2011 Draft Position Analysis

Does draft position equate to winning? Somehow the owners with the middle draft picks came out worse for wear during the season. The three worst teams last year drafted #6, 8 and 9 overall in 2010. Despite picking at decent positions, Eric A, Jimmy, and Chris combined for a 11-40-3 record. One factor could have been transactions, as Eric-A and Chris both had very low transaction moves during the season. Or perhaps their poor inaguaral season points to the drop off in top tier superstars from the #5 position on?

Interestingly, the next couple picks of this year's draft are owned entirely by the low teens drafters of last year (#10, 11, 13, 12). After that, any patterns devolve but it was interesting to look at where a team finished relative to their draft opportunity. For example, Eric-L, Pierre, and Mikey drafted the last three positions in the 2010 (#16, 14, 15 respectively) but performed at a 33-20-1 clip. The extreme outlier here is Mikey, who drafted second to last yet compiled the second best regular season record in the league. Impressive work!

Thien's team drafted #3 overall but he finished with only a .500 season, and he was mostly unaffected by injury to his top guys -- unlike Evan who lost #2 overall Chris Paul pretty early on. Thien did rally to win the Toilet Bowl but his regular season was certainly a cause of stress as his team performed erratically throughout.

Trieu, with the number one overall pick, won the whole damn thing, and faced off in the Finals versus the number two overall pick, Evan. However it's not that simple as Evan's team was actually only .500 during the regular season (before CP3 returned and a trade pushed Evan to a strong post-season). Trieu did have the benefit of drafting Lebron James but it can't be said that was the only reason he rose to the top. His team, and subsequent draft picks, were incredibly prescient and made for a dominating force. I mean, he did scoop up Stephen Curry in the 5th round, and now Curry is easily a second round pick after his stellar rookie campaign. So does draft position determine who will win? The answer is: "who knows?" But it sure is fun to analyze these things in the aftermath.