National Basketball Association

How free agency changed NBA team building

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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This summer, the NBA free agency period was more frenzied than ever before. Dudes were getting crazy deals! Four guys who have never been to an All-Star game — Mike Conley, Bradley Beal, Nic Batum, and Hassan Whiteside — combined to bank about a half-a-BILLION dollars on the open market. I already told you that the Green Falcon, Harrison Barnes, was getting maxed out this summer, and he did. And those were some of the good decisions! I mean, the Portland Trail Blazers felt compelled to pay $184M to three guys — Allen Crabbe, Evan Turner, and Mo Harkless — who all play the same position!

It wasn’t just the big paychecks that were startling, either; there was some dramatic player movement, too.

After nine years in Atlanta, Al Horford left the Hawks for the Boston Celtics. Dwyane Wade — twelve years a Heat player — took his talents out of South Beach and headed back to Chicago. Big names like Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, and Derrick Rose changed teams, too. But no free agent made a bigger splash than Kevin Durant. After nearly a decade as the marquee player of the Thunder franchise, KD headed to the Golden State to join Stephen Curry and the Warriors.

There has been a fair amount of digital hand-wringing on NBA-Twitter over the recent accumulation of star players on a small number of super-teams. It’s easy enough to draw the parallels between the new Durant-Curry partnership and the one formed by LeBron James and D-Wade in Miami and then blame LeBron’s Decision as the dark genesis of some new anti-competitive NBA landscape. However, the construction of super-teams through free agency and trades is nothing new. To find out where it all started, we need to go back to the summer of 1988, all the way back to Tom Chambers.

The first summer of free agency

There’s a reason Oscar Robertson spent the first ten years of his career toiling away for the Cincinnati Royals (a basketball team). He couldn’t leave! There was no such thing as a free agent back then. In fact, it wasn’t until the summer of 1988 that a new collective bargaining agreement created the concept of unrestricted free agency. Prior to that time, a player in his prime would only part ways with his team if — like the Big O — he was traded away (or, in rarer cases, via a funky mechanism akin to the modern sign-and-trade agreements). Likewise, NBA teams had basically two ways to add new players: draft a rookie or make a trade with another team. As such, success on draft day was absolutely paramount to having success on the court.

All that changed in the summer of 1988 when a 6-10 All-Star power forward out of the University of Utah became the first ever unrestricted free agent. The 29-year-old, seven-year NBA vet, Thomas Doane Chambers, left a crowded Seattle SuperSonics front court for Phoenix. He teamed up with an impressive young collection of talent — Kevin Johnson, Jeff Hornacek, and Tyrone Corbin — acquired by the Suns via the draft. The pairing was an immediate success as Chambers was more productive the following season than ever before — averaging 26 points per game — and with him the Suns went 55-27 and reached the 1989 Western Conference Finals.

Chambers started a revolution. More free agents followed after him and the process of team building was never the same. You can see in the chart below how successful teams, championship teams, were dependent on drafted players during the pre-free agency era, whereas players acquired through other means (free agency, trade) became more critical to championship teams during the post-free agency era.

To help visualize the paradigm shift in team building, I’m using VORP — the Value Over Replacement Player — as a summary measure of a player’s contribution to his team. The plot shows the percentage of positive team VORP contributed by players acquired through the draft for each championship team since 1980. Some minutiae: Scottie Pippen wasn’t technically drafted by the Bulls; he was acquired by Chicago via a draft-day trade, but I treat him as if he was native Chicagoan, anyways.

I did analogously with any other draft-day trades. LeBron James was drafted by Cleveland, but he was acquired by the 2016 Cavs via a sign-and-trade agreement, so I did not consider him to be a drafted player for that team. I did the same with any other player who was drafted, left, and came back. In the plot, key contributors — players with individual VORP of at least 2.5 — are highlighted within the bars and the year they were drafted is shown. I’ve divided the teams into two groups — those constructed around a franchise player who was drafted before 1989 (pre-free agency, blue bars) and those teams constructed around a franchise player who was drafted in 1989 or after (post-free agency, red bars).

Percentage of positive team VORP contributed from players acquired by the draft for each NBA champion, 1980-2016.

*Ben Wallace joined the league as an undrafted free agent in 1996.

The two dotted lines demonstrate the dramatic shift in the role of drafted players on championship teams before and after the introduction of NBA free agency. Championship teams constructed before the free-agency era relied more on the players they drafted — with those “lifers” contributing 65 percent of positive team VORP, on average. In contrast, championship teams constructed after the free-agency era have relied more on other means of team building — as drafted players accounted for only 41 percent of positive team VORP, on average.

More anecdotally, you can see how the old-school champs required a pair, if not a trio of great players drafted at short intervals: Larry Bird (‘78) – Kevin McHale (‘80) for the Celtics, Magic Johnson (‘79) – James Worthy (‘82) for the Lakers, Isiah Thomas (81’) – Joe Dumars (‘85) – Dennis Rodman (‘86) for the Pistons, and Michael Jordan (‘84) – Scottie Pippen (‘87) – Horace Grant (‘87) for the Bulls. Since the onset of free agency, several teams have succeeded in winning a title with just one foundational star acquired from the draft: Kobe Byrant (‘96) with the Lakers, Dwyane Wade (‘03) with the Heat, Paul Pierce (‘98) with the Celtics (with an assist from Rajon Rondo), and Dirk Nowitzki (‘98) with the Mavs. The Spurs are special — they overlapped the 20-year career of their No. 1 draft pick, Tim Duncan, with two other franchise players at the beginning (David Robinson) and the end (Kawhi Leonard) of his career.

In the year 38 A.C. (After Chambers), the 2015-Warriors were a throwback in championship team construction. Like the dominant teams of the 1980’s and 1990’s, Golden State’s focus on continuity and player development resulted in a powerful nucleus of draftees in Stephen Curry (‘09), Draymond Green (‘12), and Klay Thompson (‘11).

But, were these Warriors the best-drafted team in the free agent era? And, if not, who has benefited the most from the draft since the start of free agency?