With a Month Left in the Season, Who Has the Best Odds of Landing Wembanyama?

I can't believe it's already March Madness time! As much fun as the NCAA and conference tournaments are themselves, usually this is peak draft prospect watching season. However, this is an unusual year with four of the very top players not playing in college, namely the best prospect in over a decade (or two), Victor Wembanyama. Watching the French phenom again this week after the World Cup qualifying break inspired me to dive into a topic I've been thinking about for a while: where do teams currently stand in the tanking race with such a gem atop this class and just a month until the season's final day on April 9th?

And if you haven't seen more than just highlights of Wembanyama, you should change that since all Metropolitans 92 games are streamed on NBA.com and the NBA app. It's a marvel to behold someone who is 7'4" (without shoes) move with such graceful coordination, and some of the plays he makes with his 8' wingspan are almost comically good. Before this season, I had only seen a little bit of him during the 2021 U19 World Cup, and I thought he was like a stretched out Anthony Davis. It's hard to find a real comparison for what kind of talent he is now, though, with such unique tools. The best I can do is kind of like a combination of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kristaps Porzingis with some of the former's freakish combination of athleticism, length, defensive competitiveness, and ball-handling to go with the latter's sheer size and shooting ability. Although Wemby is down to 29.5% on threes now with all of the tough shots he takes, the volume of 5.6 attempts per game and his 81.5% shooting on free throws are good indicators of how well he'll shoot once he has better teammates creating looks. I honestly think he could lead a team to the playoffs as a rookie if he joins a decent situation.

As a reminder, the teams with the three worst records have the same odds at each of the top-4 draft picks that are drawn on lottery night: a 14% chance for the 1st pick, 13.42% for the 2nd, 12.75% for the 3rd, and 11.97% for the 4th. After that, the chances of landing the #1 pick drop by 1.5% for each spot. The combination of this leveling out the odds starting with the 2019 lottery and the introduction of the Play-In Tournament in 2021 has resulted in less blatant tanking. More teams try to stay competitive with the outside chance at the playoffs now, and since it doesn't matter if you have the worst or third-worst record, there's no longer a race to the absolute cellar. Spots 5 through 9 having their chances of improving their pick go way up in this format does create some incentive for those teams to lose more down the stretch, but since those squads were at least winning enough to be in that position to begin with, the mileage may vary. But we'll get to that! Let's start at the bottom of the standings...or top depending on your perspective.

Roster Analysis: The Warriors' Unique Two-Way Usage and the 15th Roster Spot

A report of an innocuous Warriors transaction on Wednesday probably didn't mean much to all but diehard Dubs fans and/or NBA capologists: Golden State is signing rookie wing Lester Quinones from their Santa Cruz G League affiliate to a 10-day contract. Pretty standard stuff at this point in the season for teams with open roster spots, right? Not quite, as the team is set to have a record-setting luxury tax payment and has been compensating with a fascinating usage of Two-Way contracts, leading to some salary cap gymnastics with this move.

Let's backtrack a little bit to the offseason as they finalized their roster. They used cash to move up in the 2nd round and take Ryan Rollins at #41, and as I speculated before the draft, they used part of the Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception to sign him to a three year deal instead of just two on the minimum. Also as expected, their other 2nd round pick was used on an intriguing international prospect, Gui Santos, that wouldn't need to take up a roster spot, though he ended up being stashed in Santa Cruz to develop in their system instead of returning to Brazil. Filling out the bench with one player on the rookie minimum of $1,017,781 compared to the veteran minimum that carries a $1,836,090 cap hit may not be a big difference in salary, but with how deep into the tax threshold they are and the repeater penalty, that cut over $5 million off of their tax payment.

After a record $170 million tax bill on top of a $176 million payroll last season, salary raises meant this roster was set to be even more expensive this season, so every dollar past the line matters. It makes sense that they would open the season with only 14 players on the main roster as a result. And while cost effective with long-term upside, using one of those spots on Rollins did come with knowing that the 20 year old with just two years of experience at Toledo won't be contributing much. That put even more pressure on nailing their two Two-Way players who don't count against the cap.