Same if you trade Vlade Divac to take a chance on a 17 year old high school kid after 12 teams passed on him, and he goes on to be the closest facsimile to the SG above.

And if the scrawny kid you took at 7 who didn’t look like he could survive in the league becomes a multiple MVP after a series of rules changes fundamentally alters the game to make it more shooter friendly AND the undersized forward you took a your 2nd round pick turns out to be the best defensive player in basketball after the guy you drafted with the 6th pick to be that player completely flames out, you are also completely lucky AF.

There is probably not a single champion who wasn’t more lucky than smart. Which is totally fine. I’d rather be lucky.

PER TS% 3PAr FTr ORB% DRB% TRB% AST% STL%
Mean 12.7 0.529 0.342 0.249 4.7 14.9 9.8 12.6 1.6
75th Perc. 16.2 0.582 0.487 0.313 6.8 19.0 13.0 16.8 1.9
Median 12.7 0.540 0.356 0.221 3.2 13.9 8.6 10.0 1.4
25th Perc. 9.2 0.494 0.161 0.143 1.7 10.0 6.1 6.7 0.9

Can you post it as a screenshot of the table? Hard to read as is.

The others have all obviously had good decisions made, but they all had to rely on lucky breaks to some extent. It’s clear that good management helps a lot and that luck plays a big factor, but there’s different equations for different cases.

The Knicks are a rare case in which management has been overall pretty terrible AND we haven’t had lucky breaks in quite a while. It really kind of sucks to be us.

https://hoopshype.com/2018/08/16/new-york-knicks-trey-burke-drive-basket-scoring-scouting-report/

Similarly, it was a stupid stroke of luck that Robinson went down just before a sure-fire once-in-a-generation player like Duncan was drafted, and that they lucked out enormously to move up to #1. They win nothing w/o Duncan. So I would replace “lucky but mostly good” with “very good after being ridiculously lucky.”

But that’s what I’m talking about with the Knicks. Maybe now that they actually have draft picks and seem to be committed to young player, they will set themselves up better for when that lucky break comes along, if it hasn’t already.

1. He did not choose to go to Boston. He chose to leave the Cavs. He accepted a trade to Boston without fuss. That does not mean he wanted to go there. Notice who was not on this list.

” CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving doesn’t have a no-trade clause, but that hasn’t stopped him from reportedly creating a preferred-destination list, one that includes four logical options.

Minnesota Timberwolves. San Antonio Spurs. New York Knicks. Miami Heat. Each team has an appeal that the Cavs don’t.

2. He already has a ring and may not feel pressured to compete for another one immediately.

3. NY is on his preferred list because he grew up near NY and played a lot of ball here.

We are thinking in terms of winning being the most important thing because for many players that is the priority. We have no idea what his priorities are. He may hate Boston and love NY and doesn’t need another reason given he will make piles of money either way and has already won.

I’m an actor/comedian. I had a really great teacher/mentor who used to say that luck happens to people who work hard and are well prepared for success to happen to them. If you aren’t ready to go to the next level, then a big break won’t really do you any good cause you haven’t put in the necessary work to take advantage of that lucky break.

I think this applies to NBA teams. The good teams get “lucky” because they did the hard work of setting themselves up to take advantage of that lucky break. Teams that are poorly run have less good luck. Its not that they don’t have any good things happen to them but when those lucky breaks happen, it doesn’t really propel them the way it would propel a team ready to take advantage of a lucky break.