Simmons/Ingram: Only One Will Succeed

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

Perhaps the ultimate #1 vs. #2 debate saw Kevin Durant emerge the easy victor.

Ben Simmons vs. Brandon Ingram. It’s a debate throughout basketball circles both in and out of Philadelphia that will only intensify the closer we get to the night of the NBA Draft. Although people seem to be trending more toward Team Simmons recently, the conventional thinking, especially before the lottery took place, was that as long as the Sixers got one of these two blue-chip prospects, which one they ultimately drafted didn’t really matter. But is that actually the case?

To try and figure that out, I looked at the players taken top two in the past 15 drafts, and compared their career Win Shares, per Basketball-Reference. While the Win Shares statistic isn’t perfect (as no stat is), it does provide a fair approximation of production over the course of a player’s career. I’ve noted for each year whether the production between the two players was close or not.

2015: Karl-Anthony Towns (8.3); D’Angelo Russell (0.0) = NOT CLOSE

2014: Andrew Wiggins (6.2); Jabari Parker (4.9) = CLOSE

2013: Anthony Bennett (0.0); Victor Oladipo (9.7) = NOT CLOSE

2012: Anthony Davis (37.7); Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (9.6) = NOT CLOSE

2011: Kyrie Irving (31.4); Derrick Williams (13.0) = NOT CLOSE

2010: John Wall (31.7); Evan Turner (14.7) = NOT CLOSE

2009: Blake Griffin (54.7); Hasheem Thabeet (4.8) = NOT CLOSE

2008: Derrick Rose (31.4); Michael Beasley (11.1) = NOT CLOSE

2007: Greg Oden (7.3); Kevin Durant (107.9) = NOT CLOSE

2006: Andrea Bargnani (18.9); LaMarcus Aldridge (79.5) = NOT CLOSE

2005: Andrew Bogut (49.2); Marvin Williams (48.9) = CLOSE

2004: Dwight Howard (113.2); Emeka Okafor (44.3) = NOT CLOSE

2003: LeBron James (192.5); Darko Milicic (7.1) = NOT CLOSE

2002: Yao Ming (65.9); Jay Williams (0.8) = NOT CLOSE

2001: Kwame Brown (20.8); Tyson Chandler (92.7) = NOT CLOSE

Looking back, the point isn’t that in 11 of the past 15 years, the player selected first had/has had the more productive career. To paraphrase Karen Smith, duh! Quickly spelling it out, the team with the first pick has the ability to select whoever they feel is the best player. The team selecting second can select anyone except for the guy the first team felt was the best player. Unless the first team is wrong in their evaluation, they’re getting the best player. Feel free to show this to any of your friends who were foolish enough to argue they would rather their team have received the #2 pick than #1.

No, the point is that, in 13 of the past 15 years, it wasn’t even close between the two players. Very rarely in recent history has there been a situation where a team would look back and say, “You know, we would have been happy taking either one of those two guys.” Only 2 of the past 15 drafts saw one of the first two players drafted record even at least half as many win shares as the more productive player between them.

Therefore, when people say something along the lines of, “I don’t care whether the Sixers draft Ben Simmons or Brandon Ingram; they’re both going to be great,” that doesn’t really align with what we’ve seen in past years. The vast majority of the time, one of the top two players winds up substantially better than the other. The trick is deciphering who is who.

For all the obvious reasons, the NBA draft lottery granting Philadelphia the first overall pick was cause for celebration among Sixers fans. With that out of the way though, it’s still incredibly imperative that Bryan Colangelo take that first overall pick and make the right decision with it. As recent history as shown us, getting the second-best player out of the top two picks entails a far steeper drop than anyone might have thought.