Pro Basketball's draft often works against a 'good fit' between draftee and draft enviro

On Sports Law Blog Michael McCann, thinking especially about the National Basketball Association's season of drafting new players for its vbarious teams from a pool of candidates, inquires about "The Importance of Which Team Drafts You" (Apr24,2k7)

We have an article up on The Situationist today entitled "The Situation of the NBA Draft." It's premised on the idea that many, if not most, players selected in the NBA Draft will succeed or fail largely due to the situation of the team that drafts them. In other words, some players will find themselves in the right environment in terms of teammates and coaches and fans, while others will wind up playing in the wrong offense, with the wrong coach, in the wrong city. These situational factors can be enormously influential in whether the player succeeds or fails in the NBA.

However, when we evaluate these players, we usually focus on presumed, but often immeasurable and perhaps misunderstood qualities, like "how hard they work" or whether they have the "drive to succeed" (whatever that actually means). In other words, we tend to overlook the situation, and focus on the disposition, and that may not be the best way to judge players.

Over at The Situationist, the author/s pursue a related theme, NBA Draft Lottery under the title mentioned (Apr24,2k7).

As most fans of the National Basketball Association know, the NBA Draft lottery will be held on May 22. It will determine the draft order of the 14 NBA teams that did not make the playoffs, as those teams will be assigned a pick between 1 and 14 in the 2007 NBA Draft, which will be held on June 28. The 16 teams that made the playoffs will not participate in the lottery, but will instead select between 15 and 30 based on inverse order of record. Picks 31 through 60 in the second and final round of the NBA draft will be based on inverse record of all teams. Typically, the drop off in talent after the first five or so drafted players is quite significant, and few players selected after 15 will become NBA stars. Nevertheless, a good number of drafted players will enjoy NBA careers of at least two or three years, which for some can mean the difference between becoming a millionaire and becoming someone who doesn’t earn much doing anything.

.The whole article is worth clicking-up and reading.