The NFL draft trade chart is famous. Invented by Jimmy Johnson during the early 1990s when he was head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, the chart is now used by teams throughout the league to value their disparate picks while negotiating trades to move up and down.
No such ubiquitous chart exists in the NBA. Some teams, though not all, have their own trade charts. Because there are just two rounds in the NBA draft -- the NFL draft has seven -- and teams trade up and down somewhat less frequently, there hasn't been the same need, and NBA teams have preferred to make individual judgments based on the talent available. Still, standardizing the value of picks can be useful as we evaluate potential trades. So let's put together an NBA draft trade chart.
Valuing Each Pick
There are a few different ways to value draft picks. I used the value they provide over the life of their rookie contracts -- four years for first-round picks, three years of minimum salary for second-round picks; a fairly standard contract. To quantify the value that picks provided on the court, I used my wins above replacement player (WARP) rating over this span for players from the 2000 to 2014 drafts.
Smoothing the averages for each pick to account for random variation gives an estimated WARP for each slot. I then multiplied that by the expected value of a win to a team in dollar terms over the next four years and subtracted the salary above the league minimum each pick would be expected to make. That yields a chart that looks like this, fairly similar to what Insider's D.R.A.F.T. Initiative has found in the past.
The exact values aren't important here. What matters is the relative value of each pick. The NFL draft trade chart starts at 3,000 points. Since the net value of the No. 1 pick (on-court value minus marginal salary) is about $44 million, I decided to convert its value to 4,000 points and go down from there. Here's the resulting trade value chart.
This chart can be used much like its NFL equivalent. Let's say the Boston Celtics want to trade up with the Charlotte Hornets from No. 16 to No. 9, as Insider's Chad Ford has suggested makes sense. The ninth pick is valued at 2,120 points and the No. 16 pick at 1,580. Boston could add the 28th pick (1,040 points). Now the Hornets are getting a total of 2,620 points in return. To even out the difference, Charlotte could include its second-round pick, No. 39 (500 points). Remarkably, this scores as a perfectly balanced trade.
Trade Value in Practice
The difficulty in evaluating most trades using the chart is that they nearly always include something in addition to picks that year -- future draft picks, players or cash considerations. Going back to 2000, I found 11 pick-for-pick swaps. Here's how they rate by my trade chart.
Teams have unanimously paid a premium to move up. That's consistent with results in the NFL. When Chase Stuart of Football Perspective put together a value-based chart, he found that Johnson's chart overvalued top picks and undervalued those in the middle rounds.
There's reason to believe that my chart undervalues the very top picks. Looking just at the rookie contract ignores the value teams can potentially get from drafting star players who can be underpaid if they sign an extension after their rookie deal, something that's far more common at the top of the draft. However, midround picks don't seem to convey the same value, and in practice the teams moving down have generally gotten the better of the pick-for-pick trades.
Consider trades from the last two years. In 2013, the Utah Jazz gave the Minnesota Timberwolves the No. 14 and No. 21 picks to move up to ninth and take Michigan point guard Trey Burke -- valuing Burke higher than the third pick in the draft. When healthy, No. 14 pick Shabazz Muhammad was better than the disappointing Burke last season; so far, No. 21 pick Gorgui Dieng has been the best of the three players.
Last year's trade up by the Chicago Bulls isn't listed in the chart because it included other assets, but the Bulls paid an even bigger pick premium to the Denver Nuggets, surrendering the No. 16 and No. 19 picks (collectively valued at 3,020 points) for the 11th pick (1,930). Chicago even threw in a 2015 second-round pick (which landed at No. 53, worth an extra 220 points) and took on the contract of forward Anthony Randolph, giving up two more second-round picks and cash to later dump Randolph's contract on the Orlando Magic. For all that trouble, the Bulls got Doug McDermott, who played just 321 minutes, while No. 16 pick Jusuf Nurkic was one of the league's most productive rookies in Denver.
Those moves pale in comparison to the worst trade up of the 2000s. In 2001, the Houston Rockets held three first-round picks (No. 13, No. 18 and No. 23) but wanted to add a star frontcourt player to point guard Steve Francis. They dealt all three picks to the New Jersey Nets for the seventh pick, used on Seton Hall forward Eddie Griffin. Alas, the late Griffin's battles with substance abuse prevented him from ever contributing to the Rockets. At the same time, the Nets drafted two players (center Jason Collins and forward Richard Jefferson) who contributed to their Finals runs the next two seasons. Both started in the Finals in 2003.
There are occasional success stories. In 2008, the Portland Trail Blazers traded the No. 33 pick in order to move up two spots from No. 27 to No. 25 to ensure they got French forward Nicolas Batum, who was an important starter for the team until he was traded to the Charlotte Hornets Wednesday for a package headlined by 2014 No. 9 overall pick Noah Vonleh. Reserve Darrell Arthur went 27th. And the Chicago Bulls successfully took a risk in 2004 when they traded their 2005 first-round pick plus the No. 31 pick in '04 to the Phoenix Suns for the No. 7 pick, which they used to take Duke forward Luol Deng. To win the trade, the Bulls needed to make the playoffs the next season, which they did, leaving Phoenix with the 21st pick in 2005 and a total of 2,060 trade points to the 2,280 they surrendered.
Still, for the most part, teams should heed the chart. Paying a premium to trade up doesn't seem to make sense, and now we have the chart to prove it.