Do You Believe in the All-Star, Superstar, or Bust Theory?

No, not exactly… I believe there’s super franchise MVP caliber players, franchise players, all stars, starters, borderline starters, bench players, borderline making the league, and then of course the busts. Some players have more boom/bust untapped potential. Others are what they are. Everything of course is relative to where the player is being drafted also in a simplistic boom or bust scenario. Not to say there isn’t a gem in this draft, I’m just not sold on anyone to be at superstar level.
As far as the video’s exact theory, no I don’t believe in that really. Someone might be an All-Star at some point, but not sure about a franchise player in this draft. I think the theory USUALLY holds, but not always. Kind of like a theory that a team must have a top 5 player to win a championship. That USUALLY holds, but then there’s say the 2003 Pistons who clearly didn’t have a top 5 player. A superstar in a draft isn’t guaranteed. In fact, only a bust is really. Everything’s just an educated guess, but the media does go with the tide. Just like we have to in mock drafts if we want to be accurate. What we on this site would do as GMs for example might be way different than the thinking of the consensus web sites, especially in a crapshoot draft like this one.

The Heat made the finals on the backs of low picks. The Raptors won a title without a lottery pick on their playoff roster. The #1 seed in the East only had lottery picks who were picked up off the scrap heap (Brook Lopez and Marvin Williams) while in their 30s. The Nuggets had two lottery picks on their roster, 7th and 14th. Even the star-studded Clippers have a single top ten pick, and he went 10th. Golden State’s core went 7th, 11th, and 35th. This theory is not grounded in reality.

It is a result of the fetishization of Sam Hinkie, and the propaganda of Philadelphia 76ers cutting payroll, pocketing revenue-sharing for years, and making that cash grab into a marketing tool that ESPN gobbled up and made the kind of fans who would fall for a ponzie scheme into ideologues. Guess what, Philadelphia’s Process did not work out as well as Milwaukee, Denver, and Boston. The results are in. Building winners takes hard work, not lottery tickets. It isn’t random which players work hard and get better. Those three had to rebuild at the same time, and they are much better now. Ben Simmons still gets a participation trophy every time he takes a shot outside the paint. Joel Embiid can’t go a month without missing a game due to injury. It isn’t random.

There is LeBron, and then everybody else. Get LeBron. Get LeBron’s team to recruit other stars. Things will work out. Guess what, 2020 doesn’t have the next LeBron. All those previous “next LeBrons” like Simmons and Wiggins aren’t LeBron. You don’t build a theory on quite possibly the biggest outlier in the history of sports. The NBA has been hurt by this movement. The number of poorly run, non-competitive teams really hurts the NBA regular season. They have the equivalent of three or four expansion team every year now, and is built on a failed scheme to pocket profits from revenue sharing.