We Don’t Need Newsbreakers

Plus, what Draft Twitter gets wrong

Welcome back to Take Week on The F5. Here’s what you need to know:

Every day this week I’m publishing different takes from two anonymous friends of The F5.

Here’s what we got today:

• First, imagine a world where the biggest newsbreaker in the world simply picked up and left.

• Then, Draft Twitter is busted and broken. But we can fix it.

- Owen Phillips

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We Don’t Need Newsbreakers

Anyone that’s been in the bowels of an unfamiliar arena can attest that getting lost is inevitable. That’s what happened to me in February when I visited Chase Center during All-Star weekend.

As I looked for a way out, I saw a familiar figure 20 feet ahead of me. Shams Charania was speaking through a bluetooth, walking swiftly with purpose.

“Shams seems to know where he’s going,” I thought. “If I follow him, he’ll lead me to an exit.”

I trailed Shams through the hallways of the arena. After several minutes, we arrived back at our starting point. It turns out that Shams was walking in circles.

Shams does the same thing on social media. Over the past few weeks, he’s tweeted injury reports, news on Terry Taylor’s 10-day signing, an ad for a Knicks game, and a two-minute video update on Luka Doncic’s furniture.

During busier periods, he’ll share some leaked slop in order to advance a source’s agenda. His biggest value-add is news of a transaction a few minutes before everyone else finds out, temporarily satiating our bottomless hunger for instant gratification.

Newsbreakers certainly work hard for their lucrative paychecks. Shams logged almost 21 hours of screen time on the day of the trade deadline. During less hectic periods, he gets 16 to 17 hours on his phone and two to three hours of sleep.

Shams is far from the only obsessive newsbreaker. Upon Adrian Wojnarowski’s retirement, Bobby Marks strangely bragged about having to dangerously steer a car from the passenger seat while Woj broke news on his phone from the driver’s seat.

Adam Schefter made things even weirder, bragging about breaking news in the middle of sexual intercourse (“I got the job done in every which way,” he said, eliciting the classic meme — we should all know less about each other).

Why do we incentivize this behavior while the Zach Lowes of the world get laid off?

This isn’t meant to disparage Shams, who by all accounts has earned everything he’s gotten and can’t be faulted for chasing the bag. Rather, it’s meant to disparage the entire profession of newsbreaking. Rita Skeeter was supposed to be the villain in Harry Potter. She’d have 20 million followers and a lucrative TV deal if she pivoted to the NBA.

Imagine a world where the biggest newsbreaker in the world simply picked up and left. Would you ever think about him again aside from when he’s hawking his used iPhones?

Would your life be better?

The Luka Doncic trade was one of the most exciting moments in NBA history. Yes, some of that was due to the lunacy of the trade, along with the greatness of the player involved. But it also captured our interest because of the lack of leaks and the shock that we all collectively experienced.

There used to be a better way. We got a taste of it for one brief moment, instead of this:

When the newsbreakers were cut out of the loop, we didn’t start the book from the last page. It turns out that method makes for a much better read.

At the end of the day, the NBA is an entertainment product. I don’t fault anyone for liking what they like. But things like the draft, free agency, and trades were better when there was some mystery to them. If walking in circles is your thing, then more power to you. There is an exit though, if you seek it

- Anonymous Crow

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Draft Twitter Is Busted

Draft Twitter (“DT”), as well as the surrounding draft pod-o-sphere, is in a bad place.

The most talented former Draft Tweeters have been scooped up and hired by NBA teams. What’s left is a group of amateur draftniks with a poor understanding of Bayesian thinking who would rather engage in novelty seeking than watching actual NBA basketball games.

Where have all the Bayesians gone?

One of my biggest criticisms of the current crop of people on DT is that too few seem to have an understanding of how much weight to give performance at lower levels.

DT often projects their hopes onto players based on their elite high school performances while ignoring evidence of their limitations that becomes apparent during college. High school samples should get swamped by college samples, because the difference in competition level means the college samples are much more valuable for predictive purposes. But far too many draftniks on current day DT stubbornly hold on to their pre-college priors on a player.

For every Cade Cunningham, who finally looks like the player he was supposed to be, there are multiple Ziaire Williams — guys who were elite prospects who did not live up to the hype in college, got drafted high anyway, and have stunk it up in the NBA. We’ve seen a similar story from Jalen Green, who didn’t go to college, but was terrible at a lower level (G-League Ignite) and has continued to be terrible in the NBA.

These players still have defenders, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Be more willing to update your priors!

Too Much Novelty Seeking

DT spends way too much time fetishizing fringe talents. This happens because everyone on DT is obsessed with trying to post their way into an NBA job by carving out their own niche.

Being “The Second Round Wing Guy” is enticing because if you hit on your evaluation of those guys when the entire league misses then it might help you stand out. But if you “like” every wing in the late first or second round, then you don’t have a valuable opinion. You’re just casting a wide net hoping everyone forgets all the second round wings you liked that amounted to nothing.

This results in a tendency to spend too much time squinting at guys that have the right tools or show flashes (for the love of God, a non-guard throwing a simple skip pass to the corner is not a “flash”) rather than doing a deep dive on the guys who are likely to matter.

No one in the public sphere needs to have more than 100 players on their draft board. Only 20-25 of these guys will have meaningful NBA careers. Focus on the ones you think are in that group and dig in.

You Have To Watch The NBA

I know there are only so many hours in the day and if you’re grinding Santa Clara versus Gonzaga, that leaves less time to watch Celtics versus Bucks. But If you want to project the best NBA players, you must watch the league to know who can hang and who can’t.

This should be painfully obvious but apparently it is not. I cannot count the number of times I have heard people on DT say things that suggest they’re spending 85 percent of their time on non-NBA hoops. But it is critical to your understanding of who is going to translate to today’s league to actually WATCH. THE. NBA.

So to sum it all up, Draft Twitter is busted and broken. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Just three basic tweaks could bring it back to its former glory:

• value production more than ephemeral film flashes

• focus on the players who matter and stop fetishizing fringe talents

• watch actual NBA basketball

Do these three things and we will Build Draft Twitter Back Better.

- Anonymous Axolotl

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Back tomorrow with more takes