PhDribble points out (PG-13) that it's massively important how good your team is at developing young players. Yet it's something we have very little understanding or analysis of. Is your team good at it? PhDribble would like to know.

Development analysis remains at the local level. That is, we all have a thoughtful opinion on how our local teams develop their young players, but don't have such a clear sense for other teams. And no matter how many games you catch on the Pass, you only get a sip of that local flava: the reportage on the draftees in the D-League, the young'uns in the weight room, the Slovenian coach shipped in to teach post-moves.

So for me, I have a pretty developed opinion of my birthteam Pistons and of the clubs residing in the cities I've lived in over the last few years. But the Bucks? I could bulls--- something quite passable, but really have no clue the prevailing local opinion in Waukee. What's more, it's a complicated amalgamation of factors: head/asst/specialty coaching, gm'ing, scouting, drafting, investment in d-league affiliates, the right mix of vet leadership, owners' patience, curfews, minute management ... endless.

Key question, should we credit Jerry West as the master of the draft-day-sleeper or as the master at building an organization that develops those players?

I'm hoping to get some analyses from readers, maybe even compile a list of assessments of how well NBA teams do at developing talent.

I will add one more wrinkle to this discussion: in many cases the most important skill development does not come from the team. There are certainly exceptions -- the Rockets, for instance, have lavished team coaching resources on Yao Ming, as the Lakers have with Andrew Bynum. I know guys like Tim Grgurich and Bill Bayno wear team logo polos as they obsess over every last little detail of this or that player's footwork. 

But from what I hear, a lot of teams a lot of the time are simply not looking at players that way. They're not watching player X a thousand times in the post to become more enlightened teachers of player X. They are watching player X a thousand times in the post to decide whether or not to glue his butt to the bench.

With the possible exceptions of legends like Jerry Sloan, Phil Jackson, and Gregg Popovich, just about every coaching staff needs to win in the short term to remain employed. So -- funny how that happens -- their emphasis is on winning in the short term. Investing time and energy in teaching a rookie something today that will pay off under some other coach in four years -- it's a luxury most staffs can't afford.

It's also a rare skill. There are plenty of top level strategists and motivators who are not great teachers. 

There is also simply not time, in many cases. One-on-one personal development is something that is squeezed into spare moments, as Bucks assistant Tony Brown described to me the other day:

I think when we watch the game we think of a player like Yi, and you can imagine you have all this time for skill development. Spending eight hours a day teaching him about the NBA game, but with the NBA schedule, you don't have that kind of time, right?
No, not really. We generally get to spend some time before and after practice with a lot of our guys. Either with skill stuff on the floor or maybe sitting down, showing them some edits of some games.

Teaching the game on an individual level (the kind of stuff like: "this is a good time to freeze fake, maybe your offensive rebound numbers should be a little better, and I noticed you're not finishing much with the left hand these days") is, many players say, lacking.

That reality means a lot of those personal development conversations happen only in the summer, or, increasingly, by text messages and phone calls with personal trainers who are employed directly by the players.

For instance, Dirk Nowitzki reportedly has a fantastic relationship with the Mavericks, who have a famously large coaching staff. But Nowitzki entrusts a fat chunk of his personal development to Holger Geschwindner. A lot of players have similar arrangements (and if they didn't, David Thorpe would have a lot more time to help me with my left-hand finishes).

Which makes you wonder: if the unheralded Nowitzki blossoms into a star in a Maverick uniform, is that a sign the Mavericks are good at developing young players? I don't know. Maybe they are ... maybe they aren't.

Are any teams really good at developing young talent? I like to think some of them are -- and I'd certainly point to San Antonio as a team with a culture, a way they do things, that many young players appear to have been taught.

But my suspicion is that, in the end, whether or not a player realizes his potential has a ton to do with what's in his heart, some to do with who's in his ear, and not much to do with the logo on his uniform.