On the NBA Draft (NBA)

Thursday is the NBA Draft, and like the 30 NBA teams, I am interested in how to find the next big star, and, as importantly, the next big bust. I have a guess as to who this will be on Thursday, but first I’m going to go through my entire learning process. I won’t be offended if you skip to the end.

Not surprisingly, I started attempting to work by the numbers. Since high school players don’t have useful numbers, and I didn’t feel like finding Europeans’, I should point out this immediately limited me to college players. I was, and am, okay with this. So, in 2001-02, I invented a statistical system to rate college basketball players. It was meant only as an indicator of value to a player’s college team. When I became interested in predicting NBA success, I had to make some modifications to adapt it for that purpose. The three adjustments were for:

Year
Conference
Height relative to position

These were all reasonable changes, and made the system more accurate. Four years ago, it identified Carmelo and Wade as the two best college prospects, in that order. The first test for any statistical system is to recognize the obvious.

However, outside the obvious, the system had one major flaw. It couldn’t really identify the type of player whose game would struggle to make the jump to the NBA. I had adjustments for age and schedule strength, which was a start, but I didn’t have a good way to tell whether a star player was also a superior athlete. Anyone who watched a decade of Duke basketball, for instance, would see that someone like Grant Hill was a far superior pro prospect than someone like JJ Redick. But the system would see superstar players on the best team in the best conference.

John Hollinger, who has my dream job, solved the problem by testing for statistics that indicated pro success. As it turns out, blocks, steals and rebound rate are effective proxies for athleticism. In retrospect, I probably should have figured that out on my own. If I had my dream job, maybe I would have.

Instead, I went in a different direction. I decided that to evaluate college players for the NBA, I would determine for myself who looked like they should be a good pro, while watching college games I would watch anyway. Then, when I crunched the numbers at the end of the year, I would rank players statistically. Players who graded out well both ways should be sure things; players who did well but not the other were possibilities.

Last year, I formalized this process by giving out A’s to players I was confident would become solid NBA players, and B’s to the other players I felt had a chance. I estimated that only about 15 college players, in a given year, will go on to have careers of a decent length and quality. I have found that my list tends to be about 25 players deep, about a third of which are awarded A’s. The goals of the system are that no A player should be a bust (barring injury), and that every college player who goes on to be a good pro should receive an A or a B.

Since the system is only one year old, it is too early to tell for sure how accurate I’ve been. However, let’s take a quick look back anyway. In alphabetical order, the A’s:

LaMarcus Aldridge
Dee Brown
Jordan Farmar
Adam Morrison
JJ Redick
Brandon Roy
Marcus Williams
Shelden Williams

And the B’s:

Ronnie Brewer
Rodney Carney
Paul Davis
Quincy Douby
Randy Foye
Mike Gansey
Rudy Gay
Paul Millsap
Steve Novak
Patrick O’Bryant
Kevin Pittsnogle
Allan Ray
Rajon Rondo
Craig Smith
Tyrus Thomas

In the A group, the results were only so-so. Brandon Roy was the ROY, which I predicted, and Aldridge was good in Portland too. Shelden Williams is off to a decent start, despite the handicap of being drafted by the Hawks. Interestingly, all three point guards fell out of the lottery. Marcus Williams did well, Farmar solid, and Dee Brown gets an incomplete due to injury. The college stars Redick and Morrison were the worst. Morrison was somewhere between disappointing and awful, depending on what factors you value, and Redick was injured and then invisible. I think that because of their shooting ability, they will still both develop into quality role players (I’m sure Cleveland would be happy to take one), but I wish I had gone with B’s for them instead.

In the B column, I did make a couple of good catches. Aside from Daniel Gibson, who didn’t really make an impact until the playoffs, Smith and Millsap were the best two players of the second round.

The third group of interest is those first round choices that did not make the A or B list. This consisted of Hilton Armstrong, Cedric Simmons, Shawne Williams, Renaldo Belkman, Josh Boone, Kyle Lowry, Shannon Brown, Maurice Ager and Mardy Collins. With the possible exception of Belkman, this group was decidedly ineffective.

This year, the lists consist of nine A players and sixteen B’s. I have also introduced plusses and minuses to the equation. Also, while I’m writing this now, I would like to point out I made this list shortly after the close of the college basketball season, before the parade of workouts and mock drafts that influence opinions for very little legitimate reason.

A+

Kevin Durant

A

Corey Brewer
Mike Conley
Joakim Noah
Greg Oden
Brendan Wright

A-

Jeff Green
Acie Law IV
Julian Wright

B+

Glen Davis
Sean Williams
Thaddeus Young

B

Aaron Afflalo
Aaron Brooks
Javaris Crittenden
Jared Dudley
Nick Fazekas
Aaron Gray
Spencer Hawes
Mustafa Shakur
DJ Strawberry
Alando Tucker

B-

Daequan Cook
Josh McRoberts

Three notes:

First, the fact that I listed Durant as my only A+ does not necessarily mean I would take him over Oden. The case for Durant is pretty good, though: he had the best freshman season in recent memory. The only one close was Carmelo, and he was a minor star immediately. Thus, Durant should be starting out at minor star quality. In addition, he is much less physically mature than Oden, meaning he has more improvement to gain that way. Also, from how good Conley has been, even when Oden was out, it may be that Conley has contributed to making Oden look better, whereas Durant took over games by himself. Also, teams were sometimes able to get Oden in foul trouble, an issue likely to only get worse at the next level, whereas Durant played tons of minutes every game. Finally, Oden’s wrist injury is a tiny red flag Durant doesn’t have. Therefore, Durant is an A-plus because he is a safer bet to become a solid NBA player. He, without any doubt at all, is one already.

The case for taking Oden, though, is like this. First, centers are harder to find than forwards. Second, no one argued with Oden being #1 in high school, when he was healthy. Third, he didn’t match Durant’s numbers because he had a good enough supporting cast to make the national title game, AND BECAUSE HE PLAYED ALMOST THE ENTIRE YEAR LEFT-HANDED. Then he dropped 25 and 12 on Florida when he got better. Because of that, and the scarcity factor, I would probably take Oden. But there’s no question in my mind Durant will be the score tons of points, win Rookie of the Year, and become a really good NBA player.

Second, I would probably have given Sean Williams an A if he hadn’t gotten kicked off his team. Sure is talented, though.

Third, the probable #3 pick, Al Horford, didn’t make my list at all. This seems odd, to say the least. But he has several issues, in my opinion. First, he is a little short for a post scorer. Usually, the very fact that he scored so easily in college would make me feel better about that, but Florida is a little bit of a special case. Since four of their starters may be first round draft picks, and the fifth was a shooting specialist, Horford avoided more double teams than a similar big man in any other situation. On the other end of the court, Joakim Noah protected Horford with his shot blocking. On a team that good, that well-coached, and that cohesive, one player’s weaknesses can be hidden. I believe at least one of the Florida players will be exposed without his teammates. Brewer had to play perimeter defense on an island, and Noah’s strengths of hustle and athleticism are obvious. I think that leaves Horford as the one who benefited most from the others.

There you have it, the draft preview. When Strawberry makes a team, when you see Big Baby getting minutes, when someone is wishing they’d taken Wright or Noah over Hawes, when Durant is scoring 20 points a game while the Blazers are still curing Oden’s foul problems, remember you heard it here first. When Horford’s an All-Star, well, just forget I said anything.