82games.com is a fantastic site. If you are a stat-head and you don’t know about it, you probably sleep under a rock. That, or you don’t have the internet. Even though I am not too big of a stat-head (I am getting there though – reading Basketball On Paper by Dean Oliver), I still check the site pretty much every day. That’s how I noticed their NBA Player Development “Mini-Series” which is really interesting.
Among the topics that they covered, Draft Performance by Year, Which College Conferences Deliver?, Performance of NBA drafted players by College, Best/Worst value picks, Best/Worst Drafting Teams, and Expected Performance by Draft Pick Number. I am going to be taking a look at that last one.
Expected Performance by Draft Pick Number:
82 games uses the following formula to determine a players rating:
Rating = points/game + rebounds/game + assists/game
After that he then breaks down each pick into categories:
- Star: 20+ rating
- Solid: 15 to 19.9
- Role Player: 10 to 14.9
- Deep Bench: 5 to 9.9
- Complete Bust: less than 5
- DNP: never played in the NBA
The possible picks we will be making are 14,13,12,11 or 1,2,3 (I will be getting to this later today). Obviously we want to be in the later group. Statistically speaking with a top 3 pick, we will be getting a contributor guaranteed (A role player is the worst case scenario). If we pick where we will be more than likely picking, it turns into a crap-shoot pretty much. The percentage of getting a bench warmer is almost the same as getting a contributor.
What does this mean? Well, we need to be smart about our pick (sorta like last year). Especially with the way the team is set up, we need someone who is going to be able to contribute right away. We can’t be picking potential. At least not this year.
