What to learn from busts

[UGA Hayes]

Be super wary of older players if you look at that list.

Also I'm not sure Branden Wright is going to end up a bust. He was injured pretty much all the time. He has played very well this year.

[Rockmaninoff]

Looking at the recent top 10 busts:

Wes Johnson
Al-Farouq Aminu
Haseem Thabeet
Jonny Flynn
Michael Beasley
OJ Mayo
Joe Alexander
Greg Oden (would have been awesome without injuries )
Jeff Green
Yi
Corey Brewer
Brandan Wright
Adam Morrison
Tyrus Thomas
Shelden Williams
Randy Foye
Patrick O'Bryant
Saer Sene


What changes in draft philosophy should GMs make after the failure of these guys to become starters or even NBA players? Busts will always happen, but do you think certain things in the drafting process needs to change for GMs to dodge some of these busts?

1. Don't select junior and seniors that didn't produce efficiently as freshman or sophomores.

2. Don't select weak/light/soft big men and expect them to handle NBA paint physicality.

3. Don't select players that are projected by their size/athleticism to play a dissimilar NBA position, if the player doesn't have the skills to play that position.

That applies to everyone except Oden, Flynn, Green, Morrison, and Mayo. Oden, Flynn, and Green have had injury/health problems. Morrison is a case of a great college player that just didn't have the athleticism to play his position in the NBA. Mayo is a good player, but he was just a jumpshooter in the NCAA, and that hasn't changed.

Golden Rule: Don't select players and expect them to be what they haven't shown early.

[bballcool34]

Looking at the recent top 10 busts:

Wes Johnson
Al-Farouq Aminu
Haseem Thabeet
Jonny Flynn
Michael Beasley
OJ Mayo
Joe Alexander
Greg Oden
Jeff Green
Yi Jialian
Corey Brewer
Brandan Wright
Adam Morrison
Tyrus Thomas
Shelden William
Randy Foye
Patrick O'Bryant
Saer Sene


What changes in draft philosophy should GMs make after the failure of these guys to become starters or even NBA players? Busts will always happen, but do you think certain things in the drafting process needs to change for GMs to dodge some of these busts?

Players who may be 'busts' in the sense they haven't produced like all-stars but are still solid players.
Players who are role-players in the NBA or could become so.
Players who are absolute busts.

Jeff Green isn't an absolute bust, try again.

[theman]

I'd like to add one more to the list of things to avoid in a draft prospect. That is the Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. Think Julian Wright. Another one, now that I read Julian's nbadraft.net bio again is 6' 8" players with "point guard" skills. Earl Clark would fall into this category.

What about the flip side of the coin. How do you keep yourself from missing out on a future stud? How did Roy Hibbert all 7' 2" of him fall to #17? How did Mario Chalmers and DeAndre Jordan fall to the second round? How was it that Jeremy Lin was undrafted and cut by two teams?

And then there are guys who on paper don't seem like they should be as good as they are, like the 6' 9" rebounding machine Kevin Love or under sized shooting guard Eric Gordon.

I think William Goldman (while talking about the movie business) said it best "nobody knows anything".

[Superiorblogman]

The OP's list is seriously wack as it has people who are not busts on it. On the other hand, no bust list is complete without Marvin Williams on it.

[King d]

Be super wary of older players if you look at that list.

Also I'm not sure Branden Wright is going to end up a bust. He was injured pretty much all the time. He has played very well this year.

Exactly, Brandan was destroyed by injuries, but looked pretty good when healthy. And as you said he is playing pretty good this year despite limited minutes and he is still 24 years old.

[Kalela]

I am not sure Jeff Green is a bust. Without the injuries and the health problems he would be at the very least a decent role player. We will see next year when he fully recovers from his heart surgery.

[Indy2thaWindy]

How did Roy Hibbert all 7' 2" of him fall to #17?

It was a deep draft and he was probably the worst conditioned athlete in the NBA during his rookie season. You could tell if he got in shape he would be good, but with it being a deep draft, most passed on him as a project. He said Houston told him if they drafted him, they would send him to the D-League for a season or two. All he really did his first two years was block shots and take hook shots.

[MGrand15]

Looking at the recent top 10 busts:

Wes Johnson
Al-Farouq Aminu
Haseem Thabeet
Jonny Flynn
Michael Beasley
OJ Mayo
Joe Alexander
Greg Oden (would have been awesome without injuries )
Jeff Green
Yi
Corey Brewer
Brandan Wright
Adam Morrison
Tyrus Thomas
Shelden Williams
Randy Foye
Patrick O'Bryant
Saer Sene


What changes in draft philosophy should GMs make after the failure of these guys to become starters or even NBA players? Busts will always happen, but do you think certain things in the drafting process needs to change for GMs to dodge some of these busts?

It's not the most important thing but athleticism and size matter a lot. The biggest issue with some of these guys is that their athleticism becomes WAY overrated.

OJ Mayo, Beasley, and Foye are good athletes but not great for NBA standards. Mayo and Foye were undersized 2s who didn't have the athleticism to make up for their size. Beasley was playing the 4 in college but was never strong or big enough for the position in the pros. He was also between positions until he went to the Timberwolves. If he went to a team without Wade and was developed as a Melo-type 3 from the starrt, I think his career would've went much different. All 3 became good players but never lived up to their hype.

Morrison and Shelden Williams were two polished college players who just weren't athletic enough to have their success translate to the league. Morrison had a chance but after he tore his ACL, he was done.

The same thing applies even to really good athletes like Tyrus Thomas, Jeff Green and Brendan Wright. Thomas is still a small-ish 4 and even though he's still good and would be way better with good BBIQ, his lack of size and strength really hurts him. Jeff Green is a good athlete but not quick enough for the 3 and not big enough to play a true 4. Still effective but not really a starting caliber player. Wright was and is too weak as a big man. Never really had the frame to be a consistent big man. They can all dunk but that's not all you need to succeed in the league.

All these guys could carve out their niche as role players (a couple of these guys are already good players) but in terms of making gigantic impacts, they were limited from the start.

[Pogue Mahone]

I wouldn't say Green is a bust but I don't think he is in any way whatsoever a beast. I think he is too soft but we'll see once he plays more SF.

Wright is not a bust, imo, and the reference to his college numbers is misguided, too. he played in an extremely slow-paced, scoring-suppressed environment.

Each position is different and requires different thresholds to be met for expected success.

For example, you can dismiss shotblocking from a college SG as a determining factor but you can't dismiss a combination of shotblocking, rebounding and steals, corrected for pace, to determine if a SG applies athleticism/motor when plying his craft.

I think the danger of drawing limitations on players is that pigeon-hole them. There are certain players who tend to traditionally fall in drafts because they don't fit cookie cutters molds but who go on to be better pros because they have a bunch of above-average to elite skills in their toolkit, even though those skills aren't traditionally aligned with their projected position.

BTW, tweener SF/PF is potentially one of the best values in any given draft so long as you are picking them outside of the lottery.

[hillbilly hare]

Looking at the recent top 10 busts:

Wes Johnson
Al-Farouq Aminu
Haseem Thabeet
Jonny Flynn
Michael Beasley
OJ Mayo
Joe Alexander
Greg Oden (would have been awesome without injuries )
Jeff Green
Yi
Corey Brewer
Brandan Wright
Adam Morrison
Tyrus Thomas
Shelden Williams
Randy Foye
Patrick O'Bryant
Saer Sene


What changes in draft philosophy should GMs make after the failure of these guys to become starters or even NBA players? Busts will always happen, but do you think certain things in the drafting process needs to change for GMs to dodge some of these busts?

What do we learn? That Minnesota gets most of them?

Seriously though, I think it's a good reminder to the people who want to perennially tank in order to "build thru the draft". You've got to really lucky a whole lot of times in order to build thru the draft. Not only beat the odds and get a top 1-3 pick or so, which is hard enough. You also have to do a great job evaluating very young guys who've never played at the NBA level. Which clearly seems to be an extremely hard thing to do, otherwise there would never be any lottery busts.

[Dr Positivity]

I think obviously the degree of difficulty of the draft is hard, but when I look at that list I think "Bad picks" more than anything. I don't want to insult professional scouts, my best guess on what happens with the worst of picks is the owners/GM making it solely themselves instead of the scouts who spend 100x more time during the year with their butts on the line making it. I call it the MJ. You just know David Kahn picked Jonny Flynn and Wes Johnson himself after reading the Chad Ford rankings all year and watching a few college games in his spare time. It's the same reason why Hollywood gave a 250 million budget to "John Carter" even though every film of the same type recently (Alexander, Prince of Persia, Troy) bombed. It was probably greenlit from a person very high up and very insulated from the repercussions of a major bomb

[DJhitek]

-Never draft need over a significantly better player, get the assets and figure the fit out later. (Marvin over Chris, Paul Pierce and Danny Granger falling in the lotto for no apparent reason)
-PG's have to finish near the rim, if they can't, their perimeter/mid range game has to be outstanding (Felton, Flynn and Foye)
-Tweeners are always crapshoots to begin with, know what you are getting. (Tyrus Thomas, M.Beasley and Derrick Williams are obsessed with being small forwards even though they should cater their games to become bigger impacts in the paint)
-Raw bigs who are huge projects are huge risks and I'm ok with doing that as long as the commitment is there from both player and organization. Tyson Chandler(took him his third team but hey) is a perfect example of that.

Mufasa also made an excellent point about drafting strictly defensive talent, I'll caveat off that by saying the very best players in this league learn to give that effort defensively. If Thibs can get the likes of Ray Allen and Paul Pierce to become competent defenders then that side of the ball is easier to coach and develope. This league has too many two way players for a defensive specialist to matter that much.

[hillbilly hare]

^^ This. Defense is such a priority that you have to really do your homework on a potential pick. There are just so many good offensive guys out there that by looking at their D you can separate some from the pack.

In practical terms, which wing player would go with in this year's draft? Barnes or Kidd-Gilchrist or other?

[noobcake]

Harrison Barnes = Bust of the Draft

He has huge bust potential written all over him.

Touted as possibly the greatest freshmen of all time.
Has not shown improvement from Freshmen to Sophomore year despite his amazing work ethic. Skill cap not very high.
Shot too broke for an NBA SG. His FT shooting is a great predictor of future (lack of) shooting success.
Can't even dominate other SF athletically on the collegiate level. Can be lax defensively and get lost in the game.
Tendency to shot jack but has not shown the ability to distribute the ball.
Biggest problem: Tweener SG/SF with no shooting ability. Too slow to defend SG; not physical enough for SF position. Will get abused by big NBA SF like Deng, Iggy, Melo, James.

The team that drafts Barnes within top 10 will be making a huge mistake. There is absolutely 0 reason to take him if MKG/Jones is not yet taken.