ESPN Givony: Raptors Draft Grade B+ Plus Winners and Losers

[PhilBlackson]

Pretty happy with our draft selections and trades done so far. Excited for the summer league.

Summer League roster:

Dick
Walter
Mogbo
Shead
Chomche
Agbaji (?)
Freeman-Liberty
Carton
Carlson

Aka the 905 Redeem Team lol

They’re coming for the G-League trophy which is also known as the Spicy P Award.

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

Raptors saved themselves with the Jamal Shead pick. I wouldn't rule out Shead becoming the best player from the Raps draft class. If he can post even just a .030 to .040 gain in TS% he can start for this team in 2 or 3 years. He has better lead guard skills than Quickley and infinitely better defense. The real key is going to be the 3 pointer and making a modest jump in efficiency there. The good news is that he can cook sufficiently well it's more a matter of just getting the shots to fall/shot accuracy because when he's playing off-ball he will need to be able to catch and shoot and nail them at a higher clip.

If the team can somehow turn him into a high 30s 3PT shooter OH BOY.

Possibly the #1 competitor in the draft, his will to win is off the charts high. Absolute freak defender who makes Devin Carter look like a choir boy.

[mrdressup]

Furphy playing next to Siakam is going to benefit him? Who writes this kind of stuff. Any team paying much attention to Siakam would be making a mistake. He can be guarded 1 on 1. It's Siakam who might benefit from Furphy or shooters around him. You surround all star players with outside shooters. That's something we never figured out.

[Merit]

It does sound kind of dumb, but he's clearly referring to some kind of statistical projection. He feels it doesn't match with the eye test or his overall perception of Walter.

Sports analysts as a whole are morons, especially as they are steered more towards hot takes for engagement, but Givony is solid. He absolutely knows more about each and every prospect than any of us would even know about one. This is not SAS being put at a desk to say "I have never seen this man before in my life."

I rate givony’s honesty, but it does make one wonder how he came up with his spreadsheet formulas that rank players.

Of course, there’s more to life than the projections alone - the eye test + work ethic + character etc. Consider me curious as to what’s on his sheet and what’s rated where.

Regardless, in a flat draft we went in. I’m definitely content with that.

first of all this grade is by pelton
second he links his projections and how his projections work in the article

his stats based projections list
https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/40394709/nba-draft-2024-pelton-updated-top-30-prospects

1 reed sheppard
2 donovan clingan
3 sarr
4 edey
5 furphy
6 jacoby walters
41 Jonathan Mogbo
46 Jamal Shead

https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/16235135/explaining-kevin-pelton-nba-draft-projection-system
its long written article but some points

my projections start with translating what players have done before with what they will do in the NBA for 14 core statistics: 2-point percentage; 3-point percentage; free throw percentage; offensive and defensive rebound percentage; assists; steals and fouls per 100 team plays; blocks per 100 2-point attempts; percentage of individual plays devoted to 2-point, 3-point and free throw attempts; turnovers; and usage rate.
...

this process also adjusts for strength of schedule to put players who faced different levels of competition on a level playing field.
....
Utilizing multiple seasons of data yields better projections than looking solely at the most recent season. In fact, for college players I've found that earlier seasons tend to project NBA performance better than more recent seasons because older prospects no longer have the same experience advantage in the NBA. So the player's most recent season is weighted two times, the season before that (if available) three times, and two seasons before that five times. The weights are opposite for international prospects, who haven't demonstrated the same pattern because they are playing against older opponents.
..
I introduced consensus projections that also include the league's assessment of a prospect's talent
..

Thanks for the info! Didn’t dig. That’s on me.

[Scase]

I'll admit I'm not totally sure why my projections were quite so high on Walter, who ranked sixth.

What the **** is this fool talking about? He ranked Walter #6 but doesn't know why, so he's giving us a B+? Sports analysts are **** morons.

It does sound kind of dumb, but he's clearly referring to some kind of statistical projection. He feels it doesn't match with the eye test or his overall perception of Walter.

Sports analysts as a whole are morons, especially as they are steered more towards hot takes for engagement, but Givony is solid. He absolutely knows more about each and every prospect than any of us would even know about one. This is not SAS being put at a desk to say "I have never seen this man before in my life."

It's still pretty stupid that he says he projected him at 6, which is pretty damn high in the draft, and yet when we picked him at 19, it's only "solid"?

Should that not be the absolute steal of the draft based on that?

[sortpar]

Givony's ranking system reminds me of a high school teach I had years ago. Myself and two other classmates researched and wrote a paper that we handed in to be marked. We each handed in a paper that was written exactly word for word, but under our own names. The first person received a mark of 78% (she was a good student), the second person received a mark of 68% (his father was a teacher at the school) and I received a mark of 58% (I had decided to focus on playing football, instead of joining the team he coached). In my opinion, Givony used somewhat the same type of ranking system in this case.