The Aggregated Mock Draft

[zaz102]

I aggregated rankings from respected draft analysts since I am a terrible talent evaluator. AGG Rank is the average rank based on the sources (see notes for details). If you feel there are any sources that should be added or removed, let me know the source and why and I will consider updating accordingly.

I also added some analysis at the bottom of the post. Let me know what y'all think.





* The player was only ranked on one Big Board / Mock Draft.

Notes:
1. The sources for the AGG Rank include The Ringer, Bleacher Report (Jonathan Wasserman), The Athletic (John Hollinger), ESPN (John Givony & Jeremy Woo), Sam Vecenie, No Ceilings, and Hoop Intellect.

2. I removed players that are ineligible for the draft.

3. There were some players that had a higher AGG Rank, but were only on one Big Board / Mock Draft. They were moved to the bottom of the list due to small sample size. The ones that made the list are marked with a *.


Analysis:
1. “AGG Rank” values that are close indicate to me that those players are interchangeable (e.g. Kon Knueppel and Tre Johnson; Derik Queen and Jeremiah Fears; Kasparas Jakucionis and Carter Bryant)

2. The bigger difference between “AGG Rank” and “Rank” indicates how questionable the prospect is compared to where they're being picked (e.g. Khaman Maluach at + 2.1 is more questionable of a pick at #7; Carter Bryant at -0.4 is less questionable of a pick at #12). Based on this analysis, picks in the 20s seem like a relatively good spot to be picking.

3. Stating the obvious- After #2, I expect a crapshoot, but I'm expecting the draft to generally follow this order with some swapping for players with close “AGG Rank”. The biggest question I am focusing on is Ace Bailey as he is the most polarizing prospect. I plan to follow during the draft to see how accurate this list is.

[The-Power]

Thanks for doing the work. It's an interesting reference point!

I am surprised that the common adage that every NBA team loves to get their hands on wings and forwards who can hold up defensively and offer line-up versatility is not really reflected in the draft rankings.

Knueppel at #5, Tre at #6, Maluach at #7 and Fears at #9 are the ones that stand out to me as players I am clearly not as optimistic about (with Tre at #6 being the one I could realistically still get the most behind, and Maluach at #7 the least). Edgecombe at #3 is also a tough sell although I do understand that any player chosen at that particular spot will feel like they were drafted too high for what they project to offer.

Fleming at #22, Coward at #25 and Thiero at #31 are the players I would bump up the most due to the aforementioned adage. For similar reasons, Bryant and Essengue are a bit too low for me as well but depending on the reasoning I could see myself understanding the choices. I just have a hard time not placing them higher when I look at some of the players ranked ahead of them.

On a rather random note, I'm surprised that Alijah Martin does not seem to be on many draft people's radar. I really wouldn't mind my team drafting him pretty much anywhere in the second round to be honest.

[zaz102]

Thanks for doing the work. It's an interesting reference point!

I am surprised that the common adage that every NBA team loves to get their hands on wings and forwards who can hold up defensively and offer line-up versatility is not really reflected in the draft rankings.

Knueppel at #5, Tre at #6, Maluach at #7 and Fears at #9 are the ones that stand out to me as players I am clearly not as optimistic about (with Tre at #6 being the one I could realistically still get the most behind, and Maluach at #7 the least). Edgecombe at #3 is also a tough sell although I do understand that any player chosen at that particular spot will feel like they were drafted too high for what they project to offer.

Fleming at #22, Coward at #25 and Thiero at #31 are the players I would bump up the most due to the aforementioned adage. For similar reasons, Bryant and Essengue are a bit too low for me as well but depending on the reasoning I could see myself understanding the choices. I just have a hard time not placing them higher when I look at some of the players ranked ahead of them.

On a rather random note, I'm surprised that Alijah Martin does not seem to be on many draft people's radar. I really wouldn't mind my team drafting him pretty much anywhere in the second round to be honest.

Your thinking aligns with what I would expect from the "AGG Rank". All the players you mentioned that you rated lower have a lower "AGG Rank" than their actual rank and the players, besides Essengue, that you rated higher have a higher "AGG Rank" than actual rank.

This is my first time doing this, but I'm thinking that players with lower relative AGG ranks are more likely to fall and ones with higher relative AGG ranks are more likely to move up.

[The-Power]

Your thinking aligns with what I would expect from the "AGG Rank". All the players you mentioned that you rated lower have a lower "AGG Rank" than their actual rank and the players, besides Essengue, that you rated higher have a higher "AGG Rank" than actual rank.

This is my first time doing this, but I'm thinking that players with lower relative AGG ranks are more likely to fall and ones with higher relative AGG ranks are more likely to move up.

Due to the nature of the ranking, this is all fairly marginal, though. If the players in question scored even slightly higher/lower in just one of the mocks – enough to move up/down one spot in the ranking – we would not see the same pattern which makes it random. You could also move all the players I mentioned up or down one spot in the respective direction (the most that could happen here based on the scores) and the main point would remain entirely unaffected by it.

If you're interested in exploring the predictive power of those composite rankings further, I suggest you look at standard deviations. Those players with greater standard deviations would seem to have a broader range of outcomes – though this approach would not be able to tell you anything about the direction in which they are more or less likely to move. For this, you may want to check for outlier rankings. This still requires proper theorization and subsequent testing, though, as the direction in which those outlier rankings work remains unclear. For example, if three mocks rank a player at #14 and one ranks him at #5, this could either indicate that the players has a better chance to rise in the draft (as at least one mock feels very positively about the player) or it could mean that he has a better chance to fall in the draft (as one outlier ranking pushes him outside of the otherwise consensus range).

[zaz102]

Your thinking aligns with what I would expect from the "AGG Rank". All the players you mentioned that you rated lower have a lower "AGG Rank" than their actual rank and the players, besides Essengue, that you rated higher have a higher "AGG Rank" than actual rank.

This is my first time doing this, but I'm thinking that players with lower relative AGG ranks are more likely to fall and ones with higher relative AGG ranks are more likely to move up.

Due to the nature of the ranking, this is all fairly marginal, though. If the players in question scored even slightly higher/lower in just one of the mocks – enough to move up/down one spot in the ranking – we would not see the same pattern which makes it random. You could also move all the players I mentioned up or down one spot in the respective direction (the most that could happen here based on the scores) and the main point would remain entirely unaffected by it.

If you're interested in exploring the predictive power of those composite rankings further, I suggest you look at standard deviations. Those players with greater standard deviations would seem to have a broader range of outcomes – though this approach would not be able to tell you anything about the direction in which they are more or less likely to move. For this, you may want to check for outlier rankings. This still requires proper theorization and subsequent testing, though, as the direction in which those outlier rankings work remains unclear. For example, if three mocks rank a player at #14 and one ranks him at #5, this could either indicate that the players has a better chance to rise in the draft (as at least one mock feels very positively about the player) or it could mean that he has a better chance to fall in the draft (as one outlier ranking pushes him outside of the otherwise consensus range).

Thanks for the feedback. I adjusted my rankings with the new formula being (0.5 × Mean) + (0.5 × Median) + (0.1 × Standard Deviation). The results weren't drastically different though. This is with the thinking that I'm splitting the importance of individuals' rankings (mean) with the consensus rankings (median) and then slightly penalizing those with a high variance (standard deviation). I decided that I don't want to completely ignore outliers since the sources I've chosen are respected and were chosen for a reason. I think the data supports the rankings.

If you have specific players that should be ahead of other specific players, let me know and I can review the data to see if it makes sense. Also, removing or adding sources could have a significant impact as well, so let me know if you see any changes there.

Here are the updated rankings.

[zaz102]

Updated to account for the updated mock drafts / big boards.