RealGM

Re-ranking how? By slyly moving up players who turned out to be NBA stars and dropping those who've become busts. Here's the breakdown, by year, of how Ford edited his draft boards—and when, per archives at The Wayback Machine, those edits were made:

Imon wrote:Whiffed on a bunch of guys but still saw that Austin Rivers was overrated ... or maybe everybody could see that.

Infinite Llamas wrote:More like Chad Fraud...

Imon wrote:Whiffed on a bunch of guys but still saw that Austin Rivers was overrated ... or maybe everybody could see that.

Mike (Sandy UT)

NBA report came out with RUDY GOBERT as the #1 big man rim protector in the league right now. Is this sustainable with a possible starting role and bigger minutes? What is his ceiling comparison?
Chad Ford (1:17 PM)

He's been so dominant there. It's interesting, I went back and looked at our draft scouting reports yesterday and coming into the fall of 2012, many scouts thought Gobert was going to be a Top 5 pick. He had an uneventful season in France and was just so-so at the NBA Draft Combine and in workouts (with the exception of Utah where I was told he had an incredible workout) and his stock slipped. Do the draft over again and I think Giannis Antetokounmpo and Rudy Gobert go 1 and 2. That's the ceiling NBA guys are seeing for him now. Interesting to think that sometimes are first impressions are the ones we should stick with. Same could hold true for Shabazz Muhammed out of that class of 2013.

I worked for a prominent NBA agent years ago. Chad Ford came by our office a few times and was buddy/buddy with the agent. He would always write puff pieces about the agent's clients while he was in town and would without fail shoot the clients up his draft board and call them "fast risers" based on "sources" who were impressed with their workouts. None of our clients ever had a bad workout. I never put an ounce of stock into anything he's written since that time.

Doctor MJ wrote:It's so weird to me that he, or anyone else, would feel a temptation to do this given that Ford isn't supposed to be giving his opinion, he's supposed to be going by what teams actually think.

So, when MCW gets moved up from #9 on Ford's actual board to #7 on the fake version, he's actually getting further off the mark from what was actually thought at the time (#11). WTF?

I wonder if we'll ever know the story here. It won't shock me if it turns out to be someone other than Ford who is responsible for this. Regardless, it obviously make him look bad...but realistically, if Darko couldn't kill Ford's career, it's hard to imagine this would.