Top Universities/(Places) [at making pro talents] Project.....gauging interest

[trex_8063]

There's a project I've kinda wanted to do, which is just as the title implies: vote and construct a list (I'm thinking maybe top 20 or so) of the best universities of all-time in terms of professional talents produced in their history.

As the game is very international AND we've seen many talents come straight out of highschool, I thought of including those as "universities" too. e.g. Croatia would be considered a "university"; and highschool would be considered a "university".
Unless there are too many objections to that.

I thought we'd do it like the top 100 project, but with fewer quality controls or rules/standards (I figure a project like this will have less potential for people to be intentionally skewing things toward favorites).

I was also thinking a simple ballot system: top 3 picks [with 5-3-1 values], 36-72 hours per thread (I may not monitor and keep the time quite as tightly as I have for the top 100 projects in the past). No pre-approval for voter panel either.

Just seems like it could be fun and interesting, going thru who came from where, etc.

Anyone interested in a project like this?

[jalengreen]

I would definitely participate

I like the idea of adding high school and countries (maybe call it the Top Talent Sources then or something, i dunno)

[trex_8063]

I'm almost wondering if a broad "highschool" category [that covers the entire United States] has too much an advantage over other Talent Sources [I like that term]. Wondering if we should maybe break it up into two groups: Highschool West, and Highschool East (with the Mississippi River being the dividing line).

Otherwise.......I mean a catch-all Highschool would include Kobe, KG, Moses, Spencer Haywood, just to name a few of the best examples. Not sure many universities [or non-US countries] will be able to compete.

Not that I necessarily have a problem with "Highschool" claiming the #1 spot; but the amount of geography it covers as a single source makes it seem a little unfair.

EDIT: Although "Highschool East" ends up catching all four of the guys I mentioned anyway. Still.......food for thought. Should we divide the HS category into two geographical regions?
EDIT2: Most that I can think of end up being in that East group; Highschool West would get to claim Tyson Chandler, anyway.

[jalengreen]

HS east would have howard, lebron, stoudemire, kobe, KG, tmac, jermaine o'neal, malone, haywood. sheesh

[trex_8063]

HS east would have howard, lebron, stoudemire, kobe, KG, tmac, jermaine o'neal, malone, haywood. sheesh

My God, how did I forget LeBron and Howard??

Well, yeah, let's definitely break it up then. Highschool East is looking like it might run away with #1 anyway, but we'll see. Splitting it a little geographically at least thins it out somewhat.

[falcolombardi]

why not just do high school per state?

[penbeast0]

IF high school per state isn't competitive, maybe high school per division . . . by which TV market each HS is in.

Actually, you could do Geographic picks for HS and colleges within each team's TV market. IT would give an advantage to NY and LA would have to split markets but it might solve some of the issues. Then you could have foreign countries as competitive markets. All of Canada could be considered Raptor territory.

[trex_8063]

IF high school per state isn't competitive, maybe high school per division . . . by which TV market each HS is in.

Actually, you could do Geographic picks for HS and colleges within each team's TV market. IT would give an advantage to NY and LA would have to split markets but it might solve some of the issues. Then you could have foreign countries as competitive markets. All of Canada could be considered Raptor territory.

Do you know the TV markets and which states fall into each? If so, I'm open to that division.

Was planning on using each foreign country as its own market/talent source.

why not just do high school per state?

I think that dilutes it TOO much. Even today, the vast majority of players go to college for at least a year or two before going pro; in any given draft there's probably at least 3-4 players who went to school [for at least a year] for every 1 draft pick right out of highschool.

[Doctor MJ]

I’m intrigued but I think you/we need to decide what the goal is here to determine what to do with the non-college entries.

I’d be inclined to go in one of two ways (which could be done one first and then the other after we catch our collective breath):

1. College only

Or

2. Geographic only - and I’d suggest the US into states here.

I think when you mix the two, you end up with a competition/list with unclear meaning.

Consider Olajuwon. Does he count only for Houston? Only for Nigeria? For both? The first two options feel arbitrary. The last means we have a ranked list between entities that are not in competition.

And yeah, there’s no answer I can think of for the high schoolers in a mixed list that I like. All have issues that bug me.


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[penbeast0]

I was thinking of the old territorial picks like Wilt being taken by Philly rather than being in the regular draft. I'd have to research whose territory is whose. Base it on last year before the NBA (though the recent guys who played in the minors for a year might have to be their HS). It would get LeBron back to Cleveland .

[jalengreen]

Yeah upon thinking about this more I think college only might be the best way to do it.

[trex_8063]

I’m intrigued but I think you/we need to decide what the goal is here to determine what to do with the non-college entries.

I’d be inclined to go in one of two ways (which could be done one first and then the other after we catch our collective breath):

1. College only

Or

2. Geographic only - and I’d suggest the US into states here.

I think when you mix the two, you end up with a competition/list with unclear meaning.

Consider Olajuwon. Does he count only for Houston? Only for Nigeria? For both? The first two options feel arbitrary. The last means we have a ranked list between entities that are not in competition.

And yeah, there’s no answer I can think of for the high schoolers in a mixed list that I like. All have issues that bug me.


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Some good thoughts in there.

I'm still inclined to give the nod to the University in the case of imported players, because those players tend to benefit from the NCAA experience. I guess my primary "point" is to see which places are producing the talents the NBA absorbs; it's hard to say where those places are, because realistically the players are products of multiple places and experiences [high school and college, and even some relevant pre-highschool experiences].

But I tend to think the NCAA experience is likely the most important/honing to young players.

The case you mentioned [Olajuwon] in particular might be a great example of this: he came in [to the U of Houston] pretty raw. An amazing physical talent, but ultimately averaging 8.3 pts/6.2 reb/2.5 blk in just 18.2 mpg in his freshman year, while also having nearly 4x as many turnovers as assists, and committing 5.8 fouls/36 minutes.
By his [final] junior year he's scoring at a higher rate on better shooting efficiency and rebounding at a higher rate, all while being on the floor >34 mpg, cutting his foul rate nearly in half, and more than doubling his Ast:TO ratio [though still not really a solid distributor].
I feel like his game benefited a lot from his three years of NCAA ball.

The other thing that gets tricky with country of origin, is that some players were born in one place but essentially a product of another [often American] system.
Take Kiki Vandeweghe as an example: he was born in West Germany, but only because his father was stationed there [Air Force] at the time. He moved back to the US as a child, though, and is of American parents.

Tom Meschery might be another example: he was born in Manchuria [under Japanese control at the time] to Russian parents. Emigrated to the US around age 8, though; basically grew up [and went to college] in California.

I suspect those types of technicalities will come up for discussion with either method; not sure there's a great solution for cases like that.

Where university/NCAA experience is concerned, I'd also note that [historically] that is the place that often gets these players more notice [from scouts], as well as *legitimizing them.
*Scouts might look at what is done in high school and think, "gee, he looks amazing......but I wonder if he can still thrive against better competition."

In short: if they play at an American university, I'm inclined to consider them a product of that place.

[trex_8063]

Well, I've made some "executive" decisions regarding how to proceed (I'll lay it all out there below).

I am going to include non-university sources, as to do otherwise just leaves too many relevant players on the table.
Besides, it occurs to me that when scrutinizing the resulting list, one can just mentally exclude the non-university sources [I'll even colour-code those differently to make it easier], and what's left is an ordered list of the universities (as well as an ordered list of other sources)......two birds, right?

How will it work?
As with other list-construction projects, we're going to start by voting on #1, then move on to #2, and so on.

We'll do a simple ballot system: 3 votes/ballots [3-2-1 point system]. The "source" with the most points will take the spot.

It looks like interest in this project is limited, so I'm not going to have a designated time-limit for each place [though I don't want to leave each open for 4-5 days]; we'll probably aim for something in the neighborhood of 48 hours each, but we'll see.
This may be one of those projects that fizzles out quick due to lack of interest, but I'm hoping at least 2-3 people will come along with me for it.
There will be no approval of participants; anyone can pop in at any time to vote/contribute. No "arguments" will be required to accompany votes, though a list of notable players from each source being voted for is encouraged.....this will help jog memories, as well as stimulate conversation (and may help clarify the "source" in some rare cases where it is ambiguous).

How you want to consider those universities/sources (in terms of considerations of total players vs quality of players, etc) is entirely up to you [though others may wish to debate your selection criteria].

I'm hoping to make it out to around the top 20 [or so] "sources" of all-time for pro [NBA/ABA/BAA/NBL] players, but we'll see.


Some guidance on how to consider the sources:

a) (an American) University/College - if they played even one year at the university, that will be designated the default "source" of that pro player. If a player played at multiple universities, you can mentally factor that in to consideration for ALL universities played at, give preference to the university he had his BEST years at, or to the university he played LONGER at.....whatever; up to you.

b) a Non-USA Country (if not subject to "a" above) - Again, this one is only to be considered a potential source IF they did not attend an American university. Examples would be guys like Dirk Nowitzki, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, or Nikola Jokic. Someone like Hakeem Olajuwon would be considered from the University of Houston [and not Nigeria].
In the event of using this designation, we may have individuals where it bears coming to a consensus on just WHERE a player should be considered "from". Having just mentioned Tony Parker, he's actually a good example: born in Belgium to an American father and Dutch mother, but raised in France.......and most of us consider Tony from France [he played for their national team, too] as a result.
To me, it's more about where they grew up than it is about where they were born (or the nationality of his parents). There may end up being a player for whom the "source" country is ambiguous and debatable; but we'll cross that bridge as we come to it (and again: that's why it's good to give at least a partial list of WHO you have in mind when placing a vote, so we can debate things like this as needed).

c) an American Highschool Zone - Self-explanatory, but this is for American players who did NOT have a college career, but rather went straight to pro.
Having just "USA" as a single source for all American players who did NOT attend a university is just too great a source......it ends up blowing away all the competition at this point (we've just seen too many great players out of highschool now, it holds too much of a sample-size advantage over any American university).
So I've opted to break it up into three zones, which are as follows....

The East Coast Zone - This includes all states that actually make up part of America's eastern coastline [including Washington D.C. simply because it basically resides within Maryland]. That is: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticutt. Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland [including D.C.], Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

The East-Central Zone - This includes the states west of our "East Coast Zone", but east of [or inclusive of, in one case] the Missouri River. That is: West Virginia, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Missouri.

The Western Zone - All the states that are left: Texas, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii.


That's 14 states in the East Coast Zone, 16 in the East-Central Zone, and 20 in the Western Zone.
If you want to know why I broke them up in this manner, I wanted zones that had some geographical rhyme or reason, but also zones that had similar overall population.....
The East Coast Zone has a population of just over 108 million by recent census.
The East-Central Zone has just under 102 million.
The Western Zone has just over 119 million.

So the Western Zone has the largest population, BUT that's only by recent census. If we jumped back 60-70 years ago, that was not at all the case. Nearer the start of BAA/NBA history, the Western Zone would have been the LEAST populous zone. The population of states like California, Arizona, Nevada, and even Texas have really taken off in more modern eras.
Basketball also started out East, and spread west more gradually. So I intentionally made it the largest zone [today] to compensate somewhat for that consideration, while still having some manner of geographical demarkation to go with.

Let me know if there are any questions.
Start thinking about your picks [whichever 2 or 3 of you who will participate ], and I'll get the first thread up either tomorrow or the next day......

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