RealGM

Posted: **Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:57 am**

82Games has a mini-series of articles number crunching of 20 years of picks from 1989-2008. There are various articles. Here are some highlights to spark discusion.

Team Rankings - Before you follow the link take a guess where the Hawks rank.
http://www.82games.com/bestdraftingteams.htm

Bargains and Busts - Take a guess where Shelden Williams ranks.
http://www.82games.com/starsandbusts.htm

Performance by College - No Duke is not last, but they aren't very good.
http://www.82games.com/collegedraftpicks.htm

In all honesty, I expected Duke to be near the bottom because of Jay Williams and Bobby Hurley's accident shortened careers and the flops of William Avery, Trajan Langdon, Shelden Williams, and JJ Redick.

Posted: **Fri Mar 27, 2009 8:57 am**

Worst Value Picks 1989-2008 Career Stats vs. Expected Perf.
Player Season Pick G Min PTS REB AST RTG G Min PTS REB AST RTG
Shelden Williams 2006 5 167 14.9 4.7 4.2 0.4 9.3 -385 -13.8 -8.7 -0.7 -2.3 -11.8

I wanted to add in this little tidbit from http://www.82games.com/bestnbadraftyear.htm:

By their rating system, Shelden the 8th most disappointing pick in terms of expected performance actually has yet to rate out as a total bust. He's rated as deep bench while Sene and O'Bryant are full-fledged busts based on current production.

To recap a few principles, since B-R provides career games, and then per game points, rebounds, assists and minutes, I have gone with an admittedly highly simplistic look on things with:
Rating = points/game + rebounds/game + assists/game

Why use this definition? It's the data I have easily on hand, which while not a good player rating system is a decent wag for these purposes. Then I group players as follows (including a new category for this):

* Superstar -- 30+ rating
* Star -- 20+ rating
* Solid -- 15 to 19.9
* Role Player -- 10 to14.9
* Deep Bench -- 5 to 9.9
* Complete Bust -- less than 5
* DNP -- (never played in the NBA)

Posted: **Fri Mar 27, 2009 4:26 pm**

I'm OK with the sort of rough qualitative aspect of it, although even though PER/eff aren't perfect they are probably better suited for this... what I'd love to see is more of a "opportunity cost" sort of thing thrown in there so that a team does in fact get punished for picking a good player if a great one was available. I'd also like to see them deal with the "player development" issue a little better because it seems like a player that is traded during his career and then blows up is a credit to the drafting team due to "player development" even though it probably shouldn't be.

RealGM

82Games.com crunches the draft

82Games.com crunches the draft

Re: 82Games.com crunches the draft

Re: 82Games.com crunches the draft