What's up with Draftexpress?

[Rapture]

I hope Jon will read this too.

I really feel that draftexpress is easily the best draft site on internet. But only around the draft time it seems. There are no news or updates about the top players this year. I understand that that you guys will write a more complete analysis later but I don't understand why you don't do any updates or short news about these guys. Kentucky vs UNC etc. Where's all this stuff?

[Dr Positivity]

Well, I'm guessing Givony has a real job to take him away

I do wonder though why DX has never tried to get some contributers from the blogosphere to at least write some stuff

[7-Day Dray]

NBADraft.net is better.

[mattg]

I've been disappointed in their write ups on a lot of guys. It often seems like they'll write an entire scouting report based on seeing a guy one time. They've also completely whiffed on, or massively overrated numerous guys recently where it was completely obvious they were wrong if you'd watched a decent amount of NCAA ball(see Wes Johnson) . Obviously I don't expect perfection because that's unrealistic but sometimes you just have to wonder how much scouting has actually taken place to be so far off.

Still a great site for free, but it just seems like they don't have enough help to thourghly scout guys with the kind of depth that people expect these days.

[Jazzfan12]

I've been disappointed in their write ups on a lot of guys. It often seems like they'll write an entire scouting report based on seeing a guy one time. They've also completely whiffed on, or massively overrated numerous guys recently where it was completely obvious they were wrong if you'd watched a decent amount of NCAA ball(see Wes Johnson) . Obviously I don't expect perfection because that's unrealistic but sometimes you just have to wonder how much scouting has actually taken place to be so far off.

Still a great site for free, but it just seems like they don't have enough help to thourghly scout guys with the kind of depth that people expect these days.

While they wiffed on Wes Johnson, they did raise way more concerns about him than everyone else. I remember Givony being flabbergasted by Chad Ford comparing Wes Johnson to Joe Johnson because Wes could not dribble a basketball.

[princeofpalace]

I've been disappointed in their write ups on a lot of guys. It often seems like they'll write an entire scouting report based on seeing a guy one time. They've also completely whiffed on, or massively overrated numerous guys recently where it was completely obvious they were wrong if you'd watched a decent amount of NCAA ball(see Wes Johnson) . Obviously I don't expect perfection because that's unrealistic but sometimes you just have to wonder how much scouting has actually taken place to be so far off.

Still a great site for free, but it just seems like they don't have enough help to thourghly scout guys with the kind of depth that people expect these days.

I agree that they get stuck on players and then massively overhype them. The most recent example being Biyombo, they hyped up Biyombo as the next Ben Wallace after watching him at the Nike Hoops Summit.

[Kirsten19]

[quote="princeofpalace]
I agree that they get stuck on players and then massively overhype them. The most recent example being Biyombo, they hyped up Biyombo as the next Ben Wallace after watching him at the Nike Hoops Summit.[/quote]

Biyombo is showing signs that he can be an elite post defender in the league though, so its a bad example

Averaged 2 blocks in 14min per game so far. He's still young n i think he'll only get better

[UGA Hayes]

Eh I think their writeups are pretty good. Noone is perfect.

Also they seem tyo be doing pretty frequent updates on players. They are probably waiting a bit to get the most complete picture on the the big guns before writing them up which is sensible IMO.

[MGrand15]

I think the issue is they (or Givony) are really conservative. He takes it the DraftExpress image seriously and while it may make him look better to the pros, it leaves us with less content that we want to see. What I mean is, he hasn't put up anything on basically any of the freshman or sophomore because its too early in the season. He doesn't ant to risk saying one thing about Anthony Davis then have him regress for the rest of the year. Makes him look bad.

I understand his way of thinking but I want to read reports on all the top prospects mid-year and end of the year. Instead we get reports on fringe NBA players (at best for some of these guys) and only near draft time do we get the interesting stuff.

[dbodner]

I don't want to speak for Jonathan, because he's ultimately the decision maker behind DraftExpress and he can only speak for himself. But I want to offer my perspective.

I understand that that you guys will write a more complete analysis later but I don't understand why you don't do any updates or short news about these guys. Kentucky vs UNC etc. Where's all this stuff?

Generally, we don't want to overreact due to one game. There's plenty of news outlets for that. We're (with some exception) writing scouting reports. Those games will be included (and often times highlighted) in scouting reports, but writing individual reports on a single game, particularly with freshman who haven't received major collegiate scouting reports yet, could be interpreted as placing too much emphasis on a single game. There are plenty of great NCAA reporting blogs (HoopSpeakU and TheMikanDrill are two of my favorites) that serve this purpose more.

There are no news or updates about the top players this year.

This is summed up pretty much by:

They are probably waiting a bit to get the most complete picture on the the big guns before writing them up which is sensible IMO.

Especially on new players, doing write-ups based on the early, out of conference schedule is a tricky proposition. We would much rather wait until we get a decent amount of data before giving our opinions on players, and instead focus on upper classmen or smaller conference players during the first half of the year. It's also generally been that way in the past, so this isn't a change for this year, were we've generally waited until later on the year for top prospects with a scouting report, while also throwing in a "finding a niche for" reports after the college season is over.

Well, I'm guessing Givony has a real job to take him away

Jonathan has some other basketball responsibilities, but basketball is full time.

Again, I don't want to speak for Jonathan, I'm just interjecting my opinion. We're about to hit the busy period for college basketball. The top players will be extensively covered, you can be sure.

[7-Day Dray]

I think the issue is they (or Givony) are really conservative. He takes it the DraftExpress image seriously and while it may make him look better to the pros, it leaves us with less content that we want to see. What I mean is, he hasn't put up anything on basically any of the freshman or sophomore because its too early in the season. He doesn't ant to risk saying one thing about Anthony Davis then have him regress for the rest of the year. Makes him look bad.

I understand his way of thinking but I want to read reports on all the top prospects mid-year and end of the year. Instead we get reports on fringe NBA players (at best for some of these guys) and only near draft time do we get the interesting stuff.

+1000

[carrottop12]

Seems like he's become pretty much a full time international scout, which I would imagine pays quite a bit more.

[JonathanG]

Sorry for the delayed response folks, I just got a Google alert about this.

Some of the people here in this thread summed up my line of thinking pretty well, so I won't be too repetitive. I'll just reiterate that:

a) DraftExpress is not part of the 24 hour news cycle, and never intended to be. We are a scouting service/database with profiles on 50,000+ plus players around the world, most of which have up to date stats, measurements, scouting reports, rankings and more. We never have been a site that writes articles about single games or offers kneejerk reactions on prospects. We have no interest in riding the rollercoaster of hype (ie: "Perry Jones' first game against Prairie View A&M was GREAT. Scouts now say he's the #2 pick!") that you can easily find in other places. I don't think that's a serious way of evaluating the draft and don't have any interest in being a part of that. Frankly, I find that to be irresponsible am not interested in promoting that.

We indeed do err on the side of caution, not just because we "don't want to look bad" but because I know how much harm overreacting to these things can do, and have seen it with my own eyes.

With that said, all of our rankings are 100% up to date, and they accurately reflect what we think at this point.

b) The more I do this, the more I realize that it takes a long time (sometimes years) before you can get a great feel for the type of prospect a player is. I like to spend the first few months of the year evaluating players in different settings, letting the sample size accumulate, and gathering a wide range of opinions before we put pen on paper and really dissect a guy's strengths and weaknesses. Unlike other outlets, our scouting reports are always right there on the player’s profile, so we’re very accountable for what we write and take that very seriously.

The out of conference portion of most teams' schedule doesn't always give you a good enough read for how these guys would fare against NBA level competition, and players (especially young guys) are constantly evolving as the season moves on, so in most cases I think it’s better to be patient.

The draft is almost 5 months away…we will have very detailed scouting reports on every player done well before then. Hopefully with video. I know there are a couple hundred fanatics that want to gobble up every tidbit of draft info out there and are hoping for more frequent updates on guys like Anthony Davis and others, but the fact of the matter is the overwhelming majority of our audience won’t even start thinking about the draft for another month at least. And we still need to have stuff to write about in April and May.

c) This definitely isn't the only thing I do. I've been doing this for over 8 years now (we started DraftCity in December of 2003) and I've pretty much figured out fairly early that it’s not realistic to expect to make a full time living off a site like this, unless you're really milking your readers for page views and doing all kinds of things which we’re not interested in.

Sites like Deadspin/the Gawker sites and SB Nation have really shown what the model is for making money on the internet if you're not a huge media conglomerate. I have lots of respect for those guys, but it’s not something I'm interested in personally. DX has evolved into an entity that has both a public (which you see) and a private side (for NBA and professional basketball teams around the globe). Luckily they tie in REALLY well to each other, which is why we put so much effort into the public side.

d) We've put up a decent amount of content already this year. If you haven't checked it out, you can always find the latest here: http://www.draftexpress.com/archives/type/all/

e) I did do a thorough article on Kentucky vs UNC actually. It was for Grantland. You can read it here: http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-trian ... spective-2 - I recommend following my twitter feed or occasionally visiting this page http://www.draftexpress.com/twitter.php to see all the latest content we've created on DX and elsewhere.

f) Regarding some of the player specific comments:

“they hyped up Biyombo as the next Ben Wallace”

Biyombo is averaging 4.7 blocks per-40 as a 19-year old rookie, #1 in the NBA by a decent margin (http://www.draftexpress.com/stats.php?s ... al%5B4%5D=).

Ben Wallace in his best NBA season averaged 3.9 blocks per-40. As a 22-year old rookie Wallace played 5.8 minutes per game. How will Biyombo look in three years when he turns 22? I'll be very curious to see. Maybe we’ll be wrong. It’s happened before.

Biyombo is a great example of a guy that we felt very strongly about.

A lot of times we'll err on the side of caution because there are so many variables out of our control that we can't predict that will ultimately decide whether a prospect ends up being successful or not. The quality of the organization that drafts the player, how he's developed, what type of teammates he's surrounded with (John Wall is a great example here--could we or should we have predicted THIS?), what type of people that prospect surrounds himself with, how hard he works to improve, injuries, trades, playing time, I could go on and on and on. Biyombo is someone we were emphatic about.

Wes Johnson is actually a guy I thought we evaluated pretty well. We usually try not to absolutely bash a guy and say he sucks and has no chance and should just quit basketball altogether. That doesn't make any sense. You need to read between the lines with our scouting reports and I think if you're smart and know how to do that you quickly would have gotten the sense that we weren't on board at ALL with the groundswell of hype that was surrounding him since he blew up at the Garden early on in the season and was anointed a top-5 pick and future all-star since.

Now, while I had my reservations about him, I didn't know at the time we were evaluating him that he was going to be drafted by one of the worst organizations in the NBA for developing talent and that he was going to be played completely out of position at shooting guard when in college he played primarily at the 4. If you look at the comparisons we gave him:

Best Case: Shawn Marion
Worst Case: Travis Outlaw

You can start to understand that. Go read through his scouting report and you'll see all the red flags we brought up regarding his ball-handling skills, his overall offensive polish, his age, etc. Unfortunately he bought into the hype himself, started taking his workouts with Kobe a little too serious and seems to have had hard time coming to grasps with the player he is. That happens sometimes, and what Minnesota has done with him surely hasn't helped.

Now, with that said, I think it’s still too early to completely close the book on him. He's only in the early stages of his 2nd NBA season. We've seen tons of players turn it around from here. He will probably never live up to being the #4 pick in the draft, but I think we did a pretty good job of pointing out the concerns about taking him that high, and my opinion was pretty well known leading up to the draft. In the past I may have tried to cause more of a stink about saying he's overrated, but I don't really view that as my job anymore in terms of beating people over the head with my opinions. People that needed to know what I really thought did. The others could have asked.

Are we going to get some of these guys wrong? Absolutely. Probably lots actually. Will it be because of a lack of research, an unprofessional approach or something worse? No chance.

Thanks to those that continue to support us throughout the years. Keep visiting the site occasionally and I promise we'll have plenty of great content leading up to the draft. I'm always open to criticism and suggestions for what we can do better. We have some really exciting things planned. Please feel free to respond in this thread, email me, tweet at me, whatever.

[advanced]

awesome post. i wish i could get into that line of work

[Rapture]

Alright guys thanks for the response. I understand what you guys are saying. I guess what I was trying to say was that it would be nice if you would write something about the top guys also in the beginning of the year because it's such an interesting season with a lot of talent players. Or maybe try to include a section where other people can comment or discuss the prospects already at this point of the season. But as you said if you intend to keep your site like it is that's fine. I guess I'll just have to check other blogs that you recommend.

[vincecarter4pres]

Just would love to see monthly updates once the season starts, even if they're maybe 2 or 3 average length paragraphs each, on say the top 15 to 20 prospects.

I mean dudes like Bradley Beal, Drummond, Terrence Ross, Thomas Robinson and Jeremy Lamb, etc. haven't had an update since months upon months before the season.

How about Quincy Miller or a European guy like Fornier? It's been a year for the former and this is a guy coming in with major injury concerns!

I understand the number of players covered and scouted is enormous, but seriously, this site is the premier one on the web for this, is it so much to ask for the top 15 to 20 players to be updated semi-regularly instead of articles every week on a hundred guys that won't even sniff the combine?

[Rapture]

Just would love to see monthly updates once the season starts, even if they're maybe 2 or 3 average length paragraphs each, on say the top 15 to 20 prospects.

I mean dudes like Bradley Beal, Drummond, Terrence Ross, Thomas Robinson and Jeremy Lamb, etc. haven't had an update since months upon months before the season.

How about Quincy Miller or a European guy like Fornier? It's been a year for the former and this is a guy coming in with major injury concerns!

I understand the number of players covered and scouted is enormous, but seriously, this site is the premier one on the web for this, is it so much to ask for the top 15 to 20 players to be updated semi-regularly instead of articles every week on a hundred guys that won't even sniff the combine?

Thx vince, you could change my thoughts into words better than myself.

[vincecarter4pres]

Haha, yeah man, I made one of these threads last year as well.

I go back and forth with Jon on Twitter on occasion too, so he's good like that, for a guy who honestly must be very busy he has no problem responding back whenever he has a chance to questions or just thoughts on prospects, etc.

He won't answer every Tweet by any means, but this is a dude who must get minimum hundreds of random Tweets a day I would imagine.

It's cool that he takes the time to respond on here too, hope he comes back to address my above post though because that tends to always be an issue with DX, they just leave top guys un-updated forever.

[JonathanG]

Every major prospect will be updated in the next few months. Guys like Terrence Ross, Thomas Robinson, and about 98 other non-freshmen were updated in September/October/November right before the season started. I don't think we'd have anything earth-changing to say about most of them when they do get updated, but we will update their profiles regardless. We always do. Just be patient.

There's a fine balance between satisfying the couple of dozen or hundred hard-core draft addicts and trying to appease a much wider audience. We're trying to do both.

[clevceltics]

Jonathan

Thanks for all the hard work. You mentioned how that the players a propect is surrounded by and the type of organization he joins has a huge impact on the players ability to reach his potential. I think this has a huge impact on a player. I think a player like Rondo is a very good example of that. I believe that if he goes to Sota in the KG deal instead Telfair we might not know Rondo as we know him now. Is he any different than your initial projection of him?