Top Pro Talent Sources of All-Time: #1 (UCLA)

[trex_8063]

Yeah, the East Coast Zone of highschool is not deep; it's just the names near the top stack up pretty strong against just about anyone (save maybe UCLA and UNC).

But you, know you're right. Kansas is really formidable here.
I mentioned Duke and Kentucky as good choices, and just sort of forgot momentarily about Kansas.

After thinking about it, I'm going to change my 3rd pick from ECZ highschool to Kansas; will edit above.

btw, agree Serbia is probably the strongest of all non-USA countries. Probably countries like Spain, Germany, Slovenia, and Argentina after that. But none of them are strong top-5 candidates, imo.

[falcolombardi]

finally for the 1-2 spots

north carolina

total of nba players: 91 ( High) (per realgm database)

mvp level players: 1-2(high) ( Jordan, mcadoo)

notable all star level players: 8 (mid) (jordan, mcadoo, worthy, rasheed wallace, bobby jones, jamison, carter, cunmingham

notable: lots of quality nba careers, has a goat candidate

vs

UCLA

total of nba players: 98 (high) (*per realgm)

mvp level players: 5 ( very high) (Kareem, walton, westbrook, reggie, baron davis? )

notable all star level players: 13 (very high) (goodrich, wilkes, kevin love,jrue holliday,mark eaton, vandeweghe, lavine, marquess johnson, westbrook, miller, davis, kareem, walton)

notable: many quality nba players, has a goat candidate to match jordan

ucla runs away in both, the mvp and all star caliber players, has a goat candidate, leada slightly in total nba players

my choice for first has to be ucla

my ballot

1-ucla
2-north carolina
3- kansas

HM for 4th: east coast highschool

[penbeast0]

Not comfortable voting without having done more work, sorry. I'm reading along but need to work out my criteria for what is most important then apply it.

[jalengreen]

3. Kentucky

Dan Issel, Anthony Davis, Cliff Hagan, Louie Dampier, Larry Johnson, KAT, Rondo, Cousins, Adebayo, Booker, Murray, Tayshaun, Bledsoe, Randle, Wall... wow Kentucky has been crazy prolific at producing NBA players recently.

Obviously listing the top guys isn't really gonna make a strong case over HS East Coast, though. KG, Malone, Dwight, TMac, Stoudemire is pretty absurd. By my count, that's 702.5 combined career win shares. It takes Kentucky's nine highest win share earners to match up that production. But I do think that Kentucky's depth of players and quantity of quality players produced is just too great to pass up.

I think Duke and Kansas are also gonna have cases over HS East Coast that I'll have to consider. Duke with really impressive quantity of quality players produced and Kansas as well - a bit less so than Duke but with the advantage of having Wilt. Don't see anyone else with a great case so HS East Coast's range of reasonable rankings is probably 3-6. I'm gonna snub them for #3 though

Not that this will or should necessarily shift your vote (as I said above: Kentucky is a perfectly valid pick for #3 [agree UCLA and UNC really are the clear 1/2]), but I suspect based on your comments that you're thinking Larry Johnson is THE ("Grandmama") Larry Johnson would played for the Hornets and Knicks in the 90s and early 00s.........but it's actually a different Larry Johnson whose NBA career is all of 38 minutes played in the '78 season.

fyi.....

EDIT: The Larry Johnson I'm sure you're thinking of was from UNLV.

Yeah oops, thanks for pointing that out. Doesn't change my ballot but definitely a major difference between the two Larry Johnsons lol

[jalengreen]

kansas

total of nba players: 79 ( High) (per realgm database)

mvp level players: 2-3 (high) ( wilt, embiid, pierce if you are high on him)

notable all star level players: 6 (mid) (wilt, embiid,pierce,lovellete, manning, jojo white?)

notable: lots of coaching contributions if that counts, phog allen, popovich, dean smith and many other were part of kansas stafd at some point and many solid nba careers

very strong but somewhat weak in the all star total compared to ucla and north carolina so i would put them as the third stronger college

vs

east coast high school

total of nba players: 20 (low) (*per wikipedia)

mvp level players: 3* ( high) (i am consideting garnett as east coast amd howard as mvp level player and of course moses malone )

notable all star level players: 8 (high) (moses malone, McGraday, garnett*, howard, jermaine o'neal, stoudamire, dawkins, rashard lewis)

notable: many quality nba players

lower in total nba players than kansas but edges kansas out in all star talent

since the difference in allstars is small i may, by the smallest margin, pick kansas as my 3rd best

how do you feel about kansas v kentucky?

for kentucky i'm getting

125 total nba players

mvp level players: 2 (AD, issel)

all star level players: AD, issel, dampier, hagan... [KAT, rondo, wall, booker, cousins, walker, adebayo, mashburn]? definitely varying levels of notability so not sure how many are worth counting

definitely lacks a wilt level player which very well may be the difference though

[falcolombardi]

kansas

total of nba players: 79 ( High) (per realgm database)

mvp level players: 2-3 (high) ( wilt, embiid, pierce if you are high on him)

notable all star level players: 6 (mid) (wilt, embiid,pierce,lovellete, manning, jojo white?)

notable: lots of coaching contributions if that counts, phog allen, popovich, dean smith and many other were part of kansas stafd at some point and many solid nba careers

very strong but somewhat weak in the all star total compared to ucla and north carolina so i would put them as the third stronger college

vs

east coast high school

total of nba players: 20 (low) (*per wikipedia)

mvp level players: 3* ( high) (i am consideting garnett as east coast amd howard as mvp level player and of course moses malone )

notable all star level players: 8 (high) (moses malone, McGraday, garnett*, howard, jermaine o'neal, stoudamire, dawkins, rashard lewis)

notable: many quality nba players

lower in total nba players than kansas but edges kansas out in all star talent

since the difference in allstars is small i may, by the smallest margin, pick kansas as my 3rd best

how do you feel about kansas v kentucky?

for kentucky i'm getting

125 total nba players

mvp level players: 2 (AD, issel)

all star level players: AD, issel, dampier, hagan... [KAT, rondo, wall, booker, cousins, walker, adebayo, mashburn]? definitely varying levels of notability so not sure how many are worth counting

definitely lacks a wilt level player which very well may be the difference though

i am not knowledgeable on dan issel but what i have read about him from posters here doesnt seem he was a superstar impact player

basically kansas seems to win ar the top (superstar) and close at the middle (star or star-ish talent) with kentucky winning the bottom (total nba talent)

it depends on what you weight more i think but kentucky definetely belongs in the conversation with east coast highschool and kansas for third

[giordunk]

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.

c) an American Highschool Zone - Self-explanatory: 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....

Love the idea of this but I'm wondering if we can expand the high school zone criteria a bit because going straight from pro means there was only a short window of players that could be counted for this criteria.

I'd argue a lot of NBA players would count where they grew up as having more influence on their basketball than their one year in college - the North Carolina high school zone would then include guys like MJ, Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, James Worthy, John Wall, etc.,

Yes we end up double counting but I think it would be a huge oversight if we force the categories like that.

[trex_8063]

Love the idea of this but I'm wondering if we can expand the high school zone criteria a bit because going straight from pro means there was only a short window of players that could be counted for this criteria.

I'd argue a lot of NBA players would count where they grew up as having more influence on their basketball than their one year in college - the North Carolina high school zone would then include guys like MJ, Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, James Worthy, John Wall, etc.,

Yes we end up double counting but I think it would be a huge oversight if we force the categories like that.

Deliniations had to be made to avoid---as you say---"double counting" certain players. I thought about eliminating players who played only ONE college season from that university's list, but ultimately decided against it, partly for simplicity's sake.

Other reasons which were given in the intro/gauging interest thread were the extra exposure [to scouts] even one college season provides, as well as providing some manner of confirmation [of performance/impact against better competition].


As to the bolded part above: John Wall is the ONLY player you listed who played just ONE year in college. Jordan, Curry, Worthy all played THREE years in college, Chris Paul played two (and all of them except perhaps Chris Paul showed notable improvement between first year and last, fwiw).

[trex_8063]

Three persons have cast ballots; score thus far is:

UCLA - 9
UNC - 6
Kansas - 2
Kentucky - 1

I'll leave it open at least until somewhat late tonight [if not maybe tomorrow morning], and then we'll tally and move on.

[Doctor MJ]

fwiw, I've tentatively added Connie Hawkins [with asterisk] to my list of guys from the East Coast Zone of highschool in vote post above.

He grew up/played highschool ball in Brooklyn, and then subsequent to his NCAA ban played awhile for the Harlem Globetrotters, iirc. He was briefly enrolled at Iowa, but never actually played a single game there......so I'd consider him more a product of this source that East Coast Zone than anything else.

Definitely agree with this placement of Hawkins. Feel strongly that he should not be attached to Iowa.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm sorry, how is Philadelphia in the central when it's an East Coast port city less than 100 miles from the Atlantic Ocean?

So, I want to avoid quibbling about more details like this, but I do want to say:

In deep basketball history, East Coast basketball basically goes down from New England to Washington, DC, with much outdoor inner city play, and with players moving between teams along this corridor. Whether that should be one region in this project is debatable, but basketball evolved similarly across this region, whereas Midwestern basketball and West Coast basketball evolved separately.

[Doctor MJ]

So, I'm going to be making use of our spreadsheet from the 2020 HOF project we did, so I'll share it here.

[Doctor MJ]

Going to start with the colleges with the biggest presence on the RealGM HOF project. First two in this post, will have to get back to others later today:

North Carolina
# of HOFers we named: 7
Billy Cunningham
Bob McAdoo
Bobby Jones
James Worthy
Michael Jordan
Rasheed Wallace
Vince Carter

Other major players to consider:
Jack Cobb (Helms POY, 1926)
George Glamack (Helms POY, 1940 & 1941, All-NBL 1st Team & Champion)

Other top current players:
Danny Green
Harrison Barnes

UCLA
# of HOFers we named:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Bill Walton
Marques Johnson
Reggie Miller
Russell Westbrook

Other major players to consider:
Don Barksdale (Black pioneer, starred on 1948 Olympic team with Kurland & Groza)
Gail Goodrich (in actual HOF)
Jamaal Wilkes (in actual HOF)

Other top current players:
Jrue Holiday
Kevin Love
Zach Lavine

[trex_8063]

Well, I named Goodrich and Wilkes in my UCLA list. They're def loaded with relevant careers.

[trex_8063]

Well, it's been 48 hours. Only three voters, but the fourth person who indicated might vote was high on UCLA too, so definitely not going to change the result. So let's move on.

Score is:

UCLA - 9
UNC - 6
Kansas - 2
Kentucky - 1

UCLA takes #1.

[falcolombardi]

i feel like going with my same choices minus ucla

north carolina > kansas > east coast highschool

may be talked into kentucky or duke over east coast

is there any case for kansas over north carolina? The tar heels just seem to have more high end nba players than kansas