NEW YORK – JUNE 26: (L to R) Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Jarvis Hayes, Maciej Lampe, Kirk Hinrich, Chris Kaman, T.J. Ford, Darko Milicic, Zarko Cabarkapa, Dwyane Wade, Nick Collison, Reece Gaines, Mike Sweetney and LeBron James poses for a photo prior to the 2003 NBA DRAFT at the Paramount Theater on June 26, 2003 in New York, New York. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images)
NBA Teams really shouldn’t be missing so badly on players like Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler or Rudy Gobert of recent drafts or Kyle Lowry and Paul Millsap of past ones. So in this post, we will look at some past drafts, 2003-2013, to determine if there is any pattern that might help us locate the players who might become stars. In addition, we will examine what we mean when we call a draft a One-Player Draft or a Two-Player Draft. And we will ask questions like, “A Two-Player Draft, is that really so unusual?” And answer them “Holy Shit, it’s not.” Or other more prescient questions like this one: If they have little or no chance to produce Top-10 or Top-15 value in the NBA, why is the NBA obsessed with spending early draft picks on shooters who don’t project to play defense?
2003 NBA Draft
1. Here we see a true Two-Player Draft: Lebron James and Dwayne Wade, both of whom were arguably the best player in the NBA at one point in time, both of whom could be the best player on a championship team. If you didn’t get one of these two players from this draft, your team ultimately didn’t have a great outcome.
2. The other best players from this draft were guys like Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, David West, Kyle Korver, and Josh Howard. Guys who could be the third or fourth best player on a championship team. Which works if you have a player like Dirk Nowtizki or Chris Paul or you sign on to kick the tugboat with Lebron James and Dwayne Wade, but not so much if this player is expected to be the foundation of a squad.
3. Almost all the best players from this draft have a strong defensive foundation to their game. James, Wade, Bosh, West and Howard would all have been projected to be potentially plus defenders. And Kyle Korver surprisingly became adequate. With Carmelo Anthony, with his athleticism and rebounding in college, you would have hoped for such an outcome as well. And it’s the part of Carmelo’s game that has always kept him from truly being the Top 10 player the league treats him as. He’s occasionally been elite offensively. Defensively, Anthony is always pretty much a non-entity.
4. We will continue to see this, projecting defense is very important in projecting the possibility for a successful outcome. Almost no NBA players are good enough to not play defense and be Top 10 players. Though James and Wade would be the exceptions that prove the rule. They were good enough, but the fact that they played defense took them from being Top 10 or Top 15 players to being the top player in the league.
5. We see three guys who, under the current rules, would be One-And-Done Freshmen in James, Anthony and Bosh. One of them became the best player in the league. The others became third tier All-Stars. What we don’t see is any unskilled One-And-Done perimeter players which we would call projects. We will continue to see this, they don’t have great outcomes. And if they do have positive outcomes, it’s generally for their 2nd, 3rd or 4th team, which greatly limits the value of drafting them. (This is not necessarily true for One-And-Done Bigs.)
6. This is often true of shooters who can’t play defense as well. Kyle Korver became an exceptional player in the league, by some measures as high as the 12th or 13th best player in the league in 2014-2015. It was also on his fourth team and almost a decade into his career. And we often see that this type of player is the last piece of the puzzle for a championship contender, not the first or second.
7. Just to further track the classes of players. We also see one guy who would be a junior in Dwayne Wade. He became the best or 2nd best player in the league at his apex. (BPM is a fine proxy for measuring greatness, but it isn’t flawless and we shouldn’t take it as an end-all, be-all.)
We also see seniors in David West, Josh Howard and Kyle Korver. A sophomore in Mo Williams. And a junior in Chris Kaman, though I have no idea why he was an All-Star. Though his presence does elucidate us to one fact, Offensive Centers tend not to do that well when transitioning to the NBA, and in most cases, unless you have a Shaq, Hakeem, Duncan or David Robinson, you want a center that can bring you value without running too much offense in his direction. Even in these cases, these players were bringing tons of value on the defensive end. (This is a concern for Jakob Poeltl, since his defense didn’t advance at all this year and probably regressed. Whereas it’s a major check mark in favor of Chinanu Onuaku, who as a sophomore is still one of the youngest players in the draft and one a few true potential impact players on D.)
8. We will continue to see this, sophomores, juniors and seniors do often become good to exceptional players, even if many of them fail. Aging is clearly a place where draft algorithms have some issues. Young players are generally better on average, yes, one, because of highly skilled players like Lebron James are part of the average, and secondly, it’s because most of these players have reasonably high floors as functional NBA players. However, what also seems true is that the best young players at perimeter positions go off the board fairly quickly, generally within the first five picks, and after that the perimeter players with the highest upside are often sophomores, juniors and seniors. We will see this in future drafts with players like Kyle Lowry and Paul Millsap.
9. There were really only 7 players from this draft who had any sort of real positive effect on the teams that drafted them. And one of them, Mo Williams, was just a flash-in-the-pan career year essentially playing a small shooting-guard role alongside Lebron James. Which is to say, even in a great draft, with two clear-cut upper echelon Hall-of-Famers in James and Wade, another who probably deserves it in Chris Bosh, and another who will make it mostly on reputation in Carmelo Anthony, the draft was very thin. Though even with that thinness, good players were available well into the 2nd round, as both Korver and Williams were both legitimate All-Star level players for at least a season of their careers. And somewhat useful contributors to their teams’ success in other seasons.
10. We should almost certainly also add Leandro Barbosa, Luke Walton, Nick Collison, Boris Diaw to this list of 7 to make 11, since all were contributors on significant contenders and/or champions. Though with the best of the four in Diaw, it happened with his third team. Diaw also had all the markers of a high pick when he was drafted. Considerable athleticism, which he lost as he became out of shape, dribbling ability, passing ability, size and enough basketball IQ to initiate from a wing position. Barbosa, too, as a guy with legit athleticism and initiation skills.
11. Otherwise, Walton and Collison are the kinds of players that most teams should only draft once you have found your Kobe or Durant. And in the case of Collison especially, many better players, most obviously David West, who played the same position, were left on the board.
12. In addition, we should note there were a number of other players who have had decent NBA careers from this draft: Steve Blake, Zaza Pachulia, James Jones, Willie Green, Carlos Delfino, Kirk Hinrich, T. J. Ford, Luke Ridnour and two pretty good undrafted guys in Jose Calderon and Marquis Daniels. So the draft wasn’t that thin after all. But when we say a draft is deep, for some reason, most people don’t mean “with NBA quality players” but with players who have a chance to function as First, Second, Third or perhaps Fourth best player on a championship team. And from that standpoint, there were really probably only 4 or 5 guys in Lebron, Wade, Bosh, Anthony, and maybe Howard.
2004 NBA Draft
1. Again, I’ve left out a number of players who went on to have fruitful careers, as will generally be the case. Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon, Shaun Livingston, Andris Beidrins, Kris Humphries, J. R. Smith, Dorrell Wright, Delonte West. The only one I wish I had included was Trevor Ariza, not just for his influence on the Lakers, but that he has some seasons as a genuine 3&D stud. Multiple +3 BPM seasons, topping out at about the 20th best player in the league in terms of regular season impact. He was chosen 43rd in this draft and is another player whose college calling cards were not shooting ability, but size, athleticism, rebounding, defensive potential and a reasonable passing and dribbling skill-set. He only shot 23.7% on college threes and 50.4% on free throws, and looked an awful lot then like Dedric Lawson looks now. Probably not a player with Top 15 potential, but a player with a good chance to have two or three seasons as a borderline All-Star type if he can put his shooting together, albeit probably not with his original team.
2. Here we see four players who grade as impact players. The best of them, Dwight Howard, ranks third, probably because BPM can underrate defensive contributions. Howard is another player who points to the potential of purely defensive centers, since Howard’s offensive abilities have always been overstated. The fact of the matter is that his teams would probably function better if he were content to just do the things DeAndre Jordan does, screen, dive, offensive rebound, get back on D. Of these four, Howard is probably the only one who may have been able to be the best player on a Championship team. Though even that may be overselling him. So depending on how you grade Howard and what you mean when you say a “One-Player Draft” or a “Two-Player Draft”, 2004 is either a zero, one or four player draft. A great many drafts fall into this kind of boat.
3. Of the other three players, Andre Iguodola, Jameer Nelson, and Josh Smith, we have one two-way guy who could do absolutely everything except shoot in Andre Iguodola. He once was the best player on a 57 win team and also probably the most important player for the Warriors in the 2015-2016 Finals, since he was the only one who could stop Lebron from beating the Warriors 1-on-5. (That’s how good Lebron is. He almost single-handedly dismantled a team which now might break the single season win’s record.) He’s interesting as a guy drafted outside of the Top 5 who went onto have a borderline Hall-of-Fame career. Iguodola looked like a hyper version of the player Ariza was. Better everywhere but the same plus size, plus athleticism, plus rebounding, plus passing, plus dribbling, plus defensive potential. The difference is that there was more basketball intelligence in Iguodola’s case.
4. Then we have Josh Smith, who at his best was Draymond Green before there was Draymond Green. A kind of do-it-all pocketknife from the 4 position who could guard and make plays with really special passing ability for the position. Paul Millsap also resembles this kind of player now. And the player who most resembles this kind of player in this draft is Ben Simmons, except Simmons has a good chance to end up on the ball, which is why Simmons is the one player from this draft who projects as potentially the best player in the NBA at some point in time. On-ball initiation is where most value comes on offense. If you can do that and defend a big position in the pros, which is where most value comes on the defensive end, you are a very unique player indeed. Another guy who somewhat resembles Josh Smith or Paul Millsap is Robert Carter Jr. Obviously not as athletic as Smith, but he compares to Millsap. One of the best PF passers college basketball has seen in recent time. Also athletic, usually a very solid defender with understanding of offensive and defensive schemes, a strong defensive rebounder and even the promise of a jumper.
5. Lastly of the four, we have Jameer Nelson, picked 20. While he was a good defender in college, he didn’t project as one in the pros. Though Nelson did have significant On-Ball possibilities. And though it was only a one-year blip of extreme success, a one-year blip, if everything aligns, can still win a team a championship. And Orlando with Nelson and Howard did get close.
6. Can we see a pattern here evolving? Great players either project to be positive defenders OR they play on the ball. And very often, it’s both. Very few, if any, tremendously significant NBA players are Off-Ball Shooters without much defensive potential. Very few, if any, are Offensive Bigs without significant defensive potential. The only position a player can potentially get by with sub-par defense is as a player who provides some ability to initiate an offense, which means these kinds of players at the very least have to have significant passing skills. And as we learned in the last piece which put these player’s passing in context, the only perimeter players who even might have this type of passing ability are this draft’s point guards: Wade Baldwin, Kris Dunn, Gary Payton II, Josh Adams, Kay Felder, Monte Morris et al, plus Ben Simmons and these five wings: Denzel Valentine, DeAndre Bembry, Patrick McCaw, Caris LeVert and Thomas Walkup. Which is not to say most of them will project to be anything close to as good as Andre Iguodola or Jameer Nelson at the pro level. And it’s certainly not to say that all of these players are non-defenders. Some of them certainly can defend. It’s only to say that if a player isn’t on this list AND can’t add value on defense at the pro level, there’s very little shot of any kind of greatness. (ie. If we’re looking for potentially great players, almost all of this year’s wings are significantly overrated. Since almost none of them project to bring any kind of value on defense.)
7. After these four players, we have the lesser impact players of this draft, several of them one-way players who failed to add enough game on the other side of the ball. That includes ace defender, Tony Allen, and one-dimensional offensive players Al Jefferson and Kevin Martin, neither of whom has experienced much team success in the NBA. It also unfortunately includes Devin Harris. Devin Harris came in to the league an ace defensive player, and lost his defensive ability as he assumed greater offensive responsibility. Which is to say, it’s very difficult to be a two-way player in the NBA. It takes an inordinate amount of energy, and thus one of the things we should look for is guys who can spend that kind of energy on both sides of the ball in college game and impact their team’s success. There really aren’t a lot of them. Maybe 10-15 at most. Taking plays off at the NBA level kills a player’s value.
8. If we’re still tracking experience level when entering the draft and how that correlates to success, we have three players the equivalent of One-And-Dones in Howard, Smith and Jefferson. All of them are post players. We also have one highly successful sophomore in Iguodola and one highly successful senior in Jameer Nelson.
Luol Deng and Trevor Ariza were One-And-Done perimeter players who have become good but not great. And neither was super highly skilled coming into the league, with more decent tools in passing and dribbling than great ones. The other players in this class to have real success are all basically upperclassmen.
2005 NBA Draft
1. Chris Paul. This draft is all about Chris Paul, who is the last great pass-first PG to enter the league. Truly a player who could headline a championship team, even if it hasn’t happened for him yet. The Clippers kind of self-destructed last year (plus Paul had a hamstring injury), and the year before they weren’t able to overcome some of the worst officiating through two rounds I’ve ever seen. But the Clippers are a legit challenger so long as Paul and Jordan are on the team. Their main problem is perhaps that Blake Griffin is the wrong type of Big, a player who brings big-time plus value on offense, but who doesn’t cover up others mistakes defensively. It’s possible they really could have benefited from being able to acquire Channing Frye, or pre-emptively trading Griffin to Boston for Jae Crowder, who could be a small ball Four, Avery Bradley and a draft pick. Something like that.
Which is to say, a large part of the value in acquiring one-way offensive Bigs, like Blake Griffin or Kevin Love, is that they still hold value league wide. And when you have a team like Cleveland (which probably should have traded both Kyrie and Love for players that could accentuate Lebron’s strengths + draft picks) or the Clippers (which probably should have traded Griffin for players that better fit those of Paul and Jordan on offense and defense), it’s not always best to wait and play out a year and see what you can do in the summer. It’s true both of these teams have a chance, but they are probably between 3rd and 5th of those teams with some chance to win it all this year.
2. Andrew Bynum. Indeed, this may have been a two player draft if Bynum hadn’t had chronic knee injuries. A rare potential two-way center. And one of the four best players on a championship Lakers team. (Three of the four were Bigs, with Gasol and Odom joining him.)
3. Here we again see Defensive Bigs being better, at least as regular season players, than Offensive ones. Just compare Andrew Bogut to David Lee or Marvin Williams. The ironic thing is that Andrew Bogut was actually drafted for his offensive skill-set, and made his way to a second team before fully realizing where he’d best fit in the NBA.
4. Indeed, this draft has a lot of reasonably successful NBA players, many of them still playing a decade later, but the main reason why no one joined Chris Paul as an upper echelon difference maker: Defense. Deron Williams, Lou Williams, and Monta Ellis all have probably been good enough in their best offensive seasons to be Top 10 players if they defended at a plus level as well. None of them defended.
5. It should be pointed out all of them are still plus dribble-drive players in the NBA. For offensive players, it’s an important skill. Deron Williams was also the best of them primarily because he was the best passer of the three.
6. In this group of players we can finally see the importance of Floor Stretch. Which is to say, three-point shooting from a Big position. Both Channing Frye and Marvin Williams have had their best seasons as guys who could adequately defend their interior defensive positions while canning three-pointers at rare rates for Bigs. There’s generally only a huge amount of upside here if the player can defend the position at an exceptional rate, which is why it’s so difficult to predict which Bigs will be the best offensive players. Three-point shooting, especially for Bigs, is often a late developing skill.
But there are several players who may be able to stick at the Four and be Marvin Williams types in this draft. Jarrod Uthoff, Dorian Finney-Smith and Nigel Hayes come immediately to mind as possibilities if they can indeed guard NBA PF.
It’s also the reason everyone is fawning over Marquese Chriss despite many other pretty negative indicators which all bow at the throne of the fact that he doesn’t really know how to play basketball.
Perhaps more importantly, the possibility to shoot three-pointers in the future with plus defending and plus rebounding from the Four is why Brice Johnson, Robert Carter Jr., and James Webb III all have upsides quite a bit higher than many of the players rated considerably above them.
7. Chris Paul: Sophomore. The one potentially great One-And-Done player from this class: Andrew Bynum, an interior player. Starting to look like a pattern? One-And-Done Perimeter players just don’t tend to add skills they haven’t already displayed. The other players from this draft class run the gamut from high school guys (Ellis, L. Williams) to seniors (Granger, Frye, Lee). All the great players were gone by the 4th pick when Chris Paul got drafted, who should have pretty easily been the 1st pick.
The NBA has a fixation on Bigs, but since the Three-Point line came in to play, perimeter creators have mostly been much more important. Though we obviously still have a number of great Bigs in Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, Barkley, Olajuwon, etc . . . It’s not remotely to say “Don’t draft Bigs.” Bigs should be drafted and highly. Karl-Anthony Towns and Kristaps Porzingis should have gone 1 and 2. But how Chris Paul went 4th is as good a question as how Paul Pierce went 10th when each was pretty clearly the best NCAA guy of their class.
8. The three players I forgot to include from this draft were Amir Johnson, who went 56th, Marcin Gortat, who went 57th and Chuck Hayes, who went undrafted. All three have brought most of their value on defense. Which is to say again, we are continually underrating how important a player’s defensive ability is to huge NBA success. That’s not to say a player can thrive with no offensive abilities. He has to be able to catch and screen and hopefully pass, finish and rebound. But it is to say, you don’t need centers who can initiate offense in the interior to win.
2006 NBA Draft
1. I could have included Rudy Gay, a semi-useful Wing, J. J. Redick, a secondary shooter, Thabo Sefolosha, a defensive Wing, P. J. Tucker, a college PF who converted to a decent 3&D wing, Jordan Farmar and Daniel Gibson, both scoring points, perhaps as others on this list. But regardless, this was not a very deep draft in terms of the number of players who provided a reasonable impact overall. Instead, there are five players all arguably with Top 15 or Top 25 ceilings. And while none of them is likely to be the best player on a championship team, four of them were or are legitimate Top 10 players at their apex. Rondo even won a title as part of an incredibly stacked Celtics team.
That Celtics team with Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen is a pretty good argument for searching for player’s with Top 10 potential in the draft. That team had four players who maxed out at least as Top 10 NBA players. Garnett was probably several times the best overall. Pierce was almost certainly a couple of times in the Top 5 to 8. How is another team going to beat that team unless they have star quality that can match it?
2. We also see another running trend here. The One-And-Done players from this draft, Tyrus Thomas and Shawne Williams, both ended up not being very good.
3. Instead, the best players are one senior in Brandon Roy, one junior in Paul Millsap and three sophomores in Lowry, Rondo and Aldridge. What do all of them have in common besides Brandon Roy? A plus defensive skill-set. And why could Brandon Roy off-set that? He was a Primary On-Ball Initiator.
Again, we see two-way players and perimeter initiators become Top 10 players. And basically no one else. With perhaps the occasional exception of Defensive Centers. These trends are pretty obvious going back in the draft. If your team doesn’t yet have a Top 7 or 8 player and you want to contend for a championship, these kinds of players are almost exclusively what your team should be drafting.
4. Beyond this being even a good strategy, we see that two of the best players from this draft went in the 20s and one went in the 40s. So let’s say your team missed out on Brandon Roy and were picking 7th. Would it have been that difficult to trade down multiple times so that you could draft a plethora of players, assuming you’ll miss on some and hit on others? Let’s then assume as I’m arguing that this hypothetical team should be drafting Primary On-Ball Initiators who are potentially plus defensively ahead of everything.
There’s no way you don’t end up with both Rondo and Lowry on your team because they were the only two such players in the whole draft. And as for Paul Millsap, the computers loved him, even after adjusting for competition, in large part because he led college basketball in rebounding three years in a row. If I have to make a gamble on a player in the 2nd round or in the back-end of the 1st, I’d almost always rather gamble on a player like Millsap who was exceptional at his level than the players who went before him like Paul Davis, David Noel, Dee Brown or Alexander Johnson, who were somewhat mediocre at theirs.
5. The reason I mention this is because there are definite parallels to this draft. And any team picking highly might do well to note them. Of course this draft has Ben Simmons, the type of player, with legit Best Player potential, that would be somewhat rare to find in any year. And some would argue Brandon Ingram or Dragan Bender are close to that kind of player. I’m rather less sure of that, but I am sure they have positive traits. However, there are a number of players, like Wade Baldwin, Kris Dunn, and Gary Payton II for instance, who potentially fit the Lowry/Rondo mold of potential Two-Way Initiators. And two of them aren’t valued all that highly in Baldwin and Payton II. A team drafting at 3 might be able to trade down a time or two and end up with all three of them.
Or if you don’t like them, there’s a defensive center in Chinanu Onuaku who is very underrated. There’s potential two-way Bigs in Brice Johnson, who has a game very similar to Millsap’s when Millsap was coming out of La. Tech, or Shawn Marion’s when he was leaving UNLV, and Robert Carter Jr. Or even a guy like Pascal Siakam, whose sophomore year was basically identical to that of Paul Millsap and in the same conference. And since, these guys aren’t regarded all that highly, mostly because we as whole probably aren’t paying adequate attention to the types of players who translate to the NBA level, one team could end up with a majority of the guys who have even a modicum of potential to become real stars from this draft class. (There’s really only a few players that have a genuine chance in any given year.)
6. The draft from 2006 to 2016 hasn’t changed that much. You might as well substitute Jaylen Brown for Rudy Gay, Buddy Hield and Grayson Allen for Adam Morrison and J. J. Redick, and Demetrius Jackson for Marcus Williams. And pencil in their failure or semi-moderate success. On the whole, the NBA hasn’t seemed to learn anything despite the growth in analytics and statistical analysis. Initiation skills or real defensive potential. If the player doesn’t have one or the other, why draft them?
2007 NBA Draft
1. So now we have a true One-And-Done perimeter superstar, Kevin Durant. He was also incredibly awesome at playing basketball in college, and obviously highly skilled. (Kind of like Ben Simmons.) He could dribble, shoot, rebound and defend as well as anyone.
2. You also have a second One-And-Done star in Mike Conley, a primary initiator who could defend. Amazingly fast. A very good passer. Excellent at getting to the rim. The only hole in his game is that he couldn’t shoot, which he learned to do. Like most players, One-And-Done perimeter players don’t tend to pick up skills they didn’t have coming into the league, except perhaps for shooting.
3. The 2007 draft had five players who are legitimate top 15 guys and three who were or are legitimate top 15 guys. Again, they are all two-way players. Again, the three centers bring huge value defensively.
4. On the other hand, Spencer Hawes, an offensive C, or Acie Law, a scoring PG who couldn’t play defense, are two guys it would have been rather easy to avoid. Jarvaris Crittenton, who failed miserably perhaps because of Off-the-Court distractions, looked on the court much better and had a statistical profile far superior to that of a player like Dejounte Murray and still was so bad, it’s hard to say it was only from all the gang related stuff that was going on. (On the record, I liked Jarvaris Crittenton as a player. I thought he was under-drafted. Obviously, I was wrong. And if there was another player like him this year, I might make the same mistake again. If you make a mistake in the draft, I believe this is where you should probably make it. Or maybe not, since I’m not that much a fan of Dejounte Murray.)
5. Not a very deep class after the top five guys. Jared Dudley, Wilson Chandler, Aaron Afflalo, Tiago Splitter, Jeff Green, Gary Neal, Josh McRoberts, Aaron Brooks, Marco Belinelli, Carl Landry, Glen Davis, Brendan Wright comprise most of the rest of the class. These are guys, apart perhaps from Splitter, who have changed teams at least once for a reason.
2008 NBA Draft
1. Now we have a deep draft class. Three legitimate Top 10 players in Russell Westbrook, DeAndre Jordan and for a season or two, Derrick Rose. Rose and Westbrook, both legitimate Top 5 players. Kevin Love, slightly overrated by metrics, and a hard guy to build around because he doesn’t defend at the point of the play or make up for his teammates mistakes, is still legitimately a Top 20 player in the league year-in and year-out. I wouldn’t want him as a max guy on my team, but if you could get him for a sub-max contract, there’s a real value there. George Hill and Nicolas Batum, same deal.
2. Then beyond these six, you also have Serge Ibaka, whose very underrated by a metric like this because of his defensive impact and the fact that he willingly surrenders shots to both Westbrook and Durant. You have Miami-stopper Roy Hibbert. Goran Dragic had a legit all-star year. And Gallinari, Lopez and Lopez is not only a made for TV law firm, but three somewhat dependable Top 50ish players, who might have a shot to be something more in a career year. That’s a legitimate 12 players before even getting to guys like Pekovic and Chalmers.
3. Still, if we’re talking about players that make a team into a contender, only two: Rose and Westbrook, both two-way initiators.
4. That being said, Kevin Love is probably the most difficult player of the last 15 years to parse. Even moreso than Blake Griffin, who at least had the athletic ability to be projectable on defense. Just how valuable is Kevin Love? How much does it hurt you to have a post player that gets beat consistently at the point of attack? How much does it hurt you to have a post player that can’t play help? At some point early, you just have to choose such elite Freshman performance, especially when there are absolutely no holes on offense. Inside, outside, passing, intelligence, dribbling ability, rebounding. Love has and had it all. But on defense rebounding only gets you so far in 2015.
5. Though as a cruel twist, 9 or 10 years ago, Love would have been exactly the player Lebron needed to have a chance vs. the Spurs. Imagine Love on that Cavs team instead of Donyell Marshall. That team at the very least has a chance, a good one.
6. So what do you do with Love? Let’s say 2008 UCLA Freshman Kevin Love is in this year’s draft, I’m pretty sure Ben Simmons is still the number 1 pick. It’s not particularly close. But even knowing Kevin Love as a player is likely to be a flawed pro, wouldn’t he have to be 2 after Simmons?
In actuality, it’s probably not all that different than Ingram at 2, who not only has a somewhat flawed resume, but also lacks the type of lateral explosion generally associated with the top players in the NBA. And also some of the defensive instincts. There’s really quite a lot to suggest he’s going to be a somewhat flawed pro, and yet there’s enough there with Ingram’s size, diverse skill set and the hope that he might improve his suddenness (since he definitely has leaping ability) that you almost have to pick him two.
There’s also probably no guy like Russell Westbrook beside him in the draft. The closest three being Wade Baldwin, Kris Dunn and Gary Payton II, who are either on par with George Hill as prospects or just slightly ahead of him because their skill-sets all allow for slightly more upside. And luckily, there’s no flawed player like Love who was so successful. Henry Ellenson is the obvious guy who comes to mind, but he looks like a not as good Kevin Love when he plays. And his numbers read like that as well. It’s much easier to pass on him for upside than it would be Love. And you are more likely to be right.
One of the funny things about the 2016 draft, is that a large number of freshman are going to go, but aside from Simmons, Ingram and perhaps Deyonta Davis, the freshman likely to leave aren’t really great upside plays. The other freshman with greater upside seem to be guys like OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, perhaps Derrick Jones, perhaps Anthony Lawrence, who are all pretty likely to stay in school and hopefully put some offensive skills onto their games, which they sorely need. The guys with upside in this draft are mostly older prospects. Simmons, Ingram, Davis yes. But besides them, it’s Baldwin, Dunn, Payton II, Brice Johnson, Onuaku, Jakob Poeltl, Josh Adams, DeAndre Bembry, Denzel Valentine and maybe a couple of others. You only have to look at these tables to realize most of them won’t turn out.
Guys like Skal and Jaylen Brown are sucker bets. Brown much more than Skal. Brown might end up overcoming all of his obstacles and become a great player. But there’s three or four major obstacles, from turnovers to the fact that he doesn’t create impact events like steals and blocks on defense to the fact that he can’t shoot to the fact that he can’t pass to the fact that he has a low BBIQ, and one of these things is in most cases enough to doom a prospect’s Top 10 chances.
7. The reason flawed players kill team building is in large part because of max contracts. When you are allocating 25%+ of the salary cap to a single player, you’d like that player not to have holes you have to cover up. Or at the very least, to be so good it doesn’t matter. But the only players who bring that kind of value are the 3 or 4 best primary perimeter initiators.
So the real question is, is it better to draft an almost fatally flawed back-end of the Top 10 player like Kevin Love, a player who might be an insurmountable negative vs. the best teams in the playoffs OR a lesser player, a player like George Hill, a player without real holes to cover up, a player likely to cost you much less on a second contract, but one who also doesn’t bring the value of a Kevin Love? It seems an obvious answer and is perhaps even moreso when one realizes that there is far more certainty of success around a player like Kevin Love than a player like George Hill, which is why Love went Top 5 and Hill went at the very end of the 1st, but I’m not sure a team isn’t better off paying George Hill 8 million a year compared to the 20 or 20+ for Love.
8. Now back to the discussion of this draft. As for One-And-Dones, you have Derrick Rose and Kevin Love. Neither’s success was particularly a surprise. The same could not be said for Michael Beasley’s failure. Though I see two reasons why now: The first, he was a Big without any plus projectable defensive qualities besides rebounding. That’s the same flag Love has, and it’s not an insignificant one. At best, Beasley was going to be a flawed player. The second flag is the one that’s been pointed out most, his passing. And it’s not just his assist vs. turnover ratio. It’s that Beasley basically didn’t know how to pass the basketball.
9. You also have DeAndre Jordan as a One-And-Done, who didn’t do much at Texas A&M, and would be instructive about the potential of freakishly athletic 7-footers regardless of their college success, except there aren’t any in this draft. (Andre Drummond is another big time athletic Center who had similarly poor Freshman performance and almost immediate NBA success.) The closest you get is probably Chinanu Onuaku, who is not quite as athletic, but quite a lot more successful at the same stage and age. Maybe Steven Zimmerman falls into this boat. Though he’s really not in either player’s league.
Again, the unskilled One-And-Done player who was remarkably successful was a Big, not a perimeter player. There’s basically been only one exception to this rule that we’ve seen so far, Eric Bledsoe, and I think he’s the only one. Unless you like Brandon Knight’s game more than I do.
10. We also again see yet another sophomore in Russell Westbrook make his way towards being a Top 7 player. (This is a trend as well. Sophomores, for whatever reason, turn out pretty well.)
11. And again, we see a number of players with the highest upside to be Upperclassmen. This draft is also notable for having three highly successful European players. Which is becoming more and more of a trend in recent years. And these players still seem like they are being under-drafted with guys in recent years like Rudy Gobert, Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antekounmpo all being available relatively late.
I personally don’t know anything about the European prospects this year, or at least not enough to have individual opinions about them. And that’s been the same for just about every draft. But I can clearly see their individual talents are being vastly underestimated by the NBA. (The funny thing is that I don’t know if this is the case for Dragan Bender. He looks great on videos. But right now, everyone only talks about his offensive ability, where he obviously has skills. But to be a truly successful NBA big, you need to carry value on defense. Lots of it. And though he can move his feet, I haven’t really heard much to suggest one way or the other if he can actually play interior defense.)
12. I kind of like George Hill as a comparison for Gary Payton II and a path Payton II’s career might take. Hill was the better shooter coming out of college. Payton II the better passer, better defender and more athletic player. It’s not difficult to imagine a scenario where Payton II has a career superior to that of Hill which would make him a real steal out of this draft, since almost no one besides me and perhaps Kevin Pelton has him as player worthy of a high first round grade.
2009 NBA Draft
1. Steph Curry’s defensive improvement is perhaps the only thing more surprising than how crazy good he is at making off-the-dribble jump shots. He can play defense, but neither he nor Harden needs to do so to be a Top 10 player. That’s how good they are on O.
2. This is a legit Two-Player draft. Both good enough to be the best player on a championship team. And one of them was traded without forcing a trade. The last time that happened was probably never. If you’re going to trade a Top 5 player, best probably do it at draft time when you can guarantee that you are going to end up with the 1st or 2nd pick in the draft as well as other compensation.
3. Again, most of the best players in this draft are initiators. There is another wrinkle though in that this draft had two or three or even four potentially great 3&D defensive players in Danny Green, Wesley Matthews, Patrick Beverley and DeMarre Carroll (who I somewhat stupidly left out).
Danny Green is the rare 3&D player to basically play at an all-star level every year, and even topped out as a likely Top 15 player in 2014-2015. Wesley Matthews was great before the Achilles injury as well. These are upper echelon outcomes for shooters. The reason why these players both had such outcomes is because both play really good defense. The funny thing, all four of them were freely available on the open market after they were drafted with Matthews being an undrafted free agent, Green and Beverley getting cut, and Carroll ending up on a 2nd team before making it to free agency and signing a cheapo deal with Atlanta where he finally put his game together.
4. With Kevin Love and Blake Griffin in the last two drafts, we have two players about as good as a purely offensive big could be. At least shy of being Dirk Nowitzki. Doesn’t there seem to be some gap between the statistical success of these players and that of their team?
5. In DeMar Derozan, we have what happens when a plus offensive player can’t play defense. You get a well above average player, but not a great one. That’s the biggest thing hurting the Raptors. Their 2nd best player is closer to being the 100th best player in the league than the 20th. Well, that their lack of interior D.
6. The Holiday-Lawson-Teague run pick 18 through 20 was one of the truly great mid to late first round runs in draft history. Of course, they probably should have went pick 8 thru 10, directly after Curry, or perhaps even earlier, considering Johnny Flynn was overrated due to his success in one multi-overtime game in a conference tournament. Which should tell us something about paying too much attention to NCAA or conference tournament success.
2010 NBA Draft
1. I say that facetiously. But so far there really haven’t been any players from this draft that profile as the best player from a championship team. Cousins and George are the closest. John Wall could change all this if he learns how to shoot the basketball, which would probably take him from being around the 20th best player in the league to a Top 5 guy.
2. This is the first draft with a successful One-And-Done perimeter player who didn’t have immense college success in Eric Bledsoe. He was also the fourth or fifth option on one of the All-Time deepest college teams. A Kentucky team that had DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall, Patrick Patterson, Darius Miller and others, which might not have allowed Bledsoe to show just how good he was.
Avery Bradley on the other hand is an example of a One-And-Done perimeter player who was only able to grow his strengths and not improve on his weaknesses. Still a high floor player. Not one with a high ceiling.
3. Ed Davis is probably overrated as rebounding and put back PF who coaches only play situationally. Still, this type of player can have a good amount of value. Which might be another guy to point to as a more likely positive outcome for a guy like Pascal Siakam. Who really fits the bill athletically from the PF standpoint, even if he is a bit raw.
4. Greg Monroe may be overrated by BPM for similar reasons. Win Totals have never followed his team’s around. I have to think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he’s a center that can’t protect the rim.
5. We do see a lot of One-And-Done success in this draft. The two Kentucky guards, three Bigs in Cousins, Favors and Whiteside and Avery Bradley as a 3&D player. Still, you don’t necessarily get more value out of a One-And-Done than by picking sophomores, since Paul George is arguably the best player in this draft. And Hayward is somewhere between the 3rd and 5th best.
6. While the NBA didn’t necessarily do a great job of picking the best players in order: Wall made sense as a potential number 1, but Cousins unquestionably should have been 1 or 2. They did do a good job of cleaning up. Beside Whiteside, who clearly had a lot of maturity problems, and ended up almost out of basketball, and Lance Stephenson who, ditto, every high upside player is off the board by 18 with the selection of Eric Bledsoe.
7. Again, the best way to spot these players is to make sure that they are Primary Initiators or that they add real defensive value. Or both. It cannot be said enough. Drafting One-Way players who don’t play the point on offense is mostly a kind of silliness. They just don’t tend to become all that valuable.
2011 NBA Draft
1. Watching Kyrie Irving and looking at his stat line, he was a worthy number 1, even if he hasn’t become that type of player. His offensive skill-set pretty regularly places him between the 20th and 35th best player in the league.
2. Kawhi Leonard however has been the unquestionable best player in this class from day one. His development went about as well as anyone could have anticipated. But the one thing that was underestimated was the value of an elite defensive skill-set, from size, athleticism, rebounding ability, the ability to create steals and to actually play On-Ball defense and within a team concept as SDSU almost always necessitates. He was also a great dribbler for a player of his size, regularly able to beat people and get to the rim.
A lot of the One-Size-Fits-All models had him in the Top 10, and knowing what we know now, it’s hard to imagine a player like this getting to 15 again. Except for this, Leonard’s success is pretty much a total outlier, as there are very few players who can be near +5 offensive players without directly creating shots for their teammates or near +5 defensive players from a perimeter position. It’s just a rare combination of elite skills, you don’t generally see in one player. And if you do, these players are almost always earmarked for the Top 3 from the time they are in high school.
3. The NBA guys did pretty poorly in this draft. The best player went 15th. The 2nd best player, Jimmy Butler, went 30th, despite being a big-time athlete, a hugely successful On-Ball Player, and in his best season, something like a +35 net rating player despite playing for a team that as a whole was only around +10. (This is a good sign, especially when it comes from a guy in a major conference.) And even Kemba Walker, a primary On-Ball initiator who managed to shoot 700 shots, most of them self-generated, in a college season with decent efficiency for the eventual National Champion, didn’t go until 9th overall.
There’s also Chandler Parsons, whose success was somewhat predictable, considering he not only could really play, which was evident by watching him, but that his profile has a number of big-time plus markers (Success with self-generated shots at all levels of the offense, an assist to usage ratio better than 1:1 for two of them). And that’s not even counting Isaiah Thomas or Reggie Jackson, even if Jackson arguably went in an appropriate range for primary On-Ball guy who couldn’t defend in college.
4. That’s what makes missing on Jackson or Thomas understandable. Neither projected as a good NBA defender. Hence, you weren’t missing on a guy with Top 10 upside.
5. Klay Thompson is a guy I’d have definitely missed on, even in hindsight. (I just don’t like the idea of drafting shooters who don’t pass, create for themselves or have much possibility of defensive projection. It’s my thing. Get used to it.) He represents an upper echelon result for a shooter who doesn’t add all that much defensively. And unlike the best such shooters this year, he’s a legit 6’7″, can guard shooting guards and can actually move his feet laterally. He was also a better passer and dribbler in college.
6. Again, we see a lack of One-And-Done success. (Even the successful one, Irving, is much less successful than I’d have guessed he would be.) What we do see is sophomores, juniors and seniors who have become great players. And the most successful of them: Two-Way Players.
2012 NBA Draft
1. Anthony Davis. The most obvious number 1 overall selection in quite some time. Two-way big with legitimate projection on both sides of the ball. After that, this draft goes off the rails.
2. Then we have three seniors as the next three best players. If we look at RPM, we could also add Khris Middleton, a junior coming off a horrible year to the mix as the next four best players. All legitimate all-star types. Draymond Green, arguably a top 5 player.
3. What do they have in common? All have considerable On-Ball skills. Damian Lillard has perhaps the best mix of being able to score at the rim and being able to make his own shot from three of any college player in the last five years. They can also all pass the ball at least adequately. Green is the only one who would not be considered large for the position they play in the NBA, and he was a good enough passer to legitimately transition down to wing if he failed at PF. They are also all plus athletes for their position. And all of them except for Lillard have huge plus defensive indicators when looking at DBPM, rebounding, blocks, steals and their defensive rating compared to that of their team. Though in the case of Middleton, some of these indicators come when he’s sophomore, not a junior, which was basically a lost year for him.
The One-Size-Fits-All formulas loved Green and Crowder, which is not everything, but often they do at least hint at which player’s might be great.
4. What else? Again, One-And-Done perimeter freshman who don’t show legit On-Ball skills, don’t seem to have high upside, even if they often seem to become average or above average NBA players.
Again the best players really play defense. And it’s obviously the one thing holding Lillard back from being a legitimate Top 10 guy year-in and year-out. And why you might even bet on John Wall or over him, since it’s generally easier for NBA guys to learn how to shoot than how to defend, even if Lillard is athletic enough to do so.
2013 NBA Draft
1. The 2013 draft is still too new to say anything about. However, for a draft that was spoken about in the same terms the 2016 draft is, there sure are a hell of a lot of average or plus players, even three years into their career. Which is impressive, because most players peak later. And RPM likes some of these guys, like Robert Covington, much more than BPM.
2. The thing this draft is missing is a star, a player who could be the best player on a championship team. At least so far. This is not so unusual. If we look back we see, while many years had two such players, 2004, 2006 and 2010 arguably have none.
3. It’s also unlikely to remain that way. Giannis Antekounmpo has all the tools to end up as the best player in the league within the next 5 years. And even if he doesn’t, it would be somewhat surprising if he doesn’t break into that Top 6 to 8 area. That are isn’t always the best player on a championship team, but Giannis is also going to be a match-up nightmare for every team in the playoffs, and that isn’t the case for most such players, who are generally possible to scheme against in some way.
4. The slightly longer bet is Dennis Schroder, as a primary initiator with elite athleticism and very good shooting skills. He wouldn’t be the first such player to go from league average at 22 to the Top 7. Kyle Lowry and Chauncey Billups come to mind. But both were better than Schroder on defense is, at least vs. players who aren’t T. J. McConnell. A more reasonable upside projection is probably Mike Conley, who was also basically league average at 22, with similar athletic gifts and skills.
5. So we see, if the players in this class fulfill reasonable projections, we all of sudden have perhaps one potential upper echelon player, two or three borderline or back-end of the Top 10 guys in Gobert, Schroder and Noel.
6. One of Noel’s main problems is that the 76ers are trying to grow his offensive skills. This may pay dividends for the future, but since most of the best offensive centers in the league actually just do basic things like run screen and roll (in which they actually connect on screens consistently), rebound, shoot and make bunnies at the basket, hit free throws and get back on defense, there’s really no way to know if it’s actually a good strategy. Perhaps it would have been better to have Noel learn to excel at these basic, some would say fundamental, aspects of the position first and build out from there.
This isn’t Joel Embiid or Karl-Anthony Towns or Jahlil Okafor on offense we’re talking about. Noel’s a real project on that side in the way that Jordan and Drummond were and in some ways still are. Albeit one who has a chance to really pass the basketball well from a big position. And if Brown had followed a more basic strategy for his potential future center on offense, Noel would probably be at least approaching average on offense right now, and with his significant plus defense, already be a +3 or +4 player.
But one difficulty may be that the goals of the GM and the goals of the coach are potentially at cross purposes. The goals of both are ultimately to win a championship, but a team needs to find at least one Top 7 guy, and usually a Top 5 guy to do that. And Noel probably isn’t that player. But having one +3 or +4 player on your can bring you a number of wins on his own. And the 76ers already lost out on Karl-Anthony Towns because they won too much last year. So the goals of the team in the short-term are clearly to lose and perhaps even to build the players up as trade-able assets.
Regardless, playing Noel at Power Forward on offense seems like a potentially lost year of development from that end, since he still can’t do the things a player needs to do at center to be really successful. And Noel is almost certainly an offensive center, even if he has the talent to play either position on defense. Perhaps Joel Embiid’s potentially diverse game on both sides of the ball will solve this issue to an extent.
7. The strength of this class doesn’t end with Giannis, Gobert, Noel and Schroder. Oladipo looks like he’ll develop almost certainly into a borderline all-star who might max out a year or two as a borderline Top 10 player. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope found a way to have a +1 year by pretty much any standard, and he didn’t even shoot. It’s at least a good possibility he learns to shoot consistently in the future. (It took Reggie Jackson five years, but both have similar scoring profiles in college. Lots of unassisted makes from all areas. Good free throw percentages.) Otto Porter was even better than Caldwell-Pope, though probably doesn’t have as much upside. Still, it’s not hard to envision him as an eventual +3 or +4 player.
Then you add Dieng, Plumlee and Adams, all already very solid NBA players. Adams also came into the league as an 18 or 19-year-old. So there’s potentially a lot of growth still there. There’s Andre Roberson, one of the better perimeter defenders in the league, even if he currently has a near unplayable offensive game. C. J. McCollum has the exact opposite problem, in that he can’t defend anyone, but is a very talented offensive player. Cody Zeller will likely go down a similar road a big position, etc . . .
This class isn’t going to look as good as 2003 or any year where there’s multiple guys who could be the best player on a championship team. But for a draft that was supposedly very thin, there’s a lot of legitimate NBA talent.
8. So it could that at least some of the years that are deemed to be thin are really those years where the draft sites have a difficult time identifying which players are actually talented. The reason being because everyone, despite what is said, is much more concerned with a player’s floor than with his upside projection. We can see this a little bit with Noel, who obviously had a higher upside than any of the player’s picked above him, but a perceived lower floor because of a pre-existing knee injury. We can see this with Giannis Antekounmpo going at 15, despite being in the top 1% of the NBA athletically and not that far behind skill-wise for a guy of his size. We can see that with Gobert going at 27.
So either the NBA and these draft sites have difficulties actually identifying what upside means, or they don’t properly understand that a draft’s strength or weakness is ultimately graded entirely by the Top 2 or 3 or 4 players in a draft, and rightly so, or they are entirely too risk averse. It’s very rare that a player’s floor is conceivably high enough that it should really enter into the equation. It might happen once or twice every five years or even ten. It’s the exact quality that makes Kevin Love such a rare conundrum.
He’s probably the one high floor, high ceiling player of the last 12 years, unless you really didn’t believe in Blake Griffin’s defense. Given that such players need to bring value on defense, Michael Beasley also looked like this prior to the draft, even if we didn’t recognize it at the time his floor was basically non-existent. (This wasn’t just do to supposed personality flaws.) And if we couldn’t recognize that fact, it shouldn’t be surprising that we didn’t recognize that a player who doesn’t understand basketball as a team sport as someone who might fail.
Usually players with high floors look like Karl-Anthony Towns, in which the floor of the player also comes with a tremendously high ceiling. Lebron James too. Chris Paul. Kevin Durant. Or players like Joel Embiid or Greg Oden, where the floor of the player is non-existent because of injury risk. Very rare is there a prospect like Kevin Love who is close to playing at his athletic ceiling as Freshman in college.
9. We once again see certain types of players being successful. Defensive Centers. Primary Initiators. Two-Way Power Forwards. Two-way wings.
Giannis is actually the prototype to bring value in the modern NBA. A player who can initiate on offense from the perimeter while playing an interior defensive position. It’s one of the main reasons he’s so valuable. Not only does it dictate match-ups on both sides of the ball, these are the two places where most value in the modern NBA is generated. It’s a fundamental reason why Ben Simmons is being underrated as a prospect. It’s not just Simmons offensive impact that has a chance to be special. It’s Simmons on defense too. And it’s far more likely that Simmons would bring super plus value on defense than Brandon Ingram.
Ben Simmons is the prospect you are hoping for when picking number one, a high floor, high ceiling guy.
10. We also see in this draft the impact of foreigners. The entire strength of this draft is in its foreign players. And this is also somewhat true for 2014 with Jokic, Capela and Saric. And 2015 with Porzingis.
11. We notice again a lack of One-And-Done perimeter players making an impact. Ben McLemore basically hasn’t done anything so far. Indeed, the higher upside NCAA perimeter players are all at least sophomores. Oladipo was a junior. McCollum was a senior. We also see a recent trend in which absolutely elite talent is available well into the 1st round and sometimes into the 2nd round. Rudy Gobert in this draft. Nikola Jokic in 2014. Draymond Green and Khris Middleton in 2012. Jimmy Butler in 2011.
Which is to say, though it’s perhaps impossible to precisely identify which players will go on to become stars, we can identify a group of players with attributes that give them a real chance. And as such, a team picking multiple times between 15 and 40 with an eye for these attributes might have a decent chance in many recent drafts to find at least one such player. Late 1st, early 2nd round draft picks when bunched together in one draft perhaps become much more valuable. As you only need one successful pick for the strategy to really pay off.
What Have We Learned?
1. Most elite players fit into a one of four categories: Primary Perimeter Initiator, Defensive Center, Two-Way PF, Two-Way Wing. The most common are Primary Perimeter Initiators and these players are also most likely to be Top 5 players. Two-Way Wings are the most rare, and if you consider Kawhi Leonard at least in part a Primary Perimeter Initiator, there really are none. You’d basically have to be Reggie Miller shooting the basketball while still being a +2 defender at a perimeter position. (This is the hope for Brandon Ingram.) Or a combo of DeMar Derozan on offense, who does have some initiation skill, and Tony Allen or Andre Iguodola or Kawhi on D. Which is to say once again, almost all perimeter players who become successful have some real dribble-drive or passing ability. Generally both.
2. We learned that One-And-Done Bigs seem to have better outcomes than One-And-Done Perimeter players unless the Perimeter players are uniquely skilled Lebron James, Kevin Durant types. As Ben Simmons certainly is. And Brandon Ingram might be.
3. We learned that a great many of the best players to come out of these drafts are indeed Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors. Especially later in the draft, this seems to be true. Older prospects are not without upside, despite what the prevailing “Common Sense” seems to say. Upside is given by size, athleticism, skill and intelligence. A couple of juniors or the equivalent (Wade and Curry) have even recently held the mantle for best player in the league.
4. Many of the best players do come off the board in the Top 5 (Wade, Lebron, Paul, Harden, Westbrook for example), the Top 7 (Steph Curry), and generally the Top 10 (Paul George). That doesn’t mean that such players aren’t still available later in the draft, especially when these are older players or foreigners: Kyle Lowry, Paul Millsap, Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler, Rudy Gobert, Nikola Jokic as examples. And DeAndre Jordan as the one Freshman with great success.
Which is to say, the odds are Ben Simmons will be the only great player from this draft class. But that’s not to say it’s a certainty. And if there is another player to join Ben Simmons, they are almost certain to be a Primary Perimeter Initiator, generally one who has some possibility to play defense (Wade Baldwin, Kris Dunn, Gary Payton II, Josh Adams), a Defensive Center (Chinanu Onuaku and maybe Jakob Poeltl), a Two-Way PF (Brice Johnson, Deyonta Davis, Robert Carter Jr. and maybe a couple of others like Pascal Siakam or Marquese Chriss), or a Two-Way Wing (Brandon Ingram, Denzel Valentine, DeAndre Bembry and maybe a couple of others).
It’s unlikely to be a young guy who doesn’t know how to play basketball, like Chriss or Jaylen Brown or Skal. It’s unlikely to be a young guy without considerable offensive skills, like Dedric Lawson. It’s unlikely to be any player who projects as an almost definite negative defensively, especially if they aren’t a Primary On-Ball guy with passing ability. Guys like Buddy Hield, Grayson Allen, etc . . .
5. Perhaps most importantly we learned this: That while getting the 4th or 5th best player from a draft might matter, it only matters if you can surround that player with the best and/or second best players from another draft. Let’s just look at past champions:
2015 Golden State: They had the best player from the 2009 draft, Steph Curry, the best or 2nd player from the 2012 draft, Draymond Green, arguably the 2nd best player from the 2004 draft, Andre Iguodola and the 5th or 6th best player from the 2011 draft, Klay Thompson. Klay Thompson was an important piece of the puzzle, yes. They also were able to win the finals with Thompson basically being a no-show.
2014 San Antonio: They had the best player from the 2011 draft, Kawhi Leonard, plus the best player from the 1997 draft, Tim Duncan, plus arguably the best player from the 1999 draft, Manu Ginobili, though Marion and Kirilenko were great too. And also the 2nd best player from 2001 draft, Tony Parker. Plus Danny Green, plus Boris Diaw.
2012-2013 Miami: They had the two best players from 2003 draft, Lebron James and Dwayne Wade. In addition, the 2nd best player from that draft would have been the best player in most of the drafts in history. Also, they had the 3rd best player from 2003, Chris Bosh. And also the 4th or 5th best player from the loaded 1996 draft, Ray Allen, behind Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Ben Wallace. And the 4th or 5th best player from the 2001 draft, Shane Battier.
2011 Mavericks: The best or 2nd best player from the 1998 draft, Dirk Nowtizki, a legit MVP winner. The 3rd best player from the 1998 draft, Vince Carter. The 2nd best player from the 1994 draft, Jason Kidd. The 3rd best player from the 2001 draft, Tyson Chandler. And one of the two guys who might be the best from 1999 draft if it wasn’t Ginobili, Shawn Marion.
2009-2010 Lakers: The best player from the 1996 draft, Kobe Bryant. The best player from the 2001 draft, Pau Gasol. And also Lamar Odom, who was probably the 3rd or 4th best out of his draft.
2008 Celtics: The best player from the 1994 draft, Kevin Garnett. The best or 2nd best player from the 1998 draft, Paul Pierce. Plus Rajon Rondo, a top 4 player from his draft. Plus the aforementioned Ray Allen.
2007 Spurs: Same deal as 2014, minus Kawhi, Green and Diaw, plus youth from Duncan, Ginobili and Parker.
2006 Miami: The 2nd best player from 2003, Dwayne Wade, but also a legit MVP level performer in this season. The best player from 1992, Shaq. The 2nd best player from 1992, Alonzo Mourning. The best player from 1990, Gary Payton.
2005 Spurs: Again.
2004 Detroit: The 2nd best or 3rd best player from 1996, Ben Wallace. The 2nd or 3rd best player from the 1997 draft, Chauncey Billups.
2003 Spurs: Yet again.
2000-2002 Lakers: The best player from two different drafts, Kobe and Shaq.
1999 Spurs: Duncan plus David Robinson, the best or 2nd best player from the 1987 draft. And also Sean Elliot, the 3rd or 4th best player from the 1989 draft.
1996-1998 Bulls: The best player from 1984 draft, Michael Jordan, which is also the greatest draft ever. The best or 2nd best player from the 1987 draft, Scottie Pippen. The best player from the 1986 draft, Dennis Rodman. And also the 3rd or 4th best player from the 1986 draft, Ron Harper.
This continues no matter how far you go back. Every championship team has at worst two players who were Top 3 players from their draft. Generally they were the best or 2nd best. And the Spurs entire roster is basically comprised of such players. This year’s Golden State isn’t far behind, except their players are all basically in their primes at the same time as the Spurs were in the mid 2000s. I can’t see how drafting players whose reasonable upside tops out as maybe a borderline all-star makes that much sense, at least when players with positive attributes that might lend themselves to becoming a top 3 player from the class are still available.
This 2016 draft actually has a reasonable number of players who fit this description. As many as most drafts. They just don’t look like the players we are accustomed to becoming stars and many of them lack an offensive floor. Defensive ability is consistently underrated in the draft, so it’s not surprise that many of the players from this 2016 draft who might have it are being undervalued.
So What’s Next?
Perhaps, knowing what we know, we should devise a series of questions to weed out the prospects who don’t have the upside to be worth a draft pick?
First, Does the player have the size and athleticism markers necessary to fit a position?
This is an easy way to weed out Point Guards who are too slow or too small or both: Kay Felder, Tyler Ulis, Stefan Moody, Fred Van Vleet. All might become legit NBA players, but there’s a pretty low cap on how good they might become. Isaiah Thomas is a pretty good indicator as somewhere around the 20th best player in the league. And he’s an all-time great outcome for such a player.
We might also put a question mark on secondary shooters, ie. relatively unskilled guards, who are 6’5″ and under without elite athleticism and tweener forwards without the skills or at least athleticism to potentially play the SF position. But since all such players will be weeded out either by defensive or skill questions later on, there is no reason to do so. Indeed, we might even miss out on a player like Paul Millsap if we did.
Secondly, Is the player a primary initiator, and if not does the player project to potentially play plus defense at the next level?
I think we might even just simplify this question to the second part: Does the player project to potentially play plus defense at the NBA level? For even Point Guards who have gone on to become bad defenders very often have positive indicators in college, whether it’s size and athletic ability or individual plus defensive skills or a defensive rating equal or better than that of the team they played for. (This is somewhat unusual for PG.) Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, both kind of awful defenders. Both would have at the very least a non-negative answer to this question. Same with Jameer Nelson, who was a very successful college defender at the position and basically a league average defender at the PG in the pros. Whereas many of this year’s Point Guard prospects like Demetrius Jackson, Anthony Barber, Monte Morris, to name a few, likely project as negative defenders were they to play in a starting role.
Third and on: These questions should probe a prospects individual skills.
We’ve already examined two of them, in terms of turnovers and passing ability. But there’s on-ball scoring ability, rebounding, the ability to create defensive events, etc . . . And everywhere we should be considering intelligence, which is for most players a necessary component of success.
So Where Do We Get Started?
Unfortunately, sports-reference doesn’t carry the advanced statistics for players before 2009-2010, so it’s difficult to look at all of these players from that perspective. But we can look at some of them, the most highly successful players from 2010 on and see if there are certain traits they have in common and compare them to this year’s class. Everyone else starts with a player’s individual statistics, and we’ll do that eventually, but I’m going to take a different tactic. I’m going to first look at these players Offensive Rating, Defensive Rating and Net Ratings compared to team. And see if there are any commonalities.
The older players I am going to focus on most are DeMarcus Cousins, Paul George, John Wall, Eric Bledsoe, Derrick Favors, Gordon Hayward, Hassan Whiteside from 2010, Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, Kemba Walker, Kyrie Irving, Isaiah Thomas, Chandler Parson, Klay Thompson and Reggie Jackson from 2011, Anthony Davis, Draymond Green, Damian Lillard, Jae Crowder, Andre Drummond, Jared Sullinger, Harrison Barnes, Khris Middleton, Bradley Beal, Festus Ezeli, and Michael Kidd-Gilchrest from 2012 and pretty much anyone who can be looked at from 2013.
Separately, I will look at draft failures as well, guys like Michael Carter-Williams or Nik Stauskas or Tim Hardway Jr. to see if we can identify any trends. For as much as looking to identify those players who might be so successful, we will be looking to screen out those players who won’t be. To lessen the pool of players we are looking at. Teams, after all, only get a limited picks per draft.
Next time, in a hopefully shorter post.
