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Bob Donnan/US PresswireAnthony Davis is at the top of our Draft Rater and it’s not even close.It’s possible that mere moments after David Stern hands off the Larry O’Brien Trophy to Micky Arison or Clay Bennett that he will be in Newark, N.J., announcing that the New Orleans Hornets are on the clock. The Finals are slated to end June 26 (or really, the morning of June 27 if you factor in the ceremony, the interviews, the analysis and all the responsibilities of the players and the league), and the NBA draft is on June 28.
This is why we need to interrupt this riveting NBA Finals for a moment to talk about a bunch of 19-year-olds who have never played a professional game before.
That’s right: It’s Draft Rater time. I’ve developed a tool that analyzes college stats to predict NBA performance and have refined it over the past several years. It’s something we can use to help identify draft steals and busts.
To review, last season was a pretty good one for the Rater. The 2011 pick with the top chance of success (Kyrie Irving) won Rookie of the Year, three other players it rated highly (Kawhi Leonard, Jon Leuer andNikola Vucevic) provided great value for their draft position, and long-time favorite Daniel Green emerged as a starter on the West’s best regular-season team.
Meanwhile, the Rater was down on Jan Vesely, Josh Selby and Jimmer Fredette. The biggest whiff was onMarShon Brooks, whom it rated as a late second-rounder but was a solid late first-round pick by the Nets. The others were players nobody else rated highly either;Isaiah Thomas, for instance, was No. 57 on my board. It was probably too optimistic about Tristan Thompson as well; he had the highest raw rating of any player but struggled at times as a rookie.
I made a few minor tweaks compared to a year ago — most notably, I ditched the "Howland" variable, even though it was statistically significant, because it felt like an "overfit" (fitting the model to past results that may not necessarily be predictive) and I had enough significant variables without it. Otherwise, it’s basically same as it ever was — a giant regression model that gets incrementally smarter as we fill it with more data each year and one that I’ve segmented by position. It’s still less predictive with one-and-done players, whom it sees less of statistically before they turn pro, and it’s not perfect — we’re trying to project what 19-year-olds will be like at 25, a profoundly inexact science.
Nonetheless, let’s zoom back out to the big picture and go through the results from this year’s Draft Rater, because I think you’ll see that a few points remain paramount.
1. Anthony Davis is obviously the best player
Good thing we came up with this neat model, because I don’t know how we could have discerned this information otherwise. Yes, this is a one-star draft. Davis blew up my Draft Rater, as expected, but just as notable is the huge gap between him and the next place on the list.
Davis rates several points ahead of every other player on the board. In fact, the difference between Davis and the No. 2-rated player, Jared Sullinger, is greater than the gap between Sullinger and No. 16 Bradley Beal. And Sullinger’s rating comes with asterisks that don’t afflict Davis.
2. Remember, we’re projecting PER
This gets extremely important when you look at the next few players that Draft Rater highlights and when you look back at some of the players Draft Rater has fawned over mistakenly in recent seasons. In each, you’ll notice a huge propensity toward defensively lacking power forwards — players like Michael Beasley, Charlie Villanueva and Tyrus Thomas, who had some of the best marks in recent seasons.
That’s not a failure of Draft Rater as much as a failure of what I’ve asked it to do: project NBA PER from college stats. It did that; Beasley, Villanueva and Thomas all have excellent career PER marks. They just aren’t very good in spite of those numbers due to their defensive shortcomings and questions about their fit in the team concept.
So let’s take a closer look at two relatively short, stocky power forwards who are among the next names on the list: Sullinger and Draymond Green. Will these guys put up numbers? Very likely. Will they be able to guard their position? That is a much more open question and why they won’t go as highly as Draft Rater places them. Green, in particular, is a massive defensive question mark.
This applies to a lesser extent to the next several players. Terrence Jones and Royce White, who also has anxiety issues that may affect his draft position, are much more offensive players who are an inch short for the power forward spot, and Furkan Aldemir of Turkey — who rates as a mid-first-rounder although he probably won’t be taken until the middle of the second round — has defensive shortcomings too.
At least that makes it easy to pick out the second-best big man this year: Thomas Robinson of Kansas, who has no such defensive shortcomings and should be able to score effectively with his athleticism around the rim.
Also warranting looks later in the lottery are two project-level bigs with more upside, especially at the defensive end: Andre Drummond and John Henson. Henson has a slightly higher rating, but as a 7-foot center, Drummond is virtually certain to be the higher pick.
Finally, a sleeper among bigs is Henry Sims of Georgetown. He is not a great athlete and will struggle defensively, but he is a high skill guy who could be a second-round steal.
3. High-rated wings usually deliver
As I noted with Leonard a year ago, wing players — especially bigger ones — with strong Draft Rater marks virtually never fail. Of the eight players to rate above 13 in the past decade, the worst among them was Josh Childress. Five of the players have played in an All-Star Game, and Rudy Gay may play in an All-Star Game soon. The seventh player is Leonard.
This year, we have two names to add to that list: Dion Waiters and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. Kidd-Gilchrist is probably the safest pick on the board — a big wing who plays defense, has strong stats and comes with no character questions. From a risk-aversion perspective alone he should be a top-five pick; I have him third on my board after Robinson. (See below for how I would rank the prospects, regardless of their Draft Rater numbers.)
I have Waiters fourth for similar reasons. His size, 6-foot-4, is more of a concern, but whatever team made him a promise did a wise thing. Waiters projects as the best small wing since Dwyane Wade, and he’d be a steal if somebody got him in the Nos. 8-10 range currently being discussed.
The other wing everybody is sleeping on is Quincy Millerof Baylor, who put up a strong mark despite coming off an ACL injury. He has more questions marks because of the knee and his bony build, but he is long and can score. The stories of him slipping have me baffled, because he rates as a top-10 pick.
Two other wings who will be drafted highly don’t rate as strongly: Beal and Harrison Barnes. Most players in their range turn out to be solid, but this part of the pool doesn’t produce many stars. I’d be more comfortable taking these two in the later part of the lottery.
Doronand Jeremy Lamb added to the perpetual confusion between the two by posting virtually the same rating, although this may be the only one that had Doron rated higher. Jeremy is likely to go 15 picks sooner given his higher ceiling, but Doron could be a great pickup in the late first or early second round as a Courtney Lee clone who hits 3s and defends.
The other wing worth a first-round look is Memphis’ Will Barton, whom most have slotted as a second-rounder and who rates as a nice sleeper.
4. The point guard conundrum
Point guard is the hardest position to draft because so much depends on improvement once the player turns pro. Unless it’s an overwhelming talent such as Chris Paul or Irving, the smarter play is usually to draft this position late and hope for the best.
This year, several point guards rate as first-round talents, and there is little to separate them. North Carolina’s Kendall Marshall is the highest rated of the bunch and the safest pick, but he offers the least upside. Often compared to Mark Jackson because of his size, acumen and lack of athleticism, he is a solid mid-first-round pick. A poor man’s version of Marshall might be Kostas Sloukas of Greece, who has solid translated Euroleague stats but will be a late second-rounder if he’s drafted at all because of his questionable athleticism.
On the other hand, Marquis Teague of Kentucky and Tony Wroten of Washington have talent to spare and star upside. The question is whether each can harness it. Teague was plagued by turnovers, especially early in the year, but he is an athletic scoring point guard in the mold of his older brother, the Atlanta Hawks‘ Jeff Teague. Wroten, meanwhile, is enormous for a point guard (6-6) and can really see the floor, but he can’t shoot and has lots of character questions.
Among Marshall, Wroten and Teague, it really is dealer’s choice as to how much risk you’re willing to take on for the reward. By the mid-first round I start liking Wroten’s star potential quite a bit, but others may wish to play it more safely.
5. The rest of the bigs
In the tail end of the first round and throughout the second, we’re sorting through several big men with fairly weak Draft Rater résumés. The Rater is a particularly harsh judge at the center position, where it frowns on the prospects of four centers with first-round aspirations — Tyler Zeller, Meyers Leonard, Fab Melo and Festus Ezeli — and flat-out mocks Miles Plumlee, who is off-the-charts bad with a 2.49 Draft Rater projection.
Plumlee aside, the other four are probably worthy of late first-round picks despite any misgivings, simply because size is such a rare commodity. Even if they can become just decent backup centers, taking them low in the first round makes sense. Two other 7-footers, Garrett Stutzof Wichita State and Robert Sacre of Gonzaga, shape up as solid second-rounders if we apply similar reasoning.
At the power forward spot, Perry Jones III is rated several notches lower than most, while two other likely first-rounders, Andrew Nicholson and Arnett Moultrie, rate as second-round picks. Also of note is Croatian forward Leon Radosevic as a decent second-round value play.
6. Potential perimeter busts
One player that Draft Rater isn’t crazy about is Damian Lillard of Weber State, who compiled strong numbers but did so against a weak schedule and is much older than most of the prospects at his position. He not only failed to outrank the top point guards above but also rates behind the less-heralded Tyshawn Taylor of Kansas. No. 6 clearly seems a stretch for Lillard, who looks more like a mid-to-late first-rounder in this analysis.
On the wings, a few potential first-rounders also fare poorly. Moe Harkless of St. John’s had one of the worst ratings of any first-round prospect. While the error rate on one-and-done players has been higher, the difference between Harkless and the other lottery candidates is well outside the standard error of the Rater.
In addition to Harkless, first-round prospects John Jenkins and Jeffery Taylor of Vanderbilt fared poorly. Another first-round prospect from overseas, Evan Fournier of France, didn’t play in the Euroleague this year and thus has no projection. Subjectively, I’m not sold on him — he’s basically a slashing scorer who isn’t athletic enough to score that way in the NBA — but he at least has the benefit of being only 19.
One player gathering momentum is Kostas Papanikolaou of Greece, who shapes up as a solid second-round stash pick. Two other wing prospects — Austin Rivers andTerrence Ross — shape up about where we’d expect as mid-to-late first rounders, but after those two, the pool thins out quickly.
A final sleeper to watch is Maryland point guard Terrell Stoglin, another guy who would make a great second-rounder.
7. Making my board
Knowing everything we know, here is how my board looks heading into draft day. This is taking into account everything from the Draft Rater as well as what we know about the players’ red flags, defensive pluses and minuses and one or two subjective calls:
1. Anthony Davis
2. Thomas Robinson
3. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
4. Dion Waiters
5. Andre Drummond
6. Quincy Miller
7. Jared Sullinger
8. Terrence Jones
9. John Henson
10. Royce White
11. Bradley Beal
12. Harrison Barnes
13. Tony Wroten
14. Kendall Marshall
15. Marquis Teague
16. Draymond Green
17. Jeremy Lamb
18. Damian Lillard
19. Austin Rivers
20. Doron Lamb
21. Furkan Aldemir
22. Will Barton
23. Tyler Zeller
24. Evan Fournier
25. Tyshawn Taylor
26. Meyers Leonard
27. Terrence Ross
28. Perry Jones
29. Festus Ezeli
30. Fab Melo
31. Kostas Sloukas
32. Henry Sims
33. Terrell Stoglin
34. Kostas Papanikolaou
35. Moe Harkless
36. Leon Radosevic
37. JaMychal Green
38. Andrew Nicholson
39. Drew Gordon
40. Garrett Stutz
41. Robert Sacre
42. Arnett Moultrie
43. Elias Harris
43. William Buford
44. Jae Crowder
45. Jared Cunningham
46. Jordan Taylor
47. John Jenkins
48. Orlando Johnson
49. Jeffrey Taylor
50. Tomas Satoransky
51. Quincy Acy
52. Maalik Wayns
53. Tornike Shengelia
54. Scott Machado
55. Mike Scott
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