I got an email two weeks ago from Jeff of the extremely popular CelticsBlog.com site, suggesting that we take a look at risers and sliders in the NBA draft—guys whose stock rose or fell in the weeks leading up to the draft. He was wondering whether it would be possible to detect a correlation between rising or falling in the draft and eventual performance in the league. Since the 2006 draft is now two weeks away, this is a timely topic for fans in Boston, Oakland, and most other NBA cities.
28 teams passed on Josh Howard in the 2003 draft.
Sorting the tables by this past year's regular season PER rating provides another interesting view (click the 05-06 PER column twice to sort descending). By observing where the top players (so far) were picked, you can second-guess the scouts and executives responsible for each year's draft. The 2001 draft seemed to produce the most unexpected results—as of this season, 3 of the top 4 players were picked between 25 and 30.
For those of you who didn't arrive here from Jeff's site, be sure to check out his post for more background information as well as a detailed analysis of the results. His idea for identifying risers and sliders was to compare actual draft picks with pre-draft projections. I was able to dig up projections using old mock drafts from NBADraft.net (see below for more details).
The last 5 years of NBA drafts are presented below using sortable tables. By default, the tables for each of the seasons are sorted by the difference between actual and mock picks—this means that the biggest sliders appear at the top, and the biggest risers (or reaches) appear at the bottom. You can click the various table headers to sort by actual picks, mock picks, or any of the other columns. The tables include all players who were either drafted in the first 30 picks or projected to be drafted in the first 30 picks.
28 teams passed on Josh Howard in the 2003 draft.
Choose a season: 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005
2001
2001 Summary:
Average 2005-06 PER: 15.0
Average Difference: 8.0
| Player | Team | Actual | Mock (5/15) | Difference | 05-06 PER |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loren Woods | Minnesota Timberwolves | 45 | 11 | -34 | 12.3 |
| Alvin Jones | Philadelphia 76ers | 56 | 27 | -29 | - |
| Ousmane Cisse | Denver Nuggets | 46 | 26 | -20 | - |
| Ken Johnson | Miami Heat | 48 | 29 | -19 | - |
| Jamaal Tinsley | Memphis Grizzlies | 27 | 10 | -17 | 12.1 |
| Gilbert Arenas | Golden State Warriors | 30 | 19 | -11 | 23.8 |
| Trenton Hassell | Chicago Bulls | 29 | 20 | -9 | 9.5 |
| Zach Randolph | Portland Trail Blazers | 19 | 12 | -7 | 16.9 |
| Jeff Trepagnier | Cleveland Cavaliers | 35 | 28 | -7 | - |
| Omar Cook | Orlando Magic | 31 | 25 | -6 | - |
| Eddie Griffin | New Jersey Nets | 7 | 3 | -4 | 12.2 |
| DeSagana Diop | Cleveland Cavaliers | 8 | 4 | -4 | 11.5 |
| Michael Bradley | Toronto Raptors | 17 | 13 | -4 | 8.4 |
| Joe Johnson | Boston Celtics | 10 | 7 | -3 | 17.9 |
| Brendan Haywood | Cleveland Cavaliers | 20 | 17 | -3 | 13.8 |
| Eddy Curry | Chicago Bulls | 4 | 2 | -2 | 17.0 |
| Gerald Wallace | Sacramento Kings | 25 | 23 | -2 | 21.3 |
| Samuel Dalembert | Philadelphia 76ers | 26 | 24 | -2 | 14.2 |
| Rodney White | Detroit Pistons | 9 | 8 | -1 | - |
| Kwame Brown | Washington Wizards | 1 | 1 | 0 | 11.7 |
| Joseph Forte | Boston Celtics | 21 | 21 | 0 | - |
| Jason Richardson | Golden State Warriors | 5 | 6 | 1 | 19.2 |
| Troy Murphy | Golden State Warriors | 14 | 15 | 1 | 15.9 |
| Tyson Chandler | Los Angeles Clippers | 2 | 5 | 3 | 12.2 |
| Shane Battier | Memphis Grizzlies | 6 | 9 | 3 | 14.7 |
| Richard Jefferson | Houston Rockets | 13 | 16 | 3 | 19.0 |
| Jason Collins | Houston Rockets | 18 | 22 | 4 | 5.5 |
| Pau Gasol | Atlanta Hawks | 3 | 14 | 11 | 22.7 |
| Jeryl Sasser | Orlando Magic | 22 | 35 | 13 | - |
| Kirk Haston | Charlotte Hornets | 16 | 32 | 16 | - |
| Kedrick Brown | Boston Celtics | 11 | - | - | - |
| Vladimir Radmanovic | Seattle Supersonics | 12 | - | - | 13.6 |
| Steven Hunter | Orlando Magic | 15 | - | - | 13.9 |
| Brandon Armstrong | Houston Rockets | 23 | - | - | - |
| Raul Lopez | Utah Jazz | 24 | - | - | - |
| Tony Parker | San Antonio Spurs | 28 | - | - | 20.8 |
Average 2005-06 PER: 15.0
Average Difference: 8.0
Choose a season: 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005
Collecting the data for this analysis was made possible through these terrific online resources:
- NBADraft.net: for mock drafts from the past five years
- The Internet Archive: for access to those mock drafts*
- Basketball-Reference.com: for full draft results and 2005-06 PER ratings
* Unfortunately, the sporadic availability of the archived mock drafts resulted in a lot of variation in the timing of the mock drafts from year to year: two were pulled from March, two from May, and one from June.
Comments[6]
Posted by jgurney on June 14, 2006 6:34:18 AM PDT
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Re: Sorting Out the 2001-2005 Drafts
great charts, thanks again for your help!
Comment from Jeff (from CelticsBlog) on June 14, 2006 6:55:29 AM PDT
Another triumph! JG, you're giving 82games.com some competition (at least in my mind).
Comment from Jeff - Hoops Addict on June 15, 2006 9:23:24 AM PDT
Ha - thanks, but Jeff from CelticsBlog gets most of the credit for this one.
Comment from Jason on June 15, 2006 8:59:05 PM PDT
I took a quick stab at PER scale / Draft Rank scale best value list for top 50 on PER 05/06. I inversed draft rank and scale to 100 being #1 pick 99 being #2, etc. and also scaled PER to 100 with LeBron James best PEr being 100. As a #1 draft who performed the best LeBron gets a the gold standard 1.0 rating. A very few deliver a higher PER/draft rank ratio. the rest are displayed as a lower percentage of that.
Player PER scale / Draft Rank scaled
Gilbert Arenas 1.192922661
Dwyane Wade 1.023131673
Tony Parker 1.013991128
LeBron James 1
Gerald Wallace 0.997377786
Maurice Williams 0.988533017
Josh Howard 0.953934361
Chris Taft 0.953012848
Yao Ming 0.914590747
Dan Gadzuric 0.900146535
Jameer Nelson 0.856728615
Chris Bosh 0.847488718
David West 0.844659778
Pau Gasol 0.824315491
Chris Paul 0.810800895
Carmelo Anthony 0.798896071
David Lee 0.771891133
Boris Diaw 0.769572954
Richard Jefferson 0.768359754
Beno Udrih 0.740993516
Leandro Barbosa 0.736118559
Zach Randolph 0.733443277
Brian Cook 0.725608911
Jason Richardson 0.711743772
Joe Johnson 0.700011732
Delonte West 0.697878634
Channing Frye 0.692610875
Amare Stoudemire 0.688534736
Dwight Howard 0.68683274
Al Jefferson 0.67036332
Caron Butler 0.668726292
Chris Wilcox 0.66199824
Josh Smith 0.660904931
Luke Ridnour 0.654477032
Troy Murphy 0.65038655
Devin Harris 0.648724792
Drew Gooden 0.64570569
Eddy Curry 0.623692996
Charlie Villanueva 0.620882865
Sean May 0.618731802
Ike Diogu 0.611171283
Luol Deng 0.598167638
Josh Childress 0.591871137
Nene Hilario* 0.590595896
Kirk Hinrich 0.586810025
Chris Kaman 0.561902978
Darko Milicic 0.546389158
Andrew Bogut 0.540925267
Emeka Okafor 0.535605162
Comment from Anonymous on June 17, 2006 6:36:57 PM PDT
The top guys on 05/06 PER with 20+ PER
(avg 23.7) drafted an average of 10.4 th pick.
Next 38 over 15 PER (avg 16.7) drafted 14.9th pick.
Next 30 over 13PER (avg 14.0) drafted 18.3th pick.
Next 37 between 10-13 PER (avg 11.6) drafted avg 18.7 pick.
Comment from Mark at APBRmetrics on June 17, 2006 6:42:06 PM PDT
I should have shortened the ratios in the firts post to 2 decimals. Sorry I forgot to do that.
I was a bit surprised that the average draft rank for the 20+PER's was as low as it was but for fuller disclosure I should note that of this top 10, 7 were top 5 picks and 3 went 25 or lower.
To add one more subgroup, the guys with PER between 17.5 and 20 now, went an avg of 11th.
In general I think the actual draft rank outperforms the mockdraft a few weeks before the draft and the pro scouts and managers are better than the press.
Comment from Mark at APBRmetrics on June 18, 2006 9:43:30 AM PDT