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Statistical Draft Depth
Posted by: Andrew on June 20th, 2011
The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of the Utah Jazz.ok so originally I was thinking of working out the odds of drafted players being in the HOF based on their draft postion but realised quickly this wasn’t possible or realistic. I quickly shifted to looking at being all-stars. I looked at all the drafts from when the lottery started in 1985 through to last years 2010 NBA Draft.
So here is how it works. I looked at how many players became all stars, the average of the pick numbers who have been all stars and the average all the picks that have been all stars in all of those drafts combined. The averages, I believe, show a true depth of a draft by the average only being skewed if the draft is weak in numbers and a player from a low draft pick has been picked. This shows us what to expect from the draft in general, a strong draft and a weak draft like the one that is predicted this year.
In terms of numbers of players drafted going on to be all stars the 1985 draft is the strongest with 11 players followed by 1996 (10) and then 1989 & 1999 (9 each). The average picks for these were 22.7 (1985), 9.8 (1996), 16.2 (1989) & 13.8 (1999), averaging out at 15.6. The weakest drafts have been the most recent ones for obvious reasons but removing the last 5 drafts then we have 3 players each from the 1997, 2000 & 2004 drafts with averages of 4.3, 21 & 8.6 respectively, averaging out at 11.3. So this tells us in a strong draft players in the top 15 have a good chances of being all stars. In a weak draft (admittedly skewed because of small sample sizes) players need to be in the top 11 to have the same chances.
Amazingly the average across all the drafts so far only excluding the 2010 draft (no players have been all stars from that yet) is set at 13.9! Yes that means a lottery pick! Statistically lottery picks are a good chance of being all stars. Yes, I know we mostly knew that anyway but seeing it statistically is still pretty cool.
As for what this means for Utah I can tell you that the number 3 pick has gone on to be an all star 12 times from these 26 drafts (and I believe the number 3 pick from the 2010 draft will make it 13 from those 26 in time). The number 12 pick has gone on to be an all star only once in 1989 (Mookie Blaylock made it in 1994).
I know this might have been tough to follow and the logic requires a bit of cryptic thinking but it is actually pretty cool to think about. So what do you all think?
P.S. The other cool fact I found was that picks 1, 2 & 3 have only all been all stars twice since the start of the lottery.
Replies: 2
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2 Responses
Less Coffee, more sleep. LOL. I like your idea here, but its hard to follow. Its like a puzzle, all the peices scattered around the board waiting to be put together. I think what your saying is we have a pretty good chance of landing a potential All Star type player, even in a weak draft right? I would have been more interested to see how many All Stars were drafted outside of the lottery, or is it up there some where too? Nice post though, lots of work I am guessing, unless you stumbled across someon elses work.
Yeh it is a bit scrambled but I think the main points still get shown. Yeh it is basically telling us we have a good chance having 2 lottery picks even in a weak draft. BTW, I wasn’t up late doing this, it’s just a different time zone in Sydney Australia.