Do those who fall in the NBA draft make better pros?


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Kawhi Leonard, Draymond Green and DeAndre Jordan — you may know these three players as this year's top three in the NBA's defensive player of the year voting. But they also have something else in common: they all fell on draft day, staying on the board significantly longer than predicted by draft prognosticators.

On the other hand, consider Bruno Caboclo, Christian Eyenga, and Nolan Smith. Those players have impressed significantly less over the course of their NBA careers. They, too, have something in common: they all were "reaches," players picked significantly ahead of their projected draft slots.

Now, the examples above were all unfairly cherry picked, so I was curious: do players who fall on draft day really outperform their draft slots once they get on the NBA court? Likewise, do players who are picked too early really disappoint?

In order to find out, I went to DraftExpress, the leader in NBA draft coverage, and visited the profile of each player drafted since 2007, the first year for which DraftExpress kept a history of the mock drafts for each player. On each profile, I visited the "Mock Draft History" page and tallied three items: the most recent mock draft slot, the highest draft slot and lowest draft slot for every mock that DraftExpress published in May or June for that player's draft season. For example, the aforementioned DeAndre Jordan was slated to go 21st on DraftExpress' draft-day mock draft, but was predicted to go as high as the 10th pick. The 21st was his lowest mock draft slot, but he was eventually drafted 35th.

Then I noted if the player had risen, fallen or stayed at his projected draft slot compared to the mock draft published by DraftExpress on the day of the draft. If a player had fallen or risen by at least three slots and by at least 25 percent of his projected draft slot, I marked them as "big" risers or fallers. Finally, if a player was drafted higher or lower than the highest or lowest DraftExpress had ever prognosticated, I marked them as setting a "new record" in either direction. Overall, I had seven different labels that could be applied to the 480 players involved in the study.

Then I wanted to see how they performed in the NBA. To do this, I used the Win Shares metric on Basketball-Reference.com. Win Shares is not my favorite all-in-one metric in the world (and indeed, I've even attacked some of its shortcomings on the defensive end), but it suffices here as a reasonable, easy and objective way of looking at the performance of 480 NBA players.

So what did I find?

Risers and Fallers in the 2007-14 NBA Drafts
**Number****WS/year****% of players who beat average**
**Risers**2161.22 WS49.5%
**Fallers**1861.22 WS54.3%
**Big Risers**741.49 WS45.9%
**Big Fallers**601.35 WS58.3%
**Record Risers**1541.04 WS51.9%
**Record Fallers**1221.25 WS59.8%

In the end, there were 216 players who rose at least one spot from the final DraftExpress mock, 186 that fell, and 78 that DraftExpress predicted exactly right. Out of the 240 players taken in the first round, there were 101 risers, 72 fallers and 67 correctly predicted picks. Of these, the players that DraftExpress predicted exactly right were the best performers, though that's largely because they were more likely to be higher picks than the other categories — it's easier to predict the early stages of the draft. But when comparing risers and fallers, they had nearly exactly the same production: about 1.2 Win Shares per year per player.

But some of those risers and fallers were only by one or two picks, not much of a change in draft status at all. So instead, I started to look at only the "big" risers and fallers, using the same definition mentioned earlier. Here, there was a small difference: 46 percent of big risers outperformed their pick's expectations in the NBA, whereas 58 percent of big fallers did. That's beginning to hint at a trend.

Then I looked at the final set: those who were drafted significantly earlier or later than they had been in any of DraftExpress' mocks during the two months leading up to the draft, the "new record" set. For these, the record risers were better than average 52 percent of the time, while the record fallers were better than average 60 percent of the time. On aggregate, the record fallers outperformed the record risers by about 0.2 Win Shares. It's a small difference.

Overall, though, I'll admit I was surprised at the low magnitude of the difference. After all, my mind jumped to the names mentioned above, the DeAndre Jordans and the Draymond Greens, without considering Ed Davis or Derrick Byars, fallers who haven't succeeded. On the riser side, I hadn't considered Khris Middleton or Ryan Anderson. In the end, my perceptions tricked me somewhat here: I thought there would be a big difference, when there was only a small one.

Still, in the NBA draft, every advantage matters. NBA general managers should tread extremely carefully about valuing players differently than the consensus. When a player falls significantly on draft day, he's probably worth a long look.

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Andy Larsen

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