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Damn, $2M just to take a flier in the 50s.
2025 NBA Draft Thread
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by addict4sneakers,
- Start date
Damn, $2M just to take a flier in the 50s.
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Since Summer League starts in basically a week, will that cause any issues for the rookies to participate due to contracts etc?
The Kings hosting a SL on Tuesday
with the Heat, Warriors and Lakers. It seems kinda tough that the rooks will get to be there. Hope I'm wrong
The Kings hosting a SL on Tuesday
with the Heat, Warriors and Lakers. It seems kinda tough that the rooks will get to be there. Hope I'm wrong
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i would think teams hold them out if they dont signSince Summer League starts in basically a week, will that cause any issues for the rookies to participate due to contracts etc?
The Kings hosting a SL on Tuesday
i cant quite remember the way it played for wiggins when he was drafted and then eventually traded for K. Love.
did he play any summer league game s?
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Ya players usually sign the contract the day or two after the draft when they have their pressers then go play in summer league.
I think the year D'Lo got drafted by the Lakers he signed the contract a few minutes before the game tipped off because the Lakers were playing the free agency game.
I think the year D'Lo got drafted by the Lakers he signed the contract a few minutes before the game tipped off because the Lakers were playing the free agency game.
dacomeup
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I’m mocked out . Just ready for the draft at this point.
. Just ready for the draft at this point.
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Same, so ready for the chaos and takes
This is going to be a class that has lasting impact
This is going to be a class that has lasting impact
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Wiggins played in 4 games and wasn't mentioned in LeBron's essay explaining his return to Cleveland. Writing was on the wall pun intended
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Re: SGA + #6 for a higher pick
NBA Draft is exciting time for fans and teams alike … unless you’re reading this: Partnow
The draft is one of the happiest days of the NBA year. For those selected and their families, it is an intensely joyous occasion, the culmination of a literal lifetime of hard work. Teams are optimistically turning the page from the just-completed season with their best-laid plans undisturbed by the intrusion realities of free agency. Fans have fully invested their hopes and dreams in their teams’ new additions. Everyone is undefeated and ready to build on wherever the last campaign left them. Smiles abound.
And I’m here to rain on all of that.
To some degree, this is a manifestation of natural contrarianism. But it’s also a recognition that for all of draft day’s enthusiasm, many more players will disappoint than will hit the lofty projections made for them. While having an eye on upside is useful for the evaluator and vital for the fan, it is equally important to retain contact with the underlying realities. Here are a few rules and mental reminders I try to keep in mind to keep from getting swept up in the tide of exuberance.
Short the class — every class — as a whole
There are 60 selections in every draft class. I would argue that in most years, there are far fewer open spots in rotations around the league that are (productively) filled by players who weren’t productive the previous season. It’s a math problem for which there is no hack to get around. Of those 60 players, around 20 will have meaningfully impactful careers.
Such an exercise is always a little wonky in hindsight, but for the draft classes between 2000 and 2017, roughly encompassing players who have had enough time in the league to get a fair estimation of ability level, the historical likelihood of getting an impact drops rapidly as the draft moves through the first round before falling off a cliff in the second:
If you’re familiar with last year’s edition of the Player Tiers Project (Teaser: It shall return for the 2021 offseason iteration), the bands above roughly translate as:
Franchise/Core = Tiers 1 and 2. I haven’t split out true franchise players from other top 10-15 types because those players tend to be somewhat unique, and trying to find “the next” of any of them instead of “the first” of the next superstar is a bit of a snipe hunt. But the orange band encompasses the range of All-NBA-level players, the top 15-20 in the game.
Borderline All-Star = Tier 3. The rest of the top 45-50.
Top starter = Tier 4. Top 75.
High rotation = Tier 5. The rest of the top 125 or so.
Just a guy = What would be Tier 6 if I went that low. Useful rotation pieces who won’t kill you with bad minutes, but don’t necessarily do much but eat innings for a high-level team.
Bust = Regardless of draft slot, a player who does not manage to consistently reside in the top half or so of the league’s players.
The bulk of players who really matter are in those first three groups. And in a typical draft, once you get past about pick No. 5, there is a less than 50-50 chance at landing one. Outside of the top-15 selections, just over half of first-rounders stick in any meaningful way.
It’s a steep curve, one which belies the lofty expectations ladled onto every player picked.
Adjust for comp inflation
The area in which the hope-bordering-on-delusion for each successive draft class manifests comes in terms of comparing the prospect to a more familiar player. In theory, this can provide useful clues not into just the prospect’s ability, but their style of play as well. This in turn allows an evaluator to project the prospect several years down the road into the player they might become. Unfortunately, it allows this projection far too well, especially, as is usually the case, when the comp chosen already represents something of a best-case scenario.
During Thursday’s draft, the majority, if not every one, of the players selected will be comped to a previous player, one who, broadly speaking, succeeded at the NBA level. The same math problem described above illustrates why these comps represent a collective impossibility. If everyone’s comp is somebody good but only one-third of the picks turn out to be good, there has to be a disconnect.
As a rule, it’s probably best to discount the supposed average outcome of a player by a level (maybe even a tier) or two. A big wing who is highly skilled but not overwhelming athletically might be comped to Luka Doncic as an average outcome. Try Khis Middleton instead. If Middleton is the comp, think Joe Ingles or Bojan Bogdanovic. If one of those guys is the comp, maybe Georges Niang is their realistic 50th percentile outcome.
The problems with player comps don’t end with the optimistic assessments just identified. Even if a current draftee is being appropriately analogized to a sufficiently similar prospect, the current is being compared to that earlier player as a prospect. This is something that is not frequently understood; players who make it, whether as a second-round pick sticking in the league or a top-five player blossoming into an All-NBA talent, have all improved markedly since they entered the league. They themselves hit their own 75th-percentile outcomes to emerge from the much larger pool of somewhat equivalent prospects. To put it another way, there are many more KZ Okpalas than Khris Middletons once players get to the league:
Draft year comparison
Yet the mind leaps from the prospect to the current-day player. The resemblance of Okpala’s college resume to Middleton’s has far more to say about the younger wing’s starting point as a rookie than it does about the degree to which he was and is likely to follow the developmental pathway that took Middleton from the Texas A&M version to the current multiple-time All-Star and newly crowned NBA champ.
Beware of the workout hype
Given the difficulty of in-person scouting this past season, this is a particularly pronounced worry. Because workouts, either at the NBA Combine or a team-sponsored event, are the last look at a player before the draft, and these events can be the first or best look people high up the decision-making ladder get — think coaches or ownership as much as GMs — they can take on outsized importance.
But workouts are not basketball. They are workouts. Certain abilities and raw tools will be accentuated while many of the more subtle skills required to actually play basketball at the NBA level are completely absent. Late in this year’s process, there has been reporting of some buzz that Jalen Green has looked great in workouts, causing teams to perhaps rethink the top of their draft boards. I’m not here to say Cade Cunningham is in any way a sure thing to be a better NBA player than Green, but performance in a workout — often one-on-zero or one-on-one for the very top prospects — won’t have given many clues as to why. How much could one really glean about Cunnigham’s craft and ability to make high-level passes out of pick-and-roll even in a three-on-three setting? These quick slices of basketball ability shouldn’t be used to overcome the months and in most cases years of detailed film, in-person and background scouting.
My sense is that the league as a whole has gotten better at not overreacting to workouts, but it’s hard to ignore what’s right in front of your eyes in the intimate setting of a private scrimmage. And from the outside looking in, it can be equally hard to ignore the hype that comes out of these sessions.
A similar but related problem can be what goes on in the interview room. To me, the value of the interview is more about finding out which guys you definitely don’t want on your team than for separating among those you do. It’s useful to weed out the *******s early, but interviewing well bears very little relation to basketball skill, which is by far the most important factor in making a selection. But much like the heat coming off a strong workout, this year in particular might see more reaches than usual based on “character factors” that often turn out to be little more than one player having a little more polish or experience in a setting that doesn’t much resemble the court. I have no reason to doubt any of the descriptions lauding the, for lack of a better term, “makeup” of this year’s prospects, but one does have to ask the most important question: Can he play?
Be patient
The biggest lie told every season is about guys who can supposedly “help right away.” As a near-universal rule, no they can’t.
Though the exact number varies from year to year, very few rookies are ready to make significant positive contributions at an NBA level. Sure, some can provide competent minutes, while others provide flashes, hinting at what is to come as they learn the ropes of competing at this level. But in terms of generating favorable movement on the scoreboard — generating wins — not so much.
According to Estimated Plus/Minus, for my money the current leader in one-number impact metrics, only a single rookie performed at a level commensurate with “high rotation” or better while receiving at least 2,000 minutes in 2020-21. That was the Knicks Immanuel Quickley. Again, that shouldn’t be taken as proof that Quickley is or will be a better player than LaMelo Ball, Anthony Edwards or Tyrese Haliburton. But while all three of those players had more than their fair share of moments, they also suffered the kinds of wildness and defensive lapses that so often chip away at the value of the good things they did do.
This is not at all unusual. The number of rookies who meaningfully help teams that are decent or better (many top lottery picks manage big numbers for bad teams without necessarily moving the scoreboard needle) can usually be counted on one hand, perhaps spotting the thumb and pinky. Typically, second-year players start to smooth out some of the bumpy surfaces of their games, cutting a few turnovers here, more attentive defensive rotations there. But it’s a learning process that in the overwhelming majority of cases lasts well into that first season.
The flip side is, don’t panic if a player comes out of the gate slowly. The worst that can be said with any confidence about a player undergoing a rough rookie season is that with the additional information gained from those struggles, they are less likely to develop into a franchise-level star than we initially might have thought. But if you’ve paid attention and are appropriately dour in assessing the chances of any given prospect of hitting that level, you’ll know better than to be disappointed.
Of course, where’s the fun in that?
The draft is one of the happiest days of the NBA year. For those selected and their families, it is an intensely joyous occasion, the culmination of a literal lifetime of hard work. Teams are optimistically turning the page from the just-completed season with their best-laid plans undisturbed by the intrusion realities of free agency. Fans have fully invested their hopes and dreams in their teams’ new additions. Everyone is undefeated and ready to build on wherever the last campaign left them. Smiles abound.
And I’m here to rain on all of that.
To some degree, this is a manifestation of natural contrarianism. But it’s also a recognition that for all of draft day’s enthusiasm, many more players will disappoint than will hit the lofty projections made for them. While having an eye on upside is useful for the evaluator and vital for the fan, it is equally important to retain contact with the underlying realities. Here are a few rules and mental reminders I try to keep in mind to keep from getting swept up in the tide of exuberance.
Short the class — every class — as a whole
There are 60 selections in every draft class. I would argue that in most years, there are far fewer open spots in rotations around the league that are (productively) filled by players who weren’t productive the previous season. It’s a math problem for which there is no hack to get around. Of those 60 players, around 20 will have meaningfully impactful careers.
Such an exercise is always a little wonky in hindsight, but for the draft classes between 2000 and 2017, roughly encompassing players who have had enough time in the league to get a fair estimation of ability level, the historical likelihood of getting an impact drops rapidly as the draft moves through the first round before falling off a cliff in the second:
If you’re familiar with last year’s edition of the Player Tiers Project (Teaser: It shall return for the 2021 offseason iteration), the bands above roughly translate as:
Franchise/Core = Tiers 1 and 2. I haven’t split out true franchise players from other top 10-15 types because those players tend to be somewhat unique, and trying to find “the next” of any of them instead of “the first” of the next superstar is a bit of a snipe hunt. But the orange band encompasses the range of All-NBA-level players, the top 15-20 in the game.
Borderline All-Star = Tier 3. The rest of the top 45-50.
Top starter = Tier 4. Top 75.
High rotation = Tier 5. The rest of the top 125 or so.
Just a guy = What would be Tier 6 if I went that low. Useful rotation pieces who won’t kill you with bad minutes, but don’t necessarily do much but eat innings for a high-level team.
Bust = Regardless of draft slot, a player who does not manage to consistently reside in the top half or so of the league’s players.
The bulk of players who really matter are in those first three groups. And in a typical draft, once you get past about pick No. 5, there is a less than 50-50 chance at landing one. Outside of the top-15 selections, just over half of first-rounders stick in any meaningful way.
It’s a steep curve, one which belies the lofty expectations ladled onto every player picked.
Adjust for comp inflation
The area in which the hope-bordering-on-delusion for each successive draft class manifests comes in terms of comparing the prospect to a more familiar player. In theory, this can provide useful clues not into just the prospect’s ability, but their style of play as well. This in turn allows an evaluator to project the prospect several years down the road into the player they might become. Unfortunately, it allows this projection far too well, especially, as is usually the case, when the comp chosen already represents something of a best-case scenario.
During Thursday’s draft, the majority, if not every one, of the players selected will be comped to a previous player, one who, broadly speaking, succeeded at the NBA level. The same math problem described above illustrates why these comps represent a collective impossibility. If everyone’s comp is somebody good but only one-third of the picks turn out to be good, there has to be a disconnect.
As a rule, it’s probably best to discount the supposed average outcome of a player by a level (maybe even a tier) or two. A big wing who is highly skilled but not overwhelming athletically might be comped to Luka Doncic as an average outcome. Try Khis Middleton instead. If Middleton is the comp, think Joe Ingles or Bojan Bogdanovic. If one of those guys is the comp, maybe Georges Niang is their realistic 50th percentile outcome.
The problems with player comps don’t end with the optimistic assessments just identified. Even if a current draftee is being appropriately analogized to a sufficiently similar prospect, the current is being compared to that earlier player as a prospect. This is something that is not frequently understood; players who make it, whether as a second-round pick sticking in the league or a top-five player blossoming into an All-NBA talent, have all improved markedly since they entered the league. They themselves hit their own 75th-percentile outcomes to emerge from the much larger pool of somewhat equivalent prospects. To put it another way, there are many more KZ Okpalas than Khris Middletons once players get to the league:
Draft year comparison
Yet the mind leaps from the prospect to the current-day player. The resemblance of Okpala’s college resume to Middleton’s has far more to say about the younger wing’s starting point as a rookie than it does about the degree to which he was and is likely to follow the developmental pathway that took Middleton from the Texas A&M version to the current multiple-time All-Star and newly crowned NBA champ.
Beware of the workout hype
Given the difficulty of in-person scouting this past season, this is a particularly pronounced worry. Because workouts, either at the NBA Combine or a team-sponsored event, are the last look at a player before the draft, and these events can be the first or best look people high up the decision-making ladder get — think coaches or ownership as much as GMs — they can take on outsized importance.
But workouts are not basketball. They are workouts. Certain abilities and raw tools will be accentuated while many of the more subtle skills required to actually play basketball at the NBA level are completely absent. Late in this year’s process, there has been reporting of some buzz that Jalen Green has looked great in workouts, causing teams to perhaps rethink the top of their draft boards. I’m not here to say Cade Cunningham is in any way a sure thing to be a better NBA player than Green, but performance in a workout — often one-on-zero or one-on-one for the very top prospects — won’t have given many clues as to why. How much could one really glean about Cunnigham’s craft and ability to make high-level passes out of pick-and-roll even in a three-on-three setting? These quick slices of basketball ability shouldn’t be used to overcome the months and in most cases years of detailed film, in-person and background scouting.
My sense is that the league as a whole has gotten better at not overreacting to workouts, but it’s hard to ignore what’s right in front of your eyes in the intimate setting of a private scrimmage. And from the outside looking in, it can be equally hard to ignore the hype that comes out of these sessions.
A similar but related problem can be what goes on in the interview room. To me, the value of the interview is more about finding out which guys you definitely don’t want on your team than for separating among those you do. It’s useful to weed out the *******s early, but interviewing well bears very little relation to basketball skill, which is by far the most important factor in making a selection. But much like the heat coming off a strong workout, this year in particular might see more reaches than usual based on “character factors” that often turn out to be little more than one player having a little more polish or experience in a setting that doesn’t much resemble the court. I have no reason to doubt any of the descriptions lauding the, for lack of a better term, “makeup” of this year’s prospects, but one does have to ask the most important question: Can he play?
Be patient
The biggest lie told every season is about guys who can supposedly “help right away.” As a near-universal rule, no they can’t.
Though the exact number varies from year to year, very few rookies are ready to make significant positive contributions at an NBA level. Sure, some can provide competent minutes, while others provide flashes, hinting at what is to come as they learn the ropes of competing at this level. But in terms of generating favorable movement on the scoreboard — generating wins — not so much.
According to Estimated Plus/Minus, for my money the current leader in one-number impact metrics, only a single rookie performed at a level commensurate with “high rotation” or better while receiving at least 2,000 minutes in 2020-21. That was the Knicks Immanuel Quickley. Again, that shouldn’t be taken as proof that Quickley is or will be a better player than LaMelo Ball, Anthony Edwards or Tyrese Haliburton. But while all three of those players had more than their fair share of moments, they also suffered the kinds of wildness and defensive lapses that so often chip away at the value of the good things they did do.
This is not at all unusual. The number of rookies who meaningfully help teams that are decent or better (many top lottery picks manage big numbers for bad teams without necessarily moving the scoreboard needle) can usually be counted on one hand, perhaps spotting the thumb and pinky. Typically, second-year players start to smooth out some of the bumpy surfaces of their games, cutting a few turnovers here, more attentive defensive rotations there. But it’s a learning process that in the overwhelming majority of cases lasts well into that first season.
The flip side is, don’t panic if a player comes out of the gate slowly. The worst that can be said with any confidence about a player undergoing a rough rookie season is that with the additional information gained from those struggles, they are less likely to develop into a franchise-level star than we initially might have thought. But if you’ve paid attention and are appropriately dour in assessing the chances of any given prospect of hitting that level, you’ll know better than to be disappointed.
Of course, where’s the fun in that?
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I think he's going to be really, really good.
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Warriors IDK.
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Didn't think they would do anything else.
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DET just telling teams the cost of the brick done went up if they want the #1
storm2006
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#NeverForget
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Woj is a certified lame. No point of even watching it now.
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Cleveland is lucky as hell to have Mobley fall in their lap. They gotta get Kevin Love outta there.
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**** it spoil it all woj and shams
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I mean y'all actually care about the first few picks that we all basically knew were set in stone?
HOU$TON
formerly convertibleburt
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KPJ and green need to start from day 1. What would it take to move Wall?
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Picks to okc is always a default first answer
MVP
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I SHOULD have be able to get home by 6PST and still see most of the fireworks right? Takes them at least 15 min to start the draft up.
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Maybe to the Wiz for Westbrook?
