I am an expert sleeper.
For as long as I can remember, I've been good - no, better than that - I've been excellent at sleeping. It's really one of my foremost skills. I can sleep in. I can nap. I fall asleep quickly, and a small to moderate sized armed conflict is required to wake me up.
But this is a week of sleepless nights, because I'm at work. It's a crazy week. One of the perks* of my job is occasional long night shifts. Apparently I didn't think things through properly when choosing a career path, but this is an occupational hazard that I just have to live with. (Maybe this is what happens when you don't do a good job of ever actually sitting down and choosing a career path!) But, because I have a profession where the people work when the machines tell them to work, I'm up all night this week.
And it's ruined my groove.
Somehow, I can't sleep. Last night I stayed up all night, got home around 8:30, went to bed, and woke up . . . at about 12:30. Hmmm . . . 4 hours of sleep isn't going to cut it. This same thing happened last time I did this. So then I'm up, and I end up trying to take a nap just before work, but it doesn't work out so well and, yeah, tiredness ensues. This schedule also messes up my eating patterns, which can't be helping. For night number two, I'm contemplating going home and eating something, because maybe I'm waking up because I don't have enough energy to keep sleeping? It's a rough life I live. This week in particular.
Not only do I have the 12 hour over-night shifts (to be fair, I volunteered for the over night, for reasons that do make sense) but this week we're singing in the Joseph Smith Oratorio that our stake is putting on. This Friday is the 170th anniversary of the martyrdom, and a guy named Rob Gardner wrote a nice collection of songs and narration. It's been a lot of practicing, and this Friday and Saturday we're finally performing it. I think we sound pretty good, though for a while I was worried about the orchestra. Yes, there's a 25 or 30 person orchestra to go with our 40ish person choir. It's all pretty impressive, I think, when you remember that we're all doing this in our spare time. So, my last night shift at work will be Thursday night to Friday morning, which lets me go to the performance on Friday night. But we're skipping the Saturday performance.
Because we're doing the oratorio, then going home, jumping in bed (who knows what my sleeping situation will have devolved to by that point) and then getting up not-too-many hours later to drive across the country. So there's that to get ready for this week. Packing, laundry, scheduling stops at the Spam Museum, loading up the car, prepping snacks, you know the drill. And because Utah isn't far enough away, we're taking the scenic route there.
Mostly, this is just to say that it's a busy week. Followed by a vacation which will be crazier than normal life, because that's how vacations are. I just figured I should keep you all updated a bit on our insanity. If my wife's reading this, I'll be coming straight home after the meeting, and for the rest of you, thanks for reading . . and keep your stick on the ice.
* Not a perk
Tuesday, June 24
Monday, June 23
NBA Crap Shoot
The NBA draft is this week, and the world can't stop talking about how "loaded" the draft is this year. I'd provide links for you to read about this, but if you aren't aware of this by now, I'm not convinced that you'd click the links. So this has me thinking about the inexact science of drafting players. For the extremely uninformed, the NBA teams take turns picking new players from those who have finished college, or declared themselves available for the draft (thus ending their college eligibility), starting with the worst teams and proceeding to the best. These days there are two rounds and 30 teams, for a total of 60 drafted players.
I was wondering how well teams can identify players that will end up having successful careers, how often they miss badly, and how much variation there is from year to year in the overall quality of the draft. So, naturally, the first step is to compile a list of the first 60 picks of every draft from 1980 to 2010. (Back in the early 80s the draft had as many as 10 rounds, for what purpose I can't even imagine, but for some amount of standardization, I'm pretending that any pick past #60 doesn't exist.) basketball-reference.com is a fantastic source for stats and information like this, so that's where all the data comes from. I also need a method for rating how good a player was, and I'm using Win Shares, again from basketball-reference.com. Essentially, this mashes up a bunch of a players stats to determine how many wins a player is "worth". (details) Add up all the win shares for a players career and we have a handy way to rate them. I'm not claiming that this is the world's most perfect method for measuring a players value, but a quick check of the top 10 players of all time gives an idea of it's effectiveness: Kareem, Wilt, Malone, Jordan, Stockton, Duncan, Gilmore, Robertson, Garnett, Nowitzki.
Because piling up win shares takes a full career, it works best for players who are retired, or who are at least very close to retirement. Greg Oden may end up being the most disappointing draft pick of all time, but he's currently the 15th worst, because Kevin Durant has only had 7 years to compile win shares.
Let's start with a few generalized numbers about the NBA draft.
Lottery picks are extremely valuable. fivethirtyeight.com has recently had a number of articles about the value of top draft picks. (here's one of them) But picking the right person can also be extremely hard. The difference between the #1 and #5 players in a draft can be very significant; the table below lists the average number of win shares (WS from here on out) for player rank along with a representative player, to help us get a feel for what the differences in WS means. Keep in mind that these are player rankings using the perfect hindsight of how their careers played out - not the order the players were actually drafted in.
I think that chart is pretty astounding in that it quickly descends into players that I've barely heard of or remember. Any pick in the top 14 is a "lottery" pick, and for those late lottery picks success is finding someone who can stick around in the league for a while and contribute something. Optimism abounds in the lead up to the draft, but if you're picking #14 this year, realistically, you should be saying "I just hope we can find the next Anthony Peeler." Instead, everyone gets sucked into looking for the next Clyde Drexler, Tim Hardaway or Peja Stojakovic (all drafted #14), while ignoring that you're equally likely to end up with the next Travis Mays, Rich King, Scott Haskin or Yinka Dare (all real players picked #14).
Essentially, if you have a top 2 pick, there is, on average, a perennial all-star/HOF player out there waiting for you. Picks 3 through 7 should get you a starter. Picks 8 through 15 should yield rotation players of varying degrees of usefulness. Picks down into the mid 20s are for guys to fill the bench out, wave towels and practice against. By the end of the first round, really, there shouldn't be anyone left that you'd ever hear about. Essentially, if we could draft perfectly, we wouldn't even need the 2nd round; the best 31st best players of any draft in the last 30 years is a tie between Mike Sweetney and Joey Graham. Sorry guys, but I've never heard of you.
Now, what about the idea of "good drafts" and "bad drafts". Do they really exist? In a word: yes. Top picks provide the lion's share of the value in a draft. The top 10 picks provide 47% of the total win shares for a draft class on average (the top ten players provide 68% with 44 of those 68 coming from the top 5 players).
The chart clearly shows that some drafts wildly out perform others over the length of their careers. The top 10 picks average 754 WS, and picks 11 through 60 average 337 WS. The top 10 provides 60 to 80% of the value generally, though there are outliers. Somehow the 2000 draft didn't have any talent (more on that later), while the years on either side were pretty good. The 1984 draft was the most "top heavy" where the top 10 provided 81% of the value, headlined by Jordan, Stockton, Barkley and Olajuwon. It's not really that the rest of the draft was bad (295 WS), but that the top was so good. That's the sort of draft that everyone is expecting this year. This is (marginally) more clear in graph form, so here you go:
This shows the WS from the top 20 players of each draft class from 7 drafts that I've chosen. I cut out some of the more "boring" drafts to clear things up a bit, though it's still a bit cluttered. The 1984 and 1985 drafts are two very interesting ones on the good side of things. Getting the second best player in 85 (Patrick Ewing, who was indeed selected #1) was about as good as you should expect from an average #1 pick. But you can see the extreme drop off from the true #1 (Karl Malone) that year down to #2. (More on this later.) The 108.2 WS is the largest in the 10 year sampled period - ahead of the 91.1 WS gap between Shaq and P.J. Brown in 1992. The 1984 draft had 4 players that each out performed the average best player in a draft. The 2003 draft has a lot of big names in it as well (LeBron, Wade, Bosh, Carmelo, in that order (of value)) who still have a number of years left to creep their line higher. Indeed, if they all retired today, they, along with the rest of their draft class generally, would have turned in better than average careers. Baring injury, they stand a chance to increase their WS by a significant amount still (30 or 40%?) and in another 10 years, may prove themselves to be a match to the 1984 draft.
On the other side of the average line, we have a few not-so-stellar drafts. The 1991 starts out ok-but-not-great (Mutombo, Dale Davis) but gets pretty bad pretty fast (Bill Owens #11? Pete Chilcutt #18?). The 2004 draft is unique because the headliners (Dwight Howard, Andre Iguodala, Luol Deng) are good and with the rest of their careers stand a good shot at reaching normal levels, but the later picks are already above average for their careers. Dorell Wright is already the second best 20th best player from any draft in the last 30 years and he's only 28 years old. Just a couple more seasons of even modest contributions and he'll have that coveted title locked up tight. The same can be said for others of similar rank in that draft class (Chris Humphries, Shaun Livingston, Josh Childress, etc.) Then there's the poor, poor class of 2000. Hedo Turkoglu is the best that draft had to offer with his 62.1 WS. He's unlikely to make any significant additions to that, so that draft was essentially "missing" it's top 5 players. If you take a magic time machine and combine the 1984 and 2000 drafts, the first 9 players picked (remember, we have perfect forecasting to go with our time machine) would be from 1984 and only after Jerome Kersey is picked would Turkoglu go with the 10th pick in the draft. (The runner-up for worst best player from a draft goes to Sam Cassell and his 87.5 WS from the 1993 draft.)
So how good are teams at picking the best players. In a result that surprises no one, the answer is: not very good. Here's a graph that compares what teams get out of picks compared to what they could get in an idea world:
The best player in a draft is worth nearly 140 WS, but on average teams are only finding someone with 83 WS. Let's revisit the first list adding in a comparison to reality.
Sorry for wimping out there on the comparisons, but I don't have an easy way to look them up, and they're increasingly players I've never even heard of. The basic concept is there though. On average, there is value in a draft to get Jason Kidd with the first pick, but on average teams are only finding Peja Stojakovic. Pick number six is particularly bad. Even if every team ahead of you got the "right" pick, you should still be able to find that year's Derek Fisher (he's old now, but was a decent PG for many years). Instead, teams are only finding the Scot Pollards and Malik Roses of the draft. The data is lumpy in reality, because of the better-than-expected (and better-than-should-have-been) picks that happen sometimes. The 13th pick has a nice average, because that 40.1 WS is basically Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant and a bunch of nobodies averaged out (apologies to Richard Jefferson, Corey Maggette and Dale Davis who were above average #13 picks). In fact, those two account for 40% of the value from the 26 #13 picks between 1980 and 2005.
But let's move on from that mess to look at the "best finds" and the "biggest busts" of all time. The analysis here is simply the difference between what you got in reality and what you should have ended up with if players were picked in the "correct" order. In order to show up on this list, you've got have a pretty high pick. The 30th pick is unlikely to be any good anyway, so you can't screw it up too badly - you either get what you deserve (little) or you get lucky. A top 5 pick, however, provides plenty of opportunity for lousing things up. You should find an all-star, but you might end up with . . . . well, someone from this list:
Look at just how badly those bottom two picks on the list stand out. A lot is made of Michael Jordan going 3rd in the 1984 draft, and how the Blazers took Sam Bowie. Houston deservedly gets a lot less flack for also passing on Jordan to take Olajuwon. It's still one of the 100 worst picks - Hakeem got 51.2 fewer WS than Jordan - but Olajuwon was still an above average #1 pick. Getting the 4th best player with the #1 pick isn't a great thing, but it is better than getting the 13th best player with the #2 pick. And anything is better than what the Clippers did in 1998 when they used the #1 pick to take the 35th best player from that draft. Olowokandi produced 2.5 WS in his career. Dirk Nowitzki has topped 10 WS in a season 12 times. Yikes.
Now, this list glosses over the fact that all of these players were passed over multiple times before they were picked. It's not just Olowokandi that was picked before Nowitzki, but also Mike Bibby, Rael LaFrentz, Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Robert Traylor, Jason Williams, and Larry Hughes that were picked ahead of him. 5 of those players have more than 100 fewer WS than Dirk, so they were all terrible picks, too. But I'm glossing over that. Jamison was a very good #5 pick, Carter a steal at #6 and even Bibby at #2 wasn't a disaster. Yes, those teams missed Dirk (and Paul Pierce), but if the Clippers hadn't made the bigger mistake first, they never would have had the chance to make their own, smaller error.
The most interesting name on the left hand list is probably Patrick Ewing. It's not every day that someone tells you that you should feel bad that you got a hall of fame player with the #1 pick, but when you missed out on the 2nd leading scorer in the history of the league, I guess you should feel bad.
There are a few players on that list that are still active and likely to move up. Ginobli, Gasol and Wade could each still produce quite a few WS still in their careers - they produced 5.7, 5.6 and 5.5 WS this year, respectively, and should each have a few years left in the tank. Garnett could retire after this year, but even if he doesn't he's not going to made a large dent in the gap ahead of him, even if he improves on his 1.2 WS from this season.
Now for the best picks of all time. These ones require a little help from other teams, because a player must have been passed over by at least a handful of teams in order to allow the discrepancy between who you did draft and who should have been left over can grow. So, here's the list:
This is the ultimate list of player who exceeded expectations. Starting at the top of the list, imagine what the history of the Utah Jazz looks like if they take Ed Pinckney and Tony Campbell in back to back drafts. I'm guessing there would be fewer statues in front of Energy Solutions Arena. Take a minute to let the sink in: the Jazz made the two biggest draft steals in 30 years in back-to-back drafts.
Two 2nd round picks made the list: Hornacek and Ginobili. Remember what I said way back at the beginning: there are only 20-30 players in each draft class that will have a meaningful impact on any team. That's why the name next to those two only says "N/A". At that point in the draft, you should be getting a player who won't even make an NBA roster. The picks should be worthless, but clearly some players fall through the cracks.
This list has it's share of players that are still active, but most of them are very late in their careers and won't be making any major moves with the exception of Tony Parker who is only 31 years old.
And there you have it. I could slice up the data another 50 ways (and I have, because I love numbers and sports) but this is already long enough, and by the time I could write it all up, the draft would be over. So hopefully your team picks someone who pans out, of course, even if he does, you'll probably lose him in free agency.
I was wondering how well teams can identify players that will end up having successful careers, how often they miss badly, and how much variation there is from year to year in the overall quality of the draft. So, naturally, the first step is to compile a list of the first 60 picks of every draft from 1980 to 2010. (Back in the early 80s the draft had as many as 10 rounds, for what purpose I can't even imagine, but for some amount of standardization, I'm pretending that any pick past #60 doesn't exist.) basketball-reference.com is a fantastic source for stats and information like this, so that's where all the data comes from. I also need a method for rating how good a player was, and I'm using Win Shares, again from basketball-reference.com. Essentially, this mashes up a bunch of a players stats to determine how many wins a player is "worth". (details) Add up all the win shares for a players career and we have a handy way to rate them. I'm not claiming that this is the world's most perfect method for measuring a players value, but a quick check of the top 10 players of all time gives an idea of it's effectiveness: Kareem, Wilt, Malone, Jordan, Stockton, Duncan, Gilmore, Robertson, Garnett, Nowitzki.
Because piling up win shares takes a full career, it works best for players who are retired, or who are at least very close to retirement. Greg Oden may end up being the most disappointing draft pick of all time, but he's currently the 15th worst, because Kevin Durant has only had 7 years to compile win shares.
Let's start with a few generalized numbers about the NBA draft.
Lottery picks are extremely valuable. fivethirtyeight.com has recently had a number of articles about the value of top draft picks. (here's one of them) But picking the right person can also be extremely hard. The difference between the #1 and #5 players in a draft can be very significant; the table below lists the average number of win shares (WS from here on out) for player rank along with a representative player, to help us get a feel for what the differences in WS means. Keep in mind that these are player rankings using the perfect hindsight of how their careers played out - not the order the players were actually drafted in.
| Rank | WS | Representative Player(s) |
| 1 | 138.0 | Jason Kidd, Clyde Drexler |
| 2 | 102.6 | Rasheed Wallace, Grant Hill |
| 3 | 88.7 | Glen Rice, Shawn Kemp |
| 4 | 76.6 | Brad Miller, Lamar Odom |
| 5 | 69.6 | Larry Johnson, Jerome Kersey |
| 6 | 61.6 | Anfernee Hardaway, Derek Fisher |
| 7 | 54.8 | Memhet Okur |
| 8 | 50.5 | Jamal Crawford |
| 9 | 45.7 | Eric Snow, Rick Fox |
| 10 | 41.9 | Drew Gooden, Matt Harpring |
| 11 | 39.4 | Raef LaFrentz, Antoine Walker |
| 12 | 35.7 | Jim Jackson, Danny Ferry |
| 13 | 32.2 | Brevin Knight, Greg Ostertag |
| 14 | 29.7 | Lucious Harris, Anthony Peeler |
| 15 | 26.3 | Eric Murdock, Malik Rose |
| 20 | 16.3 | Brian Cardinal |
| 30 | 3.1 | Kedrick Brown, your mom |
I think that chart is pretty astounding in that it quickly descends into players that I've barely heard of or remember. Any pick in the top 14 is a "lottery" pick, and for those late lottery picks success is finding someone who can stick around in the league for a while and contribute something. Optimism abounds in the lead up to the draft, but if you're picking #14 this year, realistically, you should be saying "I just hope we can find the next Anthony Peeler." Instead, everyone gets sucked into looking for the next Clyde Drexler, Tim Hardaway or Peja Stojakovic (all drafted #14), while ignoring that you're equally likely to end up with the next Travis Mays, Rich King, Scott Haskin or Yinka Dare (all real players picked #14).
Essentially, if you have a top 2 pick, there is, on average, a perennial all-star/HOF player out there waiting for you. Picks 3 through 7 should get you a starter. Picks 8 through 15 should yield rotation players of varying degrees of usefulness. Picks down into the mid 20s are for guys to fill the bench out, wave towels and practice against. By the end of the first round, really, there shouldn't be anyone left that you'd ever hear about. Essentially, if we could draft perfectly, we wouldn't even need the 2nd round; the best 31st best players of any draft in the last 30 years is a tie between Mike Sweetney and Joey Graham. Sorry guys, but I've never heard of you.
Now, what about the idea of "good drafts" and "bad drafts". Do they really exist? In a word: yes. Top picks provide the lion's share of the value in a draft. The top 10 picks provide 47% of the total win shares for a draft class on average (the top ten players provide 68% with 44 of those 68 coming from the top 5 players).
The chart clearly shows that some drafts wildly out perform others over the length of their careers. The top 10 picks average 754 WS, and picks 11 through 60 average 337 WS. The top 10 provides 60 to 80% of the value generally, though there are outliers. Somehow the 2000 draft didn't have any talent (more on that later), while the years on either side were pretty good. The 1984 draft was the most "top heavy" where the top 10 provided 81% of the value, headlined by Jordan, Stockton, Barkley and Olajuwon. It's not really that the rest of the draft was bad (295 WS), but that the top was so good. That's the sort of draft that everyone is expecting this year. This is (marginally) more clear in graph form, so here you go:
This shows the WS from the top 20 players of each draft class from 7 drafts that I've chosen. I cut out some of the more "boring" drafts to clear things up a bit, though it's still a bit cluttered. The 1984 and 1985 drafts are two very interesting ones on the good side of things. Getting the second best player in 85 (Patrick Ewing, who was indeed selected #1) was about as good as you should expect from an average #1 pick. But you can see the extreme drop off from the true #1 (Karl Malone) that year down to #2. (More on this later.) The 108.2 WS is the largest in the 10 year sampled period - ahead of the 91.1 WS gap between Shaq and P.J. Brown in 1992. The 1984 draft had 4 players that each out performed the average best player in a draft. The 2003 draft has a lot of big names in it as well (LeBron, Wade, Bosh, Carmelo, in that order (of value)) who still have a number of years left to creep their line higher. Indeed, if they all retired today, they, along with the rest of their draft class generally, would have turned in better than average careers. Baring injury, they stand a chance to increase their WS by a significant amount still (30 or 40%?) and in another 10 years, may prove themselves to be a match to the 1984 draft.
On the other side of the average line, we have a few not-so-stellar drafts. The 1991 starts out ok-but-not-great (Mutombo, Dale Davis) but gets pretty bad pretty fast (Bill Owens #11? Pete Chilcutt #18?). The 2004 draft is unique because the headliners (Dwight Howard, Andre Iguodala, Luol Deng) are good and with the rest of their careers stand a good shot at reaching normal levels, but the later picks are already above average for their careers. Dorell Wright is already the second best 20th best player from any draft in the last 30 years and he's only 28 years old. Just a couple more seasons of even modest contributions and he'll have that coveted title locked up tight. The same can be said for others of similar rank in that draft class (Chris Humphries, Shaun Livingston, Josh Childress, etc.) Then there's the poor, poor class of 2000. Hedo Turkoglu is the best that draft had to offer with his 62.1 WS. He's unlikely to make any significant additions to that, so that draft was essentially "missing" it's top 5 players. If you take a magic time machine and combine the 1984 and 2000 drafts, the first 9 players picked (remember, we have perfect forecasting to go with our time machine) would be from 1984 and only after Jerome Kersey is picked would Turkoglu go with the 10th pick in the draft. (The runner-up for worst best player from a draft goes to Sam Cassell and his 87.5 WS from the 1993 draft.)
So how good are teams at picking the best players. In a result that surprises no one, the answer is: not very good. Here's a graph that compares what teams get out of picks compared to what they could get in an idea world:
The best player in a draft is worth nearly 140 WS, but on average teams are only finding someone with 83 WS. Let's revisit the first list adding in a comparison to reality.
| Best available player | Actual Draft Order | |||
| Rank | WS | Representative Player(s) | WS | Representative Player(s) |
| 1 | 138 | Jason Kidd, Clyde Drexler | 83.1 | Dennis Johnson, Peja Stojakovic |
| 2 | 102.6 | Rasheed Wallace, Grant Hill | 55.1 | Memhet Okur |
| 3 | 88.7 | Glen Rice, Shawn Kemp | 67.0 | Reggie Theus, Robert Horry |
| 4 | 76.6 | Brad Miller, Lamar Odom | 55.4 | Memhet Okur |
| 5 | 69.6 | Larry Johnson, Jerome Kersey | 59.7 | Clarence Weatherspoon |
| 6 | 61.6 | Anfernee Hardaway, Derek Fisher | 25.2 | Scot Pollard |
| 7 | 54.8 | Memhet Okur | 37.0 | Morris Peterson |
| 8 | 50.5 | Jamal Crawford | 33.3 | John Salmons |
| 9 | 45.7 | Eric Snow, Rick Fox | 50.7 | Jamal Crawford, Gilbert Arenas |
| 10 | 41.9 | Drew Gooden, Matt Harpring | 41.2 | Drew Gooden, Matt Harpring |
| 11 | 39.4 | Raef LaFrentz, Antoine Walker | 38.8 | Raef LaFrentz, Antoine Walker |
| 12 | 35.7 | Jim Jackson, Danny Ferry | 21.7 | Danny Fortson, Othella Harrington |
| 13 | 32.2 | Brevin Knight, Greg Ostertag | 40.1 | Shawn Bradley |
| 14 | 29.7 | Lucious Harris, Anthony Peeler | 28.2 | You |
| 15 | 26.3 | Eric Murdock, Malik Rose | 19.8 | Get |
| 20 | 16.3 | Brian Cardinal | 20.1 | The |
| 30 | 3.1 | Kedrick Brown, your mom | 14.0 | Idea |
Sorry for wimping out there on the comparisons, but I don't have an easy way to look them up, and they're increasingly players I've never even heard of. The basic concept is there though. On average, there is value in a draft to get Jason Kidd with the first pick, but on average teams are only finding Peja Stojakovic. Pick number six is particularly bad. Even if every team ahead of you got the "right" pick, you should still be able to find that year's Derek Fisher (he's old now, but was a decent PG for many years). Instead, teams are only finding the Scot Pollards and Malik Roses of the draft. The data is lumpy in reality, because of the better-than-expected (and better-than-should-have-been) picks that happen sometimes. The 13th pick has a nice average, because that 40.1 WS is basically Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant and a bunch of nobodies averaged out (apologies to Richard Jefferson, Corey Maggette and Dale Davis who were above average #13 picks). In fact, those two account for 40% of the value from the 26 #13 picks between 1980 and 2005.
But let's move on from that mess to look at the "best finds" and the "biggest busts" of all time. The analysis here is simply the difference between what you got in reality and what you should have ended up with if players were picked in the "correct" order. In order to show up on this list, you've got have a pretty high pick. The 30th pick is unlikely to be any good anyway, so you can't screw it up too badly - you either get what you deserve (little) or you get lucky. A top 5 pick, however, provides plenty of opportunity for lousing things up. You should find an all-star, but you might end up with . . . . well, someone from this list:
| Year | Pick | You Picked | Shoulda Got | WS lost |
| 1999 | 5 | Jonathan Bender | Manu Ginobili | 90.0 |
| 1984 | 6 | Melvin Turpin | Sam Perkins | 91.7 |
| 1987 | 4 | Reggie Williams | Horace Grant | 92.2 |
| 2001 | 1 | Kwame Brown | Pau Gasol | 92.3 |
| 2003 | 1 | Darko Milicic | Dwayne Wade | 98.3 |
| 1994 | 1 | Glenn Robinson | Jason Kidd | 98.8 |
| 1985 | 1 | Patrick Ewing | Karl Malone | 108.2 |
| 1983 | 1 | Ralph Sampson | Clyde Drexler | 115.5 |
| 1987 | 2 | Armen Gilliam | Reggie Miller | 116.3 |
| 1987 | 3 | Dennis Hopson | Scottie Pippen | 118.0 |
| 1995 | 1 | Joe Smith | Kevin Garnett | 128.1 |
| 1984 | 2 | Sam Bowie | John Stockton | 180.8 |
| 1998 | 1 | Michael Olowokandi | Dirk Nowitzki | 182.3 |
Look at just how badly those bottom two picks on the list stand out. A lot is made of Michael Jordan going 3rd in the 1984 draft, and how the Blazers took Sam Bowie. Houston deservedly gets a lot less flack for also passing on Jordan to take Olajuwon. It's still one of the 100 worst picks - Hakeem got 51.2 fewer WS than Jordan - but Olajuwon was still an above average #1 pick. Getting the 4th best player with the #1 pick isn't a great thing, but it is better than getting the 13th best player with the #2 pick. And anything is better than what the Clippers did in 1998 when they used the #1 pick to take the 35th best player from that draft. Olowokandi produced 2.5 WS in his career. Dirk Nowitzki has topped 10 WS in a season 12 times. Yikes.
Now, this list glosses over the fact that all of these players were passed over multiple times before they were picked. It's not just Olowokandi that was picked before Nowitzki, but also Mike Bibby, Rael LaFrentz, Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Robert Traylor, Jason Williams, and Larry Hughes that were picked ahead of him. 5 of those players have more than 100 fewer WS than Dirk, so they were all terrible picks, too. But I'm glossing over that. Jamison was a very good #5 pick, Carter a steal at #6 and even Bibby at #2 wasn't a disaster. Yes, those teams missed Dirk (and Paul Pierce), but if the Clippers hadn't made the bigger mistake first, they never would have had the chance to make their own, smaller error.
The most interesting name on the left hand list is probably Patrick Ewing. It's not every day that someone tells you that you should feel bad that you got a hall of fame player with the #1 pick, but when you missed out on the 2nd leading scorer in the history of the league, I guess you should feel bad.
There are a few players on that list that are still active and likely to move up. Ginobli, Gasol and Wade could each still produce quite a few WS still in their careers - they produced 5.7, 5.6 and 5.5 WS this year, respectively, and should each have a few years left in the tank. Garnett could retire after this year, but even if he doesn't he's not going to made a large dent in the gap ahead of him, even if he improves on his 1.2 WS from this season.
Now for the best picks of all time. These ones require a little help from other teams, because a player must have been passed over by at least a handful of teams in order to allow the discrepancy between who you did draft and who should have been left over can grow. So, here's the list:
| Year | Pick | You Picked | Shoulda Got | WS gained |
| 1985 | 13 | Karl Malone | Ed Pinckney | 191.9 |
| 1984 | 16 | John Stockton | Tony Campbell | 187.0 |
| 1998 | 9 | Dirk Nowitzki | Matt Harpring | 142.9 |
| 1996 | 13 | Kobe Bryant | Kerry Kittles | 128.2 |
| 1987 | 11 | Reggie Miller | Olden Polynice | 127.6 |
| 1995 | 5 | Kevin Garnett | Antonio McDyess | 118.6 |
| 1986 | 46 | Jeff Hornacek | N/A | 108.9 |
| 1983 | 14 | Clyde Drexler | Roy Hinson | 105.4 |
| 1998 | 10 | Paul Pierce | Rasho Nesterovic | 103.7 |
| 1985 | 24 | Terry Porter | Jerry Reynolds | 99.9 |
| 1999 | 57 | Manu Ginobili | N/A | 94.2 |
| 1981 | 20 | Larry Nance | Albert King | 93.3 |
| 2001 | 28 | Tony Parker | Loren Woods | 92.9 |
| 1989 | 26 | Vlade Divac | Kenny Battle | 92.7 |
| 1996 | 15 | Steve Nash | Jerome Williams | 91.8 |
This is the ultimate list of player who exceeded expectations. Starting at the top of the list, imagine what the history of the Utah Jazz looks like if they take Ed Pinckney and Tony Campbell in back to back drafts. I'm guessing there would be fewer statues in front of Energy Solutions Arena. Take a minute to let the sink in: the Jazz made the two biggest draft steals in 30 years in back-to-back drafts.
Two 2nd round picks made the list: Hornacek and Ginobili. Remember what I said way back at the beginning: there are only 20-30 players in each draft class that will have a meaningful impact on any team. That's why the name next to those two only says "N/A". At that point in the draft, you should be getting a player who won't even make an NBA roster. The picks should be worthless, but clearly some players fall through the cracks.
This list has it's share of players that are still active, but most of them are very late in their careers and won't be making any major moves with the exception of Tony Parker who is only 31 years old.
And there you have it. I could slice up the data another 50 ways (and I have, because I love numbers and sports) but this is already long enough, and by the time I could write it all up, the draft would be over. So hopefully your team picks someone who pans out, of course, even if he does, you'll probably lose him in free agency.
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