How Do We Value Potential vs. Achievement in the NBA Draft?
by Matt Craig
Because Age is (NOT) Just a Number
There’s a saying I love that seems especially relevant every year around this time. It goes a little something like this.
“Potential” is French for “currently sucks.”
Ridiculous as it might sound now, there was a time not long ago that the NBA actually operated under this motto.
When Shaquille O’Neal was a sophomore at LSU, he averaged 27.6 points, 14.7 rebounds, 5.0 blocks, was a consensus First Team All-American, and AP National Player of the Year … and yet he decided to return for his junior season. It’s hard to imagine something like that happening today
“He’s only 18 years old,” LSU head coach Dale Brown said after Shaq was held to 15 points and 10 rebounds in an NCAA Tournament loss to Duke. “He’s not Superman.” The comment was indicative of the prevailing wisdom from coaches and scouts back then, which held that if a player was too young, he should refrain from going pro.
That’s how NBA teams thought too. Just 20 years ago at the 1997 draft, 38 of the 60 selections were graduating seniors, including three of the first four picks (Tim Duncan, Keith Van Horn, Antonio Daniels).
Boy have things changed.
This year, it will be a surprise if the number of college grads taken in the whole draft cracks double digits, with the highest being No. 33 on our mock draft board (Derrick White).
Players like Harry Giles — who averaged just 11.5 minutes per game — are likely to be taken in the first 20 picks.
Instead of being seen as a flaw, in 2017 simply mentioning the word “potential” to an NBA scout is a huge plus. And potential means youth, since on a basic level the more you “do” then the less potential you can have.
According to our own Sam Vecenie, 23 of the top 25 picks in the upcoming draft are under 21 years old, zero in the top 15. And the average age of a top 10 pick in the last three drafts? 19.37 years. No champagne toasts for this group!
Today, prospects are learning that playing college ball for more than the single requisite year can have a substantially negative impact on your draft value.
As an example, here are the statistics and measurables for two prospects in this year’s draft. To account for the minutes imbalance, I’ve adjusted their statistics out to per 40 minutes (Note: this adjustment will always favor the player who played fewer minutes).
Prospect A: Top 10 high school recruit, 13.6 ppg, 13.3 rpg, PER 19.8, FT% 50%, Height 6'9.25", Wingspan 7'3.25", Standing Vertical 27.0”, Shuttle Run 3.00 seconds
Prospect B: Top 10 high school recruit, 17.2 ppg, 12.8 rpg, PER 21.7, FT% 66.3%, Height 6'8.75", Wingspan 7'1.5", Standing Vertical 28.5", Shuttle Run 3.23 seconds
The main takeaway: these two are almost identical prospects. Can you guess who they are? Prospect A is the aforementioned Harry Giles, Prospect B is Ivan Rabb.
Yet Giles is valued over Rabb in every single mock draft. Often times their disparity is drastic, as in The Ringer’s excellent draft guide, which has Giles as a lottery pick (No. 14) and Rabb as only a second rounder (No. 35). That would net Giles more than $7.5 million for his first three seasons, while Rabb would have to negotiate a deal that is historically around $1 million per season (Second-round selections are not included in the guaranteed rookie scale.) All because Giles was born in April 1998 while Rabb was born in February 1997?
Or was it because Rabb, who was unanimously considered a lottery pick in last year’s draft had he left school, decided to return to Cal to expand his game and become more NBA-ready?
“There are some improvements on the floor I want to make, and why not make them in college before I get to the next level?” Rabb told Sports Illustrated’s Brian Hamilton at the time. He was rewarded with, potentially, a $4 million pay cut.
That’s a huge difference. But why?
The answer lurks in a study that was published by three faculty members from the Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business on this exact phenomenon, entitled “The Preference for Potential.” Here is their thesis statement:
We propose that compared with references to achievement (e.g., “this candidate has published 10 papers” or “this artist has won an award”), the relative uncertainty surrounding references to potential (e.g., “this candidate could publish 10 papers” or “this artist could win an award”) can stimulate greater interest and, ultimately, more favorable reactions.
The study then tests the thesis with six experiments, one of which even centers around NBA players. I’ll summarize it here, but I’d recommend reading the full experiment.
The research participants were asked to imagine they were general managers of an NBA team, having to decide the terms of a contract to offer two particular players. One player had played five seasons in the NBA, and the participants were given his actual statistics — which increased every year, steadily from 11 ppg and 3 rpg to 15&6 — and they were told these were good stats. The other player was a prospect coming out of college, and the identical statistics were given as projections for his first five seasons. Every other variable was the same; same college (Duke), same position (forward) and so on. Then the participants were asked what they would be willing to pay for each of the players’ sixth seasons, so as to eliminate the variable of age.
First the participants were asked their willingness-to-pay on a 0–10 scale and thenguess how many points per game the players would average in their sixth season (open-ended). Finally, they were asked to asses how likely it was that each player would make an NBA All-Star game (1–7 scale).
As you can probably guess, the participants were more willing to spend on the unproven prospect (5.25) than the tested veteran (4.26), more optimistic about their sixth season scoring average (17.45 ppg vs. 16.18 ppg), and more likely to predict an All-Star nomination (4.47 vs. 3.81).
The bottom line: Don’t let scouts see you play, for fear that your flaws may be exposed.
If we can agree we’re at a time in league history when youth and potential are being highly valued, maybe even over-valued, then there’s a large underserved party: upperclassmen.
In the past few years, every draft has seen valuable assets get plucked from the ranks of college upperclassmen in the 2nd round and undrafted pools, all for price tags well under $1 million.
- Chandler Parsons: 4 years at Florida, drafted 38th in 2011
- Jae Crowder: 4 years at Marquette, drafted 34th in 2012
- (of course I couldn’t do this without mentioning) Draymond Green: 4 years at Michigan State, drafted 35th in 2012
- Allen Crabbe: 3 years at Cal, drafted 31st in 2013
- Jordan Clarkson: 3 years at Tulsa/Missouri, drafted 46th in 2014
- Norman Powell: 4 years at UCLA, drafted 46th in 2015
- Yogi Ferrell: 4 years at Indiana, undrafted in 2016
- Ron Baker: 4 years at Wichita State, undrafted in 2016
- Malcolm Brogdon: 4 years at Virginia, drafted 36th in 2016
Yet conventional wisdom in this modern era states that teams should use their lower picks on even younger, more risky prospects, because at age 19 you can have seven years of development in the NBA where a college senior could only get three. Which makes sense, in theory. But what really happens?
Ask James Young, a bonafide Kentucky one-and-doner drafted 17th overall in 2014. Pictured to the left is a quick summary of what his NBA career development has looked like (via basketball-reference).
After scoring a grand total of 68 points in 29 appearances during his third NBA season, the Boston Celtics have decided not to pick up their team option for next season on Young, who might never step foot on an NBA floor again.
Or hey, talk to Anthony Bennett about how much patience NBA teams have for young players. The reality is that any NBA prospect, young or old, has only about two to three seasons to prove that they belong before teams move on to someone else.
So if you’re an NBA GM, why not take a chance on Naismith Award winner Frank Mason III? Or Pac-12 Player of the Year Dillon Brooks? Or a man who led his team to a national championship in Josh Hart? The list goes on with Nigel Hayes, Peter Jok, Alec Peters, Deonte Burton, and Sindarius Thornwell. We can agree they likely won’t be stars, but an NBA roster has 15 players and about 12 to 14 of those need only be solid and selfless role players.
After all, do you know what “potential” means in French?
Matt Craig is a rising senior at Ball State University. He is a feature producer for Ball State Sports Link, serves as the executive producer of their all-access basketball show Out of the Shadows, and has written for NCAA.com, PGA.com, and DailyThunder.com.
