The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

(Click Here for my updated list of 2008 NBA Draft Prospects)

After looking further into my recent draft preview, I started to think that there were some flaws in my methodology. While I believe that it was very useful in pinpointing players which may be undervalued, and at pointing out that there may be major flaws in the games of some top prospects, can you really say that OJ Mayo and Jerryd Bayless shouldn’t even be drafted? Even if they turn out to be busts, will there really be 40 other prospects who would actually be better than them?

Because of this, I decided that my results were not passing the “sniff test”, and after thinking a little more, I figured out why.

After creating my system I fine-tuned it by comparing it to the results of the 2002-2007 drafts, which meant that I was applying my system only to lists of players who were actually drafted. However, for this seasons’ preview, I compared it to about 85 players. This skewed the rankings because many of the additional players , who have little to no chance of being drafted , might do a little better in one or two categories than some of the more-heralded prospects, dropping the rankings of several talented players.

So I realized that I needed to set up my rankings in tiers to compare “apples to apples”. Overall, scouts do a pretty good job of pinpointing the most talented players, but they have a hard time filtering out the busts. But it is extremely rare that an undrafted player will turn out to have been worth a high pick. So I broke down my rankings into three lists , Likely first and high-second round picks, Potential second round picks, and Likely undrafted players.

To create my lists, I went to three sources of mock drafts , www.draftexpress.com, www.nbadraft.net, and ESPN.com’s top 100 prospect list. To make my first list (”Likely draftees”) a player had to be mentioned in both mock drafts and the top 50 of ESPN’s list (exceptions made for Marreese Speights and JJ Hickson, whom NBADraft.net still has listed as a part of the 2009 draft). Players mentioned on one or two of the lists were considered a potential second rounder, players not mentioned are likely to go undrafted. There are several foreign players that are projected draftees for whom I was unable to get reliable statistics, so I ignored them.

That gave me a list of 39 likely draftees and 20 potential second rounders, which when combined with 8-10 foreign players should come pretty close to making up the actual draft. I also rank 31 players who are unlikely to be drafted. The list is available here.

The overall rankings changed a little bit as players were compared more closely to other peers of a similar skill level. A few highlights include:

The new Top-10 (and how they compare to their previous ranking):

1: Michael Beasley (still #1)
2: Derrick Rose (up 2 spots)
3: Kevin Love (down 1)
4: Richard Hendrix (down 1)
5: Anthony Randolph (up 6)
6: JJ Hickson (Winner of the Cedric Simmons award for “most likely to be a bust and screw up my methodology.”) (up 2)
7: Mario Chalmers (down 2)
8: Marreese Speights (down 1)
9: Ty Lawson (down 3)
10: Kosta Koufos (up 3)

Some other interesting changes:

Brook Lopez falls from #9 overall to the #14 rank and the #2 center. There was a very slim margin separating the #10 and #18 prospects (10 points) and while Lopez was a little better than Koufos in every respect, Koufos gets the nod because he is a year younger. Meanwhile, Brook’s twin brother Robin, an energetic Anderson Varejao clone (even with the hair), becomes the #15 prospect.

The three shooting guards that were pounded in my previous rankings moved up (Eric Gordon goes to #19, while OJ Mayo and Jerryd Bayless tie at #25) but still don’t appear to represent lottery talent. While they will all still be taken in the top 12, my rankings show that their relatively low college production indicates that there are no sure things with taking any of these guys , I’m sure at least one of them will wind up being pretty good, but it is likely that at least one will be a major disappointment.

Danilo Galinari slipped to #28, and I think that this has to raise the question of just how athletic he really is. His poor rebounding isn’t the only concern about him (small forwards who don’t rebound well actually get a boost in my rankings), his other rankings that try to measure his athleticism do not stack up well either. Perhaps he was physically overmatched by playing against older competition at the highest European level and his true athletic ability will take time to show, but I would still be concerned. I wouldn’t draft him unless I had been able to see him play “¦ a lot.

A possible steal is Washington State shooting guard Kyle Weaver, who ranks #11 on my draft board. He has good size, at 6′6″, and while his overall production was fairly mediocre (0.77 IPM) he takes care of the ball and his other ratios suggest that he should be enough of an athlete to make an impact at the defensive end. He is a player who might be available for the Bucks in the second round. Another example of a player who ranked highly in my system without an offensive game was Renaldo Balkman.

Looking way down the list, among the players unlikely to get drafted who I might be interested in would be Missouri’s highly productive Leo Lyons (1.00 IPM) and Memphis’ bruising Robert Dozier. Bad news for fans of Jerell McNeal, as he falls into the trap of being a 6′3″ shooting guard. None of the mock drafts I looked at believe he will be picked.