Comments on: The Not-So-Instant Impact of 1st Overall Picks

By: Pageup

Pageup — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:08:07 +0000

Neil, thanks for the link...

By: Jason J

Jason J — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:09:55 +0000

Got it! Thanks.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:04:29 +0000

Sorry, I knew the format of this table would be confusing, I should have made it clearer. The rankings ("1-5", "6-10", etc.) are from the year before the player in question got drafted (we'll call that year Y). The numbers underneath the rankings, though, are the average SPM scores for that group in years Y+1 through Y+3. So to take your example, the players who ranked #21-25 in SPM in 2006 (the year before Bargnani was drafted) averaged an SPM of +2.59 over the following 3 seasons (2007-2009); meanwhile, those who ranked #26-30 in 2006 averaged an SPM of 2.94 from 2007 to 2009. Does that help it make more sense? I really should have presented this data better.

By: Jason J

Jason J — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:49:28 +0000

Neil - I'm looking at these numbers and getting confused again. When you look at the row for 2007-09, how can the group of players ranked 26-30 have a higher average SPM than those ranked 21-25 & 16-20? If the list is being weighted strictly by SPM, shouldn't those ranked 16-20 by definition have a higher SPM than 26-30?

2007-09 is just an example, not the only instance.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:33:09 +0000

There already kind of is something like that at APBRmetrics, called the "Ring of Honor".

By: Pageup

Pageup — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:05:40 +0000

You guys should get together and do something like the Hall of Merit for baseball. It would be interesting to see basketball players evaluated like that...

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:42:39 +0000

You were close: Stockton, Drexler, Bird, Ewing, & 'Nique, to be exact. Bird was right at the end of his run by then, and his "91-93" average of +6.43 is actually a 91-92 average, b/c he was retired by '93.

By: Jason J

Jason J — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:35:19 +0000

Sorry for the confusion. I could have phrased that more clearly.

So I guess the guys filling out those 6 - 10 spots in the 1991-93 term would be Clyde, Pat, Nique, Scottie, & Stockton? Something like that?

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:13:06 +0000

I re-read it and I get what he's saying now -- #6-10 in 1990 were so strong that they would have beaten #1-5 in 8 other seasons, which again speaks to the total depth of top-line talent in those days. So go ahead and totally discount what I was saying about #6-10 being up-and-comers who passed #1-5, because I was looking at my own chart wrong. :)

By: Johnny Twisto

Johnny Twisto — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:08:39 +0000

There's no question you're at least half-right. Take the best players at any point in league history, and they will definitely regress over the next few seasons. As to whether the next batch of players is _typically_ made up of up-and-comers, I doubt that is true, though it certainly may have been the case for those particular years. (But am I misreading the columns? I only see 6-10 beating 1-5 once, in 2002-04.)