Determining the Value of a Draft Pick

As a spin off of yesterday’s post about how the Hornets have drafted, I figured I’d introduce some other information I drew from that evaluation: The relative worth of each pick.

When is this useful? It’s not uncommon that players will be traded away in return for future draft considerations. But how would you put a value on a draft pick when you don’t even know what players will be available in that future draft? And in most of these situations, you won’t even know exactly what sort of pick you’ll be getting. I.E. If the Hornets made a trade and received the Lakers 2008 Draft Pick, you should be looking at picks around 12-19 to see what sort of player that pick will produce. If the trade was with the Bulls, you should be looking at the 20th-28th picks to gauge their value.

Interestingly enough, when I was doing my analysis, the picks fell rather logically into groups based on their average rating – so I’ve collated those groups in the below table and then determined the % chance of receiving each classification of player. The classifications are:
A = Star
B = Starter
C = marginal starter, good bench player
D = Bench player
F = end of bench
N/A = Won’t make the League.

Pick(s)	A	B	C	D	F	N/A	Average
1st	57%	14%	19%	5%	5%	0%	B
2-6	20%	24%	27%	19%	8%	1%	C
7-11	16%	13%	25%	30%	15%	0%	C-
12-19	7%	10%	23%	23%	36%	1%	D+
20-28	5%	6%	18%	30%	37%	5%	D
29-38	1%	4%	10%	28%	40%	17%	D-
After 38	1%	1%	8%	17%	29%	43%	F

So what does this tell us? The 1st pick is worth a lot more than any other pick, period. I f you have the 1st pick of the draft, you have about a 70% chance to land a major piece for your team. As soon as you drop to any of the picks between the 2nd and 6th, your odds will drop, and you become just as likely to get a 6th man as you are to get a Star. Your odds of getting a bust has also now increased to 28%. I thought that was really significant: One out of every four players taken 2 through 6 in the draft is likely to be a bust. That means at least one of the following players taken in this year’s draft will probably never pan out: Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Jeff Green, Yi Jianlin.

I will also note there is no significant difference between picking 2nd and picking 6th. The players taken in those spots produce almost equally in the NBA.

The next group are Picks 7-11. As you can see, the odds of picking up a starting-caliber player or better has dropped to less than one in three. Still, with one of these picks, you do have a reasonable chance of landing a rotation player.

Picks 12-19 are where the numbers start bottoming out. While still likely to land a rotation player, the chance of getting a star is small.

20-28 continues the trend, with more players falling into the grades D and F – though it is still possible you could land a good player – about one chance in ten.

Picks 29 through 38 is essentially the last chance to get anyone worth drafting. Almost half the players taken here will probably play for the team for at least a few years – and a rare few will pan out and be good. But at this point, you are more likely(17%) to have a draft pick never play an NBA minute than become one of the top 5 or 6 players on the team.(14%)

Players taken after 39 are pretty much throw-aways. Almost half will never play in the NBA, and a bare 2% would ever be considered good. If you find a 6th or 7th man, you’re pretty lucky.

So I'll end the post with one real world application of these numbers. Two years ago, the Hornets tried to trade for Steven Hunter, offering two second round picks in return. Steven Hunter is classified as a "C" player. In order for Philadelphia to have made good on that trade - i.e. get another "C" player in return, they'd have to beat the odds. Combined, those two picks would have given them about a 18% chance of finding someone as good as Hunter. I guess they should be glad Hunter's knee was not acceptable to the Hornets.