Draft Measurables Largely Irrelevant

I have spent the last several days analyzing NBA Draft precamp measurables and have determined that, for PGs at least, it means little for the most part. T.J. Ford is one of the quickest PGs in the league, but he didn't really stand out in the 3/4 court sprint or the lane agility tests. One thing interesting that I did notice was that the players closer to the "boom" end of the spectrum actually had slower lane agility times, which I thought was pretty interesting. Maybe GMs overrating players' physical gifts and not looking enough at their numbers.

I also looked through the PGs standing reaches, which is a much better indicator of how "tall" they play than their actual height. It seems the "boom" prospects have larger standing reaches, I will be curious to see if the same holds true for SGs, but it may not. The same can be said over the slower times for lane agility.

Other than that I don't see much that the draft measurables do for these prospects. I didn't test the weights or strength at all, just looking at them it seemed like there wasn't any correlation to success in the NBA. One thing I probably should look at would be a ratio of strength to speed. After that I will call it quits with the PG measurables and move onto their college data, which I still need to design a weighting system for. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

The NBA Draft

Hello all, my name is Schuyler Davis, I am currently a student at UMass. I have loved basketball for years, from my favorite all-time player Glen Rice, to my favorite now Derrick Rose, who by the way will be one hell of a player no matter what the numbers say. Anyway, that is why I am writing this right now, numbers. The numbers tell the story of game, a player's measurables show how athletic he is or isn't (that's you J.J. Redick). Over the course of the following days, weeks, months, and hopefully years I intend to prove the NBA Draft is in fact a science, however inexact will depend on how good I am with numbers of course.

To begin I wish to look at what separates a "boom" prospect from a "bust" prospect. First each prospect needs to be looked at specific to position, so PGs first. Next I need to distinguish each pick by where he was drafted. Maurice Williams is a boom because he was a second round pick, while Kirk Hinrich who has similar if not better numbers just "fits" the criteria of the 7th overall pick. I will be looking at the 2000-2004 drafts, if anyone has any draft camp measurables for any drafts before 2000 I would love to get my hands on it.

So far I have separated the "booms," "busts," and "fits" for the PGs from those years. Currently I am coming up with the criteria to test, what statistics to look at for each positon. I will also need a way to rate the statistics based on years of experience and the opposing level of talent, Stephen Curry and Wayne Ellington shouldn't have their statistics weighted equally, just like Tyler Hansbrough and BJ Mullens.

I just started this research, so this will be quite a learning experience, that is all I am looking for, pick up a few things that will help to indicate if a prospect will be starting in the NBA Finals in 7 years, or sitting in his apartment looking for a job watching it. I am very interested in any feedback, from casual fans or APBRmetricians whose work I am still trying to understand, just ordered Basketball on Paper so I hope that really helps me out in this endevor. Thanks for reading and enjoy, more to come soon!