A preliminary look with YODA.
Having crunched at least preliminary numbers on this year’s draft prospects, I have finally come around to the oft-repeated claim that this year’s class is weak. I’ve been dubious, in part because of my stat-based system (dubbed Ye Olde Draft Analyzer, YODA for short) would seem to think a few guys would break out and become stars.
This year? Not so much.
There’s more work to be done, but currently Alex Sarr, a French citizen who played professionally in Australia last season, sits atop the rankings. His score in YODA is consistent with the type of player who’d typically rank sixth through eighth.
Up and down the draft, I have questions. Like, why is Zaccarie Risacher, rated so high? He’s tall and agile, but his production doesn’t jump off the spreadsheet. When some fans on Twitter were comping him to players like Keegan Murray and Otto Porter, I ran him through the YODA version of my statistical doppelganger machine. And came up with Kevin Knox.
Is Purdue’s Zach Edey really too slow to be an effective NBA player? I mean, I get how he looks out there, but his lane agility time at the combine was middle of the pack among all players, and was better than a number of guards and wings. His lane agility time was faster than the times of players like Rudy Gobert (by 1.66 seconds, which is a wide margin in this drill), Kawhi Leonard, Daniel Gafford, Julus Randle, Bobby Portis, Tyus Jones, Gary Payton II, Pascal Siakam, Terance Mann, and Nick Richards. He just beat the time posted by Immanuel Quickley (by two 100ths of a second),
Now, his sprint time was fourth slowest at the combine, which could matter in transition. It’s also faster than Gobert ran, and either faster or about the same as guys like Steven Adams, Kelly Olynyk, Siakam, and Naz Reid. I’m not saying Edey is going to be a good NBA player. But if he fails, I don’t think it’ll be because he’s too slow.
In most years, YODA has some disagreements with the consensus view. Sometimes YODA is correct (Tyrese Haliburton) and sometimes not (Jaylen Brown) but never quite to this degree. At this point, five of the players considered to be top 12 picks have scores typically in the range of 2nd rounders or undrafted free agents. This incudes Risacher, Ja’Kobe Walter, Tidjane Salaun, Cody Williams, and Dalton Knecht.
If the scores hold up as I continue researching, YODA would have just 17 players with first round grades — the lowest number since I started doing this in 2010. It’s as if this year’s draft class is missing the top 5-7 prospects in a normal draft. And contrary to what some draft analysts have been saying, YODA doesn’t see much depth either.
We’ll see, of course. Even weak drafts produce some good players, and good players sometimes emerge from prospects who seem less than impressive at the evaluation stage. (By the way, Nikola Jokic is not one of these, at least for me. A couple years ago, I ran him through YODA using only information available at the time — including dings for being slow, ground-bound, and overweight — and he still rated like a top five pick in nearly any draft.)
Anyway, my 75% finished trip through YODA suggests it is indeed a weak draft, especially at the top. The bright side of picking second overall is that the Wizards will have lots of options. The downside: the options aren’t that great this year. Such is life for this franchise.