You are Robert Swift, if you could do it over, would you still go pro right away

[the_Bird]

The marginally utility of potentially earning a couple million more in his first contract is far, far, outweighed by the risk of never playing pro ball (or at least NBA ball) and earning essentially nil.  He made the right decision.

And, I come back to - he didn't fail because he wasn't polished enough a player.  Before he got hurt, he was pretty much starting to play up to his potential.  I don't think he missed out on too much development by not playing a season for Coach K, or whoever.

[Fafnir]

Didn't Robert Swift have very serious injury problems? Weren't they the main reason his pro career didn't turn out as hoped? All that lost athleticism?

I don't see how going to college changes any of that. So go pro and take the money.

Exactly, same with Greg Oden.

Had either waited to go pro they never make what money they have from basketball due to injuries.

[Moranis]

Didn't Robert Swift have very serious injury problems? Weren't they the main reason his pro career didn't turn out as hoped? All that lost athleticism?

I don't see how going to college changes any of that. So go pro and take the money.

Perhaps in college where there are less games, less minutes, and less impact physically (especially to big men), he could have grown into his body and not gotten hurt (at least at the rate he did).  Sure maybe he gets hurt anyway, but maybe college is what he needed to avoid getting hurt like he did without college.

Maybe after just 1 year at USC, he enters the draft and is a top 5 pick (rather than 12th) and then even if he still got hurt, he would have made a lot more money.  

  Avery Bradley was a top 2-3 prospect after high school and was drafted in the 20s after a year of college. There's no way of knowing if his position would have gone up or down after a year of college, and his career went south because of injuries, not because he came out too early.

Sure it went south because of injuries, but maybe instead of 12th he is 1st or 2nd after just one year of college ball.  He would have then made a lot more money even if he still got hurt at a similar rate in the NBA.  It isn't like Swift was the 1st or 2nd pick in the draft, he could have easily improved his draft status after just one year of college.  If he had a monster year at USC, he might have gone 1 instead of Bogut the next year (just as an example).  Or he could have been hurt and dropped to the 20's.  Who knows, but that is the risk.  He now knows he got picked 12th, got hurt all the time, and did not get a second contract in the NBA.  Perhaps going to school for even a year in retrospect might have been a more lucrative option for him.

  What if he'd gotten injured in college before he signed that guaranteed deal? What if he didn't have a monster freshman year at USC? He made $12M, I don't know that he'd gamble that on a bet where he could end up with a lot less.

I would have made the same decision as him, but I certainly would have thought about it.  There is a big difference between even pick #5 and pick #12 in the amount of money you earn in that first contract. 

[BballTim]

Didn't Robert Swift have very serious injury problems? Weren't they the main reason his pro career didn't turn out as hoped? All that lost athleticism?

I don't see how going to college changes any of that. So go pro and take the money.

Perhaps in college where there are less games, less minutes, and less impact physically (especially to big men), he could have grown into his body and not gotten hurt (at least at the rate he did).  Sure maybe he gets hurt anyway, but maybe college is what he needed to avoid getting hurt like he did without college.

Maybe after just 1 year at USC, he enters the draft and is a top 5 pick (rather than 12th) and then even if he still got hurt, he would have made a lot more money.  

  Avery Bradley was a top 2-3 prospect after high school and was drafted in the 20s after a year of college. There's no way of knowing if his position would have gone up or down after a year of college, and his career went south because of injuries, not because he came out too early.

Sure it went south because of injuries, but maybe instead of 12th he is 1st or 2nd after just one year of college ball.  He would have then made a lot more money even if he still got hurt at a similar rate in the NBA.  It isn't like Swift was the 1st or 2nd pick in the draft, he could have easily improved his draft status after just one year of college.  If he had a monster year at USC, he might have gone 1 instead of Bogut the next year (just as an example).  Or he could have been hurt and dropped to the 20's.  Who knows, but that is the risk.  He now knows he got picked 12th, got hurt all the time, and did not get a second contract in the NBA.  Perhaps going to school for even a year in retrospect might have been a more lucrative option for him.

  What if he'd gotten injured in college before he signed that guaranteed deal? What if he didn't have a monster freshman year at USC? He made $12M, I don't know that he'd gamble that on a bet where he could end up with a lot less.

I would have made the same decision as him, but I certainly would have thought about it.  There is a big difference between even pick #5 and pick #12 in the amount of money you earn in that first contract. 

  OTOH, what if he'd stayed healthy? It might have taken him a couple of years in college to cement his high draft status, that puts him getting a big payday a couple of years later and having a shorter window to earn the big bucks.

[mgent]

If anybody should've stayed in college it was Gerald Green.  With that much of an athleticism advantage on everyone he could've been a near 30pt scorer.  Meanwhile he would be learning all the other facets of the game he had never heard of and saving himself years in Russia, China, and the D-League.

[Moranis]

Didn't Robert Swift have very serious injury problems? Weren't they the main reason his pro career didn't turn out as hoped? All that lost athleticism?

I don't see how going to college changes any of that. So go pro and take the money.

Perhaps in college where there are less games, less minutes, and less impact physically (especially to big men), he could have grown into his body and not gotten hurt (at least at the rate he did).  Sure maybe he gets hurt anyway, but maybe college is what he needed to avoid getting hurt like he did without college.

Maybe after just 1 year at USC, he enters the draft and is a top 5 pick (rather than 12th) and then even if he still got hurt, he would have made a lot more money.  

  Avery Bradley was a top 2-3 prospect after high school and was drafted in the 20s after a year of college. There's no way of knowing if his position would have gone up or down after a year of college, and his career went south because of injuries, not because he came out too early.

Sure it went south because of injuries, but maybe instead of 12th he is 1st or 2nd after just one year of college ball.  He would have then made a lot more money even if he still got hurt at a similar rate in the NBA.  It isn't like Swift was the 1st or 2nd pick in the draft, he could have easily improved his draft status after just one year of college.  If he had a monster year at USC, he might have gone 1 instead of Bogut the next year (just as an example).  Or he could have been hurt and dropped to the 20's.  Who knows, but that is the risk.  He now knows he got picked 12th, got hurt all the time, and did not get a second contract in the NBA.  Perhaps going to school for even a year in retrospect might have been a more lucrative option for him.

  What if he'd gotten injured in college before he signed that guaranteed deal? What if he didn't have a monster freshman year at USC? He made $12M, I don't know that he'd gamble that on a bet where he could end up with a lot less.

I would have made the same decision as him, but I certainly would have thought about it.  There is a big difference between even pick #5 and pick #12 in the amount of money you earn in that first contract. 

  OTOH, what if he'd stayed healthy? It might have taken him a couple of years in college to cement his high draft status, that puts him getting a big payday a couple of years later and having a shorter window to earn the big bucks.

sure, but the question is knowing what happened, would you do it the same way again.  Obviously if you have no idea what will happen you go every single time when you are going to be a top 15 pick, at least I would.  You can always go back and get your degree, you won't always be able to play in the NBA. 

[Marcus13]

Yep.  I can make 11 million last a lifetime

[bdm860]

Here’s a list of some big men I’d consider busts in the last 10 or so years and how much they made:

Eddy Curry $70,027,141
Darko Milicic $46,936,562
Jerome James $44,755,150
Mark Blount $44,649,672
Mikki Moore $25,300,815
Greg Oden $23,295,444
Hasheem Thabeet $14,379,840
Robert Swift $11,473,684
Nikoloz Tskitishvili $8,907,528
Michael Sweetny $8,633,596
Patrick O’Bryant $7,398,120
Rafeal Araujo $6,716,880
Mouhamed Sene $6,316,560


Robert Swift is kind of right in the middle, so if he goes the NBA route again, 100% chance of getting $11,473,684.  If he goes to college, he could get more, he could get less, or he could get nothing.  I think the odds are pretty slim that he’d get nothing, rather he’d at least be walking away with about $6m.

If he goes to USC for one year, anything short of paralysis, I think he’d be a top 10 pick, maybe top 5.  It’s not that he was injured in his first 2 years right?  It was that he was just a project.  Basically Sebastian Telfair went from being the 13th pick in 2004 to the 7th pick in 2006 (since that’s what he was traded for) without showing anything really in the NBA, and 7-footers have a lot more value in the NBA.  I could see something similar happening with Swift. 

Anyways to the math, to do it properly, I think you should take how much each 1st round pick was guaranteed to make in the 2005 draft.  And also figure for 3 years, and the team option for the 4th.  Then take the value times the probability and sum it all up.  A lot of work.  So I’m going to throw out some estimates, tell me if I’m terribly off here.   If Swift played one year at USC, I think the projections would look something like this:

1st pick - $14m for 3 years, or $20m for 4 years, odds 2%
2-5 pick - $12m for 3 years, $15m for 4 years, odds 20%
6-10 pick - $8m for 3 years, $10m for 4 years, odds 40%
11-15 pick - $6m for 3 years, $8m for 4 years, odds 25%
16-20 pick - $5m for 3 years, $7m for 4 years, odds 10%
21-30 pick - $4m for 3 years, $6m for 4 years, odds 2%
Never Makes the NBA, $0, odds 1%

So it’s (14m * 2%) + (12m * 20%) + (8m * 40%), etc., etc. Do this for both 3 years and 4 years.

So based on these projections Swift would make:
$8m for 3 years, or $10.22m for 4 years.  Based on how valuable big guys are, I would say there’s only a 25% chance of Swift playing 3 years.  So continuing with the math (8m * 25%) + (10.22m * 75%) that would average out to a salary of $9.66m.  Pretty close to what Swift made going straight to pro.

But that’s only the rookie contract.  Swift might get another contract too (he did originally play for 5 years in the NBA).  So let’s play with some more numbers:

30% chance he’s done after his rookie deal.
50% chance he plays for 1-2 more years and gets $5m
15% chance he plays for 3-4 more years and gets $10m
4% chance he plays for 5 or more years and gets $30m
1% chance he plays for 5 or more years and gets $50m

Do the math on that part, and that’s another $5.7m Swift would be projected to make.

So no college, Swift earns $11.47m
1 year of college, Swift's earning value is projected to be $15.54m based on my projections. 

Go to college.

[Fafnir]

bdm your expected value seems way out of whack as your percentages assume he had a 70% chance of getting a second contract bigger than what he actually got due to health concerns.

Playing a year of college ball wouldn't have made him magically healthier.

[bdm860]

bdm your expected value seems way out of whack as your percentages assume he had a 70% chance of getting a second contract bigger than what he actually got due to health concerns.

Playing a year of college ball wouldn't have made him magically healthier.

Well it's all how you look at it.

1. Swift did get a 2nd contract, despite his health

2a. I think Oden will get a 2nd contract  I think some team will offer Brandon Roy another contract eventually.

2b. There's a lot of teams that would take a chance on a 7-footer.  Celtics being one of them.  Look at some of the contracts that other 7 footers got in my post?  Swift got a 2nd contract, O'Bryant got a 2nd contract...

3a. There's an 80% chance of not getting a contract, or playing 1 or 2 years (by teams essentially taking a long shot and see if you pan out).  80% chance of no contract or a team or two taking a flier on Swift.  You really think that's out of whack?

3b.  At least four teams have taken chances on Shaun Livingston.  At least 2 teams on Darius Miles. At least 2 teams have taken chances on Gilbert Arenas.  Injuries effect a 7-footer a lot less.  If you think teams don't take chances on injured players, I don't think we'll agree on anything.

4. The player isn't bound to be injured no matter what. It's not like Swift would only get 1,044 minutes before tearing is ACL no matter what year or season it was, no matter what team he played for.   If he goes a different route, or gets drafted by or traded to any different team, he might never get injured.

[Fafnir]

bdm your expected value seems way out of whack as your percentages assume he had a 70% chance of getting a second contract bigger than what he actually got due to health concerns.

Playing a year of college ball wouldn't have made him magically healthier.

Well it's all how you look at it.

1. Swift did get a 2nd contract, despite his health

2a. I think Oden will get a 2nd contract

2b. There's a lot of teams that would take a chance on a 7-footer.  Celtics being one of them.  Look at some of the contracts that other 7 footers got in my post?  Swift got a 2nd contract, O'Bryant got a 2nd contract...

3. There's an 80% chance of not getting a contract, or playing 1 or 2 years (by teams essentially taking a long shot and see if you pan out).  80% chance of no contract or a team or two taking a flier on Swift.  You really think that's out of whack?

Yes because he got a single contract for around 4 million and you're assuming that with another year's wear and tear on his body he has a 70% of doing better?

Plus given what we know about how much his body broke down the chance that he could have hurt his draft stock seems awfully low at a mere 13%.

Besides in truth you shouldn't use his actual career earnings but his expected value entering the draft earlier. He couldn't know he'd only make 11 million when he declared. You want to compare his expected career earnings for going out of HS and for going out of 1 year of college.

[bdm860]

bdm your expected value seems way out of whack as your percentages assume he had a 70% chance of getting a second contract bigger than what he actually got due to health concerns.

Playing a year of college ball wouldn't have made him magically healthier.

Well it's all how you look at it.

1. Swift did get a 2nd contract, despite his health

2a. I think Oden will get a 2nd contract

2b. There's a lot of teams that would take a chance on a 7-footer.  Celtics being one of them.  Look at some of the contracts that other 7 footers got in my post?  Swift got a 2nd contract, O'Bryant got a 2nd contract...

3. There's an 80% chance of not getting a contract, or playing 1 or 2 years (by teams essentially taking a long shot and see if you pan out).  80% chance of no contract or a team or two taking a flier on Swift.  You really think that's out of whack?

Yes because he got a single contract for around 4 million and you're assuming that with another year's wear and tear on his body he has a 70% of doing better?

Plus given what we know about how much his body broke down the chance that he could have hurt his draft stock seems awfully low at a mere 13%.

Besides in truth you shouldn't use his actual career earnings but his expected value entering the draft earlier. He couldn't know he'd only make 11 million when he declared. You want to compare his expected career earnings for going out of HS and for going out of 1 year of college.

Oh I agree with the last part, but that's not the scenario in the OP.  The scenario is, you know you get $11m, do you go back and try to do things differently?  The $11m is a given in the OP's scenario.

Yes because he got a single contract for around 4 million and you're assuming that with another year's wear and tear on his body he has a 70% of doing better?

I guess we're not on the same page.  80% chance of doing worse or the same (no contract, or 1-2 year contract), 20% chance of doing better.  (Hopefully you're not getting hung up because I said 1-2 years and 5 million, instead of 1 year and 4 million, just trying to break it out into easy ranges for the sake of the example). 80% chance of no contract, or a team taking a flier on him (like they've done with Darius Miles, Shaun Livingston, Gilbert Arenas, Patrick O'Bryant, etc.). That's realistic odds in my book.

Plus given what we know about how much his body broke down the chance that he could have hurt his draft stock seems awfully low at a mere 13%.

Given what we know about the NBA, I think the odds of a 7-footer, that was a projected lottery pick out of high school, wouldn't hurt his draft status with 1 year of college.  GM's love Centers.  I think some scouts are bad, but are they really that bad that Swift would be a total bust in college and every good thing they saw about him in high school disappeared in that one year?

If he played terrible: He's still young, he's still developing, he's still raw, it takes big guys longer to develop, etc.  Some GM would take a chance on him.  If he wasn't 7-feet, then it would be risky, but when you're 7 foot GM's seem to ignore risk.  Look at all the high school and foreign big men drafted early that were busts.  GM's will take a risk on a 7 footer with some sort of potential in a heartbeat.

Then if he played just ok: status would improve.

And if he played great: status would sky rocket.

I think it's really hard for a young 7-footer to hurt his status after 1 year, too many people are willing to write it off (young, still developing, big guys take longer, etc.)  All 4 years is a different story though.  Swift earned the Sonics starting job after 2 years, you really think he's going to do that bad in college?  Hasheem Thabeet played his time at UConn into a #2 pick, and has NBA performance similar to Swift's. Is it that unlikely that Swift wouldn't put up numbers somewhat similar to Thabeet in college?

Plus given what we know about how much his body broke down the chance that he could have hurt his draft stock seems awfully low at a mere 13%.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but his body didn't really break down until his 3rd year right.  It was the ACL thing that was the big thing.  Or am I forgetting some other serious injuries?

Anything short of paralysis, I think a 7footer with Swift's potential would always be drafted high a year out of college.  Swift tears his ACL in college, I still think he's drafted.  This is the NBA that I know, where injuries didn't stop Kenyon Martin or Greg Oden from being the #1 pick.  Where guys like Swift get drafted in the first place and Patrick O'Bryant and DeSagana Diop are top 10.  If you're a 7footer with an ounce of potential, you'll be a lottery pick.

[LooseCannon]

Here’s a list of some big men I’d consider busts in the last 10 or so years and how much they made:

Mikki Moore $25,300,815

I'm not sure how an undrafted player who had four years of college can be labeled a bust and get mentioned in a discussion about players staying in school.  He's had a nice career for an undrafted player.  Half of his career earnings can be attributed to the Kings being bad at handing out long-term contracts.

[guava_wrench]

Here’s a list of some big men I’d consider busts in the last 10 or so years and how much they made:

I can not agree that in the context of this discussion we can call a player a bust if they received a hefty contract after their rookie contract ended. They may have been a bust for the team that signed them as a FA, but they were not a bust considering where they started.

Mikki Moore is a great example. He was clearly not a bust as a player. He over-achieved. He was only tainted because he ended up with a contract worth more that what he was worth. Nevertheless, he got all he could out of his game and exceeded initial expectations by a lot.

[guava_wrench]

If he goes to USC for one year, anything short of paralysis, I think he’d be a top 10 pick, maybe top 5.  It’s not that he was injured in his first 2 years right?  It was that he was just a project.  Basically Sebastian Telfair went from being the 13th pick in 2004 to the 7th pick in 2006 (since that’s what he was traded for) without showing anything really in the NBA, and 7-footers have a lot more value in the NBA.  I could see something similar happening with Swift. 

First, Telfair was not traded for the just the 7th pick. We wanted to get rid of Raef's contract.

Second, your point seems to support that Swift could develop in the NBA like Telfair did so no point in going to USC. Is that what you meant?