I've been reading a lot of commentary suggesting that there are seven "franchise players" in the upcoming draft. And, frankly, I believe that's crazy talk.
It seems to me that out of the players that are likely to declare for this year's draft, only Jabari Parker seems close to a sure thing to be a bona fide NBA superstar. Wiggins will surely go in the top two regardless of how he performs in his short college career. The early hype on him is simply too overwhelming for that not to be the case. He could be the real thing, but he could also end up as a very good NBA role player.
Beyond that, from what I've seen, I just don't see it. Randle is a dominant college ball player, but it seems to me that strong, undersized power forwards are, euphemistically speaking, a dime a dozen. If he ends up being the next Zach Randolph, Jared Sullinger or David West that's a good score for somebody, but hardly a guy you build a franchise around.
Folks have taken to calling Joel Embiid a "poor man's Hakeem Olajuwan." If people can write that with a straight face, I don't feel guilty about referring to Kelly Olynyk as a potential poor man's Dirk Nowitzki.
Marcus Smart could as easily end up being the next Tyreke Evans as the next Dwayne Wade.
Has anyone really seen Dante Exum play in any meaningful games other than one High School all star game where he played well? Dennis Schroeder looked pretty good in that same all star game and is currently a D-leaguer. I'm not saying Dante can't be a good pro, but I think the underground hype on him might end up being vastly overblown.
Who's the seventh superstar? Aaron Gordon? I doubt it.
Now, I apologize for being so dismissive of this draft class. It could turn out to be very good, possibly even one of the very best in history. But, seven "franchise players"? That's just unrealistic.
The Celtics upsetting the Heat or the Pacers in the first round of the playoffs has higher odds of happening than there being seven superstars in the 2014 draft. Consider that seven players at the level of "superstar" from the same draft has never happened before. At least, an eighth seed knocking off a one seed has some precedence in history.
Do you follow College ball every year? Do you consider yourself an authority on the draft? Because I'm not seeing any basis for what you're saying other than "you don't see it".
Seems plenty of experts "see it". The top players in this draft look amazing.
Chad Ford, for instance... he breaks down the draft every year into tiers. Potential superstar. Potential All-star. Potential Starter, etc.
How accurate are those lists historically? His breaking down the draft into tiers isn't really interesting unless those predictions are generally accurate.
He only started doing the tier thing fairly recently. I believe tier 1 he had John Wall and Blake Griffin. Surefire all-stars/franchise players. In 2011, he had nobody in tier 1. he put Kyrie Irving and Derrick Williams in Tier 2. "potential all-stars", but not locks.
Anthony Davis was the only player in Tier 1 during the 2012 draft. He put Robinson, MGK, Beal , Barnes in Tier 2... we'll see what happens there.
Last year I don't think he had anyone in the top two tiers.
I don't have Insider but if those are in fact his ratings, I'm not sure he can be relied upon to be right 100% of the time. His being correct percentage looks to be about 50% and probably lower given the misses he has.
Griffin Tier 2 not Tier 1. Missed James Harden and Stephen Curry for Tier 2. Curry maybe Tier 1.
Irving yes, Williams no. Klay Thompson probable miss.
Davis yes, Beals and Barnes possible yes. MKG, Robinson, no. Possibly missed Lillard, Drummond, Sullinger.
Last year, possible miss on Oladipo, MCW, Noel.
So if his percentage lower than 50% the truth about this draft seems closer to what Celtics18 is saying than what Chad Ford is predicting.
Not necessarily. Being wrong about who's who (and of course, every prediction is going to get it wrong sometimes) is a separate question from whether he is likely to over-estimate the number of good guys on average.
And, what seems to be true is that Ford's rankings are by and large fairly conservative.
Even by your own estimation he's actually underestimated the number of tier 2 guys. And some of the guys he put in tier 3 appear to be All-Star caliber players.
So if he's generally conservative, if he's predicting 8 tier 1/2 guys then there may very well be more than that this year. There may be fewer, but his mistake could go in either direction - and his conservatism suggests that it's at least as likely to be in the direction of under-estimating.
(Now, "tier 2" is obviously far from "franchise player," and is also pretty subjective, but that is a separate discussion).
I am not so sure that given the perceived quality of the drafts he has done this tier evaluations in that one can come to the conclusion that Chad Ford is conservative in his evaluation of players. Many of the recent drafts have been considered poor with only possibly one or two franchise/All-Star type players to be found in each, if that. For that reason it would make sense for him to appear conservative when in fact the drafts had little to no true upper talent and so his evaluations could be looked at as being quite liberal.
It could also be viewed that the sample size to judge whether Ford is conservative in his evaluations is much too small. Three drafts or 4 is way too little to judge the evaluation process involved especially when said drafts have not been very good.
I would prefer to look at how often he is right and wrong and in that sense he has been wrong a bunch and could and probably will be wrong about a good portion of the players in this draft.
That's totally fine and I don't disagree with that statement at all - but, two things. First, all I was saying is that you cannot from a logical perspective conclude from how often he's wrong anything about whether he is getting the total number of good players wrong on the high or the low side. They're just separate questions. (In statistical terms one is about the mean and one is about the variance of his estimates).
And as far as whether he's been conservative or not, you're absolutely right about the sample size and for that reason I would not view any data on his conservatism as conclusive. But wouldn't that also make your conclusion about how often he's correct equally suspect?
In the end of course, Ford's ranking is just another data point in what's an incredibly murky exercise in forecasting. It is about as informative as these things get, however, because Ford talks to scouts and GMs in constructing his tiers.
I also agree with Tim above though that what "tier 2" means seems to be a pretty low bar. So saying that there are 8 tier 1/2 guys is a far cry from saying that there are 8 franchise players.
To answer C18's question - I don't think he's released the tiers yet. As far as I can tell the 8 player number is taken from a remark he made in passing when he was evaluating the 2013 draft last June. So, it's possible that Ford himself has downgraded that number since then.
Topic: The 2014 draft class, revisited (Read 26260 times)