Friday, March 26, 2010

Consensus Rankings of 2009-10 Season

Once the college season commenced, I started keeping track of the rankings of players on the three major sites I followed, as well as my own. Once I stumbled upon nba-draft.com, I added them to the consensus as they seemed to update their Big Board fairly regularly, and it was a quality website so I felt it was a great addition. During the periods which NBADraft.net hasn't kept their big board current, I have dropped them from the rankings so they aren't as skewed.

Basically, I have logged these so that we could get a true feel for how player rankings have changed throughout the year. DraftExpress.com is the only site which keeps a history of some sort on rankings, and this transparency is a good thing because it gives their audience a better view of how a player's stock changed throughout the year in the eyes of DX. However, they only keep track of a history on how a players standing changed in their Mock Drafts, but I'm more curious as to how Big Boards change.

This led to me tracking the change of the Big Boards of the "major" NBA draft websites. The file where you can see these rankings can be found here. After the break, I'll give an overview of how it is all set up.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Consensus Big Board

Roughly every week I go through the major draft websites I follow and track the rankings of prospects on their big boards. I do not track mock drafts as one website may have a prospect listed in their 2010 mock, while another has them listed in their 2011 mock and then how is one supposed to determine how to rank such a prospect for the 2010 NBA Draft when we, at this point, do not know for sure who is declaring this year? As such, I track the big boards of those websites, as they do not (or should not) segregate prospects based on when they think they will declare, but rather they rank them on how they feel their current talent and potential will translate to the NBA level.

I normally include nbadraft.net in these rankings, but as they haven't updated their big board since the middle of January, I have excluded them as it distorts the current state of the general consensus. Also, in these posts I will only go out to the top-25, however I plan on uploading the spreadsheet I keep with has the rankings of all the prospects I track and how the rankings have changed throughout the year.

Enough of the discussion, here are the updated average rankings of players according to the big boards (DX, nba-draft.com, ESPN, and yours truly - respectively):

1. John Wall - Fr. PG (1,1,1,1):
ESPN Profile

2. Evan Turner - Jr. SG/SF (2,2,2,2):
ESPN Profile

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Quality Opponent Statistics

The statistics which were piled up against subpar teams aren't as useful to gauge a player as those which came against quality competition. Because of this, I go through and pick out teams which I view as the quality opponents a prospect could face (using RPI and then favoring the teams in the power conferences and quality mid-major conferences) and then log the stats of the high-profile prospects.

The link for the spreadsheet for everyone to view is here. I will discuss some of the best and worst after the break.

Monday, March 22, 2010

NBA Draft Big Board (March 22nd, 2010)

My first new blog post is going to be my latest NBA big board. How I make my tiers is different than other places - I have flexible tiers where going down one tier (only one, however) is okay to make a selection when there is a position (or role) of much greater need which is available. This makes the ranking process more fluid, as there usually isn't a concrete talent separation between prospects.

I have a board going out to 70+, but since the draft is so far away, and I don't want to have clutter, I'm just going to list it out until my last tier hits 40. In the list, there are some players which I am fairly certain will not declare, however since nobody knows for certain who will or won't declare, I will not exclude them. I also have only included two international prospects, this is because I don't have nearly as much information on the players not in the NCAA, and the only two which get major pub on the websites and forums I visit are Vesely and Motiejunas.

Without further ado, here... we... go...

Tier 1:
1. John Wall

Tier 2:
2. Evan Turner

Tier 3:
3. Derrick Favors
4. DeMarcus Cousins

Tier 4:
5. Wesley Johnson

Tier 5:
6. Ed Davis
7. Greg Monroe
8. Cole Aldrich

Hassan Whiteside Writeup

Hassan Whiteside - Fr. PF/C, Marshall

Per36min numbers against Quality Opponents (10 games):
16.8pts, 9.9rebs, 0.0asts, 0.6stls, 5.4blks, 3.5PFs, 2.3TOs
44.6 FG%, 33.3 3pt% (1/3), 68.1 FT%, .42 FTA/FGA


Standing 6’11 and weighing somewhere around 230 pounds with a mammoth wingspan, Whiteside is tailor-made for playing weakside defense and altering shots around the rim. He went in and smashed the old C-USA single-season blocks record of 143 blocks with 173 blocks of his own. Not only that, but he’s set to become the first freshman to lead the nation in blocks since Travis Williams in 1998-99, an extremely impressive feat.

James Anderson Writeup

James Anderson - Jr. SG/SF, Oklahoma State

Per36min numbers against Quality Opponents (20 games):
23.2pts, 6.0rebs, 2.7asts, 1.4stls, 0.5blks, 2.9PFs, 2.7TOs
44.2 FG%, 36.0 3pt% (49/136), 82.4 FT%, .50 FTA/FGA


James Anderson is Mr. Offense for the Cowboys. He’s made slow, steady progress in both improving his body and his game the past two years at Oklahoma State, and while there are still some worries about how he’ll translate to the NBA level, he’s answered a lot of the questions people had about him his freshman year.

At 6’6, 220lbs with decent (not exceptional) length and good upper body strength, he has an NBA body for a SG. Athletically, he’s solid and he rarely tires. He’s not an explosive leaper, as you rarely see him dunk or get a lot of lift when he blocks the occasional shot, but he does possess great lateral quickness and has good straight-line speed.

Ekpe Udoh Writeup

Ekpe Udoh - Jr. PF/C, Baylor

Per36min numbers against Quality Opponents (24 games):
13.3pts, 9.0rebs, 2.5asts, 0.8stls, 3.0blks, 2.7PFs, 2.6TOs
47.3 FG%, 31.6 3pt% (6/19), 68.5 FT%, .37 FTA/FGA

At 6’10, 240lbs, Udoh has an incredible frame with extremely long arms and wide shoulders. While he’s not skinny, he looks to be able to add even more muscle on his frame as right now he looks like Dwight Howard did when he came into the league. However, at nearly 23 years of age, maybe he’s just going to stay at this size and thus be far more adept at playing PF with only spot minutes at C.

Udoh is a fluid runner and moves around the court like a SF. He possesses great lateral footspeed which allows him to look comfortable on the perimeter on either end. As far as jumping, even though he appears like he’d be able to get up high, he’s not an explosive leaper but rather just looks relatively normal. He is, however, quick off the ground which can be seen defensively.