Why do modern NBA Draft prospects not stick around in the league? Our four-part series, looking back at the 2011-2015 NBA Drafts attempts to answer this question. Part one focuses on strength, and what exactly that means.
Over the past few years, it’s become vogue in the draft scouting sphere to not just attempt to pick out who are going to be the next great NBA players but to identify who is likely to underachieve or underwhelm relative to their draft position. The analytics movement in the NBA has pushed the conversation around the NBA Draft past just “who is going to have the best chance of being a star” and into a full-fledged cost-benefit analysis aimed at finding the players with the best chance at not just becoming good but turning into a positive team contributor that can best help push the team to new heights. While some teams still will draft for a slim chance at stardom if a bundle of swing skills click, the trend is pushing more and more towards targeting players who have a high likelihood of providing a positive return on investment and avoiding those that don’t.
The general sense you’ll see from public-facing draft scouts is that we’re getting better at identifying players on the positive side of the spectrum. Certain swing traits continually seem to push players into the upper echelon of the league in their various roles. Awareness and decision-making are paramount to executing modern NBA schemes and are also incredibly difficult skills to develop, especially on defense. Offensively, you have to be able to finish at the rim to be a useful point guard in a pick-and-roll scheme; wings have to be able to handle the ball in some capacity to take advantages of mismatches; bigs have to provide either perimeter or vertical spacing; and it’s desirable for pretty much everyone save for select outlier talents to be able to shoot off the catch.
However, the opposite end of the spectrum is less clear. We don’t have a firm understanding of who, when the draft ends, is going to end up being left behind by the league. Usually when we discuss players that have a high likelihood of not living up to their draft position, we worry about them not being stars; but a lot of times that means that player is going to end up like Evan Turner — a hugely disappointing number two pick, sure but still a player who has put up a very strong career in the middle 50 percent of the league, talent-wise. The blind spot for many NBA teams, and also many draft scouts, is identifying the traits that cause a pick like Dragan Bender, who went fourth overall in 2016 and was ranked in that area by a lot of scouts, to fall out of the league within three years while the players around him are still developing.
This series will attempt to parse why certain players fail out of the league, and others don’t. There are many reasons, and certainly, many cases will have multiple explanations for why a certain player bombed while a seemingly comparable player in the same class was fine. However, there are some commonalities that we see, and we will attempt to pick through the potential reasons for the failure of draft picks. To do so, let’s lay down the parameters of how we’re going to do that.
- The best examples are the most recent ones, so we’re looking at the 2011-2015 NBA Drafts, the five most recent drafts to have completed their rookie-scale contracts.
- There are two definitions we’re using for “failure” of a draft pick. The first is if the player did not see the end of their rookie contract, either by being waived in-season (Like Jimmer Fredette) or by the more common method of having their third- or fourth-year options declined (like Mario Hezonja). Note that both of these players continued on in the league after these scenarios occurred, but they’re included because they failed to live up to expectations for the team that cut them loose.
- The second is if the player was traded for little to no return value. Now, many rookie contracts are traded, even if the player is very good. We’re not calling Nikola Vucevic a failure here for simply being involved in the Dwight Howard trade. Instead, think more of the Caleb Swanigan/Skal Labissiere swap between the Kings and Blazers this past season. We’re focusing here on the players that clearly were traded to cut bait on their rookie deal or just extract some positive value out of the player in question.
- That means we’re eliminating the following players from our sample: Enes Kanter, Brandon Knight, Nikola Vucevic, Iman Shumpert, Tobias Harris, Dion Waiters, Austin Rivers, Tyler Zeller (traded for the cap space used to sign LeBron James, so he’s safe), Evan Fournier, Victor Oladipo, Michael Carter-Williams, Doug McDermott (a tough cut, but this deal was big enough to say he wasn’t just being shipped out for failing), Zach LaVine, Jusuf Nurkic, D’Angelo Russell, Kristaps Porzingis, Trey Lyles, Kelly Oubre, Jerian Grant, and Delon Wright.
- We’re focusing on top-20 picks, giving us a 100-player sample. Picks below the top 20 are subject to far more variance in terms of outcome than those in that group, which is where the bulk of the long-term NBA talent comes from in a typical draft. Using the top-20 also gives us a nice, tidy, diverse 29-player sample size to play with.
Among those 29 players, there is a multitude of explanations for why the NBA cut bait early on them. But for the purposes of this series, we’re going to narrow that list down to three major categories: lack of functional strength, lack of skill or skill development, and lack of awareness and decision-making. Three pieces in this series will focus on those three topics; the fourth will be a catch-all for some of the more unique cases that are still worth discussing. By the end, we probably won’t have an exact formula for identifying future NBA busts. What we hope to have, though, is a better understanding of what causes players to fall out of the league, and how to understand the degrees to which players need positive attributes to be able to succeed at the NBA level.
Category 1: Functional strength
Athleticism is the foundational understanding of draft value for many. That understanding, for a long time, has been that if you have demonstrated skills, and you’re supremely athletic, you have more potential at the NBA level. Conversely, the notion is that if you’re not athletic, you have less potential.
That works in some cases. We see that great leapers and lateral athletes do incredibly well in transition, and the league’s most effective finishers, particularly at the big positions, are strong, vertical leapers with great length and explosion, like DeAndre Jordan. However, in the modern NBA, the entire athletic package isn’t necessarily a prerequisite. Nikola Jokic made an All-NBA team last year, and he’s about as far from Jordan as you could get in terms of body type and leaping ability.
As the game, and particularly defenses, have changed, the emphasis on leaping ability, acceleration, and speed aren’t necessarily as important. They’re still important for helping to determine who is going to become a star, but it’s far from an eliminating factor. The emphasis on skilled play and strong decision-making help plenty of sub-elite athletes find firm roles in the league, and athleticism on its own is clearly not enough (Andrew Wiggins, hello). But there is one athletic factor that does play a huge role in the failure of young NBA players: functional strength.
Chris Singleton
Forward, Florida State, 2011 Draft
Selling points: Handle, defensive versatility
Demise: Option declined by Washington for year four
Strength can be an easy thing to superficially identify, but in NBA contexts, it can be difficult to tell who is actually going to be able to apply that strength. Take Singleton for example. A 6-foot-8, 230-pound forward, Singleton came into the league with a reputation as a fantastic college defender, someone who was supposed to be able to handle the LeBrons of the league athletically and be a menacing on-ball defender. That reputation was built by productivity in college and his frame.
However, entering the league, that frame and defensive experience didn’t manifest in anything impactful because he wasn’t able to leverage that strength into good post defense, or the ability to provide good rim protection, in the way that say, Grant Williams is likely to be able to, or P.J. Tucker already does. Even in Euroleague, where Singleton’s athleticism is more pronounced, he still is mostly a net negative on defense due to that same issue, which is more pronounced by a lack of effort.
Singleton’s issue was never raw strength. He always had a good frame, and the ability to power through contact. But his strength wasn’t functional — meaning that he struggled to apply that strength into the contexts of what NBA defense demands. That’s what we’re getting at here.
Sam Dekker
Forward, Wisconsin, 2015 Draft
Selling Points: Handle, leaping ability, agility
Demise: Traded to Los Angeles for Chris Paul, then traded to Cleveland for a 35-year old draft-and-stash player named Vladimir Veremeenko
Dekker was billed as a jack of all trades at Wisconsin, and that drew some interest, especially because he looked like a killer athlete at the NBA Draft Combine. He had solid lateral quickness, was a good leaper, and had the length to be a full-time 4 at the NBA level. But four years after he was drafted, he’s basically out of the league, because he was missing a huge prerequisite — strength. His length has been fairly useless for Dekker against NBA athletes who can power through him on the perimeter or at the rim, and that agility simply manifests in Dekker providing a nice escort to the rim for stronger players. It really doesn’t matter how well you can stay with someone on the perimeter if your body isn’t able to be used as a deterrent.
And again, this isn’t to say Dekker isn’t strong. There are certainly smaller players currently in the league. But Dekker was definitely on the lower end of the strength spectrum as is, and he didn’t really ever figure out how to use his body as a tool to help him on either end. His finishing touch was good on offense, but he never really did figure out scoring against contact and that really matters for your overall effectiveness at the rim in the NBA.
Shane Larkin
Guard, Miami, 2013 Draft
Selling Points: Playmaking, outside shooting, decision-making
Demise: Traded to New York for Tyson Chandler; third-year option declined
A weird theme of this exercise: The 18th overall pick appears to be somewhat cursed by this problem. Larkin joins Singleton and Dekker on this list, and if we were to stretch things out to more recent drafts, T.J. Leaf and Wade Baldwin almost certainly join. I’m confident Goga Bitadze bucks the trend this year in Indiana, but still, very strange!
Strength relative to your peers becomes incredibly relevant the smaller you are. Nate Robinson and Kay Felder are both tiny and are freak athletes vertically, but Robinson survived in the league and Felder didn’t because Felder didn’t have the strength to compliment his insane vertical leap, and couldn’t attack the rim at the NBA level. Larkin, standing 5-foot-11, has the same issue. His 52.8 percent shooting at the rim in his return with Boston in 2017-18 tells you what you need to know. His inability to extend over the top of contests, or shield the ball even if he gets an edge on a defender was too much to overcome.
Trey Burke
Guard, Michigan. 2013 Draft
Selling Points: Court vision, game management, quickness
Demise: Traded to Washington for a second-round pick before his fourth season
Nik Stauskas
Guard, Michigan, 2014 Draft
Selling Points: Handle, outside shooting, pick-and-roll decision-making
Demise: Traded to Philadelphia for a first-round pick and two draft-and-stash players, then traded to Brooklyn for Trevor Booker
Strength is so integral to on-ball capabilities for guards, even beyond just finishing numbers. Raw ability to push through contact helps, but you have to get to the rim first, something that is very difficult to improve on if you can’t do it, even at the college level. You can even have a solid floater game and lethal pull-up jumper — which Burke and Stauskas did at the college level — and it doesn’t matter.
Shots at the rim are obviously the most efficient shots, and the things NBA offenses try to do are predicated on the threat of players finishing at the rim — especially lead guards. Modern NBA offenses are close to equally potent with the threat of pull-up 3s, but it’s still very hard to lead a good offense as a point guard without being able to leverage shots at the rim. The list of players who fit that bill is basically Trae Young, who may still suffer a massive regression due to scouting adjustments in year two if he doesn’t add significant strength. And even Young and other below the rim players like Kemba Walker and Kyrie Irving can compensate for that lack of burst with a combination of control and finishing touch that allows them to keep opponents on their heels.
Burke’s and Stauskas’ dribble-drive games never materialized in the NBA level because of this problem. For Burke, the problem is more getting to the rim, as his small frame and lack of ability to use any power keeps him from gaining an edge against many quality defenders. There’s minimal one-on-one value to Burke’s driving ability because even though he’s quick, defenders with length swallow him up fairly easily and force him to pass. Stauskas, meanwhile, is able to beat defenders off the dribble, as Larkin can. But his narrow lower body frame has always limited his ability to carve out space against help defenders, and he has to rely on high degree of difficulty shots to finish. He gets good length extension, but that can’t be the only tool in the toolbox. You have to be able to get all the way to the rim. To circle back to Burke, you definitely have to be able to get into the restricted area. And in the case of our last test case, you ABSOLUTELY need to be able to turn the corner on a defender.
Jimmer Fredette
Guard, BYU, 2011 Draft
Selling Points: Outside shooting, deep outside shooting, deeeeeeeeep outside shooting
Demise: Waived during his third season
Jimmer was a dynamite shooter who was similar to Steph in terms of college impact, and then couldn’t even begin to approximate Steph’s value in the NBA because he might be the weakest draft prospect of the last decade. Shooting splits and zones don’t tell a complete picture, but Jimmer took only 9.9 percent of his shots from inside the restricted area as a rookie, and then barely edged above that mark as a sophomore, only making 51.7 percent of those shots.
Jimmer is the banner carrier for the value of functional strength. He struggles to turn the corner on even modest pressure, even out of the pick-and-roll when he’s sprung off a screen. And while Burke is the king of settling for pull-up jumpers, Fredette goes for them when even the threat of a big rotating over presents itself, and his shots end up ugly because he doesn’t have the same ability to stop on a dime that Burke does.
Strength is the most important piece of the athleticism picture. You can overcome lack of quickness, vertical explosion, or agility with a combination of good decision-making and skill, but at the end of the day, you have to be strong enough to get out of bad situations. Basketball is a contact sport, won by one body getting an advantage over another body. Whether that’s by speed or strength or guile is irrelevant, but overpowering the opponent is the easiest way.
Of all of the athletic thresholds that need to be met to stick in the league, it’s the one that is the most important, because not having strength dooms you on both ends. Defensively, it means opponents can walk over you on the way to an efficient rim shot. Offensively, it affects every step of the process of getting to the rim — from getting an edge on the perimeter, to getting past a drive being cut off, to finishing the play at the rim against contact. There aren’t really ways to counter this, even if you’re an elite shot-maker, passer, or decision-maker. If a player can’t win with functional strength, it should raise several red flags.