Revisiting the 2022 Draft

Recently I tweeted a quick and dirty list of 2022 re-draft and got savagely ratio’ed for not agreeing with consensus.

The problem with consensus is that it is driven by a rudimentary hivemind which is far from optimal for efficiency. Social media makes everybody more single minded which makes the wisdom of the crowd less efficient than it should be in theory. If you agree with the majority, and you get validated with likes. Disagree and get showered with dreaded ratios.

Thus nobody has incentive to challenge ideas, even though the mainstream narratives are built on simple and flawed logic. So let’s dive into some of these accepted viewpoints and why they should be questioned:

Older Rookies

Among the older rookies that did well, they were mostly still slightly below average players. There was only one older rookie who was actively good, and that rookie is Walker Kessler:

Not only was he slightly younger than the other old rookies, but Kessler also waffled crushed them in terms of production. DARKO is only one advanced stat that isn’t perfect, but most other analytics tell a similar story that Kessler was awesome and these other guys were merely fine.

This alone should paint a picture of why it is a scorching hot take to rate J-Dub or Keegan top 3. They are behind Kessler by an enormous margin, Paolo Banchero also exists, and that only leaves one slot left. It does not pass the smell test that one of 3 older guys who are in a similar tier of OK-ish rookies stand out head and shoulders above the rest of the class that has a number of talented younger prospects.

But Kessler is a Limited Archetype

There are some arguments that can ding Kessler’s value. He is a non shooting big who has less room for growth than other prospects, and bigs are less important because of high replacement value.

First, the latter narrative is getting overplayed. Good bigs are still good, and it is especially important to have one in the West where Jokic and the Nuggets are an obstacle to the finals.

And to some extent, Kessler has fulfilled a significant portion of his potential. He was massively efficient this past season, with low turnover rate and 70% TS in a low usage role. There is likely more room to regress than improve from an efficiency perspective, and he is likely close to maxed out as a rebounder as well.

But he can improve his defensive impact with repetitions, and seems like he is on a DPOY trajectory. Offensively if he can slightly expand his scoring + passing with elite efficiency while being a monster defender player, he will be ridiculously valuable. He appears to be on a Rudy Gobert trajectory. Say what you will about Gobert’s flaws, but he is a painfully obvious #2 pick in a 2013 re-draft.

Meanwhile what is there to build on with Keegan Murray? He was a low usage rookie who did close to nothing outside of make 41% 3P. Even if he makes some minor improvements as a sophomore, if his 3P% regresses to say 37% then he may net tread water or slightly regress. And then you are left with a 23 year old sophomore who is only slightly above replacement level, and the idea of re-drafting him in the top 5 won’t seem so hot.

But Keegan Played in the Playoffs and Didn’t Embarrass Himself!

The credit that players get for just being on the floor in the playoffs and doing alright in a small role is out of control. Keegan posted a 13 usage in the playoffs and again mostly was a spot up shooter. That is not a difficult role to play, and he did not perform above expected. He did what he was supposed to do which is fine, but it shouldn’t move the needle either way.

Harrison Barnes was 2 years younger as a rookie, and played 38 minutes per game in 12 playoff games with a jump in box score output from his regular season. Everybody thought he was going to be a star, but then he went right back to his regular season trajectory and never had better playoff production again (his 14-15 championship run performance was similarly good and other playoff runs clearly weaker).

Barnes had a fine career and justified his selection at 7th overall in a thin draft. But that playoff run proved to be a complete non-signal, and it was better than Keegan’s rookie playoff performance. Most fans are too thirsty to read into small samples of playoff production that have no predictive value, and Keegan Murray is a good example of this.

Jalen Williams and Shaedon Sharpe were Elite After All-Star Break

This is another point that people tend to get confused. When a rookie goes on a hot streak in March and April, the prevailing sentiment tends to be that he made a leap and that is his new baseline of goodness and there is nowhere to go but up from there.

In reality, most teams are trying to lose in March and April and putting out joke lineups, so this needs to be taken with a large grain of salt. Especially in the case of somebody like Sharpe whose team was trying to lose themselves, and had nothing better to do than try to feature him as much as possible and pump up his value.

Two recent examples of this are Jalen Green and Cade Cunningham, who both had strong closes to their rookie seasons after early struggles.

Cade posted 92 ORtg on 26.7% usg before the all-star break as a rookie, and then jumped to 103 ORtg on 30.3% usg post-break. Green posted 96 ORtg on 22.8% usg pre-break and leapt to 114 ORtg on 25.3% usg post-break as a rookie.

These are young #1 and #2 overall picks who are expected to take major leaps from year to year early in their career. Yet as sophomores, they regressed from their monster post-break performances as rookies. If you compare season long rookie numbers to season long sophomore numbers, they improved on a lukewarm trajectory.

This is because their 2nd half was a largely a ruse in softer conditions, and their season long numbers were the real signal as to how good they truly were.

If a young #1 and #2 overall can only make pedestrian gains after a monstrous close to their rookie seasons, why should we expect an older #12 overall to blast off due to a strong post-break?

I ranked J-Dub ahead of Keegan because he is a bit younger and has a bit more to build on, but he is only 2 years removed from being a mid-major prospect who looked nothing like an NBA prospect. It is impressive he was able to even come close to an average NBA player as a rookie, but it’s hard to take massive leap year after year.

If he merely solidifies himself as a neutral NBA player as a sophomore who turned 23 at the end of the NBA season, that is a nice piece to have, but not necessarily top 5 caliber in a re-draft.

Which Young Guys Deserve to Go Higher?

It’s really tough to say. Paolo is clearly the most promising young prospect, and frankly it’s not obvious that he even he will be better than Walker Kessler. He has higher upside than Kessler, but he is highly leveraged on how well his shooting and efficiency develop which gives him a wide range of outcomes. But he nevertheless should be good and will possibly be great, so he stands at #1 for now.

After Paolo + Kessler, things get murky. In 2022 I ranked the top 12 as:

1. Paolo Banchero

2. Jabari Smith

3. Chet Holmgren

4. Dyson Daniels

5. Jeremy Sochan

6. Jalen Duren

7. Bennedict Mathurin

8. Jaden Ivey

9. Tari Eason

10. Mark Williams

11. Walker Kessler

12. Keegan Murray

That #2 thru #6 tier is such a mystery. They are all so young, it’s so hard to say much either way from their rookie seasons. For my re-rank, I vaulted Kessler ahead of them to #2, and left the rest of the group in exact same order as pre-draft as now #3 to #7.

Logic here is they are all young and none were bad enough as rookies to stop being high on them. And it certainly is not necessary to vault older role player prospects above them just because they flirted with being close to average NBA players as rookies.

Jabari Smith was disappointing, but he was in a terrible context and he was so young and so highly attractive pre-draft, it is difficult to feel good about vaulting anybody ahead of him other than Kessler. He has shown a great mentality entering summer league, and while sophomore performances in summer tend to have low signal, him absolutely dominating in his first two games is certainly better than the alternative. If he is not at least a solidly useful role player, he will be one of the bigger disappointments in my lifetime of analyzing prospects.

Chet I had significant reservations about pre-draft given his thin frame, and after missing the entire season with an injury after briefly trying to guard LeBron the reservations are only deeper. My pre-draft comp for him was big man Lonzo Ball, where he is a highly useful role player when available, but may struggle to stay healthy with his physique. I believe he is a useful player but lacks star impact as well as longevity to be truly exciting. But there is no strong candidate to push ahead of him, so he sits at #4.

Dyson Daniels badly struggled to score as a rookie, but he played strong defense and is an excellent mold of 6’8 PG. The lack of shooting and scoring is a big concern, but he is otherwise such a hooper and he does not need to be great at either to make an impact. He only turned 20 in March, and there is no strong reason to de-value him from pre-draft given that he was good in the ways he was supposed to be good as a rookie.

Jeremy Sochan is another tough one, as he was stuck on a tanking Spurs team and there is some dissent in his goodness among catchall stats. But he showed an open minded willingness to work on his free throws shooting them one handed after a slow star, and finished the season with 70% FT. We will have a better read on him next season when the Spurs hopefully perform at a more serious level.

Jalen Duren rookie season box score production was not all that far behind Dwight Howard at the same age. He is not quite the nuclear athlete as Dwight, and will not be the same level of defensive monster, but could develop better on offense and be decent enough on defense. He is a victim of a terrible situation in Detroit where he is forced to play with James Wiseman on a dumpster fire team, but he was the youngest player in the NBA this past season and has huge upside. It is tempting to creep him higher on the list, although his poor context makes it less likely that he reaches his upside.

Collectively, some of these guys likely turn out worse than J-Dub, Keegan, Tari, and Mathurin, and some of them likely turn out better. It’s a broad tier and difficult to separate these guys with any confidence. The main point is that age is a highly predictive factor, and people seem to forget this after seeing guys as NBA rookies.

Ranking the Older Guys Next

Once we get past the young guys that I like, that seems like a fitting place to slot in the older prospects who had decent but non-elite rookie seasons. I ranked J-Dub at the top of this tier ahead of Eason, Murray, and Mathurin who all were much higher on my list pre-draft (I ranked him 24th), so putting him at #8 is not a slight by any means. There’s just a limit to how much we should reasonably react to a rookie season which wasn’t even great. Truthfully you can rank these 4 in any order, and it’s not something that I agonized over getting perfect.

Then AJ Griffin was a young guy slotted in at #12 on the re-rank. AJ Griffin is a tough one to figure out. I ranked him #16 pre-draft, and he slid to #16 in part due to injury flags. Then he posted surprisingly decent box score stats in 1401 minutes as a 19 year old rookie, and his stock should clearly be boosted from pre-draft. But those injury flags are not necessarily gone, and it’s still not clear he can be a decent defensive player in the NBA. There is an argument that he should be vaulted ahead of the older group along with his fellow youths that I rated top 7, and frankly it’s hard to say what to do with him.

Christian Braun at #13 may have been too high since he is older with extremely limited offense. But he is good defensively and gave some solid minutes in the finals, and seems like he should be a decent role player piece.

It may have been better to rank Mark Williams at #13 and since I was higher on him pre-draft and he had a decent rookie sample and rank boring Braun a few slots lower.

The takes that riled people up were Shaedon Sharpe at #14 and Jaden Ivey at #16. Sharpe I ranked 16th pre-draft, and he showed potential as a rookie as an athletic shot maker. But he was overall a solidly negative player due to his limited passing and feel, and he has been difficult to watch in summer league thus far as he has been relentlessly jacking poor shot attempts when he should be dominating.

He likely plays better in further games, but this suggests that his strong play down the stretch was a tank season ruse and he still has a long way to go to become a useful NBA player. And if nothing else his style of play is grating to watch if you are hoping for more than empty calorie points and highlight dunks. That said, he is at least young and had a better rookie season than Jaden Ivey, who was absolutely terrible and had a league worst -2.2 expected wins via EPM.

I ranked Ivey 8th on my board, and it was a reluctant 8th as he in a poor mold and had a poor eye test. He is fast but he is also sloppy and a bit lacking in handle and coordination with dreadfully bad defense. Given that he was a 20 year old sophomore instead of a freshman, his flaws weigh even heavier. If he does not make a huge sophomore leap, he is probably never going to be good and there is a decent chance he is out of the league in a few years.

Honestly ranking Ivey 16th may be generous, in all likelihood he is a dud and at best he is a flawed bench microwave.

There were also some comments about Jaden Hardy exclusion. I rated him 42nd on. my board and he went 42nd overall. He played at a replacement-ish level for 708 minutes for Dallas, which is better than expected but hardly cause to jump him 25+ spots up my rankings. He is a microwave scorer who shot 40% 3P in a small sample, which was also the portion of the season where Dallas fell to shambles. If he regresses to mid-30’s next season and does not make major improvements otherwise, he will go back to looking like a just another round 2 guy.

If he continues to develop, maybe he can get paid $30M/year and become a guy like Tyler Herro or Jordan Poole that nobody wants to trade for. That is about the pinnacle of his upside, and it is not a particularly attractive one.

While Hardy has some potential, and perhaps should even be valued higher than Jaden Ivey, there’s not enough evidence of goodness to get excited over such a bad mold. At the end of the day, both are hard passes for me.