2024 NBA Draft: A Shot in the Dark

As I’ve written before, the NBA draft is a high variance affair. It’s not that analyzing it is a waste of time (though there are likely quite a few inefficiencies), it’s that the end result is destined to be looked at with such strong hindsight bias that entire careers are made (or ruined!) on outlier outcomes.

The strength of my “analysis” is not so much in my ability to scout, but my ability to project how important that type of player is even if he hits various outcomes. For example, with someone that has a huge range of outcomes like Rob Dillingham, I recognize that he is likely to be a fairly bad (and overrated) NBA player. But Dillingham’s upside outcomes [1] are very exciting to me. He has enough shake and foot speed that I can envision high end outcomes being similar to Trae Young, with even some upside to be a better shooter than Trae (who is awesome, but not as wet as you think). That doesn’t mean I’d want to draft him, but thankfully since I’m just here to play armchair quarterback, I care more about completing the exercise for posterity than actually drafting the player for my team.

So I’m writing a little something publicly on the record this year since I spent a few dozen hours looking at the draft. The most notable thing to remember about this draft is that without top end talent third-tier prospects are much closer in quality to fourth-tier prospects than first-tier prospects would be. And there are no first-tier prospects in this draft. And there may not be any second-tier prospects, either. The result of that should be fairly obvious but bears repeating: the top of this draft is going to wind up looking very silly, very often. I think once you get to the back end of the lottery you wind up with a pretty solid class, but I haven’t scouted enough of the second round to really comment on the depth of it. So, congratudolences on binking the first pick, Atlanta!

Instead of doing a full writeup on the entire draft where I paraphrase the same shit that everyone else is on the internet, I’m going to have GPT4o summarize each prospect and give some color on where I might have something interesting to say or disagree with the consensus. Within tiers, my rankings are randomized (so you haven’t lost the ability to count, I’ve just averaged the numbers next to player within that tier).

1. Donovan Clingan (7'2 C, UConn, ESPN: 3) ScoutGPT says: “A big presence in the paint with strong defensive skills. Questions remain about his ability to keep up with the NBA's pace, but his size and shot-blocking are impressive.” To me this is clearly the top prospect in the class. Due to the volume of other quality mid to late lottery prospects, chances are a couple of guys will eventually surpass him as NBA players. I certainly have no idea which ones, so I’ll stick with the two time NCAA champ who was a dominating college defensive player and has enough passing to make decisions in the short roll and enough touch to punish mismatches.

Upside: Rudy Gobert

Downside: Ivica Zubac

Probably: Jarrett Allen

Verdict: Buying

2. Ron Holland (6'7 F, G League Ignite, ESPN: 13) ScoutGPT says: “An energetic and versatile defender with a developing offensive game. Excellent at scoring in transition and making timely cuts​.” I expected not to like Holland based on his poor outside shooting and high turnovers. But after watching him play, I think his passing is pretty good and he's willing. He's got a great motor on defense and he shows enough event plays with good enough tools that I’m interested. And his worst skill, shooting, is one of the highest variance things to project, and his form looks okay to me. He would benefit greatly from getting into a good system where he’s not asked to do much primary creation early on.

Upside: Jaylen Brown

Downside: Josh Jackson

Probably: Tyreke Evans

Verdict: Buying

4. Stephon Castle (6'6 G, UConn, ESPN: 6)

ScoutGPT says: “Big guard with good size and physicality. Versatile defender, confident ball-handler, and patient playmaker. Needs to improve his shooting.”

With the best nickname in the class, Bouncy is a fun prospect as the guard version of Andre Iguodala.

Upside: Jrue Holiday

Downside: Josh Green

Probably: Josh Richardson

Verdict: Holding

4. Rob Dillingham (6'1 G, Kentucky, ESPN: 8)

ScoutGPT says: “A dynamic scorer with elite ball-handling skills and creative shot-making ability. His size is a concern defensively, but his offensive talent is undeniable​​.”

I typically hate guys like this, because they often get overpaid (Herro, Poole, Simons), but his footwork and hand eye coordination are incredible. Most likely outcome is a bench gunner, but his high end outcomes would have him as one of the best dozen or so offensive players in the league. It’s troublesome that he is guaranteed to be one of the 10 worst defenders in the league, but guard defense isn’t nearly as important as other positions. While everyone would love to have a team with as much defensive versatility as the Boston Celtics, the reality is that’s a sacrifice most teams would be willing to make for high level creation.

Upside: Trae Young

Downside: Bones Hyland

Probably: Brandon Jennings

Verdict: Holding

4. Reed Sheppard (6'2 G, Kentucky, ESPN: 4)

ScoutGPT says: “A reliable two-way player with excellent shooting and playmaking abilities. Defensively tenacious despite his size​.”

Sheppard is quite an interesting prospect, but one thing I think the market has wrong is that he’s “defensively tenacious despite his size.” He’s got good IQ, but he is a horrific defender. He's small and he runs smack dab into the middle of every screen. He does have good steal and block numbers, but by my estimation most of that came as a result of gambling.

Upside: CJ McCollum

Downside: Seth Curry

Probably: Jason Terry

Verdict: Holding

6.5 Matas Buzelis (6'9 SF/PF, G League Ignite, ESPN: 5)

ScoutGPT says: “Versatile offensive player with good size and athleticism. Effective scorer with a smooth 3-point stroke, but needs to improve consistency and ball-handling​.”

My doppleganger, I have similar thoughts on Buzelis as just about any of these mystery box forwards: NBA sized player who gives good effort and nothing is broken, roll the dice!

Upside: Chandler Parsons

Downside: Matas Bustzelis

Probably: Kyle Anderson

Verdict: Holding

6.5 Alexandre Sarr (7' C, Perth Wildcats, ESPN: 2)

ScoutGPT says: “A strong defender and shot-blocker with good hands and physical play on both ends. His offense is developing, but his defensive skills are NBA-ready​​.”

Sarr strikes me as a pretty good prospect as a garbage big man, but he seems to have aspirations to be much more than that, and his offense is very far away.

Upside: Bam Adebayo

Downside: Jared Jeffries

Probably: Zach Collins

Verdict: Selling

8.5 Tidjane Salaun (6'9 SF/PF, Cholet, ESPN: 9)

ScoutGPT says: “Athletic and versatile forward. Solid defender with potential to become a 3-and-D player. Needs to develop consistency in his shooting and add strength​​.”

When I watch Salaun play defense I can see the outlines of a guy who knows how to move at the NBA level. The shot isn’t broken and he’s large. We’ve kind of reached the portion of the program where this type of mystery box is a worthwhile pick.

Upside: Rashard Lewis

Downside: Sekou Doumbouya

Probably: Naz Reid

Verdict: Buying

8.5 Nikola Topic (6'6 G, Crvena Zvezda, ESPN: 10)

ScoutGPT says: “An elite passer and pick-and-roll maestro who can score in the paint. Not the quickest guard but plays with a calm, composed style​.”

A fascinating prospect who got to the rim relentlessly against weak competition and is probably the third best passing prospect I’ve ever scouted [2].

Upside: Lamelo Ball

Downside: Kendall Marshall

Probably: Greivis Vásquez

Verdict: Buying

10. Zach Edey (7'4 C, Purdue) ESPN: 16

ScoutGPT says: “A towering center with significant impact in the paint, but questions remain about his defense and speed at the NBA level​.”

Of course Zach Edey is too big and slow footed to play PNR defense in the NBA, of course, of course. BUT MAYBE the best player in college basketball in at least a decade, who also happens to be extremely good at the biggest barrier to entry in the NBA (size!), is the most obvious smash pick possible and the tail upside of having a very tall person with a little skill and toughness is good.

His college stats as a sophomore compare favorably with the 10th pick in the 2008 draft, Brook Lopez. As much as Edey struggles with foot and processing speed, I’m not sure that he’s worse than Lopez in those aspects, and he’s certainly bigger. Lopez has carved out an awesome NBA career as he perfected 2.9-ing [3] and became a serviceable 3 point shooter. As a good free throw shooter with a high release, Edey could, in theory, become a similar version of the same player. And with his physical advantages the sky might need to be the limit because if there was a ceiling he’d probably hit his head on it.

Upside: Brook Lopez

Downside: Boban Marjanović

Probably: Jonas Valančiūnas

Verdict: Buying

Here are a few others that I watched and would be interested in drafting: Devin Carter, Kyle Filipowski, Yves Missi, Isaiah Collier, Jamal Shead.

Finally, I’ll add a little color to a few other notables that are absent from my top 10.

Zaccharie Risacher (6'9 SF, JL Bourg, ESPN: 1) is an interesting prospect in the same way that any mid-first round prospect with good dimensions, good shooting, and very little experience contributing to high level winning basketball would be. He’s a pretty similar prospect to Salaun, I just happened to like Salaun’s size and the way he moves on defense a bit better. The fact he's spent so much time mocked at the first overall pick can only be attributed to Jonathen Givony selling his soul for a baguette. I don’t think he’ll fall out of the top 10 on draft night, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he slipped out of the top 5 despite all the smoke that he’s the favorite for the top pick.

Dalton Knecht (6'5 SG/SF, Tennessee, ESPN: 7) is an interesting prospect in the same way any late-first round prospect with good college production and very little upside due to being extremely old would be. The track record of old players being picked in the lottery is bad. I asked ChatGPT to come up with a list of the last 10 players who were at least 22 years old on draft night and drafted in the lottery:

Year	Player	Age	Pick
2022	Keegan Murray	22	4
2022	Ochai Agbaji	22	14
2021	Chris Duarte	24	13
2021	Davion Mitchell	22	9
2019	Cam Johnson	23	11
2016	Buddy Hield	23	6
2015	Frank Kaminsky	22	9
2014	Doug McDermott	22	11
2018	Mikal Bridges	22	10

It’s not like there aren’t NBA players on that list, and you might even suggest that you’re more likely to find someone who doesn’t fall out of the league if you draft someone old, but only Bridges has outperformed his draft position. And most importantly, there are zero All-Star games on the list, and the base rate of becoming an All-Star from the lottery should be 25%.

So yes, when it comes to politicians and NBA lottery picks I am ageist. From a macro prospective, I’d even argue that in a draft that’s weak at the top you should become even less risk averse. No gamble, no future, right?

[1] In this instance I’m not really worried about top 1% outcomes, which are too hard to wrap my head around, I’m looking at top 15% outcomes. [2] Josh Giddey is the first.

[3] 2.9-ing is staying in the paint as long as possible on defense while clearing your feet before defensive 3 seconds is called. Here’s an article from back in the day explaining how Brook Lopez has perfected that art to become one of the best defensive players in the NBA.

2024 Win Projections

Last year I went 21-9 against Vegas [1]. My win delta was 5.9, compared to Vegas' 6.3 [2]. Despite my best two bets on the board missing, I’d call it a fairly median result. As I mentioned last year, I have a great deal of respect for Vegas where there is high volume allowed and a short turnover, and not a lot of respect where there is low volume and your money is tied up all season. I suspect I’ll be able to win about ⅔ of these bets going forward, but the juice and the length of the bet settlement will keep me from overspending my winnings on hookers and blow.

At first glance I expected Vegas to be a bit sharper this year, but I’m about .43 wins off per team, where last year I was only .40 off per team. This might be attributable to my unwillingness to disagree with the market *too* much last season. This year, I erred on the side of accuracy rather than forcing myself to add a few wins to the tire fire that is the Detroit Pistons.

One of the first things I had some trouble with is trying to model teams at the extremes. I would imagine there’s a difficult to quantify rubber band effect happening, just as there is during regular season games. The front office might (or might not!) have the luxury of waiting for regression, but even if a losing streak is caused by shooting luck the players and coaches are considering every possible adjustment. NBA teams play fairly hard, but some play a little harder. The resulting sense of urgency should compress every team a bit closer to the middle class.

Something that interested me this year is the team wide effects that I wish I had a better handle on. Two of them that stand out are from teams that I’m higher than market, the Raptors and the Nets.

For the Raptors, I’m worried about their spacing. To quantify my worry, I made a very simple spacing score for all teams coming into this season. To get this spacing score, I used last year’s stats and combined volume and accuracy from 3 pro rated for the minutes I'm projecting [3]. This is *extremely* crude and doesn’t include incoming rookies, but the scores do a good job of quantifying about how much spacing you’d expect teams to have.

MIL 3.46

BOS 3.42

GSW 3.14

DAL 3.08

IND 2.96

The top 5 teams include spacing big men and high volume off the dribble shot creation. This method easily passes the smell test for the best spacing teams in the league.

Now peep the bottom 5 teams, paying special attention to the outliers at the bottom.

DET 2.27

LAL 2.25

BKN 2.21

NOP 1.98

TOR 1.85

The bottom 5 teams include some suspect roster building and a reliance on this year's draft to contribute to spacing, rarely a good bet.

Though the Nets don't look very good on this list, I’m actually more worried about their lack of creation. To quantify my worry, I just looked at last year’s USG pro rated for the minutes I’m projecting [4]. The result is irrelevant on the high end (additions like Jrue Holiday and Damian Lillard show the Celtics and Bucks up top), but on the low end it's notable how much Brooklyn sticks out:

BKN 18.66

MEM 19.25

MIN 19.28

CHI 19.47

GSW 19.56

I'll hand wave away every other score except how big of an outlier the Nets are. They’ll be relying on a massive increase in workload from Mikal Bridges, which some people may consider him more capable of than I do, and a strong season from Spencer Dinwiddie, who has torn his ACL twice and was medically red flagged in the draft. Ben Simmons also plays for the team.

I underscore these problems with the Raptors and Nets primarily to expose the difficulty in projecting teams as a product of individual players. It's more useful to see them as an organism that needs a certain amount of creation, spacing, rebounding, and defense [5].

In that vein, the Timberwolves are another conundrum that comes to mind. It was clear last year that as a frontcourt Towns and Gobert wouldn’t be greater than the sum of their parts, but it’s hard to quantify overlapping roles. I’ll have them as a little worse than my projection last season, but not quite as low as the market has them this year.

And that leads me to my final point. As much as I’d love to rely solely on machines [6], I think the NBA is a sphere where there’s a bit too much of the human element at work to not think I can improve the model with some common sense adjustments [7]. I made notes last year where I made the biggest manual adjustments, and they were largely big upgrades on machine alone. Wisdom of the crowds has been proven to be very wise, and there are some instances where I try take into account public sentiment on a player before that player truly arrives and it shows up in advanced stats.

The best publicly available win projections are back:

Atlantic		Central		Southeast
Celtics	58.1	Bucks	50.8	Hawks	44.7
76ers [8]	51.8	Cavaliers	49.3	Heat	41.8
Knicks	47.5	Pacers	36.3	Magic	37.2
Raptors	42.4	Bulls	35.3	Hornets	31.5
Nets	40	Pistons	21.7	Wizards	25.5
Northwest		Pacific		Southwest
Nuggets	49.9	Suns	48.9	Grizzlies	44.6
Twolves	47	Warriors	46.8	Pelicans	44.1
Thunder	39.5	Lakers	44	Mavericks	42.7
Jazz	37.9	Clippers	42.2	Rockets	35.3
Trailblazers	29.7	Kings	39.3	Spurs	24.3

[1] Though it should be noted that a half dozen of those came within 2 wins, I was even on the close ones as well.

[2] This is how many wins I was off on average from the actual result, obv.

[3] 3PA/100 * 3% * MIN / team minutes. It should be noted that I’m projecting about 85-90% of team minutes, where the remainder go to replacement level players. Or in James Wiseman’s case, below replacement level.

[4] USG * MIN / team minutes

[5] You could break this down much further into things like at rim finishing, at rim defense, off the dribble shooting, etc etc. Dereliction in any area can leave you vulnerable to predictability, an NBA no-no.

[6] Unlike most forms of poker, which are solved af.

[7] The base of this model is EPM, which passes the smell test as the best available one number metric. I've added an aging curve, taken into account other publicly available advanced stats, and added some common sense on players who have had injuries derail recent seasons.

[8] These projections assume that James Harden plays basketball for the Philadelphia 76ers. That, uh, seems unlikely.

High IQ

So much of what we learn about the extent of an NBA player’s ability is driven by opportunity. Steph Curry freed from the shackles of Monta Ellis. Nikola Jokic no longer sharing a front court with Jusuf Nurkic. Most recently, Tyrese Haliburton leading the league in assists after his trade to Indiana. Perhaps most notably for this article, Linsanity.

Every year there are many such players in the NBA, but this year one sticks out above the rest. Immanuel Quickley’s ability has been overshadowed by the coaching of Tom Thibodeau, the signing of Jalen Brunson, and the play style of Julius Randle.

The most overrated ‘type’ [1] of NBA player is the undersized shooting guard. They score points, but they don't scale well to the playoffs because they aren’t quite good enough at distributing and defending. The classic example of this mold has always been Lou Williams, though his foul drawing meant that the juice was often worth the squeeze (at least in the regular season)[2]. In this mold we have three young guards that are nearly the same age, recently got lucrative extensions, and seem destined to frequently be compared to each other: Tyler Herro, Jordan Poole, and Anfernee Simons.

But hiding in an Empire State building sized shadow is Immanuel Quickley. He not only may be better than all 3, but breaks the undersized gunner mold with superior passing and defense.

Here’s an age 22 (last season) comparison between the four players. I chose to use last year’s numbers because it’s more of an apples to apples comparison; this year Quickley’s usage has been depressed further by the arrival of Brunson. Herro has improved, Poole has declined, but largely these numbers look similar this year, sans Quickley’s volume.

You don’t need to study the table, a comparison between all of them will result in you thinking these players are quite similar.

The first takeaway I have is that it’s obvious Quickley is the superior passer, with both the highest AST% and lowest TO% of the bunch. The second is that it’s worth wondering whether Quickley can maintain efficiency at the higher usage that Herro, Poole, and Simons have. My bet is that he could: over the last two seasons in 1500 minutes without Randle or Brunson Quickley has 54.7 TS% on 24.7 USG% with 27.7 AST% and 9.3 TO%. His numbers in an increased role are on par or improved with a particularly impressive AST:TO ratio.

So he’s been able to scale his modest efficiency in larger role with even better distribution. There are sample size issues here, but I think any worry about him playing against backups is overblown: ⅔ of these minutes come with at least two opposing starters on the floor, where his numbers are the same. That argument didn’t hold water when dissenters didn’t think it was worth trading for James Harden a decade ago, and it doesn’t hold water here.

But offense is only half (probably more like ⅔!) of the battle.

And the other half is the Battle of Alesia [3], where Quickley is the only one to post a positive defensive season in BPM, EPM, or RAPTOR (with multiple in each!). The others’ defensive advanced stats rank between regular bad and Trae Young bad.

I abide by a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” rule when considering how good of a defender someone is. Check advanced stats, watch highlights on NBA twitter, and try to watch them closely in a midweek game in January against a .500 team. If those sources agree, I have at least some level of confidence in my opinion.

Now I’m certainly not claiming guard defense matters much, but in the playoffs there is a marked difference between the five alarm fire that happens when Jordan Poole gets put in a screening action, and the impressive resilience with which Steph Curry holds up with when faced with similar scrutiny. Quickley’s ability to be in the latter category is going to win his team some regular season games and may be the difference between a win and a loss in a playoff series when the chips are down.

This is a clip you may have seen from earlier in the year on Jamal Murray. Active hands, choppy steps, and not biting on the pump fake: the entire possession is defensive nirvana.

The effort is consistent. Here he topside’s both screens and seamlessly switches onto Pascal Siakam. Active hands, choppy steps, high effort closeout: he’s a one man defense![4]

And even in January against Indiana he’ll navigate multiple screens, stay attached, and force a turnover.

But the real reason I got motivated enough to write this blog is last weekend when R.J. Barrett was a late scratch and Quickley drew the primary defensive assignment on James Harden. In the Knicks 109-98 come from behind victory Harden ended just 4-11 for 12 points. I am certainly not proclaiming him a Harden stopper, and given that this was a Sunday early evening game that title may belong to the quality of adult entertainment in Manhattan, but in a role he isn’t suited for the result was impressive. That’s largely due to efforts like the first play of the game.

He understands angles, maintains good effort, and has great hands. He'll also fight for rebounds [5]. And that's why it doesn't even matter if he can't scale more usage or increase efficiency. The marginal value you get from the extra usage is wasted when this type of player isn't good enough at creation and defense to stay on the court when it matters (see Poole, Jordan, circa 2022 playoffs).

It’s all part of an impressive and versatile skillset that has allowed him to post 90th percentile on/off splits each season of his career: +8.1, +12.2, +8.9 per CtG, despite playing with a very diverse set of lineups. The package is there but the opportunity isn’t. Now that the trade deadline has passed, perhaps it never will be.

[1] I do hate generalizing like this, but for purposes of us using words to convey player values, I feel I have to.

[2] I have to be careful what I say here about Lou, who is a legend, and also one of Immanuel Quickley’s favorite players

[3] No fucking idea. I just googled “what is the most 1 sided battle in history.” Poor Gallic confederation.

[4] You will not often see a defensive highlight that ends in a wide open made 3 for the player in question’s primary assignment…

[5] He actually does get into guys, a rarity for smaller guards. I considered a highlight reel of IQ boxouts, but was shot down by my editor.