Using Numbers to Find the Best Draft Pick (Part 2)
In part one of this mini-series, I found the average win shares of every draft pick from 2009-2024. In part two, I changed the sample to a 41-year period from 1977 (the initiation of the three-point line) to 2018 and expanded the field from the lottery (picks 1-14) to the entire first round.
The objective today is to factor in the rookie contract value of every pick. The top picks have proven to be the best performers in the NBA, but are they worth the big money compared to lesser-abled players who are on much cheaper contracts?
Spotrac holds data on the value of every first-round rookie contract since the 1995-1996 season. 1995 first overall pick, Joe Smith, had just $8.53M guaranteed on his rookie deal while 2024 first overall pick, Zaccharie Risacher, is locked into a $57.03M deal including $12.57M in his first year. Since the salary data doesn’t trace back to 1977, I had to find the proportion of every pick’s average rookie deal salary compared to the 30th pick’s rookie deal salary.
For example, the ratio of the average 29th pick’s rookie deal to the average 30th pick’s rookie deal is 1.007. The ratio of the 1st pick’s salary to the 30th pick is 5.009 because the 1st pick makes much more than the 30th pick.
Here are all the proportions stacked up in one graph. A higher bar is worse for value.
Those of you who read part one would know that in the 15-year sample I chose, the third pick beat the rest of the field courtesy of five of the best players of the decade.
It turns out that in the longer period of time that I chose for part two, the first pick outplayed the competition on average with an mean of 74.3 win shares per player. Here are the averages for every pick.
While every draft is completely different from the next, this graph shares similarities to this average win shares graph in part one.
The second pick is still the laughing stock of the lottery, nearly performing worse than every top-5 pick in a 41-year sample size, and the third pick continues to hold strong. The 6th and 8th picks continue to struggle in the long run, and the 7th and 9th picks take a leap.
The next step was to divide the win shares by their proportionate salary. Essentially, I’m just dividing the first graph by the second graph for every pick. The highest bar on this graph will be the best pick in the history of the NBA.
Here is the same graph in descending order of value.
The 24th pick only makes 1.131x more than the 30th pick and has had solid players in its history such as Arvydas Sabonis, Latrell Sprewell, Sam Cassell, Derek Fisher, Andrei Kirilenko, Kyle Lowry, Serge Ibaka, Reggie Jackson, Reggie Jackson, Tim Hardaway Jr, Tyus Jones, and Anfernee Simons. That’s a heck of a lot of good players for a late first round pick, and affirms the 24th pick being at the top of the list.
The 30th pick is the lowest paying draft pick in the first round, so with one Hall-of-Fame caliber player, they were bound to be at the top of this list. That player is Jimmy Butler who was drafted in 2011. His 115.0 win shares bring up the average of the 30th pick tremendously. In fact, without Butler, the 30th pick wouldn’t even finish in the top five.
The 9th pick finishes in a close third place. It featured Hall-of-Famers such as Tracy McGrady and Dirk Nowitzki and other great players like Charles Oakley, Shawn Marion, Amare Stoudemaire, Andre Iguodala, DeMar Derozan, Gordon Hayward, Kemba Walker, and Andre Drummond. The 9th pick finished 6th in overall win shares, so their 3rd place finish in value is not much of a surprise.
Though many of the best players from 1977-2018 came from the top five picks, they were never enough to drag the early-round busts through a sea of dense salary.
Where each of the top five picks finished
The 1st pick finished in 12th place.
The 2nd pick finished in 27th place.
The 3rd pick finished in 11th place.
The 4th pick finished in 16th place.
The 5th pick finished in 10th place.
So, while stars like LeBron James, Magic Johnson, or Dwyane Wade are more than worth their expensive contracts, it's the late-round picks that have the best value.
As for the 2024 draft, the 24th, 30th, and 9th picks are Kyshawn George (Wizards), Baylor Scheierman (Celtics), and Zach Edey (Grizzlies). Only time will tell us how good these players end up being, but from what history tells us, we can say that those three picks have the best chance of offering their teams the best value.