Hollinger's Draft Rater
by FishingMN on Jun 18, 2009 6:28 PM CDT
15 comments
John Hollinger writes for ESPN and has a statistical tool for evaluating potential college players who are coming out in the draft called the Draft Rater. This is in addition to the statistical work he does with existing NBA players to evaluate based on their Player Efficiency Rating.
I recall last year that he had Kevin Love rated very highly (as well as Mayo ranked down somewhat). There are many examples of how this tool identified players who should have been drafted higher. You can get some interesting info on his tool and opinions by reading today's chat on ESPN - Hollinger Chat
His work is part of ESPN Insider but I found another NBA Blog (The Knicks Blog) that posted a good story about the Draft Rater and listed the top 12 players in Hollinger's tool for the upcoming draft. They are -
Top 12 Player According to Hollinger’s Device:
1. Ty Lawson, 2. Blake Griffin, 3. Ty Evans, 4. Austin Daye, 5. Steph Curry, 6. Nick Calathes, 7. Dejuan Blair, 8. Danny Green, 9. Flynn, 10. James Harden, 11. Hasheem Thabeet, 12. Earl Clark
I found it interesting that Lawson was #1 and that he's not on anyone's radar for the top 10.
Should be worth a little debate on those rated higher than current mock's and those who are projected lower (10/11) or missing altogether (Derozen/Holiday).
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Lawson
Anyone that pays attention to advanced stats knows that Ty Lawson had a historic season last year. This isn’t surprising and I feel that he’s been largely overlooked because he’s not a combine or measurements freak. But turn the lights on and get 9 other guys on the floor and I’ll put my money on Ty Lawson’s squad. Should we consider him with #6? Well, I’m not THAT confident, but I’d definitely give him a long look starting with New York’s pick. I think we’re going to see players like Jrue Holiday come back down to earth and a guy like Ty Lawson is going to bust his way into the Top 10.
by Rascal Flatts on Jun 18, 2009 8:06 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Agreed...
….I don’t get why he’s slipping in relation to guys like Flynn and Holiday. The injuries probably have something to do with it but the guy still went bonkers during the season.
The World's Leading Exporter of Small Area Quickness
www.canishoopus.com
by Stop-n-Pop on Jun 19, 2009 6:40 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
I think...
The interesting name on Hollinger’s list, which is an evaluation of players that I totally agree with, is Austin Daye. He has a real boom or bust potential in this draft. He’d be a very interesting prospect for the Wolves at #18 if he falls that far.
by twolvesgm on Jun 18, 2009 8:15 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Someone might know this
What exactly is Hollinger’s Formula for this? I just question Tyreke Evans numbers vs Demar DeRozan’s.
by Jose Cordoba on Jun 18, 2009 10:02 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
That's proprietary info
He’s never released his draft estimate formula, though you can make a reasonable guess at the variables and their relative weights based on the results.
That said, I completely disagree on DeRozan. To me he screams Gerald Green with a year of college (and Hollinger’s numbers back that up).
One thing to note about Evans is that I asked in his chat about Evans’ position, and he said he didn’t bother with testing him at point, as he is too tall for the position (in Hollinger’s view). So either we are grossly underestimating Evans, or Hollinger is grossly overestimating him (I’ll just repeat what I said at the end of March, that Evans numbers are fairly similar to Rose’s, who came out of the same system).
A big point in Evan’s favor is that everyone who scores 14.50 or above in Hollinger’s system (with the exception of space case Shawne Williams) has become a legit starter on their teams. Evan’s is at 15.02.
by McCleak on Jun 19, 2009 12:06 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
It was interesting...
…that Holinger rated Evans as a wing. Even in our draft system, he rates better if you simply switch him from a guard to a wing.
The World's Leading Exporter of Small Area Quickness
www.canishoopus.com
by Stop-n-Pop on Jun 19, 2009 6:42 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Here's his argument
Kevin (Minneapolis)
Is Tyreke Evans draft scored based on him on wing or point? And what is his rating at the other position?
John Hollinger
I rated him strictly as a wing. I’m always highly suspicious of 6-5 or 6-6 guys who have “point guard skills” actually playing the point — usually they’re either too slow to defend opposing PGs or can’t push it up fast enough to get transition points and they end up playing their whole career at the 2.
It’s quite possible Evans would have been even better as a point, or course.
by McCleak on Jun 19, 2009 8:28 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
I can’t tell you exactly what he does, but he debuted his system in 2007 in an article called “A New System to Evaluate the Pro Potential of College Players.” (If you have insider, you can google that title and read it.)
I don’t have insider, but I do have a hard copy still I made of that article (which was a “free preview,” they used to do a lot of NBA draft stuff as free peeks for insider, but that seems to have stopped.)
So anyway, here were the keys to his system in 2007:
1) PER
2) Age
3) Steals
4) Blocks
5) Rebounds (compared to similarly-sized players)
6) 3-pointers (probably Derozan’s biggest problem)
7) Pure point rating
And he listed his “red flags”:
1) Short guys
2) 7-footers (he docked guys for being too tall, at least he used to)
3) Perimeter players who don’t make 3’s (My guess is this is where DeRozan really comes undone)
4) Really bad rebounders (again compared to similarly sized players)
And he adjusted for pace and strength of schedule.
In 2008 he tweaked things using regression analysis. I’m not sure if his primary components listed above remained or were scrapped or somewhere in between. And he changed it to project a player’s 3rd-year PER (his 2007 system spit out a number).
Knowing all this, I’m surprised Harden’s ranked #10. He seems to have all the bases covered except for his negative PPR above, and Arizona State played a tough schedule and a slow pace, likely depressing his numbers. But who knows? Evans is a stat stuffer (although another guy with a bad PPR), and must not have gotten docked for a weak strength of schedule too badly.
In 2007 his system seemed to do a pretty good job of weeding out the busts. There were three lottery picks it didn’t like: Corey Brewer, Acie Law, and Spencer Hawes. In 2008 it wasn’t as good, as a lot of guys the system didn’t like (Mayo, Gordon, Westbrook) did well.
And even looking at the guts of his 2007 system, it’s easy to nitpick problems. Al Horford and Joakhim Noah, for instance, were probably docked because they were relatively older propects (although still not yet seniors, IIRC), even though they could have both been lotto picks had they declared a year earlier. And I kind of got the 7-footer thing, but part of his reasoning was (if you’re that big and still aren’t dominating college and/or are in college, something’s wrong), while it makes sense for a lot of guys, I thought it was unfair to Oden, as that was the first year of the NBA’s 19-year-old rule.
So, take it all with a grain of salt. As others have noted, he’s got his fair share of misses, too. It’s probably too early to call Conley a disappointment, and in fact he is showing promise, but that article he wrote compared him a couple times to Chris Paul. And even in his “backwards” calculating (see SoulHonkey’s post), in 2006 his top 2 prospects were Tyrus Thomas (whom he had rated as a monster, a raw stat stuffer at LSU who probably got a lot of points for his age) and Sheldon Williams. If you dig through the archives at Wages of Wins (or, in 2006 at least, 82Games.com), you can find pre-draft analysis that found Tyrus Thomas a lot less promising. I still look forward to his list each year, but it isn’t Gospel.
by jianfu on Jun 19, 2009 8:17 AM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
My Open Letter to John Hollinger
Dear John,
We are now in year three of your Draft Rater system. I believe that the Draft Rater could be a useful reference point but the way that you overhype it does the formula (and your own reputation) a disservice. It’s especially surprising that after the system’s 2008 performance, this year’s articles come off as more self-congratulatory, misleading, and disingenuous than ever.
The first issue is one of language. When you write about past drafts, you describe the Draft Rater’s performance in the past tense, as if the current system was actually in place at those times. For instance, you wrote “Additionally, the Draft Rater has come up with some big draft steals” or “2002 was a strong season for the Draft Rater, as it correctly recommended avoiding four players (Wagner, Ely, Haislip and Jones) selected among the top 10 collegians and made only one bad recommendation (Logan) in their stead.”
Obviously, these types of comments are misleading because the Draft Rater wasn’t introduced until 2007. The system didn’t actually “come up” with anything nor had it “correctly recommended” anyone. In fact, the complete opposite is true and that’s what makes your article so disappointing. Were these steals and busts discovered by your Draft Rater or were they actually the very information that you used to formulate your system? You claim that The Draft Rater predicted Carlos Boozer but it would seem that the truth is that Carlos Boozer helped create the Draft Rater.
This is the key problem that you fail to address in any of your articles. While the Draft Rater is great when it has the benefit of hindsight, it doesn’t fare so well in the actual moment.
If someone in 2007 had consulted the draft rater, they would have gotten a top 10 (in order) of: Kevin Durant, Greg Oden, Mike Conley Jr., Thaddeus Young, Brandan Wright, Al Horford, Nick Fazekas, Josh McRoberts, Rodney Stuckey, and Jared Dudley. While I’m sure someone might have thanked you for Stuckey over Law and Young over Brewer, you’d have some serious explaining to do for Fazekas and McRoberts. The Rater successfully pegged Big Baby Davis as a steal but, then again, it had him ahead of Jeff Green, who was about even with Kyle Visser and Herbert Hill.
The only other example we have of the Draft Rater in action was last year and even you had to acknowledge what a mess that was. However, blaming the one-and-dones doesn’t really help since it’s not like the system did a bang up job with the other collegians. Darrell Arthur and Mareese Speights over Brook Lopez. Darnell Jackson and Richard Hendrix over Jason Thompson. Ryan Anderson was considered almost undraftworthy. And that’s just the big men. Jamont Gordon was your sleeper (better than Westbrook said the numbers) and Courtney Lee was a “fringe second rounder”. Probably the biggest sleeper of the draft, the undrafted Anthony Morrow, didn’t get any help from the Draft Rater either; he wasn’t mentioned at all in your article.
This isn’t the only sin of omission that your article commits though. You constantly highlight the benefits and ignore the mistakes of the system. You commend your current system for passing over Patrick O’Bryant, Randy Foye, and JJ Redick but they were replaced with Shawne Williams, Hilton Armstrong, and Ronnie Brewer. Even if you cop a plea for Williams’ attitude, that’s still not impressive, especially since your current system is working with three years of hindsight and actual knowledge of how these guys performed.
Also, you commend your system for avoiding the likes of Patrick O’Bryant but it took you two years to get the system to be able to do that. He was #6 in 2007 and last year, the Draft Rater still had O’Bryant as having the third most potential of any big man in the draft (#2 was Shelden Williams and #4 was LaMarcus Aldridge).
The bottom line is that the system is just as flawed as the current results. For every Rajon Rondo, there’s a Marcus Williams. You might spare a team from drafting Marcus Haislip but they’ll end up with Casey Jacobsen instead.
I’m not sure if ESPN pushes you to make such bold pronouncements or if you really just have a blind faith in your system that causes you to miss all the problems but the fact of the matter is that the Draft Rater is an interesting reference but it’s hardly as helpful as tool as you like to paint it. You’re already copping pleas for Ty Lawson (citing work ethic and injury issues) but how could anyone really doubt a player with the fifth highest projection since 2002? The only guys with higher marks were: Durant, Wade, ’Melo… and Mike Conley Jr.
So I guess you can take it for what it’s worth and what it’s worth isn’t as much as you seem to think
Sent it to him and posted it on my blog
My Open Letter to John Hollinger @ www.soulhonky.com
by SoulHonky on Jun 19, 2009 12:41 AM CDT reply actions 2 recs
Box.
"Come on Eddie, let's get serious."
by biggity2bit on Jun 19, 2009 9:20 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
This is good.
But I don’t envy sportswriters who have to feed the beast between the end of the season and Draft Night. Here’s what they have to report every day:
1. Some guy did a V-Sit for 30 seconds with scouts in attendance
2. Some team would like to draft higher than they are slotted, but doesn’t want to give up anything to move up.
3. Otherwise, all the players are still exactly the same height and (usually) weight at which you last saw them. Which doesn’t really matter that much in the long run.
So, yeah, the Draft-Rater-O-Rator is a little silly. But so is ice cream, and I don’t see that going out of style any time soon.
by PoorDick on Jun 23, 2009 10:08 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
If Hollinger's system does anything . . .
it’s culling the herd. While it doesn’t give you a tremendous indication of you should draft, it does seem to do fairly decent job of identifying players that you shouldn’t draft (e.g. Corey Brewer).
by Sulla on Jun 24, 2009 2:10 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
I don't agree with Hollinger on DeRozan
Amen, soul honky. College stats are pretty ridiculous indicators — and I think that is entirely what Hollinger relies upon. There are a lot of factors that are in play. For example, DeMar DeRozan missed his first 13 three pointers of the season. After finally making one, he went on to shoot around 35% from three for the remainder, including post-season. I don’t know how a G/F that shoots 52% in the Pac-10 as a freshman is a guaranteed bust. Contrary to popular opinion, his makes were not all dunks. Plus, once the kid figured out some things offensively he basically led his team full of cheaters, rappers, and morons to an underdog Pac-10 title, and basically within a few points of knocking off Michigan State. That’s not Gerald Green’s resume.
I like the DeRozan kid — soft spoken, appears to work hard (judged by his improvement during his freshman season), and not a ball hog (which is partly why he only averaged 13 ppg). I don’t think he’s particularly done anything wrong except not dominating 24/7.
Tyreke Evans is a better fit for us — and I hope he falls to us. But if it were between DeRozan and a handful of undersized or unproven point guards that have no guarantee of being better NBA players than Sebastian Telfair, I’d still take DeRozan.
by Bruggie on Jun 22, 2009 8:56 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
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