Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread

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#251      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
there were a lot more busts from high schools so essentially NBA raised the age limit to protect itself.
Total myth. High school draftees were superior to their college counterparts by every conceivable metric.

It was precisely teams realizing the value of HS players that caused more and more of them to get picked. The league wasn't as interested in player development in those days, and the union saw those players as taking up roster space from paid-their-dues veterans, so the two sides could agree to make the change in the 2005 CBA.

Both parties look at the issue differently now, so changing back becomes an agreeable issue for the next CBA.
 
#253      

sacraig

The desert
Emoni Bates travelling with small arms on and off the court.
Animated GIF
 
#256      
Total myth. High school draftees were superior to their college counterparts by every conceivable metric.

It was precisely teams realizing the value of HS players that caused more and more of them to get picked. The league wasn't as interested in player development in those days, and the union saw those players as taking up roster space from paid-their-dues veterans, so the two sides could agree to make the change in the 2005 CBA.

Both parties look at the issue differently now, so changing back becomes an agreeable issue for the next CBA.
Just curious if you looked at the list of 41 HS draftees before posting this. 10 all stars and tons of busts in my opinion. Bust of course is subjective.
 
#257      
The NBA just needs to develop rules with the NCAA that are similar to Baseball or Hockey. Baseball allows you to be drafted, but you can still not sign and instead go to college (don’t like the team that drafted you or just don’t want to go pro yet or whatever reason). The rule used to be if you went D1 you had to do 3 years of college, but if you went JUCO you only had to have 1 year of college. The team loses your draft rights though, so I can see why the NBA may not like this model as much.

In hockey, you can be drafted but still go to college. The team retains your rights for like 3 or 4 years. I’m too lazy to Google it right now. I can see the NBA finding a model like this advantageous.

I think the NBA might like a happy middle ground that allows players to be drafted, but can still opt out and go to school. Team retains draft rights for X amount of time (and the rights could be traded).
 
#258      
Total myth. High school draftees were superior to their college counterparts by every conceivable metric.

It was precisely teams realizing the value of HS players that caused more and more of them to get picked. The league wasn't as interested in player development in those days, and the union saw those players as taking up roster space from paid-their-dues veterans, so the two sides could agree to make the change in the 2005 CBA.

Both parties look at the issue differently now, so changing back becomes an agreeable issue for the next CBA.
I wonder if success rate is more by position. I can see guards and wings being good but bigs struggling. Especially in the era kids were going straight from HS when the nba was still a bit of a pound it inside game.

Possible the failure of Kwame Brown weighs too strongly on my mind, but in general I think more bigs flame out anyway, so it would be interesting to see if that held to HS draftees.
 
#259      
Different kids are different, but Emoni Bates seems like an example of a guy who might have hugely benefitted from being in a professional environment at a younger age the way European players (in both basketball and other sports) are.

Because an NBA will reap the financial benefit of a player becoming a star, they have the financial incentive to see them develop positively. And in today's NBA there is a well developed high quality D-League system to be a part of that process now.

The truth is high school players going straight to the NBA was, generally speaking, a colossal success. And the counterexamples are generally players who were not actually drafted that highly and took that option due to NCAA eligibility issues, invariably a symptom of other problems. And then they faced an NBA at that time that wasn't really well prepared to aid in the professional development of teenagers who weren't good enough at basketball yet to at least be practicing and competing with NBA guys.

There really are remarkably few guys who didn't at a minimum have a long career though. And then Kobe, Lebron and KG are three of maybe the 15 best players ever?
Being liberal with the term successful, I count 17/41 players I would say worked out. A 41% hit rate. I would argue the sample size is pretty small, but I think I would struggle to argue HS players are somehow less risky or less advantageous to draft than overseas players. Coaches struggle even evaluating overseas players when it comes to college recruiting. Brad Few and Tommy Lloyd are two who have done it really well over a number of years.
 
#260      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
Just curious if you looked at the list of 41 HS draftees before posting this. 10 all stars and tons of busts in my opinion. Bust of course is subjective.
I wonder if success rate is more by position. I can see guards and wings being good but bigs struggling. Especially in the era kids were going straight from HS when the nba was still a bit of a pound it inside game.

Possible the failure of Kwame Brown weighs too strongly on my mind, but in general I think more bigs flame out anyway, so it would be interesting to see if that held to HS draftees.
Being liberal with the term successful, I count 17/41 players I would say worked out. A 41% hit rate. I would argue the sample size is pretty small, but I think I would struggle to argue HS players are somehow less risky or less advantageous to draft than overseas players. Coaches struggle even evaluating overseas players when it comes to college recruiting. Brad Few and Tommy Lloyd are two who have done it really well over a number of years.

That list is exactly what I looked at, and the question isn't whether every HS player lived up to their draft hype, it's whether they were better on average than college draftees (or international players), and it's not even close.

And to the narrative of unready teenagers getting chewed up and spat out by the league, even someone like Kwame Brown played 600+ games over a 12 year career. There are surprisingly few true Robert Swift-style flameouts. Whereas four year college guys do that every year.

2004 saw 8 HS guys go in the first round, the most ever. Swift was the only one to have less than a 10-year career. Whereas college seniors Luke Jackson and Rafael Araujo, both taken in the top 10, were out of the league in 4 years, as were two other college guys, Swift, and a couple of Euros from that first round.

That was the draft where it was a big shock, and regarded by a mistake by many analysts at the time, that the Magic took Dwight Howard over Emeka Okafor. The conventional wisdom was simply wrong, the HS kids were way, way better. Which shouldn't be that surprising, it was for the most part the tippy-top recruits, it was selecting from a stronger talent pool than college players in that era.
 
#261      
Just curious if you looked at the list of 41 HS draftees before posting this. 10 all stars and tons of busts in my opinion. Bust of course is subjective.
HS draftee failure rate is not necessarily higher than that of college players. (It is subjective though.) However, since it is a big step up from HS to College games, it helps a lot to screen out the lemons by just adding one more year. The obvious tradeoff is delaying a year of good players into the league so I think that's the reason they want to roll back the age limit.
 
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#263      

Joel Goodson

respect my decision™
Mind boggling that some fans question why we're pursuing a kid who has a Curbelo-like ability to get to wherever he wants to go, a much better idea of risk-to-reward and... (wait for it) is a VG to flippin' great shooter. I mean, who would want that?
 
#264      
Just curious if you looked at the list of 41 HS draftees before posting this. 10 all stars and tons of busts in my opinion. Bust of course is subjective.
I think both of you are right....

Top 10-15 picks are a pretty high success rate for the guys coming straight out of HS. After that things don't look so great.
 
#265      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
I think both of you are right....

Top 10-15 picks are a pretty high success rate for the guys coming straight out of HS. After that things don't look so great.
Jermaine O'Neal, Al Harrington, Rashard Lewis, Kendrick Perkins, JR Smith, Monta Ellis, Lou Williams, these are really good players!

And even guys that scan as busts like Gerald Green and Dorell Wright had substantial careers and moments of being productive, which the Rashad McCants and Ike Diogu's of the world drafted ahead of them absolutely did not.

The factor we're not mentioning here is that while these guys went on to good careers, most of them were non-factors as rookies and also took a few years to get going, in many cases on their second team by the time they reached their peak. That impacted both the union perception that these guys were taking spots away from more deserving veterans (as rookies they were, no question) and the league perception that they'd be better off forcing them through college for a year to get them more ready.

When they let HS players back in all but the very best and most ready of them will be spending substantial time in the D-League playing a lot against good adult competition as their full time profession with team-affiliated coaches committed to their development. That's gonna work out well for everybody.
 
#270      
Just curious if you looked at the list of 41 HS draftees before posting this. 10 all stars and tons of busts in my opinion. Bust of course is subjective.
Ok, but is that success rate markedly different than their college counterparts? It seems like it's better.

Lottery picks have a 25% all star rate, and a decent chunk of those HS draftees were not lottery picks (non-lottery picks come in at 4%).

From 2020: https://medium.com/@burakcankoc/wha...-an-all-star-for-each-draft-pick-2d113d6b82e5
 
#271      
Maybe the NBA should scout better
If they know better, Ayo should have been a first rounder. It is clear they mostly look at the potential. That generates lots of great players at high picks but there is always a good degree of risk to that approach. That is why the "one-year audition" is not necessarily a terrible approach even though some players obviously do not need that audition.
 
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#272      
It is clear they mostly look at the potential.

It probably makes more sense from an economic viewpoint. If you take a chance on high potential players, you might get more failures, but better payouts overall. A proven player costs full market price, whereas in the draft, you can look for the best risk/reward to capture the portion of their career where they're on an upward trend as a relative bargain.
 
#273      
It probably makes more sense from an economic viewpoint. If you take a chance on high potential players, you might get more failures, but better payouts overall. A proven player costs full market price, whereas in the draft, you can look for the best risk/reward to capture the portion of their career where they're on an upward trend as a relative bargain.
I don't disagree with you. I think a year in college helps out your chances by a lot though. At least you would get a better picture on the work ethic part.
 
#275      

IlliniwekKDR

Colorado Springs, CO
This needs to be a separate thread :p but I will weigh in.

To me the biggest thing is the lost opportunities for the HS kids that flame out or don't get drafted where they expected. They lose out on the chance for NIL, an education, the college experience, and being able to raise their draft stock in college. For those reasons (except NIL), I was all in on the one and done rule when it came about. I also wanted to have more talented kids come in through college, as I haven't watched an NBA game in probably 25 years. I see now where, at least I feel, it hurts the college game as more stars of the game leave after 1 year. So I'm all for them changing it back, but I like the suggestions I've seen where it looks more like the baseball or hockey model and the students have a chance to go to college if they don't like where they end up.
 
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