Not sure if this would help anyone's argument, but BBS used to do a series called "Value of a Draft Pick" which may help address some of this. The most recent one was the Anthony Davis draft. The important bits:
Quote:
To determine the value of a pick, I assigned an overall career ranking based on PER and a *******ized Wages of Wins Win Score and applied it to all the players who have been taken in the draft since 1984. Â I also cut off my evaluation of players after 2008 since since it is hard to judge a career trajectory in three seasons. Finally I jammed those numbers into a simple Grade ranking. Below is what each grade means, and I give an example player:
- N/A – the player never logged an NBA minute. (Tim Pickett, Andrew Betts)
- F – The player never developed and earned only minor garbage time minutes – or was really, really bad. (Hilton Armstrong, Cedric Simmons. Yay 2006 draft!)
- D – A substitute – possibly in the rotation, but a 8th or 9th man at best. (Aaron Gray, Julian Wright)
- C – A fringe starter, 6th-8th man sort. (JR Smith, Jason Smith)
- B – A solid starter (David West, Jamaal Magloire)
- A – A star (Pre-fat Baron Davis, Chris Paul)
The picks fell rather logically into groups based on their average rating so I’ve collated those groups in the below table and then determined the % chance of receiving each classification of player.
Code:Pick(s) “A” “B” “C” “D” “F” “N/A”
1 57% 13% 22% 4% 4% 0%
2-5 34% 23% 24% 13% 5% 1%
6-10 17% 17% 22% 28% 16% 0%
11-18 8% 13% 20% 28% 30% 1%
19-27 5% 8% 20% 31% 32% 3%
28-37 2% 5% 10% 28% 40% 15%
38-60 1% 2% 10% 19% 29% 40%