With the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors engaged in an epic showdown in the NBA Finals, 28 other teams are already looking ahead to next season.
Yep, just like in high school, for those who dropped out before Finals, there’s NBA Summer School. Sure, no one really wants to be there, but, if you have dreams and aspirations of grandeur, you better take every chance you have to get a head start on the upcoming season.
With that in mind, let’s jump right into the latest installment of the beloved summertime series: Blazers Summer School. Over the course of the summer, this series will be taking a look at a lot of the key storylines surrounding the Portland Trail Blazers this offseason and how they might go about navigating them as they attempt to move towards the head of the NBA class.
This week’s lesson:
History 323 – 23rd Picks of the NBA Draft (1980-2014)
With the Portland set to select at the 23rd position in the upcoming NBA Draft, it’s high time to start breaking down their many options at that pick. While everybody and their mother is doing mock drafts and player profiles this time of year, we’re going to switch things up a bit here at Blazer Summer School and look at it from a more historical angle.
Sure, we could do your classic “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” analysis of the 23rd pick, but, again, what does that really tell us? Without even looking at the list, I can tell you that it’s a total mixed bag. Some booms, some busts, some decent NBA players. Just like almost every non-lottery 1st round slot.
So, for this class, I figured we’d try something a little different. Let’s take a journey through the annals of time to break down those historical picks, and see if maybe we can find a pattern or two.
To start, I took the liberty of breaking down a list of every 23rd draft pick since 1980, placing them into four general categories: Busts, Roster Players, Rotation Players, and Stars. Busts were any player who was out of the league within 4 years. Roster Player are those who hung around rosters for more than a couple years, but, never had a major impact in the league. Rotation Players were those who started or played major roles in the league. And finally, Stars were defined as anyone who made an All-Star, All-NBA, or All-Defensive team during their career.
From there, I did some incredibly detailed and painstaking analysis (aka I made a spreadsheet) to see if I could find any sorts of patterns that might give some insight as to what types of players have historically succeeded from the position that the Blazers are selecting at in this year’s draft.
This is all admittedly very rudimentary, but, remember: this is summer school. We’re not trying to solve the world’s problems. We just want to have some fun, and maybe learn a little something along the way.
So, let’s get to the good stuff:
Class
The first thing that stands out when analyzing players by class were the young guys. Players who came straight out of high school, or after their freshman or sophomore season were by far the most successful. Over half the players in this group turned into Rotation Players, with zero (that’s right, zero) flat out Busts. This group includes some solid to very good NBA contributors such as Bobby Jackson (So), Kosta Koufos (Fr) and DeShawn Stevenson (HS).
In contrast every single one of the Busts came from seniors (8 of 18) and Foreign prospects (2 of 4). This group includes some NBA luminaries like Sergei Monia, Jeryl Sasser and Roy Marble. Oh, and something called Efthimis Rentzias. Not even Google could figure out what that is.
That being said, it wasn’t that cut and dry, as the only two Stars of the bunch were four-year players AC Green and Tayshaun Prince. More on that later.
Age
As you would expect, age generally correlated very similarly to class. The kicker is that it actually skewed even younger. Yes, players aged 18 or 19 proved to be a surprisingly safe bet, with no Busts among the five players selected at that age.
Players like Wilson Chandler and Travis Outlaw joined the likes of Koufos and Stevenson in this group of teenage draft picks. While none of the players became Stars, all were contributors on some level, which is really what you’re hoping for when selecting in the late first round.
Older players, on the other hand, proved to be much more “boom or bust” with only 3 of 24 (!) players 21 or older becoming more than just Roster Players. Of course, those three were arguably the best of the entire bunch, with 2002-03 NBA Sixth Man of the Year Bobby Jackson joining Green and Prince as players who could legally celebrate draft night at their favorite local watering hole.
Position
While age and class showed definitive trends, there didn’t seem to be much correlation between a player’s position (Point, Wing or Big) and their NBA success. Point guard’s faired a touch better than their larger counterparts, with only one bust (Carl Nicks, way back in 1980). Of course, it’s surprisingly been 25 years since the last point guard was taken at #23 (Tyronn Lue in 1990), so, it’s hard to put much faith in this data set.
Pre-NBA Competition
Not surprisingly, over half the players taken 23rd attended schools from the five “power conferences” (Pac 12, Big East, Big East, ACC and SEC). While there was nothing overly definitive, the big boys did seem to fair a touch better than their smaller school and foreign counterparts, including the two Stars. Still, this probably shouldn’t weigh too heavily into draft consideration.
If anything, high school players faired the best of the bunch, with both players (Outlaw and Stevenson) proving to be solid late first round picks. Of course, that’s a tiny sample size and probably relates more to their relative age than their previous competition.
There have been four players taken at #23 out of foreign leagues, and the results have been mixed, to put it nicely. Nikola Mirotic (drafted in 2011, but just making his debut this past season) seems to be a great pick, but other than that, foreign players haven’t fared too well at this spot. The previously mentioned Monia and Rentzias were total busts, while Omri Casspi has had a mostly unremarkable stateside career.
All-Americans
This is where things get interesting. There have only been four AP All-Americans drafted at #23, but they accounted for arguably the three best players drafted at this position: AC Green, Tayshaun Prince and Bobby Jackson. The 4th was two time All-American “Send it in” Jerome Lane, famous for his one-handed, backboard shattering dunk in 1988. However, he never really found a place in the league. (Although, he did go on to star in the CBA, for whatever that’s worth!)
While it’s clearly a small sample size, with only four such instances over 35 years, it’s hard to ignore the success of All-American’s who maybe get overlooked for the youngsters with that oh-so-tantalizing “tremendous upside potential.”
We’d also be remiss to mention that while Mirotic wasn’t technically an All-American (or even a regular American!), he was MVP of what is considered to be the second best basketball league in the world, the Spanish ACB league. So, you could definitely make the argument that he fits into this discussion of decorated players who slipped farther in the draft than their on-court production would suggest they should.
Conclusion
OK, class. So, what did we learn from this little jaunt through history?
I think there were two major takeaways. First, if an AP All-American slips to you at #23, you should probably take them. That’s your best chance at finding a high-level impact player. These are typically players that have incredible basketball ability, but, may not have the athletic pedigree to be a top 10 selection.
Yet, looking back on things, it seems quite logical that if they were able to dominate on the collegiate level, they probably have the talent, work ethic and basketball IQ to find success at the next level. It probably doesn’t hurt to have the motivation of 22 other teams passing them by, either.
With that in mind, AP All-Americans Delon Wright, Jerian Grant, and Rakeem Christmas are all projected to go in the late 1st or early 2nd round. It seems like it might be a good idea to give these guys a strong look when the Blazers are on the clock.
Absent an All-American with something to prove sitting there, there is but one strategy: go young. Real young. Remember that guy with “tremendous upside potential” we were joking about a few paragraphs back? Yeah, draft that guy. Swing for the fences with the upside, because, even though it might seem like a risk, history has proven that it’s a much safer gamble than you think.
So if the All-Americans above don’t float your boat, turn your attention to baby ballers like Kelly Oubre, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Tyus Jones or Rashad Vaughn. While odds are somewhat slim that they turn into an All-Star, they’re likely to at least provide the kind of roster depth that the Blazers could sorely use.
All that being said, there is but one certainty that should be taken from this historical class: Don’t ever, under any circumstances, draft anyone named Efthimis.