I did a little playful experiment about drafting between 8-10 (our pick upside), 11-13 (our pick downside and Minny pick upside) and 14-16 (Minny pick downside).
Between 1973-2022, 150 players were selected in each of those groups.
Pick range | HOFers | Other min All-NBA | Other min All-Star | Total star players | Chance of landing a star |
8-10 | 4 (Parish, Sikma, McGrady, Pierce) | 15 | 13 | 32 | 21.3% |
11-13 | 4 (Wilkes, Malone, Miller, Kobe) | 5 | 14 | 23 | 15.3% |
14-16 | 4 (Drexler, Stockton, Hardaway, Nash) | 6 | 6 | 16 | 10.7% |
Few interesting observations from that dataset:
- Between 2003 and 2012 a total of 6 All-NBA (Bynum, Noah, DeRozan, George, Walker, Drummond) and 3 All-Stars (Iguodala, Lopez, Hayward) were selected in #8-10... but none have been selected in that range since
- In the last 10 years, #11-13 has been the best (1 All-NBA in Booker and 5 All-Stars in Lavine, Sabonis, Mitchell, SGA, Haliburton)... but only 1 All-NBA (Klay) and 0 All-stars were selected #11-13 in 2003-2012
Had I used the 7-9, 10-12, 13-15 ranges I think the percentages tilt upwards a lot since #7 looked actually pretty strong compared to #10 and for some weird reason #16 seemed pretty good historically.
At the top of the draft (1-3) there are 21 HOF, 37 other All-NBA players and 21 additional All-Stars in that same timeframe... so the best odds of landing a star are natrually in that group with 52.7%. Still a cointoss though.