FanPost

The Draft: A (non) scientific approach

Like many of you, ever since we were locked into the 6th and 11th picks I have been obsessively researching who could fall to us, who would be a good fit, what trades are available, etc.

While doing this, I came across a comment in the fanposts saying something like "Thomas Robinson has a future hall of famer name". This reminded me of perhaps my favorite way of evaluating NBA talent: How good of a name do you have?

Let's find out after the jump

First, we must establish what a NBA superstar name should look / sound like. I am a firm believer that having two first names is a huge push in the right direction (talent is good too, but try to follow me for a second). For example, this is a not-very exhaustive list of players who have two first names that you might recognize:

Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Brandon Roy, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Deron Williams (William counts, don't question me), Ben Wallace, Paul Pierce, Carmelo Anthony, Tony Parker, etc.

So which players in the upcoming lottery have NBA names?

1) Anthony Davis - Talent AND two first names? lay-up

2) Thomas Robinson - The inspiration for this post, and although Robinson isn't a conventional first name, Robinson Cano is a person so I'm counting it.

3) Kendall Marshall - Two very obvious first names, this guy is probably a keeper

4) Jeffery Taylor - Many look at his playing deficiencies and overlook his awesome combination of names

So what other criteria can we use?

The second factor in deciding if your names passes the NBA litmus test is how unique it looks / sounds. Here are some examples:

Shaquille O'neal - Shaq is an easy, short nickname and very unique

Kareem Abdul Jabbar - Ridiculously unique name

Hakeem Olujawon - See Jabbar, Kareem Abdul

Clyde Drexler - Dude has both an X and a Y in his name. Solid production out of two seemingly innocuous names

Larry Bird - The fact that he was good enough to overcome the obvious "Birdman"-type nicknames is a tribute to Larry Legend

Dirk Nowitzki - Pretty good name. Loses points for being normal in his home country

Amare Stoudemire - He has an accent in his name, but other than that one thing it is very unexciting. Much like his career and scoring

Kevin Love - Pretty self explanatory

Kevin Durant - Unique at least. I don't know anyone else named Durant, but if you can come up with some I will be more than willing to edit this (former) Sonic out of my post.

So who in the draft has a name that might fit?

1) Michael Kidd-Gilchrist - Very unique, easy nickname potential with MKG. Wisely added "Kidd" to his name to try and steal away from of Jason Kidd's magic

2) Bradley Beal - Unique last name, mono-syllabic, and has alliteration. Not much to nitpick here.

3) Jeremy Lamb - Risky pick here. Lamb is unique as a name, but not so much as an actual word

4) Perry Jones III - Another risky pick. His name doesn't quite fit into "two-first names" territory, and the "third" gives him uniqueness as there are virtually no other players with it in their names. Ironically, the "third" also inherently makes him non-unique

5) Andre Drummond - Pretty unique name, solid first name. Nicknames revolving around "drum" elevate his name-position quite a bit

So what do you guys think? Do you have any other awesomely accurate ways to evaluate draft talent? Feel free to debate my choices in each category, or give me more / better historical examples