Ed: bumped to front page

My dad and I have been working on developing some tools for evaluating potential draft picks, and projecting player’s future performance. It is our intention to start a blog/website and do articles on a number of the statistical studies we do. We have been working on this for several months, and we are at the point where we have our first meaningful results, so we decided we would post it here, and then when we have the website up and running I will post a link here at Blazer’s Edge. I am going to make three posts here to Blazer’s Edge, one each for Damian Lillard, Meyers Leonard, and Will Barton.

Click through to read the analysis.

One of the things that we have seen a lot this year, as well as in years past, is a desire and effort to find comparable’s (comps) for rookies, and young players. All during the run-up to the draft, during the draft, and after the draft there were dozens and dozens of attempts to find good comps for the players we drafted. Our goal with this effort is to create a methodology that can accurately describe and understand a player as holistically as possible, and then using as much data as is available and relevant about a given player, find the players that are the most similar.

Similarity can be viewed a number of different ways, and our approach is to try and create the most thorough measurement of a player we can, using the data that is available. This measurement of the player should consider their statistical performances in college, as well as the player’s physical attributes, and athleticism. The tool we have developed considers 48 different statistical measurements of a players college performance, expressed as averages and ratios, and also 22 measurements of a players length/athleticism/physical attributes, expressed as raw number, ratios, and also these measurements relative to a standard.

In the past week Nick Van Excellent posted an interesting article about team size. First off Nick, I loved what you did with the graphing, it was an excellent visual way to visualize the team as a whole, or players relative to a group. Could you let me know how you did that, as we would like to incorporate that type of graphic into our website. Nick’s post is somewhat like what we want to do, but it is our intention to go much further. Special thanks to Draftexpress.com, http://www.draftexpress.com/stats.php, and basketball-reference.com, http://www.basketball-reference.com/ for supplying data.

Will Barton Comparable’s and Predicted Performance

There are a wide range of opinions considering Will Barton. Some say he should have been drafted as high as seventh while others offer a best case scenario of Manny Harris (played a total of 80 games). This is our attempt at answering the questions, “who is Will Barton?” and “who will he become?”

Physical Attributes, Length and Athleticism

Here are Will Barton’s raw measurements of his physical attributes, length, and athleticism.

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To put that within a scale of 1708 players in the combine list at Draftexpress.com, http://www.draftexpress.com/nba-pre-draft-measurements/, here is where Will Barton ranks on a relative basis.

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How do some of the various attributes compare to someone of similar height and weight?

Where does that place him relative to other players?

What are the main takeaways regarding Will Barton’s physical attributes, length, and athleticism? For a player of Will Barton’s height and weight he can best be described as a very poor athlete by NBA standards!! Will Barton is not a well-proportioned athlete for a player of his height, he is 44 pounds lighter than an average player of his height. It is expected that a player 6-6 and 174 pounds should be able to do 6 bench press reps and he could not do even 1. His reach is about ¼” shorter than expected, his vertical is 1” less than expected, his ¾ court sprint time was 0.3 seconds slower than expected, or 9% slower. His agility time was 1.15 seconds less than expected, 10% slower. To put his speed and agility in perspective, only one player at the NBA combine was slower in the agility drill, and that was Jared Sullinger. Meyers Leonard was able to do this drill in 1.15 seconds faster. Yes that’s correct, Meyers Leonard is as agile as an average NBA player of 6-6 and 174. The only players slower than Will Barton in the sprint were Sullinger and Andrew Nicholson. There is no question that Will Barton dreadful showing at the combine explains why he slide from an early 20’s projection to a mid-second round pick.

Which NBA players, or draftees are most similar to Will Barton with regards to physical attributes, length, and athleticism? Here is a list of 16 of the most similar (some fringe NBA players, Euro’s, and undrafted or non-NBA players have been excluded). Note that many of these players comp Will Barton very well in Physical Attributes, and Length, but in Athleticism the comps drop of dramatically. Consider Rudy Fernandez; Physical Attributes is 95.64% similar, but Athleticism is only 79.85%. Marquis Danials; Physical Attributes is 95.88% similar, and Strength and Athleticism is only 81.93%.

Top NCAA single season statistical comps to Will Barton’s Sophomore season 2011-12

Here is a list of a number of the NCAA seasons with the highest statistical similarity to Will Barton’s sophomore season. This has been filtered for players who didn’t play in the NBA, weren’t drafted, played at small programs and were never perceived to be significant prospects, or were at best fringe NBA players.

From this list we have come up with the following list of the best comps for Will Barton.

Here is a statistical comparison between all these players while in college. As you can see there is a very high degree of similarity between Barton and each of these players.

We believe that since Will Barton is such a poor athlete it is difficult to find great comps both physically and athletically. Barton plays very similar to underwhelming athletes in Jared Dudley and Ryan Gomes, but he doesn’t comp them all that well athletically.

From the best comparable’s list above we comfortable making the following statements about the best comps for Will Barton.

Best Case - Josh Childress, Marquis Daniels

Worst Case - Sam Young, Rawle Marshall

Fair Comps - Ryan Gomes, Craig Smith

Best Comps - Jared Dudley, Sam Young

Here are our projections for Will Barton’s first 3 years in the NBA

We are projecting Will Barton to play 16 minutes per game as a rookie, 18 in his second year, and 20 in his third, and this is consistent with the minutes played by his best comps. That means that we project Barton to score 6 ppg, and get 3 rbs per game in his rookie year.

So who is Will Barton? He is a poor athlete, and projects to be mediocre in virtually every aspect in the NBA. While it is possible that Will Barton will surprise us and become a player on par with Marquis Daniels or Josh Childress, we suspect that he will end up much closer to Jared Dudley and Sam Young. This doesn’t mean he is a bad pick. Consider Jared Dudley. Jared Dudley has played in 370 career games, started in 97, produced a total of 21.7 wins, and averaged .120 WS/48 throughout his career and he is only 26 years old! To put this in perspective there are only 6 players drafted in the second round of the 2007 draft that have played in more than 200 games. People who rely solely on statistics see him as a lottery pick, while others who prioritize athletics see him as a flop. Ultimately Will Barton will not make the Blazers contenders next year or any year. He has the chance of being a good role player, which is a serious value, especially with the 40th pick.