The Odd Phenomenon of the NBA Draft’s Second Overall Pick
The NBA Draft is on the horizon, but I am no NBA scout or even enough of a follower of college hoops to give you my personal opinion on the upcoming draft. However, I am a fan of what happens to players from the moment they’re drafted into the NBA. And what I’ve seemed to randomly notice was how the second overall pick has not always lived up to expectations. Just based on my own stock knowledge, I could tell that it seemed like the Third Overall Pick seemed to perform better. This is seen in recent drafts like 2012 with second pick Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and third pick Bradley Beal, 2014 with Jabari Parker and Joel Embiid, 2017 with Lonzo Ball and Jayson Tatum, and even in 2018 with Marvin Bagley and Luka Doncic. And of course the most memorable version of this phenomenon was in 1984 with Sam Bowie and Michael Jordan.
This is not always the case, as in 2007 with the second pick being Kevin Durant. But there is still enough proof that made me want to take a deeper look.
For this analysis, I decided to look at all the second overall picks within this century, or what are the last 20 years. Obviously these findings may change if we expand the selection, but I do believe this is a good indication of the draft picks per position and how they’re affecting the NBA.
The Second Overall Pick is by no means a bad one. Jason Kidd and Gary Payton are a pair of Hall of Famers drafted in this slot, and the aforementioned Durant will join them once he hangs it up. But the stats definitely back up the idea that the second overall pick hasn’t performed up to the standards of the selection.
I took two key stats: Total Win Shares and Average Win Shares Per 48 of the last 20 second overall picks. Then I got the same stats for the first, third, fourth, and fifth picks. For those who aren’t familiar, A Win Share, according to Basketball Reference, is a player statistic which attempts to divide up credit for team success to the individuals on the team. Because Win Shares is a raw number, Win Shares Per 48 calculates that same impact in a one-game span. There’s a reason why Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, who is the all-time leader in minutes played, is also the all-time leader in Win Shares. On the other hand, Michael Jordan is the all-time leader in Win Shares Per 48.
You can see that of the top 5 draft positions, the second overall pick has the lowest total Win Shares of the last 20 years. The second pick does perform a bit better in Win Shares per 48, but is still behind both the first and third overall pick. Regular Win Shares could be skewed by injuries like that of 2002 second pick Jay Williams, or also because some of the standout younger players like Ja Morant and Brandon Ingram have played significantly less games. Still, those same problems could exist for any draft position. In my opinion, those points only add to this phenomenon.
Now take a closer look at the differences. In terms of total Win Shares, the first pick has 350.4 more total Win Shares in the last twenty years than the 2nd pick. And the third pick actually has 276.1 more win shares than its predecessor. To give perspective to how massive that gap is, Pau Gasol and Carmelo Anthony have the most Win Shares of all third overall picks, combining for 246.4. However, if you remove both of them, the number three pick would still have more win shares than the number two pick.
If analytics are not your cup of tea, then here’s a table of the number of all-stars and All-NBA players of each pick over the last 20 years. Take note that this counts just 1 per player no matter how many all-stars games they’ve made. The second pick has significantly less all-stars and all-NBA players compared to both the first and third picks, and is barely ahead of the fourth and fifth picks. And it’s worth noting that out of the 6 second pick all-stars, 3 of them are only one-time All-Stars as of today.
Now, you might be thinking — Colin, we’re talking about one, two, or three pick position differences. I understand that. But for teams who spend millions of dollars on scouting, is it not odd that they seem to get it wrong at the near top of the draft so many times?
I mean, just look at this table comparing the year by year 2nd and 3rd picks. I didn’t use any more stats for this, and simply my opinion, to choose which player I would take every year. You can pause the video and try this one yourself and tell me how many of each pick you would choose. I had 11 of the last 20 third picks as the clear cut better option. Only 5 times did I choose the second pick outright, and the other 4 were either coinflips or the jury is still out.
Originally published at https://youtube.com/colinsalao on November 15, 2020.
