Friday, June 25, 2010

NBA Draft 2010: NBA Draft grade disparity reveals guessing game

You know guessing who had the best NBA Draft is a subjective process when you have AOL Fanhouse' Tom Ziller giving the Boston Celtics an "A", while The Bleacher Reports' Joe Slowik gives the Celtics a C-minus.

That kind of grading disparity shows that two reasonable people can disagree, but also shows the inexact nature of the NBA Draft or the NFL Draft for that matter.

We really don't know how great a player will be until that person in any sport actually plays the game. Before Le Bron James entered the NBA, he was called "The Golden Child" and "The Chosen One"; the man who would take any team to the NBA Finals. But after failing to reach the NBA Finals for the second year in a row, the man once called King James is now called "Queen James" by some.

It's all a guessing game. In drafting any player, the most likely success comes from picking someone who has enough training to be effective, is from a culture such that he can step in and learn, and has a background that indicates he will not cause trouble and can handle making a lot of money well. That's the template.

It's a template that produces a lot of great players, but even then one can't calculate how a person handles fame. Look at Tiger Woods. His rapid rise gave him the idea that he could do anything and have any woman as long as he could flash the cash. And he did. But it's impacted his game. Being outed for fooling around on his wife a whole bunch of times has changed him into someone who can't win Golf tournaments with the ease he once did.

It's hard to calculate how all of that will impact rookies in any sport. While it's fun to guess, a really good NBA Draft evaluation has to be done with time and research.

Stay tuned.

No comments:

Post a Comment