I looked into this a bit yesterday, and didn't really want to post it in one of the draft threads because
But I thought it was at least worth a discussion.
First off, in order to ask this question I'm going to have to define what a "quality player" from the draft is. Obviously this is a pretty subjective measure. Some might think a quality player means an All-Star, some might think think it means a starter, some might think it means a 7-year rotation player, and some might think it means nothing more than a guy who can give you needed spot minutes for a few years at the league minimum rather than using part of the MLE to sign a free agent who's going to spend most of his time on the bench. That's a wide range.
But given the excitement that we usually see around draft season in the fanbase, I think that we should at least have a moderately high bar - it should really be a guy that the entire fanbase can look back on in 10 years and say, "yeah, that was a pretty good pick". Not to get technical about it (because I didn't) I decided to take a look at a criterion of 10,000 career minutes. Pretty much, if a guy plays 10K minutes in the NBA, he earned them. And, of course, it's a really, really simple criterion for doing an analysis.
To hopefully convince you that 10,000 minutes isn't completely half-baked as a criterion of quality, I'm going to list all of the players the Kings have drafted between 1988 and 2017 (30 years) who either hit the 10K minutes criterion, or who missed it but did beat 4000 minutes (I'd have used 5000, but there were just too many guys between 4000 and 5000 to leave out). Less than 4000 minutes, you don't even get considered.
10,000 minutes ("Quality Player"): De'Aaron Fox, Ben McLemore, Isaiah Thomas, DeMarcus Cousins, Hassan Whiteside, Tyreke Evans, Omri Casspi, Jason Thompson, Spencer Hawes, Francisco Garcia, Kevin Martin, Gerald Wallace, Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Williams, Anthony Johnson, Peja Stojakovic, Corliss Williamson, Brian Grant, Michael Smith, Walt Williams, Randy Brown, Lionel Simmons, Pervis Ellison, Vinny Del Negro (24 players)
4,000-9,999 minutes ("Sorry"): Justin Jackson, Willie Cauley-Stein, Nik Stauskas, Thomas Robinson, Jerome James, Tariq Abdul-Wahad, Tyus Edney, Lawrence Funderburke, Bobby Hurley, Pete Chilcutt, Duane Causwell, Anthony Bonner (12 players)
While there are a few players in the 10,000 minute club that don't exactly roll off the tongue when talking about players we can look back on and say we were happy to draft, for the most part these guys are solid NBA players with at least decent careers. The next list, not so much. WCS was recent so we still might think about him, and Funderburke was there in the early years of the Glory Days, so I'll always have a soft spot for him. To me, this looks like just about as natural of a cutoff as you could find with a nice round number.
So what did I do then? First, I picked the latest draft where basically everybody has sorted into "Made 10K minutes" or "Not gonna make 10K minutes" categories. I chose 2013, a draft whose players have ten years in the league. Technically Michael Carter-Williams is 58 minutes away and could make it, but he only played 44 minutes last season so he's not on pace and he's not under contract, so we'll just call him a no. Then I went back through 20 years worth of draft data from there and sorted players into the following categories: (A) Selected 1-5, (B) Selected 6-10, (C) Selected 11-20, (D) Selected 21-30, (E) Selected 31-45, (F) Selected 46-60. (In a few earlier drafts when there were fewer than 30 NBA teams I adjusted the C/D and E/F midpoints accordingly but kept the first round/second round distinction between D and E because I think the guaranteed first round contract could play a role in minutes allocations.) I also determined whether they were members of the 10,000 Minute Club, AKA "Quality Players". The breakdown of how likely all NBA teams were to draft a Quality Player in the various draft ranges (finally, the meat!) went as follows:
(A) 1-5: 87%
(B) 6-10: 72%
(C) 11-20: 50%
(D) 21-30: 37%
(E) 31-45: 19%
(F) 46-60: 8%
As you can see, the odds of picking up a quality player at any given draft pick are already against you by the time you get to the 20s - a pick just outside of the lottery is already a coin flip. But the Kings aren't even picking that high - in fact we're basically smack-dab in the middle of tiers D, E, and F with our three picks. I know we'd all love to "hit" on all three of our picks, but the raw probability of doing that looks to be between 5 and 6 percent. Not too likely. In fact, we're at about 47% odds (so basically a coin flip) of getting NO quality players assuming we stand pat and draft at #24, #38, and #54.
So, hope for the best, but if things don't turn out in our favor on this one, well, we shouldn't be too surprised.
it's kinda wet blankety.
First off, in order to ask this question I'm going to have to define what a "quality player" from the draft is. Obviously this is a pretty subjective measure. Some might think a quality player means an All-Star, some might think think it means a starter, some might think it means a 7-year rotation player, and some might think it means nothing more than a guy who can give you needed spot minutes for a few years at the league minimum rather than using part of the MLE to sign a free agent who's going to spend most of his time on the bench. That's a wide range.
But given the excitement that we usually see around draft season in the fanbase, I think that we should at least have a moderately high bar - it should really be a guy that the entire fanbase can look back on in 10 years and say, "yeah, that was a pretty good pick". Not to get technical about it (because I didn't) I decided to take a look at a criterion of 10,000 career minutes. Pretty much, if a guy plays 10K minutes in the NBA, he earned them. And, of course, it's a really, really simple criterion for doing an analysis.
To hopefully convince you that 10,000 minutes isn't completely half-baked as a criterion of quality, I'm going to list all of the players the Kings have drafted between 1988 and 2017 (30 years) who either hit the 10K minutes criterion, or who missed it but did beat 4000 minutes (I'd have used 5000, but there were just too many guys between 4000 and 5000 to leave out). Less than 4000 minutes, you don't even get considered.
10,000 minutes ("Quality Player"): De'Aaron Fox, Ben McLemore, Isaiah Thomas, DeMarcus Cousins, Hassan Whiteside, Tyreke Evans, Omri Casspi, Jason Thompson, Spencer Hawes, Francisco Garcia, Kevin Martin, Gerald Wallace, Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Williams, Anthony Johnson, Peja Stojakovic, Corliss Williamson, Brian Grant, Michael Smith, Walt Williams, Randy Brown, Lionel Simmons, Pervis Ellison, Vinny Del Negro (24 players)
4,000-9,999 minutes ("Sorry"): Justin Jackson, Willie Cauley-Stein, Nik Stauskas, Thomas Robinson, Jerome James, Tariq Abdul-Wahad, Tyus Edney, Lawrence Funderburke, Bobby Hurley, Pete Chilcutt, Duane Causwell, Anthony Bonner (12 players)
While there are a few players in the 10,000 minute club that don't exactly roll off the tongue when talking about players we can look back on and say we were happy to draft, for the most part these guys are solid NBA players with at least decent careers. The next list, not so much. WCS was recent so we still might think about him, and Funderburke was there in the early years of the Glory Days, so I'll always have a soft spot for him. To me, this looks like just about as natural of a cutoff as you could find with a nice round number.
So what did I do then? First, I picked the latest draft where basically everybody has sorted into "Made 10K minutes" or "Not gonna make 10K minutes" categories. I chose 2013, a draft whose players have ten years in the league. Technically Michael Carter-Williams is 58 minutes away and could make it, but he only played 44 minutes last season so he's not on pace and he's not under contract, so we'll just call him a no. Then I went back through 20 years worth of draft data from there and sorted players into the following categories: (A) Selected 1-5, (B) Selected 6-10, (C) Selected 11-20, (D) Selected 21-30, (E) Selected 31-45, (F) Selected 46-60. (In a few earlier drafts when there were fewer than 30 NBA teams I adjusted the C/D and E/F midpoints accordingly but kept the first round/second round distinction between D and E because I think the guaranteed first round contract could play a role in minutes allocations.) I also determined whether they were members of the 10,000 Minute Club, AKA "Quality Players". The breakdown of how likely all NBA teams were to draft a Quality Player in the various draft ranges (finally, the meat!) went as follows:
(A) 1-5: 87%
(B) 6-10: 72%
(C) 11-20: 50%
(D) 21-30: 37%
(E) 31-45: 19%
(F) 46-60: 8%
As you can see, the odds of picking up a quality player at any given draft pick are already against you by the time you get to the 20s - a pick just outside of the lottery is already a coin flip. But the Kings aren't even picking that high - in fact we're basically smack-dab in the middle of tiers D, E, and F with our three picks. I know we'd all love to "hit" on all three of our picks, but the raw probability of doing that looks to be between 5 and 6 percent. Not too likely. In fact, we're at about 47% odds (so basically a coin flip) of getting NO quality players assuming we stand pat and draft at #24, #38, and #54.
So, hope for the best, but if things don't turn out in our favor on this one, well, we shouldn't be too surprised.