From college to the NBA: what determines a player’s success and what characteristics are NBA franchises overlooking?

ABSTRACT

Considering NBA players who were drafted between 2006 and 2013, the author analyses the determinants of draft position, playing time and player productivity. By comparing these factors simultaneously, one is able to consider if there are some factors that correlate with players’ draft positions, but fail to correlate with on-court performance. For example, the results reveal that a player’s college turnover rate does not predict his draft position or his playing time in the NBA despite evidence that turnover-prone college players are less effective in the NBA. These results can be used to improve draft-day decisions for NBA executives.

KEYWORDS:

• Basketball
• NBA draft
• sports economics
• labour

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Z2
• L83
• J40
• J31

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ This approach was also utilized by Evans and Pitts (forthcoming) and Berri, Brook, and Fenn (2011).

² The NBAMINUTES variable includes all players in the data set, while NBAWINSHARES includes only players who received NBA playing time during their third season.

³ For thorough analyses on the determinants of draft position, see Evans and Pitts (forthcoming), Berri, Brook, and Fenn (2011) or Berri (2005).

⁴ For a thorough discussion of win shares, visit http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html.

⁵ The number of win shares available for a team is roughly the number of wins it attains in a given season. These wins are divided among players into win shares, based on player performance. Thus, it is necessary to control for a team’s winning percentage since winning teams will naturally distribute more win shares to their players than losing teams.