Positive Manny Feedback at ESPN
I know the board generally dislikes links to ESPN Insider material. Sorry for that.
For those who can't view: Chad Ford breaks down how some NBA teams rely heavily on statistical models to evaluate player value, and shares the results of three NBA teams' statistical models for the upcoming draft class.
Of relevance to this board, he states that one of the three teams, based on its statistical model, had Manny Harris in its top 10. (!!)
Later in the article Ford also mentions that Manny has looked good in workouts and has generated some buzz.
Even if 33% of the league has Manny somewhere in their top 10, he's a holy lock to go undrafted. There are only two rounds in the NBA draft (60 players). So unless Manny features in the top 1-4 for a non-lottery team--you have to assume that this evaluation is not including the likes of John Wall, Evan Turner, and the other high-draft locks in the top 10--he's not getting anywhere near the draft board.
Even if 33% of the league has Manny somewhere in their top 10, he's a holy lock to go undrafted.
Can you explain the logic to me on this? I would think that if 33% of NBA teams have him in the top 10, he's a holy lock to get drafted.
I think what you meant to say was something like "even if 1/3rd of teams polled have him in the top 10, that's still only one team and not indicative of the entire NBA (or 33% of all teams)".
I think what he means is that chances are that even if he's in the top ten of 1/3 of the teams in the NBA, since only 60 guys are drafted, he still won't get drafted. All those teams would have to have all of their other higher choices picked already to decide on Harris, and not every team is going to have the same top 10.
OK I still don't follow that logic at all.
Not looking at the NBA draft order, let's assume all teams have both first round and second round picks. 30 teams x 2 rounds = 60 picks (as you had mentioned).
1/3 of teams rank Manny in top 10 overall. That's 10 teams.
10 teams, picking twice - even if they have screwy rankings - Manny is GUARANTEED to be drafted. Just do the math.
30*10 = 300. So without overlap in the Top 10 lists, there would be 300 people on said lists. If 1/3 have Harris in the top 10, that's not guarantee he'd be drafted, even with considerable overlap. (I'm assuming he'd be ranked more towards the 9-10 spot on people's lists...)
We should probably get the Mathlete in here to take a look, but I think you're right that the chances he doesn't get drafted in that situation is VERY small, just not zero.
You've got to be right on this. Just some things to add:
- If 1/3rd of teams have Manny, that's 10 teams.
- 10 top ten lists with the max possible of 9 different players (Manny is the same in all of them)
- 10 lists x 9 players = 90 players
- 90 players outside of Manny for 20 draft slots
So that's his worse case. 22% chance of getting drafted. And that's assuming ALL top ten teams have an ENTIRELY different top 10. Which, by all things science, is f'ing impossible.
Of course this is all based on 1 f'ing team having him in their top 10 and then extrapolating that to the entire NBA. Logical? Yes. Likely? Probably not.
You are still assuming that the 1 out of 3 teams listed above can be extrapolated to 10 out of 30 teams. Worst case is that that team is the only one that has him in their top 10.
he's a holy lock to go undrafted
become
that's not guarantee he'd be drafted
You are still defending IM4UMich's opinion, right?
I got lost in my words. My first post was just to explain how I understood IM4UMich's post. The second was when I finally got around to thinking about it myself. If he's in 1/3 of NBA teams' top 10 lists, I think he'd have a very small chance of being undrafted.
Uh, the overlap is going to be a HELL of a lot higher than you're giving it credit for. I would guess that nearly every single NBA team has at least 4 guys in common.
For example, John Wall and Evan Turner are holy locks to be on nearly every single list. A few guys (i.e. DeMarcus Cousins) are probably on well over half of the lists.
He's not guaranteed anything. If 30 teams each have 10 different players in their top 10, that means 300 players are on lists and only 20% of those players get drafted.
The idea that 30 teams each have 10 different players in their top 10 is ridiculous. There are probably four to five players that are on every single team's top ten. John Wall isn't going to be #18 on anyone's list.
I know that. I'm just trying to disprove any idea that Manny is guaranteed a thing. Even if 5 players make everyone's list, that still means that about 40% of the players will be picked.
In that the players ranked 6-10 would be completely and wholly different from team to team, which is again ridiculous.
Without doing any sort of statistical analysis, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the total number of players who are in any GM's top ten is far, far closer to 30 than it is to 300. There is going to be an incredible amount of overlap in these rankings.
I am not assuming anything that isn't already being assumed. Beavis makes the fuzzy assumption that teams will have near identical top 10 lists. Based on that he is saying that Manny Harris is guaranteed a spot in the draft. That's not true.
Guaranteed means that in all possible scenarios (assuming that the GMs pick the highest rated player on their lists) Manny Harris is picked by a team. The only way he would be guaranteed given those circumstances is if he was rated 1 or 2 on at least one list. The fact that I can come up with more independent scenarios where he does not get picked than he does get picked should tell you that he is not guaranteed anything.
Honestly, the fact he is in the top 10 on a list is a very good sign he will get picked up, but not a guarantee.
Beavis was exagerating to emphasize that there is a greater probability that Manny gets drafted than goes undrafted, based on that 33% number that was thrown out by IM4UMich........
Greater probability and guarantee are not the same. That's all I'm saying. I don't disagree that there is a very good chance for him to get picked, but saying that it's a guarantee is incorrect. Even his math with his assumptions above shows it's not guaranteed.
Beavis is not guaranteeing anything. He's saying that in this hypothetical 33% scenerio created by IM4UMIch, that Manny would virtually be a lock to get drafted. I don't think we can argue with his logic.
Realistically, is Manny in the top 10 list for 1/3 of the NBA teams? No; so this scenerio will never get played out.
But in what round? The second round doesn't come with guaranteed contracts. I thought that was the original point everyone got side-tracked about.
so you didn't read the article. That's fine. But there is absolutely nothing to indicate in the OP's language that Turner and Wall are excluded from the top ten. And the article itself is very clear that "top ten" includes lottery picks.
The main takeaway is that one "stat-head GM" ranked Manny Harris in his overall top ten (which included every available player), and the conclusion that IF that GM has two picks and IF it's a fair assumption that 1/3 of all GMs has Manny Harris in his overall top ten THEN Manny Harris is a holy lock to be drafted is correct.
Huh? As Tebow showed us, all it takes is one. If 1/3 of the league thinks your top 10, you'll get drafted.
I'm trying to comb through my non-existent NBA knowledge and remember which teams are heavily statistics based. I think that the Suns, Rockets and Hornets are teams that focus extensively on advanced statistics for player development. Any one of those teams would probably be good for Manny (minus maybe the Hornets). Of course, this is mostly me talking out of my ass becaue I know next to nothing about the NBA.
Those teams would be bad for Manny, because they'd see that his impressive scoring statistics were built on the basis of a ton of usage, rather than individual offensive efficiency.
That's why I'm surprised one of the GM Stats geeks has him ranked so hi. Looking at who is picking in the 2nd round and which teams are stats heavy I see Portland at 44 as a possible fit. Maybe they see Manny as a Brandon Roy lite or something. The Pacers and the Mavs also seem like good fits from teams that are pretty stats heavy.
I just read this and came here to post it as well - so +1 to you sir.
I had posted previously about Hollinger's PER ranking having Manny in the top 20. And now based on stats, one team has him in the top 10? That's great news for Manny.
Of course the argument of many is that he doesn't pass the "eye test".
It will be interesting to see if stats win out on draft night - it would be crazy to see Manny go in the top 20, but based on these findings - it's not impossible.
Every team in the NBA pretty much will have the same top picks .. they might have a few different ones thrown in but usually at the end of the first round everyones top ten picks are mostly gone .. so the fact that manny is on more than 1 teams top ten picks is actaully very good for him because chances are he will go middle of the second round.
the whole 30*10 is way off because most teams will have similar lists because the talent they want is all the same ..
Every team in the NBA pretty much will have the same top picks
This is almost certainly false. Teams likely don't build their lists of prospects off of the entire pool of players. That's a fools game and a waste of time because the Lakers and Cavaliers and Celtics know damned well they're not drafting John Wall. There's absolutely no reason to include him on your list.
These top 10 lists would cease to have any meaning at all--and given that they have pretty little meaning right now as is, that's saying something--if teams all included the top 10 prospects in the draft.
well yeah but that not who i'm talking about . when i say they all will have the same top picks what i am trying to say is all the picks that come after the john wall type picks because when you are at the draft only a certain amount of prospects are coming out that are great . and to think each team would pick up on those same players is dumb . All the teams are going to be looking at the same people saying hey there is a great chance i'm going get this guy think no one else would think about picking him but 9 time outta 10 everyone else is thinking the same thing .. there is a reason that these people are the best of the best and to think each team isn't trying to get the best 15-60 is false .. Because after that 15 pick each pick comes as a guess and no one know who is going to get picked so they have to put players on that they think they may get and thats why i said they will have a lot of the same picks
Every single team has a draft board that goes from 1 to probably 60 or 100 picks. If teams don't do their homework then they wouldn't know what to do if say the Lakers were offered the #2 pick for Andrew Bynum. If they just evaluated picks they expected to be there when they picked at 30 they would be completely unprepared for trading up or trading down.
What you are saying to common knowledge . ya they all have top 60 picks but all we are looking at is top 10 because that is what manny is in . What i am trying to say is every team has a very generic top 10 . why because top tier tallent is wanted by all teams and the fact is there isn't a ton of people to call top tier . because of this each team will have similar top 10 picks . Yes people like Wall will not be on the Celtics list but then again say a Stanley Robinson, Dexter Pittman, Larry Sanders, and others will be on more than 1 top ten board which mean manny will keep moving up .. and that is why it is likely he will be drafter since he is in 1/3 of the teams top 10 picks
I couldn't completely understand your ramble but Yes, Wall will be on the Celtics board. On with a bullet at #1 just like everyone else's board. I posted something much longer below but the gist of it is that Manny is likely not in anyone's top ten (even if he is in their statistical top ten) but some teams may see him as a sleeper (or at least want to take a closer look at him) if their adv stats evaluation is telling them something their scouting department is not.
We can say with near certainty that Manny is not a lottery pick, leaving 45 players left to get drafted. If we assume that even 33% of the teams in the league have him somewhere in their top 10--a specious statement, to say the least, given that a) being in the top 10 could mean, ya know, 10th and b) the three teams Ford breaks down is by no means an adequate sample size to apply to the whole league, but we're being optimistic for Manny's sake--it's a toss up.
Let's say, hypothetically, that Manny is #5 on 1/3 of the team's top 10s (put him dead in the middle of their lists for an overly optimistic percentage of the league). That's 40 "players". Take into consideration the fact that there's probably a lot of overlap between the team's respective lists and let's estimate that there's 15 players that Manny is considered amonst as reasonable draft prospects. So those 15 players are all in consideration for the 1/3 of the final 45 spots left in the draft (i.e., 15 spots).
So now you'll look at that and think, 15 players, 15 spots, he's likely to get drafted. But realistically, he could either be on far more or far less people's top 10 lists. And given what we know of Manny and his draft potential (the "eye test" mentioned above; an average sized, moderately athletic shooting guard without an outside shot), logic leads us to say that's probably tending toward the latter.
I've been a pretty outward Manny critic for a long time, so take it with a grain of salt, but even these optimistically hazy numbers paint a pretty grim picture for Manny's draft potential.
if one team likes you a lot, crazy things can happen.
Manny will get drafted if a team has an opportunity to pick and has no player rated higher. Even if every team had 43 players higher than Harris on their board, he could still get drafted if a team comes up to pick at spot 58, Manny is their #44, and #1-43 are already taken.
Now imagine a team thinks Manny is the 10th best. (At least one team thinks this, or better, based on statistics.) All it takes then for Manny to get drafted is for players 1-9 to be off the board when that team selects again in the 2nd round. (Assuming positional need does not impact their decision making)
Good points. But like I mentioned somewhere above, these teams know realistically the players they're going to get. If Manny is #10 on someone's draft board, he's not going to that team.
Again, take my pessimism with a grain of salt. I'm a noted Manny hater; I don't like his game or his upside, with empirical evidence to back my sentiments. Maybe he's someone's #1 pick and goes in the first round. I'd be willing to wager a pretty significant sum of money that he's no where near the draft.
If Manny is #10 on someone's draft board, he's not going to that team.
I think that you are failing to see that a scenerio where players 1-9 on that team's draft board all get drafted before that team's second pick isn't all that far fetched..........
I think he is also failing to to realize what a draft board is. If Manny was 10 on someone's draft board and they are picking 20, they would take Manny (assuming 1-9 are gone).
That may be how a team thinks practically about the draft, but the "draft board" that Chad Ford is talking about in his column is clearly a top to bottom ordering of all draft-eligible players. It doesn't get skewed based on a team's pick, otherwise the whole premise of Ford's article about what metrics teams use to evaluate players is useless since it would be unique to each team based on their pick.
I've spent way too much time over the last 15 years reading about the NBA draft and here's my take:
- Manny Harris is not in the top ten of anyone's draft board. Right now he is generally regarded as a 2nd rounder to undrafted. A team's statistical evaluation a player only supplements what they already know by spending thousands of hours on scouting. If a team's scouting department thinks someone is the 30th best prospect but their stats guy thinks he's a top ten then the GM will use both sets of data when making a decision.
- But what if I'm wrong and someone actually thinks he's a top 10 pick? In 2006 the Celtics had Rondo as their 7th best prospect and when the 21st pick came around they traded for Cleveland's pick because they thought Rondo had so much value at 21. If a team had Harris in their top 10, he'd be a surefire top 25 pick.
- If Harris has scored high on one team's advanced statistical rankings chances are that a few others have him pretty high too, but not a third. Many teams don't use advanced stats in evaluating prospects at all for a number of reasons so 1/3 is unreasonable.
- The fact that a few teams have Harris high on their stats rankings and he's looked good in workouts bodes well for him getting drafted. Manny still has some upside and considering that most 2nd round picks are out of the NBA (or never make the roster in the first place) within a few years I think he'll look pretty attractive in the 2nd round.
You always posting some informative shit on hoops, thank you. You need to post more oftener
Let's assume there are 4 picks on every teams top 10 draft board:
- Wall, Turner, Cousins, Favors
Let's assume there are 3 players on 80% of teams' top 10 draft board:
- Aminu, Monroe, Wes Johnson
The remainder of the top 10 according to Chad Ford are on 40% of teams top 10 board:
- Ed Davis, Gordon Hayward
After taking into account that Manny shows up on these 10 teams' board, the remaining players are all random - every one of them is different. What does that give us?
- 28 random players
So... Realistically if you're looking at ten teams, they will probably have a total around 38 players in their top 10.
Are these numbers exact? No, not at all. But I'd venture an educated guess that for 10 NBA teams, picking in the top 10, you'd get a list of 30-40 guys possibly being taken.
Teams invest so heavily in scouting now that there are rarely "sleepers" in the top ten. Chad Ford makes his Mock draft based on conversations with almost every single GM and a ton of scouts and other executives. If Manny was in ten of teams' top ten he'd be ranked probably in the mid first round right now which he is not.
I think you are thinking of top ten way wrong . ..you are correct in what you are saying but your not understanding what is being said .. by top they mean each teams top ten players they would pick in terms of when they pick . It's not a Wall , Turner , Favors type boards .. It's a player they could get in the area they are picking .. say Magic who are 2nd top last would have a Top ten list of people like .. Albai , James, Harris, Robinson .. that is what they mean ..
but it's just not done that way in the NBA or in the NFL. The reason it is not done that way is that sometime players take huge falls like Dejuan Blair last year and sometimes teams move up in the draft. Drafts are chaotic and teams try to prepare for anything.
So why discuss a hypothetical top ten system that isn't used and doesn't relate to what Chad Ford was talking about? Ford was referring to a top ten list that a computer program spat out that evaluates ALL the eligible draft candidates and then list then in ascending order. How do I know this? Because this is what John Hollinger does and he was comparing the combined list of the other 3 GM's with Hollinger's list in the article.
I'm glad he is starting to generate some buzz, it was looking like he was a lock to undrafted but now it looks like he is a solid second round pick.
this is one of the funniest threads ever
The notion of an NBA team having Manny in its top 10 seems absurd. But it's so absurd that I believe it. Ford couldn't have made that up.
That's why you guys need to ready this article. Ford doesn't say he is in the top ten of anyone's big board. He says one team that does stats analysis has him in the top ten of their stats board.
No team relies completely on stats to evaluate draft prospects, otherwise they would fire their scouts and not hold workout. So yes, the notion the Manny is in the top ten of anyone's big board is absurd.
Manny is good, his problem is good way too inconsistantly. Therefore he is not top 10 material.