Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Ayo Donsunmu has a decision to make (Jonathan Bonaguro, dailyillini.com)

This is the dilemma a select group of college basketball underclassmen face each year as the NBA draft withdrawal deadline approaches. Each has dreams of playing in the NBA, but with so few roster spots available they have to carefully consider when is the best time to take the leap to optimize their chances of making it in the league. Of course that anxiety and uncertainty is exacerbated this year as the coronavirus pandemic has left potential draftees unable to workout for NBA clubs or do much of anything to solidify or improve their draft position.

Competition for those precious few roster spots is only increasing. According to realgm.com, there were a record-high 86 early entry candidates in last year's draft, which as we know is 26 more than there are actual draft spots in the current draft format of 2 rounds of 30 picks each...and that's before we even factor in the seniors and foreign players. As it turns out 45 of those 86 underclassmen went undrafted. As of this moment, realgm.com lists a whopping 163(!!) underclassmen who have declared for the draft, with just under two weeks remaining until the August 3 withdrawal deadline.

In the weeks leading up to the withdrawal deadline each year there are no shortage of college basketball fans across the country on Twitter and message boards pleading for their star underclassmen to return, or more likely, lecturing these players to return because "he's not ready yet. If he stays for one more year he'll be a lottery pick"...never mind that there are only 14 lottery picks, and these days those picks are probably going to the next crop of freshmen. So did all of those undrafted underclassmen make a mistake? Only those players themselves can judge whether their post-draft situation is better or worse, because, by the way, the draft is not the only path to the NBA. In the past NBA season 23.5% of all players who got on the floor and nearly 13% of all minutes played went to former college players that were undrafted...but more on that in a minute.

But IF a player believes that getting drafted is his best path to the NBA, and IF he's getting a draft grade during his evaluation, what do recent draft trends suggest he should do?

I went back and looked at each draft since 1989 (the first year of the current 2-round format) and counted the number of picks from each class of eligibility (as well as international and high school players, where applicable).

One thing stands out right away - where have all the seniors gone? Well, if they were any good, probably in the 1-3 drafts before as underclassmen. In the 5 drafts from 1989-1993, seniors represented a whopping 84% of all players selected. Beginning in the mid-90s seniors started to get squeezed a bit by underclassmen, and then international players started to make their run in the late-90s and early-2000s, peaking at 20 players selected in the 2003 draft. Seniors then consistently made up about 1/3 of the draft from 2001 to 2013 while the number of internationals and underclassmen ebbed and flowed.

Beginning in 2013 and continuing through the 2018 draft, however, the number of seniors drafted shrunk ever smaller each year, falling to a record-low 11. Last year the number ticked up by one to 12. And that is despite the number of international players dropping from an average of 14 from 2013-16 to 8, 7, and 7, respectively over the last three years.

Who is making up the shortfall? Overwhelmingly it is freshmen and sophomores (although juniors did have a resurgence in the last two drafts with 12 selected in 2018 and 10 in 2019 after averaging 7 in the prior 4 drafts). From 1995-2007 there were an average of 6 sophomores picked per draft, since 2008 that average has increased to 10, with a record-high 16 in last year's draft. Meanwhile the number of freshmen drafted increased in each of the 5 drafts from 2014-2018, topping out at a record 20 in 2018, after setting records in each of the prior 3 drafts.

Not only are there more and more freshmen and sophomores selected each year, they are also going earlier and earlier in the draft, increasingly dominating the first round over the last 10 years, and especially the first 10 picks, as shown in the charts below.

And because this is a zero-sum game, that means juniors and seniors are getting sent further back into the draft, or out altogether. Juniors made up a sizable chunk of the middle of the first round in the 2010-2014 drafts, but now their center of gravity has shifted to the back half of the draft. The bars for seniors got skinnier almost across the board, but especially so at the end of the first round and beginning of the second round, while still maintaining a healthy share in the back of the second round.

So what does this mean for the underclassmen wrestling with the decision of whether or not to stay in the draft? Well, unfortunately for all of us age only moves in one direction, but the NBA draft is getting younger and younger each year and figures to continue in that direction. While it is certainly possible for underclassmen to improve their game by staying another year or two in college, these recent draft trends suggest that, despite those improvements, it may be difficult to improve their draft stock. The perception of remaining upside is all-important to NBA draft decision-makers (why that is will be the subject of a future post), and with each passing year that perception tends to decrease, despite whatever skill/attribute improvements are made. So if you have a draft grade evaluation, now is *probably* the optimal time to go. Certainly there are players that stay and manage to improve their draft stock. Moe Wagner from Michigan comes to mind as someone who was projected as a second round pick at best as a sophomore but sneaked into the back end of the first round after his junior season. In last year's draft Rui Hachimura, Cam Johnson, and Matisse Thybulle all probably helped themselves by staying through their junior or senior seasons. But increasingly these are the exception rather than the rule.

Now what about those who declare early but go undrafted? The NBA dream is not necessarily over for them. Thanks in part to the NBA's new "Two-Way" contracts instituted before the 2017 season which expands NBA rosters from 15 to 17, more undrafted players are making it onto NBA rosters.

The percentage of all NBA players who were undrafted former college players increased significantly in 2017 with the introduction of the two-way contracts, and now make up a fairly sizable chunk at 22-23% the last three seasons. Minutes played (as a % of all NBA minutes) by this group have grown more gradually, but have increased each of the last 5 seasons from 8% in 2015-2016 to almost 13% this season. While 13% is obviously not a huge number, there does appear to be an increasing willingness by NBA teams to put undrafted players on the floor.

Undrafted players are now playing more minutes than guys drafted in the first ten picks of the second round, and more than players from the middle and end of the second round combined. Now granted, the drafted players come from a very finite group, while the universe of undrafted guys is technically infinite...I mean heck, I suppose even I'm in that group. (And by the way, NBA execs, I'm available: I am 5'9" and 43 years old...but the jumper is wet). Regardless, there clearly is a (growing?) opportunity for the undrafted player to make it in the NBA.

But is it an opportunity for the early entry undrafted player? A closer look at the undrafted players that make it in the NBA reveals that may not be the case. In fact, over the last ten seasons over 82% of the undrafted college players that saw the floor in the NBA had used all 4 years of college eligibility, and soaked up 84-94% of all undrafted minutes each season.

Data Sources: basketball-reference.com and realgm.com

In the 5 drafts from 2014-2018 there were a combined 124 early entrants that went undrafted, while in the last 5 NBA seasons only a total of 46 undrafted early entrants saw the floor in an NBA game. In that same period 193 undrafted seniors saw action in the NBA. During the 2018-19 season only seven undrafted early entrants (from ANY draft year) saw action in at least half of their team's games, and only five played at least 1,000 minutes (Dewayne Dedmon, Allonzo Trier, Wayne Selden, Derrick Jones, and Jonathon Simmons, if you were wondering...four of which played through their junior season).

The dominance by 4-year players in the undrafted group surprised me, but there are two things that I think are important to keep in mind.

The pool of undrafted seniors is obviously much larger than undrafted underclassmen. If we assume an average of 3 seniors for each of the ~350 Division I teams, you have a universe of about 1,000 players. Obviously most of those are not viable NBA prospects, so after a cursory look at past NBA Summer League rosters I think we can safely assume about 3-4 undrafted seniors per team which yields a viable universe of 90-120 senior prospects each year, which is larger than the 30-50 or so (but growing) number of undrafted early entrants we've seen the last few years. Still, it does appear that undrafted seniors' representation in the NBA is significantly over-indexing relative to the size of its pool.
This is probably correlation rather than causation. In other words, the act of staying all four years in college in and of itself does not necessarily all of a sudden make that player into an NBA prospect. Sure, the increased exposure that college basketball provides, along with continued skill and physical development; opportunity to play in meaningful, high-stakes games; and opportunity to continually expand one's role as he advances through college will certainly help better prepare a player for the NBA. But to some degree the player could have done all or most of those things outside of college as well, whether in the G-League or overseas.

So why does the undrafted senior seem to fare better in the NBA than his undrafted early entry counterpart? I tend to think that the type of guy that stays all four years in college is probably also the type of guy that has a good sense of what he is and what he isn't, and probably more willing to mold his game to play a role that teams are looking for out of their 2nd round or undrafted guys emphasizing defense, screen-setting, ball-movement, spot-up shooting, etc. rather than ball-dominant number one or two option scorer. And I tend to think that most early entry guys that go undrafted probably have an inflated sense of their value, have always seen themselves as a star (and probably constantly been told that they are a star), and thus less likely or willing to bend their game to what NBA teams truly need out of them. For the most part these are still very good players who are probably going to go on and make a bunch of money overseas playing a role that better suits them...and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, sign me up for some of that. Overseas team executives, you have my scouting report above, I'm taking your calls as well.

So what does this all mean? I think it means that early entry candidates need to take advantage of any and all opportunities they have to get a fair evaluation of where they stand in terms of draft prospects. If they are looking to maximize their NBA career (and not everybody necessarily is, there are other places and ways to make money playing basketball, or some other guys that stay when they could leave may just really value the college experience) AND they are getting a draft grade, the recent data suggests that now is probably the best time to enter the draft. Otherwise they are facing an uphill battle to increase their draft value as the ever-important perception of potential tends to decrease with each passing year. If they are not getting a draft grade, however, the data also suggests they are facing long odds to make it in the NBA if they leave now - there are just very few undrafted early entry candidates that make it to the league. In order to maximize their NBA career, the data suggests they would be better off taking their evaluation and doing an honest self-assessment of the player they are and reconcile that with what the NBA needs out of them, and then stay in school until they have a draft grade or they exhaust their eligibility, which for many would mean staying in school all four years.

Hi.

Jul 21 Should I Stay or Should I Go?