The Time Line, Part 2: A Macro-Analyis of the Tournament

In Part 1 of The Time Line, I detailed changes to college basketball and the NCAA tournament, primarily from the Modern Era (1985-present). I then classified the changes into two categories: structural changes to the tournament and technical changes to the game. One change did not fit into
either category, and in my opinion, it could be in a class on its own.

2007: First tournament featuring the "One-and-Done" rule. Implemented by the NBA, all draft prospects must be 1-year removed from high school (or 19 years old) in order to be draft-eligible. It does not mean that draft prospects have to attend college. As the previous NBA drafts (2003-05) began reaching critical mass with "Straight-Outta-High-School" prospects, the NBA implemented this rule to rein in scouting and recruiting operations that had become over-extended as franchises (especially those with lottery picks) had to scour the entire nation at both the high school and college level in order to get the pick right.

For those of you thinking this is going to be an definitive analysis of the one-and-done (OAD) rule, you will be sorely disappointed! Instead, I intend to address a point I made in Part 1 about the relationship between the OAD rule and tournament results. So, I'll start this examination with a familiar data piece, the E8 Aggregation Model (E8AM). The most unusual stretch of games in the E8AM takes place from 2007-2009, which many regard as the calmest years of the tournament in an otherwise volatile era. Producing both a 13 and a 14 in the AM (and there's only one possible way of doing each of these) during this stretch, I think it is no coincidence that it started at the exact same time in which the OAD rule was implemented. So, what happened?



The explanation is simple: Players who would have been Straight-Outta-High-School (SOHS) prospects now had to wait one year before going professional. Furthermore, they could not pass this one-year purgatory by remaining idle or else they risk their draft stock falling. The only apparent option (at that time) was to spend the one-year purgatory by playing basketball at the collegiate level. In effect, pro-potential young players mixed in with experienced veterans, directly causing a stabilizing environment in college.

Let's look at some data to visualize what is going on. Here is a table* of the High School Senior Prospects for each of the first three years of the OAD Rule. (NOTE: They are high school seniors in the year listed, meaning their first NCAA tournament would be the next year after the one listed). Listed is their ranking, their school of original signing, and the number of years played in college basketball (T=Transfer and Sitout, S=Tranfer without Sitting, R=Redshirt, D=Delayed Entry).

Just a casual look at this table shows what college basketball would have been missing without the OAD rule. Out of the OAD players in these classes, you see one national player of the year and teams that had lengthy tournament runs (06 OHST players, 06 Brandan Wright, 07 Kevin Love, and 07 Derrick Rose). Not to be out-done, you can see players in this list that flirted with OAD (or assumed to be SOHS for the 06 class) that stayed multiple years and had similar success (06 - Lawson, Ellington, Arthur, Paul Harris, Damion James; 07 - Patterson, Griffin, Harden, Flynn; 08- Samuels, Hopson, Ebanks). For the first three years of the OAD rule, the trial balloon seemed to be working. However, once high school players coming up through the system understood the process, OAD essentially became the SOHS-plus-one phenomenon, meaning those who would have went SOHS without the OAD rule went pro anyways without regard to potential development at the college level.

• 2010 [10]: Wall (1), Favors (3), Cousins (5), Henry (12), Bledsoe (18), Bradley (19),  Orton (29), Whiteside (33), Stephenson (40), Gallon (47)
• 2011 [7]: Irving (1), Kanter (3), Thompson (4), Knight (8), Harris (19), Joesph (29), Selby (49)
• 2012 [9]: Davis (1), Kidd-Gilchrist (2), Beal (3), Drummond (9), Rivers (10), Harkless (15), Wroten [25], Teague (29), Miller (38)
• 2013 [8]: Bennett (1), Noel (6), McLemore (7), Adams (12), Muhammed (14), Goodwin (29), Jerrett [40], Ledo (43)
• 2014 [9]: Wiggins (1), Parker (2), Embiid (3), Gordon (4), Randle (7), Vonaleh (9), Lavine (13), Young (17), Ennis (18)
• 2015 [14]: Towns (1), Russell (2), Okafor (3), Johnson (8), Winslow (10), Turner (11), Lyles (12), Booker (13), Oubre Jr (15), Vaughn (17), Jones (24), McCullough (29), Looney (30), Alexanders (U)

What does all of this have to do with the NCAA Tournament? Let's take the AM and combine it with the OAD draft counts to see if a pattern emerges. If we count the first three years of OAD as transitory years and provide a solid explanation of the variance, we see a definitive correlation: The more OADs in a given NBA draft class, the more stability (lower AM) in the NCAA tournament.

Explaining the variance in 2008 and 2009

Let's start with 2009. Since it was a transition period, many in the 06 HS class who would have been SOHS became three- and four-year players in college by the 2009 tournament. Likewise, the 05 HS class (data not shown) retained most of its players for four-years (college seniors in 09) since most of its pro-potential players were drafted as high school seniors (9 were drafted as HS seniors, 2 were drafted as freshman in 06, 5 were drafted as sophomores in 07, 9 were drafted as juniors in 08, and 21 were drafted as seniors in 09). You typically hear the talent vs experience debate over which makes a better team. In 2009, you got the best of both worlds as talent gained experience by staying in college, which explains the lower than expected Aggregate Value (AV) given a very low OAD value.

What about 2008? I'm of the opinion that the 2008 draft was an over-draft year. In other words, 2008 had too many OADs leaving for the draft and not living up to the label (or the draft pick for that matter). These findings are especially troubling considering these players could stay another year or two in college refining their own game while providing some stability to the college game from the added experience they gain. Nonetheless, if more OAD players are drafted than there should have been, a lower OAD total in 08 would have correlated better with the slightly higher AV in 2008.

Back-Testing The Findings

Is it possible that this pattern of trend is exclusive to the OAD era, or is history repeating itself? Let's
try this analysis with the phenomenon that created OAD: the SOHS movement.

First, let's break-down the AM in three sections.

• 1985-1992: The First 8 (F8) years were rather mild, with AVs ranging from 20-25 and two outliers of 37 and 40. Since this takes place before the SOHS movement, I wrote a separate article for my explanations for this time period.
• 1993-1996: The Middle 4 (M4) years were rather calm and peaceful, with AVs in a tight range from 18-22. These four years are most equivalent with the 2007-2009 years of the OAD era.
• 1997-2006: The Last 10 (L10) years were turbulent to say the least, with AVs ranging from 19-40 and each year except the last two years are separated by at least 6 from the next year.

Second, let's break-down the NBA Draft in four groups.

• 1985-1991: These seven years were the senior wall, where the draft followed the precedent of seniors first (a senior taken 1st overall) and seniors in mass (seniors being the majority of picks). 
• 1988 and 1989 saw expansion drafts as two new franchises started up in each year (4 total). 
• 1988 saw the draft reduced from 7 rounds to 3 rounds and 1989 saw the draft reduced from 3 rounds to 2 rounds.
• Maybe the increased draft competition (four extra franchises and five fewer rounds) led to the youth movement of the next draft group.
• 1992-1996: These five years were the youth revolution, where the draft set new precedents with youth first (juniors and sophomores taken 1st overall) and youth high (non-seniors taken inside the lottery picks). Also, two new franchises started in 1995, meaning more draft picks in the lottery, but both took seniors in their first picks. The SOHS phenomenon started in 1995 with Kevin Garnett going 5th overall behind 4 sophomores.
• 1997-1998: These two years can be best described as a shock-and-awe adjustment phase, as seniors took the top spot (Duncan & Olowokandi), lottery picks picks were mostly seniors and juniors with the underclassman making appearances in the mid-lottery range, and seniors dominating the non-lottery picks. The youth movement fad took a pause (as the chart shows) compared to the other years as fewer sophomores were taking the jump to the pros. Even though most SOHS players were taken outside the lottery in these two years (except McGrady in 1997), the SOHS movement was just warming up.
• 1999-2006: These eight years are the arms-race phase that led to the OAD rule. With each new draft, picks were getting younger and younger and, as a result, riskier. In this period, 3 SOHS players, 2 college sophomores, 2 international players and 1 college senior make up the 1st overall picks. By 2005, barely any college seniors were being taken in the lottery, essentially being relegated to the 2nd round. One interesting trend (noticeable in the chart) is how the SOHS movement began deterring sophomores from entering the draft early. Except for a purge of young players in the 2001 draft, the decline in sophomore early entrants is made up by a surge in SOHS entrants. The sophomore numbers increase in the end, as the OAD rule prevents any OAD prospects in the 2006 class. One final detail involves all of the '+1' figures in the chart. These are members of that particular age group that went undrafted in their respective years. Notice how it starts in sophomores in 1995, then moves to freshmen by 2001, and reaches the SOHS faction by 2004. Finally, a new NBA franchise began in 2005, but by that time, the SOHS trend was in full swing, and the NBA was close to putting a stop to it.

What is the data showing us? Obviously, there is not a direct correlation between the AV and the number of younger prospects being drafted like there was in the OAD analysis. However, I do see a lag effect. As pro-potential players are being taken out earlier and earlier, their "talent" doesn't become "experienced talent" in later years.

1. Notice how 7 sophomores leave the college game in 1995 and 1996. By the 1997 NCAA tournament, these players would have been talented seniors and juniors. As we saw in the 2007-2009 years of the OAD era, talent combined with experience leads to stability in the tournament. Since these "experienced talents" are missing from the college game in 1997, tournament stability takes a hit with an increase in the AV in 1997. The same could be said of the SOHS players taken in 1995 and 1996. Garnett, Jermaine O'Neal and Kobe Bryant would have made impactful sophomores and freshman in the 1997 tournament, if they had chosen to play in college (Note: I'm not arguing they should have went to college. I'm merely stating the 1997 tournament could have been much more stable with them in it.)
2. As fewer young players were taken in 1997's draft, 1998 ended up as one of the calmest years in this period. An uptick in younger players drafted in 1998 and 1999 resulted in an uptick in the AV in 1999 and 2000, respectively.
3. The surge of younger players being drafted in 2000 and 2001 resulted in a surge in the AV in 2002. Then, a downtick in younger players drafted in 2002 resulted in a downtick in the AV of 2003.
4. As sophomores began to hang around in 2003 and 2004 and as SOHS players began to surge at the same time, the AVs for 2004, 2005, and 2006 remain at an elevated level. Instead of having "experienced talent" in college basketball during these years, you simply have "experience" during these three years as most of the talent goes to the NBA without even stepping on a college court. While experience is a good thing to have in the NCAA tournament, it is far more probable for experience to have a bad shooting night than talent, and one bad shooting night in the NCAA tournament is a ticket home.

Conclusion

The first and obvious conclusion from both analyses is that tournament stability is highly related to "experienced talent" in the college game. When talent is taken from the college game (whether or not this talent is ready to make the jump) before this talent gains the experience, tournament stability (and therefore tournament predictability) takes a hit.

The second and obvious conclusion from both analyses is that the OAD rule has established a definitive (and somewhat predictable) trend in the tournament. If we take Point #4 from the SOHS analysis and apply it to 2010-2015 years of the OAD era, we see a pattern of "Elevated AVs" due to the college game being more comprised of players with "experience" rather than "experienced talent".

The third and less apparent conclusion is the application to the 2016 Tournament. Current projections (NBADraft and DraftExpress) have projected 12 and 13, respectively, OAD players in the 2016 Draft. If this holds true, we could be looking at an AV in the low-to-mid 20s. They have 7 and 8 (respectively) going in the lottery, and 12 and 10 (respectively) going in the first round. By all accounts, this is a weak freshman class and an even weaker draft class. If this is the case, then we could be looking at an AV in the 28-36 range (which other indicators also suggest). Let's also take into account the 15 OAD players that left for the 2015 draft. If 2015 was an overdraft year (as was described in 2008), then 2016 might experience an increase in instability (a higher AV) than 2015 because some of those "talented freshman" (who would have been "experienced sophomore talents"), are no longer with us. We will find out in about five weeks.

I hope you enjoyed Part 2 of this article. Don't forget, the March Edition of the Quality Curve should be out on Monday, February 29. I also promised another article explaining the AVs for the 1985-1992 era of the tournament, and it should arrive before the bracket is revealed.

Sources

*https://sites.google.com/site/rscihoops/home