Anchoring Bias & Cooling Draft Stocks
Which prospects are cooling off as the season goes on, and what might that reveal about us as evaluators based on our first impressions of them?
Self-awareness is an important trait in athletes. We ask players to sacrifice and to buy into the greater construct of a team, and in order to best do so, they need to know what they do best to contribute to the team. Learning to be cognizant of their own strengths and shortcomings helps the team, but it’s a process that requires honesty from the athlete.
In short, self-awareness extends beyond the court and far beyond just athletes. Decision-makers at the top need to know their own strengths or shortcomings and learn what influences them if they are to make the most objective and ostensibly right draft selection for their team. To us, the easiest way to do so is to be aware of one’s own biases as much as possible.
Bias training isn’t anything new; it’s common in the corporate world as a human resources practice, and several individual leaders take it seriously to avoid any blind spots in their work. Hell, we’ve written about bias before in long form, and force ourselves to re-read that at the start of every draft cycle.
The idea we’re focusing on today is that of a first impression, which is known professionally as anchoring bias. The idea is simple in draft terms: based on the initial evaluation, we as scouts can tend to tether the rest of our eval off the first impression. If we see a prospect struggle to score the ball the first time we see them, we may frame the rest of our viewings as a ‘search for efficient scoring’ even if they are sensational and consistent the next several watchings.
In essence, we favor the first bit of information we learn, using that as the anchor for which we compare everything else to. If a conversation leads us to head into our first viewing because a friend says “man this kid can shoot, you should watch him”, we go in expecting and looking for a strong shooting performance. It’s a human nature trend that is impossible to eradicate, though it is one to at least be aware of.
So how do we fight anchoring bias? Awareness is a great first step, and it’s incumbent upon the scout to have an open mind and be aware of trying to just judge the performance before us on its own. Afterward, taking time to really wrestle and grapple with all potential outcomes is key. We find that anchoring bias tends to have a more substantial impact not necessarily when there are only a few data sets to compare, but when we rush to get to a conclusion.
There’s a strategy that is useful called ‘questioning your anchor’ that we also find useful. If the first piece of information we receive on a prospect is that they are a really smart team defender, it’s helpful to watch them play and ask yourself ‘is that a smart play?’
Overall, the best method for being aware of anchoring bias is to experience it and fail from it. I’ve been open with this about my 2018 ranking of Mo Bamba. Bamba was a guy we saw play in AAU settings, where he showed some ball skills, shot the ball well, and has insane fluidity of skill for his size. Despite not showcasing any of those consistently at Texas, we remained steadfast he could unlock those tools in the NBA because we saw them at a younger age. We were banking our optimism on that first impression, devaluing all the other data points as a result.
The best way to learn that lesson was to experience the ramifications of being anchored to that first impression. We put Bamba #1 overall in that class, ahead of Luka Doncic or Trae Young. Now, Bamba is a fringe rotation player just five years into his career and has still not shown any type of consistent usage of those traits.
Now, we’re much more skeptical of what we see and try to dig deep into prospects before letting different biases around us influence where we rank players. That’s a hard thing to do in an online scouting community, especially where groupthink and consensus runs rampant. What we tend to see are a few prospects who, once their names get mentioned as potential lottery prospects, stay in that range even if their performance starts to dip.
That’s the focus of our piece today — not just about raising awareness for anchoring bias, but in trying to identify a few prospects whose consensus evaluation might be influenced by those first impressions.
Jett Howard - W, Michigan
First 18 games: 15.4 PTS (44/39/79), 2.5 AST, 1.2 TO. 3.2 FTA, 2.9 REB, 0.6 STL, 0.8 BLK
Last 8 games: 12.3 PTS (37/33/92), 1.1 AST, 1.5 TO. 1.5 FTA, 2.3 REB, 0.1 STL, 0.5 BLK
Currently sidelined with an ankle injury, Jett Howard has not played since February 18th but is slated to return for the Big Ten tournament. The reprieve actually comes at a convenient time for Howard, who was in the midst of a pretty inefficient eight-game stretch. Howard’s shot has been solid but unspectacular over that stretch, and it reveals several flaws about his game: when the shot isn’t going in at a high level, he doesn’t do much to help his team.
Over that span, Howard has been playing 28.5 minutes per game and averaging only 2.3 rebounds, 1.1 assist, 1.5 free throw attempts, and 0.1 steals. Inefficient scoring on top of that — and a lack of rim attempts — kind of makes Howard feel like he’s floating out there.
The flashes of scoring and secondary playmaking stood out at the beginning of the year, especially with his real shooting versatility. Being 6’8” and able to score off the bounce, catch, or off screens really helped people see the vision with Howard long-term:
Since that video, Howard has made some incredibly tough shots and been pretty good in the mid-range. His self-creation jumpers go in at a high rate and the mechanics he shoots with consistently have us believing he’ll be a really good shooter at the next level.
We still believe in Jett and believe he is a legitimate first-round talent. But the first impression of his excellent shooting and tough shot-making has clouded the overall perception of his draft stock. He looks great in highlights and when he’s hot, he’s really good. There are too many dud performances and rough games for us to get on board with the top ten discussions, though. We see him as a mid-to-late first-rounder whose stock has been a little overblown by a strong start in non-conference play and a few (potential outlier) insane shooting performances.
Max Lewis - W, Pepperdine
First 19 games: 19.6 PTS, 52% FG, 41.2% 3FG. 2.7 AST, 3.1 TO
Last 11 games: 12.8 PTS, 36% FG, 22.7% 3FG. 2.8 AST, 3.3 TO
A little over a month ago, we did an in-depth dive into Max Lewis and his start of the season. At that time, Lewis was wildly impactful from a statistical standpoint: shooting over 50% from the field and 40% from deep on high volume. Even then, though, we were pretty hesitant to jump on the Lewis bandwagon for the NBA: