Are there really 'win now' draft picks in the late-20s?
Recent history may suggest that going younger is a better route for front offices in that range
Last week, we asked a simple question on one of our draft philosophy daily polls and set up a scenario: if you’re a team picking in the 25-30 range (tail end of the first round) and trying to compete for a championship immediately, what do you prioritize if you keep your pick?
Throughout the vote, results were fairly split, with the final tally leaning slightly towards a more ready-made role player. The idea seems to be prevalent that, for a team that is competing and might be one piece or so away, finding the right puzzle piece and fit through the draft is possible. That older or more experienced players will be able to slide in right away and help in ways that young guys cannot, especially if there’s a role to be filled in the rotation.
Years ago, we would have agreed. However, after studying the draft more closely and doing our own high-volume scouting over the last few cycles, we’ve shifted our way of thinking over towards valuing a swing on young talent.
It’s somewhat unfair to make blanket statements on questions like this. Everything is situation-dependent, and no roster’s individual makeup can be ignored in the discussion. There will always be circumstances that dictate moving in a different direction; we can certainly dive into those at another juncture if there is interest.
Also somewhat unfair is to place prospects into one of two camps: ready-to-play and long-term projects. Development isn’t linear, and everyone comes into the NBA at a different point on their development spectrum. But the point of the question (and the shift in our thinking) is really about the first camp of ‘ready-to-play’ prospects. Outside of the lottery or, on a good year, the top-20, there really aren’t any/ many of these that can easily be identified.
John Hollinger of The Athletic has, through data and his own research, come up with a theory that there are really only 20 or so prospects from each draft class who sign a second guaranteed contract in the NBA. The higher in the draft a team is, the more likely it is they snag such a player.
So we, instead, try to reframe the question with all that information. If all prospects taken outside of the top 20 have some sort of acclimation period to the NBA, why would you prioritize the guy whose ceiling isn’t very high?
We decided to look at some recent selections and do our best to break it down by age. To us, that seems like the fairest way to distinguish between more long-term prospects and those with expectations of earlier contributions. 20 or younger fell into one camp, and 21 and up into the other. We also set parameters for the drafting team for how we would define “championship contention”. 50 wins the year prior (a winning percentage of 60%) and over 75% of the previous season’s scoring still under contract, with the 50-win team either making the selection or trading for the prospect on draft night.
To broaden the scope of our research to (hopefully) eliminate a small sample size, we opened this up to picks 22-30.
It turns out that, since the 2013 NBA Draft, there have been exactly 17 players that meet the criteria for each camp. 17 have been drafted at the age of 20 or younger, 17 were 21 or older on draft night. The side-by-side results can be found below.
There’s a lot to comb through in terms of the data and its takeaways. Of course, individual talent assessment and actually nailing the picks is far more important than just drafting based on age or prior data. It’s hard to conduct these studies sometimes because you’re taking into account the decisions of others.
First, it seems like NBA teams are already catching onto this trend. Only three players 21 or older have been drafted under these circumstances from 2019-2021, whereas seven younger prospects have been taken. In particular, Denver Nuggets EVP Tim Connelly has nailed going younger, taking three of those seven in that timespan. While Connelly left Denver, it’s worth noting that the Nuggets took another young player in the late-first this year in Peyton Watson.
The theory behind a championship-caliber team taking an older piece is, ostensibly, that they can play minutes right away within that title-contending environment. Very few teams within the circumstances detailed above experienced a severe fall-off after their 50 win season; only the Golden State Warriors (the year of their massive string of injuries) during Jordan Poole’s rookie year fell out of the playoff picture entirely.
However, that theory cannot be supported by the data. Of the 17 players 21 or older, only four logged over 1,000 minutes their rookie season. Five did so off the younger list. If the overall objective is to get earlier impact, age is no indication that early impact will certainly happen. In fact, more players on the older list played fewer than 100 minutes (5 of them) than of the younger players, so the inverse is also true.
What else does the data support? A notion of longevity and production in the league. Almost all of those younger guys taken in the later part of the first round have carved out dependable careers for themselves. Several (OG Anunoby, Robert Williams, Jordan Poole, Kevon Looney) turned into really dependable contributors for their drafting franchise on an NBA Finals team, and all contributed starter minutes to that Finals team while on their rookie deal. Bobby Portis went on to help the Milwaukee Bucks to the 2021 NBA Championship.
Sure, guys like Payton Pritchard and Pascal Siakam also contributed to Finals teams. But everything about Siakam feels like the exception to the rule; so much of his development occurred after draft night and that rookie season. Siakam spent a fair amount of time his rookie season in the G-League, eventually being named G-League Finals MVP. He logged only 10 minutes in the playoffs as a rookie.
There seems to be a more firmly-encapsulated ceiling that teams place on themselves when drafting this late. Put Siakam aside and only Derrick White, Landry Shamet and Tim Hardaway Jr. have averaged 8 points per game for their career. Shamet and Hardaway are floor-spacing specialists and were drafted as such. Frequently, teams would draft in these ranges older guys to fill specialty niches, the 3-and-D wings (CJ Wilcox, Jacob Evans) or shutdown defenders (Andre Roberson, Josh Huestis). Such an approach takes only into account the prospect’s ability to perform a specific task, not to grow beyond that role. The value in getting younger players is, in theory, that they can be molded to that specific role while still possessing a lot of room for growth beyond said role. The best of the older picks (Siakam, Hardaway) wound up expanding their game a great deal in the NBA.
The more consistent performers among older prospects are guards: Derrick White, Landry Shamet, Malachi Flynn, Payton Pritchard and even Shabazz Napier. Proven commodities in the backcourt might be more translatable to the NBA. That said, none of them are likely to reach starter levels of production; instead, they’re all best served as second unit leaders and pieces. While there’s value in drafting for that in the later part of the first round, that value is only truly delivered if the other options still on the board don’t provide a fair amount of upside or quality.
Finally, when we look at the playoff minutes logged by the 34 rookies we studied for this piece, there is a pretty strong trend: their minutes pretty much shrink. Only OG Anunoby (23.8), and Bones Hyland (17.4) logged over 15 minutes per game in the playoffs as a rookie, and Hyland’s was impacted in large part due to injuries at the point for the Nuggets. That’s right, only two of 34 players taken to 50-win teams over the last decade played rotational postseason minutes. In fact, only three other rookies drafted in the twenties over that same time span (Desmond Bane, Immanuel Quickley, and Matisse Thybulle) logged more than 15 minutes per game. Anunoby is the only one whose team made it out of the first round.
To us, this is the strongest indictment of the ‘draft older’ idea for contending teams. If the player isn’t going to be in your rotation when the games matter most, you’re wasting a valuable developmental spot by drafting for fit within the current team.
Value can be gained with these young guys in various ways throughout their rookie deals, as opposing general managers tend to view them as intriguing in trade talks. The Nuggets shipped RJ Hampton to the Orlando Magic in a deal mid-way through his rookie season; that deal landed Denver Aaron Gordon, a vital piece to their championship hopes. Still having a teenage first-rounder on the books operates almost like a future first-rounder in trades, which helps add win-now veterans in ways that trading older players likely does not.
Let’s look at what took place between selections 22-30 in this year’s 2022 NBA Draft. The Milwaukee Bucks took a player in the older camp in MarJon Beauchamp; he’ll turn 22 this Fall. Wendell Moore (20), Nikola Jovic (19), Patrick Baldwin Jr. (19) and Peyton Watson (19) all fall into that younger camp of players and now are joining teams to win 60% of their games last season.
This is not to say that drafting Beauchamp was a poor decision. Nor does it guarantee that any or all of the four players drafted under the age of 21 are going to thrive, especially early in their careers. What it does show, though, is a shift we are seeing in decision-makers to value youth on that four-year contract as opposed to certain impact.
Similar arguments over youth and experience can be had with teams drafting in this range that are hitting the reset button or out of the playoff picture on draft night. However, in those cases, timeline for competing and roster needs around their core still take further precedence over anything else. Those teams simply need talent and to hit on draft picks, not necessarily get the right fit for their team.
There’s a whole other team construct or situation that we left off this study: teams drafting in the late part of the first round aiming to compete right away but that did not win 50 games. Some really impactful picks made in the late-20s over the last decade have belonged to teams in this designation: Desmond Bane (30th to Memphis in 2020) and Mason Plumlee (22nd to the Nets in 2013) have both been high-end players drafted in that range and been on playoff teams early in their career. But the success of those three doesn’t overshadow the countless swings and misses that take place in that range on more experienced guys. For every success story of an older guy like Bane, there’s a long-term project like Capela, Rudy Gobert or Jaden McDaniels taken in the late-20s that pans out to a borderline All-Star level.
An eye for talent and drafting guys who still have room to grow/ add to their games is most important. But what I’m finding is that the notion of drafting for ‘fit’ on a current roster’s construct in the late part of the first round does very little in terms of immediate value. What’s more damaging is that, in instances where teams seemingly try to draft that way, they often miss out on younger talent still available that, more times than not, outperform those fit-first guys in the long run.
We’re pretty firmly on board with the idea of taking the developmental route and going for a younger, higher upside player (this cannot be said enough: the right young player) as opposed to someone who fits a particular void the roster lacks at the moment.