With the new labor deal recently signed by the NBA and its players, college freshmen are now the youngest players that teams can draft.  Which types of those players will succeed in the NBA?  In this third part of my six part series, I will analyze college freshmen by breaking them down into three categories: point guards, swingmen (shooting guards and small forwards), and big men (power forwards and centers).  I’m including only first-round picks in this study.

The main statistic I will be using to judge these players is PER.  PER, or Player Efficiency Rating, was developed by ESPN’s John Hollinger.  According to Hollinger, “Player Efficiency Rating is a rating of a player’s per-minute productivity.”  The league average is set at 15.  More information can be found here: http://www.alleyoop.com/prates.shtm.

For each pick, I calculated an expected PER.  For a #1 pick to be a success, he had to have a career PER of at least 16.8.  For a #2 pick, 16.6.  I subtracted .2 from each subsequent required PER, all the way down to pick #30 which needed a PER of 11 to be a success. I then took a look at the difference between what a player’s PER actually was and what a player of that pick should be expected to attain. 

There’s not too much to say about the point guards.  It’s strange that Marbury was the only one selected in the first round.  As you will see, many swingmen have been taken after just one year of college, but very few point guards.  No point guards were taken out of high school either.  Are a few years of college necessary to be a draft-worthy point guard?

Believe it or not, Gerald Wallace was a more successful pick than Lamar Odom, Corey Maggette, Larry Hughes, and Jamal Crawford.  He’s posted as good of numbers as the rest of them despite not being selected until the 25th pick.  The three players not selected in the top 10 (Maggette, Wallace, and Ricky Davis) have all been successes.  So far, taking a freshman swingman with a really high pick has been a risky proposition.  Wagner, White, and Johnson were all huge disappointments, and Hughes and Odom have only been moderately successful given their expectations.   

Only four big men qualified for this study.  Apparently, 18 year-old big men are worth drafting but 19 year-old ones are not.  Eddie Griffin has been a disappointment but is still a good shot-blocker.  Randolph and Abdur-Rahim are underrated.  Overall, we can not say anything conclusive about this group until we get a larger sample size.

College freshmen are rarely selected in the draft.  As rare as high schoolers are, there were 14 selected in the first round from 1995-2002, compared to just 15 college freshmen.  The new rule should presumably almost combine the two.

That wraps up part three of the series.  College sophomores are next.  If you have any suggestions or comments about my articles, please send an e-mail. 

Information from thedraftreview.com and basketball-reference.com was used in this study.

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