This article is the first of a six part series that will take a close look at six different age groups (high school, college freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and international players).  This first part will look at high school players.

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.

I will break high schoolers down into three groups (point guards, swingmen, and big men).  There were no point guards drafted out of high school between 1995-2002.  Only four have been taken in history, with Sebastian Telfair in 2004 being the first.  So we move on to swingmen…

            There were two major successes in this time period.  LeBron James, drafted a year too late to be included in the study, was also a major success.  When Bryant was taken in 1996, taking high schoolers was still a relatively new thing.  Only four were drafted before him, and only one since 1995.  If Kobe was entering the draft in 2006 instead of 1996, he probably would have been an extremely high pick instead of the #13 he was at the time.  One year later, the Raptors struck gold with T-Mac (although they were never able to experience his best years).  GM’s may have looked at those two and expected every athletic high school swingman to be the next great thing. 

            What can we say about high school swingmen entering the draft (who unfortunately don’t exist anymore)?  First of all, we can say there’s the potential for greatness.  It took McGrady and Bryant four years to excel, so there’s still hope for the swingmen recently drafted out of high school.  Josh Smith, Martell Webster, and Gerald Green (among others) could develop into perennial all-stars.  With that being said, by the time those guys were drafted, scouting young kids wasn’t a new, risky thing anymore.  Bryant and McGrady were special talents that almost demanded to be looked at.   You just have to hope that the expectations placed on these younger guys aren’t too high (see: Darius Miles).

            High school big men are an interesting case study.  It seems that when you hit, you hit big.  Stoudemire, Garnett, and O’Neal were huge successes.  The rest…not so much.  Leon Smith played a grant total of 105 garbage minutes in his career.  Sagana Diop has a very low PER, although he seems to be getting it together and may end up being a productive defender.  Curry is solid, but can’t be considered a huge success.  The same can be said for Chandler and Kwame Brown.  In the end, there was only one total disaster (Smith).  Guys not included in the study (Al Jefferson, Dwight Howard, Kendrick Perkins, Robert Swift, and Andrew Bynum) either are dominant already or have the chance to be dominant.

            High school big men seem to be a low-risk, high-reward choice.  The one absolute bust, Smith, had many off-the court issues that affected his career.  As a GM, you can’t really plan for that.  People seem to think high school big men are poor picks, but that’s only a matter of expectations.  Brown, Chandler, and Curry are certainly small disappointments.  But high school big men are usually impressive physical specimens with great size and athleticism, something every GM loves and something players don’t lose.  Chandler won’t be Rasheed Wallace, but he will be an above average rebounder and defender who will play at a position of scarce talent for a long time.  Seven footers don’t exactly grow on trees.

That ends the first part of the series.  Coming up soon will be my look at international players.

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