Which Draft Board Is Most Reliable?

right now? No ones because until the lotto is set and players start to work out it's all a crap shoot after the first 2 picks.

I do tend to like Nbadraft.net and draftexpress.com mock drafts.

 

^ Is Turner a lock at #2? I can see why someone would say yes, but it doesn't seem to be as obvious as say Oden / Durant was.

If whoever ends up in the #2 spot really needs a big, Evans might fall a spot and the best big in the draft could go ahead of him.

Of course, that said, none of the bigs really wow me. Favors? Solid prospect, but a little small at 6'9. Cousins? Haven't seen a lot of his type of centers with actual skill come out in a while, but he is clearly no Shaq.

Whereas you could more legitimately say Evans could be the next Roy type of player, so maybe he is a lock.

In either case, the best best is to just look at all the draft boards to get a feel for the players ranked highly, knowing that short of Wall at #1 and potentially Evans at #2 it is a crapshoot at the moment.

 

Well to be fair, I've only seen one center, like that in the last 20 years, probably the last HOF center to be drafted (outside of Dwight Howard), and he is nearing grandpa age.

 

Mock drafts are really just speculation and are kind of worthless. Even after the lotto is conducted, teams can still trade up or down in the draft (or into or out of it).

What I read the draft sites for are the other stuff-- the rumors, scouting reports, interviews, etc. Draftexpress is the best, I believe, since Givony works very hard at it.

 

DraftExpress.

 

CLUTCHFANS KNOWS BEST

 

I don't like Chad Ford as an analyst much but he seems to know his **** around the draft, so I prefer ESPN and draftexpress.

 

Draftexpress does the best job even though it remains a crapshoot due to many variables (trades, moves up and down, team needs vs. best player available picks, etc).

 

this. you can never read into that much. i usually read up the players, then decide what teams are likely to pick them, but we don't know the order so right now it's impossible to predict.

 

Before the lottery starts all of these draft boards are basically pointless. They change or "update" each teams pick every week, but this is just to ensure that people continue to view their. If the top 5 every week was John Wall, Evan Turner, Derrick Favors, Demarcus Cousins, Westley Johnson, then no one would come back and view it. Just wait untill this tuesday and these draft boards will be more reliable.

 

Can someone post the top draft sites and their accuracy for the past few years? Basically post how many picks they got right out of 14 (lotter only)

 

i'm really nuts about the draft, and i keep a print out of all of the mocks i can find with me during the draft.

usually espn is the most reliable, but draftexpress is very reliable as well. can't go wrong.

also, the past 2 years hollinger spoke to gm's and created a tier system before each draft. that tier system was gm's groupings of talent rather than rankings by player. it was almost as good as a cheat sheet for the draft. if he puts together a tier system for this years draft, that's the one thing i would make sure to get my hands on.

 

it's not about how many picks they guessed correctly. it's about how close they came on the missed picks.

obviously, a correct guess is awesome. but if the mock draft has player x going #15... and he ends up going #31, that's worse than a mock draft that has player x going #15 and then the player goes #16.

 

exactly. all you really want from a mock draft is a good guess at the players stock. is he top 5? lotto? mid-late first round? etc...

that way you can have a good understanding if a guy hasn't been picked yet, is he slipping? will he be a steal in the late lotto (or wherever your team is picking)? or was another player picked too early causing another to slip and become a potential steal?

it's the players' stock that shapes the draft, and makes a quality mock. hollinger's tier system, espn, draftexpress are the best in that sense.

 

Before Tuesday, they are just picking the sequence of who they feel are the best players. After Tuesday, they will be looking at the drafting teams and factor in their needs in a tier of best players available at that slot.

 

I wasn't aware of the tier list, definitely something I need to keep an eye out for.

I love the draft too, its always interesting to watch and speculate before it happens. I recall putting together a 5 or 6 page lottery mock draft last year, hopefully I will do the same this year now that the Rockets are in it.

 

most GM's use a tier system going into the draft rather than a ranking system. in other words, instead of figuring out an order for the top 60 players in the draft (as they see it) teams now group players into tiers, but rank their needs.

so for a team like the kings, they might rank their needs as:

1. PG
2. C
3. SF

now wall is the consensus #1 pick, turner is probably the consensus #2, so tier 3 would be anyone who's up for #3. for argument sake lets say thats cousins, favors, aminu, and johnson. the kings first need is a PG but teams won't reach down to the next tier for a lesser player. so they rank the guys in this tier by their needs. cousins being a center tops the list while favors, a pf, probably isn't needed. sorting through the tier by need makes cousins the pick.

what espn does (either hollinger or ford) is poll the gm's and scouts of as many teams as they can to get an idea of who is in everyones tiers, then they make a consensus set of tiers.

with this in hand (and some knowledge of team needs) you can pretty much predict the next pick while the draft is going on. definitely keep an eye out for it as we get closer to the draft.