The Best NBA Players Left Off the "Rivals 150" Prospect Rankings

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Definitely an interesting investigation. I'd be curious to see the opposite: the players who were high on the Top 150 who went on to do nothing in the NBA. I imagine there's a point where you can say "most players rated X or higher went on to play in the NBA" but I have no idea where that would be.
 

You want guys Rivals rated high that didn't do much in the NBA?

In 2003, they had James Lang #4, Brian Butch #5, David Padgett #7, Ndudi Ebi #9. In 2004, they had Malik Hairston #7 and Joe Crawford #9. Richard Hendrix #9 in 2005. 2006 was a pretty strong class but they still had Javaris Crittenton #7 (probably played more minutes in the NBA than anybody else I'm listing) and Paul Harris #12. 2007 was a super strong class. Scotty Hopson #5 and Willie Warren #10 in 2008. Michael Snaer #7, Tiny Gallon #9, and Mouph Yarou #10 in 2009. Josh Selby #1, Tobias Harris #7 in 2010.

Pretty much you should expect a guy if he's ranked in the top-10 to make the NBA, and after that it gets more hit or miss. I'd say about half of the guys in the 10-20 range make the NBA but it kind of varies based on class strength. Once you get below the top 20, you're more likely to not be an NBA player than turn out to be one and the frequency of pros decreases the farther you go.
 

Pretty fair assessment except for Tobias Harris. Grant it it was only 27 games last year but he averaged over 17ppg for Orlando. He has played in 97 games coming into the year. He got hurt early but was being touted as a breakout player.

OSUfan said:
You want guys Rivals rated high that didn't do much in the NBA?

In 2003, they had James Lang #4, Brian Butch #5, David Padgett #7, Ndudi Ebi #9. In 2004, they had Malik Hairston #7 and Joe Crawford #9. Richard Hendrix #9 in 2005. 2006 was a pretty strong class but they still had Javaris Crittenton #7 (probably played more minutes in the NBA than anybody else I'm listing) and Paul Harris #12. 2007 was a super strong class. Scotty Hopson #5 and Willie Warren #10 in 2008. Michael Snaer #7, Tiny Gallon #9, and Mouph Yarou #10 in 2009. Josh Selby #1, Tobias Harris #7 in 2010.

Pretty much you should expect a guy if he's ranked in the top-10 to make the NBA, and after that it gets more hit or miss. I'd say about half of the guys in the 10-20 range make the NBA but it kind of varies based on class strength. Once you get below the top 20, you're more likely to not be an NBA player than turn out to be one and the frequency of pros decreases the farther you go.
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rivergopher said:
Pretty fair assessment except for Tobias Harris. Grant it it was only 27 games last year but he averaged over 17ppg for Orlando. He has played in 97 games coming into the year. He got hurt early but was being touted as a breakout player.
Click to expand...

Oh, hadn't noticed that. It was probably too early to try to include that 2010 class in this analysis.
 


A) I think the premise of the article is a little silly. I could understand comparing the Rivals 150 to college success, since that's what it's intended to project, but to even think about judging a list of 17 year olds based on what those kids do when they're 28 to me is ludicrous.

I recognize that many of the players only play briefly in college, and going back far enough some didn't play at all. But no one in the world would tell you that they can accurately predict whether a group of 150 high school kids would make it to the NBA. I'm sure everyone at Rivals feels pretty confident that Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker will contribute in the NBA, but I doubt anyone there would be even $100 that there'd be more guys between 75 - 100 making it than between 100 and infiinity, which is essentially how this is set up.

B) I also think that using only Rivals is slightly flawed. The poster boy for the article, Westbrook, was 114 in the RSCI, which is essentially a composite. Hibbert was 96 his year. Jordan Hill was 137.

C) Lastly, as the chart states 15 is league average. So they were come up with 12 players (9 if you count RSCI) that weren't in the Rivals top 150 in the last 10 years but ended up being above average NBA players.. So basically 9 out of about 10,000. The author of the article was careful not to actually draw any conclusions, and I'm thinking that 9 out of 10,000 number is probably why.
 

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