Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets

Always Bet On Black Hops – Kevin Hetrick’s ongoing analysis of the draft combine at Hardwood Paroxysm examined power forward defense this week, and his results show that NBA GM’s (and the rest of us) are pretty stupid:

First, when considering height, this is a player trait typically held in high regard.  Certainly, how tall a player is gains pub from media and fans alike; Player X doesn’t have ideal size, he won’t be able to defend the opposition, etc.  Viewing actual draft-day decision making, a similar preference emerges; correlating draft position with height provides positive values for all positions and age groups, peaking at 0.37 for underclassmen centers.  This is ironic if you recall Part 6, featuring graphical representation of the  strong negative correlation between underclassmen center height and offensive performance. . . Moving into today’s focus, the power forwards, barefoot height offered no inclination of future defensive aptitude.

Hetrick provides very strong data showing that of all the draft combine measurements, leaping has the highest correlation with good defense.

In this case, Josh Smith, the overwhelmingly dominant player of the group, stood 6′ – 7″ at draft time.  Other “short” power forwards with decent defensive results include Paul Millsap, Thad Young and Ty Thomas; “tall” player with lesser outcomes are Jason Smith, Troy Murphy and Charlie Villanueva.  Similar to Centers, an over-valuing of height is at-play; for power forwards, correlations between draft position and height proved highest, at 0.30 for underclassmen and 0.26 for the elder group.

Allow me to apply this to the Rockets after the break:

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