DI Review: The 2005 Draft

The following is the sixth in a ten part series in which we'll review the past 10 NBA drafts, provide the Draftability Index Score for every American college prospect, and analyze the findings. One note before we dive in, all of the data is being pulled from Basketball Reference and the NBA Geek and the win share numbers are the players' career average per 48 minutes to date. If you're new to that measurement, a league average score is .100 and 'star' level production correlates to .200 and above.

The rating system is as follows: Green level prospects are the strongest and will be notated with an E, Gold level prospects are reasonably desirable prospects and are notated with a G, Red level prospects are suspect prospects and are notated with an R, and Gray level prospects are highly suspect and are notated with a Y.

The 2005 Draft was not a particularly strong crop of prospects and is a also the last draft with direct to high school prospects. Let's take a look at how things shake out...

Round One

                                             DI Score           Rating          WP per 48
1) Andrew Bogut                      1.14                    E                     .134
2) Marvin Williams                    0.34                   R                     .120
3) Deron Williams                    0.71                   G                     .149
4) Chris Paul                            0.35                   R                      .307
5) Raymond Felton                  0.53                    G                     .077
7) Charlie Villanueva                0.44                    R                     .022
8) Channing Frye                     0.51                    G                     .022
9) Ike Diogu                              0.17                    Y                      .057
13) Sean May                           0.49                    R                      .066
14) Rashad McCants               0.29                    R                      .035
15) Antoine Wright                   0.25                    R                      .029
16) Joey Graham                     0.25                    R                      .061
17) Danny Granger                  0.69                     G                     .117
19) Hakim Warrick                   0.48                     R                     .043
20) Julius Hodge                      0.40                     R                      .003
21) Nate Robinson                   0.29                     R                      .057
22) Jarrett Jack                        0.67                     G                      .093
23) Francisco Garcia               1.22                     E                      .085
24) Luther Head                       0.43                     R                      .122
26) Jason Maxiell                     0.76                     G                      .107
27) Linas Kleiza                       0.12                     Y                      .051
29) Wayne Simien                   0.14                     Y                      .085
30) David Lee                          0.25                      R                     .155

Notes: The green level prospects (Bogut and Garcia) split. On Garcia, he is one of those Louisville guys, and still would have been a decent choice in the mid-to-late first. The gold level prospects (Deron Williams, Felton, Granger, Jack, Maxiell) have all panned out, more or less, as well. 
From the red and the grays, we have eliminated some lousy players, but as you likely noticed pretty immediately, we missed some really good ones. DI would have had us pass on Chris Paul and David Lee- pretty big whiffs. I'd like to get into the Wake Forest film and figure out how precisely how CP3 posted such a weak number, but that's neither here nor there.

Round Two

                                             DI Score           Rating          WP per 48
31) Salim Stoudamire              0.07                   Y                     .040
32) Daniel Ewing                      0.30                   R                    .027
33) Brandon Bass                    0.35                   R                    .089
37) Ronny Turiaf                      0.27                   R                     .101
38) Travis Diener                     0.26                   R                     .125
39) Von Wafer                          0.04                   Y                     .064
42) Chris Taft                           0.69                   G                     .155
47) Bracey Wright                    0.19                   Y                      .068
50) Ryan Gomes                     0.29                    R                     .082
53) Orien Greene                     0.16                    Y                     -.002
54) Dijon Thompson                0.09                     Y                    .102
55) Laurence Roberts              0.49                    R                    .103
60) Alex Acker                          0.12                     Y                    -.004

Notes: By using Wins Produced per 48 minutes, we do lose some of the perspective one would gain from an aggregated measurement. In this case, we have a number of prospects, some of whom with  less than 200 minutes, registering as 'good' professional players. Whether or not we should read more into the fact that the player only lasted a year or two, or that they played decently when they got on the court, I'll leave to you to debate.
We do have some more established productive players (Turiaf, Diener, Bass, Gomes) none of whom would have registered as desirable options on DI. Nobody said the second round was easy...


There you have in folks, and now, 2005 in a nutshell...

"We're slightly above average!!"