NBA Draft Preview: Nerlens Noel Projects to Be Best Prospect

Nerlens Noel is the sixth best player in the draft at steals (3.9% of opponents’ trips end in Noel stealing the ball), one of the top 10 at defensive rebounds (grabs 22.3% of opponents misses) and is the best “non-ball hog” in the draft, taking only 15.9% of his teams shots. Those are the three most important college stats in determining a college player’s future NBA potential, and when factored in with other stats, Noel projects to be the best NBA player from this year’s draft by the fourth year of the rookie contracts – indicating a team of players as good as Noel would likely go 65-17 by 2016-17.

These exclusive NBA projections indicate a team of players as good as Trey Burke would go about 42-40 next season, while a team of players as good as Noel should go about 34-48. However, Noel is younger and his strengths tend to improve values more than Burke’s strengths, so Burke could well be the better rookie but Noel is the better draft pick. Here are the rankings of the 59 potential draft picks who played in college this year, with their draft rating as an average of their first year and fourth year projected record.

Rnk	Name	School	%Shots	Stl%	DR%	2013-14 Wins	2016-17 Wins	Average
1	Nerlens Noel	Kentucky	15.9	3.9	22.3	34	65	49
2	Otto Porter	Georgetown	25.5	3.3	19.0	38	50	44
3	Andre Roberson	Colorado	19.9	3.9	27.1	21	65	43
4	Trey Burke	Michigan	28.3	2.8	8.7	42	42	42
5	Kentavious Caldwell-Pope	Georgia	33.1	3.8	19.7	34	47	40
6	Ben McLemore	Kansas	24.7	1.8	12.3	38	38	38
7	Anthony Bennett	UNLV	28.0	1.5	21.8	33	40	36
8	Steven Adams	Pittsburgh	17.6	1.9	19.1	29	44	36
9	Victor Oladipo	Indiana	21.9	4.5	14.0	30	42	36
10	Cody Zeller	Indiana	24.5	2.1	18.7	34	37	35
11	Gorgui Dieng	Louisville	16.1	2.6	22.1	21	50	35
12	Mason Plumlee	Duke	20.9	1.7	23.3	25	41	33
13	Jamaal Franklin	San Diego St.	26.7	2.9	26.3	20	44	32
14	Michael Carter-Williams	Syracuse	19.6	4.8	11.1	29	35	32
15	Mike Muscala	Bucknell	31.1	1.0	28.9	25	40	32
16	Richard Howell	NC State	20.5	1.9	24.0	19	46	32
17	Dewayne Dedmon	USC	18.1	2.9	24.1	11	49	30
18	C.J. McCollum (2012)	Lehigh	34.3	4.6	17.6	25	34	29
19	Jeff Withey	Kansas	20.4	1.4	20.9	22	37	29
20	Reggie Bullock	UNC	20.1	2.2	15.5	23	35	29
21	Erick Green	Virginia Tech	33.0	2.1	10.6	28	28	28
22	Grant Jerrett	Arizona	18.5	1.6	16.4	20	36	28
23	Shane Larkin	Miami FL	21.4	3.4	10.4	28	28	28
24	Colton Iverson	Colorado St.	21.3	1.2	25.8	16	38	27
25	Shabazz Muhammad	UCLA	30.8	1.3	8.5	27	27	27
26	Trevor Mbakwe	Minnesota	18.8	1.7	24.3	14	40	27
27	Kelly Olynyk	Gonzaga	29.3	1.6	20.5	25	27	26
28	Jackie Carmichael	Illinois St.	27.8	1.8	24.7	16	34	25
29	Erik Murphy	Florida	24.6	1.5	17.4	20	29	24
30	Nate Wolters	South Dakota St.	29.1	2.8	14.3	24	24	24
31	Carrick Felix	Arizona St.	22.2	2.4	18.6	14	33	23
32	James Ennis	Long Beach St.	24.5	3.1	15.7	18	28	23
33	James Southerland	Syracuse	25.1	3.1	14.4	15	31	23
34	Deshaun Thomas	Ohio St.	32.2	0.9	14.0	22	22	22
35	Allen Crabbe	California	27.7	1.9	14.8	21	21	21
36	Brandon Davies	Brigham Young	27.4	2.6	21.9	13	29	21
37	Ray McCallum	Detroit	23.9	3.0	13.1	19	23	21
38	Robert Covington	Tennessee St.	30.1	4.1	18.7	10	33	21
39	Peyton Siva	Louisville	19.5	4.3	7.6	19	22	20
40	Pierre Jackson	Baylor	27.6	2.5	9.5	20	20	20
41	Alex Len	Maryland	23.2	0.5	19.3	16	23	19
42	Tony Mitchell	North Texas	22.1	1.8	20.6	9	29	19
43	Kenny Kadji	Miami FL	25.0	0.8	20.2	13	24	18
44	Seth Curry	Duke	26.6	1.6	6.8	18	18	18
45	C.J. Leslie	North Carolina St.	23.1	1.8	18.1	11	21	16
46	Ryan Kelly	Duke	22.6	1.4	14.3	14	19	16
47	Isaiah Canaan	Murray St.	32.4	2.5	9.2	15	15	15
48	Solomon Hill	Arizona	21.7	2.1	12.7	13	18	15
49	Brandon Paul	Illinois	27.6	2.3	14.4	14	14	14
50	Lorenzo Brown	North Carolina St.	20.9	3.4	11.4	12	17	14
51	Will Clyburn	Iowa St.	22.8	1.7	16.8	10	18	14
52	Archie Goodwin	Kentucky	25.0	2.1	10.4	13	13	13
53	Tim Hardaway	Michigan	24.2	1.2	14.8	11	15	13
54	Vander Blue	Marquette	27.6	2.0	9.3	10	10	10
55	BJ Young	Arkansas	30.5	1.4	10.5	9	9	9
56	Phil Pressey	Missouri	22.2	3.1	7.9	7	7	7
57	Tony Snell	New Mexico	24.2	1.6	8.1	7	7	7
58	Myck Kabongo	Texas	19.9	3.2	12.7	5	5	5
59	Adonis Thomas	Memphis	25.4	1.3	11.0	3	3	3

The stats a player produces calculate to a “Wins Produced per 48 minutes.” A player who is exactly average in every NBA Stat would have a WP/48 of .100, meaning that a team of completely average players would average to a .500 for a full 48 minute game for a 41-41 record over 82 games. in calculating how well decades of college players have done when jumping (or attempting to jump) to the NBA, we have been able to project the WP/48 minutes they should have in their first, second and third year. By his fourth year Noel projects to have a WP/48 of .160, which means combined with four average players would win 56 percent of their games (.100 + .100 + .100 + .100 + Noel’s .160 = .560).

However, if every player on a team were as good as Noel (all .160), they would project to go 65-17.

Previous posts covered know how good a college player someone is (Senior Value Add), and if he is one of the few players elite enough physically to play in the league. While many stats factor into determining how many wins a player can produce for a team we list the three that are the strongest “NBA Indicators” in the equation that leads to projected wins.  A further explanation of the three most important stats in these projections follows:

Shot% – Players who excel in college WITHOUT taking a lot of the shots are the best prospects. This has been mathematically proven over the years, but the reason seems to be that a college star who is used to shooting his way out of a slump is going to be on an NBA bench when he misses his first three shots. Noel only takes 15.9 percent of his shots while on the floor and dominates both ends, while BJ Young is not going to have the green light to put up more than 30 percent of the shots like he did in Arkansas when he led the SEC in scoring so he is a long shot to stay on an NBA roster even if picked.

Steal% – Victor Oladipo steals the ball on 4.5% of opponents’ trips down the floor, and that is a huge indicator that he will be a strong NBA player. The fact that Noel is also one of the top players in the country at 3.9%, despite playing center, is yet another reason he is clearly the top player in this year’s draft.

Defensive Rebound% – Andre Roberson’s ability to go down and grab the rebound 27.1% of the time one of Colorado’s opponents’ missed a shot is one of the reasons he projects to put up a lot of wins for an NBA team.