Warning: long post with data –quit reading now if you’re not interested in the Locke/Kaminsky discussion.
I’ll take a stab at the Locke/Kaminsky question with some (semi-systematic, if also quick and dirty) research.
Locke’s argument has been that college players (or more precisely 18/19 and 19/20-year olds) who don’t demonstrate some kind of excellence their first two years in college are very risky – that they tend to flame out in the NBA.
To go through the data as quickly as possible, I used the EFF rating in DX’s player profiles, as it seems to be the single number that gives at least some sense of the combination of quality and the amount of play (which Locke seemed to stress). I went through six years of drafts (2006-11) because I simply don’t have time to do more, and I think the patterns probably become clear enough with this sample size. I typically tried to go through about the first 35-40 or so players drafted in each of these years.
Kaminsky’s EFF rating was 2.8 and 5.4 respectively as an 18-year-old freshman and a 19-year-old sophomore. Locke is right to say that these are extremely low numbers for an NBA draft pick in Kaminsky’s range. They are quite rare.
It’s not unusual for draftees to have somewhat low 18/19-year-old EFF ratings (though they’re still the minority). But I decided to concentrate on the numbers as a 19/20-year old, the typical age for sophomores, since Locke was really stressing this yesterday. Indeed I found it was very rare for NBA draftees to have such low numbers in that season.
In fact, I found only one real good comparison--Jon Leuer--Wisconsin skilled big man--coincidentally (or not coincidentally) enough. Though Leuer was a bit higher earlier in his career and a bit lower later, his career trajectory tracked pretty closely to Kaminsky.
Is this a good or a bad sign for Kaminsky? Hard to say, but I’d lean toward good. He’s become a decent, though thoroughly replaceable semi-rotation player for a very good team. But having been drafted 40th, that career trajectory probably doesn’t hurt Kaminsky’s case.
Another Big Ten guy – Maurice Ager – had numbers very similar to Kaminsky in his first two years (though slightly higher). He and a few other players with similar numbers – Nolan Smith, Justin Harper, Morris Almond (ouch!) are all probably fairly classified as busts, even though they were picked between the low 20s-low 30s. Maybe these support Locke’s case, but none of those players’ last two years numbers were nearly as good as Frank’s.
In support of Kaminsky, we can turn to Joakim Noah, who had a 5.3 EFF rating as a 19/20-year-old freshman and yet has clearly lived up to his high draft position.
Al Thornton is a bit more uncertain. Drafted at #14, near Kaminsky’s projection, Thornton was more than a year older than Frank in his college progression. His freshman and sophomore EFFs of 3.1 and 9.3 are quite low. Thornton had some decent years for bad teams as a pro, but kind of faded away as his game never really progressed.
If we stretch the match with Kaminsky a bit (ie including for freshmen, rather than sophomores – but only those who were within about 6 months of Kaminsky’s sophomore age; or getting a little further away from Kaminsky’s low sophomore EFF score), we can add the following names, roughly from closer to less close match with Kaminsky:
Cole Aldrich
Jordan Hill
Randy Foye
James White
Epke Udoh
Jordan Hamilton
Norris Cole
Chandler Parsons
Jimmy Butler
Aaron Afflalo
Joe Alexander
Larry Sanders
Nick Young
Isaiah Thomas
Sheldon Williams
Craig Brackins
Good or bad signs for Kaminsky overall? Hard to say, but any determination has to factor in draft position.
Overall, I’d say, as Stitches said earlier, it’s probably good to have a healthy respect for the argument that low production in the first two years is a warning factor. But I suspect (with Vashro) that it’s overplayed at times.
In reality, Kaminsky’s case is so unique – going from such low to such high production – that it’s really hard to know if past experience is any guide in this particular case. Maybe that by itself is even more risky than comparison with these quasi-similar cases I found.
But on the other hand, there’s an argument to be made that Kaminsky has shown an aptitude for improvement – one of the most important traits an NBA player can have. As Wes Matthews, DeMarre Carroll, Paul Millsap, and many others have shown, it’s hard to know where the ceiling is for that.
EDIT PS: The comparisons Locke has been providing: Wesley Johnson, Jimmer Fredette, particularly, aren't very good comparisons. Johnson was pretty good as a freshman, Jimmer as a sophomore. They wouldn't make my cutoff for comparisons.
