Draft Express/John Hollinger/Chad Ford Composite Mock Draft

  
        With the NBA Draft coming up on June 28th, people are beginning to wonder how the draft will pan out. Whether it be ESPN's Chad Ford and John Hollinger or even draftexpress.com, everyone has a different opinion on where players should be drafted.
        Ford bases his big board on what he's hearing from NBA general managers, executives and scouts. His big board does not reflect his own opinion, rather it is a consensus mock draft for all NBA personnel he has contacted.
        Hollinger's big board reflects his own formula. This formula has improved year after year (each year there is more data) and provides a statistical perspective of players (his formula doesn't account for intangibles for example). His formula has been quite effective predicting the success of players in the past (in the 2011 draft Hollinger accurately predicted success for Kawhi Leonard, Jon Leuer and Nikola Vucevic). It is important to note that Hollinger's formula predicts a players future player efficiency rating (PER). Past players such as Michael Beasley and Tyrus Thomas rated well in Hollinger's formula but have turned out to be worse NBA players than anticipated (although both of their PER's have been very good so far in their respective careers, their poor intangibles were unpredictable). Although Hollinger's big board reflects his formula, he still includes his own opinion as well (therefore his order is not strictly based on his calculations. For example, Henry Sims is the 10th best big man according to his formula but he only has him ranked 32nd overall on his big board).
        Draft Express is a website that in the past I wouldn't have called trustworthy but recently they've improved immensely. DX has tremendous scouting videos that I highly suggest viewing. DX is also partnered with Yahoo which is a plus. Their database is extensive, featuring some of the best advanced stats on the internet for international and college prospects.
        After reviewing all three of these big boards the Chicago Sports Guys came up with the idea of calculating a composite score. This composite score is the average ranking of Hollinger, Ford and Draft Express' big boards. The chart below ranks the players in order of their composite score. When reviewing composite scores, remember this is predicting future NBA success not draft order. At the end, Arik Wonsover will shed some insight on the calculations and draw conclusions.

 2012 NBA Draft Composite Big Board

Player	College	Hollinger	Ford	DX	Composite	Comp Rank
Anthony Davis	Kentucky	1	1	1	1	1
Michael Kidd-Gilchrist	Kentucky	3	2	3	2.67	2
Thomas Robinson	Kansas	2	4	4	3.33	3
Andre Drummond	UCONN	5	5	2	4	4
Bradley Beal	Florida	11	3	5	6.33	5
Harrison Barnes	UNC	12	6	6	8	6
Jared Sullinger	OSU	7	10	7	8	7
Dion Waiters	Syracuse	4	8	19	10.33	8
Terrence Jones	Kentucky	8	14	9	10.33	9
John Henson	UNC	9	12	11	10.67	10
Jeremy Lamb	UCONN	17	9	10	12	11
Damian Lillard	Weber St.	18	7	13	12.67	12
Kendall Marshall	UNC	14	18	14	15.33	13
Perry Jones	Baylor	28	13	8	16.33	14
Tyler Zeller	UNC	23	15	12	16.67	15
Quincy Miller	Baylor	6	27	17	16.67	16
Austin Rivers	Duke	19	17	15	17	17
Meyers Leonard	ILL	26	11	20	19	18
Terrence Ross	Washington	27	16	16	19.67	19
Royce White	Iowa St.	10	23	26	19.67	20
Tony Wroten	Washington	13	22	25	20	21
Marquis Teague	Kentucky	15	24	22	20.33	22
Mo Harkless	St. John's	35	20	18	24.33	23
Evan Fournier	France	24	26	24	24.33	24
Fab Melo	Syracuse	30	25	23	26	25
Draymond Green	MSU	16	28	36	26.67	26
Arnett Moultrie	Miss. St.	42	19	21	27.44	27
Doron Lamb	Kentucky	20	34	33	29	28
Tyshawn Taylor	Kansas	25	35	28	29.33	29
Andrew Nicholson	St. Bona	38	21	30	29.67	30
Festus Ezeli	Vandy	29	30	31	30	31
Will Barton	Memphis	22	32	38	30.67	32
Jeff Taylor	Vandy	50	29	27	35.33	33
Jared Cunningham	Oregon St.	46	31	35	37.33	34
John Jenkins	Vandy	48	33	32	37.67	35
Orlando Johnson	UC SB	49	39	29	39	36
Furkan Aldemir	Turkey	21	50	48	39.67	37
Kostas Papanikolaou	Greece	34	42	45	40.33	38
Drew Gordon	New Mexico	39	51	39	43	39
Jae Crowder	Marquette	45	49	43	45.67	40
Kyle O'Quinn	Norfolk St.	NR (61)	36	41	46	41
Henry Sims	Georgetown	32	41	65	46	42
Kevin Murphy	Tenn. Tech	NR (61)	38	40	46.33	43
Scott Machado	Iona	54	37	49	46.67	44
Tomas Satoransky	Czech Republic	NR (61)	40	42	47.67	45

**Kyle O'Quinn, Kevin Murphy and Tomas Satoransky were not ranked on Hollinger's big board. Therefore, we counted their rankings as 61 in the composite calculation**

        All three big boards are comparable

        Maybe the most surprising observation of these results is that they weren't very surprising. All in all, these three sources have pretty similar rankings. Most of the deviations came from John Hollinger, which is probably due to the fact that he relied heavily on his draft rating and he's not primarily a draft expert like Draft Express or Chad Ford.

         Biggest disparity between big boards

Orlando Johnson was all over the place among the big boards

        One of the players the three big boards seemed to disagree on was UC Santa Barbara shooting guard Orlando Johnson. His composite rank was 36th, but each big board had him ranked 10 spots apart from each other (49, 39 and 29). This could be due to his under-the-radar play and basketball obscurity. Not many scouts got to see him play on a regular basis or even at all. After Johnson trains with a few NBA teams, I'm sure we'll have a better feel for his draft range.

Meyers Leonard and Quincy Miller are stars or busts depending on your expert

        Quincy Miller (6, 27, 17) and Meyers Leonard (26, 11, 20) also saw quite a bit of disagreement between big boards. These are two players with major potential but have also left something to be desired. Both players also have risks tied to them. Miller is still recovering from a torn ACL he suffered his senior year of high school and Leonard has some attitude issues that need to be adjusted. These guys represent major risk-reward picks.

Overvalued and Undervalued Players

        While the big boards did a pretty nice job overall of avoiding overvaluing and undervaluing players, two players in particular ended up  a little lower than expected.

Hollinger projects Quincy Miller to be a stud in the future

        Quincy Miller jumped his expectations by ending up with a composite score of 16.67, good for 16th best overall. Much of this is due to Hollinger's more than generous rank for Miller at sixth overall. Hollinger calculated a rating of 12.94 for Miller, which was the fifth best of any perimeter player. Interestingly enough, of the eight players to rate above 13 in the past decade, five became All-stars, and the others were Rudy Gay and Kawhi Leonard (both could very well be All-Stars in the future) and Josh Childress. Hollinger stresses that the draft rater most accurately predicts wing players, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Arnett Moultrie's composite score was hurt by Hollinger

        The most undervalued player in the composite big board was Arnett Moultrie. He finished with the 27th best composite score, which would suggest his value is much lower than most people have him pegged. Once more, Hollinger's dismay of Moultrie, (ranking him 42nd overall) knocked him down quite a bit. Ford and DX had him ranked 19th and 21st, respectively. While Moultrie's stock has taken quite a hit since he sat out the NBA combine in Chicago, it remains unlikely that he'll be on the board by late first round. You could also argue St. Bonaventure's Andrew Nicholson was a little low at 30th overall, as he will probably be picked in the upper 20's.

Closing Thoughts

        Not every big board will correctly project every NBA player, but as you pool your sources and look for similarities, you'll get closer and closer to the truth. Hollinger, Ford and Draft Express are three of the most credible sources that you can find, but even the best can be wrong sometimes. As it goes with any draft, the NBA draft is a crap shoot. Sometimes your best guess is as good as anyone's.