What is the Success Rate of NBA first round draft picks over the past 45 years.
The numbers may surprise you…..
For the 2nd straight year a Frenchman has been deemed the number one pick in the NBA Draft. Zaccharie Risacher the 19 years old 6’9 young prospect has been drafted to help change the fortunes of the Atlanta Hawks; as Victor Wembanyama was for the San Antonio Spurs a year ago. Wembanyama so far has lived up to his draft hype and the Spurs hope that he continues on the trajectory that he is on. As we know most of these prospects will be backups and play limited minutes and some will not even last on their respective teams. Regarding that last statement I got curious and wanted to know how many of the #1 picks were actually successful and how many never panned out. Since 1979 which was ironically the Magic Johnson draft, there have been 21 out of 45 number one picks have gone on to have successful/hall of famers. Not as stark as the NFL Draft however the averages over 45 years break down to every two to three prospects having a boom or bust potential. Meaning if you have a team who is looking to revitalize your franchise as many do every middle to the end of June through the draft; you are looking at potentially the top of the draft every three years having a bust at the very top of the draft. The most notable signs of potential stars in most recent drafts are the aforementioned Wembanyama, the often injured but still potentially dominant Zion Williamson (2019 NBA Draft) Anthony Edwards (2020 NBA Draft), Cade Cunningham (2021 NBA Draft) Paolo Banchero (2022 NBA Draft. As you are reading this the NBA draft had ended about 2 weeks ago now and it’s astonishing to think a lot of “experts “ say this was a weak draft. Most experts were down on the two top prospects ( Zaccaharie Risacher, Alexandre Sarr) yet these are the same experts who allowed Nikola Jokic to slide to the second round of the 2015 draft and then tell us how guys like #1 picks like Ben Simmons (2016 NBA Draft) were can’t miss. So curiosity getting the better of me I went further into my research to see how many of those draft classes produced great players. For this study the benchmarks needed to be reached were quite high; for grading the draft classes the criteria was the class had to produce multiple hall of famers and multiple all stars. Per Yahoo Sports/NBC Sportsmhttps://sports.yahoo.com/nba-draft-history-first-overall-222642580.html (Yahoo Sports/NBC Sports) the NBA Draft with the most combined MVP’s were the 1984 Draft with 7 which coincidentally is tied with the 1996 class for most individual MVP winners with 3. The player that has the honor with the most MVP awards as a number one pick is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who was drafted in 1969. Kareem went on to win 6 MVP trophies; and as far as All Stars selections are concerned the class with the most All Stars were the legendary 1996 Class (Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen, Steve Nash to name a few.) Per Bruin Sports Analytics the success rate for All Stars in the NBA draft lottery is 27.4% while the rest of the first round picks average a success rate of 7.4%. Those numbers are even starker when you realize that second round NBA selections have an even bigger mountain to climb when you see that on average 2% of those selections have went on to be All Star selections. Selecting players we know is an inexact science and the young men selected within the past few years are carving out their paths to stardom and success. However the clock is ticking and time will eventually tell how many more of these guys will rise to the ranks of the elite and how many will flame out into obscurity.