April 11, 2012
Early Entrants
The Guys Who Didn't Make It

by Neil Paine

Amid the reactions to David Stern's thoughts on the NBA's "one-and-done" rule ("We would love to add a year," Stern told reporters), Mark Cuban chimed in last week with his preference--adding a third year to the NBA's college requirements.

"I just think there's a lot more kids that get ruined coming out early or going to school trying to be developed to come out early than actually make it," Cuban said. "For every Kobe or Garnett or Carmelo or LeBron, there's 100 Lenny Cookes."

That's a common sentiment among age-limit defenders, who frame their argument as one of altruistic concern for the well-being of young players. (Surely it has nothing to do with the inherent benefit to teams of extra scouting time and more prime years covered by team-friendly contracts.)

Putting aside Cuban's ulterior motives, is his statement even accurate? Have early-entry players flamed out at an especially high rate?

On the surface, it seems like Cuban has a case. From 1994-2005, there were 86 players who entered the draft early either out of high school or following their freshman year of college. Using the broad categories of performance (Superstar, All-Star, Starter, Regular, Scrub, Did Not Play) I employed in this article, this is how they performed in the NBA:

Superstar--8.1%
All-Star--10.5%
Starter--36.0%
Regular--14.0%
Scrub--9.3%
DNP--22.1%

While the numbers are quite good for drafted preps-to-pros players (18% superstars, 74% starters or better, 15% scrubs or worse), the inclusion of undrafted players like Cooke, who declared in 2002, changes the picture quite a bit.

Cuban obviously exaggerated for effect, but for every superstar who came out early there were roughly four early-entry hopefuls who either barely scraped the bottom of the NBA barrel or didn't play in the league at all. Perhaps these were players who could have improved their eventual standing by attending college or staying in school an extra year or two.

Then again, for the most part we're not exactly talking about future Hall of Fame talents who were "ruined" by coming out early. Using DraftExpress' recruiting rankings (which go back to 1998), we can try to gauge how much raw talent was irrevocably destroyed by the preps-to-pros or one-and-done phenomena. Of the 23 players in that span who either failed to reach the NBA or peaked as "Scrubs", just four ranked among the top 5 in their high school recruiting class, and only five were in the top 10:

Conversely, 12 of the 23 placed outside the top 100 prospects in their class, and 18 were outside the top 10.

As impressive as a moderately high recruiting ranking looks on paper, the future is not typically bright for those types of prospects, whether they declare early or not. According to research I did last summer, 73% of players ranked outside the top 10 in their class failed to make the NBA at all, and 8% more maxed out as mere scrubs. Only 11% were NBA starters or better.

Given those numbers, is it any surprise that so many early entrants failed? Based on their recruiting rankings, only Cooke, Korleone Young, Ndudi Ebi, and Ousmane Cisse can really be considered to have underachieved relative to their NBA potential. Perhaps that quartet would have blossomed into regulars or even starters with NCAA seasoning, but it's worth hammering home that even prospects on the order of a Randolph Morris or DeAngelo Collins fail to make the NBA roughly half of the time.

In the final analysis, Cuban's argument is not only transparently self-serving from an ownership point of view, but it's historically inaccurate. The assumption that all or even most early entrants washed out because they eschewed extra college seasoning doesn't hold water when you consider the talent level that most of those players were working with--whether they stayed in school or not, the vast majority of them would have fallen short in the NBA simply for lack of raw ability.

The take-home lesson of those failed prospects isn't the virtue of college experience, but rather the incredible difficulty any player faces when attempting to earn and maintain an NBA job.

Neil Paine is an author of Basketball Prospectus. You can contact Neil by clicking here or click here to see Neil's other articles.