Basketball Card Saber Metrics: NBA Draft Lottery Version

[sonics_79]

Josh Glover
Sonics_79



Basketball Card Saber Metrics:

NBA Draft Lottery Version


This past year has been an exciting one for NBA fans in the hobby. We have seen the emergence of some amazing players from last year’s draft that have had a huge impact on the card collecting industry, and the sport in general. Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry, and Brandon Jennings among many others have been the big names coming from this year’s rookie ranks.

Every year it seems like we see a few surprise players coming out of the draft that end up drawing huge values for their cards. I have to say, before the beginning of the season I didn’t necessarily expect Curry and Jennings be quite as popular with collectors as they have turned out to be. It seems like it can sometimes be difficult to predict who is going to be ‘the next big thing’. Everyone knew that Blake Griffin and Tyreke Evans would be huge, but after that it was a little up in the air.

So, in honor of last year’s draft, where we saw pick #’s 4, 6, and 10 (Evans, Curry, and Jennings) explode, and with anticipation for the soon to be 2010 Draft class, I decided to do a little research to find out exactly how lottery picks have stacked up to each other over the past ten years in the hobby. Thanks to Beckett.com I was able to go through, what I call ‘Basketball card saber metrics’, and find the average Beckett value per card for each lottery pick from 1999-2009. It really wasn’t too difficult, simply look up your player, find the total Beckett value for all cards, and then divide by the number of cards made. Then, add up the average ppc (price per card) for every player of a certain pick; divide by number of years, and viola, average ppc for said pick over the last decade!

So without further adieu, here are the results:


1. 30.63 (Gee, thanks, LeBron!)
2. 21.98
3. 18.02
4. 20.79
5. 17.20
6. 14.95
7. 13.82
8. 9.90
9. 11.19
10. 13.70
11. 11.37
12. 10.43
13. 12.88
14. 11.47



There you are! Interpret as you please, but I’ll go ahead and share a few things that I happened to notice. It’s important to remember that these are all averages of course, and for every LeBron there is a Kwame Brown; but you get the picture. First of all, you may notice…gasp, the #1 pick tends to do favorably well. LeBron had a lot to do with that, but I’d say it’s a fairly safe bet that you’re going to get value out of a card from the #1 pick. There are two little surprises for me, however, that I did not expect. What happened to all of those #8 picks, who had the lowest average of all lottery picks? I guess it should be no surprise when considering this group contains big-time let downs such as Joe Alexander, Rafael Araujo, Chris Wilcox, and Desagana Diop. Good luck Clippers! I was also surprised to see how well the #10 picks faired. This group did not have the highest value, but has Brandon Jennings, Brook Lopez, Andrew Bynum, Joe Johnson, and Jason Terry amongst its ranks.

Let’s hope that this year’s 2010 class will be just as exciting to collect as 2009! Look for upcoming articles featuring my new patented ‘Basketball card saber metrics’ method. I will be comparing player values pertaining to several different topics, throughout the year!

[mikesilvia]

Final version was posted here:
https://www.sportscardforum.com/artic...ttery-version/

[beishuizen91]

Very good artical. Its very interesting how the picks stack up against one another.