In Defense of Mock Drafts

Believe me, this is a post I never envisioned myself writing. I do not like mock drafts. I find them silly when they are six to eight months ahead of time, and even when the draft draws near, they often are nothing more than someone’s opinion on how the draft will go. Even with great information from people with knowledge of teams’ draft intentions, all it takes is one team to go against the grain to throw a mock draft off.  “Big Boards” function in much the same way. Someone has an opinion on how players should be ranked, often based on few criteria.  More often than not, they give you very little information of value.

So why defend the mock draft? Last week, Fri Lavey wrote a post for the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective entitled Mocking Mock Drafts. The gist of the article was measuring the “accuracy” of mock drafts from major names such as Chad Ford and Draft Express, as well as a couple of sites I’ve never even heard of. As a final exercise in his post, Lavey used a random number generator to generate mock draft results. His results seemed to outdo those of the draft sites. Also, his methodology was very basic, relying solely on draft “position” and name, which can’t account for things such as draft-night trades where picks are swapped, or teams who may have multiple picks. If a team had three first round picks, and a mock drafter got all three picks correct, but in a different order, are they really “wrong?”

In his final paragraph, Lavey does give credit to mock drafters for the skills they do have, though his idea of what scouts actually do seems very basic. All-in-all, the post offers little insight, and is more of an excuse to apply statistical analysis to something that didn’t really need it.  Deadspin even reprinted the post with the title “Why and How NBA Mock Drafts Are a Sham.” That title takes mock drafts way more seriously than many who produce them.

As I mentioned, I see very little value in mock drafts. They are purely done for page views. There is some value though to a broader audience. Most people have no idea how the scouting and draft process goes in the NBA, and most people don’t want to be bogged down by knowing that the “Big Board” mentality that media fusses over has very little to do with it. But, mock drafts can be useful to the general fan in making them familiar with names they may not know, and more often than not, they inspire plenty of debate. They sometimes have very little to do with actual scouting. Scouts who also dabble in mock drafts care much more if their analysis/projection of a player’s NBA ability is correct, rather than guessing where they are actually picked.

Chad Ford, Draft Express, and others, don’t need me to defend the accuracy of their mock drafts, and after a draft is over, they probably care very little how many picks they “missed.” I will defend that the good scouts do much more than Lavey’s assertion of creating broad categories for prospects and taking a guess.  Now most mock drafters don’t fall into the “good scout” category, and Lavey may be correct about them, but they also have very little staying power in the NBA Draft world.

Will I still take shots at mock drafts? Yes, especially those done before there is any idea where teams will be picking.  Ideally, instead of dumbing down the draft process for the casual fan, those who understand how things work would use their knowledge to make the fan smarter, and there are a few that do this already.

However, measuring accuracy of mock drafts does little to advance this, and can create a false impression of what some people are trying to accomplish with their scenarios. Some, such as me when I do one, will look at the exercise as a chance to put myself in each team’s shoes and do what I would do if I ran each team. Some are more concerned with wanting to guess the correct order, but basing it on actual information that is gathered from various sources. Some probably do just guess. No matter how it’s done, a general “accuracy” analysis can’t account for a mock drafter’s intent, and the end result is the idea that random guessing can do as good a job as top-level draft analysts. That’s as silly to me as a mock draft in October.