Everyone knows Zion Williamson is the best player in the 2019 NBA draft. But is he the best prospect in the past two drafts? Yes.
Past five? Yes.
Past 10? It depends how you look at it, respectively.
ESPN's NBA draft projections show Williamson has the most upside of any prospect to enter the NBA draft in the model's history, which dates back to 2005.* His average projections rank third among all players in the same time span, trailing only Greg Oden and Anthony Davis.
Per the model, Williamson has a 72 percent chance to reach an All-Star level of play in his first four seasons -- better than the same model would have said for the likes of Davis, Kyrie Irving or Kevin Durant at the time of their drafts.
And as for the rest of the class of 2019? Williamson blows them out of the water. No other player in this year's class has even a 30 percent chance to reach an All-Star level, matching the perception that the drop-off from the first pick in this year's draft to the second is precipitous. In fact, if the second pick ends up being Ja Morant, the drop-off is even steeper (more on Morant in a minute).
Where are these numbers coming from?
ESPN's draft-projections model considers information from five different categories before forecasting the range of possibilities for each prospect's NBA career:
Opponent-adjusted NCAA production
League-adjusted international production
ESPN draft-expert rankings (Chad Ford's from 2000 to 2010, Jonathan Givony's from 2011 to 2018)
AAU/grassroots box score statistics
Combine measurements, such as height, weight, wingspan and body fat
For every player, the relevant categories are considered (only some players have an international track record, for example).
In which facets of the model did Williamson impress? Most of them.
The Duke product unsurprisingly ranked first in college production and first in Givony's rankings. He skipped the combine and doesn't have international experience. The only area in which he has an imperfect measurement is his grassroots production, for which he ranks sixth (he didn't put up quite as impressive rebounding or defensive numbers pre-college as he did at Duke).
All put together, Williamson has a 95 percent chance to become at least a starting-caliber player in his first four seasons and the aforementioned 72 percent shot at All-Star status. Putting Williamson at No. 1 and as an elite prospect is a shock to no one. But the chalk stops there.
Ja Morant: A reach at No. 2?
Our projections certainly think so.
ESPN's draft-analytics model pegs the Murray State sensation as just the 10th-best player in this year's class, with only a 35 percent chance to become at least a starting-caliber player. And, shockingly, it's his NCAA production -- or lack thereof -- that is keeping him there. I know what you're thinking: Morant was a stat machine! He averaged 24.5 points and 10 assists per game!
But there are two major caveats to Morant's collegiate production.
He wasn't nearly as statistically outrageous in his freshman season as he was as a sophomore.
The quality (or lack thereof) of Morant's opponents is significant. Most of them weren't exactly ACC-caliber. When we apply an opponent adjustment, Morant still grades out as elite in terms of assist production, but the rest of his numbers took a hit.
Consider especially these two factors combined: As a freshman, Morant was good but did not completely dominate the Ohio Valley conference. Morant might turn out to be a quality NBA player, but we would expect a future All-Star to excel even as a freshman against that level of competition.
Jaxson Hayes leads group of underrated prospects
In Morant's stead, our projections have an awfully hot take about the second-best player in the draft: Texas center Jaxson Hayes.
In Givony's latest mock draft, in which Hayes went 10th to the Atlanta Hawks, Givony noted the player's "phenomenal physical tools, mobility and instincts on both ends of the floor" that "[cemented] himself as the top center prospect in the draft."
Hayes might seem like a surprising player for a statistical model to love, but here we are. Although he had limited playing time as a Longhorn (23.3 minutes per game) and posted only 10 points per game, he was incredibly productive in some respects (2.2 blocks per game) and efficient in others (73 percent from the field).
Hayes' combine measurements (82.3 inches tall without shoes, 10.5-inch hand size) firmed up, in the model's eyes, his second-best projection.
He isn't the only surprise in the top five. Gonzaga's Brandon Clarke is an older prospect -- he'll be 23 in September -- but the model is willing to look beyond that given his ultra-efficient scoring as a Bulldog.
Bol Bol, meanwhile, doesn't have much college production to show given he was injured after only nine games at Oregon. But the center did have the second-best grassroots production in the class, playing for California Supreme of the Nike EYBL. Oh, and there's his 7-plus-foot height and 91-inch wingspan, which the model considers, as well.
But the biggest surprise inclusion in the top 10 of our analytics projections is easily Western Kentucky's Charles Bassey, who might or might not remain in the draft. The model is probably wondering what it's missing that everyone else seems to be seeing. Bassey was very productive at Western Kentucky on the boards and as a shot-blocker (2.4 blocks per game), and that was impressive to the model even after an opponent adjustment. That productivity was a follow-up to some strong pre-collegiate numbers -- in fact, he earned the third-best grassroots grade among the class.
Bassey doesn't possess the upside the previously mentioned players do, but with a 46 percent chance to become a starting-caliber player, the model thinks he's a no-brainer in the first round.
Darius Garland: Boom-or-Bust
Garland's situation is exactly why our model considers factors beyond just college production. A knee injury knocked the Vanderbilt freshman out for the year early in the season, but what we do have are Givony's qualitative ranking of Garland and his statistics playing for Bradley Beal Elite. The two categories offer differing views of the prospect: Garland's qualitative grade is excellent -- fourth-best in the class -- while his Nike EYBL stats could have been better, particularly in terms of scoring efficiency, rebounding and turnover rate for someone expected to be an early lottery pick.
Ultimately, the model landed somewhere in the middle on Garland: 17th-best on average but with the sixth-highest chance to end up as an All-Star. He also has a 22 percent shot to end up below replacement level, making him perhaps the high-variance prospect of 2019.
Wary of De'Andre Hunter
Fresh off an NCAA title, Hunter has a real chance to go in the top five of this year's draft, but our projections have the Virginia product as more of a late-first-rounder. Although Hunter was an efficient scorer, he didn't offer much in other statistical categories while playing for the Cavaliers. That's particularly true when we consider his freshman season, when he was a role player (before injury struck right before the NCAA tournament).
Sure, last year is the most important data point on Hunter, but it's worth keeping in mind that we are comparing him against others who played at a high level in the ACC in their first season in college. Our projections give Hunter a mere 12 percent shot to become at least a starter -- and that's certainly not worth a top-five selection.
Two other potential top-10 players whom the model considers generally overrated: Coby White and Sekou Doumbouya.
Zion Williamson is ... Mike Sweetney?
Let me explain.
In addition to producing a range of outcomes for each incoming player, our NBA draft projections produce stylistic prospect comparisons. These are based on each player's opponent-adjusted box score statistics in college, in addition to height and weight. It is not a reflection of what the past prospects went on to do in the NBA.
And Williamson's best comp, per our model, is former Georgetown big man Mike Sweetney. For NBA-only fans, that might raise some eyebrows: Sweetney did not become an impact player and appeared in regular-season games in only four seasons. But for college hoops aficionados, it likely makes more sense; Sweetney was very good when he was at Georgetown at a time when the Big East was stronger. He was the ninth-overall selection in the 2004 draft.
If we just compare some of their raw stats per 40 minutes from their final year of college, the resemblance actually is striking.
Williamson: 30.1 points, 11.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 2.4 blocks, .680 field goal percentage.
Sweetney: 28.2 points, 12.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 4.0 blocks, .544 field goal percentage.
Of course, those numbers came in Sweetney's third season playing college ball, and Williamson did it in his first. It's one of several reasons Williamson is a much better prospect than Sweetney was, but these stats do explain why the two are stylistic-prospect comps for one another.
Below are the top five stylistic-prospect comps, per our model, for Givony's top prospects (Bol Bol and Sekou Doumbouya did not qualify for the style comps).
*Note: Out of sample data informed all past years' projections, though ESPN's NBA draft projections have existed only over the past several seasons and have been tweaked/updated in recent offseasons, including this one.