How close are the men's college basketball players in action this month to their NBA counterparts?
It's March and the NCAA season is reaching a crescendo with Champ Week wrapping up this weekend and the start of the NCAA tournament beginning next week. Many of the players in action will take their talents to the NBA next season.
With that in mind, this week's mailbag takes a look at whether college basketball players are closer in ability to the NBA than college prospects in the other big two American men's sports leagues -- a question that largely boils down to comparing college basketball and college football.
Throughout the NBA season, I answer your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet me directly at @kpelton, tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them to peltonmailbag@gmail.com.
In addition to the main question, this week's mailbag also tackles the best NBA player never to get any tangible award or championship ring as well as rules the league could take off the books without changing how the game is played.
"Are college basketball players closer in talent to their NBA professional counterparts than college football and baseball players are to NFL and MLB players?"
-- Glenn
We can start by ruling out MLB here given that the vast majority of college draftees still must go through the minor leagues before reaching the majors. When Garrett Crochet debuted immediately with the Chicago White Sox in 2020, he was the first MLB player in a decade to go directly from NCAA to the major leagues.
That leaves the NFL and NBA and the challenge of comparing them. Because individual statistics are so limited in football, it's difficult to directly compare performance. I figured playing time was the better way to go. Specifically, I went with percentage of minutes (NBA) or snaps (NFL) played by rookies directly out of college in the playoffs, under the logic that playing time in the regular season can be more determined by development than performance.
I was a bit surprised to learn the results weren't particularly close. On average, there are two rookies on the field on any given NFL postseason play, whereas it's rare to see rookies on the court in an NBA playoff game.
Given football players are required to spend at least three years in college, it's not surprising they enter the NFL more ready than NBA rookies do when coming out of college. Looking at the playoffs might exaggerate the difference a bit because the NFL's greater uncertainty from season to season means rookies in general and high-lottery picks in particular are more likely to end up on good teams.
That said, I also looked more broadly at rookie playing time during the regular season -- not going to the same effort to determine if players were directly out of college -- and found about twice as much in the NFL as the NBA there, too. So I think it's safe to conclude college football players are somewhat closer to their NFL peers than men's college basketball players are to their NBA teammates.
"Who is the best NBA player ever with no awards and no rings?"
These criteria are more restrictive than they sound at first. The All-Rookie Team in particular slices off a large chunk of otherwise productive but unawarded players.
For a first statistical cut at this, let's look at Basketball-Reference.com's win shares metric. Although win shares are available throughout NBA history, the leaderboard is exclusively made up of players from the past four decades. That makes sense given how much easier it was to both make the All-Star team and win a championship in the smaller league from its first three decades.
Since we don't need to worry about pre-merger seasons, we can shift over to my wins above replacement player (WARP) metric, which values players slightly differently.
In fact, there's only one common player in the top five, longtime center Tree Rollins (perhaps most famous for biting Danny Ainge, producing the amazing Boston Herald headline "Tree bites man").
Both WARP and Basketball-Reference's value over replacement player (VORP) metric like Nicolas Batum, who was on the fringes of these awards, as the answer.
Batum started 76 games as a rookie (2008-09) but didn't make the All-Rookie Team because he played such a small role on offense (averaging 5.4 PPG) on a Portland Trail Blazers team that won 54 games. Batum frequently got votes for the All-Defensive Team without being selected and was never a serious candidate for the All-Star team during his best seasons with the Charlotte Hornets. He's played at a good but not great level for a long time, which epitomizes what this imaginary accolade represents.
"Are there rules in the NBA that have gone past their sell-by date?"
-- @Luzh1
Besides the current version of the clear-path rule, which even the league has acknowledged needs change, the question brings up defensive three seconds, which went into effect when the league legalized zone defenses in 2000, seeking to prevent teams from stationing a 7-footer in front of the rim at all times.
That rule might not be necessary with the improvement in shooting making it more difficult to stay anchored in the paint at all times. Still, protecting the rim is so important that I think teams would play differently without the rule in place, so I wouldn't say it's outdated. I have two other rules in mind, both of which have been called less frequently this season. (There have been 345 defensive three-second calls this season, according to play-by-play data.)
The first rule we could definitely do without is the little-known five-second back to the basket violation. This too is an artifact of the illegal defense era, when players (most famously Charles Barkley and Mark Jackson) could slowly work their way toward the hoop while forcing defenses to either fully commit to a double-team or play them one-on-one.
In an era where defenders can dig down on the post, that strategy has limited value at best. This violation has been called precisely two times this season (on Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker and Oklahoma City Thunder guard Josh Giddey). I think we can safely remove it.
Secondly, Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey brought at last week's MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference the eight-second rule for getting the ball across half court. Again, this rule seems to date back to a bygone era before the shot clock.
The NBA did reduce the time to get the ball over from 10 to eight seconds in 2000, along with the illegal defense changes to speed up play, but that kind of artificial boost is no longer necessary now that statistics tell us teams are much more efficient the earlier they begin their half-court offense. This gets called a bit more frequently (30 times this season), but mostly because a point guard forgets about it. I doubt we'd notice if this rule was removed.