Why Finding the NBA's Next Star Is Much Harder Than You Think

Future NBA players aren't born ready to enter the league.

Sure, height and natural ability help along the way. But rising high enough in the basketball hierarchy to make the Association takes plenty of hard work over a lengthy stretch of time. Even a non-household name in the NBA experiences an astronomical rise in status at some point; it just happens earlier for some. 

Beyond that, we don't know with any semblance of certainty that a youthful prospect is going to turn into something special. The LeBron Jameses of the world are exceedingly rare. 

Even Anthony Davis wasn't viewed as a future superstar until a late growth spurt turned him from a point guard into a big man. Premier high school recruits such as Harrison Barnes haven't always panned out quite as expected.

If we move back out of the realm of the league's best, foreseeing the future in a handy-dandy crystal ball becomes nigh impossible. In fact, just predicting which of the most prolific amateurs will turn into NBA players—even fringe benchwarmers—is remarkably difficult until they've actually hired agents. 

Going all the way back to their high school playing days, we can learn a bit but maybe not as much as you'd think. 

Do We Know in High School?

Identifying high school standouts is a pretty easy process. It's not particularly difficult to figure out which players are too advanced for their age, dominating the overmatched opposition in all facets of the game as they make teenagers in small but often crowded gyms spring to their feet. 

It's much more perilous trying to figure out which of the many studs will go on to play in the NBA. Beyond that, it's insanely hard to predict which players will become stars at the sport's highest level. 

Remember this magazine cover? 

Obviously, Sebastian Telfair and LeBron James experienced different levels of success in the Association. But before we write off the former, the fact that he made it into the NBA is an achievement in and of itself. Not every top high school recruit can claim that on his resume. 

Since 1998, RSCIHoops has tracked the Recruiting Services Consensus Index (RSCI), which essentially functions as an amalgamation of the most respected high school rankings. Each national service is weighted equally, and the overall RSCI of a collegiate prospect serves as his consensus rank. 

Including ties for the final spot on the countdown, 1,304 players have appeared in the rankings between 1998 and 2010. 

Out of all eligible players, just a paltry 34.1 percent (445) have suited up in even a single game at the NBA level. That's not the fault of the true top recruits but rather a result of the unlikelihood that a fringe top-100 prospect eventually pans out as something special. 

Sure, there are some random upticks as we move toward the final spot, but the players who fall outside of the top 30 generally have a tough time making it to the Association. The spots such as No. 46—which somehow produced Jamal Crawford, Taj Gibson, Chuck Hayes, Jarrett Jack, James Johnson, Troy Murphy and Sean Singletary—are few and far between. 

Of course, there are exceptions even further down, as well.

Jackie Butler, Toney Douglas and Derrick Williams all made it to the NBA out of the final spot in the RSCI rankings, but none of them experienced much success as professionals—granted, Williams could still change that. At No. 99, Gilbert Arenas, Khris Middleton and Emeka Okafor have all become NBA standouts at various points in the last decade, defying the odds to earn big contracts and widespread accolades during their primes. 

But again, these are the exceptions. 

When we look at the career win shares earned by every top-100 prospect who's gone on to play in the NBA, there isn't much difference between a high-level recruit who isn't quite elite and the guys filling out the bottom rungs. They may as well all the be the same: dominant high school players with lofty dreams.

Once you remove the major outliers—LeBron James and Chris Paul—this is fairly patternless. It's hard to differentiate between players who are pretty far apart in the RSCI rankings. Unless, of course, they're at the top. 

The good news for Ben Simmons, this year's No. 1 recruit, as he heads to LSU is that the players taking the pole position have generally experienced quite a bit of success. Every single one of them between 1998 and 2010 went on to play in the NBA, even if Donnell Harvey and Eddy Curry never amounted to much at the peak level. 

As such, success is now the expectation, which ESPN.com's Jeff Borzello explained in a look back at the current top prospect's rise to prominence:

Simmons is already being named by some as the early favorite to be the No. 1 pick in next year's NBA draft. Players will spend the next 11 months looking to dethrone Simmons from that spot. Of course, Simmons is used to playing with a target on his back; he was the clear-cut No. 1 player in the country for most of his high school career in the United States.

But even with Simmons and next year's possible top prospect—7'1" ball-handling phenom Thon Maker, who could rise past the trio of Harry Giles, Jayson Tatum and Josh Jackson when every national service officially classifies him in 2016—an extreme amount of success isn't guaranteed. We can learn this by looking at win shares—by no means a perfect measure of a player's success in the NBA but a strong, all-encompassing stat that allows us to set baselines for these high school studs. 

Plenty of non-stars have managed to record at least 20 win shares during their professional careers, including such household non-names as Chris Wilcox, Vladimir Radmanovic, Ricky Davis, Austin Croshere, Malik Rose, Scot Pollard and myriad others. On the heels of that, it might be a bit surprising to learn that not even 75 percent of No. 1 RSCI recruits have earned 20 career win shares (though current players could change that down the road). 

In fact, the same is true at each slot in the top 100: 

Outside of the top five, it's tough to find a ranking that has seen even half of its representatives hit the 10-win-share benchmark. Move down to No. 20, and three-quarters of the prospects are failing to hit that very same milestone. 

Lest we forget, it's difficult to make it into the NBA. From a sheer numbers standpoint, it's virtually impossible to actually succeed there, based on how many players are hopeful they'll buck the odds when they're still thinking about prom invites, senior pranks and the next biology test. 

Serving as a highly recruited high school player means you have a better chance of becoming a pro, if only slightly. But it doesn't guarantee you'll be a star once you get to the NBA, as teams learned the hard way when selecting prep-to-pro prospects up through the 2005 draft class.

Fortunately, RSCI is getting more accurate over time, presumably because of the increased access to video technology, better statistics from high school games and overall experience targeting specific areas of players' games at this relatively low level. 

Not since 2001 has a top-five recruit—Kelvin Torbert (No. 2) and Ousmane Cisse (No. 5)—failed to make it to the NBA. In and of itself, that's quite impressive. So too is the overall trend among top-10 prospects, as Renardo Sidney (No. 7 in 2009), Kenny Boynton (No. 9 in 2009), Keith Gallon (No. 10 in 2009) and Delvon Roe (No. 10 in 2008) are the only ones who peaked without making it to the NBA in the last five years of our analysis. 

Have we gotten better at identifying the future professional studs? Not really, as there are players who emerge in college as late bloomers each and every year. 

There's only so much information that can be gleaned before players receive their high school diplomas. 

Verdict: We're getting better at picking out future NBA players, especially at the top of the board, but the rankings don't indicate much about their eventual levels of success in the Association. 

Do We Know at Draft Time?

By the time players are ready to declare for the NBA draft—whether as prep-to-pro prospects back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, international players or collegiate standouts—we generally have extra information about them. Even those who haven't played a single NCAA game have been under the microscope more than their peers at the high school level. 

But the Association's 30 teams still manage to make their fair share of mistakes during the selection process. Overhyped one-and-done prospects at the top of the proceedings end up flaming out against stiffer competition. Even some players such as Draymond Green, ones who have accrued four years' worth of games at major college programs, emerge as second-round steals. 

The NBA draft is just an imperfect science. 

"We will not bat a thousand on every single draft pick," Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie explained during a press conference before this year's draft, as transcribed by Business Insider's Tony Manfred. "We also have them by the bushelful, in part, because of that. We don't have any hubris that we will get them all right. We're not certain that we have an enormous edge over anybody else. In some cases, we might not have an edge at all."

Does anyone?

The NBA draft is often a glorified guessing game. It's a crapshoot, where only the rare prospects are viewed as sure things, and every franchise is susceptible to drafting a player who will wind up on a list of biggest busts a few years down the road. 

Above you can see the career win shares of every player drafted between 1998 and 2010, arranged by the athlete's slot in the proceedings. And even when dragged up by the extreme outliers—LeBron James (178.9 career win shares, No. 1 pick) and Dirk Nowitzki (192 career win shares, No. 9 pick)—there's not much separation between the top picks and the bottom ones over the course of time. 

The top-10 picks have gone on to do impressive things in the NBA—on average—and there's not a steep drop-off until we're into the teens. But once that happens, chaos reigns supreme.

Isn't it slightly disconcerting that the league's 30 squads, rife with talent evaluators who spend the year scouting prospects and determining who should be taken with ultravaluable first-round picks, aren't able to establish any sort of a consistent track record? 

Look back at that previous chart one more time. Isn't it weird that a complete afterthought like the No. 47 pick can be bolstered by the success of both Mo Williams and Paul Millsap, making it the rare second-round selection that has produced multiple All-Stars during the relevant time frame?

Even though that could be a bit of good news for Arturas Gudaitis, the Lithuanian big man selected at No. 47 by the Philadelphia 76ers on June 25, the news isn't all hunky-dory for the first players off the board. Or, for that matter, practically anyone on the board. Calling someone a lottery pick doesn't guarantee he'll succeed in the NBA.

That's even true for the top-five selections, since there's usually chaos all the way up to the top of the board. 

If we look only at the top three picks in each draft between 1998 and 2010, it's possible to find eight players who have provided just barely more than 40 combined career win shares: Michael Olowokandi (2.5), Greg Oden (7.3), Darko Milicic (7.1), Jay Williams (0.8), Michael Beasley (10.2), Hasheem Thabeet (4.8), Darius Miles (9.5) and Adam Morrison (minus-1.4).

Granted, there are some extenuating circumstances and unfortunate career-ending injuries for a few of them, but that's still part of the sport.

Landing with the wrong team at the wrong slot can also inhibit the success of a player, as we've recently seen with Anthony Bennett, a surprising shocking No. 1 pick by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Going back further, Morrison's career may have panned out differently had he not landed with a Charlotte Bobcats team that buried him on the bench and never gave him an opportunity to grow. Ditto for Milicic and Olowokandi, among others.

For the record, those eight aforementioned players—not even including other busts who hung around in the league for a long time, such as Kwame Brown, Raef LaFrentz, Marvin Williams, Andrea Bargnani and Stromile Swift—earned a total of 40.2 win shares. That's the same career total Tom Gugliotta and Spud Webb each produced, and they combined to make one All-Star squad. 

And again, we're only looking at top-three picks from a stretch of a dozen years. Busts are just terrifyingly prevalent at the top of the boards, and it becomes quite difficult to find impact players with any semblance of consistency once you're drafting outside the lottery. 

Sure, a team might have just under a 50 percent chance of landing a 20-win-share player with a pick late in the first round. But fat chance of adding a true franchise player (arbitrarily designated here by 50 win shares) if you're not in the top 10.

Much like high school recruiting ranks, the actual draft order doesn't do much to tell us about the future of NBA players. It's still a guessing game but one that teams in the Association have to play correctly if they hope to have a shot at lifting the Larry O'Brien Trophy. 

Unlike high school recruiting ranks, however, we're not getting much better. The draft remains just as much of a crapshoot as it was back in '98, when our analysis begins. 

To look at this, I sorted each draft class by career win shares and looked at how that rank differed from the player's actual draft slot in either direction. It's worth noting that I excluded any players who never appeared in the NBA, as that only confuses the data.

Below, you can see an example, using the '98 class:

If the draft order were becoming more predictive over time, the average difference in each class would be shrinking.

It's not. 

In 1998, the average difference was 11.98 slots in the order. While it was down to 11.18 in 2010, that's not a substantial decline and isn't indicative of any trend, since it's fluctuated dramatically on a year-to-year basis, bouncing up and down with absolutely no pattern.

Confused by this in the wake of the high school data, I turned to Jonathan Wasserman, Bleacher Report's resident NBA draft guru, who explained there wasn't any one go-to indicator of future success that's popped up in recent years.

Scouting is a long, painstaking process, and that hasn't changed lately. 

"There isn't any one stat or quality that's stood out as a major indicator of NBA success. You really have to start watching these kids in high school, so that when they're in college, you can pick up on the progress they've made or didn't make," Wasserman said.

"I particularly like prospects who show gradual improvement during a year or from season to season. Andrew Wiggins clearly tightened up his game in one year at Kansas. Karl-Anthony Towns also looked a lot more polished in March than he did in November. Victor Oladipo's progress took longer than most, but the fact it happened suggested to me (at the time) he was capable of adapting and getting better. 

"Otherwise, if we're just talking about identifying safe bets among college players who weren't highly touted out of high school, the blend of athleticism and shooting range is always an NBA-friendly combination—assuming that player has adequate size for his position."

Nothing is going to make the process an exact science, as every prospect's skills and weakness are ultimately up to each evaluator's own interpretation. And until that changes, fans of certain NBA squads will just have to cross their fingers and hope for the best. 

That's really all you can do during the draft. 

Verdict: There will always be exceptions, but the draft is an inexact science. The fact that a prospect was taken early in the proceedings is by no means a guarantee of future success. More time and evaluation is needed. 

Do We Know During a Rookie Year?

Legitimate information about future standouts can only truly be learned as soon as a player's rookie year. 

Obviously, there are exceptions. That's the one constant as we move from high school to college to the ranks of professionals.

Every year, there are players who won't emerge until significantly later in their careers, serving as late bloomers who defy conventional wisdom. Each season, some standouts produce unsustainably strong numbers and regress until they fall out of the league. 

But in the grand scheme of things, those players are relatively few and far between. For every Jamario Moon—earned 5.7 win shares as a rookie with the Toronto Raptors in 2007-08 but kept regressing and is no longer in the Association—there are a dozen players whose early success is actually indicative of their future. Perhaps more.

For the first time, we have an actual trend that isn't merely limited to a small portion of the overall pool: 

Even the two most notable exceptions are explainable. 

Dirk Nowitzki only earned 0.8 win shares during his rookie season for the Dallas Mavericks before putting together a Hall of Fame career. He struggled with his shot during limited action while making the difficult transition to the NBA, but then he improved exponentially as a sophomore. Lest we forget, the German 7-footer wasn't even old enough to drink in the United States during his debut season. 

The biggest outlier on the bottom-right portion of the above graph is Blake Griffin, and he'll move closer to the trendline as his career progresses. After all, he's just 26 years old and will have plenty more seasons to rack up win shares. 

But even if those two are factored out, the relationship between rookie-season and career win shares isn't as strong as what happens when we take playing time out of the equation. We can do so by analyzing win shares per 48 minutes: 

The outliers here aren't too extreme. Some players improve and regress over their careers, but that's only natural. 

Over time, the top per-minute players function as such from their first years in the league, and the same is true of the busts. Opportunity might fluctuate along with roles on a team, but the level of production—according to this imperfect stat, at least—largely stays the same. 

Of course, that doesn't prevent the occasional player from becoming an exception to the rule, and you never know who it's going to be.

Maybe it's someone with a predictable go-to move that becomes exploited once the scouting report is out. Maybe it's a strong rookie contributor who's suddenly surrounded by more talent, driving his usage rate into the dirt. Maybe a top first-year player loses his motivation—for whatever reason—and flames out quickly. 

Plus, we're only looking at rookies who played enough minutes to qualify for the minutes-per-game leaderboard, so those who don't receive any opportunity to strut their stuff can still vacillate rather significantly. 

But rookie seasons remain the earliest point in time at which we can actually make fairly definitive assumptions about players' careers. Those guesses still aren't written in stone, but they're at least educated ones. 

And based on high school and collegiate data, it's the first time we can even say that much.

Verdict: The occasional player will emerge as a fluky first-year contributor or late-blooming prospect, but rookie-season stats—assuming the young contributor in question actually plays significant minutes—are our first actual indicator of future success in the NBA. 

Note: All stats, unless otherwise indicated, come from Basketball-Reference.com. 

Adam Fromal covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @fromal09.