Shooting for the Top Spot: Exploring the Use of NBA Combine Data to Predict Draft Position

• Activity Number: 439
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 3, 2011 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
• Author(s): Clayton Barker*+ and Michael T. Crotty
• Companies: SAS Institute Inc. and SAS Institute Inc.
• Keywords: basketball ; NBA draft ; ranking ; variable selection ; data mining ; logistic regression

Abstract

Each summer, the National Basketball Association (NBA) drafts sixty college and international players into the league. The teams draft sequentially, so it is crucial to choose the "best" player among the remaining players. In order to help teams make these decisions, the NBA combine is an event held before the draft that measures various physical and athletic ability attributes of each player. Based on these measurements and college or international performance, NBA teams choose the player that they expect to make the greatest contribution to their team. The data from the combine are often cited during pre-draft analysis and predictions, but what effect, if any, do the combine measurements have on player selection? Using a combination of variable selection and data mining techniques, we will determine which factors impact draft position and we will attempt to predict the 2011 NBA draft. We also compare the predictability of the draft using the combine data to using the college and college conference affiliation of the player.