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Few topics draw a stronger emotional response than pessimism towards young players. NBA teams selecting near the top of the draft are investing their sole reward for suffering through a miserable season, making the resulting players the focal source of hope for dejected fans. This hope tends to soldier forth, even when the on-court production falls well below expectations. September and October is the time when every fan is convinced their underwhelming lottery picks are just one offseason of “losing 15 pounds”/”training with Kobe”/”working out with a former navy seal”/”having their [vision : deviated septum : tonsils : ingrown hair] corrected”/”working with a shooting-coach”… from leading them to the promised land. It often seems that front-office personnel feel a similar emotional investment in their young players.

This response is not very surprising. Teams select players who they think will become valuable contributors. Fans may or may not initially share this evaluation, but most eventually fall in line. This sets everyone’s expectations to “positive.” Positivity is probably a wise approach for psychological well-being, but it creates a collective atmosphere of confirmation bias. People automatically focus on events that support their view of the world, but deftly ignore those that do not. Add in the community element of similarly incentivized observers, and it takes overwhelming evidence to reach the point where folks know it just is not going to work out.

Sustained support of poor-performing youngsters is bolstered by the popular opinion that you cannot judge a prospect early in his career. There are certainly exceptions, but usually you know a ton about a player just one season into his career. The standards are much lower for younger players, but generally good young players become great players and bad young players eventually drop out of the league. There is nothing wrong with a little hope, especially in the service of supporting young men in their careers. However, the necessary roster spots and cap-space come at the expense of fringe prospects looking for a chance, and useful veterans hoping to continue contributing in the league. These opportunity costs should become a major consideration as we approach the October 31 deadline for picking up rookie-scale options.

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Everyone knows that young players improve as they mature and gain experience. The relationship between age/experience and production has been captured in many studies showing expected improvement between seasons. This approach is understandably unpersuasive to those considering the tradeoffs of abandoning a young prospect. Sure, the guy hasn’t been very good, but you do not want him to suddenly realize his true potential then hit free-agency the following summer. The concept of linear improvement does not fit the intuitive model that fans are really working from. The gamble is all about paying in cap and roster flexibility while hoping the prospect explodes into a highly-productive and underpaid player.

In order to capture this approach, I built multinomial regression models to generate the odds a given player’s career will ultimately peak at one of five different levels:

“Bust”: Never worth more than 2.5 wins in a season.

“Bench warmer”: Peak value between 2.5 and 5 wins.

“Starter”: Peak value between 5 and 7.5 wins.

“Stud”: Peak value between 7.5 and 10 wins.

“Star”: Ultimately worth more than 10 wins in a season.

[“Wins” are determined using a combination of Win Shares and RAPM-wins]

The models are trained on 20 years of historical data and use age, experience, NBA production, and prior expectations to make predictions.

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Clear opt-ins: Anthony Davis looked like the best NCAA prospect since Shaq. He has since backed that up with two seasons of dominant production (though his RAPM has been surprisingly mediocre). Davis’ option is the easiest decision a team will ever make. The 4% chance that he fails to become more than just a starter is basically the odds he suffers a career-ending injury

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Austin Rivers, Thomas Robinson, and Meyers Leonard. These players have done little to demonstrate their ability to compete in the NBA. It is highly unlikely that this changes in 2015

Also on Jimmer's projection.

I'm rooting for both guys to play well. They're Pelicans now. Same time, I am a healthy skeptic of their viability. The Pelicans don't need much more than not awful from either guy barring injury. But they haven't been able to clear that bar on a regular basis thus far.