You know why Doug McDermott had to stay all four years in school? His game hasn't changed all that much, and all of a sudden he's a lottery pick. If he's a lottery pick now, why wasn't he a lottery pick say, two years ago, or last year? McDermott can shoot inside and outside and rebound competently, but he's slightly undersized for his true position (PF), puts up NCAA-levels of futility in steals and blocks by position, and with this adjustment (which he went down 17 slots in), is just a pathetic dunker. Maybe I'm putting up too stock in dunking, you say. Sure, then, go back to NBA Mock 5.0, where the flow of the draft perhaps looks more reasonable.
But consider this: you know how there are players--I'm going to name drop them right now--say, Russell Westbrook, Jrue Holiday, Eric Bledsoe, Taj Gibson--who have been far better NBA players than what their college stats suggest? Those guys were all athletic. Primarily, we have a treasure trove of data suggesting that any 6'2" to 6'4" pseudo point/shooting guard with a high dunk rate tends to do far better in the league, and while Gibson preceded the dunk data I received, I also think he'd benefit with these adjustments.
In current day, as mentioned, this hurts a guy like McDermott a lot. But, as you'll see in the 2015 mock draft, this really helps Willie Cauley-Stein and Montrezl Harrell, for starters. Cauley-Stein is a typical Tyson Chandler-esque type whose role will be simple at the next level: pick and roll for dunks, play excellent defense. With the dunk rate addition, he went up about six spots from mock draft 5.0. Montrezl Harrell flew about thirty spots from deep in the 2nd round to somewhere in the later half of the first round with the dunk rate. He was college basketball's leading dunker last year. Truthfully, I don't see all the hoopla about Harrell besides the fact that he's a dunker, really, as you can see in my scouting report--but with the obsession with dunking and how it can translate to the league, yep, he's this high.
Other risers in the draft? Zach LaVine and Chane Behanan. LaVine went from 39th to 30th in this mock with the dunk add-in, and truthfully, that's about where he'll be drafted. Game-wise, he's overrated, and if you want a true game measurement, once again, I'd suggest mock draft 5.0. I'd like to consider both mock draft 5.0 and mock draft 6.0 stand-alone mocks, which depends on your inclination. But mock draft 6.0 is more accurate as it will be pertain to how scouts see things, and that's why this dunk project was created. Behanan was beset with attitude problems and declared for the draft, and while he's severely undersized, he's a frequent dunker and might have the athleticism to cut a place--he's considered a mid-2nd rounder.
Jarnell Stokes fell to a late 1st rounder, which is a bit of the consensus as well. He doesn't dunk much, despite impressive stats. Besides McDermott, I'm also not sure about pure scorers like CleAnthony Early and TJ Warren--considering scoring is overrated, I'm not sure if their low assist, low rebound and high scoring games are really conducive to NBA success.
Another thing is this hurts that UCLA duo a little bit. Scouts have really shaded Kyle Anderson and Jordan Adams' games a bit because the idea is that they don't really have NBA athleticism--Adams somehow got through his sophomore season with 0 dunks, and Anderson, for being 6'9", rarely if ever dunks. They've built up too many points in my algorithm to really dock them off significantly, but they both fell a spot in mock 6.0.
In 2015, you know how every person hates how Kevin Pangos' game will translate to the league? Another 0 dunker. He fell in this mock as well.
I've tried to normalize the dunk rates by position, so those who dunk above the average of their listed position, will have an additive marker due to dunk rating, and same goes for negative. Internationals aren't affected, since we don't have dunk data for them (that was why I wanted to hold off from doing this project--we know Clint Capela dunks a lot, but does Dario Saric?). So this is a more informed mock for NCAA types, clearly, and I've left my original ratings from mock 5.0 on for the internationals.
Below, see the results:
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