Can the NBA Summer League predict surprise stars?

A year ago, Los Angeles Lakers rookie Kyle Kuzma was named MVP of the NBA championship while Lonzo Ball, second overall, led the Lakers to victory in Las Vegas Vegas

I stay in Vegas. He will become the least drafted player of the first All-Rookie team (27th overall), joining four other players in the lottery.

So, does studying the results of the summer league help us to discover Kuzma next? Or are we more likely to be misled by outliers like Josh Selby, who shared the MVP honors of the 2012 NBA Summer League with Damian Lillard?

Let's take a closer look at how summer performance is translated into NBA competition. surprises

Thanks to the database of RealGM.com, I've been collecting summer league statistics on all players since 2004. I've also got projections of players from my SCHOENE projection system since the 2009-10 season, which allows us to see the players exceeded expectations in the summer. By setting the minimum at 150 minutes of play, here are the biggest surprises of the summer league in terms of winning percentage (the per minute version of my wins over the replacement metric):

] Player Year SCHOENE SL Rookie Season Brandon Jennings 2009 .355 .803 .518 Tony Snell ] 2014 .375 .821 .412 Kyle Anderson 2015 .384 .766 .452 Austin Rivers 2013 .304 .676 .385 Harrison Barnes 2012 .321 .689 .376 Ian Clark ] 2013 ] .404 .766 .387 Wayne Selden 2017 .384 .744 .407 Armon Johnson 2010 . 286 .638 .317 Stanley Johnson 2016 [1] 9659014] .379 .731 .358 C.J. McCollum 2014 .381 .728 .434 Medium .357 .736 [1965] .405 Since 2009; minimum 150 minutes

You will notice that Kuzma does not quite crack the list. He ranks 12th in this measure, although we have a larger sample to judge by: He played 224 minutes, more than anyone in the top 10.

Although none of these players n & # 39; 39, still evolved into All-Stars, the short-term results were impressive. Eight of the ten teams, with the exception of Ian Clark and Stanley Johnson, beat their SCHOENE projections during the regular season and, on average, their winning percentages were about 50 points higher than the initial forecasts.

. the end of the spectrum, we see similar results. Nine of the 10 players who fell short of their SCHOENE projection during the summer season were also underperforming in the regular season:

Most Underachievement Winning Percentage

It is clear that the summer league does not tell us everything. After all, the underperformers scored even higher in the regular season than the outperformers despite a relatively poor summer game. SCHOENE's projections are based on three seasons of data, so it's not surprising that they have more predictive power than a few games.

At the same time, SCHOENE predicted that the last group would get 114 points better than the old one. during the regular season, and the actual gap in their performance was only 11 points. It is therefore clear that the performance of the summer league tells us something meaningful about how the players will go from the front.

Looking for Kuzmas this year

could exceed expectations? Slightly lowering the bar to 100 minutes, because 45 players played a total of 150 minutes in the quarter-finals on Sunday, here are the biggest outperformers compared to their projection SCHOENE 2018-19:

It is possible that the Lakers found another piece of jewelery late in the first round with the center of Michigan Moritz Wagner, who only shot 28% of 3 in six games before being ruled out with a left knee bruise, but dominated the glbad and had 12 steals and 10 blocks in 130 minutes of action . Given that these statistics tend to be better in the regular season than shooting, the Lakers should feel good about Wagner's chances of contributing right away. Josh Hart was also great this summer

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While some veterans have obtained Results worse than expected round choice came from the overall selection No. 2 Marvin Bagley III. Bagley played three games in front of home fans with the Sacramento Kings but only one in Las Vegas before being diagnosed with a bruise. In that period, he shot 1 in 10 out of 3 and 13 out of 32 (41 percent) inside the bow while getting only 11 percent of the rebounds available.