Golden State Warriors: 10 Best NBA Draft Picks Since 1990

Which players that the Golden State Warriors have drafted since the draft lottery was installed in 1990 have exceeded expectations the most? 

You know that Monta Ellis is going to find himself on this list, but where will he rank, and who will join him in the top 10? 

We're going to have to go back over a decade to find a couple of these draft gems. 

Read on to find out who they are. 

How Draft Value Was Determined

First of all, what exactly can teams count on when they make a draft pick?

Well, unless a team releases or trades a player, they are under the team's control after the draft for up to four years, the maximum length of a rookie contract. So really, when looking at draft steals, we should focus almost exclusively on the first four years of a player's career. 

As a result, I looked at the first four years of Win Shares data for a player, as provided by basketball-reference.com.

Win Shares are an advanced basketball metric calculated so that one Win Share is exactly equal to one win provided by that player to his team's cause. It's the combination of Offensive Win Shares and Defensive Win Shares, a full breakdown of which can be found on this page, called "Calculating Win Shares."

Starting with the year 1990, when the NBA draft first introduced the current lottery system, I looked at each and every single player drafted into The Association, tracking their draft position and the amount of Win Shares they produced in their first four seasons in the league.

It is important to note that I only evaluated data through the 2007 draft because the players taken in 2008-2011 have not yet played out their first four seasons in the league.

Moreover, players who were drafted by one team and immediately traded to another were considered as drafted by the team who wound up with their services. 

After I had data for all 1,028 players drafted from 1990-2007, I took the average number of Four-Year Win Shares for each draft position and plotted them on a scatterplot (which you can see in the embedded picture with draft position along the x-axis and Four-Year Win Shares along the y-axis).

Using a best-fit logistical regression, I found the following formula: Four-Year Win Shares = -5.836* ln (draft position) +24.537.

For the statistically inclined out there, that equation has a coefficient of determination (r^2) of 0.91024. For the non-statistically inclined, the equation fits extremely well. 

Using this formula, we can plug in a number for draft position and have the formula show how many Four-Year Win Shares a player drafted there should be expected to produce. For example, the first overall pick of a draft should produce 24.537 Win Shares while the 30th overall pick should produce 4.688. 

With that data firmly established, we can tell exactly how much players have exceeded or failed to live up to the expectations associated with the slot in which they were drafted. That can be done by subtracting the expected win shares based on the draft position from the actual number of Four-Year Win Shares that players produced.

If the difference is positive, the player exceeded expectations by that much and was a bit of a steal. If the difference is negative, the player failed to live up to the expectations and was a bit of a bust. 

Let's look at Monta Ellis, a player commonly referred to as a draft steal, for an example.  

Ellis was drafted 40th overall, so he should have been expected to produce 3.08 Four-Year Win Shares. The shooting guard actually produced 13.7 over the first four years of his career, meaning that the Golden State Warriors "stole" 10.69 Four-Year Win Shares when they drafted him.

This was still a great pick, there's no denying that. It's just not as great as quite a few players drafted ahead of him.

It's important to realize exactly what we're looking at. As some of you may have realized, even No. 1 picks may be considered steals.

Because I was only able to look at data from 1990-2007 as the last four draft classes haven't yet played out their fourth seasons in the league, players drafted in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 have to be excluded from this list.  

10. Jason Richardson (No. 5 in 2001)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 17.5

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 15.1

Difference: 2.4

 

Jason Richardson was drafted at No. 5 out of Michigan State and almost immediately became the starter. His name was called 75 times out of the first 82 announcements of the starting lineup. 

In the first four seasons of his career, all spent with the Golden State Warriors, Richardson started 307 of the 312 games he appeared in. Playing primarily out of the shooting guard spot, he averaged 17.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.2 steals per game. 

Even though it doesn't technically count towards anything on this slideshow, the high-flyer also won two Slam Dunk titles during these four years.

9. Marc Jackson (No. 37 in 1997)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 6.5

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 3.5

Difference: 3.0

Marc Jackson was drafted in 1997, then spent three years playing abroad in Turkey and Spain before he finally joined the Golden State Warriors in 2000. 

The 6'10" center lasted a little over one season with the team before he was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Just a year and a half later, he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers just prior to the 2003-2004 season, his fourth in the league. 

Jackson averaged 7.8 points, 4.5 rebounds and 0.7 assists per game during the designated four-year span. 

8. Andrew DeClercq (No. 34 in 1995)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 8.5

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 4.0

Difference: 4.5

Andrew DeClercq was drafted in the second round of the 1995 NBA draft by the Golden State Warriors, but he never really made much of an impact with the team during the two years he spent with the team.

The former Florida Gator played in 93 games and started two of them, averaging 4.7 points and 3.6 rebounds per game during his 13.6 minutes per contest on the floor. 

He signed with the Boston Celtics as a free agent before the start of his third season and was traded midway through the following year to the Cleveland Cavaliers. 

By the time he finished his fourth season in the league, DeClercq had become a mediocre starting center. 

7. Chris Gatling (No. 16 in 1991)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 13.5

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 8.4

Difference: 5.1

Chris Gatling may not have made an All-Star team during his first four seasons in the NBA, but he did steadily improve up through his fourth year, which was quite productive. 

All four of the seasons we care about here were spent with the Golden State Warriors, the team that drafted him out of Old Dominion during the first round of the 1991 NBA draft. 

Gatling's fourth season was his most productive. He led the league in field goal percentage at 63.3 percent and averaged 13.7 points and 7.6 rebounds per game. 

6. Troy Murphy (No. 14 in 2001)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 14.4

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 9.1

Difference: 5.3

A two-time All-American at Notre Dame, Troy Murphy has had a productive career in the NBA, even if he never reached that level of success at the professional level. 

Murphy barely played during his rookie season, put up solid numbers in 79 starts during his second, spent most of the third season in street clothes and then rediscovered his three-point stroke and had his best season yet during his fourth campaign. 

During that fourth season, Murphy averaged 15.4 points and 10.8 rebounds per game while earning 5.3 win shares. 

5. Tyrone Hill (No. 11 in 2004)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 17.1

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 10.5

Difference: 6.6

Tyrone Hill made the All-Star team one year after the four-year time-frame in question expired, but he still managed to have a productive first four seasons. 

The power forward averaged 8.0 points and 7.8 rebounds per game while shooting 51.7 percent from the field. Throughout his entire career, he managed to maintain his elite efficiency when it came to shooting the basketball. 

Hill, who made a name for himself at Xavier, was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers midway through his third season in The Association. 

4. Andris Biedrins (No. 11 in 2004)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 18.8

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 10.5

Difference: 8.3

The big man who has spent his entire career with the Golden State Warriors struggled to earn minutes during his rookie season, but he continued to both improve and earn more playing time as his career progressed throughout its first four years. 

Andris Biedrins struggled with free-throw shooting and foul trouble throughout his first two seasons before new head coach Don Nelson gave him a chance to start over Adonal Foyle. 

During his third season, Biedrins nearly averaged a double-double, and then he led the league in field goal percentage during his fourth season while averaging 10.5 points and 9.8 rebounds per game. 

3. Monta Ellis (No. 40 in 2005)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 13.7

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 3.0

Difference: 10.7

Ah, now we get to Monta Ellis, the player who everything thinks is one of the greatest draft steals of all time. 

The high-scoring shooting guard has blossomed into one of the better players in the league, but his status as a draft steal is a little bit overrated because nothing exemplary happened during his rookie season.

Ellis only played 18.1 minutes per game and averaged just 6.8 points and 2.1 rebounds per game. 

Ellis was named the NBA's Most Improved Player the following season when he averaged 16.5 points, 3.2 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game. 

During his final three seasons that we care about here, the prep-to-pro shooting guard from Mississippi averaged 18.5 points, 4.1 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game. 

2. Latrell Sprewell (No. 24 in 1992)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 19.5

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 6.0

Difference: 13.5

Latrell Sprewell choked his coach, P.J. Carlesimo, during his fifth season in the league, so I unfortunately don't get to talk much about that here. 

Instead, I have to focus on how well he played during his first four seasons in the NBA. 

Spree made two All-Star teams during that time, one each in 1994 and 1995, while he averaged 18.9 points, 4.3 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game. Not bad for a guy who was drafted at No. 24 in 1992. 

1. Gilbert Arenas (No. 30 in 2001)

Actual Four-Year Win Shares: 23.1

Expected Four-Year Win Shares: 4.7

Difference: 18.4

It seems as though the Golden State Warriors have a knack for drafting players who exceed expectations before causing trouble.

Long before he had problems with shooting (in the locker room, not on the court, and then on the court), Gilbert Arenas was a productive young player for the Warriors.

His scoring average steadily climbed: 10.9 points per game in 2001-2002, 18.3 in 2002-2003, 19.6 in 2003-2004 and 25.5 in 2004-2005. 

He was named the NBA's Most Improved Player in 2003 and made the All-Star team in 2005. 

When you have as productive an early career as Arenas had coupled with a draft selection of No. 30, it's hard not to be ranked No. 1 on a list like this.