NCAA Tournament and the NBA Draft: How 2nd-Round Draftees Fared in Tourney

Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series examining how participation in the NCAA tournament affects the draft stock of NBA players. Check back later this week for Part 3. 

In this second part of this series (see the first part here), I'll look at the second round of the NBA draft and whether tournament participation affected draft position. My theory going in was that players who didn’t have the exposure of the tournament would be undervalued and more likely to be passed over.

I found this to be true with undrafted successes, especially perimeter players. For second-round draftees, the opposite was true. Tournament participants drafted in Round 2 were actually more likely to have success than non-participants.

Here is a look at the success rates of second-round draftees from the years 1989-2007. I put the success/failure number at 5,000 minutes of NBA play. Players with over 5,000 career minutes of NBA time, or those on pace to hit that number, are considered a success. While most of these players logged many more minutes than 5,000, I felt this was a good cutoff point.

Tournament participants: 28 percent success

Non-participants: 21 percent success

The draft after Round 2 has always been a tough place to find usable players. But players coming off a season in the tournament were 33 percent more likely to have a decent NBA career.

The gap widens when separating the players further. Tournament participation was even more common among the more successful players. The numbers below show the number of draftees and their tournament participation percentage broken down into three groups, according to their level of NBA play.

Rotation Regulars:            20                        80 percent

Journeymen:                     83                         62 percent

Busts:                             318                         56 percent

For rotation regulars, I included players who had played or are on pace for playing over 15,000 career minutes and did so at a reasonably decent level. The number I looked at to determine a reasonable level was .08 win shares/48 for perimeter players and .10 for inside players.

For journeymen, I used players with at least 5,000 career minutes, or on pace for that level, at any level of play. I included players who seem likely to get there. The term "bust" isn't used to offend the Serge Zwikkers of the world. There really are no second-round busts, but it will work for our purposes.

These statistics show that for all second-round draft picks, players coming off an NCAA tournament appearance are a much better bet for success than players who aren’t. 

Looking a little deeper into the players who became rotation regulars, I did spot an interesting trend. The best place to look for useful NCAA players in Round 2 is teams that have exited the tournament early. Of the 20 Round 2 draftees who became a useful rotation regular, 16 played in the tournament. Of those, 12 played on a team that exited by the first weekend. These are the 20 players who made the grade as rotation regulars.

Player; School; Player's NCAA Tourney Result

Gilbert Arenas; Arizona; National runner-up

Cuttino Mobley; Rhobe Island; Elite Eight

Nick Van Exel; Cincinnati; Elite Eight

Carlos Boozer; Duke; Sweet 16

Carl Landry; Purdue; Second round

Ramon Sessions; Nevada; Second round

Michael Redd; Ohio State; Second round

Ruben Patterson; Cincinnati; Second round

Voshon Lenard; Minnesota; Second round

Brandon Bass; LSU; First round

Mo Williams; Alabama; First round

Kyle Korver; Creighton; First round

Eric Snow; Michigan State; First round

Antonio Davis; UTEP; First round

Lucious Harris; Long Beach; First round

Byron Russell; Long Beach; First round

Paul Millsap; Louisiana Tech; NIT

Rafer Alston; Fresno St.; NIT

P.J. Brown; Louisiana Tech; NIT

Cliff Robinson; Connecticut; NIT

The trend here is that successful second-round players were somewhat more anonymous in college than typical prospects. At least as a group they were. Boozer and Arenas played for national powers. Redd and Van Exel had both played in Final Fours in years previous to their draft years.

Aside from that, most of this group played on good, but not great teams that were somewhat out of the national spotlight. Anonymity was also something of a theme in the previous article on undrafted players.

The majority of second-round players have little or no impact on the NBA. But there is at least one player per year who will have a long-term impact. The vast majority of those players were coming off an NCAA tournament appearance.

The others played in the NIT. While the tournament stars typically get snatched up in the first round, the bargains in the second are often found on teams that went home during the first weekend.

In the 2012 draft, chances are players like Mike Moser, Nate Wolters, Will Barton, Marcus Denmon, Kyle O’Quinn, Andrew Nicholson and Scott Machado. All of these players exited the tourney on the first weekend and will be available in Round 2. Teams would be wise to give such players a long look.