Distributional draft model · 2007–2026 · out-of-fold

NBA Draft Board / career projections

Every prospect gets a predicted distribution of realized value, not a single rank — a two-part model: a propensity that he ever becomes an NBA player, and, if he does, his availability × on-court quality, measured in Marginal Plus Minus (mPM), over four seasons (a Gaussian copula over the two). Never sticking is a floor below the worst player who plays, so a likely-bust sinks beneath a mediocre-but-real rotation piece. Each row shows the outcome curve, the quality and availability pieces, and — for closed classes — where he actually landed. Open any prospect for his scouting rubric and a career trajectory — rookie, four-year, and peak mPM drawn as a banded arc. Out-of-fold, leakage-free.

value distribution (p10–p90) middle 50% (p25–p75) median actual outcome / offensive / defensive mPM (4yr)
Risk aversion · risk-neutral γ=0 ranked by the certainty-equivalent CE(γ) of his value to the drafting club — four rookie-deal seasons at market, then what it keeps when it re-signs him; at γ=0 that is E[V] (risk-neutral) — the convex price already rewards upside
γ 0
floor $10M
Rk
Prospect
Realized value — outcome curve
mPM · R/4/P · Off/Def
Availability
vs pick
· target: realized value, avail×quality copula (ρ≈0.25) · 2026 forward · 2007–2025 out-of-fold.
Reading the scouts' words (1,152 LLM-scored reports) lifts OOF Spearman ≈ +0.05. Scored fairly among drafted players (out-of-fold, player-bootstrap 95% CIs): the model out-ranks the draft on realized value — ρ 0.47 vs 0.39, edge +0.08 [+0.03, +0.13], P(model>draft) 99.9%. On level, the calibrated distribution mean vs the draft's own fitted value curve E[value|pick] is Pearson 0.55 vs 0.51, edge +0.04 [−0.01, +0.09] — real but not yet significant. Both baselines are the strong ones: pick is teams' revealed preference, and the value curve is the best monotone transform of pick.
Bands are conformally calibrated out-of-fold (expanding-window, per tail): the 80% band covers 81% of realized outcomes, the 50% band 51%.