What is HoopsHype's Draft Predictor?

We know that, at some point during the night of June 22, deputy commissioner Mark Tatum will announce who’s the last pick of the 2023 NBA draft. We’ll then have full certainty of how one of the busiest nights in the association fared. But until then, we have to rely on mock drafts and other factors to have a better idea of how the draft will go. To make it easier, we introduce the 2023 NBA Draft Predictor.

To calculate the odds of a player landing in a specific draft position, we considered the mock drafts we monitor to develop our Aggregate Mock Draft… taking also into account their reliability in previous years. By factoring in each player’s placement in these mock drafts and the consensus on their potential draft range, we compute the odds for every prospect and draft position. Additionally, we take into account the pre-draft workouts reported for each player, making it slightly more likely that a franchise will draft a player who has worked out for the team.

There are a couple of points we need to address here. First, there is no pure analytical justification for why Victor Wembanyama should not have a 100 percent probability of being the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft, aside from the “s*** happens” factor. The consensus among mock drafters and league insiders is just that overwhelming. However, we cannot discount unpredictable factors that might contribute to the non-zero chance that unforeseen circumstances could prevent Wembanyama from being the first draft pick. For this reason, we have arbitrarily assigned a 0.5 percent chance that the French phenom will not be the top pick. Of course, if you believe the “s*** happens” factor should actually be measured closer to 5 percent or 0.01 percent, you might also be correct.

Another apparent anomaly in the draft prediction odds involves a player being the favorite for more than one draft spot. In our first edition, the best example is Taylor Hendricks, who emerges as the front-runner for both the 10th and 11th draft picks. The reasoning behind this is that there is a general consensus that he will land in one of those two positions. Meanwhile, a prospect with similar potential, like Cason Wallace, has mock draft predictions ranging from the 7th to the 13th pick, making it much more challenging to pinpoint his exact draft position. Ultimately, both players are viewed as likely lottery picks, but the odds reflect that Hendricks’ draft range is considered more stable than Wallace’s.