This is Part II of a series where I go back and apply MAPLESOCUTING to all of the drafts we have had this league. We are going to dive into how players ended up later on in their careers, success rates based on potential/draft position, and in other data that might help us all become better drafters, or just understand how FBB works with player development. I now have 1500 players in my database (15 draft classes), so let's take a look at some new discoveries.
A New King: Artis Gilmore
Artis Gilmore has now surpassed Zion Williamson for best MAPLESCOUTING score overall. As shown below Gilmore and Zion are the only two players so far to reach a score of 60 or greater. Gilmore has shown he is worthy of the highest score overall by netting plus 10 growth in seven years and by already winning a championship in New York. Steve Nash is the only other player in the MAPLESCOUTING top 10 to see double digit growth. The 2027 draft class holds 3 of the top 10, imagine have both picks #1 and #2 in that draft class and deciding to trade out. Donkey can win 5 more rings, but his legacy this iteration will always be the countless trades he lost in the quest for securing more draft picks.
| YEAR | Name | POT | SCORE | IMPROVEMENT: |
| 1 | 2035 | Artis Gilmore | 5 | 61.43 | PLUS 10 |
| 2 | 2019 | Zion Williamson | 3 | 60.91 | PLUS 7 |
| 3 | 2026 | June Mar Fajardo | 16 | 59.98 | MINUS 2 |
| 4 | 2020 | Cole Anthony | 1 | 57.73 | PLUS 8 |
| 5 | 2027 | Jason Kidd | 6 | 57.63 | PLUS 7 |
| 6 | 2040 | Bob Pettit | 3 | 57.40 | TBD |
| 7 | 2022 | Paolo Banchero | 8 | 57.01 | PLUS 2 |
| 8 | 2027 | Steve Nash | 2 | 56.98 | PLUS 10 |
| 9 | 2022 | N'Faly Dante | 27 | 56.72 | MINUS 1 |
| 10 | 2027 | Kiril Sitnik | 5 | 55.55 | PLUS 5 |
Bold pot signifies A potential
Notable Players who Stayed the SAME:
As requested by Fortson above is a list of guys who over 7 years never got any better... or any worse. Bonzi Wells is probably the wing version of Jelani Hewitt, A pot spec that went top 5 and didn't do anything. The Pistons are very lucky to have seen Grant Hill develop the way he has, because Hill easily could have done nothing like Wells. Carlos Strong was recently inducted into the Pelicans ring of honor I believe. I'm not sure why he was, he never got any better for them, but he's probably the second best player on this list. The best player would be Scotty Pippen, only for his early career success in Oklahoma City. Joshua Christopher I believe was at one point Golden State's best asset under Jon. Christopher is a prime example of what happens when you take a teen and hope/assume that they will boost. Hunter Mickelson had the worst potential among the group above, so his zero growth doesn't come as a shock to anyone. He did have a pretty lengthy career as a rotational big man.
MAPLESCOUTING STATISTICS:
| MAPLE Score AVG | AVG Growth | AVG Growth* | % of Players that Stick |
| Lottery Picks | 49.50 | 4.15 | 5.05 | 87.95% |
| Early Lotto (1-6) | 51.62 | 4.88 | 5.23 | 96.15% |
| Late Lotto (7-13) | 47.59 | 3.46 | 4.95 | 79.35% |
| Mid Firsts (14-22) | 45.72 | 2.27 | 4.89 | 62.93% |
| Late Firsts (23+) | 43.86 | 1.00 | 4.43 | 46.15% |
| 2nd Rounders | 40.39 | -0.95 | 4.96 | 12.00% |
| Prime 2nds (1-5) | 42.03 | 0.43 | 5.45 | 30.77% |
| A Potential | 49.87 | 5.29 | 6.59 | 88.30% |
| B Pot (Top 25) | 43.94 | 0.13 | 5.48 | 38.26% |
| AVG Pot | 39.92 | -0.76 | 3.85 | 16.14% |
| C Pot | 35.52 | -0.78 | 1.52 | 8.82% |
*indicates what the growth rate is for players that made it to their "peak" year (year 7)
**players that don't make it to year 7 receive a negative value based on their draft day potential.
With 13 drafts-worth of data to work with we have started to see some consistencies. The first thing that stands out to me is that in FBB the average player that doesn't bust out of the league will go about +5 regardless of where they are drafted. So if you draft someone and just hold onto them for 7 years, you are almost guaranteed to see +5 growth in them. Potential does play a major role in development as expected. It continues to be proven that no matter how good a C pot player is, it's not worth the time or effort. We are going to need to see C potential players with B+/A- starting ratings for them to ever become serious top 5 caliber players on draft day. Until then the Devin Williams and Kamall Richards will look nice in theory, but their starting ratings better be perfect because the odds they grow in areas of need are so slim you're better off taking a C C D C D A pot player or a C C+ C C D+ teen. Another stat that stood out to was that we have seen 42 late firsts survive 7 years and only 45 second rounders survive that same amount of time.
SKETCHY AF: Martin Cuello +15.....
Let's talk about Martin Cuello. We can maybe call this the Cuello Conspiracy. But it makes absolutely ZERO sense how a 20 year with average potential has gone plus FIFTEEN in 7 years. He is right between RJ Barrett and Malik Rose...both of those players saw MULTIPLE training camps at 100ish potential, Cuello probably peaked at 75 potential and i'm probably being generous. All players below you can attribute their massive growth to starting with A potential or having a teen pot jump at some point. You can also see Cuello scored at 42.73 which is easily the lowest of the group. Something is up if a player on the roster of the commissioner that runs TC magically goes +15 without a rhyme or reason.
This chart is of the top 10 players with the highest growth
Inspired by the podcast conversation on Trevon "Trigger" Bluiett I wanted to take a look at all of the B-/B- or better scoring prospects in MAPLESOCUTING. In 15 drafts scouted we have 18 players who hold a B-/B- scoring mark, basically meaning we are guaranteed one bucket getter each draft class. These players as expected are typically highly sought after on draft day with an average draft position of 11.22, meaning usually these players are gone before the lottery ends. To take it a step forward eleven (61%) of these kinds of players were taken in the top 7 overall in the draft. Donkey usually knows what he is doing during his draft creation and to keep this league from becoming inflated you will see only 3 out of 18 guys had A potential on draft day: Manu (Stud), Dower (Dud), and Gliebov (Dud). Now is targeting these kind of players on draft day worth it? Below you can see the average growth for a certified bucket is only +2.06, and only +2.85 for those who stick. BOTH of those growth numbers are substantially lower than the average growth we see out of lottery players, which is where a majority (72.2%) of these players were selected. When Cloud slides in your DM's this off season about Bluiett, or Ebbs hits you up about Gyt. just remember Certified Buckets only go about +2....and we've most likely have already seen Bluiett & Gyt hit their growth ceiling.
| Average Draft Position | 11.22 |
| MAPLESCOUTING AVG | 46.45 |
| AVERAGE GROWTH | 2.06 |
| AVERAGE GROWTH* | 2.85 |
A CLOSER LOOK: Cleveland Cavaliers Draftees
Hokey was gracious enough to provide me a draft list of his to work off of for this. Now this will be more fun and accurate to do once I have every draft class entered in, but for now it'll still be fun to look at how Hokey has done so far. First off according to MAPLESCOUTING the best player the Cavs have taken was Antoine Walker. Walker is one of the least talked about BUSTS we have seen in BSL. Looking at Walker next to Mark Williams it almost makes zero sense how Walker became a dud and Williams became the franchise centerpiece for Cleveland. Those two guys were taken back to back years and if Walker could have exploded like Williams did, the Cavs might have a ring by now. On average the Cavs have actually been drafting players below the league average in MS score. However, they have seen significantly better growth rates for the players they have selected. An almost +2.0 difference in growth for players that are around for 7 years. Also a higher percentage of players drafted by Cleveland stick around the league. 16 (69.5%) of the players Hokey has drafted were teens on draft day, I'm guessing this is a strategy of his as it is a strategy by many. Overall based on the data we see today I would say the Cavs have been good drafting and exceptional at player development.
| MAPLE Score AVG | AVG Growth | AVG Growth* | % of Players that Stick |
| CAVS | 46.12 | 4.93 | 6.83 | 78.26% |
| League AVG | 46.45 | 2.47 | 4.92 | 64.09% |
