Posted by gillispie1 on 11/28/2020 12:21:00 PM (view original):
benis - i've also seen the big board change after the NT, but my VERY minimal looking suggested to me it wasn't the final big board because the changes made zero sense. you seem to have reached the same conclusion (well, that it makes no sense).
i think we should compare the final draft order. if its the same as the final board, it will say quite a lot. i suspect it will be different, but i might be totally misguided there. even if its different, it doesn't prove there is a final big board that we can't see - it could be randomly different for non-NT / AA reasons. however, if it is consistently different for NT / AA reasons, i think it will prove the final big board is unseen.
that would of course leave the lingering question... what the heck is happening for the final big board update we do see. i don't know. insert arbitrary conspiracy theory?
I’m pretty confident there’s a final big board we don’t ever see. When I bother to look, the draft order is usually a little different from the last published big board, among players who go pro. But I also think it’s a mistake to think the only thing that affects the last draft order is NT/AA awards. When players up top start declining to go pro, those outcomes have ripple effects. As you see from mully’s Smith prediction, two of Florida’s early entries were projected in the second round, but due to the number of projected 1st round players who declined to go pro, likely ended up in the first round themselves. We don’t know for sure, but I think there is a very good chance that increases their odds of declaring.
Another possibility - and this is more in the realm of conspiracy, I suppose, but it would actually make sense, given what we’ve seen from players who make big jumps during the season when the system sees them as a different position - is that fake NBA teams draft according to, or at least considering, “position need“. So if the Timberwolves have the 45th pick, and they want a SF, and the highest SF left on the big board declines, they *might* move to the next SF. If that guy happens to be #65 on the big board, it’s going to look like he made a huge jump, and it won’t make sense, unless some kind of scenario like this is working. It might be a stretch, if you don’t assume the system is very complicated or intelligent. But again, we know the system already makes big delineation between how it evaluates positions, and how those evaluations impact the big board. So I don’t think it’s outlandish, personally.