Watching The Watchers – The Best NBA Mock Drafts

NBA Draft 2011 didn’t disappoint in terms of providing entertainment with interesting decisions, picks and trades but it’s over so it’s time for some conclusions… no, I don’t mean judging teams or drafted players with special grading scales [where almost all teams were above average!] but to answer a question which doesn’t require waiting few years: Who Had The Best and Worst 2011 Mock Drafts on the Internet?

Obviously, I couldn’t cover every mock available on the web but here’s what I did:
1) 12 hours before NBA Draft I saved on my hard drive pages from as many latest 1st round mocks as possible. Mostly from widely known authors/sources but I also added some random googled ones.
For more fun and information I also added older versions.
2) I graded every mock by a following scoring system:

• 12 points for every accurate pick,
• 10 points for every pick which missed by one spot,
• 8 points for every pick which missed by two spots,
• 6 points for every pick which missed by three spots,
• 4 points for every pick which missed by four spots,
• 2 points for every pick which missed by five spots,
• 0 points for all others.

BTW, if you are interested what’s the score for YOUR mock draft let me know in the comments.
Although there better be some kind of valid information about a date.
It won’t be fun to judge mock which has been written after real draft ;-)

OK, let the mock draft challenge begin! Here are the results… (Number before name means “earlier version”):

Author	Link to Source	Only Lottery	12 pts	0 pts	1st Round Score
David Kay	Downloaded from	118	7	7	198
nbadraft.net	Downloaded from	114	7	7	192
Sam Amick	Downloaded from	126	8	9	186
nba-draft.com	Downloaded from	100	7	9	174
Christopher Reina	Downloaded from	114	5	9	166
DraftExpress	Downloaded from	112	5	12	156
1DraftExpress	Downloaded from	86	5	9	152
6Chad Ford	Downloaded from	86	4	8	150
Jonathan Carrano	Downloaded from	98	4	12	146
Alex Raskin	Downloaded from	90	2	11	144
Steve Kyler	Downloaded from	84	5	11	144
2Alex Raskin	Downloaded from	106	3	12	144
2Sam Amick	Downloaded from	92	4	12	144
“Ben Golliver”	Downloaded from	106	4	13	144
mynbadraft.com	Downloaded from	98	5	13	142
3Chad Ford	Downloaded from	84	3	12	142
3Christopher Reina	Downloaded from	94	4	10	142
Tyler	Downloaded from	84	8	14	142
Scott Howard-Cooper	Downloaded from	106	8	15	136
2Yannis Koutroupis	Downloaded from	98	5	15	132
Kristofer Habbas	Downloaded from	98	5	11	132
Joel Brigham	Downloaded from	92	3	14	130
Charlie Zegers	Downloaded from	78	4	12	130
1nbadraft.net	Downloaded from	80	3	13	130
Neal Leitereg	Downloaded from	90	7	14	130
2Luke Byrnes	Downloaded from	80	3	12	124
Allen Moll	Downloaded from	68	3	13	116
InsideHoops.com	Downloaded from	76	4	13	112
Luke Byrnes	Downloaded from	74	1	13	110
Sean Deveney	Downloaded from	80	4	16	106
Yannis Koutroupis	Downloaded from	74	3	15	104
2Joel Brigham	Downloaded from	74	2	15	102
2Steve Kyler	Downloaded from	48	2	15	98
Matt Moore	Downloaded from	66	3	17	90

Unsurprisingly [?] professional writers were better than amateurs… although not all of them because CBSSports, Hoopsworld, InsideHoops and Sporting News struck out badly but…
for now congratulations go to David Kay from thesportsbank.net! We could also thank nbadraft.net, Sam Amick, nba-draft.com, Christopher Reina, DraftExpress and Chad Ford for either good sources or good luck ;-)

Note that not all of earlier versions were better than latest ones!

Overall the biggest problems in the lottery were with those picks [and in that order]:
#14, #9, #12, #13, #8, #7, #3, #11 while #1, #2 and #4 were the easiest ones.

Here’s the list of accurate guesses for each pick:
#01-#10: 33, 31, 11, 3, 2, 15, 0, 0, 2, 0,
#11-#20: 7, 1, 3, 0, 0, 5, 5, 1, 3, 6,
#21-#30: 0, 7, 2, 2, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2.