What do they have in common Bronny James, Reed Sheppard And Devin Carter ? Answers: All three are expected to be drafted this season…and their fathers played (or still play) in the NBA.
Nine years ago, we were already analyzing this phenomenon of “sons of”, second generation NBA players. During the 2014/15 season, there were already 26. A record which has since been broken almost every season, since there were 34 during the last campaign. And others arrive to reinforce the contingent.
Behind the most famous cases (Stephen Curry, Domantas Sabonis, Klay Thompson, Tim Hardaway Jr, Jerami Grant, Gary Payton II…), we also find Andrew Wiggins, Devin Booker, Darius Garland, Al Horford, Luke Kornet, Kevin Love, Jae Crowder, Wesley Matthews, Jaren Jackson Jr, Jalen Brunson or Trayce Jackson-Davis.
An outperformance compared to their place in the Draft
For Dale Davis' son, all these players have in common the desire to show that they deserve their place in the NBA.
“It’s fuel”, he explains to Yahoo! Sports. “They want to prove the naysayers wrong, and they want to prove the skeptics wrong, right? That's what motivated me. »
As sociologist Joshua Dubrow explained to us in 2015, the children of basketball players are also logically attracted by the flamboyant universe in which they grew up, and in which they in turn wish to succeed.
“An NBA basketball player will likely have the money, connections, access and knowledge of the league that will interest his son. Unlike other “family businesses” where the desire for succession is uncertain – the son of a toy manufacturer may have little desire to succeed his father, for example – the NBA is a very attractive business for a young sporty boy looking for adventure » the professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology in Warsaw told us. “Children raised by their parents are socialized by their parents. These children are therefore in contact with the NBA, whether they like it or not. They know about it because their fathers talk about it, because their fathers’ friends talk about it and because their own friends talk about it too.”
But the most interesting aspect of the Yahoo! Sports is that the “sons of” tend to outperform relative to their place in the Draft.
By analyzing the performances of the “sons of” since 1989, and comparing them to players drafted in the same place as them, Tom Haberstroh finds that they perform better (+30%) than the average of their rank at the Draft. Thus, compared to their places in the Draft, second generation basketball players “should” generate 1.65 “Win Share” per year on average (“Win Share” being a statistic which calculates the number of victories a player adds to his team). However, the 68 “sons of” actually generate 2.15 “Win Share” per year on average. As Tom Haberstroh says, they are drafted as 16th picks, but they actually weigh like 10th picks…
The “Seth Curry syndrome”
The “sons of” would therefore in fact, and paradoxically, be undervalued by NBA franchises, what one executive calls the “Seth Curry syndrome”. “You don’t want to rank him too high just because of his father, so maybe you underrank him” he explains on condition of anonymity.
In any case, this 30% outperformance linked to the parental factor exceeds those linked to the university, the players from Kentucky exceeding the performances expected by their rank in the Draft by 26%, those from Texas by 25%, two from UCLA by 24% and those of Michigan State by 17%.
This is because, as we noted almost ten years ago, “marked by resounding failures in the late 1990s and early 2000s, NBA clubs and universities have understood that a player’s entourage has a vital role in his success in the league” and that the athletic potential and intrinsic talent of young basketball players is not enough to “adapting to the world of the NBA”, made of temptations and traps. Second generation basketball players have the advantage of knowing this world and the importance of routine and daily work well.
For Bronny James, this is a huge bonus, and a reason for optimism for interested clubs, even if the pressure surrounding the son of the “King” is very different from that of other second-generation basketball players, especially that his father still plays in the league…
“I don’t know how to explain it, but we understand this life, we understand it”concludes Gary Payton II on the advantage of “sons of” in the NBA. “When we are children, we do not necessarily understand what we study and what we keep. But it is. And then, once you’re older, the floodgates open and then everything can come together.”
