Using Data to Determine the Best NBA Draft Class Ever

Every once in a while, NBA fans will look at each other and say “sheesh, last year’s draft might have been the best NBA draft class ever”. And, because of the nature of “ever”, they’re almost always wrong. But we want to use a data driven approach to help determine which classes rightfully have a claim to being one of the best classes ever.

Discussing the best NBA draft classes is always a fun topic. You can bank on people bringing up Jordan and Sam Bowie. If you’re talking to a younger crowd, you can guarantee people will discuss at length the Luka Doncic-Trae Young trade. If you’re talking to NBA twitter, you’re going to hear nonstop about how the 2023 NBA draft has the best prospect since LeBron James or Kevin Durant in Victor Wembanyama. No matter what, discussing the draft is always sure to draw strong opinions.

In this article, we want to put emotions aside. We want to take a data-driven approach to try to determine the best NBA draft class ever. The approach we take is largely inspired by our methodology for rating the best WNBA players of all time. A good draft is a mixture of elite talent and depth. We’ll start off in the next section by describing our metric for determining the best NBA draft classes of all time.

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Best NBA Draft Class Metric

The best NBA draft class has to be built on two things. First, you need a strong dose of elite, top level talent that people will talk about for generations to come. Second, you need depth in the draft. For example, if you have two good players in a draft class but the other 28 players in the first round are trash, then it wasn’t a very good draft after all.

For both of these aspects we use players’ win shares as a measure of the overall value of their career. Win shares are a way to measure how many “wins” a player contributed to their team. The sum of each player on a team’s win shares is supposed to be approximately equal to the team’s wins. To rate the top-end talent in a draft, we add up the career win shares by the two best players in the draft.

To rate the depth of a draft, you might be tempted to look at the total win shares of the draft. However, because the league used to be smaller than it is today, using total win shares is an unreliable metric. To see this, the graph below shows each NBA draft classes’ total win shares. Look specifically at how the total win shares increases as the league expands in the 1960-1980 period.

Comparing the total win shares of a draft would heavily punish the drafts in the 1960-1980 range. To counteract this fact, we will rate the depth of a draft by looking at the win shares of the 4th-10th best players in the draft.

Then, to rate the overall quality of a draft, we rank each draft’s top-end talent amongst all drafts since 1960. The same is done to rank their depth score amongst all drafts since 1960. Finally, we average these two ranks to come up with an overall quality of the draft class. The drafts with the best average rank in these two categories will be rated the best NBA draft classes ever.

The Best NBA Draft Class of All Time

Using the approach outlined in the previous section, we looked at each season to figure out the best NBA draft class since 1960. The winner, if you have a bit of historical NBA knowledge, shouldn’t be a surprise.

The 1984 class is the best NBA draft class ever. Nearly any way you slice it, this draft class checks every box you want. The 1984 draft has one of the top 2 all times players in Michael Jordan. It has the all-time assists leader – one of basketball’s most unbreakable records – in Stockton. Charles Barkley and Hakeem Olajuwon are also good enough to both be in the top 21 in all time career win shares.

The 1984 NBA draft ranks #1 in the win shares of the top 2 players. The 1984 draft class ranks #1 in the depth of the class, in good part due to Olajuwon and Barkley. Finally, the 1984 draft has one of the biggest all time misses in draft history in Sam Bowie going #2 overall between Hakeem and Jordan. This class truly has it all.

The Next 9 Best NBA Draft Classes Ever

We went through each draft since 1960 and ranked them to determine the next 9 best NBA draft classes ever. The following graphic helps visualize how good the 1984 draft class is and where the next few best classes compare.

The top 10 best NBA draft classes are as follows:

Class Rank	Year	Top-End Talent Rank	Depth Rank
1	1984	1	1
2	1985	3	2
3	2003	2	7
4	1987	6	5
5	1996	9	3
6	1998	4	8
7	2001	17	6
8	1995	10	14
9	1999	22	4
10	1979	15	16

My initial thoughts: the mid 80s and the mid to late 90s had some great draft classes. This goes a long way to explaining why the NBA saw dramatic increases in popularity since the 1980s. In the next few sections, we’ll go through the remainder of the top 10 NBA draft classes to see why they ranked as well as they did.

#2: The 1985 NBA Draft Class

One of the most shocking parts of our results are that the two best NBA draft classes ever came in consecutive years. Just like the 1984 draft class, the 1985 class was built on both elite top end talent and insane depth. This class was headlined by Karl Malone and Patrick Ewing. Some other names rounding out the top 10 include Charles Oakley, Terry Porter, and A.C. Green. The combination of the 1984 and 1985 draft classes combined to make the 1990s one of the most exciting eras in NBA history.

#3: The 2003 NBA Draft Class

For modern NBA fans, the 2003 class is often cited as the best NBA draft class ever. Lebron James and Dwyane Wade combine to be the second best top-2 in an NBA draft ever. This class also had Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, and David West to contribute to the depth of this class. The 2003 draft, and their reunion as the “Heatles”, led to a surge in NBA popularity around 2010. This surge continues today.

#4: The 1987 NBA Draft Class

We return, again, to the mid 1980s. Again, this class was very balanced with both the depth and the top end talent needed to form an elite draft class. The top 2 players in the 1987 draft were Reggie Miller and David Robinson. These two were poster children of the late 90s and early 2000s NBA. The remainder of the top 10 contains a few members of the Bulls dynasty – Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant. Again, it’s even crazier to me that 3 of the top 4 best NBA draft classes ever happened within the span of just 4 years in the mid 1980s.

#5: The 1996 NBA Draft Class

The 1996 NBA draft class contains a few of the players whose faces and names define the 2000s era of the NBA. The top 2 players in this draft class were Kobe Bryant – an all time great in every way – and Ray Allen – one of the best shooters ever. A few other names for this class are Allen Iverson, Steve Nash, and Stephon Marbury. This class was more built on depth than it was on top-end talent. This draft had the 3rd best depth of any class ever.

#6: The 1998 NBA Draft Class

The 1998 NBA draft was particularly fascinating because the best players weren’t taken at the beginning of the draft. The top 2 guys from this class were Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce, the 9th and 10th picks of the draft. This class also contained Vince Carter, Rashard Lewis, and Antawn Jamison. The depth of this class drops off faster than some others, but the top-end talent delivered by Dirk and Pierce is enough to secure this classes’ spot in the top 10 list.

#7: The 2001 NBA Draft Class

The 2001 NBA Draft has one of the most famous draft busts ever in Kwame Brown. However, the next few picks were quite good. Tyson Chandler and Pau Gasol were the 2nd and third picks in the draft and also ended up being the 3rd best and the best, respectively, players in the draft. The second best pick value-wise was Spurs’ legend Tony Parker. This draft was not noteworthy for its elite talent but was built on some pretty incredible depth.

#8: The 1995 NBA Draft Class

The two best players in the 1995 NBA draft class were Kevin Garnett and Rasheed Wallace. Really, though, this draft class was dominated by Kevin Garnett. After him, there were quite a few depth pieces that had nice careers. However, none of them were close to the career-long value produced by KG.

#9: The 1999 NBA Draft Class

The last draft class before the turn of the millennium was a masterclass in depth. However, this was at the expense of a lack of elite, top-end talent. The two best players in this class were Shawn Marion and Elton Brand. Combined, they have roughly the same career win shares as LeBron James. This class had a remarkable 4th best depth, though, driven by Manu Ginobli, Jason Terry, and Lamar Odom, among others.

#10: The 1979 NBA Draft Class

This is the only pre 1980 draft that cracks our list of the best NBA draft classes ever. The most notable name from this class is the legendary Magic Johnson. Some of the others contributing to the quality of this particular class are Bill Laimbeer, Sidney Moncrief, and Bill Cartwright.

Rating Young Draft Classes

There is one issue with the approach we’ve taken so far. Using career win shares to rate a draft class means we can only determine how good a draft class is after all the draftees are done playing. Look again at the graph of win shares versus draft class we posted above.

Total win shares decreases fairly sharply around the 2008 draft class. This doesn’t mean those draft classes were bad. Rather, it is because the players drafted in 2008 and onwards are roughly 33 years old or younger. They are still playing. They are still accruing win shares. Therefore, we don’t really know yet where these draft classes will rank in the all-time list.

This isn’t a bad thing. When measuring the best NBA draft class ever, it is probably for the best to wait until all is said-and-done.

For fun, though, we can look at a slightly different stat – win shares per 48 minutes – to get a feel for how good the younger draft classes are. This works because win shares per 48 is a rate stat will total win shares is a counting stat. Counting stats take time to accrue and can make young players/drafts look worse than they will be viewed in retrospect.

There are five recent draft classes which stand out when evaluating their quality using win shares per 48. We expect the following draft classes to have a chance at entering the top 10 conversation for the best NBA draft class once more time has passed.

• 2018: 3rd overall when using win shares per 48 minutes.
  • Luka Doncic, Trae Young, DeAndre Ayton, Mitchell Robinson, Mikal Bridges, Robert Williams, and SGA
• 2014: 5th overall
  • Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, Clint Capela, Dwight Powell, Julius Randle, and Marcus Smart
• 2011: 7th overall
  • Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard, Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker
• 2013: 8th overall
  • Giannis, Rudy Gobert, Steven Adams, Mason Plumlee, Cj McCollum

Personally, I think the 2018 class is destined to go down as one of the best NBA draft classes of all time. I don’t think it will beat the 1984 draft class because I don’t think there are four all-time greats, but I think there are at least two all-time greats, and maybe a third.

The 2014 draft class also will probably end up as a top 10 best NBA draft class. The only question surrounding the 2014 class is its longevity. Clint Capela, Embiid, Jokic, and Randle may not have long careers. The same is likely true for the 2011 and 2013 class.

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