NBA Draft Combine: What Matters and What Doesn’t — According to My Draft Model

Which stats are actually valuable?

The NBA puts each prospect through a series of tests and measurements at its annual draft combine:

• The tests measure speed, quickness, agility and leaping ability.

• The measurements include height, weight, wingspan, standing reach, hand length, and hand width.

But what does it all mean? It’s hard to know intuitively which results matter, and which do not.

To solve that, we can plug the combine results into the NBA draft model and let machine learning decide which numbers have the strongest predictive value.

This will also tell us which players’ draft stock should be most influenced by these numbers.

Let’s break down the results to talk about what matters and what doesn’t from the NBA draft combine — according to my draft model.