Nate Silver's Blog, page 85

Will Kennedy’s Retirement Help Republicans At The Midterms?

The most important effects stemming from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement will be on how the Supreme Court rules on landmark cases on issues ranging from abortion to gerrymandering. But there are fewer than 20 weeks between now and the midterm elections, and Kennedy’s announcement also has the potential to affect the composition of the next Congress.

Betting markets see the news as a wash as far as the midterms go.1 But betting markets are sometimes pretty dumb, so let’s work our way through a pair of decent arguments I’ve seen for why Kennedy’s retirement is more likely to help Republicans than Democrats politically2:

Argument No. 1: Kennedy’s retirement will help Republicans close the “enthusiasm gap”

One way that Kennedy’s retirement could help Republicans is by narrowing the enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans. Here’s how National Review’s David French puts it:

Heading into the midterms, Republicans were desperately worried about an “intensity gap.” Democratic voters seem prepared to turn out in huge numbers. Republicans — while holding firm in their support for President Trump — lacked the same excitement. Special elections were swinging strongly Democratic, and even though the generic preference numbers were trending closer, most observers thought Republicans would struggle to get their voters to the polls. I’d say those concerns are eased a bit today.

After all, for an immense number of base GOP voters, judges aren’t just an issue. They’re the issue that drives them to the polls. Republicans are all over the place on immigration policy, trade policy, and foreign policy. Divisions in the party are deep and real. Those divisions disappear when judges are on the line. We can debate all we want about Russian influence on the 2016 election (or about the effect of the Comey letter), but one thing is certain — if Evangelicals and other conservatives weren’t afraid of the impact of a progressive Supreme Court on their fundamental liberties, Donald Trump doesn’t win. A new Supreme Court pick will galvanize the entire base for months.

This is a well-argued case. French is certainly right that an enthusiasm or intensity gap is a massive risk for Republicans. If the midterm elections look more like the special elections we’ve had so far this cycle, in which Democratic turnout significantly outpaced Republican turnout, the GOP is very likely to lose the House and the Democratic wave could reach epic proportions. But without that enthusiasm gap, control of the House looks like more of a toss-up, at least based on the current generic ballot average.

Democratic candidates will undoubtedly also try to use the Supreme Court as a wedge issue. If and when Trump’s nominee is confirmed, these candidates will pivot to telling their voters about how a Republican-chosen replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who is 85 years old) or Stephen Breyer (79) would be an even bigger problem and how it’s therefore crucial that Democrats take control of the Senate.

The catch, though, is that the Democratic base is already very motivated: Motivated by the Russia investigation, by Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare, by Trump’s overall unpopularity, and so forth. They might not need the additional motivation of a Supreme Court nomination, whereas Republican voters perhaps do.

Also, there’s some evidence Republican voters are more motivated in general by the Supreme Court than Democratic voters are. In the 2016 national exit poll, 21 percent of voters said that Supreme Court appointments were the most important issue to their vote, and they split 56-41 for Trump.

But let me pick a few nits with French’s claim. One questionable assertion is his idea that “a new Supreme Court pick will galvanize the entire [Republican] base for months.” That may understate how many other stories the Supreme Court pick will compete with for attention. The news cycle moves very quickly these days, and Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court last year was a major news story for only a couple of weeks. The death of Antonin Scalia and the Republican refusal to consider Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland also did not gain much traction as a news story in the 2016 campaign given how much else was going on.

Perhaps, as the exit-poll data implies, the Supreme Court was an overlooked issue in 2016 that was more important to evangelical voters and other parts of the Republican base than the media assumed. But it was not necessarily a top-of-mind issue to these voters. The exit poll question specifically prompted voters to think about the Supreme Court. But when Gallup and other pollsters ask open-ended questions about what issues are most important, the Supreme Court doesn’t really register. Nor does abortion, for that matter — issues such as immigration and the economy are rated as being much more important.

Also, assuming Trump has his choice confirmed by the Senate before the midterms, the Supreme Court will arguably be more of a backward-looking issue in 2018 than it was in 2016. I say “arguably” because Kennedy probably won’t be the last justice to retire under Trump; liberals Ginsburg and Breyer are retirement risks, as is conservative Clarence Thomas. Still, in 2016, voters were deciding on an open Supreme Court seat and not just the prospect of further vacancies.

Finally, even if base motivation is crucial in midterm elections, it’s worth considering its effect on swing voters. In 2016, voters preferred Hillary Clinton’s prospective Supreme Court appointments to Trump’s. Despite that, Gorsuch was a reasonably popular nominee last year. But he was replacing another conservative justice, whereas a replacement for Kennedy could potentially produce a big ideological shift in the court. For instance, If Democrats can frame Trump’s nominee as threatening Roe v. Wade, they could find public opinion on their side, as voters oppose overturning Roe v. Wade by more than a 2-to-1 margin.3 The nomination is also coming against the background of a midterm election, and voters tend to view the ruling party skeptically at the midterms, seeking to elect members of the opposition party to check its power.

Argument No. 2: Kennedy’s retirement forces red-state Democratic senators to make a tough vote

Five Democratic Senators — Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, Montana’s Jon Tester, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin — are up for re-election this November in states that Trump won by double digits in 2016. There’s also Alabama Democrat Doug Jones, who isn’t up until 2020 but who already has to carefully calibrate his positions in one of the nation’s reddest states. As the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein argued, these Democrats are in a tough position:

The difficulty faced by red state Democrats is that even in a more conservative states, a substantial portion of their base is going to be fiercely anti-Trump, and opposed to any of his judicial nominees. At the same time, particularly in the very red states (Missouri, North Dakota, Indiana, and West Virginia) where Trump won big, it’s going to be really difficult to vote “no” on a qualified Supreme Court nominee.

While it won’t be an easy vote for any of these Democrats, especially so close to the midterms, there are also some mitigating factors for them. One is that other than Jones, all of the senators already voted on Gorsuch, with Heitkamp, Manchin and Donnelly voting aye and McCaskill and Tester voting nay. If in doubt, they could just vote the same way on Trump’s next nominee.

Another is that it could plausibly be to these Democrats’ advantage to demonstrate their centrist and independent streak by voting for Trump’s pick. Heitkamp, for instance, has already run ads bragging about how often she votes against Democrats and with Trump’s position. Sure, the Democratic base would be upset with her — but there aren’t a lot of Democratic base voters in states such as North Dakota, and almost all these states have already held their primaries anyway.

Finally, there’s one Republican who’s potentially put in a tough position by Kennedy’s retirement. That’s Nevada’s Dean Heller, who voted for Gorsuch, but who faces a tough re-election race in a state that isn’t known for its cultural conservatism. And unlike the Democrats,4 Heller’s vote could fairly easily prove to be decisive. Republicans don’t have much margin for error with only a narrow 51-49 advantage in the Senate, and they have possible issues with senators ranging from Maine’s Susan Collins (who might object to a nominee she saw as a threat to overturn Roe) to Arizona’s John McCain (who could miss the vote because of illness).

The Gorsuch nomination went well for Trump, but this one could be tricker

So the arguments for why Kennedy’s retirement could be a political boon for Republicans are persuasive — but only up to a point. And they seem to be using Gorsuch’s nomination as a template for how things will go this time around when that won’t necessarily be the case.

Gorsuch’s nomination was one of the most successful episodes of Trump’s presidency; he was a fairly popular selection with swing voters, but also one who pleased conservative activists. Republicans were also able to “nuke” the Supreme Court filibuster with relatively little backlash, perhaps in part because Democrats had already ended it for most other types of nominations.

Supreme Court nominations are not always cakewalks, however, as cases such as Harriet Miers and Robert Bork (and Clarence Thomas) attest. There are several potential risks to Trump and Republicans:

Trump could nominate a relatively moderate justice, in an effort to keep Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski on board and to put maximum pressure on red-state Democrats, but then face a backlash from conservatives.
Trump could nominate someone very conservative, but at the price of actually putting votes such as Collins’s and Murkowski’s at risk and of turning off swing voters.
Trump could nominate someone who had vetting issues, or someone who triggered a debate about qualifications, or someone who was seen as too much of a political crony. Historically, these sorts of justices have had trouble getting confirmed.

On balance, Kennedy’s retirement probably offers more political upside than downside for Republicans, but it’s a long way from a slam dunk. And this is not a White House where things always — or usually — go so smoothly as they did with the Gorsuch pick.

Emergency Politics Podcast: Trump’s Chance To Reshape The Supreme Court

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Justice Anthony Kennedy announced on Wednesday that he is retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court, creating a vacancy that President Trump will have the chance to fill. FiveThirtyEight contributor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux joins Nate Silver on the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast to react to the news. They discuss what it means for the ideology of the court going forward and how the vacancy could affect the midterm elections this fall.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

What Are These Civility Arguments Really About?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Hello! You all ready for some chatting!?!?!?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I’m ready for the pizza we ordered to arrive, but am happy to chat in the meantime.

micah: Today’s topic: Does civility in politics matter? The most immediate cause for this question is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, being asked to leave a restaurant (and all the attendant hand-wringing). But obviously incivility has been a topic of conversation in politics ever since Donald Trump came onto the scene.

I want to try answer this question in two ways:

Does civility matter in terms of a well-functioning democracy?
Does civility matter to voters?

And, just to make this as complicated as possible, let’s try to answer those questions as they pertain to four different cases of incivility. From Nate:

Powerful people being uncivil to other powerful people.
Powerful people being uncivil to non-powerful people.
Non-powerful people being uncivil to powerful people.
Non-powerful people being uncivil to other non-powerful people.

In any case, let’s start off super highbrow and talk about the well-being of our democracy!

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): I want to be clear up top that there’s been a lot of talk about this on cable, Twitter, etc., over the past couple of days. It’s obviously a thing people are fascinated by, though I wasn’t entirely keen on joining in on the Huckabee Sanders/restaurant news cycle. As a journalist, I think it’s interesting to watch people hash out whether there is such a thing as pushing protest boundaries too far in the U.S. An active time for our republic, to say the least.

micah: That seems to be a big debate in the Democratic Party: What’s the right way to resist Trump — adopt his tactics or draw a sharp contrast?

natesilver: I mean … I will say that I’m also sort of fascinated by the story and have a lot of takes on it, some of which I’ll reveal here and some of which you shouldn’t really care about. But I’m not sure the story is nearly as newsworthy as you’d infer from the amount of coverage it’s getting.

clare.malone: ^^^cosign

micah: So you all don’t take it as a sign of a deteriorating democracy?

clare.malone: The very fact that active protest is involved means no, I don’t see that as deteriorating democracy.

That is one of the fundamental rights granted in a democracy, this right of protest. People are certainly exercising that right! That’s at least some sign of health.

But you can also have that sign of health (protest) exist alongside symptoms of deterioration (i.e., the president saying that due process should be thrown out in some cases).

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): The Huckabee Sanders story is interesting in part because it captures a lot of what people are thinking about right now. So it’s important in that vein. Questions like:

Is the Trump administration, particularly in regard to its immigration policies, uniquely bad and outside of political norms, which would mean that new rules of engagement are needed to deal with a real moral threat, or are these really just the left-right political debates that we always have?
Is being conservative and being pro-Trump so unpopular in certain circles that you face the kind of social sanctions that blacks, gays, women, etc., once faced?

Those feel like the underlying questions here, and that’s why the Red Hen restaurant story has taken off.

natesilver: Maybe we should go through the categories one at a time?

micah: Yeah, so to go back to Nate’s groups, I’d argue that:

Powerful people being uncivil to other powerful people: bad for democracy
Powerful people being uncivil to non-powerful people: bad for democracy
Non-powerful people being uncivil to powerful people: good for democracy
Non-powerful people being uncivil to other non-powerful people: bad for democracy

And the Huckabee Sanders thing falls into No. 3.

clare.malone: I’m curious to hear you explain that first answer, Micah.

I mean … aren’t presidential campaigns and elections in general all about powerful people being uncivil to each other? What would you call attack ads?

It’s a free country. Powerful people are allowed to be rude to each other and forceful in expressing their views.

That’s not some new Trump-era thing.

micah: I don’t think debate is inherently uncivil.

natesilver: But is, for example, the Republican decision to refuse to have a vote on Merrick Garland uncivil?

micah: No.

natesilver: Oh, come on! It’s a lot more important than the Red Hen.

And I think it definitely falls into the civility bucket.

micah: It’s 100 percent more important, but the Garland thing has nothing to do with civility!

clare.malone: Yeah, Garland to me is different — a perversion of democratic norms, right? That is, giving a nominee a vote is something that, up until recently, legislators basically treated almost as a matter of law.

Powerful people undermining democratic institutions is bad for democracy.

micah: Yes.

Nate, you have a weird definition of civility.

Like, Trump calling people names is uncivil.

natesilver: So civility is just politeness? Then it’s really stupid, I’d argue.

perry: I assume civility means, say, Trump’s tweet last year suggesting MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski had plastic surgery that went badly.

micah: That dude who yelled, “You lie!” at then-President Obama — that was uncivil.

natesilver: And that mattered about 1/1,000,000th as much as the Republican strategy on Garland.

micah: But that’s the point … we’re debating how much civility matters. That the GOP’s Garland gambit mattered isn’t really worth a debate — of course it mattered.

But actually, in the aggregate I think civility does too.

clare.malone: Nate, most people would argue that civility is politeness.

micah: The more clown-show-ish our political figures are, the less respect they get, the less people care?

Something like that?

clare.malone: Or like: What are the proper bounds of speech and protest?

To me, civility seems to be mostly a way we try to govern each other’s speech. We might have First Amendment rights to speech, but does some speech abuse norms? Does it cross boundaries we’re better off not crossing?

Does that seem right?

natesilver: I dunno, I guess I think civility ought to encompass some notion of acting in good faith.

clare.malone: Maybe the fact that we can’t agree on a definition gets to how many different threads people are weaving into this debate.

natesilver: I just think the civility debate is even stupider if it’s about whether someone calls the president or one of his advisers a mean name.

micah: That’s part of the the debate.

natesilver: If it’s about saying, “We no longer share common ground,” that’s a bit more substantive.

clare.malone: OK, here’s what I’ll say:

The Founding Fathers identified from the get-go that factions and parties could be dangerous to their idea of democracy — in that as factions and partisanship deepen when political leaders demean their party opponents, and that is bad.

perry: Some of the political science is in this realm shows that the problem with powerful people being uncivil (whether to other elites or regular people ) is that powerful people and their partisanship influences the rest of the public. My worry would be that Trump’s racist remarks make people who are white nationalists feel more comfortable about being public with their views. If the leader of “my team,” says that stuff, maybe I should say it too. See this video that is going viral of a woman calling Mexicans, “Rapists. Animals. Drug dealers.”

natesilver: That’s in category No. 2, though — not category No. 1. I don’t think there’s that much consequence to Trump describing Nancy Pelosi in unflattering terms or vice versa, or something.

perry: How Trump describes Rep. Maxine Waters is perhaps more problematic;

she doesn’t seem to have a low IQ to me.

natesilver: Also, he seemed to imply a threat toward Waters:

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2018

And it’s not the first time that Trump has seemed to at least tacitly endorse violence. He also did it during the campaign, directed toward protestors at his rallies.

That was one of the more disgraceful moments in press coverage during the campaign — that this violent speech was not treated as a particularly big deal.

perry: When Obama said Kanye West was a “jackass” — that was uncivil, I suppose. Was that bad for democracy? Not sure. I’m trying trying to think of instances pre-Trump when the power dynamics were different (meaning a liberal was being uncivil to a less-powerful adversary).

clare.malone: Kanye was outside the political discourse. So it was different.

natesilver: Is The White House Correspondents’ dinner an example of Category 1 civility? (Powerful people being uncivil to other powerful people.) If so, then fuck civility.

micah: I don’t know. The “civility doesn’t matter” argument kinda seems like the default FiveThirtyEight stance because a lot of the people worrying about political civility are blowhards/preposterous/wrong about almost everything ever.

But I sorta think it matters.

clare.malone: Well, to my point about deepening factions above, I think it does.

micah: I think I’d put the correspondents dinner in the unpowerful vs. powerful bucket.

natesilver: You’d have to go on a case-by-case basis. The media as an institution is extremely powerful. The New York Times or The Washington Post is fairly powerful. An individual journalist working for one of those pubs probably isn’t powerful. A small paper in the middle of Kansas isn’t powerful.

micah: A comic isn’t powerful.

clare.malone: And a lot of that stems from politicians’ rhetoric over time.

Dog whistles and the like.

Using speech to subtly incite racial hatred is bad for democracy.

perry: I’ll be honest: It’s hard for me to think of some general civility rules or norms absent the content or context of a specific event. Telling your nearly all-white supporters that a black congresswoman is stupid is really problematic. But if Jose Andres (the famous chef who operates several restaurants in D.C.) kicked Huckabee Sanders out of one of his restaurants …. Well, they are both powerful. I don’t think I’m as concerned about that. D.C. is full of restaurants. But I’m thinking out loud. I’m not sure what I said makes sense.

Or, I’m not sure it’s intellectually consistent, at least.

I think I’m suggesting a norm around being very anti-racist, and that would have different implications depending on the person’s racial views.

clare.malone: Yeah.

What Perry said.

It’s hard to make sweeping decisions.

micah: Shouldn’t we leave aside threats of violence and racist demagoguery? Those are clearly bad. Bad on their own and bad for democracy.

natesilver: Yeah, Jose Andres is enough of a political figure that I think he’s in a different category than the owner of some rando restaurant.

perry: We can’t really leave aside racist stuff, because this whole debate is in part about whether everything Trump touches and does is racial and to some extent racist, particularly on immigration. But I get what Micah is saying.

clare.malone: What a lot of people are grappling with in the Sanders case are our normal terms of politeness.

It makes a lot of people uncomfortable to think about a person in their off-duty hours getting harassed. It’s human nature to feel empathy in those moments.

But public figures are public figures in their off time too. So people are battling normal bounds of politeness with the all-encompassing idea of public-figurehood.

micah: And the counterargument is that Trump is so beyond the pale that anyone working for him doesn’t deserve, I guess, standard decencies.

perry: I’m guessing that Gary Cohn (who was Trump’s top economic adviser and a big player in the tax policy overhaul) will not be targeted by liberal protestors at restaurants, but that Stephen Miller, a Trump adviser who reportedly pushed for the family separation policy, will get protests, even after he quits Team Trump. The reason for that difference, I think, is that Miller has been deeply involved in the racial and cultural parts of Trump’s agenda.

micah: Ah, yeah. I see what you’re saying, Perry.

clare.malone: Listen, one of the old saws of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

It’s something that journalists think about a lot — viewing a person as a person, and viewing them in their public role. And deciding to view them in their public role, even if you see them up close, as a person, is one of the important things about the job.

Now Americans are having to think about that a little more if they’re the sorts of people inclined to protest right now.

micah: Yeah. Also, it’s very easy to call for civility as a white man who’s comfortable financially. I’m not under any threat, really.

natesilver: I do wonder if women pay a greater price than men for speaking out in certain ways. Like, Peter Fonda said some vile stuff, and it didn’t seem to get half as much attention as, say, Samantha Bee.

Former press secretary Sean Spicer was portrayed as goofball and a loser, but I don’t think there’s the same level of vitriol toward him as toward Sanders.

clare.malone: Well. I think a lot of this gets into the gender dynamics that are woman-on-woman, right?

Huckabee Sanders/Bee.

perry: I would emphasize that the Samantha Bee controversy happened in the same week as Roseanne Barr getting fired over making a racist remark. (Note: FiveThirtyEight and ABC Entertainment, which aired “Roseanne,” are both part of Disney.) There is a real desire on the right for liberals to be punished for their racial and cultural views in the way that conservatives perceive that they are punished.

clare.malone: You have women who both A) think that Sanders is upholding the lies of an administration that is cruel to families and women, and B) still don’t like seeing another woman be called a name that they themselves might have been called or find nasty.

micah: So, have we convinced Nate that this kind of stuff is bad for our democracy?

natesilver: No, Micah, not really, you haven’t. I mean, I think racism and misogyny and incitements to violence are really bad for democracy. It’s bad for democracy when Trump demonizes the press. But I don’t think civility — if we’re narrowly defining it as politeness — is that much of a problem per se.

clare.malone: So are we drawing a line between “civility” and “democracy-threatening speech”?

I think that’s actually useful.

micah: I think it makes sense to — again, just because the latter is sorta by-definition bad.

clare.malone: A) Some speech is rude, and B) some speech foreshadows violence/calls on demeaning histories of violence or oppression.

natesilver: Yeah. That’s sort of what I was trying to get at before. I’m not saying that talking about “civility” is dumb. But I’m saying that people focus on exactly the wrong stuff — the least-important parts of it.

micah: I see, Nate.

natesilver: If we had a more expansive definition of civility, I’d argue it’s a much more useful concept.

micah: OK, that makes more sense.

Before I was like, “WTF is Nate talking about?!”

clare.malone: I don’t think we want “civility” to be more broadly defined … maybe we should come up with more specific speech designations.

Like, “Oh, that was sort of rude”

“Oh, that was sort of undermining our democracy” (something snappier, of course).

natesilver: I also think there’s a lot of rather explicit both sides-ism in coverage of the Red Hen event.

The big newspapers are paranoid about being perceived as in the tank for liberals, so they really relish the opportunity to scold liberals.

micah: Our colleague Julia Azari had a really good piece differentiating between norms and (small-d democratic) values.

Some norms are closely linked to values, others aren’t.

clare.malone: In the words of Destiny’s Child: “You know I’m not gon’ diss you on the internet

/ Cause my mama taught me better than that.”

micah: But let me take one more, common-sense-y try at arguing that civility (politeness) matters: If the FiveThirtyEight office were like the national political debate — full of ad hominem attacks, people not talking to each other, kicking each other out of meetings — I don’t think we’d be able to publish a website every day.

Why doesn’t that apply to democracy writ large?

clare.malone: Well, citizens are free to speak as they wish (minus hate speech).

Free speech is a defining right of democracy.

I think a lot of civic institutions end up governing common people’s uncivil speech.

So, in some ways, this debate that the Democrats are having right now is good for the push-pull of polite vs. impolite protest.

You want that balance.

natesilver: I feel like one of the canonical (and at this point even perhaps slightly apocryphal) examples of civility is how Democratic and Republican senators vehemently disagree with one another but are nonetheless friends in real life and go out and get drunk together after the vote, etc.

clare.malone: Getting drunk helps.

natesilver: It’s some sense that “we’re all in this together.”

That was the sense that Obama tried to cultivate and that Trump very much hasn’t.

micah: That attitude is very helpful to have in a newsroom. I imagine the same is true for a country.

clare.malone: Right. The idea of “this is a family fight” vs. “you are from a different country and I don’t even know you.”

micah: So, as a starting point, why wouldn’t we think it’s helpful for a democracy too?

clare.malone: What’s the “it” there?

micah: Politeness/we’re all in this together.

natesilver: The fourth type of incivility, non-powerful people being uncivil toward one another, is maybe the most serious one, I think.

On the other hand … for better or worse, Trump does seem to have increased political participation.

clare.malone: I actually think the fourth type of incivility is a lot less common.

micah: Non-powerful vs. non-powerful?

clare.malone: Yeah.

I think people are generally pretty polite to each other, despite what terrible moments captured on camera phones might tell us.

natesilver: It’s the one there’s also the least data or information about.

clare.malone: Yeah.

Which means we could be over- or underestimating

natesilver: Like, instead of one of these “Trump voters still love Trump” pieces, I’d love for local papers to talk about debates in their communities and how they’ve changed, if at all.

Again, though, I think I’d trade off civility for increased participation.

micah: I’ve heard stories of people, for example, having “no Trump supporters” in their online dating profiles.

clare.malone: That’s the internet, not in person.

micah: Ah, interesting.

perry: Politico did an interesting piece about how Trump staffers in D.C. are often shunned in the dating scene.

clare.malone: I guess I was thinking that in-person interactions are generally pretty polite and respectful.

micah: I think that’s prob right.

clare.malone: I mean, we could have a whole separate debate about whether the Internet is bad for democracy.

natesilver: I’ve … maybe only once or twice in all my years covering politics had a nasty encounter in person.

micah: OK, to wrap, let’s just talk about how voters view civility.

Do they care?

natesilver: Trump would be an argument that they don’t.

Or at least, if you can set up “I’m honest” or “I’m authentic” in contrast to civility, that tends to be an appealing argument to voters.

clare.malone: I’ve heard people say stuff along the lines of, “I might not like what Trump is saying, but at least he’s being transparent about what he actually thinks.”

micah: This is from a CBS News poll (taken after the shooting at the Congressional baseball game):

clare.malone: I would say Americans are not wrong that things have gotten less civil, per that CBS poll! I do think they care about the degradation of politeness norms. It makes reading the news, just as a baseline, much less pleasant.

perry: Isn’t Nate’s analysis of Trump’s tweets and them appearing to hurt his poll numbers a suggestion that civility matters in politics? One of defining features of Trump’s tweets is that they are uncivil, right?

natesilver: But isn’t political participation increasing in almost every form that you’d measure it?

micah: Yeah, Trump is less popular than we’d expect based on the economy and no major wars, right?

So his incivility could be part of what’s driving that gap.

Though surely it’s also racism, sexism, etc.

natesilver: Well I don’t know. Like, is this kind of tweet harmful to Trump?

While not at all presidential I must point out that the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2017

perry: Lol.

Good point.

natesilver: It’s definitely uncivil, but it’s not racist or sexist.

micah: See, I think it is harmful to him — in the aggregate.

clare.malone: “While not at all presidential … ”

Self-awareness!

natesilver: That was one of his best tweets, to be honest.

clare.malone: I for sure lol’d.

micah: It’s not a huge effect, but I think there’s a small-but-not-insubstantial group of voters who either consciously or subconsciously care about the president being “presidential.”

Final thoughts?

clare.malone: “Don’t tweet” is my final thought

natesilver: I mean … look, at a base level, Trump is quite unpopular, despite the economy being quite good. So all the peripheral stuff matters. I just think it’s hard to separate “civility” out from everything else in that bucket.

micah: Take us home, Clare.

clare.malone: And I kinda mean it, the “don’t tweet” thing. To my point about about how the internet might be a little bad for democracy, well, I think it might be! There are lots of good uses for words and speech (I happen to be a person who makes a living off of both of those things), but anger finds its easiest outlet through the keyboard sometimes. And sometimes that anger is backed up by actual productive action — protest, involvement, whatever. But sometimes it’s just anger flushed out through a keyboard and that’s it. Talk to people in person.

#PSA

Our NBA Player Projections Are Ready For 2018-19

Just in time for the NBA’s free agent bonanza (headlined by LeBron James’s The Decision: Part III), FiveThirtyEight has re-launched CARMELO, our NBA player projection system, with forecasts for 2018-19 and beyond.

[image error]

CARMELO NBA Player Projections:
Our probabilistic forecast of what a current NBA player’s future might look like, based on similar players throughout history. See our projections for 2018-19 and beyond »

The basics of the system are largely similar to previous years, with the backbone of CARMELO remaining an algorithm that compares current players to past ones who had statistically similar profile through the same age. For instance, Utah Jazz phenom Donovan Mitchell is similar to players such as Gilbert Arenas, Ray Allen, Stephen Curry, Ben Gordon, Victor Oladipo and O.J. Mayo through this early point in their respective careers. Some of those players (Allen, Curry) became superstars, while others (Gordon, Mayo) didn’t really pan out. The combination of those good and not-so-good outcomes gives us a probabilistic forecast for the rest of Mitchell’s career.

In a moment, I’ll describe the (relatively minor) changes to CARMELO this year, but first, a quick word about how the system did last season.

How CARMELO Performed in 2017-18

In the regular season, CARMELO performed very well, as its preseason projections were the second-most accurate of the 20 projection systems tracked by the statheads at the ABPRmetrics message board. It also correctly predicted the Warriors defeating the Cavaliers as the most likely NBA Finals matchup (not that this was a bold take, exactly).

CARMELO was also among the most accurate regular-season prediction systems in its debut year in 2015-16, although it was one of the least accurate in 2016-17. What accounted for these differences? In 2015-16 and 2017-18, CARMELO used a combination of Real Plus-Minus and Box Plus/Minus to make its forecasts, whereas in 2016-17 it solely used BPM. (CARMELO uses a mix of two-thirds RPM and one-third BPM rather than weighting them equally.) While we’ll want another two or three season to know for sure, we strongly suspect that the RPM/BPM blend outperforms BPM alone.

In addition to our preseason projections, we update our projections for teams — though not for individual players — during the season using a version of the Elo rating system. (These are our so-called “CARM-Elo” projections.) In contrast to our preseason projections, these in-season projections sometimes seemed pretty hinky last season, at least when it came to forecasting the NBA playoffs. Despite an adjustment that was meant to give extra credit to teams with more playoff experience, the system seemed to overcorrect based on how teams finished out their regular seasons — getting too bullish on the 76ers and Raptors, for example, and too bearish on the Warriors and Cavs.

One potential shortcoming is that whereas our preseason projections use depth charts and projected playing time for each team, the in-season updates do not. For instance, they had no way to account for Curry’s injury late in the regular season and subsequent return in the second round of the playoffs. One solution could be to continuously update depth charts (and CARMELO player projections) throughout the season instead of just at the start of the year. We’re examining alternatives; just know, for now, that we think the preseason CARMELO projections are pretty smart, but that our Elo-based method for updating them during the season might require some rethinking.

What’s Different In CARMELO for 2018-19

The major fix to CARMELO this season isn’t a change in how the system projects players, but rather in how it values them. Like many modern statistical systems, CARMELO uses a notion of the replacement-level player in calculating player value. A replacement-level player, in theory, is someone who is freely or cheaply available, e.g. a G League player or someone signed to a contract for the league minimum salary.

How good, or bad, are these sorts of players? They’re below-average — but it turns out they’re not that far below average. Over the past four seasons, players signed to minimum-salary contracts or two-way contracts subtract about 1.5 points per 100 possessions from a team’s scoring margin1, relative to an average player — somewhat better than the -2.0 points per 100 possessions that CARMELO had assumed before. Moreover, we found that the quality of replacement-level players differs quite a bit by position. As the NBA shifts to smaller lineups, it’s relatively easy to find reasonably productive bigs on the waiver wire (see my colleague Chris Herring’s story on the sad saga of Roy Hibbert). But it’s harder to find good wings or point guards. Thus, our calculation of wins above replacement is now position-based, using the values you see in the table below.2

How good are replacement-level NBA players?

Based on performance of players signed to minimum or two-way contracts, 2014-15 through 2017-18

Plus-Minus (Points per 100 possessions)


Position
Offense
Defense
Combined




PG
-0.7
-1.0
-1.7


SG
-1.1
-0.8
-1.9


SF
-1.4
-0.2
-1.6


PF
-1.4
+0.3
-1.1


C
-1.7
+1.3
-0.4


Overall
-1.2
-0.3
-1.5

Sources: ESPN.com, Basketball-Reference.com

The overall effect of these changes is, first, to boost the value of guards and wings relative to big men, and second, to increase the value of star players relative to average ones. (If you can sign a guy who’s only slightly below average for the minimum salary, you shouldn’t pay that much of a premium to grab a merely average player instead.) We think this brings CARMELO a little closer to how NBA teams actually value players.3

One other small modification is that we now issue projections for American-born players who had little or no NCAA playing time, such as Anfernee Simons (who decided to forgo his college eligibility) or Michael Porter Jr. (who played only three games at Missouri because of injury).4 These projections use a limited set of information — namely the player’s position, height, weight, age, draft position, and their career number of NCAA minutes played. (Our regular projections for rookies, by contrast, use NCAA stats that have been adjusted for pace and opponent quality, as provided to us by ESPN’s Stats & Information Group). Last year, we’d introduced similar projections for players who played in Europe (or another international league) rather than the NCAA; this is simply an extension of that system for players who neither played in Europe nor the NCAA.

Finally, as a small token of appreciation our for people who made it through this entire story on methodology, here are our new CARMELO projections in capsule form, with a summary of 2018-19 as well as long-term projections for the more than 600 players in our system. Have fun browsing through the CARMELOs and enjoying the drama of the NBA offseason.

2018-19 CARMELO projections, in one chart

2018-19 Projection
Long-TERM


Player▲▼


Off. +/-▲▼


Def. +/-▲▼


Tot. +/-▲▼


Min.▲▼


WAR▲▼


7-Year Upside▲▼






Russell Westbrook
+6.3
+1.0
+7.3
2481
12.4
52.7


James Harden
+6.6
+0.1
+6.7
2496
11.8
53.8


Stephen Curry
+6.8
-0.2
+6.6
2088
9.6
42.8


LeBron James
+5.4
+0.8
+6.2
2764
11.5
41.0


Nikola Jokic
+4.0
+2.1
+6.2
2181
8.3
49.7


Chris Paul
+5.1
+0.9
+6.0
2120
9.1
32.4


Giannis Antetokounmpo
+3.1
+2.4
+5.5
2558
9.8
57.3


Anthony Davis
+1.7
+3.2
+4.9
2573
8.2
42.4


Karl-Anthony Towns
+4.0
+0.8
+4.8
2634
7.6
49.4


Ben Simmons
+2.5
+2.3
+4.8
2524
8.8
65.5


Jimmy Butler
+3.3
+1.4
+4.7
2310
8.3
38.3


Kawhi Leonard
+2.6
+1.9
+4.6
1670
5.6
22.3


DeMarcus Cousins
+2.4
+2.2
+4.5
2100
6.0
26.5


Draymond Green
+0.9
+3.4
+4.3
2332
7.0
28.6


Kevin Durant
+3.6
+0.7
+4.3
2201
6.8
27.3


Kyle Lowry
+4.3
-0.2
+4.1
2319
7.5
28.2


Joel Embiid
+0.8
+3.3
+4.1
1944
4.8
28.9


Rudy Gobert
-0.7
+4.7
+4.1
2122
5.3
23.9


Damian Lillard
+5.4
-1.5
+3.9
2591
8.1
37.4


Otto Porter Jr.
+2.6
+1.2
+3.8
2415
7.0
37.7


Victor Oladipo
+2.2
+1.5
+3.7
2489
7.7
38.0


Jayson Tatum
+1.2
+1.7
+2.9
2729
6.5
51.9


Jordan Bell
+0.0
+2.8
+2.8
1310
2.5
16.4


Robert Covington
-0.2
+3.0
+2.8
2274
5.2
23.5


Paul George
+2.1
+0.6
+2.7
2640
6.2
25.1


Kemba Walker
+4.1
-1.5
+2.6
2625
6.3
26.0


Kyrie Irving
+4.2
-1.7
+2.6
2251
5.3
26.2


Lonzo Ball
+0.4
+2.1
+2.5
2481
5.8
45.3


Andre Drummond
-0.5
+2.9
+2.5
2463
3.9
19.8


Blake Griffin
+2.0
+0.5
+2.4
2055
4.0
13.5


Kevin Love
+1.6
+0.8
+2.4
1887
3.3
10.7


Al Horford
+0.5
+1.9
+2.4
2146
3.5
10.3


Kristaps Porzingis
+0.0
+2.3
+2.3
2052
3.7
25.6


Kyle Anderson
-0.7
+3.0
+2.3
1931
3.8
22.2


John Wall
+2.4
-0.2
+2.2
2252
4.9
20.0


Ricky Rubio
+1.3
+0.9
+2.2
2310
5.0
21.1


Donovan Mitchell
+2.2
-0.1
+2.1
2674
5.9
45.6


Kelly Olynyk
+0.8
+1.3
+2.1
1797
2.8
13.0


Ekpe Udoh
-1.6
+3.7
+2.1
553
0.8
2.2


Jrue Holiday
+1.4
+0.6
+1.9
2597
5.4
20.5


DeAndre Jordan
-0.3
+2.2
+1.9
2094
2.7
9.1


Lucas Nogueira
-1.7
+3.6
+1.9
1069
1.4
7.3


Clint Capela
-0.5
+2.4
+1.9
2067
2.7
14.1


Steven Adams
+0.1
+1.7
+1.8
2394
3.0
15.0


Tyus Jones
+1.7
+0.2
+1.8
1837
3.6
29.1


Joe Ingles
+0.9
+0.9
+1.7
2124
3.7
12.2


Gordon Hayward
+2.1
-0.4
+1.7
1112
2.2
7.3


Eric Bledsoe
+2.1
-0.5
+1.7
2218
4.1
15.9


Bradley Beal
+2.8
-1.2
+1.6
2705
5.3
27.4


Larry Nance Jr.
-0.7
+2.4
+1.6
1724
2.3
12.2


LaMarcus Aldridge
+0.5
+1.1
+1.6
2296
3.0
7.6


Nikola Vucevic
-0.7
+2.3
+1.6
1967
2.2
8.3


Tyreke Evans
+1.7
-0.1
+1.5
1717
3.1
10.4


Nikola Mirotic
+0.7
+0.8
+1.5
1838
2.6
10.9


Cody Zeller
-0.7
+2.1
+1.5
1511
1.9
9.5


Kyle O’Quinn
-0.9
+2.3
+1.4
1404
1.7
6.6


Pau Gasol
-0.9
+2.3
+1.4
1532
1.8
3.0


Jusuf Nurkic
-1.9
+3.3
+1.4
1919
2.0
13.5


Paul Millsap
-0.5
+1.9
+1.3
1689
2.3
5.5


Aaron Gordon
+1.0
+0.3
+1.3
2301
3.3
22.5


Delon Wright
+0.7
+0.5
+1.3
1541
2.5
13.0


Myles Turner
-0.9
+2.2
+1.3
2238
2.5
19.5


Jakob Poeltl
-0.8
+2.1
+1.3
1579
1.7
13.6


Fred VanVleet
+1.5
-0.2
+1.3
1657
2.7
16.7


Amir Johnson
-1.2
+2.5
+1.2
1230
1.4
3.6


Dejounte Murray
-0.8
+1.9
+1.2
1855
3.0
26.6


Marc Gasol
-0.7
+1.8
+1.2
2075
1.8
4.5


Al-Farouq Aminu
-0.7
+1.9
+1.1
2007
2.7
10.0


Mike Conley
+2.1
-1.0
+1.1
1523
2.4
6.1


Marcus Smart
+0.2
+0.8
+1.0
2093
3.3
19.7


Nerlens Noel
-2.1
+3.1
+1.0
1258
1.1
7.6


Spencer Dinwiddie
+1.7
-0.7
+1.0
2022
3.0
17.1


Mason Plumlee
-0.8
+1.8
+1.0
1610
1.5
5.6


Brice Johnson
+0.2
+0.8
+1.0
84
0.1
0.8


Dwight Powell
-0.6
+1.5
+0.9
1611
1.5
7.4


OG Anunoby
+0.4
+0.5
+0.9
2057
2.9
27.5


David West
-1.7
+2.7
+0.9
800
0.8
1.2


Andre Roberson
-1.5
+2.4
+0.9
1663
2.4
10.8


Gary Harris
+2.0
-1.0
+0.9
2388
3.7
22.1


DeMar DeRozan
+2.4
-1.5
+0.9
2331
3.5
11.6


James Johnson
-0.6
+1.4
+0.8
1740
2.1
6.1


Khris Middleton
+1.3
-0.5
+0.8
2377
3.3
13.6


Hassan Whiteside
-2.2
+2.9
+0.8
1675
1.4
6.0


Tobias Harris
+1.2
-0.5
+0.7
2469
2.7
11.6


John Collins
-0.5
+1.2
+0.7
2196
1.9
23.3


Trevor Ariza
+0.0
+0.7
+0.7
2134
2.7
6.4


Davis Bertans
+0.3
+0.4
+0.7
1277
1.5
8.2


Derrick Favors
-0.9
+1.6
+0.7
1867
1.4
6.4


Jonas Valanciunas
-0.4
+1.0
+0.7
1835
1.1
6.0


Kevon Looney
-1.1
+1.7
+0.7
1174
1.1
8.6


Terry Rozier
+1.0
-0.4
+0.7
1929
2.5
15.9


Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
+1.1
-0.4
+0.6
2389
3.4
16.4


Greg Monroe
-0.3
+0.9
+0.6
1478
1.1
4.0


Daniel Theis
-1.3
+1.9
+0.6
1282
0.7
4.4


Salah Mejri
-2.9
+3.5
+0.6
879
0.5
1.0


Jaylen Brown
+0.4
+0.2
+0.6
2219
2.6
22.8


Zaza Pachulia
-1.5
+2.0
+0.6
951
0.5
1.3


Klay Thompson
+1.6
-1.1
+0.6
2376
3.2
11.6


Mohamed Bamba
-1.8
+2.3
+0.6
1252
0.7
17.8


Andre Iguodala
-0.6
+1.1
+0.5
1458
1.7
3.5


Dwight Howard
-1.7
+2.2
+0.5
2072
1.0
3.0


Nene
-1.8
+2.3
+0.5
767
0.5
1.1


Pascal Siakam
-0.8
+1.2
+0.5
1640
1.4
9.6


Willy Hernangomez
-0.8
+1.3
+0.5
1121
0.5
4.9


Marvin Williams
+0.0
+0.4
+0.4
1760
1.7
4.5


Josh Richardson
-0.2
+0.6
+0.4
2277
2.7
15.0


Dario Saric
+0.7
-0.3
+0.4
2251
2.2
13.6


Jeremy Lamb
+1.1
-0.7
+0.4
1819
2.3
10.2


Dewayne Dedmon
-1.9
+2.3
+0.4
1505
0.7
3.3


Tomas Satoransky
+0.4
+0.0
+0.4
1620
1.9
9.5


Jamal Murray
+2.4
-2.0
+0.4
2373
2.9
26.2


Jeff Teague
+1.3
-0.9
+0.4
2207
2.5
6.9


Thaddeus Young
-1.1
+1.5
+0.4
2154
2.0
5.5


Brook Lopez
-0.4
+0.8
+0.4
1728
0.7
2.7


Patrick Beverley
+0.3
+0.1
+0.4
1454
1.7
4.3


Enes Kanter
+0.6
-0.2
+0.3
1841
0.8
4.8


Julius Randle
+0.4
-0.1
+0.3
2040
1.2
9.0


Bam Adebayo
-1.2
+1.5
+0.3
1798
0.9
15.2


Montrezl Harrell
+0.3
+0.0
+0.3
1409
0.8
6.0


Danilo Gallinari
+0.4
-0.2
+0.3
1566
1.5
4.0


DeMarre Carroll
-0.3
+0.5
+0.3
1773
1.7
4.5


CJ McCollum
+2.1
-1.8
+0.3
2576
2.9
12.5


Nicolas Batum
+0.5
-0.2
+0.2
2060
2.3
6.5


Andzejs Pasecniks
-0.3
+0.5
+0.2
198
0.1
2.9


Elfrid Payton
+0.9
-0.8
+0.2
2067
2.1
13.3


Willie Cauley-Stein
-1.5
+1.6
+0.2
1908
0.6
6.2


Tim Hardaway Jr.
+1.2
-1.1
+0.2
2057
2.3
9.9


George Hill
+0.8
-0.7
+0.1
1620
1.7
4.3


Eric Gordon
+1.5
-1.4
+0.1
2010
2.2
6.3


Eric Moreland
-2.6
+2.7
+0.1
874
0.6
3.5


Nemanja Bjelica
-0.7
+0.7
+0.1
1308
1.1
3.1


John Henson
-2.1
+2.1
+0.1
1585
0.7
3.8


Cole Aldrich
-2.1
+2.2
+0.1
488
0.1
1.0


David Lee
-1.2
+1.2
+0.1
571
0.3
0.7


Maurice Harkless
-0.6
+0.7
+0.1
1600
1.4
7.9


Jarrett Allen
-1.6
+1.6
+0.0
1689
0.4
12.0


Will Barton
+1.0
-1.0
+0.0
2190
2.2
9.0


Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
-0.8
+0.8
+0.0
1931
1.6
11.2


Danny Green
-1.4
+1.4
+0.0
1562
1.5
4.4


Richaun Holmes
-0.8
+0.8
+0.0
1189
0.5
4.4


Darren Collison
+1.4
-1.5
-0.1
1799
1.6
4.7


Royce O’Neale
-1.1
+1.0
-0.1
1311
1.0
6.3


Thabo Sefolosha
-1.8
+1.8
-0.1
997
0.9
1.9


Frank Kaminsky
+0.4
-0.5
-0.1
1787
0.7
5.7


Patrick Patterson
-0.6
+0.5
-0.1
1316
0.7
2.5


Justise Winslow
-1.3
+1.1
-0.1
1832
1.4
12.4


Lou Williams
+2.9
-3.1
-0.2
2061
1.9
5.2


Mike Muscala
-0.8
+0.6
-0.2
1280
0.2
2.4


Channing Frye
-0.3
+0.1
-0.2
690
0.3
0.6


Kris Dunn
-0.6
+0.4
-0.2
1778
1.5
11.7


Tim Duncan
-1.7
+1.5
-0.2
466
0.2
0.5


D’Angelo Russell
+1.5
-1.7
-0.2
1834
1.6
15.5


Ed Davis
-1.7
+1.5
-0.2
1231
0.4
1.9


Ersan Ilyasova
-0.4
+0.2
-0.2
1576
0.8
2.5


Boban Marjanovic
-1.6
+1.4
-0.2
449
0.0
0.8


Kent Bazemore
-0.8
+0.5
-0.2
1740
1.6
5.2


Alex Len
-1.7
+1.4
-0.2
1552
0.2
3.6


Goran Dragic
+1.2
-1.4
-0.3
2000
1.6
4.7


Gorgui Dieng
-1.7
+1.4
-0.3
1499
0.3
2.4


Tyler Johnson
+0.2
-0.5
-0.3
1961
1.7
7.9


Josh Hart
+0.5
-0.7
-0.3
1767
1.6
11.9


Chris Bosh
-1.2
+0.9
-0.3
571
0.1
0.9


Rudy Gay
-1.0
+0.7
-0.3
1202
0.7
2.0


Domantas Sabonis
-1.0
+0.7
-0.3
1996
0.6
8.9


Robert Williams
-1.7
+1.5
-0.3
538
0.0
6.3


Shaquille Harrison
-0.4
+0.1
-0.3
881
0.7
5.0


Lauri Markkanen
+0.1
-0.4
-0.3
2269
1.0
17.4


Trey Lyles
-0.1
-0.2
-0.3
1610
0.7
7.3


Serge Ibaka
-1.1
+0.7
-0.3
1866
0.6
3.0


Tyson Chandler
-2.2
+1.9
-0.3
928
0.0
0.4


PJ Tucker
-1.1
+0.8
-0.3
1705
1.1
2.9


Jonathan Isaac
-2.4
+2.1
-0.3
1296
0.7
13.1


Tyler Lydon
-0.6
+0.3
-0.4
272
0.2
2.9


Devin Booker
+2.0
-2.4
-0.4
2272
1.8
18.2


Guerschon Yabusele
-0.7
+0.3
-0.4
657
0.3
3.5


Gary Clark
-1.0
+0.6
-0.4
178
0.1
1.7


Malcolm Brogdon
+0.7
-1.1
-0.4
1796
1.4
8.1


Jae Crowder
-0.1
-0.4
-0.4
1911
1.1
4.5


Reggie Bullock
+0.1
-0.6
-0.5
1495
1.1
5.0


Jared Sullinger
-1.2
+0.8
-0.5
594
0.2
1.9


Khem Birch
-1.4
+0.9
-0.5
889
0.1
1.9


Luke Kennard
+0.2
-0.7
-0.5
1716
1.4
14.2


Jerian Grant
+0.5
-1.0
-0.5
1577
1.1
6.9


Patty Mills
+1.4
-1.9
-0.5
1755
1.2
3.5


Shabazz Napier
+0.2
-0.6
-0.5
1319
1.0
4.6


Evan Fournier
+1.0
-1.5
-0.5
2004
1.4
7.1


Anthony Tolliver
+0.2
-0.7
-0.5
1254
0.4
1.3


Michael Carter-Williams
-1.5
+0.9
-0.5
1088
0.7
3.9


Bobby Portis
+0.2
-0.8
-0.5
1576
0.5
6.2


Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
-1.3
+0.7
-0.5
1796
1.1
7.5


Ivica Zubac
-1.9
+1.4
-0.5
960
-0.1
4.0


Buddy Hield
+0.9
-1.4
-0.5
1926
1.4
9.8


Brandan Wright
-1.6
+1.1
-0.6
534
0.1
0.7


Yogi Ferrell
+0.2
-0.7
-0.6
1873
1.3
8.0


Luc Mbah a Moute
-1.9
+1.4
-0.6
1371
0.6
1.8


Jevon Carter
-0.1
-0.5
-0.6
550
0.3
6.2


Alan Williams
-1.8
+1.2
-0.6
588
0.0
1.4


Ian Mahinmi
-2.7
+2.1
-0.6
886
-0.1
0.5


Jabari Parker
+0.4
-1.0
-0.6
1541
0.6
7.2


JaVale McGee
-1.7
+1.1
-0.6
700
-0.1
0.5


Justin Holiday
-0.7
+0.0
-0.6
1832
1.2
4.6


Caris LeVert
-0.1
-0.6
-0.6
1801
0.9
7.9


Seth Curry
+0.5
-1.1
-0.6
1187
0.8
3.4


Festus Ezeli
-1.9
+1.2
-0.6
352
0.0
0.7


Marreese Speights
-0.7
+0.0
-0.6
845
0.1
0.8


Denzel Valentine
-0.3
-0.4
-0.6
1801
1.2
8.8


Stanley Johnson
-1.3
+0.7
-0.6
1926
1.0
11.6


Wendell Carter Jr.
-1.4
+0.7
-0.6
1215
-0.2
15.1


Derrick White
-0.5
-0.2
-0.7
166
0.1
0.4


Dante Exum
-0.1
-0.6
-0.7
1057
0.7
7.2


Taurean Prince
-0.5
-0.1
-0.7
2009
1.1
8.7


Marcin Gortat
-2.2
+1.6
-0.7
1639
-0.2
0.8


Jarred Vanderbilt
-1.0
+0.3
-0.7
414
0.2
13.1


Meyers Leonard
-1.0
+0.3
-0.7
854
-0.1
1.2


Luke Kornet
-1.2
+0.6
-0.7
883
0.2
3.9


Kyle Kuzma
+0.3
-1.0
-0.7
2319
0.5
8.4


Taj Gibson
-1.3
+0.6
-0.7
1856
0.3
1.6


Markieff Morris
-1.4
+0.6
-0.7
1731
0.4
2.4


Deandre Ayton
-0.5
-0.2
-0.7
1742
-0.3
16.9


Marquese Chriss
-1.4
+0.7
-0.8
1838
0.4
12.1


Devin Harris
+0.2
-0.9
-0.8
966
0.5
1.3


Kelly Oubre Jr.
-0.3
-0.5
-0.8
2026
0.9
9.6


Andrew Wiggins
+0.8
-1.6
-0.8
2625
1.4
13.2


Ante Zizic
-1.2
+0.4
-0.8
565
0.0
2.8


Ryan Anderson
+0.4
-1.2
-0.8
1600
0.2
1.6


Brandon Ingram
-0.4
-0.4
-0.8
2328
0.8
17.1


Mikal Bridges
-0.9
+0.1
-0.8
1103
0.5
13.2


Kosta Koufos
-2.3
+1.5
-0.8
1239
-0.1
1.2


Terrence Ross
-0.6
-0.3
-0.8
1303
0.7
3.2


Kenrich Williams
-0.8
+0.0
-0.9
162
0.0
1.1


Wesley Johnson
-2.5
+1.7
-0.9
1085
0.5
1.5


Joakim Noah
-2.6
+1.8
-0.9
348
-0.1
0.2


Emeka Okafor
-2.7
+1.8
-0.9
313
-0.1
0.2


JJ Redick
+1.4
-2.3
-0.9
1757
1.0
2.5


Solomon Hill
-1.4
+0.5
-0.9
1011
0.4
2.4


Jaren Jackson Jr.
-2.5
+1.7
-0.9
1456
-0.1
17.9


Harry Giles
-1.0
+0.1
-0.9
270
0.0
3.5


Chris Johnson
-1.8
+0.9
-0.9
335
-0.1
0.6


Trevor Booker
-1.6
+0.7
-0.9
1146
0.1
1.0


Dennis Schroder
+1.4
-2.4
-0.9
2091
0.9
6.7


Jared Dudley
-1.3
+0.3
-1.0
814
0.2
0.8


Jeff Withey
-2.4
+1.4
-1.0
393
-0.1
0.3


Austin Rivers
+0.8
-1.8
-1.0
1973
0.9
5.4


Thon Maker
-1.5
+0.5
-1.0
1390
-0.3
5.2


Ish Smith
-0.2
-0.8
-1.0
1710
0.6
2.3


Willie Reed
-1.7
+0.7
-1.0
702
0.0
0.9


Andrew Bogut
-3.8
+2.8
-1.0
443
-0.2
0.2


Marcus Morris
-0.6
-0.4
-1.1
1628
0.1
1.8


Darius Miller
+0.6
-1.6
-1.1
1335
0.4
2.7


Dirk Nowitzki
-1.6
+0.5
-1.1
1134
-0.2
0.4


Tyler Cavanaugh
-0.6
-0.5
-1.1
880
0.0
2.0


Amar’e Stoudemire
-2.1
+1.0
-1.1
312
0.0
0.2


Derrick Jones Jr.
-1.1
+0.0
-1.1
789
0.1
2.9


Langston Galloway
-0.1
-1.0
-1.1
1158
0.5
2.9


Wayne Ellington
+0.7
-1.8
-1.1
1471
0.6
2.3


Andrew Harrison
-0.5
-0.6
-1.1
1595
0.5
6.8


Juancho Hernangomez
-0.5
-0.7
-1.1
881
0.0
3.3


Bonzie Colson
-1.3
+0.1
-1.1
185
0.0
1.6


Spencer Hawes
-2.0
+0.8
-1.2
569
-0.2
0.3


Omri Casspi
-1.4
+0.3
-1.2
837
0.2
0.9


Isaiah Thomas
+2.4
-3.6
-1.2
1515
0.4
2.1


Cory Joseph
-0.3
-0.9
-1.2
1818
0.5
3.8


Kyle Korver
-0.2
-1.0
-1.2
1053
0.4
1.2


Bogdan Bogdanovic
+0.4
-1.6
-1.2
1989
0.7
5.5


Raul Neto
-0.5
-0.7
-1.2
844
0.2
2.4


Justin Hamilton
-1.9
+0.6
-1.2
703
-0.3
0.5


Allen Crabbe
+0.4
-1.6
-1.2
1980
0.7
4.6


Alec Peters
-0.9
-0.4
-1.2
654
0.0
2.3


CJ Miles
+0.2
-1.4
-1.2
1157
0.3
1.4


Chris McCullough
-1.2
+0.0
-1.2
406
0.0
1.9


Jerami Grant
-1.2
-0.1
-1.2
1552
0.1
3.6


Dillon Brooks
-0.7
-0.6
-1.2
2275
0.6
9.2


Jonas Jerebko
-1.2
+0.0
-1.2
923
0.1
0.8


Harrison Barnes
-0.2
-1.0
-1.2
2259
0.1
3.0


Tristan Thompson
-1.3
+0.1
-1.3
1271
-0.4
1.1


Sam Dekker
-1.0
-0.3
-1.3
1091
0.1
3.2


Mario Chalmers
-1.1
-0.1
-1.3
972
0.2
0.9


Jeremy Lin
-0.3
-1.0
-1.3
870
0.2
1.0


Ivan Rabb
-1.1
-0.2
-1.3
990
-0.1
3.8


Jamil Wilson
-1.1
-0.2
-1.3
603
0.0
1.4


Kenneth Faried
-1.0
-0.3
-1.3
874
-0.1
0.8


Myke Henry
-1.7
+0.4
-1.3
755
0.0
2.4


Cedi Osman
-0.7
-0.7
-1.3
971
0.2
3.8


Cameron Payne
-0.4
-0.9
-1.3
1077
0.2
4.0


Milos Teodosic
-0.2
-1.2
-1.3
1081
0.3
1.5


T.J. McConnell
-1.3
-0.1
-1.3
1602
0.3
3.6


Ray Spalding
-2.1
+0.8
-1.3
261
0.0
2.7


Deron Williams
+0.0
-1.3
-1.3
908
0.2
0.8


Reggie Jackson
+0.7
-2.1
-1.4
1437
0.3
2.0


Donatas Motiejunas
-1.9
+0.6
-1.4
480
-0.1
0.7


James Ennis III
-1.0
-0.4
-1.4
1372
0.2
2.2


Aron Baynes
-3.3
+1.9
-1.4
972
-0.3
0.4


Damion Lee
-1.1
-0.3
-1.4
883
0.3
2.6


Zach LaVine
+0.5
-1.9
-1.4
1562
0.4
6.1


Sindarius Thornwell
-2.0
+0.6
-1.4
1286
0.4
5.4


Deyonta Davis
-1.7
+0.3
-1.4
1100
-0.4
2.7


Darrell Arthur
-1.7
+0.3
-1.4
487
-0.1
0.4


Rajon Rondo
-1.0
-0.4
-1.4
1336
0.2
1.5


Dennis Smith Jr.
+0.1
-1.5
-1.4
2269
0.4
14.2


Omari Spellman
-1.6
+0.2
-1.4
452
-0.1
3.8


Kyle Collinsworth
-1.6
+0.1
-1.4
733
0.1
1.7


Tyler Ennis
-0.8
-0.6
-1.4
940
0.1
3.7


J.J. Barea
+0.9
-2.3
-1.5
1206
0.2
1.1


Joe Harris
+0.1
-1.6
-1.5
1525
0.4
3.5


Cheick Diallo
-1.5
+0.0
-1.5
864
-0.2
2.1


Shane Larkin
-0.6
-0.9
-1.5
898
0.1
2.3


Carmelo Anthony
-0.2
-1.3
-1.5
1824
-0.1
1.1


Maxi Kleber
-1.9
+0.5
-1.5
1225
-0.3
1.6


Jon Leuer
-1.8
+0.4
-1.5
892
-0.2
0.7


Alex Abrines
-0.1
-1.4
-1.5
1137
0.3
3.5


Thomas Robinson
-1.8
+0.3
-1.5
560
-0.1
1.1


Mario Hezonja
-1.0
-0.5
-1.5
1551
0.1
5.5


TJ Warren
-0.1
-1.4
-1.5
1936
0.1
4.3


Mike James
-0.1
-1.4
-1.5
910
0.1
1.5


Travis Wear
-1.6
+0.1
-1.5
410
0.0
1.0


Glenn Robinson III
-1.1
-0.4
-1.5
914
0.2
2.6


Henry Ellenson
-1.5
-0.1
-1.5
707
-0.2
2.7


De’Anthony Melton
-1.8
+0.3
-1.5
451
0.1
9.4


Troy Williams
-1.6
+0.1
-1.5
801
0.0
2.7


Toney Douglas
-0.8
-0.7
-1.5
431
0.0
0.5


Marvin Bagley III
-0.7
-0.8
-1.5
1693
-0.7
15.2


Rodney McGruder
-0.6
-1.0
-1.5
958
0.2
2.0


Dion Waiters
-0.5
-1.0
-1.5
1413
0.3
2.3


Iman Shumpert
-1.3
-0.2
-1.5
995
0.2
1.6


Noah Vonleh
-2.3
+0.7
-1.6
1223
-0.3
2.8


Michael Beasley
-1.1
-0.5
-1.6
1235
-0.2
0.9


Tarik Black
-2.6
+1.1
-1.6
820
-0.3
1.0


Roy Hibbert
-3.2
+1.7
-1.6
445
-0.3
0.1


Luke Babbitt
-0.8
-0.8
-1.6
828
0.0
0.9


Trey Burke
+1.2
-2.8
-1.6
1121
0.1
2.3


Shelvin Mack
-0.4
-1.2
-1.6
1213
0.1
1.6


Luol Deng
-2.1
+0.5
-1.6
630
0.0
0.4


Trae Young
+0.2
-1.8
-1.6
1807
0.1
16.6


Zhaire Smith
-1.2
-0.4
-1.6
920
0.0
15.3


James Michael McAdoo
-2.0
+0.4
-1.6
394
-0.1
0.8


Wilson Chandler
-1.0
-0.6
-1.6
1630
0.0
1.3


Skal Labissiere
-1.7
+0.1
-1.6
1373
-0.4
3.2


Tony Snell
-0.4
-1.2
-1.6
1768
0.1
2.8


Justin Patton
-1.9
+0.3
-1.6
343
-0.2
1.4


E’Twaun Moore
-0.3
-1.3
-1.6
1826
0.2
2.0


Adreian Payne
-2.1
+0.5
-1.6
476
-0.1
0.8


Courtney Lee
-0.4
-1.2
-1.7
1723
0.2
1.6


JaKarr Sampson
-2.4
+0.7
-1.7
619
-0.1
1.2


Alexis Ajinca
-3.2
+1.5
-1.7
456
-0.3
0.2


Tim Frazier
-1.0
-0.7
-1.7
1016
0.1
1.7


JaMychal Green
-1.4
-0.3
-1.7
1536
-0.5
1.2


Briante Weber
-1.0
-0.7
-1.7
548
0.0
2.0


Terrence Jones
-1.6
-0.1
-1.7
870
-0.3
0.9


Okaro White
-1.6
-0.1
-1.7
511
-0.2
0.8


Tyler Zeller
-2.3
+0.6
-1.7
937
-0.7
0.4


Rodney Hood
+0.1
-1.8
-1.7
1599
0.2
3.2


Justin Anderson
-0.9
-0.9
-1.7
924
0.0
2.4


Archie Goodwin
-0.3
-1.4
-1.7
578
0.1
2.2


Anderson Varejao
-2.9
+1.2
-1.7
347
-0.3
0.0


Bruce Brown Jr.
-1.1
-0.6
-1.7
332
0.0
3.2


Pat Connaughton
-0.4
-1.3
-1.7
1099
0.1
2.5


Alex Caruso
-1.6
-0.2
-1.7
836
0.0
2.5


Ryan Kelly
-2.0
+0.2
-1.7
290
0.0
0.8


D.J. Wilson
-1.3
-0.5
-1.7
398
-0.1
1.3


Jordan Hill
-2.0
+0.3
-1.8
283
-0.1
0.2


Chandler Parsons
-1.1
-0.7
-1.8
879
-0.1
0.6


Garrett Temple
-1.5
-0.3
-1.8
1253
0.0
0.9


Quincy Acy
-1.4
-0.4
-1.8
1069
-0.3
1.0


Ron Baker
-1.6
-0.3
-1.8
724
0.0
2.2


Tony Bradley
-0.8
-1.0
-1.8
233
-0.2
1.0


Dragan Bender
-1.9
+0.0
-1.8
2020
-0.8
10.2


D.J. Augustin
+0.3
-2.1
-1.8
1255
-0.1
0.9


Damian Jones
-1.8
-0.1
-1.9
59
0.0
0.1


Wesley Matthews
-0.7
-1.1
-1.9
1789
-0.1
1.2


Markelle Fultz
-1.3
-0.5
-1.9
990
0.0
13.7


Tyrone Wallace
-1.5
-0.4
-1.9
1268
-0.1
3.1


Treveon Graham
-1.0
-0.9
-1.9
945
0.0
2.3


Vince Carter
-1.3
-0.6
-1.9
855
0.0
0.4


Jacob Evans
-1.3
-0.6
-1.9
564
0.0
6.2


Jordan Mickey
-2.1
+0.2
-1.9
537
-0.2
1.2


Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
-1.1
-0.8
-1.9
1109
-0.1
14.0


Zach Collins
-2.4
+0.5
-1.9
1473
-1.2
4.8


Jeff Green
-1.2
-0.7
-1.9
1296
-0.4
0.5


Dwyane Wade
-1.4
-0.6
-1.9
1162
0.0
0.4


Chandler Hutchison
-0.9
-1.0
-1.9
539
-0.1
3.8


Corey Brewer
-2.4
+0.5
-1.9
898
-0.1
0.5


O.J. Mayo
-1.4
-0.6
-1.9
385
0.0
0.4


Nick Collison
-2.0
+0.1
-2.0
358
-0.2
0.1


Chase Budinger
-1.6
-0.3
-2.0
289
-0.1
0.4


Damyean Dotson
-1.0
-0.9
-2.0
742
0.0
2.0


Mike Miller
-1.8
-0.2
-2.0
395
-0.1
0.2


Josh Jackson
-1.2
-0.8
-2.0
1884
-0.3
7.9


Matt Barnes
-1.5
-0.5
-2.0
750
-0.2
0.3


Jordan Clarkson
+0.2
-2.1
-2.0
1694
-0.2
2.2


Devonte’ Graham
-0.4
-1.6
-2.0
413
-0.1
2.0


K.J. McDaniels
-1.5
-0.5
-2.0
423
-0.1
1.3


Josh McRoberts
-2.0
+0.0
-2.0
295
-0.1
0.2


Dorian Finney-Smith
-2.0
+0.0
-2.0
980
-0.4
1.3


David Nwaba
-1.4
-0.6
-2.0
1261
-0.1
2.3


Frank Mason
-0.1
-1.9
-2.0
1160
-0.2
2.5


Carl Landry
-1.9
-0.1
-2.0
300
-0.2
0.2


Ryan Arcidiacono
-1.1
-0.9
-2.0
626
-0.1
1.9


Brandon Jennings
-0.4
-1.6
-2.0
771
-0.1
0.6


Aaron Harrison
-1.3
-0.7
-2.0
624
0.0
2.3


Malik Beasley
-0.8
-1.2
-2.0
750
-0.1
2.8


Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot
-1.1
-0.9
-2.0
1144
-0.2
3.6


Robin Lopez
-2.8
+0.8
-2.1
1472
-1.3
0.2


Josh Huestis
-2.8
+0.7
-2.1
790
-0.3
0.6


Joffrey Lauvergne
-1.8
-0.3
-2.1
771
-0.5
0.6


Andrea Bargnani
-2.1
+0.0
-2.1
328
-0.2
0.0


Doral Moore
-3.1
+1.0
-2.1
107
-0.1
0.4


Thomas Welsh
-2.3
+0.2
-2.1
219
-0.2
0.7


DeAndre’ Bembry
-2.2
+0.1
-2.1
762
-0.3
1.6


Alec Burks
-1.1
-1.0
-2.1
944
-0.1
1.3


Manu Ginobili
-1.7
-0.4
-2.1
776
-0.1
0.3


Isaiah Canaan
-0.5
-1.6
-2.1
846
-0.2
1.1


Lavoy Allen
-2.2
+0.1
-2.1
531
-0.3
0.3


JR Smith
-0.7
-1.4
-2.1
1342
-0.2
0.7


Sterling Brown
-1.9
-0.2
-2.1
1001
-0.1
3.3


Dante Cunningham
-1.9
-0.2
-2.1
1134
-0.5
0.4


Donald Sloan
-0.7
-1.4
-2.1
352
-0.1
0.4


Nik Stauskas
-0.7
-1.4
-2.1
1059
-0.1
2.2


Frank Ntilikina
-1.8
-0.3
-2.1
1839
-0.4
11.0


Damjan Rudez
-1.6
-0.5
-2.1
335
-0.1
0.1


Mike Scott
-1.1
-1.1
-2.1
931
-0.5
0.4


Al Jefferson
-2.7
+0.6
-2.1
532
-0.5
0.1


Brandon Paul
-2.1
+0.0
-2.1
627
-0.1
1.1


Gerald Green
-0.9
-1.2
-2.1
806
-0.2
0.4


Ty Lawson
-0.6
-1.6
-2.1
795
-0.2
0.3


Rashad Vaughn
-1.2
-1.0
-2.1
659
-0.1
2.0


Michael Porter Jr.
-1.9
-0.2
-2.1
887
-0.4
7.8


Bojan Bogdanovic
-0.4
-1.7
-2.2
1770
-0.4
1.3


Miles Bridges
-1.3
-0.9
-2.2
1010
-0.5
7.7


Malachi Richardson
-1.1
-1.0
-2.2
685
-0.1
2.3


Danuel House
-0.9
-1.3
-2.2
576
-0.1
1.4


Beno Udrih
-0.6
-1.5
-2.2
435
-0.1
0.1


Isaiah Whitehead
-1.4
-0.7
-2.2
899
-0.2
2.6


Tony Allen
-2.7
+0.5
-2.2
513
-0.1
0.3


Norman Powell
-1.2
-1.0
-2.2
1034
-0.2
1.9


Bismack Biyombo
-3.2
+1.0
-2.2
1302
-1.3
0.6


Chris Andersen
-3.3
+1.1
-2.2
312
-0.3
0.0


Alize Johnson
-1.0
-1.2
-2.2
254
-0.2
1.1


Khyri Thomas
-0.9
-1.3
-2.2
353
-0.1
2.6


Keita Bates-Diop
-1.7
-0.5
-2.2
255
-0.2
1.1


Caleb Swanigan
-0.7
-1.6
-2.2
218
-0.1
0.8


Avery Bradley
-1.0
-1.3
-2.2
1558
-0.3
1.2


Luka Doncic
-1.0
-1.2
-2.2
1271
-0.3
21.2


Theo Pinson
-1.5
-0.7
-2.3
144
0.0
0.8


C.J. Williams
-1.8
-0.5
-2.3
830
-0.2
0.9


Quinn Cook
+0.1
-2.3
-2.3
882
-0.2
1.5


Tiago Splitter
-2.4
+0.2
-2.3
255
-0.2
0.1


TJ Leaf
-1.1
-1.2
-2.3
780
-0.5
1.8


Justin Jackson
-1.4
-0.9
-2.3
1525
-0.6
3.5


Kevin Hervey
-1.6
-0.7
-2.3
273
-0.1
1.8


Melvin Frazier
-1.5
-0.8
-2.3
375
-0.1
2.5


Alonzo Gee
-2.2
-0.1
-2.3
330
-0.1
0.2


Hollis Thompson
-1.2
-1.1
-2.3
641
-0.3
0.6


Raymond Felton
-1.2
-1.2
-2.3
1001
-0.3
0.4


Andrew Nicholson
-2.3
+0.0
-2.3
363
-0.2
0.3


Jawun Evans
-1.6
-0.7
-2.3
1115
-0.4
3.5


Isaac Bonga
-1.7
-0.7
-2.3
166
-0.1
4.7


Donte DiVincenzo
-0.8
-1.6
-2.3
701
-0.2
4.9


James Anderson
-1.6
-0.8
-2.3
314
-0.1
0.5


Kevin Seraphin
-2.6
+0.2
-2.3
424
-0.5
0.1


Jose Calderon
-1.2
-1.1
-2.3
653
-0.2
0.3


Evan Turner
-2.2
-0.2
-2.3
1503
-0.5
0.6


Rodions Kurucs
-1.9
-0.5
-2.4
117
0.0
2.5


Marco Belinelli
-0.1
-2.2
-2.4
1292
-0.3
0.6


Dzanan Musa
-1.7
-0.6
-2.4
224
-0.1
5.9


Shaun Livingston
-2.0
-0.3
-2.4
855
-0.3
0.4


DeAndre Liggins
-2.6
+0.2
-2.4
680
-0.2
0.5


Jarell Martin
-2.5
+0.1
-2.4
1274
-0.9
1.2


Wayne Selden
-0.8
-1.6
-2.4
915
-0.2
1.9


Mirza Teletovic
-1.2
-1.1
-2.4
466
-0.3
0.1


Johnny O’Bryant III
-2.1
-0.2
-2.4
542
-0.4
0.7


Jahlil Okafor
-2.5
+0.2
-2.4
898
-1.0
0.7


Isaiah Taylor
-1.0
-1.4
-2.4
1000
-0.4
2.0


Mitchell Robinson
-2.4
+0.1
-2.4
337
-0.4
1.7


Josh Okogie
-1.3
-1.1
-2.4
823
-0.2
9.6


Elie Okobo
-0.9
-1.5
-2.4
252
-0.1
3.2


P.J. Hairston
-1.4
-1.0
-2.4
442
-0.1
1.1


Davon Reed
-1.6
-0.8
-2.4
597
-0.2
2.5


Marcus Georges-Hunt
-1.2
-1.2
-2.4
379
-0.1
1.3


Jarrett Jack
-1.2
-1.2
-2.4
940
-0.4
0.4


Josh Magette
-0.9
-1.5
-2.4
379
-0.2
0.8


Isaiah Hicks
-2.1
-0.3
-2.4
532
-0.4
0.9


Jordan McRae
-1.4
-1.1
-2.4
325
-0.2
0.4


Brandon Bass
-2.0
-0.5
-2.4
361
-0.3
0.1


Dwight Buycks
-1.4
-1.0
-2.4
449
-0.2
0.6


Kevin Garnett
-2.3
-0.1
-2.4
436
-0.3
0.0


Grayson Allen
-0.8
-1.6
-2.5
568
-0.2
2.9


Moritz Wagner
-2.0
-0.4
-2.5
487
-0.6
1.7


Troy Brown
-1.5
-0.9
-2.5
936
-0.3
12.9


Issuf Sanon
-1.2
-1.3
-2.5
153
-0.1
3.6


Arnoldas Kulboka
-2.0
-0.5
-2.5
60
0.0
1.5


Nick Young
-0.3
-2.2
-2.5
902
-0.3
0.3


Omer Asik
-3.5
+1.0
-2.5
386
-0.4
0.0


Jonathon Simmons
-1.3
-1.2
-2.5
1452
-0.6
0.9


Chimezie Metu
-2.8
+0.3
-2.5
296
-0.3
1.3


Norris Cole
-1.1
-1.4
-2.5
314
-0.1
0.2


De’Aaron Fox
-0.6
-2.0
-2.5
2198
-1.0
8.3


Kris Humphries
-2.6
+0.0
-2.5
299
-0.2
0.1


Torrey Craig
-1.6
-0.9
-2.6
723
-0.3
0.7


Luis Scola
-1.8
-0.8
-2.6
376
-0.3
0.0


Jason Smith
-3.0
+0.4
-2.6
451
-0.4
0.1


Sergio Rodriguez
-0.8
-1.8
-2.6
583
-0.3
0.2


Charlie Villanueva
-2.6
+0.0
-2.6
271
-0.2
0.1


Metta World Peace
-2.3
-0.3
-2.6
456
-0.3
0.1


Doug McDermott
-0.6
-2.0
-2.6
1377
-0.8
0.9


Monta Ellis
-1.8
-0.8
-2.6
897
-0.4
0.3


Derrick Williams
-1.7
-0.9
-2.6
483
-0.4
0.3


Bryn Forbes
-0.4
-2.3
-2.7
1084
-0.5
1.5


Brandon Knight
-0.4
-2.2
-2.7
757
-0.4
0.7


Vince Edwards
-1.5
-1.2
-2.7
287
-0.2
1.2


Cristiano Felicio
-2.3
-0.4
-2.7
965
-1.1
0.4


Ronnie Price
-1.7
-1.0
-2.7
314
-0.2
0.0


Sasha Vujacic
-2.1
-0.6
-2.7
301
-0.1
0.2


Lance Stephenson
-1.0
-1.7
-2.7
1163
-0.6
0.7


Darrun Hilliard
-1.8
-0.9
-2.7
378
-0.2
1.1


Markel Brown
-1.4
-1.3
-2.7
306
-0.1
0.5


Kendrick Perkins
-3.2
+0.5
-2.7
183
-0.2
0.0


Terrance Ferguson
-1.2
-1.5
-2.8
1081
-0.5
2.7


James Jones
-1.7
-1.1
-2.8
391
-0.3
0.1


Steve Blake
-1.3
-1.5
-2.8
407
-0.2
0.2


Emmanuel Mudiay
-0.7
-2.1
-2.8
1429
-0.9
3.1


Miles Plumlee
-3.6
+0.8
-2.8
700
-0.8
0.1


Antonio Blakeney
-1.2
-1.6
-2.8
677
-0.3
1.4


Wes Iwundu
-2.7
-0.1
-2.8
1091
-0.7
2.0


Kay Felder
-1.0
-1.8
-2.8
528
-0.3
2.1


Dakota Mathias
-1.3
-1.5
-2.8
155
-0.1
0.6


Tyler Ulis
-0.7
-2.1
-2.8
1487
-0.8
3.0


Devon Hall
-1.2
-1.6
-2.8
217
-0.1
0.8


Matthew Dellavedova
-1.0
-1.8
-2.8
1056
-0.6
0.7


Tyler Dorsey
-0.4
-2.4
-2.8
1213
-0.6
2.2


Timofey Mozgov
-3.7
+0.8
-2.8
512
-0.7
0.0


Mo Williams
-1.1
-1.7
-2.9
334
-0.2
0.1


Kevin Martin
-1.4
-1.4
-2.9
343
-0.2
0.1


Anthony Brown
-1.5
-1.4
-2.9
440
-0.3
1.4


Joe Young
-1.0
-1.9
-2.9
584
-0.4
0.8


Mike Dunleavy
-1.5
-1.4
-2.9
425
-0.2
0.1


Rodney Stuckey
-1.7
-1.2
-2.9
415
-0.2
0.2


Kyle Singler
-2.4
-0.5
-2.9
300
-0.2
0.1


Jerryd Bayless
-1.2
-1.7
-2.9
798
-0.5
0.3


Jodie Meeks
-0.9
-2.0
-2.9
682
-0.4
0.3


Zach Randolph
-1.5
-1.4
-2.9
1050
-1.1
0.1


Jamel Artis
-1.9
-1.0
-2.9
518
-0.3
0.9


Jerome Robinson
-1.2
-1.8
-2.9
886
-0.6
4.3


Malcolm Delaney
-1.8
-1.2
-2.9
928
-0.6
0.4


Yante Maten
-2.6
-0.4
-2.9
173
-0.2
0.6


Kobe Bryant
-1.4
-1.6
-3.0
380
-0.2
0.1


Landry Shamet
-0.9
-2.0
-3.0
501
-0.3
2.8


Kevin Huerter
-1.5
-1.4
-3.0
793
-0.5
7.6


Patrick McCaw
-1.9
-1.1
-3.0
1131
-0.7
2.2


Justin Jackson
-2.0
-1.0
-3.0
256
-0.2
3.5


Alan Anderson
-2.0
-1.0
-3.0
280
-0.2
0.0


Ben McLemore
-1.6
-1.4
-3.0
1037
-0.6
1.0


Dwayne Bacon
-2.6
-0.4
-3.0
910
-0.6
1.9


Boris Diaw
-2.6
-0.4
-3.0
426
-0.4
0.0


Derrick Rose
-0.8
-2.2
-3.0
883
-0.6
0.2


Anfernee Simons
-1.7
-1.4
-3.0
698
-0.4
8.0


Shake Milton
-1.6
-1.4
-3.1
279
-0.2
1.4


Ramon Sessions
-1.7
-1.4
-3.1
546
-0.4
0.1


DJ Hogg
-2.3
-0.7
-3.1
144
-0.1
0.5


Aaron Holiday
-0.9
-2.2
-3.1
547
-0.4
2.2


Collin Sexton
-0.6
-2.5
-3.1
1254
-1.0
8.3


Leandro Barbosa
-1.4
-1.7
-3.1
348
-0.2
0.1


Marcus Thornton
-1.4
-1.7
-3.1
401
-0.3
0.2


Ian Clark
-1.0
-2.1
-3.2
1059
-0.7
0.6


Sean Kilpatrick
-1.0
-2.1
-3.2
763
-0.5
0.4


Keenan Evans
-1.6
-1.6
-3.2
188
-0.2
0.9


Troy Daniels
+0.1
-3.4
-3.2
1136
-0.8
0.7


Jalen Brunson
-0.9
-2.4
-3.2
415
-0.4
1.6


Brandon Rush
-2.2
-1.0
-3.3
428
-0.3
0.1


Gerald Henderson
-1.6
-1.6
-3.3
650
-0.5
0.2


Lance Thomas
-2.5
-0.8
-3.3
879
-0.9
0.1


Anthony Morrow
-1.5
-1.8
-3.3
311
-0.2
0.1


Joe Johnson
-2.1
-1.2
-3.4
821
-0.7
0.2


Malik Monk
-0.4
-2.9
-3.4
1313
-1.1
2.9


Josh Smith
-2.8
-0.6
-3.4
296
-0.3
0.0


Jameer Nelson
-1.3
-2.1
-3.4
701
-0.7
0.1


C.J. Watson
-2.2
-1.2
-3.4
317
-0.3
0.1


Kirk Hinrich
-1.7
-1.7
-3.4
316
-0.3
0.2


Lonnie Walker IV
-1.6
-1.8
-3.4
749
-0.6
5.9


Nicolas Brussino
-2.3
-1.1
-3.4
285
-0.2
1.1


MiKyle McIntosh
-2.2
-1.3
-3.4
105
-0.1
0.2


Jason Terry
-2.8
-0.7
-3.4
437
-0.4
0.0


Tony Carr
-1.5
-2.0
-3.5
341
-0.3
1.8


Brian Roberts
-1.7
-1.8
-3.5
299
-0.3
0.1


Shabazz Muhammad
-0.9
-2.5
-3.5
727
-0.7
0.4


Randy Foye
-2.4
-1.1
-3.5
426
-0.4
0.1


Tayshaun Prince
-2.9
-0.6
-3.5
374
-0.4
0.1


Jaylen Barford
-1.7
-1.8
-3.5
133
-0.1
0.4


George King
-1.7
-1.8
-3.5
125
-0.1
0.2


Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk
-2.0
-1.6
-3.6
318
-0.3
1.7


Tony Parker
-1.6
-2.0
-3.6
724
-0.8
0.0


Richard Jefferson
-2.2
-1.5
-3.6
426
-0.5
0.0


Paul Zipser
-3.1
-0.5
-3.6
798
-0.8
0.7


Rodney Purvis
-1.9
-1.7
-3.6
504
-0.5
0.6


Pablo Prigioni
-2.4
-1.3
-3.7
364
-0.4
0.0


Semaj Christon
-2.0
-1.6
-3.7
516
-0.6
0.6


Marcelo Huertas
-2.0
-1.7
-3.7
285
-0.3
0.0


Aaron Brooks
-1.7
-2.0
-3.8
309
-0.4
0.1


Rawle Alkins
-2.2
-1.5
-3.8
170
-0.2
1.0


Paul Pierce
-3.4
-0.3
-3.8
305
-0.4
0.0


Isaac Haas
-3.4
-0.4
-3.8
70
-0.1
0.0


Kevin Knox
-2.1
-1.7
-3.8
1039
-1.4
4.8


Kostas Antetokounmpo
-3.8
+0.0
-3.8
172
-0.2
1.1


Brandon McCoy
-3.3
-0.5
-3.8
156
-0.3
0.4


Abdel Nader
-3.2
-0.6
-3.9
525
-0.7
0.4


Gary Trent Jr.
-2.2
-1.8
-4.0
474
-0.5
3.7


Semi Ojeleye
-3.1
-0.9
-4.0
1008
-1.6
0.5


Andrew White III
-2.7
-1.3
-4.0
420
-0.5
0.6


Hamidou Diallo
-2.2
-1.9
-4.1
331
-0.4
1.8


Mindaugas Kuzminskas
-2.8
-1.3
-4.1
268
-0.4
0.1


Gary Neal
-2.3
-1.8
-4.1
273
-0.4
0.0


Malik Newman
-1.8
-2.3
-4.1
147
-0.2
0.4


Trevon Duval
-2.4
-1.8
-4.2
200
-0.3
1.4


Kobi Simmons
-2.1
-2.1
-4.2
987
-1.4
0.6


Allonzo Trier
-2.2
-2.3
-4.5
118
-0.2
0.2


Arron Afflalo
-2.4
-2.2
-4.6
568
-0.9
0.0


Jamal Crawford
-0.9
-4.0
-4.9
864
-1.4
0.0

* Upside is a measure of WAR where values lower than zero are treated as zero instead. That is, it doesn’t punish a player for being below replacement level, but does reward him for being above replacement level. The 7-year calculation reflects the 2018-19 through 2024-25 seasons.

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President Trump backed down on Wednesday from his “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which separately detained parents and children who crossed the border illegally. The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team discusses the fallout from the policy and how Trump is talking about immigration in the run-up to the midterms. Also, as record numbers of Democratic women run for Congress, the crew asks why there aren’t more Republican women running.

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The Most Promising Players In The NBA Draft According To My Computer

We usually don’t release our CARMELO NBA projections until after the NBA draft. But this year, in an effort to procrastinate from other modelling-related tasks,1 I finished them a little early. We’ll publish the complete set of CARMELO projections later this month, but with the draft scheduled for Thursday night, I wanted to share the system’s take on the best NCAA prospects.

Our methodology for CARMELO is pretty much the same as last year, with only minor tweaks. It works by identifying statistically comparable players — for instance, John Wall is currently similar to Detroit Pistons Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas and to Deron Williams. For NBA veterans, we use a database of player statistics since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976, and for rookies, we use a database of NCAA statistics since 2002, adjusted for pace and opponent strength, as provided to us by ESPN Stats & Information Group. The rookie projections also account for — indeed, heavily emphasize — where in the draft each player was selected. Because the 2018 draft hasn’t taken place yet, we can’t use that variable to evaluate this year’s prospects, so for now I’ve used scouting rankings for both current and historical players.2

As I said, the changes from last year’s model are pretty minor, but one of them is potentially relevant in the context of this year’s draft, which is heavy on big men, including traditional centers such as Arizona’s Deandre Ayton. As ESPN’s Kevin Pelton has found, it’s become easier in recent seasons for teams to find once-desirable big men on the waiver wire or available for the minimum salary; the former All-Star center Roy Hibbert, who didn’t play at all in the NBA last year, is one perfect example. After evaluating the performance of players on minimum salaries over the past four years, we now use position-based replacement levels,3 which reflect that it takes a little bit more for big men to generate surplus value in the NBA than it does for guards and wings.

One last important warning: This list does not include projections for European players (so no Luka Doncic) or for other players who did not play NCAA basketball for some reason. Also, since Michael Porter Jr. played in only three NCAA games as a result of injury, we don’t project him on the basis of his NCAA statistics.4

At any rate, here goes: The top prospects as projected by CARMELO, non-Doncic, non-Porter edition. Players are ranked by their projected wins above replacement over their first seven NBA seasons:

‘Stats + Scouts’ CARMELO projections for 2018 NBA draft

Not including European players or Michael Porter Jr.

Player
Scout Rank
Age on 2/1/19
Pos.
WAR THRU 2025
Top Comps




1
Deandre Ayton
1
20.5
C
24.6
Jahlil Okafor, Greg Oden, Anthony Davis


2
Marvin Bagley III
5
19.9
C
19.0
Lauri Markkanen, Kevin Love, Derrick Favors


3
Jaren Jackson Jr.
4
19.4
C
18.6
Marquese Chriss, Derrick Favors, Noah Vonleh


4
Mohamed Bamba
3
20.7
C
15.8
Nerlens Noel, Ben Simmons, Michael Beasley


5
Wendell Carter Jr.
7
19.8
C
14.9
Noah Vonleh, Marquese Chriss, Derrick Favors


6
Trae Young
8
20.4
PG
14.3
Dennis Smith Jr., Brandon Knight, Mike Conley


7
Kevin Knox
9
19.5
PF
12.8
Tobias Harris, Thaddeus Young, Julius Randle


8
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
10
20.6
SG
11.9
DeMar DeRozan, Jamal Murray, Alec Burks


9
Collin Sexton
11
20.1
PG
11.8
Tyus Jones, Dennis Smith Jr., Malik Monk


10
Zhaire Smith
16
19.7
SF
11.5
Malik Beasley, Xavier Henry, Justise Winslow


11
Mikal Bridges
14
22.4
SF
10.8
Jimmy Butler, Nik Stauskas, John Jenkins


12
Kevin Huerter
20
20.4
SG
9.8
Jeremy Lamb, Alec Burks, Gary Harris


13
Miles Bridges
15
20.9
PF
8.6
TJ Warren, Ryan Anderson, Bobby Portis


14
Robert Williams
12
21.3
C
8.3
Cole Aldrich, Bobby Portis, Marreese Speights


15
Lonnie Walker IV
13
20.1
SG
7.2
Jrue Holiday, Austin Rivers, Avery Bradley


16
Troy Brown
18
19.5
SG
7.1
James Young, Archie Goodwin, Austin Rivers


17
Josh Okogie
25
20.4
SG
6.8
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Gary Harris, Jordan Adams


18
Jerome Robinson
17
21.9
PG
6.2
R.J. Hunter, Dominique Jones, Allen Crabbe


19
Aaron Holiday
22
22.3
PG
5.2
Demetrius Jackson, Reggie Jackson, Jimmer Fredette


20
Jalen Brunson
35
22.4
PG
4.7
John Jenkins, Michael Frazier II, Ty Lawson


21
Donte DiVincenzo
26
22.0
PG
4.5
Willie Warren, Tyler Dorsey, Doron Lamb


22
Gary Trent Jr.
39
20.0
SG
4.3
Rashad Vaughn, James Young, Javaris Crittenton


23
De’Anthony Melton
24
20.7
SG
4.1
Javaris Crittenton, Eric Bledsoe, Zach LaVine


24
Jacob Evans
30
21.6
SF
3.6
Dillon Brooks, Tim Hardaway Jr., Gerald Henderson


25
Grayson Allen
27
23.3
SG
3.6
Jimmer Fredette, Denzel Valentine, Nolan Smith


26
Moritz Wagner
36
21.8
C
3.4
Derrick Brown, Thomas Bryant, Marreese Speights


27
Khyri Thomas
31
22.7
SG
3.2
Jodie Meeks, Wayne Ellington, L.J. Peak


28
Landry Shamet
49
21.9
PG
3.1
Tyler Dorsey, Michael Frazier II, John Jenkins


29
Shake Milton
40
22.3
SG
3.0
Olivier Hanlan, Tyler Harvey, Allen Crabbe


30
Melvin Frazier
32
22.4
SF
2.2
Tony Snell, Dillon Brooks, Jordan Crawford


31
Chimezie Metu
45
21.9
C
2.2
Richaun Holmes, Justin Harper, Drew Gordon


32
Rawle Alkins
48
21.3
SG
2.2
Travis Leslie, Jared Cunningham, Aaron Harrison


33
Keita Bates-Diop
29
23.0
PF
2.0
Justin Harper, Quincy Pondexter, Trevor Booker


34
Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk
59
21.6
SG
1.9
L.J. Peak, Jared Cunningham, Andre Roberson


35
Bruce Brown Jr.
28
22.5
SG
1.9
Jamaal Franklin, Marcus Thornton, Will Barton


36
Malik Newman
47
21.9
SG
1.8
Jordan Crawford, Jared Cunningham, Edmond Sumner


37
Jevon Carter
34
23.4
PG
1.8
Demetri McCamey, Deonte Burton, Ben Uzoh


38
Omari Spellman
43
21.5
PF
1.7
Ben Bentil, Jarell Martin, Samardo Samuels


39
Devonte’ Graham
44
23.9
PG
1.6
Frank Mason III, Joe Young, Yogi Ferrell


40
Tony Carr
54
21.3
PG
1.6
Nick Calathes, Terrico White, Andrew Harrison


41
Ray Spalding
52
21.9
PF
1.6
Hollis Thompson, Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ashley


42
Hamidou Diallo
37
20.5
SG
1.5
Avery Bradley, Josh Selby, Kobi Simmons


43
Chandler Hutchison
33
22.8
SF
1.5
Glen Rice Jr., C.J. Leslie, Jermaine Taylor


44
Vince Edwards
65
22.8
PF
1.3
Solomon Hill, Matt Howard, Jake Layman


45
Trevon Duval
53
20.5
PG
1.2
Cory Joseph, Dejounte Murray, Avery Bradley


46
Allonzo Trier
62
23.0
SG
1.2
Tyler Harvey, James Blackmon Jr., Khalif Wyatt


47
Keenan Evans
72
22.4
PG
1.1
Marcus Denmon, Derrick Marks, Rasheed Sulaimon


48
Bonzie Colson
68
23.1
PF
1.0
Perry Ellis, Branden Dawson, Matt Howard


49
Justin Jackson
41
22.0
PF
1.0
Ben Bentil, Vince Hunter, Tony Mitchell


50
Kevin Hervey
46
22.6
SF
1.0
Draymond Green, C.J. Leslie, Akil Mitchell


51
Brandon McCoy
64
20.6
C
0.7
Greg Smith, Kosta Koufos, Jordan Williams


52
Dakota Mathias
75
23.6
SG
0.7
Dez Wells, Thomas Walkup, Ron Baker


53
Yante Maten
88
22.5
PF
0.7
Brandon Costner, Rick Jackson, Marqus Blakely


54
Gary Clark
57
24.2
PF
0.6
Arsalan Kazemi, Melvin Ejim, Jaron Blossomgame


55
Kostas Antetokounmpo
58
20.7
SF
0.4
Chris Walker, Grant Jerrett, Derrick Jones Jr.


56
Devon Hall
51
23.6
SG
0.4
Jermaine Taylor, Lamar Patterson, MarShon Brooks


57
Alize Johnson
61
22.8
PF
0.4
Malcolm Thomas, Eric Griffin, Khem Birch


58
Kenrich Williams
63
24.2
PF
0.3
Jaron Blossomgame, Michael Gbinije, Kris Joseph


59
DJ Hogg
60
22.4
PF
0.3
DeAndre Daniels, Cameron Moore, J.P. Tokoto


60
Isaac Haas
73
23.3
C
0.3
Dexter Pittman, Justin Hamilton, Trevor Thompson


61
Jarred Vanderbilt
56
19.8
SF
0.3
Grant Jerrett, Jereme Richmond, Ioannis Papapetrou


62
Theo Pinson
70
23.2
SG
0.2
Durrell Summers, Jajuan Johnson, Peter Jok


63
Doral Moore
86
22.0
C
0.2
Dexter Pittman, Chinemelu Elonu, Josh Harrellson


64
Jaylen Barford
92
23.0
SG
0.2
Dwayne Bacon, James Blackmon Jr., Sonny Weems


65
George King
71
25.0
SF
0.1
Elgin Cook, Jamel Artis, Andy Rautins


66
MiKyle McIntosh
81
24.5
PF
-0.2
Herb Pope, Taylor Griffin, Robert Dozier



Show more rows

One thing you see is that CARMELO is extremely deferential to the scout rankings — more so than other systems that use similar data, such as Pelton’s system or the Stats & Info system. Both CARMELO and the scouts have Ayton as the No. 1 pick, for example. The order of the big men listed just after Ayton is slightly different — CARMELO prefers Duke’s Marvin Bagley III and Michigan State’s Jaren Jackson Jr. to Texas’s Mohamed Bamba — but these differences are minor. As both an empirical and a philosophical matter, we think it’s hard to beat the consensus rankings of NBA scouts and franchises. NBA teams are smart these days: Many of them have projection systems that are at least as sophisticated as CARMELO, plus they have lots of other information that we can’t possibly account for. So if CARMELO disagrees with the consensus of NBA teams, we don’t necessarily want to take CARMELO’s side of the bet.

With that said, there are a few differences. CARMELO puts a lot of emphasis on a player’s age; it’s relevant, for instance, that Jackson is more than a full year younger than fellow freshman Bamba. The counterpoint to this is that older players can sometimes help a team now, even if they have less upside. For instance, Mikal Bridges, who played three seasons at Villanova, is one of just three players who project to have a positive WAR in 2018-19. (The others are Ayton and Bamba; Doncic would probably also qualify if we projected him.) And Duke senior Grayson Allen has the fifth-best projection for 2018-19 even though he rates as just the 25th-best long-term prospect.

We can get a better sense for where CARMELO differs from the scouts by taking the scouting rankings out of the system and running “pure stats” projections instead. (Note that these projections still account for a player’s height, weight, position and age, in addition to his NCAA statistics.) Again, we would not recommend that NBA teams draft players on the basis of the list, but it helps to reveal how CARMELO “thinks”:

‘Pure stats’ CARMELO projections for 2018 NBA draft

Not including European players or Michael Porter Jr.

Player
Scout Rank
Age on 2/1/19
Pos.
WAR THRU 2025
Top Comps




1
Marvin Bagley III
5
19.9
C
15.0
Anthony Davis, Lauri Markkanen, Kevin Love


2
Zhaire Smith
16
19.7
SF
14.2
Justise Winslow, Malik Beasley, Malik Monk


3
Jaren Jackson Jr.
4
19.4
C
12.5
Diamond Stone, Karl-Anthony Towns, Marquese Chriss


4
Wendell Carter Jr.
7
19.8
C
12.3
Derrick Favors, Diamond Stone, Greg Oden


5
Deandre Ayton
1
20.5
C
11.6
Jahlil Okafor, Kevin Love, Lauri Markkanen


6
Kevin Huerter
20
20.4
SG
11.5
Alec Burks, Jeremy Lamb, Gary Harris


7
Kevin Knox
9
19.5
PF
11.5
James Young, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Kevon Looney


8
Trae Young
8
20.4
PG
11.0
Dennis Smith Jr., Mike Conley, Brandon Knight


9
Collin Sexton
11
20.1
PG
11.0
Derrick Rose, De’Aaron Fox, Mike Conley


10
Gary Trent Jr.
39
20.0
SG
10.3
DeMar DeRozan, Bradley Beal, Andrew Wiggins


11
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
10
20.6
SG
9.8
D’Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley, John Wall


12
Troy Brown
18
19.5
SG
9.6
Rashad Vaughn, James Young, Thaddeus Young


13
Josh Okogie
25
20.4
SG
9.3
Gary Harris, Marcus Smart, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope


14
Miles Bridges
15
20.9
PF
7.6
Caleb Swanigan, Ivan Rabb, Gordon Hayward


15
Mohamed Bamba
3
20.7
C
7.3
Meyers Leonard, JJ Hickson, Lauri Markkanen


16
Landry Shamet
49
21.9
PG
7.2
Tyler Dorsey, Luke Kennard, Doron Lamb


17
Lonnie Walker IV
13
20.1
SG
6.9
Jrue Holiday, Tyreke Evans, Russell Westbrook


18
Mikal Bridges
14
22.4
SF
6.7
Quincy Acy, Derrick Brown, John Jenkins


19
Jalen Brunson
35
22.4
PG
6.3
Ty Lawson, Demetrius Jackson, John Jenkins


20
De’Anthony Melton
24
20.7
SG
5.9
Russell Westbrook, Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans


21
Robert Williams
12
21.3
C
5.9
Marreese Speights, Caleb Swanigan, Cole Aldrich


22
Moritz Wagner
36
21.8
C
5.5
Jakob Poeltl, Cole Aldrich, Derrick Brown


23
Brandon McCoy
64
20.6
C
5.5
Meyers Leonard, Brook Lopez, Kosta Koufos


24
Rawle Alkins
48
21.3
SG
5.3
Donovan Mitchell, Aaron Harrison, Elliot Williams


25
Donte DiVincenzo
26
22.0
PG
5.3
Tyler Dorsey, Jodie Meeks, Victor Oladipo


26
Trevon Duval
53
20.5
PG
5.2
Avery Bradley, Cory Joseph, Marquis Teague


27
Shake Milton
40
22.3
SG
5.0
Tyler Harvey, Olivier Hanlan, James Anderson


28
Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk
59
21.6
SG
4.9
L.J. Peak, Jared Cunningham, Wayne Ellington


29
Tony Carr
54
21.3
PG
4.9
Darius Morris, Malcolm Lee, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope


30
Jerome Robinson
17
21.9
PG
4.8
Armon Johnson, Allen Crabbe, R.J. Hunter


31
Aaron Holiday
22
22.3
PG
4.8
Demetrius Jackson, Stephen Curry, Isaiah Canaan


32
Jacob Evans
30
21.6
SF
4.6
Andre Roberson, L.J. Peak, Jared Cunningham


33
Omari Spellman
43
21.5
PF
4.4
Anthony Bennett, Samardo Samuels, Ben Bentil


34
Chimezie Metu
45
21.9
C
4.4
Damian Jones, Richaun Holmes, Brandon Ashley


35
Jarred Vanderbilt
56
19.8
SF
4.2
Grant Jerrett, Jereme Richmond, Daequan Cook


36
Malik Newman
47
21.9
SG
4.2
Jordan Crawford, Jeff Teague, Jared Cunningham


37
Hamidou Diallo
37
20.5
SG
4.0
Kobi Simmons, Lance Stephenson, Avery Bradley


38
Khyri Thomas
31
22.7
SG
3.9
Khalif Wyatt, James Blackmon Jr., Jodie Meeks


39
Keenan Evans
72
22.4
PG
3.8
Tyshawn Taylor, Marcus Denmon, Derrick Marks


40
Ray Spalding
52
21.9
PF
3.8
Brandon Ashley, Marcus Morris, Ed Davis


41
Allonzo Trier
62
23.0
SG
3.6
James Blackmon Jr., Tyler Harvey, Khalif Wyatt


42
Doral Moore
86
22.0
C
3.5
Dexter Pittman, Byron Mullens, Mitch McGary


43
Vince Edwards
65
22.8
PF
3.4
Matt Howard, Solomon Hill, Trevor Booker


44
Kostas Antetokounmpo
58
20.7
SF
3.4
Chris Walker, Grant Jerrett, Skal Labissiere


45
Grayson Allen
27
23.3
SG
3.3
Buddy Hield, Pat Connaughton, Joe Harris


46
Yante Maten
88
22.5
PF
3.2
Rick Jackson, Brandon Costner, Joel Bolomboy


47
Bonzie Colson
68
23.1
PF
3.1
Matt Howard, Perry Ellis, Branden Dawson


48
Melvin Frazier
32
22.4
SF
2.9
Andre Roberson, K.J. McDaniels, Tony Snell


49
Dakota Mathias
75
23.6
SG
2.6
Dez Wells, Thomas Walkup, Marcus Denmon


50
Devonte’ Graham
44
23.9
PG
2.5
Kendall Williams, Aaron Craft, Yogi Ferrell


51
Justin Jackson
41
22.0
PF
2.4
Vince Hunter, Ben Bentil, Tony Mitchell


52
Bruce Brown Jr.
28
22.5
SG
2.4
Jamaal Franklin, Sonny Weems, Marcus Thornton


53
Jevon Carter
34
23.4
PG
2.1
Demetri McCamey, T.J. Williams, Keith Appling


54
Kevin Hervey
46
22.6
SF
2.0
Stanley Robinson, Rodney Williams, Draymond Green


55
Keita Bates-Diop
29
23.0
PF
2.0
Brandon Costner, Robert Carter Jr., Branden Dawson


56
Jaylen Barford
92
23.0
SG
2.0
Marcus Thornton, Jordan Crawford, Jodie Meeks


57
Chandler Hutchison
33
22.8
SF
1.9
Scotty Hopson, Landry Fields, Stanley Robinson


58
Alize Johnson
61
22.8
PF
1.7
Eric Griffin, Malcolm Thomas, Khem Birch


59
DJ Hogg
60
22.4
PF
1.6
Cameron Moore, John Henson, Joe Alexander


60
Gary Clark
57
24.2
PF
1.5
Arsalan Kazemi, Melvin Ejim, Elias Harris


61
Isaac Haas
73
23.3
C
1.4
Dexter Pittman, Brian Zoubek, Festus Ezeli


62
Theo Pinson
70
23.2
SG
1.3
Durrell Summers, Jajuan Johnson, Peter Jok


63
Kenrich Williams
63
24.2
PF
1.3
Jaron Blossomgame, Taj Gibson, Michael Gbinije


64
Devon Hall
51
23.6
SG
1.2
Peter Jok, Jermaine Taylor, Lamar Patterson


65
George King
71
25.0
SF
0.5
Jamel Artis, Elgin Cook, Gilbert Brown


66
MiKyle McIntosh
81
24.5
PF
0.2
Jackie Carmichael, Herb Pope, Lazar Hayward



Show more rows

On a pure stats basis, Bagley rates as the top pick, somewhat ahead of Ayton. CARMELO sees the two players as being highly similar — they share many of the same comparables — but Bagley is half a year younger, and he posted his stats against tougher competition at Duke than Ayton did at Arizona. College statistics don’t do a good job of accounting for defense, and there are concerns about Bagley’s defense, but the same is true for Ayton. My point is not necessarily that teams should draft Bagley over Ayton — I’d defer to the scouts who say Ayton has more upside. But I do think it’s probably more of a crapshoot than most fans assume.

There’s a similar dynamic between the top point guards in the draft, Oklahoma’s Trae Young and Alabama’s Collin Sexton. The scouts have Young ranked slightly higher, but CARMELO sees them has very comparable players on the basis of their statistics. It’s true that Young scored more points per game than Sexton (27.4 versus 19.2), but that’s because the Sooners played at a faster pace, and Young played more minutes and used a larger share of his team’s possessions — all factors that aren’t particularly predictive of success at an NBA level.

CARMELO also sometimes like guys who played non-starring roles on good teams, such as Kentucky’s Kevin Knox and Duke’s Gary Trent Jr. These players don’t necessarily post hugely impressive raw statistics, in part because they have to share the ball with a lot of other talented players. But they look better when evaluated on an efficiency basis and adjusted for strength of competition.

Finally, there are a few true “computer picks” — guys who didn’t have great scouting pedigrees coming out of high school but who had impressive NCAA seasons. These include Texas Tech’s Zhaire Smith and Maryland’s Kevin Huerter, both of whom are reportedly rising on NBA teams’ draft boards.

Can Trump Use Hard-Line Immigration Policies To Turn Out GOP Voters?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Hi, everyone!!! Ready to chat?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): What? During a World Cup match? It’s the game of the tournament!

micah: We’re talking about immigration today. There’s a lot going on. The family separation issue, first and foremost, but also some House votes. There’s reporting that the White House wants to make immigration the issue for the 2018 midterms, and that they’re planning further hard-line immigration moves.

From Tuesday’s Playbook:

“The White House is making the conscious decision that divisive immigration policy — not a booming economy — should be the focus of the 2018 midterms. We can’t tell you how dumb many Republican leaders think this is.”

So, here’s the question: Is that dumb? Will a hard-right immigration message and/or policy help the White House/Republicans in 2018?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): In general elections, I think it’s going to hurt them.

The current administration policy just seems miscalibrated — taking this really hard-line approach (separating children from families) that doesn’t even seem to appeal to the entire ideological base (i.e., most Americans, including about half of Republicans, think this is a bridge too far). And this issue could engender more anti-Republican sentiment come November.

So there, I just made the Republican leaders’ argument.

natesilver: There’s maybe a world in which the White House could use immigration dexterously as a “wedge issue” to turn out its base, but that’s not the world the White House inhabits. They’re too clumsy, too indifferent as to whether individual policies are popular and too eager to fight ideological battles that they might trick themselves into believing are good politics.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Can I briefly reject the premise here, that the White House has some brilliant strategy or is making a “conscious decision” to make the midterms about immigration? There is often “Trump-did-something-crazy-so-he-must-have a strategy” coverage that likely overstates Trump’s political planning and understates his desired policy goals, like stopping NFL players from kneeling or limiting immigration.

natesilver: Yeah, I certainly think the Playbook/Axios/NYT “news analysis” style is too quick to attribute strategic motives instead of ideological ones.

Or what may just be people being dumbasses and faking their way through the strategy.

micah: I mean, they’re certainly pursuing a bunch of hard-line immigration policies.

perry: I suspect a ton of Republican candidates will run on the economy in the fall. I have no idea what Trump will say during the fall campaign, but my guess is he doesn’t either. I doubt he has a message calendar that he’ll be following, like George W. Bush or Barack Obama might have had.

natesilver: I guess one could argue that the economy (and maybe North Korea?) can be used to help Republicans hold ground among swing voters, but that won’t turn out the base.

micah: Yeah … Nate, intentional or not, you said in one of these chats a few weeks ago that if you were a Republican strategist, you would focus on ginning up base turnout. That, most likely, Democratic base turnout will be high, and so the best strategy is probably to try to counter that with your own base.

clare.malone: I said this on the podcast, but I guess it makes sense in some way to run all the Trumpy anti-immigrant ads, etc., now, during primary campaigns. But come September, you’d better have more of a message than that if you’re a Republican.

perry: Yeah, I also think that the GOP should run on cultural issues. But I’m not sure we are seeing that right now, as opposed to an ex post facto explanation for a policy blunder.

micah: OK, let’s leave aside intent for the moment though.

natesilver: But that gets to the issue of clumsiness.

Like, if you’re laser-focused on sanctuary cities, maybe you could do OK. Maybe you could use that issue as enough of a dog whistle to your base, without necessarily turning off moderates.

But stuff like separating families at the border? Curtailing legal immigration? Shutting down the government over the wall? Those are extremely unpopular measures.

clare.malone: This particular issue seems to have brought the various White House “wings” back into the foreground, and in the post-Bannon age, we mostly seem to have forgotten about the wings.

But some people think this is great policy/politics (like White House policy adviser Stephen Miller), and a lot of other people (like Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen) are trying to get their way around a pretty ugly policy while not getting the president mad at them. It just seems sort of like a) bad politics and b) perhaps a sign of bad internal organization.

natesilver: I do wonder how much of it is borne out of a view — from Trump and from other senior officials in the White House — that the polls are fake and the media outrage is fake and they have their finger on the true pulse of American opinion.

perry: I think that’s closer to where I am.

They are doing this because they believe in deterring illegal immigration by basically any means necessary. But they also believe the backlash is overstated by a press that is often hypercritical of them.

micah: OK, I’m going to play devil’s advocate.

clare.malone: Great movie.

micah: Forget the separating families — that’s prima facie horrible and seems like bad politics too.

But isn’t the idea that Republicans need something beyond the economy and North Korea actually correct?

clare.malone: Why? Rule of threes?

micah: Yup.

haha, no…

Because the GOP base isn’t as enthused as the Democratic one right now.

clare.malone: You’re saying they need something that tides over the tribal identity issue.

natesilver: So talk about Colin Kaepernick or some shit.

clare.malone: ^^^^

Or just focus on wall funding.

You don’t need to do this child separation thing.

natesilver: The wall is pretty darn unpopular, though.

clare.malone: I would guess it’s more popular than separating 2,000 kids from their parents.

perry: Sanctuary cities/MS-13/NFL national anthem protests — these are all issues that 1. Trump wants to tweet/talk about instead of reciting boring economic stats; and 2. play into the negative partisanship stuff that will be used for base turnout. But talking about how terrible San Francisco or Nancy Pelosi is would do the trick as much as sanctuary cities. I don’t think Republicans need immigration policies necessarily to gin up negative partisanship, as much as they need reminders to their base that “Democrats are the party of all that stuff you hate.”

Republicans know Trump wants to talk about this kind of stuff anyway, so they have to find a way to make that part of the 2018 strategy.

micah: But it’s interesting to me that some of you — Nate, at least — seem to think that the NFL anthem stuff or Pelosi stuff is maybe a better option than immigration. (Again, put aside separating families — I feel like they’ll have to retreat on that pretty soon.)

perry: There are very few immigration ideas that unify all Republicans. The national anthem issue, in contrast, is very unifying among Republicans: 86 percent of Republicans say kneeling during the national anthem is “never appropriate,” according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll earlier this year. So is anti-Pelosi sentiment: 72 percent of Republicans view her unfavorably, according to a recent Ipsos poll.

clare.malone: Couldn’t he talk about wall stuff or, I don’t know, talk about E-Verify, things like that? I can’t help but think that coming up with a more refined Trumpian take on immigration could help them through both the primaries and the general.

perry: Republicans probably should run on identity issues writ large, with some anti-immigration rhetoric as a part of that.

That kind of messaging is challenging for Democrats. Do Joe Manchin or Claire McCaskill want to defend sanctuary cities?

natesilver: I think when you asked me to put my Republican strategist hat on a few weeks ago, Micah, the tricky part wasn’t finding something that turns out your base, but something that turns out your base without simultaneously hurting you among swing voters and also turning out the Democratic base.

Lots of people might think Trump’s NFL stance is sort of dumb, but it’s not likely the sort of thing that’s going to turn out Democrats to vote or that will greatly influence a swing voter’s decision.

micah: I bet the same is true for sanctuary cities, E-Verify, etc.

clare.malone: Basically, they picked the worst possible issue angle to make the story.

I know politicians get a lot of shit for poll-testing things but … there’s a reason to do it!

micah: “Should we do terrible shit to children?”

Yes

No

Not sure

Yeah, that question could have saved everyone a lot of heartache.

perry: Trump seems to be in some danger of overlearning lessons from 2016. I don’t think he won the general election because of the wall and the Muslim ban. (The primary, yes.) I do think, in general, that it helped that he was seen as taking on the cultural left. I also think it’s different when you are the person running the government and implementing policy. I’m not sure people voted for Stephen Miller-ism, even if Miller thinks they did.

clare.malone: Do we attribute any of this to, say, Chief of Staff John Kelly checking out and no one being awake at the wheel when it comes to this kind of across-the-board strategy stuff?

I’m a little curious as to how this actually got this far without the ramifications being thought through.

micah: I tend to ignore most of this kind of reporting, but there have been some stories lately about Kelly basically giving up.

natesilver: Didn’t Kelly mention the child separation policy last year as part of a plan to deter immigration?

perry: I think this policy was thought through. There is a lot of reporting about the administration having long considered it.

clare.malone: Yeah, fair point.

I take that back.

But in general, who’s doing the political strategy thinking?

Miller?

If so, yikes.

micah: No one?

perry: Miller and Trump are driving this. There is some reporting to indicate that.

micah: But Miller is thinking in terms of policy, not politics, right?

clare.malone: Right.

I mean politics. Who’s driving that?

No one maybe?

natesilver: I wonder if the fact that Trump has had a few successes — or at least things he can claim to be successes — is making him feel as though he can be a little bolder.

clare.malone: Yeah, but this was in motion before North Korea.

perry: Miller thinks the politics are fine here. So does Trump. They think they won because of this stuff in 2016 and that they are doing pretty well now and this is a media storm that will blow over.

clare.malone: I think my point is, if Miller is your person running overall political strategy, not just policy, that’s a problem.

He’s an ideologue.

perry: Yeah, Clare, you make an important point: Are there are any establishment-style people left at the White House to say no to this kind of thing? Kelly favors get-tough immigration policies.

But even if he opposed this, he could not kill it. He has limited power, particularly now.

natesilver: It would be sort of ironic if Republicans were on track to just barely hold the House — and maybe make gains in the Senate — because of an improving economy, but Trump blew it over a border wall fight and a trade war with China.

Or maybe not “ironic” — just that I think that’s a plausible course of events.

micah: That seems like the likely course of events!

perry: To switch this a bit, the Democrats I talk to really want this campaign to be about health care/tax cuts/cronyism — anything but this race/identity stuff. Their general view is that every day talking about health care is good for them, and that every day talking about cultural stuff broadly is good for Trump (minus this exact policy). Are they right?

micah: Yeah, I guess I do worry a little bit that we’re underrating how hard-line an immigration policy Americans will support — Republican in particular, but also white Democrats.

I just feel like maybe this is an area where I actually don’t trust the polling all that much?

Politics Podcast: The (Partisan) Politics Of Immigration

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The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast looks at the Trump administration’s practice of separating immigrant parents and children at the border and assesses the role that immigration plays in the Republican Party overall. The crew also reacts to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Monday decision on gerrymandering. Finally, the team continues a series of conversations called “Priors” about how the midterms work.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Emergency Politics Podcast: The Inspector General’s Report Is In

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Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a 500-page report Thursday, evaluating the FBI’s 2016 investigation of Hillary Clinton. The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast reacts to the highly critical report in an emergency episode.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Will Voters Give Trump Credit For North Korea?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): For the first time in awhile, we have the full politics chat gang!!! So …