So who is the next Jordan? No one, of course. Michael Jordan's accomplishments are monumental and unprecedented, feats so uniquely impressive that it is difficult to imagine anyone matching just Jordan's numbers, much less his style and global appeal.
Why do people keep proclaiming that a second coming will occur? For one thing, people (especially many in the NBA offices) do not want to accept the inevitable end to Jordan's great career and need to believe that the greatness will continue. But the other reason is the one I'm most interested in: from a scout's perspective, talent as unique as Jordan's is truly hard to identify.
Michael Jordan is the rarest of basketball players, the best of the millions of people who have played in high school. Even the superstars that stand in his shadow -- Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Penny Hardaway -- are the bests of several thousands of players who played in high school. But it is very difficult to differentiate between one in a million and one in a thousand. It is often difficult to differentiate between one in a million and one in a hundred. This is the reason so many high school kids are declaring themselves eligible for the NBA draft. They have the talent unique to one in a couple hundred high school players, but it feels like they have the talent unique to one in a several thousand high school players, just because they haven't played against very many players.
This drives scouts crazy. It drives parents and politicians crazy because these kids they'd hoped would be role models are basically skipping school. It drives scouts crazy because these so-called role models are skipping the process that tells us (and them) whether they are one-in-a-thousand or just one-in-a-hundred. College basketball and those all-star camps that graduating basketball players used to attend were a tremendous testing ground for comparing players of rare ability.
Let's start to attach numbers to this. In 1994, there were 2.5 million high school graduates. If we say that just 1% of these graduates played basketball, that is about 25,000 high school basketball players. As an estimate, about 130 top Division I schools (305 total) each year offer roughly 3.5 new basketball scholarships for about 455 new players in Division I. Of these, about 50 later get drafted by the NBA. Of these, roughly three go on to be All-Stars (one of the top 10-15 players in the league). To summarize, 1.8% of all high school players go to a Division I school, 0.2% of all high school players go on to the NBA, and 0.012% of all high school players go on to be All-Stars in the NBA. Or, using percentiles (remember the SAT?), Division I basketball players are roughly in the 98th percentile (of high school players), NBA players are in the 99.8 percentile, and NBA stars are in the 99.98 percentile.
College basketball then serves to weed out roughly 90% of the entering talent. How does this weeding out occur? Through direct competition, a powerful way of comparing the best with the best. For example, how does a player who just squeaked into a Division I scholarship compare with a Division I player who gets drafted? Approximating this using matchup probabilities, we can estimate the individual winning percentage that we should expect of a player going into the draft:
Win%(Drafted Player vs Mediocre Scholarship Player) = 0.998(1-0.982) ------------------------------- = 0.901 0.998(1-0.982) + (1-0.998)0.982What this approximately means is that an NBA quality player will outplay an opponent of mediocre quality 90% of the time. However, we're more interested in how often an NBA quality player outperforms an average opponent since that is generally what most teams see. If we repeat the above calculation using an average opponent, we get 82%, implying that a minimal NBA draft pick outplays his opponents in college about 82% of the time. That is a minimal NBA draft pick, like Donnie Boyce, for example.
On the other hand, if you're looking for an NBA star, you need to find a college player that outplays his opponents about 98% of the time. Think about what this means. College players play in about 110-130 games over four seasons. Four or five "bad games" (meaning bad compared to an overall college average, not compared to the individual's normal game -- did they hurt their team?) over the course of that career implies that they are not NBA All-Star quality. That is a very tough standard, especially considering the learning period as freshman, but it is a standard that the very best have accomplished. It also implies that, to have a chance to be an NBA star, you better be good as a freshman. There, of course, is some ambiguity in defining what it explicitly means to "outplay an opponent", but ask yourself whether any of the following underclassmen entering the draft this year outplayed (in any way) their opponents 95% of the time: Samaki Walker, Jess Settles, Chris Kingsbury, Darnell Robinson, Jeff McInnis, Randy Livingston, Michael Lloyd. Did they even outplay their opponents 90% of the time or 25+ games? For players like Erick Dampier who probably did do this, but also were gaining a significant amount educationally by being in school, is it really worth leaving school to be a mediocre or average NBA player?
Without the college experience at all, a scout has to narrow down whether a player is at the 98th percentile and barely gets a college scholarship (who might be Jeff Hornacek, too) or something better, something much more unique. Scouts are trained to do this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who think they have scouting skills and they tell Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O'Neal, and Taj McDavid that they are one in a million when they are probably much, much more common.
Good luck, boys.
(Technical note: The above calculations approximate a player's individual winning percentage with their ranks, or percentiles, as players. This is probably fine for these calculations where I am looking at extremes, but would not work for most players in the middle. If anything, the above winning percentages are a little extreme, based on my experience. For example, a college player who outplays his opponents 70-75% of the time is probably drafted and one who outplays his opponents 93-95% of the time is probably an NBA star.)