I just started doing my own projections a few years ago, so I apologize for any naivete. I’m still learning and growing in the process. While my process has matured over the years and I’ve figured out things, one thing that I’ve always had difficulty doing is projecting incoming rookies. There’s been plenty of work in the past about how college or Euro stats correlate to NBA stats. Click HERE, HERE, and HERE. They have all been helpful but I wanted more. I wanted a baseline to give me a general idea, so I went back and looked at all the rookies from 2010 to the present and jotted down the percentage increase or decrease for each category from pre-NBA to their rookie season and averaged everything out. It’s not the most scientific research and volume wasn’t incorporated so it’s far from perfect, but it gives me a general lay of the landscape. Hope this helps and, if you have any questions or if there are any ways to improve upon it, please comment below.
Out of the 660 rookies, there were eight that went straight from high school. I did not factor in their stats because not all of them were available. Two players came from the G-League but I did not factor in one (Thananis Antetokounmp since he played some G-League then many years overseas before getting into an NBA game). There were 62 international players, of which, 44 never played a minute in the NBA.
This is just a tool to give a basic idea. Every situation is different so context must be applied. I did notice that some of the 3PA numbers were skewed. In those instances, I just applied the ratio of 3PA to FGA from pre-NBA to the rookie projections.
