About The Draft Index

Our Mission

The Draft Index was created to democratize NBA draft scouting performance. We believe that anyone should be able to make predictions about the NBA Draft and have their picks tracked against actual NBA performance.

Our platform allows basketball fans, analysts, and enthusiasts to test their scouting abilities and compete against others in predicting which prospects will have the most successful NBA careers.

Our Methodology

The Draft Index collects advanced metric data on each player in a given draft class and ranks them per the advanced metrics. Today, we use Box Plus/Minus exclusively. We are, however, open to other metrics if there is interest. Our users can view player rankings per BPM in the "ActualTop20" tabs embedded in the "Current Rankings" tile of the Leaderboard page.

The Draft Index also collects user-submitted prospect rankings via the Draft Form page and stores them in our database. We then cross-reference user-submitted rankings with the advanced metric data to generate scouting performance insights per user. For example, how accurate was a users' Top 5 predictions vs actual player performance data? Or Top 20?

We also believe there's value in discerning a users' ability to accurately predict top talent vs lesser talent, which leads us to the Scouting Score. The Scouting Score is a weighted performance metric featuring the number of correct predictions crossed with the quality of correct predictions by BPM value. So, users' who correctly predict the top-5 players would likely have a higher Scouting Score than those who predict the bottom-5 players.

Our Team

The Draft Index was founded by a group of basketball enthusiasts who are passionate about the NBA Draft and player development. Our team combines expertise in basketball scouting, data analysis, and software technology.

We're committed to providing the most accurate platform for NBA prospect predictions and analysis.