NBA DRAFT

So, the NBA draft is a ridiculous mix of hype and anticipation. It's a world where Michael Jordan can be drafted after Sam Bowie (who? exactly.), and people like Michael Olowokandi and Kwame Brown go #1. But we all know it's impossible to know how 20-year olds are going to perform three years from know (most 20-year olds don't know what they're doing next week)
But ESPN.com's John Hollinger has figured out a fairly reliable system for predicting NBA success. Note that this system can only evaluate college players. So, it's hard to say exactly how good this is since three straight NBA rookies of the year (02-04) didn't go to college in the US. However, Chris Paul was 06 ROY, picked fourth but ranked first. (05 was the other way around, as Okafor was ROY, picked first, ranked fourth) and this year's ROY was ranked third, but picked fifth.
In any case, though not perfect, this sytem is pretty damn good. In a lot of those rankings, you'll see players that weren't drafted very high, but have made an impact. Anyway, I was thrilled to see that Kyle Visser was ranked #15. Yes! Also notice 6 of the top 15 and 10 of the top 30 are ACC players (compared to 4 of the top 30 from the SEC, 4 from the Big 12, 4 from the Big 10, 2 from the Pac 10, etc) We rock.