SMILODON 3.5: Hello Wingspan, My Old Friend

Photo by Harry Langer/DeFodi Images via Getty Images Four score and a few years ago, minus the four score, I introduced the SMILODON draft projection system. SMILODON, which stands for Skills Model In Lieu Of Dexterity Operating Numbers, is an attempt to peer into the future by isolating specific, important basketball skills from a player’s statistical profile. Rather than running sophisticated statistical regressions, I decided to keep the model to mostly simple arithmetic formulas that create a series of weighted averages in different categories. The players are rated in those four categories on a color-coded scale from “Poor” to “Elite,” with a “+” or “-” sometimes attached to the rating to indicate if the player is at the very top or bottom of that range.

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