It is lunchtime somewhere. So, welcome back to the lunch hour read of the Meat & Three. Every weekday I dive into a big picture topic and three things to get you through a quarantine spring. With the NFL Draft happening tonight, I thought it was a good time to look back on some old high school hoops rankings in relation to the NBA Draft. Also, a good 2004 rewatch for the Stream of the Day and, of course, the Ty Freeman photo of the day. 

THE MEAT: SO, I THINK WE KINDA GOT IT RIGHT

The NFL Draft begins tonight and if you’re reading this, you’re probably going to watch. Because, well, we all just want to watch something live. Regardless of your level of interest in football - college or pro - the draft is always fun. 

As I’ve mentioned before in this space, I love a draft. Any kind of draft, really. The NBA Draft is where I started my career and then I moved over to rivals.com. I was with the dot com recruiting coverage company from 2003 to 2010. 

I’ve been deep into the rankings that Jerry Meyer and I worked on during that time. The data was interesting and I will have a series coming soon that I hope you’ll enjoy. In the meantime, here’s some data points that may only interest me but I thought I would share it here as a preview of things to come. 

From 2004 to 2010, there were 175 players that were considered a “five-star prospect”. That means they were ranked inside of our top 25 overall rankings nationally. Of the 175 players that fit into this category, 122 of those players were drafted by a NBA team. 

There were 98 players taken in the lottery (top 14 picks) in that span. In that span, 49 five-star players were taken in the lottery. It should be noted that nine of those 98 players that were taken in the lottery were international/non-Americans ranked in HS. 

There were 40 four-star prospects (ranked 26 to 100) and 33 ranked 3-star (ranked 101 to 15) taken in the NBA Draft. 

Of the players that were ranked inside of our top 10 rankings, in that span (70 total players), 34 were taken in the lottery. Fifteen were taken in the first round but not in the lottery and 15 were taken in the 2nd round. 

Finally, there were 420 players taken in the NBA Draft but 82 were international prospects. So, let’s take them out of the equation. That means there were 338 players who played high school and were eligible to be ranked by rivals.com. We ranked 251 of those players. That's 74 percent of players drafted were nationally ranked. 

During that span, three players that were No. 1 overall were taken No. 1 in the NBA Draft. They are: 

2004 Dwight Howard, Southwest Atlanta Christian 
2006 Greg Oden, Ohio State
2009 John Wall, Kentucky

There were only five players that we ranked as a top 10 player that didn’t get drafted in the 2004 to 2010 span. They are: 

2004 No. 10 Randolph Morris, Kentucky 
2008 No. 5 Scotty Hopson, Tennessee 
2008 No. 9 Samardo Samuels, Louisville 
2009 No. 7 Michael Snaer, Florida State
2009 No. 10 Mouphtaou Yarou, Villanova 

There were two players that were ranked three-star prospects in our rivals.com rankings that were taken in the lottery. They are: 

2005 Terrence Williams, Louisville (ranked No. 111/drafted No. 11 in 2009)
2010 Victor Oladipo, Indiana (ranked No. 144/drafted No. 2 in 2013)

I’ll have a series coming that I think you’ll enjoy starting next week looking back on these seven classes. With over a decade of history to go off of, it has been a fun project to look back on. 

THE NOTE

In case you missed it yesterday, we had some things to share about any sort of idea about a 2020 season for HoopSeen events.

THE STREAM 

The 2004 McDonald’s All-American game was loaded with players, including several studs mentioned in the data above. Plug this one in and have a go. There were some absolute studs in this game.

THE TY FREEMAN PHOTO OF THE DAY 

The lens of Ty Freeman catches it all. This week we look take a look at the perspective that Ty brought from the 2019 Best of the South at the Georgia World Congress Center.