When it comes to mining for information, Pete D’Alessandro is like a sponge. From experienced basketball minds who’ve played the game to tech-driven analysts, the Sacramento Kings general manager absorbs opinions from a variety of sources.
With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that D’Alessandro is looking to the fans for their input on this year’s draft. Yesterday, the Kings announced the Draft 3.0 Challenge, a contest encouraging fans to offer their expertise in evaluating the prospects in next month’s draft.
“There is so much talent and so much information out there today outside of the walls of the NBA,” D’Alessandro said in a Q&A for Reddit on Friday. “I told (Vivek Ranadivé) I felt like we could tap into that vast wealth of knowledge. For that reason I was actually planning on reaching out to advanced fans and asking for their help in this Draft.”
The opportunity is simple. The Kings are asking fans to break down this year’s college prospects from an analytical perspective. According to the rules of the contest, they’re requesting “methodology for evaluating the long-term value of potential NBA draftees by position” by using “historical, publicly-available and individually-sourced data.”
Submissions are being collected now until May 19, a day before the league’s annual draft lottery. The best entries may be invited to a special draft advisory committee that will meet with D’Alessandro on a regular basis up until draft day. The two best performers from the committee will be considered for an invite into the Kings’ war room.
“I would like to have a Draft Advisory Council of analytically-minded people and we’d definitely like to do this moving forward,” D’Alessandro said. “At one point I was outside of the wall of the NBA scratching to get in and I know there are many, many others who are in the same situation. So this is really exciting for me.”
For more information, visit Kings.com.
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