Do Cheap Fliers on Failed NBA Prospects Work?

Nickeil Alexander-Walker is a story many front offices will revisit every July. Alexander-Walker was a first-round talent with a couple failed stints who eventually rebuilt himself as a point-of-attack defender in Minnesota. For the duration of his rookie deal, Alexander-Walker had poor impact metrics. Nevertheless, the Timberwolves took a cheap flier on him as part of the original Mike Conley trade. Alexander-Walker was considered a throw-in, but he would eventually sign a 2-year, $9 million deal to stay in Minnesota after his rookie deal ended.

At the conclusion of his rookie deal, Alexander-Walker registered an xRAPM of -1.5, indicating he was a near replacement level player. The Wolves declined to extend his $8.48 million qualifying offer and instead signed him for under 3.5% of the cap. Their dart throw would pay off. In year 5, Alexander-Walker's impact jumped to +2.1, and he had built himself into a bona fide playoff contributor. Now of course, Alexander-Walker would eventually land in Atlanta, average over 20 points per game, and win Most Improved Player. But Minnesota took a flier on a low impact guy and struck gold with "starter-level" return.

But how often do cases like Alexander-Walker's truly happen?

The answer depends entirely on what qualifies as a "second chance". Every offseason, former first-round picks sign minimum contracts or training camp deals. Some are simply roster fillers, while others are legitimate reclamation projects. Without defining those terms, it's impossible to measure how often teams actually find value.

Methodology

To explore this topic, I built a database of every player who entered the NBA between 2015 and 2022. Players were classified as first-stint underperformers if they finished their fourth season with a negative xRAPM. Now four years is not perfectly analogous to a rookie deal for second round and undrafted players, but the overall goal was to capture impact on what would be the first four years of a player's career.

Players were considered cheap fliers if they remained in the league on contracts worth less than 8% of the salary cap - roughly the value of the non-taxpayer mid level exception.

From there I tracked whether those players ever developed into starter-level contributors (xRAPM ≥ +1) sustained that level of play, or eventually reached star territory (xRAPM ≥ +3).

Throughout this study, Jeremias Engelmann's xRAPM serves as the primary measure of player impact. I chose xRAPM because its historical data is readily available and its a good blend of box-score data with adjusted plus minus. I did replicate results with predictive EPM and my own model and the conclusions were remarkably consistent.

The Reclamation Landscape

The chart below plots every first-stint underperformer in the study. The x-axis shows where each player finished after their fourth season, while the y-axis shows their best xRAPM recorded from Year 5 onward. This gives us a bird's-eye view of every prospect who "struggled" their first four years, and just how good they ended up. The chart also carries important information on how the market viewed each player, split into two categories: paid believers – players who got paid above 8% because some team believed in them, and cheap fliers. The chart is interactive on browser and you can play with filters.

The -2 Wall

Since 2015, only one player, Cam Payne, has finished his fourth year at -2 xRAPM or worse and later become a successful cheap flier. Here we are counting a successful reclamation as a player who produces starter-level impact at +1 xRAPM or better. There were 60 players who registered an xRAPM of -2 (usually understood as replacement level) or worse in their fourth years, 37 were given cheap fliers, and Payne is the only one to climb over that bar.

Additionally, only 3 other players have ever crossed the starter threshold with a year four xRAPM of -2 or worse. These three players (Lavine, Clarkson, Reid) were paid after year 4 and therefore do not count towards the cheap flier threshold.

It's worth making the distinction because the teams believed in these players enough to pay them. There is going to be context not captured by xRAPM, such as Lavine tearing his ACL in year 3.

A negative Year 4 xRAPM is far from a death sentence. Teams often pay on the promise of a future and we see that to be the case with Lavine, Clarkson, and Reid. Players often deliver on that promise and eventually become quality NBA contributors. However, the closer a player gets to -2, the weaker their chances are of ever producing a redemption season.

Still, there is more to unpack here because not every underperformer even gets a chance.

Who Gets Another Chance?

Before an underperforming player can become a reclamation success, a team has to believe he's worth another investment. The data suggests a player's draft slot plays a large role in second or third chance opportunities.

This chart examines underperformers who made it to Year 4. There is always going to be an element of survivorship bias when examining a sample space of players who actually got that far. That means the differences illustrated above aren't driven by which players stayed in the league long enough to become cheap fliers, they are driven by what happened after clearing that hurdle. By filtering out players who never reached Year 4, we can more cleanly isolate the impact of draft pedigree on who receives another opportunity.

As expected, first round picks receive considerably more grace than their second round and undrafted counterparts. That advantage, however, appears to flatten quickly within the first round itself. Outside of the top five, there is relatively little variation in second chance rates across first round draft slots. The difference appears in the washout rates, with picks outside the top 10 having a greater chance of washing out after a bad Year 4.

Does Position or Role Matter?

While draft pedigree clearly influences which underperformers receive another opportunity, what the player actually does on the court plays a part too. To classify player archetypes, I used the role taxonomy developed by BBall Index's LEBRON model in addition to traditional positions. Each role and position is the player's Year 4 designation in LEBRON.

There are a few immediate takeaways. First, shooting guards and shooting-oriented offensive roles receive more second chances than any other archetype. Teams will continue to recycle floor spacers, even after a disappointing first stint. This reflects the league's belief that shooting is one of the NBA's most portable skills.

Conversely, athletic play finishers are bad bets. The finisher/slasher role type produced zero starter-level redemptions despite receiving a healthy number of opportunities. Teams continue to gamble on that archetype, but athleticism without reliable complementary skills has yet to produce a successful reclamation in this sample.

And finally, contrary to conventional wisdom, we see that bigs simply do not get the same opportunity as perimeter players. Teams appear quicker to move on from struggling interior players. These results might partially reflect the era studied (2015-2022), when most of the league was imitating the small-ball philosophy popularized by Golden State.

The Anatomy of Success

Only twelve cheap flier signings have produced starter-level players after a negative Year 4 xRAPM. Eight of the twelve were between -0.1 and -0.6. There is enough noise in APM stats to suggest these players may have better impact than the raw numbers indicate. Despite this, no player in the cheap flier category cracked "star level" impact at +3. And what's more is that the redemption wasn't immediate. On average, these players are reaching redemption status by year 6.5.

Additionally, none of these players reached redemption status by taking on larger usage. Most of them reduced the scope of their role, focusing on defense or ancillary skills. Even Alexander-Walker himself is on record stating he had to rewire his mentality from scoring first to defense first.

Implications

On the whole, NBA teams are pretty good at knowing which reclamation projects are bad bets. What this study illustrates is that they might not be as good as they think. Let's take the mild cases for example– players who were better than -1 xRAPM by end of Year 4. About four out of five of these players got another look, and nearly 45% of them went on to have a genuinely good season at some point. Now take the ones who were among the worst in the league, the players who finished -3 or below. Nearly half got another look. But only one out of 18 ever produced another good season.

The difference between a slightly bad young player and a genuinely terrible one is enormous. But the way the league offers second chances doesn't fully reflect that gap. In other words, front offices appear to overestimate their ability to identify the rare exception.

Every front office is looking for the next Nickeil Alexander-Walker, but the findings here encourage a more disciplined approach to fliers. History suggests it's better to search among the mildly disappointing players rather than the deeply unproductive ones.

Like with any historical study, these findings come with limitations. The sample spans a specific NBA era (2015-2022), which subjects it to the CBA rules and team building trends of that time. xRAPM is also just one lens for evaluating player impact. Any regularized adjusted-plus-minus stat will carry inherent flaws, such as wide confidence intervals and a resistance to change. This framework should be viewed more as a guideline for how to approach fliers rather than a concrete formula.

There are still questions worth exploring. What is the true financial cost of pedigree? Are there any good bets in this current class of free agents? But those are studies for another day.