Which college produces the best NBA pros?

A new NBA Draft analysis reveals which college program yields the best NBA players relative to draft slot.

Villanova checks in at No. 3. (Photo by Steven Ryan/Getty Images)

For many folks, deciding where to go to college is one of life’s most important decisions.

For NBA prospects, it’s no different.

College programs have changed quite a bit over the years, but if you watch the NBA intently, you’ll notice that some of blue-chip programs often produce the best players.

I’m talking the Duke, UCLA, Kentucky, Kansas and UNC’s of the world.

Yeah, those guys are everywhere.

But which college produces the best NBA players based on draft expectations?

Let’s get into it.

Over at Yahoo Sports this week, I wrote about Bronny James and the phenomenon of underrated second-generation NBA players. In that story, I showed how sons of NBA players outperformed even the best blue-chip programs like Kentucky, UCLA and Duke. Every program that yielded at least 25 draftees actually underperformed the group My Dad Played In The NBA.

But let’s expand the pool a little bit more.

I analyzed every draft selection since 1989 when it moved to the current two-round model. I tracked each draftee’s production in the league using Basketball Reference’s win shares (WS) metric (find here) and then derived an annual WS figure (AWS) based on years since they were drafted (capped at 15 so as to not punish players for having superlong careers).

Using a regression model, I determined the expected AWS value of each draft slot (xAWS) which tells us the caliber of player at that number.

From there, I was able to pull up which college produces the best NBA products relative to their draft slot. This might not be the answer to “which college produces the best players”, though you can click on the “All-Stars” tab to answer theat one.

My version gets us closer to “which college is overrated/underrated” when it comes to NBA prospects.

Here are the 62 colleges in my database with at least 10 draftees. You can toggle between pages on the top right of the chart.

Without further ado …