APBRmetrics

If this is indeed true, it makes absolutely no sense to me. What a high risk, ultra-low reward maneuver. And I can't imagine Chad was the only one aware of it. The whole premise of the operation would imply that people rely on Chad due to his mock draft "accuracy", but I don't think that could be further from the truth. Once the draft is actually over, people move on and 99.9% of them don't even lock back at the pundit mocks. People pay attention to Chad because he churns out draft content (good or not) and is shoved down our throats as an "insider", so I just don't get why he would think this would be an important thing to do...

kohanz wrote:Once the draft is actually over, people move on and 99.9% of them don't even lock back at the pundit mocks

That's what I thought, too

This is both really pointless and completely hilarious. Its also something easy to find out and kind of troubling in its lack of journalistic integrity. I'd have to think ESPN would do or say something here.

...it's not his "mock draft" (which player he thinks a given team will take at a spot), it's his own personal top 100 rankings going into the draft

so very much alters the perception of how good his scouting take is if *someone* changes the rankings after the fact to be more in line with how NBA careers actually played out

ESPN wrote:After reviewing the post on Reddit today, we have found that changes were made manually to Chad Ford’s NBA Draft prospects rankings. We have not been able to determine who made the changes, or when. We have talked to Chad Ford, who strongly denies any involvement, and based on his past work and professionalism, we believe him. Our review will continue but it is unclear at this time if we will be able to ascertain who was responsible.

This sounds super shady. There's almost no way ESPN doesn't have a CMS that would tell them exactly when and who altered those rankings.

It's kinda comical in spots too. Altering his rankings to elevate Kevin Seraphin, for example.

This is why I'm a fan of immutable values in programming!