Every draft season, front offices argue over the same sliver of prospects at the top. Scouts debate measurables. Agents spin narratives. But beneath the noise, the box score has been quietly keeping score all year, and when you distill it into a single number, the picture is surprisingly clear.
Net Wins measures how many wins above or below average a player’s individual production accounts for, calibrated against his own team’s pace of winning and losing. A high number means the player’s output (points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals, relative to turnovers and missed shots) maps tightly onto team success. A low number doesn’t mean a player is bad; it means the data alone can’t yet justify the projection.
Personal foul data was unavailable at the team level for this model run, which means the Negative Actions denominator is slightly underweighted. Interpret the absolute values accordingly, but the relative rankings hold.
Cameron Boozer leads all projected first-rounders with a remarkable 8.59 Net Wins, the highest mark in this class by a wide margin. Playing alongside his twin brother Cayden at Duke, the younger Boozer has been a monster contributor on a 35-win team, and the metrics validate what the eye test has screamed all year: he’s the most NBA-ready player in this draft on pure production.
The surprise at the top is Yaxel Lendeborg (6.11) sitting at pick 12 in the conventional draft order. His Net Wins rank suggests he’s producing like a lottery player, and the boards likely reflect one significant factor the metric doesn’t capture: age. At 24, Lendeborg is one of the oldest prospects in this class, and NBA teams routinely discount older college players regardless of production. The 6.11 is real. The age gap is real too. Meanwhile, AJ Dybantsa goes first overall in most boards. His 3.35 is solid but reflects a BYU team that wasn’t elite, calibrating his raw brilliance into a more modest win contribution.
Darryn Peterson (1.98, pick 2) is another number that deserves context. Peterson missed time at Kansas after attributing cramping issues to excessive creatine supplementation. The abbreviated season drags down his Net Wins total, and his slot near the top of most boards reflects projection more than 2025-26 production. When a player’s availability is the variable, the model measures the gap, not the talent.
Jayden Quaintance (0.07) shows the widest gap between draft position and Net Wins, though context matters: he missed significant time with a knee injury this season, which explains the near-zero production figure. His projection reflects draft capital on a player who didn’t play enough to establish a statistical footprint.
Three players to watch
The Age Discount
Yaxel Lendeborg
Projected 12th, producing like a top-5 pick. The 6.11 Net Wins on a powerhouse Michigan team is legitimate. His combine measurements backed up the production: 6’10” in shoes, 7’3.25” wingspan, 9’0.5” standing reach, and his agility and shooting drew notice from scouts on the floor. The one thing boards can’t get past is age. At 24, front offices apply a steep discount regardless of what the box score or the tape says. Whether that discount is warranted here is the real debate heading into June.
The Asterisk
Jayden Quaintance
Pick 20 on most boards, 0.07 Net Wins on this one. The number is misleading in isolation: Quaintance dealt with a knee injury that severely limited his availability this season. The model can only measure what happened on the court. When a player barely played, the output reflects absence, not ability. Treat his entry as incomplete data, not a talent verdict.
The Hidden Value
Tarris Reed Jr.
Sliding to pick 32 in conventional boards but posting 5.41 Net Wins on a Connecticut squad that went 34–6. The model likes big men who anchor winning teams, and Reed was a genuine anchor. A late-first selection at this production level is a significant value play.
Class summary
Of the 31 prospects with Net Wins data, 15 posted above 3.0, a reasonable threshold for meaningful college contribution at a first-round level. Eight cleared 4.5, which is where the model starts flagging a player as a genuine win-contributor rather than just a volume accumulator.
The Michigan pipeline stands out: three first-round prospects (Lendeborg at 6.11, Mara at 5.45, Johnson at 5.25) all cleared the 5.0 mark on a team that won at a high rate. That’s unusual concentration of production from one program. Worth noting: Lendeborg is 24 and will be evaluated differently than Mara and Johnson, but the on-court contribution was genuine across all three.
Duke’s pair, Boozer (8.59) and Evans (4.50), further suggests the Blue Devils were everything the eye test showed and more. Two first-round picks, both with strong Net Wins profiles, both emerging from a team that finished 35-3. The denominator matters: on an elite team, those wins come harder, which makes the numerator more valuable.
The class overall tilts toward the back end being undervalued on consensus boards. Ejiofor (5.26, St. John’s), Karaban (4.71, UConn), and Jefferson (4.56, Iowa State) all project as mid-to-late first rounders despite producing at levels that, historically, have translated to meaningful NBA rotational contributors within two years.
© 2026 Will Fiore. Net Wins formula and all written content are original works. All rights reserved.
