Is Syracuse basketball successful at developing NBA players?

Last week’s news about Darius Bazley skipping college to head right into the G League brought back one of the familiar refrains about Syracuse Orange basketball- the lack of success of former players in the NBA.

We’ve heard plenty of similar comments to this one so I decided to do a bit of digging to see if this was just another #lazynarrative around the Syracuse program. Using the 247 rankings I went back to the 2003 class to look at the players that the Orange brought in after the Championship season. Using this metric, Syracuse has only brought in one top 10 recruit in that time period- Donte Greene (Bazley would have been the second). Despite lacking a lot of can’t miss recruits, the Orange have produced nine first round picks and four second round picks in that time. (For sake of the development angle, I’m not including Wes Johnson or Mike Gbinije here).

The debate about the Syracuse development becomes even more muddled when you look at this statistic.

So in this “One and Done” era, the Orange sits 4th in terms of first-round picks. When I went back to look at how these players, I found that most of the NBA picks were top 30 recruits, but it wasn’t a guarantee for future success. What is clear is that Syracuse has often recruited without concern for rankings and that the program certainly isn’t hindering the development of players.

Take a look for yourself at what we’ve seen the last 15 years

When you look at the overall recruiting picture for the last 15 years, I can see how some people can critique the lack of former Orange players who have gone on to star in the NBA. Just like I’d be cautious about giving too much credit to John Calipari for the NBA success of his former players, I wouldn’t place blame on Jim Boeheim if the Orange alums haven’t found that same success professionally.

However, shouldn’t the goal of the program be to get players into the league in the first place?