Sure, but first of all that draft value chart is just something somebody pulled out of thin air without any empirical data or benefit of modern analytics
Not even remotely true.
Back in 1989, Jimmy Johnson was looking for a way to gain an advantage in trade transactions involving draft picks (similar to the advantages he'd enjoyed at Miami in recruiting top HS prospects). He had a couple stat geeks in the Cowboys front office compile a history of all picks-for-picks transactions, and then quantify the value exchanged,
in relation to what part of a given round was involved. Obviously, a late-2nd is closer in value to an early-3rd than it is to an early-2nd - but nobody had ever bothered to try to calculate the potential value difference before.
Where actual past transactions didn't exist for specific draft picks or ranges of picks, the geeks extrapolated values and adjusted them until all the historical transactions balanced, more or less.
Johnson kept this chart exclusively in-house, and then used it for the rest of his tenure in Dallas to wrangle more pick value out of trades than going purely by back-of-the-envelope history would support. IOW, he was more able to negotiate good deals than his trading partners could.
Contrary to Chase Stuart's claim, the chart was never intended to place a value on the prospect selected at a certain spot. How could it, when those selections hadn't happened yet? The chart was intended solely to reflect how teams had historically valued various places in the "buffet line."
I'm not making this up. This is pretty much what Jimmy Johnson himself has said about the development and intent of the chart.
When Johnson left Dallas at the end of 1993, he took a copy of the chart with him. Even before that, though, scouts and other front office personnel who left the Cowboys for other teams had taken copies with them. So, by the time Johnson became the HC of the 'Fins in 1996, his draft chart had been widely adopted, and had become (informally) a "standard" reference tool for many teams. Because it worked. Even now, although many teams have made their own slight customized adjustments to the values, Johnson's original chart is still the basis for most pick-trade transactions.
A few years back, inspired by AdamJT's work in maintaining a record of such transactions, I reviewed ALL pick-trade transactions back to 1995, transposing the selection numbers into chart values to see how close each transaction came to "balancing".
As it turns out, trades involving top-5 picks have often deviated wildly from chart values (no surprise) - but in both directions - especially before the rookie wage scale was imposed. Deviations have been a bit less frequently "wild" since, but teams holding top picks sometimes still charge a "premium" above chart values, and also sometimes will "sell at discount". For picks #6-#10, the deviations from chart values typically have been much smaller, usually less than 10% "out of balance".
Furthermore, working down from about pick #11 through the rest of the draft, more than 90% of all picks-for-picks transactions come within 4% of actual chart values, with many coming within 2% of balancing exactly.
IOW, the "common wisdom" that the chart is arbitrary and doesn't reflect reality is completely incorrect.
