For the whole group of rookies from 1985 to 2013—not just top-10 picks—the correlation between a player’s cumulative first-10 game score and his total win shares after four years is .63, on a scale in which zero represents no connection and 1 a perfect relationship. But we would expect that relationship to be pretty strong, because widening the player pool past top-10 picks accounts for fringe second-rounders and undrafted rookies who paired a silent first 10 games with a quiet career.
What is unexpected is that the relationship remains nearly as strong when restricting the sample to just top-10 picks, who are theoretically all on equal footing in their team’s future plans and in a similar place based on talent. For just top-10 picks, the correlation between game score after 10 games and win shares after four years is .58. There are exceptions, but the basic trend generally holds: The worse a player’s first 10 games, the less chance he has of becoming even a productive player, let alone the star his draft position would suggest.