Anchoring bias in the evaluation of basketball players: A closer look at NBA draft decision‐making

The NBA installed the draft mechanism to fairly distribute young amateur players among its franchises. As this policy hinges on appropriate talent evaluation skills of the respective organizations, it can be considered a proxy for decision‐making under uncertainty. Such judgments are prone to fallacies and systemic mistakes. The article found the RSCI rank as a problematic metric, which is the source for systematic draft errors. It can be shown that in many cases, managers do not deviate enough from the pre‐draft rankings of players, leading to systematically over‐ and undervaluing certain groups of talents. This can be described as a decision‐quality‐lowering anchoring bias.