Family Ties: NBA Draft Position and Player Performance

This study aims to investigate the role, if any, that nepotism plays in the careers of players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Career performance is compared between the 780 players drafted from 2007 to 2019, with familial relationships considered. Ordinary Least Squares and logistic regression models are specified to estimate the effect of having a relative on the success of an NBA player’s career. We find that siblings of NBA players earn more and reach minimum games played thresholds more often, while sons of NBA players earn more, but generally do not reach games played thresholds more often than similarly drafted peers.