No, that's not a crapshoot. Just because the "best" players aren't picked in successive order does not automatically mean random chance is the only remaining option. Mike posted this but edited the post so I'm going to throw it up again: http://www.hardballtimes.com/the-net-value-of-draft-picks/ Any single player can bust. No one is disputing that point. But in the aggregate, the top five picks are consistently better and bust less frequently. 6-10 are a notch below that but still outperform 11-15. As you carry that down the chain, the numbers begin to bunch together, which implies more (but not complete) randomness (ie. a "crapshoot"). You can make the argument that once you get past pick 15, it becomes more of, but not a total, crapshoot. As you approach the second round, it's so close that randomness becomes a larger factor. But we shouldn't conflate the value of pick 6 and pick 17, as that wrongly implies both have an equal chance of success. They don't. As shown in those tables, there is a clear downward trend from pick one to pick 50, where the list stops. In no situation has a lower pick outperformed a higher pick in the aggregate, which means the draft cannot be random.