NBA superstars are hard to find. They can be expensive or impossible to acquire in free agency. And they are rarely available via trade. And that’s why NBA teams don’t try to draft role players. Most NBA teams would rather take a chance on a player with a 10 percent chance of being a star, and a 90 percent chance of being a bust, than a 100 percent chance of being a polished but unspectacular end-of-the-rotation player.

Part of that process means that NBA teams love aggressive players. They love players that use a high percentage of their team’s possessions in college. They want players that believe they are the most talented athlete on the floor. It doesn’t matter whether those players are great. But they should at least believe they will be great.

If a player defers to his teammates at the college level, the likelihood he will defer at the pro level is just too high. It is easy to get players to shoot less. Expecting someone to shoot more while playing against veteran NBA talent is something most general managers won’t bank on.

With that said, here are some players who have particularly high or low usage rates who are projected to go in the first round of the 2013 NBA draft:

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was even more aggressive than these numbers suggest. He actually took 33 percent of his team’s shots when on the floor. But because of Caldwell-Pope’s low turnover numbers and his teammates high turnover numbers, he used a lower percentage of team possessions.

These numbers explain why observers of college basketball often struggle to understand the NBA draft.

- Gorgui Dieng was the cornerstone of a national championship team. His explosive help defense allowed Louisville to press and take chances that most defenses could not afford to take. Because he was so good at recovering for other people’s mistakes, Louisville’s defense played at a historic level. Meanwhile Dieng’s emerging free throw lane jump shot balanced out Louisville’s offensive attack and gave the team the right spacing to score against any defense.

- Shane Larkin was a transformational player for Miami. He turned a group of talented players who struggled to win into the ACC champions. Larkin’s passing numbers don’t do justice to his impact on the offense. He was a floor leader who made sure everyone knew where to be and how to execute their role. He was also an underrated defender whose quickness at cutting off penetration helped improve a defensive unit that had been bad for several years.

- Conversely, Shabazz Muhammad was viewed as a selfish college player. He walked off the court after a teammate hit a game-winning jumper without bothering to congratulate him; he never passed the ball; he lied about his age to improve his NBA draft stock. And Muhammad did not end his season with the kind of memorable NCAA run that would have saved his coaches’ job. Instead UCLA ended its season with a whimper, losing its first NCAA tournament game.

And yet Shabazz Muhammad is projected to go much higher than Dieng or Larkin. Muhammad, despite his lack of a developed outside shot, despite his baggage, despite all his negative intangibles, still believes he is the best player on the floor. He is athletic, he is talented, and he is aggressive. And in the end, NBA teams would rather take a chance on Muhammad becoming a superstar, than on Dieng or Larkin being a key rotation piece.

Similarly, it may seem puzzling to followers of college basketball that Tony Mitchell could sneak into the first round. He had academic issues out of high school which forced him to attend North Texas. And while he was dominant and aggressive there, he never really played enough games against elite talent to truly evaluate his game. But Mitchell was aggressive and successful at his level of basketball. And the possibility that Tony Mitchell is the next Paul George makes him intriguing to many scouts. A polished winner like Kansas’ Jeff Withey is far less intriguing. We’ve had time to pick apart Withey’s game and we know what his ceiling is. Mitchell might only have a small chance of dominating in the pros. But not knowing Mitchell’s ceiling makes him interesting.

But perhaps the most surprising part of this analysis is that many people’s projected top pick in the 2013 draft, Nerlens Noel, was not a particularly aggressive player in college. Of course Noel is being drafted for his defense as much as his offense. And Noel was injured last year. Had Noel played two more months of college basketball, he might have become a more aggressive player. But Noel’s low usage rate is still a red flag. It would be somewhat unusual for a player like Noel to have such a quiet season and then become a star in the NBA.

In the next table I look at current NBA stars and examine their final college statistics. I list players in the Top 25 of Bill Simmons 2013 Trade Value Column and show the percentage of possessions they used in college. (International and prep-to-pro players are excluded from the table.) In college only Anthony Davis had a comparable percentage of possessions to Noel. And Davis played for a much deeper and more talented Kentucky team than the one Noel played on:

(NBA usage rates and the NCAA percentage of possessions stats are technically slightly different formulas, but both measure a player’s aggressiveness on offense.)

This doesn’t mean that Noel won’t eventually become a star in the NBA. Russell Westbrook became a more aggressive NBA scorer after being more passive at UCLA. And if I expanded this table or looked back at past seasons, I’m sure I could find some quieter college scorers who became NBA stars.

But in the world of scouting, polish and accomplishment are often dwarfed by the simple question of who is the most aggressive. If you believe you are the best player on the floor, maybe someday you will be.