And we’re back! With the NBA Draft beginning Wednesday, and all of the players who will be in it confirmed, it’s time to expand my draft board.
I shared my top 20 draft prospects just before the draft combine. That list hasn’t changed, and you can find it below. However, we’re adding 55 more names to the list; I’m not necessarily betting on these players, but I think it would make sense to select them at a certain point in the draft where the failure rate is relatively high no matter whom a team takes. I’ve also included several two-way candidates, as that has become an increasingly important roster-building mechanism in recent years.
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My full Top 75 ahead of the 2024 NBA Draft:
Ron Holland
Ron Holland? Yes, Ron Holland. Let’s start with the negatives first:
Holland only measured 6-6 1/2 at the NBA Draft Combine, he shot a ghastly 24 percent from 3 in the G League, and his avert-your-eyes start to the G League season — including an 11-turnover game — had scouts shuddering.
Now, for the good news: He came into the year as the top-rated player on most boards, had better numbers with G League Ignite than any other one-and-done in its history … and somehow went careening down draft boards anyway, even in a draft year where absolutely nobody came in and claimed the top spot for themselves.
I don’t really get it. The biggest complaint with Holland is his lack of efficiency, but that was baked in the second Ignite built this roster. Virtually any teenager put in a situation where he has to carry a 30 percent usage rate is going to struggle; we saw it with LaMelo Ball in Australia and Scoot Henderson in Portland. Holland was no different, especially since he’s not a natural point guard in the first place. Playing on a team with no real creator, he often had to call his own number against loaded-up defenses.
Did he get tunnel vision once he put it on the floor? Absolutely. Was it so tragic to rule him out versus other non-overwhelming options? I don’t think so, especially as the season wore on.
Holland's numbers stack up well against Jalen Green’s with Ignite and are superior to every other Ignite perimeter player who has come through. That happened despite Holland missing the final two months of the season, when his increasing experience would have given him an edge and when the rest of the G League is at its most depleted due to call-ups and fewer assignment players.
In his Ignite season, Green posted a 15.4 PER with 61.3 percent true shooting; Holland had a 15.8 PER on 56.5 percent. The shooting numbers were bad, but Green played on a more coherent team and thus also was only asked to carry a 23 percent usage rate at this level, not Holland’s 28 percent. Also, keep in mind that Holland’s free-throw rate was pretty massive for a perimeter player; four free-throw attempts per game may not seem like much until you remember the G League shoots one attempt that counts for two points. Only 10 players in the whole G League matched his rate. And even with Holland’s brutal early turnover issues, his assist and turnover rates were essentially the same as Green’s age-18 season.
Green would be the No. 1 pick in this draft; I think Holland should be too.
The other reason to like Holland is his defense. His 3.5 percent steal rate stands out; some iffy gambles spiked the total, but there is real talent (and fire) on this end. Overall, his rates of rebounds, steals and blocks compare favorably to former Ignite lottery pick Dyson Daniels, for instance, who has now become an awesome defender at the NBA level. I think Holland has similar pathways to being elite at this end.
On top of that, there’s the good ol’ eye test. I’ve seen Holland shoot a ton, both before games and during them, having watched him in person several times over the last year. He has a low push shot that needs some work, but he’s also not a 24 percent 3-point shooter. His 72.8 percent mark from the line is a more accurate tell on where he stands as a shooter — he isn't Stephen Curry, but his shot isn’t broken either. Just reaching the point where he makes one in three would make him a potent two-way wing, and that feels attainable.
Lastly, consider Holland’s age. With a July 2005 birthdate, he’s nearly a full year younger than several other players vying for places with him in the high lottery: He's six months younger than Rob Dillingham, nine months younger than Stephon Castle or Matas Buzelis and more than a year younger than Donovan Clingan and Reed Sheppard. Teams get caught on class year, but birth year is what matters.
It's not a slam dunk, and you could make a credible case for several players, but Holland has been the top player on my board since the 2023 Hoop Summit. He still has the best overall résumé.
Stephon Castle
For a league where everyone is looking for big, ballhandling wings, teams sure seem to like finding reasons to avoid taking one in the draft. I’ve seen Castle ranked much lower than this on several draft boards, and I’m not sure I get it.
Castle isn’t perfect — questions about his shooting persist — but in this draft, he stands out as a plus defender from day one who also adds secondary ballhandling and creation chops. A 6-6 freshman wing with 6.2 assists per 100 possessions and a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio certainly stands out, especially since he did so for a team that cruised to the national title.
Like Holland above, Castle has high-end possibilities on the defensive end that help provide a solid floor even if he doesn’t hit his offensive ceiling. He was impressive contesting shots at the end of plays and using verticality, although he did foul too much for a perimeter player. In terms of lateral quickness, I wouldn’t quite put him on the top shelf, but he was good — straight-line drives weren’t beating him, but sometimes quick stops and changes of direction got him a step behind.
Getting back to the offense end, the shooting question looms large. Castle's balance and form on his shot varies quite a bit depending on whether he’s shooting off the catch, off the dribble going left or off the dribble going right. At times, his arms look like they’re fighting each other, with the guide hand getting too much in the way.
On the other hand, his size, athleticism and ball skills should allow him to thrive in the more open floor of the NBA, and the more the ball in his hands, the less of an issue his catch-and-shoot jumper becomes. Even with his issues shooting, Castle made 75.5 percent from the line last season.
Donovan Clingan
Longtime readers know I don’t put as much stock in drafting centers as I do other positions. If it weren’t for that, Clingan would have a case for the top spot on my board. Even with my anti-center bias, Clingan seems like a fairly obvious starting 5 man with a possible All-Star ceiling. At this point in a weak draft, that becomes an enticing value proposition.
Clingan isn’t just tall, he’s huge all over, with thick legs and a strong frame from top to bottom. He’s capable of overwhelming smaller players in the post, but UConn didn’t bring everything to a screeching halt to run stuff for him the way, say, Purdue did for Zach Edey. Instead, the Huskies took advantage of Clingan’s facility as a passer from the elbows. His best work on the block often came in early offense with quick transition seals; he runs the floor shockingly well for his size. Watch here, for instance, as he first smothers a drive at the rim, then cooks four of the five opponents in transition despite starting from his own baseline. (Bonus: That's my No. 2 prospect, Stephon Castle, throwing the crosscourt dime to set up the finish.)
Defense, of course, is where bigs make their dough, and Clingan excelled here. Relative to recent drafted centers, his 12.2 percent career block rate in college isn’t quite in Walker Kessler territory, but it’s superior to that of Mark Williams or Jalen Duren and nearly matches Chet Holmgren’s 12.9 percent. On top of that, Clingan showed well on tape in picking up smaller players on the perimeter and sliding with them to meet their shot at the rim. Watch him against Illinois prospect Terrence Shannon Jr., for instance, in the NCAA Tournament.
While Clingan only shot 55.8 percent from the line for his career at UConn, there is some level of hope he can stretch out a bit. Watching him shoot before Huskies games, his stroke looked surprisingly game-ready.
Clingan’s draft combine medical report will be important since he had a foot injury that teams will want to research. But heading into the week in Chicago, nobody seemed overly concerned that it could crater his stock. The injury was to a tendon, not a bone, and the latter is more what freaks teams out with players of this size.
Reed Sheppard
There are some obvious standout items on Sheppard’s prospect résumé, starting with his sizzling 52.1 percent 3-point mark in his lone season in Lexington.
He backed up that shooting display with 83.1 percent marksmanship from the charity stripe. Equally impressive for a small guard, he shot 55 percent on 2s and had a high assist rate (8.4 dimes per 100 possessions) for a player who was often playing off the ball. His knack for hit-ahead passes particularly stood out.
Sheppard’s shooting volume wasn’t as high as you might expect for somebody this successful from 3, but the eye test reveals a quick, compact, textbook release off his right shoulder that could allow him to up his volume if he hunts the shot more. Sheppard also showed enough flashes of shot creation and off-the-dribble juice to think he could play point guard full time at the next level, which is important given his size. It wasn’t needed at Kentucky, however, as he played nearly all his minutes alongside the zippy Rob Dillingham (See below).
Sheppard’s defensive event creation rate also stood out. A block rate of 2.5 percent is basically unheard of for a player this size (he swatted 23 shots in 33 games — Kentucky’s starting center, by comparison, blocked 26), and his steal rate of 4.5 percent was phenomenal.
That said, his steal rate doesn’t account for some of his defensive weaknesses, as he resorted to gambling at times to make up for his size deficiencies and iffy lateral sliding. Sheppard’s anticipation is off the charts and he’s great in passing lanes, but he doesn’t put a ton of heat on the ball one-on-one and at times was beaten on straight-line drives with alarming ease.
The tape showed multiple instances like this one where he’s stuck with his feet while a guard glides past him.
As a smaller player with short arms, Sheppard also may struggle if he has to play the wing. That’s one reason he had to gamble so much for steals in the first place.
That said, there are too many positives in Sheppard’s profile to push him any lower than this. At worst, he’s a knockdown shooter, and high rates of assists and steals in particular historically indicate a player who can progress heavily in other areas as he develops.
Alex Sarr
The National Basketball League is improving every year, but it’s still weak sauce compared to most of the European leagues, so I’m slowing my roll a bit on the Sarr enthusiasm relative to most of my colleagues. He had a good, but not dominant year for Perth, and watching him in person before the season raised questions regarding his offensive level.
That said, Sarr is a switchable defender on the perimeter for day one. His defense might be the most bankable skill set in this whole draft. He flies up and down the court, slides his feet to contain guards on the perimeter, gets his hands on balls and can protect the rim. In his first year Down Under, he led the NBL in block rate. He did it with a remarkably low foul rate for a big man, too, with just 41 personals in 30 games.
If you’re looking for physicality on top of that package, you have perhaps come to the wrong place. Sarr will undoubtedly improve in this phase as his body fills out, and the extreme physicality of the NBL may have highlighted this weakness a bit more than other environments. However, a 13.3 percent rebound rate from a 7-1 center is sad-trombone stuff and a good indication of his deficits here. (By comparison, Ariel Hukporti, a meh 7-footer who will likely be picked late in the second round, had a 21.6 percent rebound rate in the same league.)
Sarr’s lack of physicality arrives over the offensive end, where he has no post game to speak of. He tries to make up for it with 3-point shooting and play from the elbows, but he’s still not NBA-caliber in these realms. He tends to dribble himself into trouble when he puts it on the floor more than once, and his 3-point shot has a sidespin on it that makes it difficult to trust. (He shot 27.6 percent from 3 and 70.7 percent from the line in Australia.)
He could perhaps contribute more profitably as a rim runner, especially since he already seems to make decent decisions out of short-roll situations — an even assist-turnover rate from an 18-year-old center is nothing to sneeze at.
However, that takes us to another issue that has me a bit lower on Sarr than consensus: I don’t totally trust his hands. His rebound rate isn’t low just from a lack of physicality; he also was phenomenally unable to pull down contested boards in traffic, especially with one hand. Sarr’s defense alone makes him a notable prospect in this draft, but his offensive shortcomings are too limiting for me to place him at the top of the board.
Nikola Topić
The Adriatic League isn’t what it once was, but you still have to give Topić respect for playing at a high level as a teenager in a professional league. He finished his year with a 20.0 PER while playing a major shot-creation role for two different teams as an 18-year-old. (His August 2005 birthdate makes him one of the few players in this draft who is younger than Holland.)
Topić also was the MVP of both age-group tournaments he played in during the summer of 2023: The U18 European championship and the Belgrade NIJT tournament. Those all make a prima facie case that Topić should be one of the highest-rated players on the draft board. He’s a big guard who can get downhill and create plays for others. This is the archetype every team seeks out, so it’s no accident I have three big wings near the top of my list.
The shooting question marks about Topić might be overblown as well. He’s only made 26 3-pointers in 22 games, which is certainly a concern. On the other hand, he’s shot 88 and 89 percent from the line the past two seasons. How many guys are this good from the line and total zeros from 3? He needs to get into his jumper more comfortably off the dribble, but the raw material is there.
Of more concern, perhaps, is his lack of athletic event creation and overall athleticism. He had low rates of blocks, steals and rebounds in the Adriatic League and projects as a below-average defender at the NBA level. To use one obvious comparison, even Luka Dončić had a massively higher output in these areas before coming to the NBA. Scouts bring up Josh Giddey when they mention comps for Topić, but I suspect Topić will shoot better and rebound less. Topić also had an in-season knee injury that NBA teams will dig in on for more information, but he’s already back playing, so nobody expects it to harm his stock.
Matas Buzelis
While I find it bizarre that a lot of boards have Buzelis over Holland when Holland was clearly the better player, Buzelis definitely has some interesting traits that could make him an effective stretch big in time. While he played exclusively at forward with Ignite, I think he could be a stretch five in the NBA once he gets into his 20s and his body fills out.
Buzelis only shot 26.1 percent from 3 with Ignite last season, but don’t believe that number. Much like Holland above, his stroke isn’t that of a 26-percenter, and his 69.6 percent free-throw mark considerably shorts his shooting ability as well. Buzelis has a nice-looking stroke with few obvious flaws; I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t a league-average shooter, at the very least, by his third season. It seems like the league has priced this into his draft stock as well.
Even with the bad shooting numbers, Buzelis’ overall numbers in the G League weren’t awful: 53 percent shooting on 2s, a 13.6 PER and 55.7 percent true shooting. His Ignite numbers, for example, compare favorably to Jonathan Kuminga’s. As with Holland above, those numbers likely would have looked better had he been afforded the chance to play on a real team with an actual point guard.
Offensively, Buzelis doesn’t have the shot-creation upside of some of the other non-centers ahead of him on this list. He can really jump, but he doesn't have a lot of burst on the perimeter and struggles to get separation, which limits his advantage creation. In time, however, he should grow more adept at working size mismatches on switches for chances closer to the basket. Additionally, he's able to pop off the ground near the basket to finish transitions or cuts with strong dunks.
Defensively, the long-term promise is more apparent as a big forward who can guard multiple positions, and Buzelis takes pride on that end. He moves well laterally for a player of his size and has some real pop as a leaper that allows him to block shots – a 5.7 percent block rate for a non-center jumps off the page, and his 12 percent rebound rate is respectable for an 18-year-old four playing against grown men. Overall, you can see Detlef Schrempf-type upside if the skill package comes together and a floor of rotation-level usefulness as long as his shooting is even remotely acceptable.
Rob Dillingham
I mentioned above that it’s tough to hand a 30 percent usage rate to an 18-year-old. Well, that’s what Kentucky did with DiIlingham, and he was still awesome. Granted, it was in a bench role that let him cook against some backups and play shorter shifts, but still. Dillingham is an electric offensive player who shot 44.4 percent from 3, averaged 35.3 points per 100 possessions and posted two assists for every turnover.
Dillingham’s shooting might not match his college 3-point numbers. He made just 79.6 percent from the line and has a quarter turn sideways getting into his shot; it’s not as bad as, say, Cameron Payne’s, but his right foot is well forward when he shoots and he may end up susceptible to foot-on-line long 2s. He’s a decent but hardly elite passer right now — it’s good enough to keep him at the point, but he’s playing more as a scorer. Dillingham’s turnover rate also escalated in conference play, a worrying trend.
Between those weaknesses and his suspect defense, he profiles more as a perennial Sixth Man of the Year candidate than a long-term starter. Much like, say, Lou Williams, Dillingham is really fast but doesn’t really weaponize his speed or quickness on defense. He had a very low rate of steals for a player of this type, and the tape showed him getting cooked regularly.
Given his small frame (he’s listed at 170 pounds), Dillingham will get up into the ball to try to prevent bigger players from shooting over him. However, he has trouble with crossovers and second moves and leaves his feet on any decent shot fake. In a related story, his foul rate of 6.1 per 100 was terrible for a non-big; in fact, it’s the worst of any legit perimeter prospect in this draft. Overall, Dillingham’s effort level was solid enough that he probably won’t be Trae Young-level bad on defense, but he certainly won’t be good. That puts a bit of a cap on his stock.
Kyle Filipowski
Filipowski’s case for being a lottery pick doesn’t get enough attention. There are legitimate questions about whether he shoots well enough to be a true stretch big. If he can’t, he profiles as something along the lines of “a more defensively capable Frank Kaminsky,” which is draftable, but not this high. You’re banking on Filipowski refining his perimeter game to the point that it weaponizes his superior ability to dribble and pass for his size.
Filipowski’s shot is going to take some work; He hit 31.4 percent from 3 and 71.8 percent from the line in his two seasons at Duke. Watching him before several of Duke’s games, he had trouble controlling the spin on his shot and preventing his guide hand from affecting his shot’s flight.
That matters, because he’s more of a combo big than a true five at both ends of the court. He doesn’t have the broad shoulders or superior length you’d expect from an interior presence on defense, and while he's a good passer on the block and can score against mismatches, he’s not going to physically overwhelm rival bigs.
Filipowski can have more success just playing in the flow of the game, making the right pass and getting to the rim on his own once he has an advantage. It’s easy to see how even a middling 3-point shot could be a force multiplier for those skills.
Defensively, Filipowski’s ability to defend on the perimeter could make him useful as the type of big four (think Al Horford, Maxi Kleber or Karl-Anthony Towns) who has low-key come back into vogue recently. His tape was eye-popping. He isn't just some "serviceable" switch big; he can embarrass smaller wings who try him one-on-one. A 2.5 percent career steal rate from a 7-footer is awesome, and the Dukies were very comfortable leaving him on an island against guards. In fact, you could build an entire five-minute YouTube montage of guards thinking they were going to cook Filipowski once they got a switch, only to find out in a relatively embarrassing way that they didn’t have any advantage.
Devin Carter
An upperclassman! What is this madness? Carter is a wizened graybeard of 22, but his season was good enough that he presents a real possibility of being an immediate rotation player – even a starter – depending on where he lands.
For me, Carter is the guy the Miami Heat take in the middle of the first round, and after he has 18 points and 10 rebounds in a December game in Boston, the rest of the league slaps its collective head and says, "Why didn't we do that?"
The son of former Heat guard Anthony Carter, Devin shoots a moon-ball jumper just like his dad, but evened out the kinks in his stroke this past season, improving to 37.7 percent from 3 while nearly doubling his volume to an impressive 11.2 per 100 possessions. He also shot a more pedestrian 74.9 percent from the line, which might soften our projection for how well he’ll shoot 3s as a pro.
Nonetheless, that’s far from his only skill. Carter has been a “little things” guy his whole career: a hard-playing, crafty player with a preposterous 23 percent defensive rebound rate as a 6-3 guard. He led the Big East in this category – Donovan Clingan plays in his conference!
Offensively, Carter is more of an off-ball guard because he doesn’t have an electric first step and he isn’t an elite passer. He was a bit turnover-prone, too, but had enough finishing skill to shoot 56.3 percent on 2s with a plus free-throw rate. Realistically, he will be a secondary shot creator at the next level at either guard spot.
His defense, however, has a chance to make him stand out. Carter has great instincts as an off-ball defender, getting nearly two steals a game and blocking 32 shots in 33 games despite his small stature. As an on-ball defender, he didn’t overdo it with ball pressure but excelled at playing angles and funneling players to low-value spots before challenging shots late. Carter also fouled remarkably infrequently for a player who generated so many defensive events. With his size, one worries a bit about big wings playing over the top of him, but that’s about the extent of the concerns.
Overall, Carter may not offer as much right-tail upside as some of the players below him on this list given his age and middling athleticism, but much like Jaime Jaquez Jr. a year ago, he offers the likelihood of immediate playability for the right team.
Johnny Furphy
This is higher than a lot of people have him, but I’m a big fan of what Furphy offers. He has positional size for a combo forward and the mobility to check smaller players on the perimeter, but he also grades out as a plus shooter who can supply some extra athletic pop as a finisher on cuts and in transition.
Furphy is skinny and needs to fill out, but his statistical production was a bit better than that of similar physical archetypes Zaccharie Risacher and Cody Williams (both below) despite coming over from Australia to play for Kansas. While Furphy didn’t shoot often and wasn’t asked to do much off the dribble, he shot 64.2 percent on 2s with a high free-throw rate. From the perimeter, his stats were more ordinary (35.2 percent from 3, 76.5 percent from the line), but he shoots 3s with relatively high volume, and both his shooting form and incoming rep suggest he is capable of better.
Defensively, Furphy had some trouble with quick guards, and physicality sometimes gave him trouble when players could shrug him off with a shoulder to get room for a shot. That should lessen as his body fills out, but he’s always going to be light for this size. That said, he had the length and quick hops to get back into plays to contest or block shots, even when initially beaten. His 11.7 percent rebound rate is pretty impressive for a guy who projects as a three at the next level.
We’re into a new tier here where the projections are more questionable, but of this group, I’d argue Furphy has the most realistic upside to turn into a long-term starter.
Isaiah Collier
The No. 1 pick hype was overblown – Collier has too many warts in his offensive game to warrant a selection that high, with iffy shooting, too many turnovers and a bully-ball style limiting his appeal as a leading man at the offensive end. That said, he has some similarities to Holland: He was asked to carry a 30 percent usage rate for a bad team; what did you think would happen?
But, um, can we talk about his defense? Collier was a bit inconsistent on that end, but his best plays were off the charts. Here is a play where he ends up getting scored on … but look at the multiple efforts and lateral slides that preceded it. (Collier is No. 1 in dark jersey, starting at the bottom of the screen).
The data says Collier pilfered 3.2 steals per 100 possessions, and while this was partly due to USC’s gambling system (teammate Kobe Johnson nicked 4.1, for instance), Collier’s tape in one-on-one defense is pretty impressive. You’d just wish he’d followed that up on the boards; for a strong 6-5 guard, his 5.6 percent rebound rate was pathetic.
Offensively, Collier shoots a flick off the top of his head with inconsistent arc, which will need some work. He shot 33.8 percent from 3 and 67.3 percent from the line at USC, and if you watched his pregame work, those are believable numbers. He also had some mind-boggling turnovers, with a strange proclivity for throwing terribly inaccurate passes even when he’d made the correct read.
He also probably needs to play off the ball at the next level; he struggles to elevate at the rim, doesn’t show much left-hand finishing skill and he is just an average decision-maker. Given his tank frame, he may even evolve into a Lu Dort type if he can straighten out his catch-and-shoot game. More likely, he’s a secondary scorer as a slasher who can also defend the perimeter and guard up in size. That gives him value, even if he's not No. 1 pick material.
Zaccharie Risacher
I’m not sure any player’s stock has yo-yo’d as much as Risacher’s in the last year. After a disappointing performance at the Nike Hoop Summit followed a poor shooting year in France, Risacher was seen by some as a fringe first-rounder. This season, his 3-point percentage rebounded sharply, and Risacher suddenly moved into the discussion for the No. 1 pick. Both pendulum swings now seem like overcorrections, with shooting variance spiking the punch scouts were drinking.
Let’s take a step back. Risacher has obvious pathways to rotation-level usefulness: He’s a tall wing who can move on the perimeter and showed very good lateral quickness in particular. He has a solid feel for the game, and his shot, while a bit hitchy at the top, is reliable enough to demand the opponent guard him.
But once we start raising the bar to lottery-level pick, the questions become louder. One thing in particular that NBA teams have consistently underpriced is that the French League just isn’t that good. Turkey and Spain, to name two, are much, much stronger. It’s one thing if a guy like Clint Capela or Victor Wembanyama destroys the league as a teenager, but Risacher isn’t doing that – he has a modest 14.8 PER in 57 games for JL Bourg. At the French League level (and in EuroCup play as well, one notch below the EuroLeague), he’s fine … but he’s not an elite player.
Historically, drafting players like this from France hasn’t ended well. The two perimeter players in the last two decades who hit as imports from this league were Evan Fournier and Nic Batum, who both had much more impressive numbers in their pre-draft seasons. The ones who didn’t – the Frank Ntilikinas and Sekou Doumbouyas – were overdrafted based on seasons a bit worse than the one Risacher is having, but Risacher’s statistical profile is much closer to those guys than to Batum and Fournier. (I’m leaving Bilal Coulibaly out of this for now, as we don’t know how the story ends.)
History isn’t destiny, and it’s possible Risacher outperforms these comps. But his lack of on-ball juice at this level is a tell that his upside is probably more as a plus role player than a star, especially given that his shooting isn’t a lock and his thin build and lack of toughness raise added questions.
Risacher has shot better this year, hitting 38.9 percent of his 3s, but it hasn’t been on huge volume and his pedestrian shooting marks on 2s (51.6 percent) and from the line (71.9 percent) haven’t budged at all from a year earlier. Overall, big forwards are rare enough that he’s worth drafting, but a team would feel much better about the pick if it isn’t counting on him becoming a starter.
Dalton Knecht
Let’s start with the positives. There’s a reason his name is pronounced “connect”: This dude shot it. Knecht had both the highest 3-point frequency and accuracy of any legit top-50 prospect in this draft. More impressively, he did this not as a secondary off-ball threat, but as part of a Tennessee offense that often reverted to giving him the rock and getting the hell out of his way. Setting aside anything else, that alone automatically gets your foot in the door in today’s NBA.
Concerns about Knecht’s age and defense are real. Additionally, he’s just a career 76.8 percent foul shooter and shot only 49.9 percent from 2 this past season, so perhaps his shooting isn’t quite as elite as the top-line 3-point numbers make it seem. He managed to be extremely accurate despite possessing a more line-drive shot than most elite shooters and a release that still seemed to have some guide-hand involvement. But he has a strong frame, good size and gets into his shot very easily off the catch or the dribble, especially going to his left.
Knecht is already 23; even in an old-trending draft, he will likely be the oldest player selected in the first round. However, he’s also a late bloomer who came in as a transfer from Northern Colorado and ended up winning SEC Player of the Year in a landslide. At least at the college level, his on-ball shot creation was real. Knecht has good size and a quick trigger with a high release point that’s comfortable getting to from different movement situations, and he’s a pretty good two-footed leaper.
Defensively, neither his numbers nor his tape were positive data points, but he’s big enough and has enough mobility that he won’t be instant toast either. Combined with his age, his other analytics don’t point to him being a top prospect, but an outcome somewhere between Corey Kispert and Bogdan Bogdanović feels fairly bankable. He doesn’t have Bogie’s handle or passing ability, but he’s more threatening as a movement shooter than Kispert and has more shot-creation ability. That makes him a likely rotation piece but an unlikely starter; this feels like the right spot to take that plunge.
Cody Williams
How does a 6-8 guy only have a 6.4 percent rebound rate? Williams is a tall wing who can jump, but his mark was the worst on Colorado’s entire team, even worse than the two 6-1 point guards. Yikes.
That poor rebound rate underscores a larger issue that hurts Williams’ draft stock: He just shrinks from any kind of physicality or contact. That was especially pronounced after a midseason injury against Washington State, but even in the stretch preceding that – his best 10-game span of the season – he wasn’t exactly playing smashmouth basketball.
Williams’ stats from that stretch, however, paint a more convincing draft profile than his overall season numbers. He is very slightly built, unlike older brother Jalen with the Thunder, but is a true wing at 6-8 who is dangerous pushing the ball on grab-and-go situations in the rare event he gets a rebound.
Williams has a set push shot and was a very low-volume 3-point shooter because he can’t get into it off the dribble. When he drives in half-court situations, he’s all right hand and has little awareness of secondary defenders as he puts his head down toward the rim. In the open court, though, he’ll have his head up looking for hit-ahead passes.
Defensively, he has the length to challenge shots at the end of plays but doesn’t put up nearly enough resistance up until that point. He doesn’t pressure the ball or anticipate, and offensive players easily nudge him aside if he’s still in range. He’s also pretty nimble chasing smaller players around screens.
Overall, there are some Ziaire Williams vibes (no relation) where you wonder if scouts are coloring in lines that might not really be there. He might just be a guy who floats through games getting cardio. But between the scarcity of tall wings, the non-broken shot and the open-court athleticism, this Williams also flashes starter upside that becomes worth the plunge outside the lottery.
Tidjane Salaun
Much of what I say above about Risacher also applies to Salaun. Like Risacher, Salaun is a tall forward who has put up middling numbers as a teenager in the French League. He showcases obvious athleticism with deep shooting range, and at 6-9, he projects as a four once he fills out physically.
I can’t quite put Salaun in Risacher’s level because he’s been less productive in the same league and had less of a resume in age-group competition before this point. There are more clear-bust possibilities given the limited feel for the game Salaun has shown offensively. That said, you can also talk yourself into Trey Murphy-type possibilities fairly easily if the shooting piece is real, especially given the rapid improvement he’s made over the last two years.
While Salaun is only at 31.6 percent from 3 this year, the fact that he shoots well from the line (81.5 percent this year) and the frequency of his bombs (one every 5.5 minutes) are both strongly positive indicators for his long-term effectiveness from distance. (So, too, is the sheer audacity of some of his pulls, but I don’t have a stat for that.)
On the negative side, Salaun is a very mechanical player. He makes up for it with toughness and athleticism, but there are some tragic plays on the tape when he tries to get outside his limited box of 3s and dunks.
That overall package might not get you into the top 20 most years; there’s a real chance the lack of feel swallows him up and he busts. But in a draft like this one, it’s worth taking the plunge on his right tail of starter-level outcomes.
Ja’Kobe Walter
Walter is a tough evaluation because the outlines are there for a 3-and-D guard in the mold of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. That’s a reasonably attainable mid-case scenario, not some outlier upside thing.
There’s just not a whole lot more you can stick a fork into. Walter shot 3s frequently but not all that accurately (11.6 attempts per 100 possessions but only 34.1 percent from 3 and 79.2 percent from the line). He played perfectly acceptable defense … and otherwise did little that would move a role-player evaluation for better or for worse.
Most notably, Walter shot very poorly inside the arc (just 40.6 percent in Big 12 play) despite playing on an elite team, a red flag for his finishing and shot-creation skill. That came with a negative assist-to-turnover ratio too. An unusually high free-throw rate for a player of his ilk offset that, but offensively, it’s hard to see him as more than a second option.
Defensively, the story gets better. Walter has good size and moves well, pressures dribblers and posted a solid steal rate in his one college season. Physically, he looks like he can match up against NBA shooting guards and will likely need to embrace that part of the game to become a viable starter by his second contract.
Jared McCain
McCain has a couple of things working against him. He’s short for a shooting guard at 6-3 and has yet to show enough burst or playmaking to believe in him as a full-time point guard. He’s also old for a freshman, having turned 20 in late February, and that has to factor into the evaluation when comparing him to other one-and-dones.
McCain, however, has a believable skill set as a knockdown shooter from 3 who can also get to enough pull-up and midrange opportunities to pad his scoring numbers. He shot 41.4 percent from 3 and 88.5 percent from the line this past season, and the 3-point volume was significant (11.0 attempts per 100 possessions). McCain shot 52.1 percent inside the arc, and an impressive-for-his-size 9.3 percent rebound rate shows some functional athleticism.
On the defensive end, McCain will give up inches, but his tape was pretty solid. He does a good job keeping dribblers in front of him, uses a high hand in his stance to deter jump shooters and actively communicates. He had a solid steal rate too. One worries that NBA wings will play right over the top of him given his size and the fact that he only blocked two shots all season, but he can likely thrive if he can cross-match with a bigger point guard.
The debate between McCain and Walter is a tough one; McCain is the more bankable shooter, but Walter is bigger, younger and has fewer positional questions. Both rate as a cut above the next tier at this position.
Oso Ighodaro
I’m a firm believer in bigs who can pass — that trait tends to indicate outsized feel that can worm itself into other facets of the game — and Ighodaro is the best passing big in the draft. He is very comfortable operating from the elbows and hitting cutters or operating dribble handoffs, and his size and leaping ability should make him at least a decent rim runner on the tail end of those actions. Ighodaro can also handle the ball well enough that Marquette occasionally ran inverted pick-and-rolls for him. While he’s not an outside shooting threat, he does have a nice floater game he can get to when the rim is blocked off.
Ighodaro grades out very well in the switching type of perimeter defense that most NBA teams demand from their bigs now. He gets up on guards, not letting them waltz into off-the-dribble 3s and instead sliding with them when they try to get to the cup. He seems almost more comfortable with that than going against players his own size; he doesn’t play with much physicality or toughness. Players who spin and stop on him, or post players who get into his body, can give him some trouble.
Ighodaro isn’t seen as a first-rounder because he falls short on a lot of the traditional big-guy stuff. He’s not an elite rim protector, with a decent but hardly overwhelming 5.6 percent block rate in Big East games, and he’s a phantom on the glass with a career 12.1 percent rebound rate in conference play. Similarly, he shies away from attacking the rim at times, settling for the floater even when it seemed he could get to the rim. Those factors turn off some scouts and could limit him to being a backup, but a rotation big isn’t a bad outcome this deep in a weak draft. That feels like Ighodaro’s floor given his other skills.
Trey Alexander
He back! My sleeper from last year pulled out of the draft following the combine, allowing us to have a rare encore in the sleeper section. Alexander didn’t have a great year at Creighton relative to his previous draft stock, mostly because he began the year in a horrible shooting slump. But by the end of it, most of his statistical indicators were pointing exactly where they were a season ago. And after playing the point full-time this past season, he’s more credible as a true combo guard.
Alexander isn’t a sure thing, but I think his prospects have been undersold. He’s a wiry, slightly undersized shooting guard whose handle may be good enough to play extended minutes at the point. He has a solid outside shot that has some clear potential for improvement, and he doesn’t have any red-flag indicators that would preclude him from playing rotation backcourt minutes.
Alexander’s defensive tape was just OK, but dig deeper, and you’ll see a lot of really good defensive slides followed by some weak shot challenges at the end. On a Creighton team with basically no bench, it seemed he was trying incredibly hard not to foul — and indeed had one of the lowest foul rates of any prospect in this draft. He did struggle with physicality (when players got a bump on him, he couldn’t always recover), and that may be an issue at the next level if he can’t fill out a bit more.
Offensively, you’d also like to see him get all the way to the rim more. Alexander leaned pretty heavily on putting pick-and-roll defenders in jail and then shooting tough pull-ups; that’s how he shot only 47.2 percent on 2s in Big East play. On the other hand, he moved from shooting guard to point guard and posted nearly two assists for every turnover under the burden of a much higher usage rate (26.6 percent). He only shot 33.8 percent from 3 this past season, but he’s a career 82.2 percent foul shooter, and his 3-point shot seems to offer an obvious pathway to improvement if he could just square up better and stop missing to the sides so often.
Jonathan Mogbo
Mogbo has some things working against him, which is why I couldn’t quite get him into my top 20. He’s only 6-6 and played as a rim-running five at San Francisco, making zero 3-pointers and attempting only two all season. He’s already 22. And he didn’t play in a power conference.
Nonetheless, he becomes a compelling proposition because the strengths here are strong; if the shooting comes around at all, he has a great chance to be a steal in the back half of the draft. Mogbo played guard as a kid before a late growth spurt and handles the ball very well for his size, but more importantly, he is a good passer who averaged 7.4 dimes per 100 possessions – lofty stuff for a center. He’s able to push his own rebounds, lead the break and make decisions on the move and run actions from the elbows in the half court.
He combines that with a very different skill: elite rebounding, despite being an undersized center. His 22.0 percent rebound rate led the WCC and was fourth in the nation – just ahead of some guy named Zach Edey.
Mogbo has great instincts that show up behind his passing, particularly in a superb steal rate for a center (3.2 swipes per 100 possessions) and his high field goal percentage in the paint. While he’s not going to be rim-running for dunks except, perhaps, in brief cameos as a junk-ball five, he’s shown he has the all-court game to be a productive NBA forward. He reflected much of that in the NBA Draft Combine, where in 37 minutes across two games, he filled the stat sheet with 11 rebounds, seven assists and four steals.
Now, about the shooting: I’ve seen Mogbo shoot 3s before games, and his shot isn’t broken. He has a push shot from distance and it’s a bit slow, but he can be threatening enough to warrant at least some token degree of respect from defenses. He shot 69.2 percent from the line in his final college season.
At this point in the draft, I’d take those positives and the upside over the fairly meh outlooks of the rest of the field. Realistically, I expect Mogbo to be picked in the 40s or 50s, but I think he’s one of the most interesting players in this class.
Bub Carrington
Carrington was only moderately effective in his one college season, but a July 2005 birthdate and a workable base of guard skills hints at more.
He shot only 32.2 percent from 3 and 78.5 percent from the line, but his future is as a shooter: His form looks good from a set position and off catch-and-shoots, and he gets good elevation on his shot. Where he tended to get into trouble was when he went to more complex moves, where his balance would break down and his arms would get out of alignment, dragging down his percentages. That said, he shot 3s at a high volume, and that part of his game should translate.
Carrington also rebounded well for his size and had nearly two assists for every turnover in ACC play despite often playing off the ball.
Where you worry a little is in some of his athletic indicators. Nothing is easy for him; he has skill for his size but doesn’t exactly pop off the floor or blow by opponents on the move. His piddling rate of 1.0 steals per 100 possessions is extremely low for a guard prospect, and the tape showed him giving acres of cushion, suggesting he didn’t trust his feet much. He also only shot 47.0 percent on 2s partly because he didn’t put a ton of pressure on the rim.
I’d have an easier time giving Carrington a top-20 grade if his youth was accompanied by a bit more athletic sizzle. Still, he’s very young and decently skilled, so there’s some chance he turns into a valuable offensive player. In a draft where most of the remaining prospects are quite old, his age is a major differentiator.
Tyler Smith
Smith has some yellow flags that keep him out of my top 20 – he’s not a very instinctive defender, and you want a big man to read things at the end of the floor quicker. Positionally, he seems a bit stuck between four and five. There are parallels to Christian Wood, where Smith’s defense may be suspect enough that teams can’t fit his offense onto the floor. The more positive argument is that he can be a Bobby Portis-type third big who rains buckets while toggling between two frontcourt spots.
Smith has a fairly high ceiling as a stretch big at the offensive end, especially since he companies that with plus athleticism. He’s not a total zero on defense either, hustling end to end and offering secondary rim protection as a shot blocker. His rapid improvement from Overtime Elite to his one year at G League Ignite also speaks well in his favor, especially since Ignite wasn’t exactly a program with which players regularly made giant strides.
Smith mustered 61.6 percent true shooting in the G League as a stretch big despite playing without a real point guard who could make his life easier. He hit 36.0 percent from 3 on solid volume and showed the ability to face up smaller opponents on switches and let it fly from midrange over the top of them. Between his size, left-handedness and Texas roots, there are some Chris Bosh parallels offensively.
Smith needs to hit as an offensive player, though, because the rest isn’t nearly as far along. In particular, he has to up his physicality to survive as an NBA five; a 12.7 percent rebound rate isn’t going to cut it.
Pacome Dadiet
Dadiet isn’t a big “tools” guy the way a couple of other French prospects are, but his statistical output as a teenager in a B-level European league aren’t all that different from what the more highly touted Risacher and Salaun accomplished. I get the question about whether Dadiet is more a “floor” player than a ceiling one, but teams are constantly looking for guys in this size profile who can stretch the floor.
Dadiet would seem to have a decent chance of qualifying on these fronts, especially when attached with the possibility of being stashed overseas for another year or two before a team is compelled to bring him over. Let’s start with the shooting: While the numbers aren’t overwhelming (35.8 percent from 3, 74.4 percent from the line), the eye test says his jumper is wet. He has a nice, compact flick that comes off his fingers rotating perfectly and good balance getting into shots off the dribble.
Between that, his size and athleticism, Dadiet doesn’t need to add a heck of a lot on the ball to be a useful player. That’s good news, probably, because he hasn’t shown much juice as a creator. He has a high bounce, doesn’t change directions easily and doesn’t read the floor all that well.
Dadiet wasn’t exactly a defensive player of the year candidate in Germany this year, either. He has size and mobility on his side, but lowlights included only blocking eight shots in 903 minutes – #NotGreatBob when you’re 6-8 – and generally reading plays a half-beat late or slow.
Overall, Dadiet seems underrated to me given his birthdate, as his odds of achieving rotation-level usefulness seem pretty decent. I’d rate him a better version of Kyshawn George – younger, more athletic and with a more credible résumé of production.
Zach Edey
My basic outline of the risk-reward proposition on Edey goes something like this:
He’ll probably get cooked on defense. But what if he doesn’t?
Edey had dominant college stats and looks amazing in some statistical models, but the center position is the most radically different one when we talk about jumping from the NCAA to the NBA. In a related story, big, lumbering centers are the fail point of many draft models.
Edey will have to play a different game from what he did at Purdue, where he basically cut through the paint into post-ups on offense and played deep drop coverage in the paint on defense (I’m talking Jacques Cousteau deep). NBA centers, even the best and slowest ones, are now asked to defend in space, run to the rim in pick-and-roll and be threatening on the move out of short rolls.
In that sense, it feels like Edey arrived two decades late. Many aspects of his game are reminiscent of Yao Ming, with immense size making his shot unblockable and a high, accurate line-drive release. Any team that posts him up consistently will get points out if it. It’s just a question of whether he can avoid calamity at the other end.
However, a career rate of fewer than one steal for every 100 minutes is truly phenomenal, and not in a good way. It’s another indicator of the defensive mobility issues that might swamp his offensive contribution. To be fair, Edey held up better than you’d think on switches in the limited number of times Purdue tried it; NBA guards will be able to walk into pull-up 3s against him, but he can get in a stance and use angles and his imposing size fairly effectively to take away blow-bys.
Finally, a piece of the Edey debate that has received far less discussion: Drafting older centers has been a surefire way to light money on fire for at least the last decade. Edey is 22.
Overall, the “What if he figures it out like Brook Lopez did?” question on defense is tempting enough that he probably becomes worth a dice roll in the 20s and 30s. Even in a draft this weak, however, I can’t see him going higher than that.
Kel’El Ware
Is there something here? Maybe? Almost across the board, Ware’s indicator stats were neither good enough to stamp him as an automatic first-rounder nor bad enough to exclude him from consideration. He has a thin frame, and opposing post players are likely to have success getting into his body, but he also showed more toughness and mettle at Indiana than in his freshman season at Oregon.
Ware’s most impressive numbers come at the doctor’s office. He measured 6-11 3/4 in socks at the combine with a 7-4 1/2 wingspan and 9-4 1/2 standing reach. That, plus decent mobility, offers serious potential as a rim protector; Ware’s block rate wasn’t exceptional, but the tape at Indiana shows some weird plays where it seems like he could have blocked the shot and opted not to, perhaps in an effort to avoid fouls.
Ware’s offensive role is perhaps a bigger question; he has shown the skill at times to step out and hit 3s but has yet to do so consistently. Similarly, his length and mobility give him obvious utility as a rim runner, but his ability to pass out of those situations remains a question. Between that and the lesser value I put on drafting centers, I can’t quite put him in my top 20, but he’s interesting.
DaRon Holmes II
Holmes was a hugely productive college player but seems trapped between the four and five spots at the NBA level and will have to make some adjustments for his game to work at either position.
Unfortunately, it seems like he’ll have to play the five defensively despite only measuring 6-8 3/4 in socks at the combine, because he doesn’t seem that comfortable defending on an island. The hands are active, and he can contest shots late with his springiness, but he gives a ton of ground to guards. Meanwhile, in the paint, his lack of lower-body strength means opponents can either power through him or spin off him with relative ease.
Offensively, Holmes became a really good player at the college level but doesn’t quite have one go-to skill that differentiates him as a pro. He can make 3s (38.6 percent this past season on 83 attempts) but a career 67.1 percent mark at the foul line doesn’t inspire confidence that he can become a true stretch option. He’s a good one-on-one player who scored at an extremely high rate at Dayton (40.4 points per 100 possessions!) and can put it on the floor and pass, but a lot of the things he did best to dominate the Atlantic 10 will become more difficult against NBA size. Still, Holmes could reach the point where has a Christian Wood-type offensive impact.
All of this makes him look like a typical late first-rounder, with enough tools to make a rotation if everything works out 10 percent better than the median expectation.
Jaylon Tyson
Tyson doesn’t blow you away with athleticism, but he has a good basketball IQ and a believable skill set for a wing, shooting 37.2 percent from 3 over his three college seasons while often acting as a lead ballhandler for an overmatched Cal team. He measured as a disappointing 6-5 1/2 in socks at the combine, so his future is definitely at the two and three, but his solid frame and plus rebound rate are indicative of somebody who can play bigger.
Defensively, Tyson’s clips make it hard for me to get fired up about him as a first-rounder. He doesn’t trust his feet enough to get into the ball, instead giving players cushion to waltz into a jump shot, and he doesn’t have the length to make impactful shot challenges once they go up. He had a high steal rate in his first two college seasons, however, and can likely put more effort into this end if he’s not being asked to create every shot for the offense.
Tyson’s shooting accuracy isn’t a major question, but he does have a slow release on his shot, and it’s off to the side of his head. Additionally, his role was likely too big for him even as a collegian, with a high turnover rate and just 55.7 percent true shooting. He showed some craft as a finisher to compensate for his lack of elite athleticism and being generally slow, but he’s going to need oodles of it at the next level. Those factors kept Tyson out of my top 20, but his IQ and skill could make him a solid rotation wing if he can hold up on defense.
Justin Edwards
Edwards was an older freshman (he turns 21 in December) and isn’t an elite athlete (a 28-inch no step vertical, confirmed by his getting rim-checked on a two-footed dunk attempt in Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament loss to Oakland.), thus, the high-lottery hype he had coming into the season was likely always misplaced.
That said, I think the pendulum might have swung a bit too far against him during his disappointing campaign at Kentucky, and Edwards is a pretty good bet to be a useful role player at the next level. He wouldn’t be the first Wildcats perimeter player under John Calipari to look a lot better after he left Lexington.
The narrative is that Edwards had a terrible year, but he ended up with a 18.5 PER on 66.9 percent true shooting in SEC play – pretty darned good for a one-and-done. Going deeper under the hood, he shot 56 percent on 2s and had a respectable steals rate. That’s partly offset by a poor assist rate and a sky-high foul rate, but there’s nothing red-flaggy in his profile. Underwhelming in places, maybe, but not red-flaggy. He played two pretty solid games at the combine, too, and dished out five assists.
Edwards’ feel for the game is definitely a work in progress – he was the lord of the one-dribble pull-up 2 in the first half of the season, and his 3-point shooting numbers in SEC play this season (a torrid 50.1 percent) likely vastly overstated his true ability level. Edwards’ shot doesn’t always come off his hand cleanly, and his release isn’t terribly fast. While he got on a big hot streak in conference play, he made 36.5 percent from 3 overall on fairly low volume and 77.6 percent from the line. I’d project him as an average shooter for a small forward.
Players in this size range are always in demand, and you can play several of them at once. Thus, I’ll always be biased toward taking them higher rather than lower, especially the young ones. Edwards has his flaws, and it’s possible he just doesn’t have the feel to overcome his other limitations. This package, however, seems worth taking a stab at between picks 20 and 40.
Baylor Scheierman
In a draft with a surfeit of 23- and 24-year-olds, Scheierman is my highest-ranked senior citizen after Knecht. He will turn 24 in September and has bad athletic indicators: low rates of steals, blocks and 2-point shooting across all 17 years of his college career. (OK, five years, but still.)
However, the lefty offers a clear positional fit as a big wing who can shoot and operate as a secondary ballhandler. He was the best player in the on-court session at the draft combine (which nearly all the projected first-rounders skipped), and historically, that has had some predictive value. (Take a bow, Andrew Nembhard.)
Also, guys with this kind of shooting track record (38.1 percent from 3 on massive volume, 87.6 percent from the line) have been pretty bankable as NBA role players, especially when they combine it with positional size. Scheierman also punches way above his weight on his glass, posting a stellar 15.9 percent rebound rate in Big East games. This is a low-ceiling, high-floor proposition, but in a weak draft, it gets my last first-round grade.
KJ Simpson
It feels quite odd that two Colorado players are projected to go ahead of Simpson, given that he was obviously the Buffaloes’ best player and probably should have won Pac-12 Player of the Year over Arizona’s Caleb Love.
Simpson is only 6-0, which immediately puts him behind the eight-ball in the NBA game. His athletic indicators are positive, including a 10.0 percent rebound rate that’s sensational for a small guard, but he doesn’t have the freakish blow-by quickness that you’d like from a player of this size. Simpson’s breakout junior season instead came about through a massive leap as a shooter; he nailed 43.4 percent from 3 and 87.6 percent from the line in 2023-24.
The tape shows a guy who could get opportunistic steals but wasn’t turning guards three times coming up the court or anything; again, for a small guard, you’d hope for a bit more ball pressure. That said, I think sometimes teams are too dismissive of the idea that a small guard can succeed with skill and craft; Tyus Jones, for instance, has done so without shooting nearly as well as Simpson.
While he probably profiles as a backup, at this point in the draft, Simpson feels like a reasonable proposition. He probably doesn’t warrant a fringe first-round grade in a normal-strength draft, but all the remaining options are either significantly older, significantly worse or both.
Adem Bona
May I interest you in a 6-8 center who can’t shoot? Bona probably tops out as a backup given his offensive limitations and lack of height, but he has the athleticism (35-inch no-step vertical) and length (7-3 3/4 wingspan) to make up for only measuring 6-8 1/4 in socks at the combine.
Bona had a lot of success switching onto guards on the perimeter and was comfortable getting up into guards dribbling; he also had a high steal rate for a center. Despite his size and frequent defensive forays on the perimeter, he had a 9.9 percent block rate in Pac-12 games. The bigger concern with him is probably on the glass, where he punched below a typical draftable center’s weight with just a 14.2 percent rebound rate.
Offensively, Bona pops off the floor on rim runs, but his potential there was largely nullified in a constipated UCLA offense that rarely offered open lanes to paradise. His skill set is pretty limited otherwise, with a predilection for turnovers and a career 67.6 percent free-throw rate. That showed in his first combine game, when he fouled out and had four turnovers, although he played much better in the second one.
Bona’s ceiling is likely too limited to justify a first-round pick, but he has fairly believable utility as a switchable, high-energy big man who can get some free points on dunks.
Ryan Dunn
Dunn can guard all five positions, and his defensive tape doesn’t leave many questions. He averaged 3.1 steals and 5.4 blocks per 100 possessions in a conservative scheme, finished second to teammate Reece Beekman in the ACC Defensive Player of the Year vote and had a plus rebound rate for a four. Physically, he only measured 6-6 1/4 in socks at the combine but has a 7-1 1/2 wingspan, making him a rare “plus-7” in NBA parlance. The reason to draft him is for his defense; he can be an impact player on that end from Day 1.
Unfortunately, today’s NBA is all about offense, and Dunn’s outside shot is a down-to-the-studs rebuild. He began the season taking 3s but lost all confidence as the year went on and wasn’t looking at the basket by the end. He’s an atrocious foul shooter, too. Right now, nearly all his baskets come on dunks and layups from random offense; while he could have some potential as an undersized rim-runner, it’s hard to see somebody of his size surviving for long on an NBA floor without a real 3-point shot.
That makes Dunn a classic second-round dart throw, a bet that maybe his shot comes around enough to keep him on the floor for his elite defense.
Yves Missi
It’s easy to understand why Missi is getting first-round looks; he pops off the floor in game tape in a way that demands you rewind and ask, “Who the hell was that?” He had a 31-inch no-step vertical at the combine, but it’s how quickly he gets up for blocks and finishes that gets your attention.
Missi is old for a freshman, turning 20 in May, but also young as a basketball player, coming to the U.S. from Cameroon in 2021 with relatively little experience. You can see that with all the rough edges in his game; he doesn’t have great feel for passing and fouls with abandon.
Some other aspects of his game present questions too. A player of this ilk should put up huge rebounding numbers, but Missi’s rebound rate (14.5 percent in Big 12 games) was unimpressive for a center prospect. He also didn’t show a lot of comfort defending on the perimeter and had a very low steals rate even for a center.
The reason he’s in the mix for the first round is the combo of athletic pop and ballhandling skill for his size; Missi loves to face-up opposing bigs from the free-throw line and has superior mobility to take them off the bounce. Without an accompanying shooting threat, however, this may be much harder to pull off in the NBA. Overall, I get why some teams have him rated as a top-20 prospect given the developmental upside, but there are too many rough edges. I wouldn’t roll the dice until the second round.
Harrison Ingram
Ingram might be slightly too slow and slightly too unskilled to make it as a rotation player, but the league is starving for guys in his size profile who can dribble and pass, and he checks those boxes. If he hits, he’s going to end up being a valuable player.
Ingram made an encouraging 38.5 percent of his 3s this past season, but he shot only 34.5 percent from 3 over his college career to go with a ghastly 62.4 percent from the line. He also doesn’t pop athletically, especially in terms of getting separation, but a 7-0 1/4 wingspan makes up for his coming up short, literally, in socks (6-5 1/4) at the combine – just a wee bit shy of the 6-7 he was listed at through college.
Ingram, however, is a pretty good leaper and outperforms on the glass, with an eye-popping 18.5 percent rebound rate in ACC games last season. He also can handle the ball and distribute well enough that he operated as Stanford’s de facto point guard for two seasons before transferring to North Carolina. Defensively, his tape was solid as an on-ball defender, and he has some handsy-ness to go with his basketball IQ.
He kept those trend lines up in the combine games, where he had 19 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists and four steals across the two contests in 45 total minutes. I’m surprised his combine performance didn’t get more attention, as he was one of the best players there. Between his positional value, varied skill set and being a relatively young junior who won’t turn 22 until November, Ingram seems underrated right now.
Tyler Kolek
Kolek is already 23, but he’s a left-handed pick-and-roll maestro who averaged 13.5 assists per 100 possessions and shot 55.2 percent on 2s. He’s also a good shooter with his feet set, although his release is slow and he doesn’t seem comfortable launching coming off or around screens; that’s why he only took 6.8 3s per 100 possessions, low volume for a skill-based guard prospect. His high-arcing shot barely rotates in the air but splashes regularly; he’s an 81.9 percent career foul shooter and made 38.8 percent from 3 his final season at Marquette.
Kolek, however, can be prone to turnovers; he’s so focused on jailing the defender in pick-and-roll that he barely seems to notice what’s in front of him. He’s also left-handed and a bit small – listed at 6-3 at Marquette – he measured 6-1 1/4 in socks at the combine. A 27-inch no-step vertical won’t get anyone’s blood pumping either.
Kolek rebounds well for his size and has a solid steal rate, but I think his feet will be challenged at the next level. He projects to be a solid backup, but it’s harder to see starter-level outcomes, and if he’s not good enough to keep the ball in his hands all the time, I’m not sure what his role is.
Kyshawn George
George is already 20 but got his first taste of high-level basketball with the Hurricanes this year after arriving from Switzerland. He has perimeter skill and is comfortable shooting from deep, with the size to see over closeouts and fire away. George made 40.8 percent of his 3s on plentiful volume, and his high assist rate for a forward indicates he can move it to the next guy when an opening isn’t there.
Athletically, however, George underwhelms. His no-step vertical was just 27 inches at the combine, and he had a pathetic 7.3 percent rebound rate at Miami. Offensively, he has no juice whatsoever inside the arc, shooting just 46.7 percent on his rare 2-point forays, with a high turnover rate and few free throws.
On a more positive note, George's steals and blocks rates were credible for an NBA prospect, and for somebody with no burst, I was surprised by how well he could hang on defense. Even though he was usually bigger than his opponent, he liked to play up on dribblers and get into the ball, and his first slide was solid. He just had no catch-up speed if he was initially beat.
Overall, there’s a believable 3-and-D package here, but the low-wattage athleticism and shot creation puts a hard ceiling on it. Even if George hits, it likely will be as a low-volume offensive player chilling in the corners most trips.
Juan Nunez
Nunez just turned 20 and already is a very effective player in the German league who throws saucy left-handed dimes; he also gets reps for Spain’s national team. Despite that, his combination of limited athleticism and iffy shooting has teams left struggling to get too excited about him. Specifically, the dude cannot jump – a 22-inch no-step vertical has to be some kind of record for a guard prospect.
While the athleticism stands out on his stat sheet in some ways (two blocks in his last 2,500 minutes), Nunez offsets that with a tremendous nose for the ball. His rebound rates are excellent for a point guard (9.6 percent this season, 10.3 percent last season), and his 3.7 percent steal percentage nearly led the Basketball Bundesliga.
He’s also a bona fide point guard at 6-4, with more than an assist every five minutes this season and more than two dimes for every turnover. All of that would make him pretty easy to buy into, despite the athleticism questions … if he could shoot.
Nunez has shot exactly 60.7 percent from the foul line each of the past two seasons. No es gran, Roberto. From the 3-point line, he has shot 31.9 percent two years in a row. While his consistency is admirable, Nunez has to be a plus shooter to succeed on an NBA floor, and at the moment, he’s nowhere close. A glass-half-full perspective is that his shot doesn’t look overtly broken; it just doesn’t go in much.
Nonetheless, his age and stashability (he reportedly signed a new deal with FC Barcelona) make him a solid pick at this point in the draft. Teams can either see his shot develop and bring him over as a plug-and-play rotation guard or don’t have to bother rostering the pick if he can’t fix his shot.
Jamal Shead
An undersized bulldog with a questionable outside stroke, Shead has elements of a poor man’s Kyle Lowry if he can just straighten out the 3. His pure activity was enough to generate 27 points and 10 assists in two combine games, and as a backup point guard, he profiles as somebody who can provide a jolt despite his size and shooting question marks.
Shead only shot 29.2 percent from 3 for his college career, he measured 6-0 1/4 in socks at the combine and he turns 22 in July. That’s enough for some to cross him off their list right away, but he’s a hyper-defender who generated 4.3 steals per 100 possessions in Houston’s high-pressure defensive system, and he worked well enough as a distributor to hand out three dimes for every turnover.
He’ll need those passing numbers to translate, because Shead’s shooting woes aren’t just outside the arc; he only made 45.1 percent of his shots inside the arc in Big 12 play, with his size making it harder for him to get clean finishes at the rim.
AJ Johnson
Johnson had a rough season in Australia, finishing with a 7.0 PER in 239 minutes. The shooting is a real question: Forget shooting from distance, he barely made a third of his 2s.
That said, Johnson’s performance in the combine scrimmages likely earned him a lot of grace for his rough year overseas. He won’t turn 20 until December, and we’re nearly out of teenage prodigies to bet on at this point on the board. Additionally, he played against older prospects at the combine and finished 7 of 14 from the field with 10 assists and one turnover in the two games. Included in that total was a flying dunk down the lane that every scout there will tell you was the most memorable play of the week.
I’m not going to readjust my board because somebody had a cool dunk, but Johnson’s pre-Australia priors were strong – he was a five-star recruit in 2023 before decommitting from Texas to venture Down Under – and his overall combine performance was reasonably convincing. He’ll have to play point guard because he’s so thin and his shooting remains a concern, so I can’t give him a first-round grade. But he’s definitely … interesting.
Nikola Đjurišić
Đurišić is good enough that I wouldn’t consider him a pure stash – more like somebody you leave overseas for one more year and then bring over. He’s already a solid player in the Adriatic League and could potentially be more if he can shoot consistently.
He measured 6-7 in socks at the combine, although he had a short wingspan, making him a legit small forward. That makes his other standout feature more compelling: He can really pass, averaging nearly four dimes a game in Europe this year, and remember, overseas scorekeepers are much less willing to credit assists.
On the downside, Đurišić shot only 30.5 percent from 3 last season after making just 21.4 percent the year before; despite that, he took about a third of his shots from 3 in both seasons. His foul shooting has been only slightly more consistent (69.1 percent in 2022-23, 76.1 percent in 2023-24). Additionally, his six-percent rebound rate is just plain sad for a player of this size.
Đurišić helped himself at the combine, scoring 20 points in 32 minutes and only committing two turnovers; notably, he made several jump shots on the second day. His shooting numbers this season were notably improved from the year before, so it’s possible this part of his game is coming around.
Jaylen Wells
Wells is 6-7 and shot 41.7 percent from 3 in 2023-24. Yes, tell me more. Every team in the league is looking for his skill-size intersection. Arriving in the Pac-12 as a relative unknown from Sonoma State, Wells played as a role player even in college but did exceedingly well. In addition to the 3s, he had a microscopic turnover rate (just 1.4 per 100 possessions) and added some scoring juice inside the arc. He also shot 81.4 percent from the line, in case you were worried the 3-point shooting was a fluke.
That said, Wells has some limitations that likely cap him as an NBA role player. He had exceptionally low rates of blocks and steals – despite standing 6-7, he only blocked eight shots all season – he was a poor rebounder and rarely created for others. The combine games highlighted some of these deficits, as he had just three rebounds, one steal and zero assists in two games. He also missed some open 3s he’d typically make and still managed to score 13 points in the second game, but it wasn’t exactly an eye-catching performance.
Ajay Mitchell
An unusual player who requires several viewings to get a handle on, Mitchell is a strong lefty who has a variety of finishes in the paint area and thrived putting small guards in jail on the block. I’m not sure that will work as well in the NBA as it did in the Big West, but he has other skills to fall back on, as he showed at the combine when he ran the point for two games and handed out nine assists.
A big swing skill for Mitchell will be his 3-point shooting; he upped his percentage to 39.3 percent this past season but on very low volume. From a flat-footed standstill, he has a low release and it’s a bit slow getting out, but it’s fine – his 81.8 percent career mark from the line supports that.
Where things get weird is on the move, where it seems like a hidden grappling hook off screens is tugging him to his right; watching him shoot before a game, he consistently ended up several inches to the right of his takeoff spot. That balance issue is important because he will need to shoot 3s off the bounce at the next level, and right now, that’s not in his bag.
Physically, Mitchell is not an elite athlete by any stretch, but he has a strong base and a solid frame that should help him guard up a position on defense if he needs to. Mitchell has a Belgian passport, incidentally, but it seems unlikely that he would be selected as a stash pick.
Cam Christie
The brother of Los Angeles Lakers guard Max Christie, Cam Christie shot 39.1 percent from 3 on fairly high volume in his one season in Minnesota. Because of that and his positional size, there’s an obvious hope that he can be a reasonable 3-and-D guy.
However, even relative to the other one-and-done guys in this draft, the Christie steak seems severely undercooked. He only shot 40.8 percent on 2s in Big Ten games and was often a secondary option on a team that wasn’t exactly overflowing with talent. The athletic markers (blocks/steals/rebounds/free throws) are all underwhelming too. The biggest reason to select Christie is his birth certificate – he’s the youngest collegian in this draft, beating Bub Carrington by three days, but Carrington’s freshman season was far more productive.
That said, the eye test on Christie’s athleticism is better than his stats – he can run and jump, and his tape shows him sliding his feet and keeping dribblers out of harm’s way. He just doesn’t make many plays; maybe that changes in time. Christie is a developmental play who a team would probably want on a two-way for all of 2024-25 rather than burning a roster spot, but he’s the last legit college prospect on the board who can’t legally enter a bar.
Trentyn Flowers
Flowers is 19, measured 6-6 1/2 in socks and posted a 34.5-inch no-step vertical – only three players at the combine topped it. He shot 5 of 5 in his first combine game, and while he certainly wasn’t good in Australia this past year, he wasn’t destructively bad once Adelaide stopped a ridiculous experiment to play him at point guard.
Flowers doesn’t always use his athleticism in the course of a game – how did he only block two shots in 300 minutes? – and three turnovers for every assist is definitely a red flag. His best developmental pathway might be as a shooting specialist who can add the ability to get downhill in straight lines, but his impact is likely to be limited unless he can read the game a bit better and fill out more physically (he was only 201 pounds at the combine).
He's an interesting bet because there just isn’t a lot of good information here: He hasn’t played in a game since January, and he was a half-notch below the top recruits who played in events like the Hoop Summit and Jordan Classic. Still, virtually any teenager who shows some ability is a better bet than the sea of 23- and 24-year-olds left on the board at this point in the draft.
Enrique Freeman
Freeman might have the most compelling backstory of any other prospect in the last decade. He went to Akron on an academic scholarship and walked onto the team because a coach saw him crushing in pickup.
Four years later, Freeman ended up graduating as the best player in the Mid-America Conference and hanging 21 and 14 on Creighton in an NCAA Tournament game. While he was there, he picked up his MBA.
Freeman measured at just 6-7 1/4 in socks at the combine and only 212 pounds, but he played center at Akron and led the nation in rebound rate at 23.2 percent. His vertical isn’t that impressive – 30 1/2 inches on his no-step vertical – but he’s what scouts call “bouncy,” getting off the floor quickly and hopping back up right away on his second jump.
Obviously, he’ll need to change positions as a pro. Freeman added a 3-pointer to his arsenal last season and is clearly still developing, so his age might be “younger” than it is for most. Still, he’s ancient for a prospect, turning 24 in July, and his poor rates of steals and assists are indicative of ways he might struggle on the perimeter at the next level.
Freeman likely quelled a lot of doubts by his performance at the combine, where he was a standout in the on-court sessions and finished his two games with 29 points and five steals. He’s a strong two-way candidate who might even get a roster contract if he lands in the right place.
Dillon Jones
Jones is an odd player, one who isn’t a great shooter or much of a leaper, has a football player’s body and turns 23 in October. Yet, he impacts the stat sheet in enough ways that he might still be a top-40 guy.
Let’s start with the bad news. Jones only jumped 26 1/2 inches at the combine in his no-step vertical and weighed in at 236.8 pounds, easily the heaviest of any perimeter player. Those dimensions are great for a nose tackle, not so great for a shooting guard. Also, he shot just 32.0 percent from 3 in his college career, including 32.4 percent in his final season, and some of his passing skill is offset by a sky-high turnover rate.
That said … there are enough oddball, disparate strengths here to think he could be a valuable player if the 3 straightens out. Jones has very long arms – a 6-11 wingspan – helping him overcome his athletic deficits. He has a great nose for the ball, too, with a mind-boggling career defensive rebound rate of 32.1 percent. Sure, this was in the Big Sky Conference, but it stands out anywhere, and it has translated to higher-level environments. (Jones’ rate this year was second in the entire nation; again, he is a 6-5 guard.)
Jones’ length also is an equalizer for him on defense, where he picked 3.2 steals per 100 possessions. He handles the ball well for his size and is a bowling ball going down the lane, drawing heaps of fouls in the process.
As for the shot? Jones shot 85.7 percent from the line last season and 82.3 percent for his career, offering some hope that the underlying skill is there to eventually knock down 3s more consistently.
There are questions about his competition level, but in two combine games, he did his usual stat-stuffing thing with 13 rebounds and nine assists while earning nine free-throw attempts. He only shot 3 of 12 from the floor, including missing all five of his 3s, and it may be that his bully-ball style just doesn’t work at the next level. But at this point of the draft, he’s worth a shot.
Jalen Bridges
Bridges isn’t much to look at athletically, but he’s 6-7 with a 6-10 wingspan, shot 41.2 percent from 3 last season and is just good enough on the ball to avert disaster if he’s asked to create something. While last year’s 3-point performance might have been a slight outlier, the southpaw profiles as a plus shooter who can occasionally score in the paint when he has an advantage, and that played out in his two combine games.
All of this pencils out as “third-best guy on his G League team” as often as not, especially since Bridges is already 23. Bridges is here in a sea of other older wing candidates. Among the group, he’s probably the least athletic but the most skilled, and his size is a plus if he can really play the three full-time. As always, I’m interested in any 6-7 guys with perimeter skills on draft night; while Bridges isn’t exactly the type of prospect who has you feverishly texting the GM immediately after the game, he has a decent chance to stick.
Terrence Shannon Jr.
Off the court, Shannon was found not guilty of charges of rape and aggravated sexual battery in a case that saw him briefly suspended from the Illinois team this past season. He turns 24 in July, which makes him superannuated even by the standards of this portion of the draft. I’ve been tracking the southpaw as a draft prospect since his freshman season at Texas Tech, and the on-court pros and cons remain largely the same: He’s an athletic wing who can get downhill to the rim, but he’s a shaky skill guy whose shooting comes and goes, he doesn’t see the floor well and he is extremely left-hand dominant.
Shannon, however, improved to 36.2 percent from 3 and 80.1 percent from the line this past season. The finishing package was too much for college opponents to handle: He shot 56.3 percent on 2s in Big Ten play, with a mammoth free-throw rate. That said, he’s not going to overwhelm NBA opponents like this; his other athletic indicators were pretty ordinary.
Pelle Larsson
Another 23-year-old, Larsson’s Swedish passport could give him a leg up on getting drafted if he is willing to play overseas for a bit.
If he stays stateside, however, he also has a clear pathway to back-end rotation minutes because of his shooting. Watching Larsson shoot before games this past season was a treat; it’s all high arcs and clean swishes. He shot 42.6 percent from 3 in the actual games; his career marks of 39.7 percent from 3 and 81.3 percent from the line offer a massive sample size that he can stroke it.
The only question is why didn’t he do it more? Just 5.4 3-point attempts per 100 for a player with a stroke like his is baffling. Larsson can do other stuff, though; he shot 57.8 percent on 2s in Pac-12 games, with an unusually high assist rate for a wing and nearly two dimes for every turnover. He was a relatively low-usage player even in college, but he can be an efficient role player.
Defensively Larsson is more suspect, creating few events while still fouling like crazy and making little impact on the glass. Between that and his age, his upside likely tops out as a back-end role player, but he’s a reasonable pick once we get into the 40s.
Tristan da Silva
Here’s my Johnny Davis/Jalen Hood-Schifino special for 2024. Da Silva has been getting top-20 buzz that I just don’t understand. He’s 23 and his statistical profile is basically indistinguishable from guys like Jalen Bridges and Pelle Larsson. I’ve seen him in person and several times on TV and am trying to figure out what I’m missing here; maybe I’m just too dense to see it, but I haven’t.
Even relative to the other old guys in this draft, da Silva’s résumé is pretty underwhelming – he’s a good but not great shooter on low-ish volume from 3 who floats through games and doesn’t show much in the way of plus physical or athletic traits. Compared to Larsson, for instance, who is the same age and played in the same league, da Silva was a worse 2-point scorer and a dramatically less impactful passer, without any real advantage to counteract that.
Da Silva does check a size/shooting box at 6-8, but he struggles to get separation on offense and doesn't show a whole lot of resistance on the defensive end. He gets beat laterally, shoved aside physically and leaves his feet on shot-fakes. The only positive is that he has enough experience chasing his man from behind that he’s become somewhat adept at blocking shots that way.
Da Silva’s set shot from 3 is nice, though, with a perfect arc, and he showed some hints of grab-and-go potential. Still, it’s one thing to take a 23-year-old in the first round if it’s somebody like Dalton Knecht, who razes the SEC to the ground. It’s quite another to take one who was the second-best player on the nation’s 40th-best team and didn’t make the cut for the 10-man All-Pac-12 squad. He’s a two-way guy for me.
Bronny James
This ranking won’t surprise people who have been tracking this all year, but those just checking in now on draft news might be surprised to hear the younger James is a fairly fringy draft prospect.
Let’s review. He isn’t a point guard because he has a rather poor handle for a player his size, so his measuring 6-1 1/2 in socks at the combine was a bummer. On the other hand, he has a 6-7 wingspan and a 32-inch no-step vertical, attributes that should allow him to play bigger than his size. Between that and his solid frame, he should be able to guard most twos if he can stop fouling so much.
The offensive end, however, is the bigger concern. What does he do? James had a 10.3 PER on 47.2 percent true shooting at USC, coming off the bench for a team that went 15-18. He shows flashes of passing acumen, but it’s only flashes because he’s rarely compromising the defense in the first place – he just doesn’t have the handle or first step to do that.
That leaves him more dependent on being a catch-and-shoot threat, and right now, he’s not. James shot 26.7 percent from 3 and 67.6 percent from the line at USC, and while I’d argue his form is better than his numbers, he’s pretty clearly a long way away from being a threat in an NBA game.
James is a reasonable developmental prospect on a two-way, in the hope that his shot comes around and he can become sort of a mini-Lu Dort with his frame and defense. I’ll note that I’ve seen him play in person several times, and despite the last name, he gives off absolutely zero sense of entitlement; he just shows up and plays team basketball. The issue here is more about talent, believe it or not. At his size, he just needs way more skill to crack an NBA rotation.
Kevin McCullar
McCullar is a winning college basketball player who does a lot of “little things,” so his draft buzz didn’t emerge from vapor. Nonetheless, his transition to the NBA is likely to be extremely challenging. He’s another 23-year-old, and he measured a disappointing 6-5 1/4 in socks at the combine. (He was listed at 6-7 at Kansas.)
Offensively, McCullar has to show he can space the floor; he was a career 30.9 percent 3-point shooter on extremely low volume in college. It’s not like he was tearing teams up inside the arc, either; he was a secondary scorer at both Texas Tech and Kansas until leading the Jayhawks in scoring in his fifth season, and even then, he did it with just a 51.2 true shooting percentage in Big 12 games.
McCullar has also struggled with injuries (he played 30 games just once in his five college seasons). There are positives here – a high steal rate and generally good defensive tape offer some promise on that end, and his passing instincts are solid enough to make a good secondary playmaker. I’d like him a lot better as a potential energy guy on a two-way.
Ulrich Chomche
Chomche was getting first-round buzz earlier this spring, but his performances at the Hoop Summit and the combine were underwhelming, to say the least. There are the rough outlines of a player – he has a good frame with long arms (7-4 wingspan and 9-1 standing reach), he shows some facility as a passer, and his shot isn’t broken.
However, he is plagued by the scourge of big men – bad hands – and in the two prospect-laden events in which he played this year, the game at both ends moved waaaaay too fast for him. He needs a year in a developmental league just to reach the point where we can evaluate him more properly as a prospect, let alone bank on him being part of an NBA team’s future.
Bobi Klintman
If I may damn Tristan da Silva with faint praise … he’s surely at least better than Klintman. Klintman has been a big Mock Draft Guy for two years in a row despite his results on the court, playing as a meh backup as a 20-year-old in the ACC (12.0 PER in 33 games for Wake Forest) in 2022-2023 and an unremarkable player as a 21-year-old in the fairly low-level Australian league in 2023-24. (He shot 43 percent on 2s, with nearly two turnovers for every assist. Yikes.)
Both in college and in Australia, Klintman had low per-possession rates in the assists and steals categories that often are tip-offs to “maybe there’s something more here.” Instead, the attraction seems to be the theoretical prospect of a mid-30s 3-point shooter suddenly turning into Ryan Anderson. Crazier things have happened, I suppose; Klintman has size and can rebound and could be a developmental late bloomer after not playing high-level competition in his native Sweden.
In the broader outline, he’s a bad defender without much in the way of offsetting positives unless he’s going to become cash from the 3-point line. I can’t imagine using a first-round pick on him; for me, he’s an overseas stash pick or a developmental two-way.
Melvin Ajinça
Ajinca turns 20 on draft night (the first one, I should specify) and shot a 3-pointer every 4.5 minutes last year, making 35.7 percent of them. He also blocked just two shots the entire season as a 6-7 forward in the kinda-mid French league and made fewer than half of his rare 2-point attempts.
Combined with his measuring with a short wingspan and a 26 1/2-inch no-step vertical at the combine, it paints a clear picture: This guy had better rain fire from 3, because there’s not a lot of other elements here to get excited about at the NBA level.
Armel Traore
I kind of like this guy and don’t think he’s been talked about enough. Traore can’t shoot right now, making 28.1 percent from 3 and 64.6 percent from the line in France last season, but he has the size, length and athleticism to play at the next level. He popped off the screen in 2022-23 in cameos as a teammate of Victor Wembanyama and Bilal Coulibaly, then took on a more prominent role this season in Blois.
Traore also posted a 17.1 PER in the French league, which is better than that of Ajinca, Risacher or Salaun. Traore is 21, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it gives you some idea of the fact that he’s not a total stiff right now, and if he ever shoots, he’ll have genuine value.
Ariel Hukporti
A fairly generic 22-year-old beast-ball big, Hukporti doesn’t exactly scream upside, but he has a German passport that makes him a strong stash candidate. He enjoyed a successful season with Melbourne this past year before signing for a brief cameo in Germany with MHP-Riesen at the end. (Australia’s season ends earlier, so players can double-dip like this.)
The big man has been on the NBA radar for years now, making an impression by winning MVP at the 2020 Basketball Without Borders camp before leading a nomadic existence as an overseas pro.
Reece Beekman
The ACC Defensive Player of the Year, Beekman is an outstanding defender for his size but is going to have trouble convincing teams his offense is good enough to keep him on the court for defense, especially since you don’t see many defensive specialists at point guard. While he had a high assist rate at Virginia, the Cavaliers’ system was heavy on pindowns that created easy assist chances without generating particularly valuable shots; he hasn’t shown many moments of being a spicy pick-and-roll creator or a notably incisive passer.
As a shooter, you wouldn’t necessarily say the shot is broken, but you sure wouldn’t call it good; Beekman made 31.0 percent of his 3s on relatively low volume and doesn’t get into his shot easily on the move. He’s also a very right-handed offensive player, though he showed some more variety in his final season in Charlottesville.
Isaac Jones
Jones turns 24 in July and for most of this season looked like another pretty good college big who would end up in Europe. However, he was fantastic in the postseason scouting circuit, dominating in Portsmouth and at the G League Elite Camp and holding his own in the combine scrimmages. One thing that helps: He can pass, dishing out six dimes in his two combine games; we didn’t get to see that much of this with the Cougars.
That said, there are obvious concerns about Jones’ age, size and lack of a true perimeter skill set. He measured only 6-7 3/4 in socks at the combine and made only seven 3-pointers in his two college seasons. He does show some pop as a finisher around the basket, and his 7-3 wingspan offsets some of his height disadvantage. This wouldn’t exactly be a high-ceiling pick, especially given his age, but Jones might be able to challenge for rotation minutes immediately.
PJ Hall
Hall put in a pretty good combine performance in 2023 before pulling out of the draft, but opted not to play in 2024’s scrimmages. It’s possible I’m too low on him: Hall offers an interesting skill combination with a 7-1 wingspan and some springiness off the floor that could allow him to play minutes at center, but he also has the outlines of a stretch skill set that might allow him to play time at the four.
The key is whether those skills just leave him a positionless tweener or allow him to toggle across both. Hall didn’t have an overwhelming senior year, but he’s slightly younger than most of the other “seniors” here since he didn’t stay for a fifth season, turning 22 in February. He was a key player in the Tigers’ run to the Elite Eight, however, and if his stat outline isn’t overwhelming, neither is there anything overly tragic that disqualifies him. With slightly more upside than most of the players we’re looking at in this realm, he’d be a good player to have on a two-way or end-of-roster contract.
Zyon Pullin
This is the one old guy I might like a bit better than the masses. Pullin is 23; he played four years at UC-Riverside before transferring to Florida last season, where he forced his way into the starting lineup by hardly ever making a mistake. Pullin had an amazing 4-to-1 assist-to-turnover rate, which is crazy considering he often wasn’t even playing point guard; he also shot 44.9 percent from 3, albeit on extremely low volume, and made 84.7 percent from the line.
His other stats are indicative of some athletic deficits that may swamp him as a pro: very low rates of blocks, steals and rebounds and just 44.2 percent shooting inside the arc. But he drew a ton of fouls, and his ball skill is indicative of feel and instincts that could pop at the NBA level.
Tristen Newton
It may surprise some college fans to learn that the Most Outstanding Player of the 2024 Final Four is only 50-50 to hear his name called at the draft. His iffy shooting is the biggest issue, but he also doesn’t profile as an elite prospect in other ways: Newton shot only 44.4 percent on 2s in Big East games, his rates of defensive events are low for a guard prospect, and he turned 23 in April. Additionally, his decision to sit out the combine scrimmages might not have been wise.
Newton does pack some positives, particularly an off-the-charts rebound rate for a guard, and his ability to run an offense and get the ball to the right places could see teams value him as a third point guard at the end of the roster.
N’Faly Dante
Dante played five injury-riddled seasons at Oregon but isn’t even that old, turning 23 in October; he was recently denied a petition by the NCAA to play an additional season. As a big man, he offers a straightforward package of finishing and rebounding without a ton of skill to surround it. He’s not the most clever passer and is just looking to get a bucket once he catches the ball, but his size and length make him a pretty effective finisher despite only average leaping ability.
Defensively, he might be a bit underrated; he played drop coverage at Oregon but gets his hands on a lot of balls (2.8 steals per 100) and offers credible rim protection (7.0 percent block rate in Pac-12 games). Non-stretch centers without explosive hops don’t tend to get pulses racing on draft night, but Dante has a ceiling as a rotation backup.
Judah Mintz
An actual young guy! Mintz turns 21 in July, setting him apart from virtually every other prospect in this part of the draft board. The other thing that separates him, alas, is a 29.1 percent career shooting mark from 3. Mintz wasn’t notably good inside the arc, either, only converting 47.7 percent of his 2s in ACC play over his two seasons at Syracuse.
Other elements of his box score line are more encouraging: He drew fouls at a high rate and plucked 3.1 steals per 100 possessions in conference play despite having short arms. He also has a knack for eye-catching passes, even if his overall assist rate was pretty ordinary and there were too many turnovers along the way. A middling showing in the G League Elite Camp likely eliminated Mintz from the “draftable 58” on most boards, but he’s definitely worth looking at on a two-way.
Isaiah Crawford
Crawford is a fifth-year senior from a small conference but has a lot of positives in both his statistical production and tape that indicate he could be a sleeper. While he measured small for a player who played the four in college, Crawford has a “plus-7” wingspan of 7-0 1/4 that allows him to play bigger than his height. And for an old prospect, he’s not even that old, turning 23 in November.
Crawford failed to stand out at the G League Elite camp and doesn’t possess elite athleticism, but between his shooting promise, his positional fit (everyone needs wings!) and his physical dimensions, this seems like the right type of player to roll the dice on with a two-way slot.
Antonio Reeves
Reeves can really shoot, hitting 44.7 percent from 3 and 86.3 percent from the line last season. While that is pretty much the beginning and end of his resume, that alone is likely to get him some opportunities. Reeves’ movement also gives him a chance to make an impact even if the shots aren’t falling; in the combine games, he shot just 2 of 10 from 3 but still managed to tally 26 points and six assists in the two contests.
While he’s not exactly a dynamic ball hawk on defense (his steals rate was a pathetic 1.1 per 100 possessions), Reeves measured 6-4 1/2 in socks with a 6-8 1/4 wingspan at the combine. That gives reasonable hope that he can line up against opposing twos and not be complete toast.
Turning 24 in November after a five-year career that began at Illinois State, Reeves is likely too limited to stick in the league for long, but his shooting is a wild card that gives him a chance.
Cam Spencer
Spencer was a delight to watch at UConn but faces an uphill battle to stick at the next level. It’s hard to overstate how small he looked against other wing prospects at the combine, where he measured 6-3 in socks and posted a 23-inch no-step vertical. In the games, he struggled to get to his spots and finished 4 of 15 from the floor with seven fouls in 35 minutes.
Spencer also turned 24 in April, so this isn’t exactly an upside play. But it’s possible the combine highlighted his warts too harshly. Spencer’s shooting is real (he shot 44 percent from 3 and 91.1 percent from the line last season), and he’s a good passer who also makes phenomenally few turnovers. Finding a defensive home for him and creating conditions where he can get enough shots away to make his mark will always be questions, but in the right system, he has a chance to be an impact two-way.
David Jones
Jones’ draft combine was a disaster, but the wider body of work suggests there might be a decent prospect here. While his listed height of 6-6 at Memphis was laughable – he measured 6-3 1/2 in socks at the combine – Jones has an incredible nose for the ball, posting an impressive rebound rate for a player of his height (12.9 percent) and pilfering 3.8 steals per 100 possessions. He also improved to 38 percent from 3 last season and 79.7 percent from the line, cleaning up what had been the shakiest part of his game, and is a year younger than most “seniors” in this draft because he only played four years of college.
The adjustment for him at the next level is to stop trying to take everyone one-on-one and play as an off-ball role player. If he buys into that and harnesses his defensive instincts, he has a chance to be a useful 3-and-D player.
Anton Watson
An impact defender with long arms and an unusually high steal rate for a player of his size (3.3 steals per 100 possessions), Watson is an effective paint finisher who made 63.6 percent of his 2s in his career at Gonzaga but rarely shot 3s and wasn’t effective from distance (30.7 percent career) or the line (62.7 percent).
As a developmental player, there’s some mild hope that a shooting boost could see him become enough of a floor spacer to keep him on the court for his defense, but he also turns 24 in October, so the clock is ticking. His age and limited offense make it hard to draft him, but as a two-way, he’s interesting.
Isaiah Stevens
Stevens seems almost pre-ordained to follow in the footsteps of luminaries such as Doug Overton and Anthony Goldwire, a perfectly good emergency point guard who can come in, run the offense and soak up some minutes for exactly 10 days before being returned to the G League when better players become healthy. Stevens is a career 40.2 percent 3-point shooter who proved he can run an offense adeptly at Colorado State, but he lacks blazing speed, measured 5-11 at the G League Elite Camp and failed to stand out in the scrimmages.
Keshad Johnson
Johnson turned 23 three days before the draft after spending his fifth college season with Arizona; previously, he’d played at San Diego State, playing a key role in the Aztecs’ run to the 2023 national title game. He’s a big-framed forward who can move, and scouts have looked at him as an energy guy who can run the floor and defend.
His combine performance was perhaps humbling in this respect, as he just couldn’t impact the game offensively and mostly operated on the fringes; he also measured just 6-6 1/4 in socks with a 6-10 1/4 wingspan, which would leave him quite undersized against most fours.
That hurts because Johnson doesn’t really have the skill to play the three. He started shooting 3s this past season and made 38.7 percent, but he only shoots the wide-open ones, and a 64.2 percent career mark from the line doesn’t augur well for his future marksmanship. Johnson also had pretty low rates of blocks and steals for an energy guy. Overall, he’s worth a look with a two-way, but I’d have a hard time being convinced to use a draft pick on him.
Quinten Post
Post has a Dutch passport that could allow him to be a late stash pick, but given that he’s already 24, he likely wants to get things rolling on his NBA hopes sooner rather than later. He was the mainstay of a poor Boston College team, a highly skilled big who earned All-ACC honors with a mix of 3s, low-post buckets and passes from the high post and elbow areas.
Post has a strong frame but will be at a disadvantage athletically, particularly on defense. He’ll have to play drop coverage and needs to prove he’s a credible shot blocker and defensive rebounder to stick. His high foul rate (6.1 per 100 possessions in ACC play) and relatively low block rate (2.9 per 100) aren’t promising, and that’s why I’ve rated him as a two-way guy rather than a draftable player. A forgettable stint at the combine probably didn’t help any.
Jaylin Williams
Sam Presti has a chance to do the funniest thing …
Williams was certainly efficient in his fifth and final season at Auburn; in SEC play, he shot 64.9 percent on 2s, 41.3 percent on 3s and 84.6 percent from the line. He’s a good shooter with his feet set and posted solid assist rates, and he’s a fairly good rebounder for his size. The eye test isn’t quite as effusive, however, as Williams seems a bit slow and underpowered for the perimeter and doesn’t flash much on-ball skill, likely consigning him to life as an undersized four.
Aaron Estrada
Estrada’s name hasn’t come up much in the draft world, and partly for good reason: He turns 24 in November and was plying his trade at Hofstra 18 months ago. However, he helped Alabama make the Final Four in his fifth college season and was good enough at the G League Elite Camp that it was surprising he didn’t earn an invite to the main combine, finishing with 14 assists and three turnovers in his two games.
Estrada is a total non-athlete who jumped just 23 1/2 inches on his no-step vertical, and he’s not exactly a knockdown shooter (31.3 percent from 3 last season), although a career 86.3 percent mark from the line offers hope he can do better from distance as a pro. More often than not, this archetype tops out as the third-best player on a G League team, but it’s pick No. 75 in a weak draft. Estrada is likely worth a two-way.
(Top photos of Donovan Clingan and Bronny James: David Becker, Jamie Schwaberow / NCAA Photos / Getty Images)
