Subscribe now

Gambling is often thought of as a negative in basketball. In real life, sure. It rots your mental health and bank account, creating a dependency on a game tilted against you. In basketball, it’s perplexing why we see it as such a bad move.

What is “gambling” in a basketball context?

Most often, it’s applied to jumping passing lanes, willingly risking a positional disadvantage to swing for home runs. In this sense, it is gambling. There is risk involved, though; it isn’t stacked against the gambler in the same way gambling on markets is.

In basketball, the risk-reward formula is tilted in favor of the gambler – not the market (or opponent). Think of 3-point shooting, something thought of as too inefficient a shot to take, favoring shots inside the arc instead, before Stephen Curry came around and shook the ideology with simple math.

A team may shoot 50 percent from 2, but that comes out to just a point per possession without factoring free throws. Take a 3-pointer at just 35 percent, and that equates to 1.05 points per possession. Fifteen percent worse for 5 extra points over 100 possessions.

That holds until you get to transition opportunities.

Both shots get more efficient in transition, obviously. There’s less defenders, and even 3-pointers are easier to shoot out of the traditional, half-court five-on-five setting.

The points per possession garnered on 2-pointers climbs from 1.03 to 1.20 in transition, with 3s going from 0.99 points per possession to 1.10. It’s no secret that the game’s most efficient shots come with nobody in front of you – that’s what transition is.

There’s no real correlation in the NBA between high transition frequency and offensive rating, but good teams, on average, forced a ton of turnovers.

It’s personnel dependent – the Spurs didn’t rack up turnovers, in large part because their perimeter defense is designed to funnel opponents into their one of a kind defensive centerpiece, Victor Wembanyama.

Personnel rules all, and that shouldn’t be forgotten. If you’re built to defend the rim, you shouldn’t be giving up 3-point attempts by overextending into passing lanes and whiffing. You should be running people off the line, and into your vortex of length around the rim.

If you’re weaker around the rim, understand that any transition attempt you get is going to be more efficient than the majority of half-court attempts you concede. If you’re stacked with great defensive playmakers, it’s doubly so.

Offensively, personnel matters even more. The Bulls want to play fast to make up for league-worst half-court offense. They’re also not great on defense, so they don’t force turnovers. The Thunder force a ton of turnovers, yet are so elite in the half-court with a bevy of shooters and the best scorer in the league that slowing it down isn’t a bad idea for them.

There’s no correlation between forcing turnovers and getting out in transition because of this.

That means we need to look at the defensive end, where common sense dictates gambling more, and thus, forcing more turnovers, leads to better defense.

The common response to this is, “The more you gamble, the more open shots you’re giving up.”

While there’s no correlation between great offenses and high defensive turnover rates, there’s even less so between a high defensive turnover rate (dTOV) and a bad defense. The Pistons and the Thunder – two of the top three defenses in the league – were the the top two teams in dTOV. Every team higher than a 14 percent dTOV had a defense above league average.

A top-10 team in dTOV had an average defensive rating of 114.16, 1.2 points petter than league average. On the other side, a bottom-10 team had an average defensive rating of 116.44, 0.6 points worse than league average.

“Good defense creates turnovers” isn’t exactly new philosophy. Winning the possession game is the hot topic in basketball philosophy right now, and the easiest thing to point to regarding that is nabbing more steals than your opponent.

Dean Oliver, the creator of basketball’s four factors (eFG%, TOV%, OREB% and FTr) weighs the factors in terms of relevancy, with eFG% taking first place at a 40% margin and TOV% being second at 25%.

Ultimately, the best way to defend is stopping opponents from making shots. The reason stopping them from taking shots altogether is weighted lower is because it’s much harder. The average NBA team took 89.1 shots in 2025-26. They only committed 14.5 turnovers. There’s more opportunities for influence on shots than there are on turnovers.

Share

More individually, the difference between prospects who force turnovers and those who don’t showcases a wide difference in NBA success. Below is the list of drafted players younger than 21 to record a steal percentage greater than four percent.

The list for those less than three percent is much larger, and thus, more varied. The majority of success stories are bigs, and factoring for position, the busts outweigh the successes quite a bit.

The busts in the list above are either remarkably small or lacking significantly in other aspects, and were drafted lower because of it (side note: Tyreke Evans is not a bust).

One thing I’ve come to realize is “stocks” isn’t a good enough measurement of…anything. Steals and blocks should remain separate as they bring two different values, both in winning and evaluation. Steals are a marker of feel with a smidgen of athleticism. Blocks are the opposite. Great rim protectors who lack feel exist – they have outlier tools, but might leave plays on the board without elite quick-time decision making and early rotations.

It’s the same with steals. Lackluster athletes can rack up steals because it is a measure of process – seeing the game a step ahead and making your move before the opponent has time to do the first thing every basketball player is taught to do: protect the ball.

Share Prospects & Concepts

Steals can be systematically repressed or emphasized, though. The difference between getting steals and gambling on them is aggression, after all. If you minimize aggression, you get less steals. If you maximize it, you get more.

Almost every college basketball program has some modicum of aggression in getting steals, and, for the most part, it’s advantageous to their offense and defense – except one outlier. Illinois.

Brad Underwood’s squad has eliminated the unofficial fifth factor of basketball, transition, through a complete disregard for creating turnovers. The Fighting Illini had the best offense in the nation last year, adjusted or not. They were also last in the nation in steals per game.

Underwood’s offense predicates the intersection of athleticism and feel by emphasizing feel in the half-court as a method to score. The Illini are far slanted in the direction of feel, running through Keaton Wagler, a subpar athlete, and building an offense through his ability to exploit the pick-and-roll.

They purposely forgo the most efficient context in the game, tailoring themselves to a form of feel that forgets steals.

From a fore factors perspective, Illinois was maybe the best team in the nation. They were 46th in eFG%, fourth in TOV%, third in OREB% and 232nd in FTr. Illinois’ free-throw aversion is a symptom of lack of defensive aggression leaking into offense.

Defensively, the Illini were very similar to the Spurs – few steals, funneling opponents into an elite backline (top-30 in the nation in block rate and defensive rebounding rate). This is another function leading to little transition.

If the ball is meant to get into the paint, the offense is more likely to be the first back in transition, leading to slower offense and fewer transition opportunities.

Would it stand to believe Illinois’ offense would have been better with a more aggressive defense and more transition opportunities? Perhaps. The Illini were 96th percentile in transition efficiency, scoring 1.224 points per possession. The crux was their 2nd-percentile frequency.

The trade-off is less half-court attempts, where they were also dominant. On 98th-percentile pick-and-roll frequency, the Illini were 98th-percentile in efficiency. Even still, they were nearly two-tenths of a point better in transition.

Do teams who run a lot end up sacrificing in the half-court? If that was the case, it would be understandable why Underwood kneecapped his transition attack.

It’s not. Just look at the Saint Louis Billikens. The Billikens were 96th percentile in transition frequency, and only fourth in half-court frequency. Despite this, their half-court offense was one of the best in the nation, ranking 98th percentile – slightly better than Illinois.

Both these teams have superb half-court talent: elite playmakers and play finishers, with a bevy of shot-makers in the margins. They have skill and feel, and thus, they dominated.

In the same vein, some teams are not equipped to score in transition. They are naturally slower, and thus don’t choose to play slow, they have to. For high-end college teams, and NBA teams, this is rarely the case.

While higher steal rates – or “gambling” – isn’t indicative of better offense, or even a higher transition frequency necessarily, it’s conducive to pace of play. Faster teams have more opportunities to get in front of their defenders; the easiest way to do this is knock the ball loose.

Higher steal rates are also indicative of high feel. Feel is one of the translative pillars between levels, alongside athleticism. Steals represent both.

It can be learned just as easy as it can be suppressed. Illinois had an elite offense and defense without steals or transition play, while a team like Vanderbilt was elite with more steals and more fast breaks.

Just as easily as Brad Underwood was able to half Kylan Boswell’s steal rate from 2023-24 to 2025-26, Mark Byington was able to double Duke Miles’ – and I don’t think any draft sicko would see Boswell as the better 2026 NBA Draft prospect.

The advantage of prioritizing steals are simple: better defense, higher pace/better control of the possession game and greater NBA outcomes. It’s common critiques say gambling leads to more out of position players, and thus better shots for opponents, but that isn’t the case statistically.

Outliers exist, as they do in every aspect of the sport, but a team like Illinois isn’t plausible with just about any other set of players. Play to your personnel, but don’t forgo the most efficient play-type in the game, wide spread, unless you have enough half-court firepower to outweigh it.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Are small guards back? Not officially, but they’re gaining momentum. Several of the best decided to come back to college, with undersized freshmen poised for big roles out of the gate. The NBA is ultimately about size, but these guys are anomalies.

Before we list them off, what makes a small guard good?

The college basketball darling is a Markus Howard or Myles Powell type. Little guys who get up shots, hit the big ones and look cool doing it. Ultimately, this type rarely translates to the NBA, indicating the higher barrier for entry the smaller the player is.

The other form of small guard is the bulldog defender and patient playmaker. Think Zakai Zeigler – a guy who defined Rick Barnes basketball for half a decade with the Volunteers. The issue is he couldn’t score well enough.

Even a combination of elite shooting and defense isn’t guaranteed success in the NBA. Reed Sheppard was the closest to this in recent memory. He led the SEC in steals, blocked a shot every 40 minutes and hit more than half his 3-point attempts, leading the SEC in true shooting as well.

Sheppard’s barely had time to make it to the water cooler in the NBA, but his trip there hasn’t come without a stumble or two. The third-overall pick in 2024 played just 654 minutes his rookie year – 12.6 per game in 52 appearances – and struggled a good bit in his sophomore campaign, failing to add lineup impact as a rebounder or team defender, while still struggling with efficiency (48 percent from 2 and a nine percent free-throw rate).

The shortfalls in Sheppard’s profile are glaring in hindsight. Only 50.4% of his 2-point attempts came at the rim, with just 10% of those rim attempts being dunks. He wasn’t much of a self-creator behind the arc, relying on teammates to draw gravity, with 77 percent of his 3s assisted. More than anything, lackluster free-throw volume and offensive rebounding paint a picture of someone who struggles with physicality. All has shown in the NBA.

Share Prospects & Concepts

Despite the uphill climb, scouts would be failing to do their job if they didn’t take the time to assess small guards. Here are the five best 6-foot-and-under guards to watch out for this season.

Tyler Tanner, Vanderbilt

HEIGHT: 5’11”, WEIGHT: 175 LBS, BORN: 2006

Tanner’s easily the most well-known name among draft sickos. He tested the combine waters last year, after an iconic season at Vanderbilt, and came back to make millions with sights still set on the NBA.

His intersection of elite feel and functional athleticism is among the best in college basketball, regardless of size. Tanner doesn’t play the part of a small guard well, and that’s for the best. He feels 6 feet, 6 inches when you’re watching him.

It appears that way on the sheets, too. Tanner’s 5.3% stock rate is 93rd percentile among guards, and his 17 dunks are the third-most by any high-major player 6 feet or shorter since 2007-08.

There have been eight high-major players with his combination of dunks, stocks and assists. Every single one made the NBA and has seen success.

The hang-ups with Tanner are size-related; the measurement we see in combines is scary, and some of the issues with Sheppard (namely rebounding) are still there. Tanner’s biggest wart on his profile is the 1.5% offensive rebounding and 10.8% defensive rebounding rates – the latter dropping to 8.5% in top-50 games.

It’s a similar issue, but not the same issue. Tanner checks every other physicality-based box. While his defensive rebounding drops against competition, his ability to get to the line climbs. His free-throw rate against top-50 competition is over 50 percent, and his 2-point percentage never drops below 53 percent.

Tanner truly plays bigger. The rebounding is the difference between him playing like a big guard and a micro-wing.

Jeremy Fears Jr., Michigan St.

HEIGHT: 6’0”, WEIGHT: 197 LBS, BORN: 2005

Fears’ calling card is being a true point guard – somebody who carries the load on the ball as a playmaker who can score, not the other way around – but different from the Zeigler-esque guard discussed in the preamble for a couple of key reasons.

Fears is taller than 6 feet in shoes. The 6-foot-2 measurement Michigan State gives him is likely a tad generous, but it’s meaningful. At almost 200 pounds, he’s the heaviest guy on this list. Those are meaningful physical advantages for a smaller guard.

What Fears does well is obvious: he holds a 3.9 assist-to-turnover rate with the highest assist rate in the country. He’s extremely good at the line and gets there at an elite clip, shooting 88.5% on a 65.6% free-throw rate.

He has easily marked issues, too, and they’re more damning than Tanner’s. His stock rate is less than half, his rebounding is even worse and he only dunked once.

(If he did more of this, there would be almost no concerns.)

The question with Fears is how good of a “pure point guard” can you be to circumvent the restrictions of your size?

Fears’ junior year was a historic passing season. No player since 2007-08 has had a 50 percent assist rate and a 3.0 assist-to-turnover rate. You drop that first number by 10 percent, and you start to find some names.

Two interesting ones pop up: Jamal Shead and Andrew Nembhard. The former is going to be hard to achieve – Shead was an incredible defender at Houston and is in the NBA today. Nembhard, one of the smallest guys in the NBA, didn’t get to the line nearly as much as Fears. It’ll be interesting to watch if anything improves – if it’s the scoring, it gets even more interesting.

Nigel James Jr., Marquette

HEIGHT: 6’0”, WEIGHT: 195 LBS, BORN: 2006

James is the most explosive of this bunch. He’s built like an action figure with springs in his legs and the ability to make a defender look silly while doing exactly what you’d want him to.

James’ 14 dunks were only beaten by Tyler Tanner for players 6 feet and under. He’ll need to be better at the rim overall, shooting just 54.6%, but rim shooting is famously improvable, as is scoring touch in general.

That number shouldn’t discourage anybody questioning his functional size and athleticism, though. He gets to the line at a high rate, racks up steals and is a relatively good rebounder for his size. If he were 6 feet 4 inches, he’d still be an above-average to elite athlete.

The question is the shooting, which isn’t as much of a swing skill as many seem to think, but more on that later. James doesn’t shoot a ton of 3s. Less than 30 percent of his shots came from beyond the arc and less than half of them came in the catch-and-shoot. He shot just 25 percent on those non-catch-and-shoot looks.

There are good indicators, though. James shot nearly 45 percent on catch-and-shoot 3s – better than 50 percent (20-of-38) on unguarded catch-and-pop 3s. The touch has a ways to go, and I think there is a natural cap on how good James can be, given atypical biomechanics on his jumper. However, James can improve, and he does enough as a stellar playmaker and athlete to garner floor time – the most valuable asset to improvement.

Miles Sadler, West Virginia

HEIGHT: 6’0”, WEIGHT: 175 LBS, BORN: 2007

The youngest player on this list, Sadler may have the highest upside. RSCI isn’t infallible; if it were, we’d draft by high school rankings alone, but Sadler being the only five-star on the list is worth noting.

His body of work to achieve that ranking is just as notable. Sadler was one of the most dynamic guards in high school basketball this past year, leading Bella Vista Prep to a National Championship over Montverde Academy. Sadler had 20 points, four rebounds and nine assists in the finale, shooting 50 percent from the floor.

In EYBL, it was much the same. Sadler averaged 14.1 points and 5.9 assists, rarely turning it over and providing bulldog-ish defense.

Sadler’s listed height by West Virginia is 6 feet. That’s a lie. Sadler likely stands much closer to 5 feet 9 inches without shoes and was listed at 5 feet 10 inches out of high school. People who have stood next to Sadler seem to agree that anything with a six up front is bullish, if not delusional.

That said, Sadler’s a first-round pick by my estimation. His impact on the turnover market as a high-steal, low-turnover handler who generates high-quality looks for his teammates, while being relatively efficient as a scorer himself, is not just intriguing – it’s substantial. We’ll know more about how he translates in the coming months, but I’m high on Sadler being maybe the best player here.

Chance Mallory, Virginia

HEIGHT: 5’10”, WEIGHT: 186 LBS, BORN: 2007

Mallory’s a bit of an oddity on this list. Every player above him is an established college basketball star or a top-ranked high-school recruit. Mallory was a respectable four-star prospect, ranked 55th by 247 Sports, who didn’t start for his college team.

Tyler Tanner suggests that’s not a dealbreaker.

Mallory played substantially more minutes. He was more impactful from a box-score perspective and handled more usage with a higher playmaking load. He’ll undoubtedly be at the helm of Virginia’s offense as the starting point guard next year, and has the chance to lead the Cavaliers in a similar way Tanner did for the Commodores.

There are some translational shortfalls in Mallory’s resumé that stand out, however.

Unsubstantiated rumors claim Mallory has a 6-foot-6 wingspan. I don’t believe that. He’s burly for a guard his size – a plus, but it also showcases his lack of horizontal length. Regardless, a 4 percent steal rate, elite small-guard rebounding numbers and high BMI are massive for his defensive translation.

Mallory’s one of the most dynamic offensive players here. He already possesses an advanced shot diet, with 70 percent of his 2-pointers coming at the rim and 49 percent of his total shots coming from 3-point range. He gets to the line at an elite clip, too, averaging more than one free throw for every two field goal attempts.

We could see an All-ACC, if not All-American, breakout from Mallory this year. Stay tuned.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Welcome back to Prospects & Concepts, the NBA Draft blog where we don’t care about accolades unless there’s irrefutable evidence to determine their worth. Otherwise, who cares?

Winning amateur overseas basketball’s foremost team and individual award should hold weight. Those who achieve it should be successful pros, or at least should have a precedent for success backing them. They don’t.

Of the last 10 FIBA U18 EuroBasket MVPs, four have made the NBA. They are as follows:

• 2025: Ian Platteeuw

• 2024: Ben Saraf

• 2023: Nikola Topic

• 2022: Izan Almansa

• 2019: Santi Aldama

• 2018: Marko Pecarski

• 2017: Nikola Miskovic

• 2016: Frank Ntilikina

• 2015: Vasilis Charalampopoulos

• 2014: Egemen Guven

Stefan Joksimovic is the latest of that historically underwhelming bunch, and looks like he may have potential to curb the trend. If you told me he has a 40 percent chance to make the NBA given this alone, I’d call you an idiot.

That’s because, ultimately, what this shows is EuroBasket accolades mean nothing.

Joksimovic is projected to be a top-five pick in the 2027 NBA Draft, and for good reason. His counting stats are impressive enough: 23.1 points per game, 6.7 rebounds, and 3.7 assists on 61.3% true shooting.

Follow me on Twitter!

Joksimovic isn’t the first player to dominate FIBA U18 play, though. So, why is Aldama the only one in recent memory to maintain a rotation spot in his career? Let’s take a brief detour to talk about what makes a prospect good or bad.

Aldama works in the NBA as a low-turnover, plus-rebounding dribble/pass/shoot option on offense. He’s neutral at worst on offense, which outweighs his poor defense and nets him 20-plus minutes per game with the oft-injured Memphis Grizzlies. He now heads to Dallas on a 3-year, $52.5 million deal.

Frank Ntilikina differs. Ntilikina was an elite defensive guard early in his career. He was never an elite stock collector, but his length and feel allowed him to succeed as an on-ball menace against the league’s best guards. To say he never figured it out on offense is a massive understatement. Adjusted for role, Ntilikina’s best-scoring season has him at -4.9 zTS (NBArapm.com’s playtype-adjusted relative true shooting statistic). That’s abysmal. He wasn’t a good playmaker either, with multiple years in the bottom fourth of the league in potential assists per 100.

The league is undoubtedly offensively slanted. The most basic takeaway is even a neutral offensive player who is a below-average defender trumps a one-way defensive player, especially at the guard or wing spot. Offense in the NBA is so good that efforts to slow it down rather than keep up are futile, and a player as poor as Ntilikina is bound to slow his team down more than his opponent.

Share Prospects & Concepts

That reality, on paper, favors Joksimovic, who is much better on offense than defense.

He’s not horrible, though his 6-foot-8 frame is fine-tuned to getting off tough shots and reading over the defense, rather than boxing out or nabbing stocks – a 6-foot-8 wingspan doesn’t help. Joksimovic will likely be a below-average defender for the majority of his NBA career.

The upside comes from the fact that he may be an elite offensive player. Joksimovic presents a unique combination of size, touch and feel that’s hard to come by. When you do come by it, you take it.

The marks above are all ones Joksimovic has hit throughout his career, both in FIBA and in Euroleague/ACB/Bologna play. Simply, you take the players who are young, and are both big and high in feel. These are the three biggest pillars of my draft philosophy.

Among this group are a No. 1 picks, three more top 10 picks and a 13-year NBA pro. That is not a wide array of outcomes – all of them have experienced success, or project to experience it for a long time.

Joksimovic’s game doesn’t scream functionally athletic – at least not until he climbs the latter and jams it or jukes his defender out like a wide receiver running a hitch and catches a backdoor pass for a jam.

Dunks may just seem like a flashy way to get 2 points, and it is, but it’s also more. It’s the most effective way to get 2 points, while being an impossible option for a lot of players, making it a separator, particularly for guards.

They don’t depict an elite athlete on their own, however. It’s a proxy for it, certainly, but the other aspects – rebounding, steals and blocks – are just as important; perhaps even more. Joksimovic, as previously mentioned, isn’t an elite defender. He gets an OK amount of steals, doesn’t block shots, but he holds it down on the defensive glass, which is a huge additive at the guard spot.

All great players have one or more ways to impact possession quality and quantity. The best – players like LeBron James and Nikola Jokic – do it in just about every way, but it can be as simple as grabbing a couple more rebounds than your peers at your position, or limiting your turnovers.

Joksimovic does it through the last two reasons above. The swing skill is the shot-making.

There’s reason for light suspicion of Joksimovic’s effectiveness in his FIBA U18 EuroBasket MVP run. He had a 61.3% true shooting, opposed to a 49 percent true shooting across all competition (26 games played) last season, a greater than 12 percent drop off.

That said, it’s worth noting Joksimovic took more shots in the seven-game run in FIBA than his 26-game season with Baskonia. If Joksimovic were to have come state-side for his pre-draft season, chances are his role and usage would have been much closer to the former than the latter.

Additionally, Joksimovic has excellent feel for the game. He’s not an elite playmaker, and will likely be better off playing alongside another guard than as the sole initiator in the lineup. For that role, however, he’s undoubtedly a great passer and creator.

There’s no sure thing with a player whose sample is that small, but the film looks real, and the numbers have been consistent and optimistic, when reading through the lines.

Does it matter that FIBA U18 EuroBasket MVPs don’t have the best track record in the NBA. For my money, no. Youth competition and scouting is already going to be weird, but Joksimovic’s product put forth screams that he’s an excellent prospect.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Welcome back to Prospects & Concepts, the only NBA Draft blog that thinks positionless basketball should include bulldog-y little guys.

Jordan Smith Jr. is the poster child for this.

He stands just 6 feet 1 inch, and that’s been the case for years. He’s not growing any time soon. Smith is physically imposing for that size, though. He’s a cut-up 205 pounds, with a high-shouldered 6-foot-9 wingspan. He may measure closer to 6-foot-flat without shoes, meaning that’s a plus-9-inch wingspan – tied for the fifth-longest wingspan differential in NBA history.

You know who else has a plus-9-inch wingspan? Kawhi Leonard, someone Smith has compared himself to.

“I feel like my player comparison, people have told me... it's Kawhi, just because of how we attack the best player offensively. And we keep it as simple as possible.”

Jordan Smith Jr.

It’s a noteworthy enough comparison to at least dig into.

Smith truly is built like Leonard, just a half-foot shorter. He’s dominant on defense, as one of the best on that end in the 2026 high-school class. He’s been a shoo-in for three stocks per game, aside from FIBA competitions where he’s consistently played up in age – averaging 2.9 stocks in 15 minutes per game in 2024 with the U17 squad, and 2.7 in 18 minutes per game in 2025 with the U19 squad.

Share Prospects & Concepts

Defensive playmaking, especially relative to size, isn’t just a marker of superior defensive instincts; it’s an indication of all-around cognition. My most popular piece to date discusses this thoroughly, through the lens of a historic stock-man in Allen Graves.

REQUIRED READING: “What ‘stocks’ do and don’t mean”

Smith’s assist numbers aren’t going to blow anyone away. Passing is one of the thresholds he’s underwhelmed in, and why he’s far from the consensus top prospect in this class, along with traditional size.

However, not only does Smith’s defensive playmaking allude to there being more than meets the eye with his passing, it indicates his listed height means little.

One things stocks also do is translate. Whether from high school to college, Division II to Division I, mid-major to high-major, or NCAA to NBA, they tend to be “sticky” numbers.

Smith will undoubtedly be one of the premier non-center defenders in college basketball, in large part due to his defensive playmaking.

The plays below are not indicative of someone who is too small – not in the slightest – especially playing two years up in age. Smith’s functional size is that of a 6-foot-7 wing, or bigger, making him one of the more “positionless” small guards I’ve seen.

The plays above show athleticism, cognition and decisive aggression to the highest degree. Smith’s ability to make these plays doesn’t just aid defense, but it leads to more effective, fast-paced offensive opportunities.

He’ll often leak out after a play, where he’s consistently been incredible.

Smith dunks easy for his size, with 55 in 31 high school games this past year. For reference, that would rank 22nd in the NCAA this past year, over some truly massive individuals – including Morez Johnson Jr., Koa Peat and Trevon Brazile, all forward-sized high-flyers.

Many of those dunks were in transition, but Smith still logged 11 jams in the half court; more than double the half court total for any guard drafted in the 2026 draft lottery.

It is easier to dunk in high school, I’m not going to ignore that. However, Smith is one of the more functional athletes of any guard-sized player I’ve scouted. When he dunks, it can look like a wing, slashing to the rim for one-handed posters. Sometimes it’s even Shaq-like, with post-entries into drop steps for two-handed rim rockers.

It’s Smith’s uniquely, beyond-functional athleticism that makes him positionless.

He blocks shots, is omni-present in passing lanes, rebounds with gusto and dunks with ferocity. Those aren’t things you start the list with when looking for traits in a point guard.

Smith can play that position – it’s where he’ll likely start in Arkansas, especially given their depth of more traditional wings (two other highly-recruited freshmen among the bunch) – but long term, he may find himself elsewhere in the lineup.

There just isn’t precedent for that type of player in the league. In the Bart Torvik database, there’s only been six first-round picks to hit the following bench marks. All of whom have had successful NBA careers.

• Height ≤ 77 inches

• DREB rate ≥ 12.0%

• STL rate ≥ 3.0%

• BLK rate ≥ 2.0%

• Dunks ≥ 10

Smith projects to be the highest-drafted of this bunch, as well as the shortest among them.

Another thing about all these players is the majority figured out how to shoot it well throughout their career. Why? Athletic playmaking and superb processing just gets you on the court.

REQUIRED READING: “Reviewing the 2004 NBA Draft” by 100guaranteed

It doesn’t always amount to shooting, but in the modern NBA, it usually does. While these guys figure out the margins between their superior athletic traits, they’re asked to fill the corners, and thus, become better by repetition.

Though two legs above the query aren’t included in the one above it, Smith likely fills in just as well. His passing, as mentioned, isn’t great for a point guard, but for a wing, it’s exceptional. His offensive rebounding also stacks up.

Smith’s jump shot isn’t anything worthy of adoration right now. In his senior season of high school, 33.6% on a four 3-point attempts per game, making up 31 percent of his shot diet. It also comes with a high-volume, yet underwhelming conversion rate at the line. Smith shot 73.6% on 8.4 free-throws per game.

It’s not much, but it’s reason for optimism. Shooting, in general, is something I see as an overrated swing skill, especially for athletes like Smith, but it’s something those players consistently develop.

So, what are we looking at with Smith? A point guard is not out of the question. He’s consistently been great in the turnover economy, with an assist-to-turnover ratio above two-to-one, but may lack the elite handling and processing necessary for full-time duties.

Is it a wing? At 6 foot 1 inch, it’s unlikely – we’ve never really seen anything like that at that much of a height disadvantage, though, the athletic traits are there.

Until we know for sure, I’m fine with keeping it at this: Jordan Smith Jr. is positionless, and he’s really, really good.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Welcome back to Prospects & Concepts, the only NBA Draft blog talking about a blue blood’s sixth man in July. Trust me, it’s for good reason.

There’s almost no pathway for Drew Scharnowski to start in Durham, aside from injury. He’ll begin playing behind three five-star bigs, while he himself enrolled at Belmont back in 2023 as a measly three-star.

Scharnowski added a star to his belt when he entered the transfer portal in March, grading out as the 30th-best overall player looking for greener pastures. Personally, I believe that is too low.

Scharnowski brings immediate impact in all facets. The weakest area of his game is scoring (10.7 points per game), which he more than makes up for in efficiency, versatility, feel and function.

X (formerly Twitter) user SheedinATL compiled the “stickiest” stats for mid-major players transferring to the high-major level. Stickiness implies how likely the stat is to remain the same from one level to the next.

Follow me on Twitter

There are a couple of widespread takeaways I’d like to address before getting into how this depicts Scharnowski in particular.

1. Feel is universal: Assist percentage is generally your share of team assists relative to minutes played. It is one of the stickier stats listed for the translatability of feel. Assists are not something easily schemed up, meaning it’s hard to add or take away from one’s playmaking load.

2. Functional athleticism is king: Block percentage and rebounding percentage sit first, third and fifth on this list. Steal percentage is seventh and free-throw rate is eighth.

3. Scoring is not guaranteed: It should go without saying that shots are the easiest thing to scheme for. Going to a new team, a new coach and a new system means it’s the shakiest thing to bet on maintaining.

All this is pretty great for Scharnowski! For a big, he was in the 98th percentile in assist percentage, 92nd percentile in block percentage, 88th percentile in offensive rebounding percentage and 82nd percentile in defensive rebounding percentage.

Those things will translate to the highest level, and they’re valuable at every level.

The easiest way to win more games is by securing more possessions. You do that, and you get more shots. You take more shots, you’re almost bound to score more points than your opponent. Scharnowski secures possessions on the glass at an elite level, but he’s also detrimental to his opponent’s shot quality, wiping away shots and taking possessions through steals. Other sticky stats, like 2-point percentage and free-throw rate, mean Scharnowski’s adding efficiency to his lineups.

I expect Scharnowski’s scoring, true-shooting percentage and minutes to take a hit at Duke. His new team is just too talented for him to have the same kind of featured role offensively, and that’s why those numbers file under “icky.”

That’s not a bad thing. For instance, box-plus/minus, a general impact formula, veers on the icky-er side of the coin. Team context is the biggest reason for this. At lesser schools, players will post lower BPMs than they will at bigger schools. Dalton Knecht is a prime example. In two years at Northern Colorado, he posted a 1.8 BPM. That jumped to 11.3 in one year at Tennessee.

Another is Cam Spencer, who made three jumps in his career. Spencer’s a good metric for how relative BPM is more predictive of translatable impact than raw BPM. His 5.7 BPM his last year at Loyola Marymount in 2022 ranked first in the Patriot League, but was 160th in the nation. His jump to Rutgers saw him fourth in the Big Ten, then at UConn he was eighth in the nation.

Scharnowski ranked second in the Ohio Valley Conference in BPM, just 0.5 behind new Iowa State guard Jaquan Johnson. Regardless of his role with Duke, I expect Scharnowski to be top 10 in the ACC in box-plus/minus.

It’s an easy query to run: the most impactful mid-major players, year-after-year, end up being impactful high-major players, if they don’t go right to the NBA.

In 2025, by BPM, the best mid-major players with remaining eligibility were Yaxel Lendeborg, Oscar Cluff and Bennett Stirtz; all of whom were dominant at the high-major level last season and are now in the NBA.

Scharnowski was top-25 on the same list from this past season.

Athleticism is the biggest part of Scharnowski’s game and profile. He shot nearly 70 percent at the rim, logged 46 dunks and two stocks per game. On top of his rebounding and ability to get to the line, he was simply one of the more dominant physical forces in college basketball, regardless of level.

He’s also just a massive player, sitting 6 feet, 9.5 inches and bolstering a 7-foot-3 wingspan. High shoulders also indicate a monster standing reach, which, on top of his impeccable timing, has made him an elite shot-blocker.

When you watch this reel, I want the rotations, timing and hand-eye coordination to be on display. Are these the highest-flying blocks you’ll ever see? No. They’re better.

Athleticism is often poorly defined, at least as it pertains to impact. Is jumping high and running fast athletic? Yes. Is it impactful? Not necessarily. It’s what you can do with athleticism that is. Scharnowski might be a 60th percentile athlete at best in the traditional sense, but he uses 100 percent of it with his extraordinary feel, hence my constant harping on functional athleticism.

It’s feel that unlocks Scharnowski’s impact in this facet – another highly-translatable staple of his game. Scharnowski is a fantastic passer, who lights up the film reel and stat sheet – as previously mentioned, his assist rate is 98th percentile for his position and his assist-to-turnover rate grades out similarly, in the 87th percentile. He’s a high-caliber handoff hub and an adept passer from the post, elbows and the top of the key.

To put it plainly, Scharnowski is impactful – universally so. The best parts of his game are the most translatable and the weaknesses not as sticky. He projects for an uphill climb for minutes at Duke based on stars. However, production and impact lend themselves to usage coming early and often.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Welcome back to Prospects & Concepts, where we don’t talk about the Houston game.

All my best judgment says, “Don’t put any stock in Summer League.” The data is flimsy and the film is catastrophically incoherent. It’s a basketball bizarro world, and it's only for the good of the players and the agony of the evaluator.

But I can’t see what Khaman Maluach is doing and ignore it.

The second-year big man and 10th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft is averaging 19.5 points, 12.8 rebounds and 3.2 stocks, shooting 53 percent from the field and 40 percent from 3. I can’t ignore that.

Maluach played only 456 minutes in his rookie season, where he was actually pretty solid. Phoenix had a +4.1 net rating with him on the court (excluding low-leverage minutes), including a -3.7 relative DRTG; the would-be eighth-best defense in the league last year.

He averaged 16.5 points, 12.7 rebounds and 2.5 blocks in 11 G-League games, with an elite 61.9% true shooting.

The standout trait is the rebounding – specifically on the offensive end, but he’s not far off on defense. Maluach was one of the best rebounders in college basketball at Duke in 2024-25, ranking in the top 10 nationally in offensive rebounding rate.

Maluach’s offensive rebounding has all but disappeared in Summer League, but his defensive rebounding has been a world-beater. He has an uncanny ability to secure possessions on the glass, largely due to his role as a rim protector.

He can also touch the rim nearly flat-footed.

Follow me on Twitter

Part of the reason for the offensive rebounding decline is Maluach’s offensive positioning. He’s taking more 3-pointers than he ever has – 44 percent of his shots; higher than Golden State Warriors rookie LaJae Jones, who once took 21 3-point attempts in a game at Florida State.

The best part – he’s making them! Maluach has shown a propensity for 3-point shot-taking in the past, but has never been prolific as a shot-maker. It was never a certainty it would come around. The typical formula for shooting development is functional athleticism and feel.

Maluach is a functional athlete in a couple of ways, notably on the glass, but he’s never been the stock-collector you’d expect for someone of his size and talents. On top of that, he has to develop his feel. Maluach is averaging one assist to 2.5 turnovers per game in Summer League, a ratio that tracks throughout his career.

Maluach’s decisions aren’t just slow; they’re telegraphed, and even then, his deliveries are often off-target. It’s something that limits him both on and off the ball.

The solution the Suns’ come to will undoubtedly rely on over-indexing play-finishing.

Maluach hasn’t shown he can be trusted to handle short-roll decisions, or even hand-offs for that matter. He overcompensates for decision-making and confidence by over-imposing with his frame, and turns it over through unnecessary fouls. Illegal screens are called more often in Summer League, due to the impossibility of fouling out, but Maluach makes it pretty obvious.

Low feel is also the reason he doesn’t block more shots. He recorded a 6.8 percent block rate at Duke – underwhelming for his size and athletic traits.

Timing and feel are paramount for elite defensive playmakers. Maluach makes up some of the gap with outlier length, but concerns lie in translation.

Maluach has the ability to be a top-10 center in the league next year – I believe that. However, among starters, how many will have worse feel than him? The answer may be none. That’s scary.

The upside comes from what he could be as a playmaker, and a possession-keeper on the glass. Maluach’s offensive role will come down to how good of a shooter he can truly be. If it falls, he can be one of the more dynamic roll and pop options in the league. Though, Maluach’s lacking ball skills and feel mean if the opportunity isn’t there, his ability to keep a possession stable is all but null.

Additonally, the Suns may see a hit to transition offense with Maluach on the court. He runs the floor well, but his dominance on the glass also implies he’s the first person to touch on misses. He can’t be trusted to take it up himself, nor hit ahead with consistency, and thus, quick-hitting opportunities off misses may come few and far between.

That all sounds pessimistic, but it’s the reality. Maluach is remarkably talented, incredibly gifted and a surreal athlete, but he’s not without his flaws. The fact that Maluach has been so good is something to note, regardless.

Summer League is noisy, and the players who perform the best don’t ever end up being much in the NBA, time and time again. It’s not always the case, but nothing substantial has ever come from a five or six game sample size.

We have to learn what to trust, what to ignore, and what to look forward to. Maluach has shown remarkable growth as a shooter and defender, while being just as great a finisher and rebounder. That is substantial.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Welcome back to Prospects & Concepts, where I’m going to answer the question posed in the title right away: Yes.

Markelle Fultz has become a folk legend in basketball. The No. 1 who was traded for Jayson Tatum in the 2017 NBA Draft, producing a 2024 NBA Championship for the Celtics while Fultz himself bounced around the league, dealt with never-before-seen injuries and ultimately burned out of the NBA entirely.

His college tape is discussed like campfire stories of buddies lost in war or musicians who never hit their prime. “He was special,” they’ll say. “A generational guy who would have dominated if he was healthy. He could have changed the game."

Now, he’s seen as one of the 21st century’s biggest first-overall busts.

Subscribe now

Fultz likely played his last NBA season this past year – a five-game tenure with the Raptors on a 10-day contract, averaging 0.8 points and 1.6 assists, shooting 2-of-11 from the field. The contract ended April 2. Fultz wasn’t picked up again.

There’s no bigger discussion point around the NBA than the “What if?” Fultz is an obvious favorite, personally and league-wide. Fultz is a personal favorite of mine.

This is where I make some people tune out, but I was 13 years old when Fultz got drafted – 12 for his freshman season. I watched him play, but I wasn’t looking at him through the lens I evaluate prospects now. Hell, I wasn’t doing that 10 months ago.

I’ve been doing more prospect retrospectives because of this. I want to look at prospects I was wrong about, didn’t study, or were a “What if?”, and try to come to a conclusion on them using my current framework, adjusting as needed.

Let’s talk about Fultz’s profile:

Measurables:

• Height: 6 feet, 4 inches

• Weight: 209 lbs

• Wingspan: 6 feet, 10 inches

• Athletic testing: N/A; Fultz did not participate in the NBA Combine.

Strengths:

• Good around-the-rim athlete: 26.1% rim rate, 61.7% rim FG, 14 dunks.

• Gets to the line with ease: 0.383 FTr.

• High usage (31.7% USG), effective playmaker (1.85 A/TO).

• High-level defensive playmaker: 2.4% STL, 3.1% BLK.

• Great overall age-adjusted impact: 8.8 BPM, 5.6 PPRG!.

Weaknesses:

• Questionable jump-shooter: 0.287 3Pr, 64.9% FT.

• Turnover prone: 3.2 TO/G + 15.6% TO rate.

• Average-to-weak positional rebounder: 14.0% DREB, 4.0% OREB.

The sell, in a sentence or two, is this: Fultz gets to the rim and makes plays for others, with plus positional size; akin to guards like Russell Westbrook, John Wall and others. Westbrook and Wall also weren’t high-caliber shooters at any point in their careers, even down to subpar free-throw shooting, while Fultz exceeded both as rebounders and defensive playmakers.

He also profiles similarly to now-Hawks guard Kingston Flemings, the eighth pick in the 2026 NBA Draft.

A few more 3s, a few fewer rim attempts and a few more stocks are the big separators. Flemings’ box plus/minus also sticks out, but it’s important to note context.

The average BPM for every non-Fultz player on the 2016-17, 9-22 Washington team (receiving a 30% minute share or better) was -1.4. Meanwhile, Flemings’ Houston squad had an average BPM of 7.5. Adjusting for the difference, Fultz’s 8.8 BPM is 10.2 points over his team’s average, while Flemings’ sits 3.9 points over Houston’s average.

BPM isn’t everything, though; alongside more traditional counting stats, it’s a solid approximation of a prospect’s “good-ness.”

RECOMMENDED READING: “What ‘stocks’ do and don’t mean”

That said, lined up with Fultz’s injury history, the main detractions were in shooting, with nerve issues in his shoulders creating difficulty.

Share Prospects & Concepts

Fultz did shoot better than 40 percent from 3 in college, as well as a solid 43 percent on midrange jumpers, but his low 3-point rate and free-throw percentage didn’t inspire awe in his overall trajectory.

Fultz’s willingness from 3 disappeared in the league – in part a product of his injury, certainly – but he actually improved his percentage at the free-throw line. Fultz went from 65 percent in college to 73 percent in the NBA, including a four-year stint in Orlando, where he shot 76 percent on 385 attempts.

What was lost? Willingness and confidence.

Fultz never got to the rim or the line at a high rate again. He never really shot the ball at a high rate again. He shifted to a pass-first role, but with no confidence to create advantages – lacking shot-making talent or willingness – he added no value.

We’ve seen this story before, although with different turns. Rajon Rondo shot 26% from the free-throw line in the 2010 Finals. Previously, Rondo was a master at getting to the line – he held a monster 0.44 free-throw rate at Kentucky, and was at 0.32 in his first four seasons, leading up to his horrendous Finals performance.

After the series, Rondo’s willingness to get downhill and create contact waned and faded entirely. He only had one more season over a 0.30 free-throw rate and was a career 0.16 from that point on.

More Rajon Rondo discredit:

Fultz’s reason for shooting fewer free-throws is more valid. There was likely some degree of pain in shooting the ball, and the trauma persisted post-injury. The damage was done, and Fultz’s game and mental state had changed significantly.

Prospect Fultz showed no signs of this otherwise. A tick on the “He was actually a great prospect” scale – that’s starting to amount to something.

I’m not confident Fultz would have ever been as dynamic a shooter as his 3-point clip in college suggested. His mechanics were still a tad clunky in college. He had high-volume games where he made his fair share, but wasn’t an NBA-range rocket launcher by any means.

I’m more certain on his playmaking. It’s the one true aspect from Fultz’s collegiate game that translated, to a degree. It was still hampered by scoring aggression, but Fultz's downhill ferocity made him an adept passer. He was better than his assist numbers at Washington showed, too. Aforementioned team help (Washington shot 33.3% from 3 without Fultz’s 24 percent share of attempts and 29 percent share of makes) hurt him there.

He maintained his playmaking against competition, too. The assist-to-turnover rate shrank marginally, but everything else stayed the same or grew – notably, his 3-point rate grew over 0.30 against top-100 competition, and his steal, usage, and rebounding rates all went up a tick.

Fultz’s warts are notable. He’d likely be a decent volume guy from 3 and the free-throw line without his injuries, but I doubt the percentages would ever get to an elite level. He surely would have improved, and he showed that at the line throughout his real career.

What I’m more enamored by is the two-way playmaking aspect of his game.

How many freshmen have recorded 10 or more dunks, an assist rate of 30 percent or better, and a steal and block rate of over 2 percent each in a season? Just two.

Markelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball.

Ball also dealt with major injuries, crippling his career, but early on, he was one of the league’s best passers and defenders. Fultz could have seen a similar fate with more robust on-ball scoring.

Ball warped basketball at the college level – he shot over 70 percent from 2, over 40 percent from 3 and was as high-volume a playmaker and home run hitter as you can find. Fultz was the better prospect.

It’s impossible to tell how good Fultz would have been had it not been for the uniquely bumpy road he went down, but his pre-NBA greatness is undeniable. There’s no way to prevent bumps entirely – injuries, accidents and everything between or outside can happen to anybody. That said, Fultz was an elite prospect.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

The 2026 NBA Draft looks more and more like an oddity the further we get from it.

New college eligibility rules, influenced by the NIL era, mean any given class is going to see a downturn in depth. Overall talent, too, if the one-and-done class isn’t as absurd as this past cycle’s.

The 2027 NBA Draft class is already getting maligned for its talent, despite a stacked group of returners and more top-end talent overseas. There’s no Victor Wembanyama, no Copper Flagg and potentially nobody worth a top-four pick in the 2026 class. "Weak” classes of the past, like 2024, didn’t see the same loss of depth, with rotational players already blossoming from the second round.

The odds are stacked against 2027, and every draft after it. But is it as bad as people say?

Prospects & Concepts

2026 NBA Draft Big Board: FINAL Edition

Read more

3 months ago · 10 likes · Logan Adams

A misunderstood top of the class

The biggest misconception surrounding the 2026 high school class is who sits at the top. Tyran Stokes is, for now, the clear top recruit on every website, but beyond that, it boils down to guesswork.

Mainstream rankings often fall into traps. The guys at the top tend to be there by some combination of resources and social media hype. They can uproot their lives, play basketball at academies that wouldn’t exist without their basketball programs, or play in the biggest AAU circuits. Those players are bound to have more eyes on them.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially for these guys. Darryn Peterson’s switch from Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, to Prolific Prep in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, undoubtedly helped him fast-track to the top of the class. He had opportunities to play in front of more cameras, more scouts, and against better opponents, before ever setting foot in Lawrence, Kansas.

That said, there’s also too much emphasis placed on these prep schools, which aren’t omniscient forces in grassroots basketball. They’re bound to miss some. Think Keaton Wagler, the fifth-overall pick who saw one of the most incredible single-season rises last cycle; or Allen Graves, the 19th-overall pick who was completely unranked before a redshirt season.

Grassroots scouts do what they can. The lower the competition level you go, the less film and statistics you’ll have on players, as well as the more variance in competition. Part of the reason players at these prep schools, playing for highly-funded AAU programs, get the edge over the Waglers and the Graves of the world is the competition they face. Performance against comes secondary.

It’s why there’s so much movement and shaking in the freshman rankings during the first month or two of the college basketball season. The NCAA is a much more even level than high school or even AAU. There’s a barrier to entry that isn’t there at levels below.

It’s important to find what translates and what is improvable. Shooting can be taught. One’s athletic tools and how they’re used are traditionally stagnant before age-induced decline. Feel, ultimately, trumps all. The habits a prospect builds from a young age are hard to paint over. In a way, it makes sense that uprooting and moving to the highest-level competition is advantageous. Bad habits can come from playing down.

History backs this up.

It’s understandable, then, why the casual fan sees players at the top of 2027 who don’t fit the criteria above, and subconsciously draws lines to the failed projects that parallel modern prospects. A genuinely good draft class may be hidden between the lines, but the “top” prospects are a result of bad habits in scouting. Habits repeated ad nauseam with little introspection as to why they continue, seemingly chalked up to “randomness.”

What separates this class’ consensus top three – Tyran Stokes, Jordan Smith Jr. and Caleb Holt (via 247Sports Composite) – is in the above criteria. They’re all highly functional athletes, all feel the game at a high level and see elite production because of it. The on-court product, as a result, is dominance. Their floor is more secure and their ceiling leaves room for easy renovation.

That said, all three players listed have major flaws. Stokes is turnover-prone and has never been a good shooter. Smith also struggles as a shooter, while being smaller for his role. It’s much of the same for Holt. Their weaknesses make them harder to project as franchise-defining talents, but their specific strengths give them wiggle room to improve.

The top of the class will see massive reordering in the first couple of months of the season. High school is inherently harder to scout, especially without in-your-face top talent.

Share

A potent returner class makes everything better

Patrick Ngongba II. Motiejus Krivas. Tyler Tanner. Thomas Haugh.

All four were projectable first-round picks in the higher-regarded 2026 class. Their decision to return positions them as headlining names in a weaker class.

Age is something draft fans will have to be more comfortable with. NIL deals and the new five-by-five ruling provide financial advantages for high- but not top-end talent to return to school. It’s additionally why the NCAA has seen an increase in international players leaping across the pond for financial reward and playing time.

The trend behind returners who climb ranks is simple: prior production and/or a role increase is paramount.

Take the Michigan trio from last year. Yaxel Lendeborg was the standout addition, going 11th to the Warriors, having been a two-time American Conference Defensive Player of the Year, the conference’s best rebounder and defensive playmaker, and an elite scorer and passer before going to Michigan.

What followed was a transition in everything. Scoring volume took a hit, but Lendeborg’s standout feel, motor and athleticism didn’t hinge on who he faced whatsoever. It translated. Lendeborg’s shooting improvements exemplify the idea that good players just fit everywhere and are more prone to improvement.

Lendeborg’s accomplices and fellow lottery picks, Morez Johnson Jr. and Aday Mara, are also notable for their prior production and their role scaling up as a result. Both played for other Big Ten teams, though in far more sparse usage than under Dusty May in Ann Arbor.

Ngongba seems primed for a Labaron Philon, the 17th pick in 2026, type of jump. Last season, Philon played a complementary role in the backcourt to All-American Mark Sears. His ancillaries shone, and when it was time to take the reins, he showcased improvement as an on-ball weapon.

Ngongba, similarly, was the complement to National Player of the Year Cameron Boozer, the third pick, in Duke’s frontcourt. He dealt with injuries as well, which still stick out like a red flag signaling dangerous tides, but his talent is undeniable.

Ngongba produced as an elite defender and passer at the five spot, working as a handoff hub and high-low weapon; a Robin to Boozer’s Batman. The two have obvious overlap as interior scorers and on-ball playmakers, though Ngongba’s role was limited because Boozer is the better player. He won’t have the same inhibitors on Duke’s 2026-27 roster, as talented as its frontcourt is.

Still, many non-upperclassmen with two-and-done buzz may see more benefit from a third year with amped up usage in their sophomore campaigns. Ngongba himself, along with Tyler Tanner, who opted to return to Vanderbilt for his junior year, is a prime example of this.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise if 2026 March Madness legend Braylon Mullins comes back to UConn for another run, or if projected Gonzaga breakouts Davis Fogle or Mor Massamba Diop are back in Spokane. Both are remarkably talented, but the allure of generational wealth and a college degree is powerful.

The allure of both, and several others around the nation, adding to an incredible group of returners is tantalizing for scouts simultaneously. At the very least, their projected breakouts will be more of a sample for what they’re capable of moving onto the NBA, whether that’s 2027 or any draft until 2030.

Right now, this is a class with elite depth, but anybody who follows the draft could tell you it won’t stay that way. We will get to combine season, and almost out of nowhere, dozens of names will drop out. With a weaker freshman class, too, we’ll likely see even fewer names than we saw this cycle, coming out as non-automatic entrants.

Remarkable overseas talent stayed international

Even in the NIL era, there are many hurdles to a collegiate future for top international prospects, namely in the educational aspect. A front-of-mind example is NBL star Ben Henshall’s rumored pursuits of a collegiate career before last season, with Texas Tech as a target. Ultimately, eligibility requirements were not met.

Several top international talents decided to stay across the pond this year, perhaps creating the illusion, in a growing NCAA-centered mindset, that the draft is weaker.

Overseas talents are traditionally undervalued. The state-bound ones have started to curb this, with players like Egor Demin and Kasparas Jakučionis receiving deserved attention in the 2025 NBA Draft, and now in the NBA.

There are many players still considering that option in the 2027 class – Egor Amosov is one of my favorites – with 2028 guys like Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje already opting to head to high-major powerhouses.

Still, international talent has stayed international, for the most part, this class. Stefan Joksimovic (Baskonia), Hugo Yimga Moukouri (Nanterre), Adam Atamna (Ratiopharm Ulm), Klark Reithauser (Chalon) and Cameron Houindo (Cedevita) headline the class, representing Europe’s top clubs, but it’s a deep and talented one.

Overall, an international class that remains international often becomes underrated leading up to a class.

Share Prospects & Concepts

Takeaways: Is the 2027 class weak?

There are many reasons to believe this class is weak. A mis-evaluated freshman class and the ever-looming presence of NIL, impacting depth and volume of returners, lead some to think there’s not much to 2027.

Albeit, the top-end talent isn’t the same as 2026, and there’s no Cooper Flagg or Victor Wembanyama to run away with the first pick in a weaker top-end. There’s also no clue which of the highest-touted returners (aside from seniors) declare. There’s an avenue to generational wealth, with much less variation, at their fingertips already.

That said, leave room for expectations to be exceeded as we enter the 2027 NBA Draft cycle. Chances are, many underrated freshmen will pop up out of the blue as one-and-dones, while returners most never considered will find their way to draft promises next June.

On paper, this class is weaker than its predecessor, but it’s also far more of a wildcard.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

There’s nothing more exciting than the unknown—something we haven’t seen before, making its debut and proving valuable despite little proof of concept.

Keaton Wagler is the unknown in the 2026 NBA Draft.

That’s not to say he’s some never-before-seen basketball miscellaneous. He’s a slight yet tall guard who handles and makes plays for others. He shoots the lights out from deep and has pressing athletic concerns, capping his defensive and finishing ability.

We’ve seen that before. Usually not for long, because those guys can’t keep up with NBA athletes. What we haven’t seen is one of those guys being one of the best players in college basketball at 18 years old.

Prospects & Concepts

2026 NBA Draft Big Board: FINAL Edition

Read more

2 months ago · 9 likes · Logan Adams

Wagler’s 11.0 box-plus/minus was the 14th-highest mark in the nation–fifth among true freshmen. The other four were top-10 picks: Cameron Boozer, Caleb Wilson, Darryn Peterson and Kingston Flemings. Wagler went fifth to the Clippers.

He produced that kind of impact despite major red flags in his profile. He logged zero dunks in 37 games, shot under 60 percent at the rim, just 34.8% on other 2-point attempts and had an abysmal 3.0% stock rate.

Nobody will confuse Wagler for Vince Carter. The 6-foot-6, 190-pound guard is not a high-flyer in any regard. It isn’t a death sentence, though. In fact, the list of 6-foot-6 or taller lottery picks who had fewer than five dunks in their pre-draft season is small, but not the worst.

Expanded to fewer than 10 dunks, you get additional names who put forth long-term NBA impact: Cameron Johnson, Otto Porter Jr. (who both had seasons under five dunks), Klay Thompson. Even stars like Cade Cunningham, Devin Booker and Franz Wagner.

The common thread for those with fewer than five is low stocks. Two-point percentage varies as well, but about half find themselves around or below 50 percent.

There’s three areas Keaton Wagler stands out from the rest – two of them indicative of physicality and functional athleticism and one an indicator of elite feel: they are offensive rebounding, free throw production and playmaking.

Wagler’s influence on offensive rebounding, as well as 3-point attempt rate makes him an oddity among guards in recent years. He’s the only guard in the last three drafts to have positive impacts on both, securing more possessions and higher-value shots when he’s on the floor.

Illinois as a whole is a great offensive rebounding team. They crash the glass after a miss harder than just about any team in the nation. Wagler, the lightest player on the court at any given moment, being additive here is an indicator of not just physicality, but elite spacial awareness and feel.

Offensive rebounding, while jacking up 3s, is one of the ways players can separate themselves in the margins of winning. It’s a rare combination because it indicates being all over the place; something many don’t have the willingness or skill set to do.

Additionally, it’s a way athletically challenged players who don’t make plays on the defensive end can be elite in the possession economy. That’s what Wagler, and by extension, Illinois, was.

Wager also got to the line better than just about anybody in the above query. Expanding it back to fewer than 10 dunks, when we start to see stars show their faces, Wagler is first among the group. Wagler is also the second-best in assist percentage and first in assist-to-turnover ratio.

These aren’t the proxies Wagler is discussed on.

Ultimately, the biggest pinpoint has been, “How real is the shooting?” Wagler shot nearly 40 percent on more than 10 3-point attempts per 100 possessions. That alone should be the marker of an elite shooter, especially considering just 48.3% of Wagler’s makes were assisted.

However, between weak touch inside the arc and middle-of-the-pack free-throw shooting, Wagler’s shooting projection is simply good not great. His priors are great, though on a small sample. In eight showcase games, Wagler shot 40.4% from 3 with a 51.7% 3-point rate.

The shot has gone in. That’s indisputable. There’s no reason to believe that stops in the NBA, or that it won’t go up. Just about everything Wagler did in high school translated to high school.

But what of the defense?

There’s more reason to question that. Wagler’s athleticism leaves a lot to be desired. The low dunks queries above aren’t guillotines, but the NBA eats poor athletes alive. There’s reason to believe Wagler’s more functional than his traditional indicators suggest, but the stocks don’t quell concerns.

Wagler’s 3 percent stock rate was 55th-percentile nationally. This is in part, schematic by Illinois. The Fighting Illini were last in the nation in steals per game and steal percentage. Head coach Brad Underwood has shown a massive preference for shot-blocking in his roster construction, with just three seasons in the nation’s top-100 in steals. This is opposed to five seasons ranked 300th or lower.

It’s a trend to see transfers come into Underwood’s program and experience a drop-off in steal rate. Below are the five high-major transfers seeing game-to-game minutes on Illinois’ 2025-26 roster.

Wagler led the team in steal rate at 1.7%; a mark that would be middle-of-the-pack at best on most high-major teams. He was the foremost defensive playmaker on the perimeter, despite being a lackluster shot-blocker, on a team that was top-75 in the nation in defensive rating.

There’s reason to believe there was ample tax on Wagler’s defensive playmaking because of the system he was in.

The oddity to Wagler isn’t the shooting or playmaking at his size. It isn’t the offensive rebounding or free throw generation. It isn’t even the athletic traits. It’s the combination of all those factors, with the impact he produced that we’ve really never seen. He’s an outlier between the lines, and one that has fascinated me since I’ve started seeing it.

There’s a chance this unique combination of traits rolls out into a lackluster player – a jack of all trades who is really just too poor an athlete to make it at the highest level. There’s also a chance he’s one of the three or four most impactful players in his class, exceeding expectations because of his unique skill set and tools, just as he has at every level.

Wagler’s the most interesting man in his draft class, as a true oddity in a league marred with a need for comparison.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

“If he had a jump shot…”

How many prospects have you heard that about? There are a few every class, but rarely does the complete non-shooter ever get to the point he’s trusted to launch 3s routinely.

Portland Trail Blazers wing Jerami Grant is an exception to the rule.

Grant went zero-for-five from 3 in his sophomore year at Syracuse, shot under 70 percent at the line and made just a third of his non-rim 2-point attempts. Grant wasn’t even an elite finisher – good, for certain, but not outstanding – shooting just 62.5% on layups.

The 12-year veteran has made a heel-turn, however, shooting 38.9% from 3 and 81.4% from the free-throw line in his age-31 season. How?

Prospects & Concepts

2026 NBA Draft Big Board: FINAL Edition

Read more

2 months ago · 3 likes · Logan Adams

Share Prospects & Concepts

Grant didn’t find an overnight fix. In his first five years of his career, spent in Philadelphia and then Oklahoma City, he shot just above 31 percent from 3, going 33.4%, while shooting 65 percent from the free-throw line.

The jump in volume is noteworthy, but not uncommon for someone with Grant’s strengths as a prospect. Grant’s production in other areas of the game, notably as a plus rebounder for his position, got him on the court early.

Without much of an offensive skill set, he added value simply by standing in the corner and spacing. If there was room to cut, he’d cut. If a shot went up, he’d crash the glass. But Grant’s uptick in shooting volume off the bat is a product of his other traits.

In a vacuum, Grant’s profile is pretty pedestrian. He went in the second round, 39th overall, to the Sixers as an undersized four with a motor on the glass and on defense, though remarkably raw offensive skill and generally unimpressive indicators of feel.

Unimpressive isn’t bad, though. It’s simply not an outlier. Grant could handle the speed of the NBA, not in the role of a creator or initiator, but as a piece with the athleticism to keep up and a passable mind for the game.

That combination of offensive rebounding and baseline offensive and defensive feel, especially for a young player with size, is conducive to early NBA minutes. For the non-centers among that bunch, who play a role that requires them to be further from the basket off the ball, shooting tends to come.

What stands out about the chart above? How many of these guys became passable spacers in the NBA? We can safely say Porter Jr., Gordon, Portis and Grant did. Some like Julian Phillips and Jeremy Sochan still have yet to be seen, but take their fair share. Robinson-Earl and Okeke are good shooters, just held back in one way or another from seeing real NBA minutes. Even Anderson takes his share of outside shots.

The outliers are Looney and Simmons, who never really developed as shooters, but provided elite impact at their peaks with outlier ability in the other statistics listed – Looney’s rebounding and Simmons’ two-way playmaking.

Grant really started to find his stroke in Detroit, where he had the ball in his hands more than he ever has. Grant’s first season with the Pistons saw his usage jump 10 percent, going from 18 percent in 2019-20 to 28.5% in 2020-21.

Funny enough, it saw a slight dip in 3-point rate, with his 3-point attempt rate going from nearly 40 percent down to a shade greater than 35 percent. However, his per possession rate went up immensely with the greater creation burden. In his last season in Denver, Grant took 6.6 3-point attempts per 100 possessions. In Detroit, that rose to 8.8, with every season following eclipsing that mark from his last season in Denver.

Grant got a bag to go to Portland at the end of his contract with Detroit. With the Trail Blazers, Grant’s efficiency and 3-point rate has continued to climb.

Whether that bag was deserved is up for debate – Grant’s expanded offensive role and move further from the basket has decreased once-trademarked offensive rebounding chances and limited his willingness to defend all over. Without exceptional ancillary playmaking, the on-ball virtuoso of Grant was overblown. The only real improvements came as a shooter.

Ultimately, the differences between him and someone like Sochan may also be coaching. Some teams have better track records of developing shooters, but getting on the court and producing in games is a fast track to improvement. History backs that up.

Not every non-shooter will become the shooter Grant is – now in year 12 shooting having shot 38.5% on 8.9 3-point attempts per 100. However, the reasons Grant saw the court early; defense, rebounding and baseline positional feel; are reasons to draft a prospect on their own, as well as reason to believe there’s more than meets the eye to their shooting profile.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

It’s here.

The 2026 NBA Draft, one of the most interesting classes I’ve had the joy to evaluate, is just around the corner. With that, the most in-depth, longest installation of my big board is here. One hundred players broken up into 10 tiers, with explanations on philosophy, ranking choices and more.

Ultimately, I decided to make this 100 percent free to view. The decision, for all my labor, was one that was hard to make. This is by far the longest piece I’ve ever written at over 5,000 words. If you could show your support by subscribing for just $5 per month, it would be greatly appreciated.

Without further ado, let’s get into the big board.

ON GENERAL PHILOSOPHY

There are two guiding principles behind my philosophy in the NBA Draft – which I feel I’ve done great work to define this cycle – being functional size/athleticism, and feel. If you follow me on X (formerly Twitter), you’ll see me harp on these two things, and the unconventional ways in which they manifest.

Functional size/athleticism shows up in a number of ways. The two where they don’t are listed height, vertical leap, wingspan and other basketball-alienated measurements. They do, however, manifest on defense, in one’s ability to create events; generating stocks, finishing possessions; and yes, staying in front of and contending with multiple positions on film. Offensively, it is in one’s ability to get above the rim and finish efficiently, as well as their ability to contend on the offensive end and create efficient shots. Free-throw rate is also another indicator, as fouls, in part, are caused by one’s ability to put defenders at a disadvantage, often through functional athletic capability.

There’s some overlap in functional size/athleticism and feel, the biggest example being stock generation (which I’ve written about extensively). Stocks are not representative of just one’s ability to get to a ball they weren’t intended to, creating an offensive possession, but representative of one’s ability to read the game from a step ahead. Of course, it also manifests in the obvious ways offensively – efficient shot selection, assists and turnover avoidance. Ultimately, feel is not an aspect of evaluation that is as misunderstood as athleticism is; it’s simply undervalued.

Why? These are things that typically don’t see development.

Feel and athleticism are things that translate, and do not often go up and down. Players can circumvent a lack of one or the other through outlier ability in another aspect of the game (see Kon Knueppel, and this incredible article as a whole). Skill singularity is the only way in which I’ll feel comfortable casting aside these two formative pillars of my draft philosophy. It can come in an outlier-good skill, or simply a uniqueness to how one puts forth visible, trackable impact that forces me to re-evaluate them in a vacuum.

Ultimately, there’s a reason almost every MVP or All-NBA caliber player (save for the outlier skill examples or strange voting choices) can finish at the rim and can keep the ball from sticking to their hands. The best players in the world; Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama, Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Dončić, etc.; have made their intersection of feel and athleticism the catalyst of their game.

And, I don’t believe the evaluation of role players should be much different. The best ones still find ways to impact games on defense, through their rebounding, playmaking, etc., it just may not manifest in every aspect as the best do.

One final leg of philosophy worth mentioning, other than simply saying, “shooting is good”: age trumps most. Though I still look for the tenants above in 18 and 19-year-old players, youth is an additive in almost every setting. The reason there are two tiers between Cameron Boozer and Yaxel Lendeborg is exactly that.

TIER 10: LONGSHOT NBA CAREERS

82. Jaron Pierre Jr., Southern Methodist

83. Keyshawn Hall, Auburn

84. Rienk Mast, Nebraska

85. Melvin Council Jr., Kansas

86. Peter Suder, Miami (OH)

87. Tre Carroll, Xavier

88. Amani Lyles, Akron

89. Seth Trimble, North Carolina

90. Donovan Atwell, Texas Tech

91. Bryce Hopkins, St. John’s

92. Tre White, Kansas

93. Nimari Burnett, Michigan

94. Bryson Tucker, Washington

95. Boopie Miller, Southern Methodist

96. Elijah Mahi II, Santa Clara

97. William Kyle III, Syracuse

98. Lajae Jones, Florida State

99. Noam Yaacov, Hapoel

100. Ezra Ausar, Southern California

The players in this tier are players with baseline NBA skills or traits. However, they aren’t outliers in any way and in areas they lack, they lack so much to make it a devastating issue to their career.

Using Syracuse’s William Kyle III as an example, the athleticism jumps off the page. He dunks hard and often, is an event creator on defense and rebounds well. The issue is a complete lack of feel and touch, with no projectable way to circumventing a lack of ability to do anything with the ball. As of now, Kyle’s offensive skill set is completely left to what he can do off a lob.

Another example is Kansas’ Melvin Council, Jr., who, while meeting baseline point/rebound/assist output, was highly inefficient to a near hilarious degree. Council is a high-feel prospect, though the functional athleticism/size, paired with otherworldly bad touch, makes him a prospect that would require outlier development to find a role in the NBA.

Council is also an example of why scouts need to look at the games with talent most comparable to NBA talent. Though Council posted a 3.5% steal rate his final year at St. Bonaventure, the leading factor behind his reputation as a great defender, against higher-caliber competition, Council’s productivity nabbing loose balls always fell off.

Such is the theme for this tier; players who lack translative skill in one facet or another that will likely fail to see NBA minutes consistently at any point because of it.

TIER 9: G-LEAGUE DEVELOPMENTALS

67. Tobe Awaka, Arizona

68. Jack Kayil, Alba Berlin

69. Lamar Wilkerson, Indiana

70. Tyler Bilodeau, California-Los Angeles

71. Milos Uzan, Houston

72. Cade Tyson, Minnesota

73. Jalen Washington, Vanderbilt

74. MJ Colllins Jr., Utah State

75. Jaylin Sellers, Providence

76. Kylan Boswell, Illionis

77. Jaden Henley, Grand Canyon

78. Robert McCray V, Florida State

79. BJ Edwards, Southern Methodist

80. Nick Martinelli, Northwestern

81. Keba Keita, Brigham Young

In tier nine is where we start to get into the “post-priority two-way targets area,” with most of these guys likely to spend a lot of their time in the G-League or in other leagues overseas. The reason for this is, though these guys project better to the next level than those ranked under them, is still weaknesses or damning irregularity; just to a lesser degree.

Take Northwestern forward Nick Martinelli. Isolating him on offense, you have one of the more unique and productive players in college basketball: a 6-foot-7 guy who produced a 120.9 offensive rating on 29.4% usage and did so effectively. Martinelli posted a 60.2% true shooting with great ancillaries like offensive rebounding (7.8% OREB) and foul drawing (41.8% FTr).

Then, you look at the playmaking, the shooting volume and, more than anything, the defense, and the profile crumbles a bit. Martinelli posted a stock percentage of 2.6% and a defensive box plus/minus of 0.1 – both among the worst rates of any extremely high usage (≥28.0% USG), high-major players this season.

The pathway to success for Martinelli is there, though, it would involve a high-octane change in shot-profile and strides defensively, particularly in event creation. However, Martinelli’s never been that much of an athlete; the stocks depict that but so do the dunks, which Martinelli just had seven of this past season (second-least in the usage query above). The issue is, he may not be an NBA athlete; however, his scoring touch, additive rebounding and turnover aversion provide a needle-sized hole to long-term NBA success.

On the surface, Arizona’s Tobe Awaka profiles as the skill-singular type of player. He was the nation’s best rebounder off the Wildcats’ bench, logging an offensive rebounding rate of 20.2% (!!!) and a defensive rebounding rate of 26.2%. The former ranks first in the nation (by a margin if filtering for high-major players only) and the latter ranks in the nation’s top 20.

Awaka has mastered rebounding, and it’s made him an effective, winning piece at the college level. His ability to extend and secure possessions on the glass, as well as his physicality to draw fouls and standout athleticism for his 6-foot-8 frame make him a great offensive piece in particular. Once again, as with Martinelli, it comes down to defense.

Margins matter in the NBA, and as an undersized center with little positional versatility (low cognition, bare minimum touch indicators) Awaka needs to be a standout defender. He simply wasn’t. Granted, his superb rebounding is a strength yet again, but Awaka’s lack of versatility forces him to function as a rim protector. One might attribute his lack of shot-blocking prowess to sharing the court with Motiejus Krivas, one of the most prolific stalwarts in college basketball, but Awaka’s 3.5% block rate with Krivas off the court is far from awe inspiring, especially as a high-volume fouler.

The success for Awaka lies in the rebounding singularity he possesses; though, as we’ve seen with bigger, better rebounding-centric prospects who have failed before him (Oscar Tschiebwe and Armando Bacot come to mind) there has to be a runway beyond those skills.

TIER 8: PRIORITY TWO-WAYS

50. Trey Kaufman-Renn, Purdue

51. Graham Ike, Gonzaga

52. Tamin Lipsey, Iowa State

53. Jaden Bradley, Arizona

54. Nate Bittle, Oregon

55. Tyler Nickel, Vanderbilt

56. Malik Reneau, Miami

57. Nick Boyd, Wisconsin

58. Felix Okpara, Tennessee

59. Jaxon Kohler, Michigan State

60. Otega Oweh, Kentucky

61. Darrion Williams, North Carolina State

62. Maliq Brown, Duke

63. Jacob Cofie, Southern California

64. Zach Cleveland, Liberty

65. Aaron Nkrumah, Tennessee State

66. Tobi Lawal, Virginia Tech

This tier is really fun, and where we have to start shifting form, “Here’s why this guy probably won’t make it,” to, “Here’s why this guy might.”

Duke’s Maliq Brown seems as good a start as any. He was, by a margin, the nation’s leader in defensive box plus/minus at 8.1 (which is flat out ridiculous). He was nearly a can’t-sit guy when Patrick Ngongba went out for the season, pretty much solely for his defense. Even more impressively, Brown became that caliber of player despite being a zero on offense.

A 63.5% true shooting and 11.8% offensive rebounding rate were essentially the only value adds in Brown’s offensive profile, though, both came at the end of extremely low usage (14.5%) and high turnovers (24.1%). Brown’s impact on the possession game was still positive due to his rebounding and defensive capability, though. His 5.3% steal rate and 3.9% block rate culminated into one of the highest stock rates in the nation, and showcase that intersection of functional tools and feels I harp about ad nauseam, meaning, Brown could see his way onto an NBA floor early in his career.

Liberty’s Zach Cleveland is another fun case – a 6-foot-7 playmaking wing who shot four 3-pointers all season and is a career 53.7% from the free-throw line.

Cleveland’s case is that the cognition and feel is just too hard to pass on. Everything aside from the shooting suggests Cleveland as an impact player – he racks up assists (36.2% assist rate, 2.1 assist-to-turnover), secures rebounds on the defensive end (22.0% defensive rebounding rate), gets to the line (49.6% FTr) and was a prolific scorer at and above the rim (19 dunks, 65.3% FG at the rim).

The only thing holding Cleveland back is perimeter shooting. Could he develop?

Conventional wisdom says no. He doesn’t shoot efficiently from the line or often from 3, and his low-volume dosage on non-rim 2s (highly assisted) doesn’t show much substance. That said, Cleveland’s other skills could see him on the court regardless, and in an ancillary role, he might just be forced to shoot on some possessions. In game repetitions have been shown as a method of improvement – Cleveland has every capability to get on the court.

TIER 7: SECOND-ROUND TARGETS

41. Ryan Conwell, Louisville

42. Duke Miles, Vanderbilt

43. Quadir Copeland, North Carolina State

44. Oscar Cluff, Purdue

45. Emmanuel Sharp, Houston

46. Braden Smith, Purdue

47. Rafael Castro, George Washington

48. Sergio de Larrea, Valencia

49. Robbie Avila, Saint Louis

This is the area, into the top-50, where tiers begin to get shorter, and separating talent is more of a chore. The players in this tier are projectable NBA players for a number of reasons, though, for another number of reasons, less damning than those ranked below them, that role will likely be as a fringe rotation player.

George Washington’s Rafael Castro is one of those players. Castro’s older, as are a lot of players in the second round, but his production speaks for itself. An elite defender with some of the best hands in the class, Castro nabs steals, blocks and rebounds with the best. Those things get bigs on the court, and are clear cut signs of athleticism and cognition worthy of a role on both ends. Castro’s not a standout playmaker by any means, but can handle reps as a hand-off hub and roll man.

The one gripe comes as a pure rim protector. Castro’s long and far from ground bound, but raw explosion kept him from being a truly elite shot-blocker, having to use his hands lower to disrupt passes and take from idle hands. There’s a semblance of shooting touch as well – elite 2-point shooting and volume from the free-throw line.

Another standout big is Purdue’s Oscar Cluff. I’ve harped on rebounding a lot so far as something that projects to playing time early. Cluff is among the best in this regard, winning possessions on the glass with a heaving 6-foot-11 and 255-pound frame. There’s a clear-as-day avenue for Cluff to be a real-deal shooter in the league, too, despite just seven career 3-point attempts.

Cluff checks all the boxes of an elite offensive big – scoring efficiency, offensive rebounding, baseline playmaking, turnover aversion – and he may be scratching the surface. Rebounding is his biggest strength, elite on both ends (at South Dakota State he logged a 32.2% defensive rebounding rate and a 17.2% offensive rebounding rate!!!). Defense is an issue, as Cluff lacks the athleticism to time and block shots, but his offensive ceiling should see him drafted.

TIER 6: SWING-DEPENDENT BREAKOUTS

31. Chris Cenac Jr., Houston

32. Zuby Ejiofor, St. John’s

33. Koa Peat, Arizona

34. Isaiah Evans, Duke

35. Izaiyah Nelson, South Florida

36. Dillon Mitchell, St. John’s

37. Alex Karaban, Connecticut

38. Nate Ament, Tennessee

39. Meleek Thomas, Arkansas

40. Baba Miller, Cincinnati

This tier is defined by objectively talented players, most of whom will have a cup of coffee in the NBA. However, for one reason or another, longevity and ceiling hinges on one or two swing skills/traits. These players don’t necessarily have to overcome them to see success, but it’s the difference between specialized regular season minutes versus portability and longevity.

One prospect I differ on from consensus is Tennessee’s Nate Ament. Ament is a 6-foot-10 wing with the guise of “upside” seeing him mocked in the top-10 of the NBA Draft. Ament’s upside comes from his combination of length and perimeter-oriented game; a tantalizing pairing that has come with some of the more unique offensive talents, but doesn’t possess the greatest hit rate.

Ament’s issue stems from the functionality in these traits. circling back to what makes a player functionally athletic, we’ll find the potholes that make Ament’s game a rock evaluation. He’s not strong for his frame, and a lackluster handle dictates the spots he can and can’t get to. Ament’s profile as a whole is uninspiring. Low rim attempts and efficiency, inflated volume from the mid-range (also lacking efficiency) and a heavily-assisted 33.3% clip from 3.

Furthermore, less than sufficient steal and block rates, an even assist-to-turnover rate and ballpark average rebounding means there’s nothing that stands out as abundantly positive. The swing suggested to make it into this tier is Ament finds himself an elite shooter, but his touch indicators make it an uphill battle.

Arizona’s Koa Peat is another one-and-done I’ve done more flip-flopping on than Ament. However, early-second round feels like a more-than perfect range for him.

Peat isn’t a typical prospect – a 6-foot-8 forward who doesn’t shoot 3s often or well. The sell is the physicality and translative athleticism Peat possesses. He’s clearly burly and gets up above the rim often, with 53 dunks on the season. Additionally, he’s impactful on the offensive glass. Defensive rebounding and rim protection will keep him from being a small-ball center, but passing chops, turnover aversion and the ability to generate his own shots at the rim.

On top of his production on one of college basketball’s best teams, which equated to one of the more efficient rim offenses in the country and an incredible interior defense, Peat’s priors stand out. He was a far more productive rebounder and defender in high school, leading me to believe there’s more than what meets the surface.

TIER 5: POTENTIAL STARTERS

21. Joshua Jefferson, Iowa State

22. Karim Lopez, New Zealand

23. Henri Veesaar, North Carolina

24. Bruce Thornton, Ohio State

25. Tarris Reed Jr., Connecticut

26. Cameron Carr, Baylor

27. Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Tennessee

28. Ugonna Onyenso, Virginia

29. Richie Saunders, Brigham Young

30. Trevon Brazile, Arkansas

This tier is where we start to get into surefire impact players in the NBA, in my mind. These players fit into the functional size/athleticism and feel query outlined in philosophy. And, if they don’t, they make up for it in other ways.

Arkansas’ Trevon Brazile is a monster on a spreadsheet: stands 6 feet 11 inches, dunks everything, shoots a ton of 3s, projects well on defense with rebounding and shot-blocking prowess, while being reliable to not make dumb decisions with the ball.

Brazile’s always been a high-quality athlete; someone who can dunk on your center, swat a shot and sky for boards. However, his development into a reliable long-ball shooter on volume has been remarkable, and changed his offensive outlook dramatically. Low playmaking feel will keep Brazile a low-usage player, but the ability to score in many ways off the ball, while never turning the ball over keeps him impactful in the possession game.

Virginia’s Ugonna Onyenso is another monster. He’s one of the best shot-blockers in the history of college basketball, statistically, and does everything you need of that type of player offensively. His package on that end had almost entirely been dunks until this year, but a healthy dose of 3s and long 2s (on which he shot 51.5%) is a product of solid free-throw shooting being a good indicator of shooting development.

Onyenso’s feel also stands out for a low-usage guy. He isn’t Jokic, but he cares for the ball and makes the basic reads proficiently. The sell is always going to be the defense, though. Onyenso blocked nearly a fifth of the shots he saw on the court, and still logged a 2.0% steal rate – better than some guards in this class.

There isn’t an absurd offensive ceiling with Onyenso, but a stable floor with elite defense makes him hard to miss in the late first.

TIER 4: LOTTERY-CALIBER

11. Ebuka Okorie, Stanford

12. Keaton Wagler, Illionis

13. Hannes Steinbach, Washington

14. Darius Acuff Jr., Arkansas

15. Dailyn Swain, Texas

16. Brayden Burries, Arizona

17. Labaron Philon, Alabama

18. Jayden Quaintance, Kentucky

19. Morez Johnson Jr., Michigan

20. Christian Anderson Jr., Texas Tech

Every year, one or two guys in this tier end up being the ones looked back upon as “underrated and undrafted.” I don’t think it’s a more befitting description, as every player in this group has feasible upside to All-Stardom.

One of the most popular players here is Arkansas’ Darius Acuff Jr., who I’ve flip-flopped on. He’s an irregularity, to the highest degree. One of the most productive point guards in college basketball history, and one of the worst defenders to see high minutes this season. It’s a dichotomy that usually causes me to dismiss guards, but the outlier quality is Acuff’s shooting.

I’ve talked a lot about defensive event creation as a proxy for feel. If that’s a fool proof case, Acuff is one of the worst-feel case in this class. But, that’s not the case. He handled high usage all season efficiently, both as a scorer and playmaker, and was the engine behind an offense that was fifth in adjusted efficiency, 17th in effective field goal percentage and first in turnover avoidance.

Guards just tend to work better, more often, in college though; a lot of them faltering in the NBA. Especially small guards who struggle defensively. There’s a possibility of that for Acuff, or, at the very least being an “empty stats” guy whose offensive impact is weighted almost even with his defensive shortcomings.

The ones who peak through, though; the Maxeys and Murrays of the world; are dynamic shooters and finishers. Acuff wasn’t the best at the rim, but a high volume of self-created looks shows an avenue for improvement, on top of seven dunks being a marker for athleticism at the cup. Acuff is, however, a dynamic shooter, going 44 percent on a respectable 207 attempts (34.7% 3PAr). An above-80 percent clip at the free-throw line helps as well.

Illinois’ Keaton Wagler is perhaps the biggest odd-ball in the group. Wagler was undoubtedly one of the highest-impact players in the country this past season, doing so as a 6-foot-6 high-usage ball-handler. His efficiency in that role was remarkable – 59.8% true shooting, 39.7% from 3 and almost 80 percent at the line.

Wagler’s shooting has come under scrutiny recently – he shot 34.8% on 2-point jumpers and 80 percent at the line isn’t the best – but his track record is noteworthy, as a 44 percent 3-point shooter in high school. Context must be applied, too, as Wagler was assisted on just 6.5 percent of his 2-point jumpers. He got those attempts all on his own.

The real concern is the athleticism, as a guy who hits low on all related markers aside from offensive rebounding. Wagler didn’t dunk, didn’t finish well and had just nine stocks in his first 10 games, ramping up slightly later in the year.

The offensive rebounding is truly the odd-ball part. It’s how he effects possessions, the number one goal in basketball. Wagler doesn’t create steals, but his ability to keep the ball safe, rebound on offense and shoot is what led to him being one of the best offensive engines in college basketball as a true freshman missed entirely by RSCI.

He’ll be an interesting case study, at the least, for the work arounds to typical athletic queries for guards who don’t match up.

TIER 3: ALL-STAR PROJECTABLES

5. Aday Mara, Michigan

6. Kingston Flemings, Houston

7. Yaxel Lendeborg, Michigan

8. Bennett Stirtz, Iowa

9. Mikel Brown Jr., Louisville

10. Allen Graves, Santa Clara

We literally get into the top five in this tier. Every player here is someone I could see making an All-Star team, or at the very least, starting and adding legitimate value for a long time.

Michigan’s Aday Mara is the top player of this tier for a number of reasons, but, my personal preference for rim protectors reigns supreme. He’s maybe the most obvious, in your face, example of my feel/size emphasis. At about 7 feet 4 inches in shoes with the feet to move on the perimeter and the actual ability to swat and deter shots at an elite rate, Mara also functions as one of the class’s elite passers.

He shot 68 percent from 2, was an elite rebounder and shot-blocker and had the second-highest assist percentage in the nation of any 7-footer. Mara’s touch is also an interesting long-term watch, too. I’m reminded of Donovan Clingan, who was a 55.8% free-throw shooter at UConn. He was much the same his rookie year, but jumped to 68 percent last year. I wouldn’t bet on Mara’s long term development as a shooter, but I also wouldn’t count it out.

There’s an expectation of a low ceiling for players of Mara’s archetype. Conventional thinking says players with an easy pathway onto the court just, for whatever reason, aren’t the ones who develop wildly. I don’t understand that. Players who end up being good rarely are kept off the court early in their career. Even Most Improved Player winners, most of the times, were flawed role players who saw minutes, but developed around the margins for breakouts. Mara’s traits that will allow him to see the court and start early on, are the reasons he has a high ceiling as well.

Iowa’s Bennett Stirtz is another false ceiling prospect, simply due to age. I’m a fan of young players who produce as much as anyone, but youth, as previously mentioned, is an additive. Age, inversely, is not necessarily a subtractive quality, especially for players like Stirtz, who dominated at all levels of college basketball.

Stirtz dominated through an incredible combination of athletic prowess – an underrated aspect of his profile due to the pace Iowa played at – absurd feel and shooting touch. That’s just a good player, no matter how old. At 6 feet 4 inches, he shot over 70 percent at the rim with 11 dunks. He shot a more-than-healthy 11.7 3-point attempts per 100 possessions as well, a healthy dose unassisted. That, along with his 85th-percentile free-throw shooting, adds an impressive flair to his average 36 percent clip from behind the arc.

I could go on and on about what makes Stirtz such an incredible point guard. It’s hard to poke a hole in his game. The eye test crowd will say he’s too slow, but there’s nothing statistically – the ultimate equalizer in basketball – that backs it up. If the argument is he saw a less-than-3-percent drop in true shooting and a 2 percent drop in free-throw rate against top-50 opponents, sign me up.

TIER 2: ALL-NBA PERENNIALS

2. Darryn Peterson, Kansas

3. Caleb Wilson, North Carolina

4. AJ Dybantsa, Brigham Young

Let’s talk about all four of these guys.

Kansas’s Darryn Peterson had one of the more divisive seasons in college basketball. The No. 1 recruit out of high school was and is touted as a highly-talented scorer from all three levels. Again, he still is, despite dealing with injuries and a reported creatine overdosage that caused muscle cramps and severe pain.

Peterson’s sell is a little harder to grasp considering everything I’ve placed my flag on to this point. He was a notoriously poor playmaker relative to his usage this season and it’s hard to gauge functional athleticism for someone who played injured for a whole season. Peterson gets more wiggle room from me because his priors are legitimately fascinating, and he still came out as one of the best all-in-one metric guys in the class (12.7 BPM, 99th percentile PER and WARP).

It’s easy to see why. Peterson, even on a bum hamstring that limited his rim pressure, and thus, his playmaking (Peterson’s a reactive playmaker, and he draws a lot of reactions getting to the rim), Peterson still managed to score at a ridiculous rate, logging a 37.1% free-throw rate and a 46.3% 3-point attempt rate.

Peterson’s defense also sees All-League potential. A 3 percent steal rate and 2 percent block rate are rare for guards regardless, especially on usage, tends to be a pretty good hit rate. Among first-round guards age 20 or younger, with a usage of at least 23 percent, and those stock numbers, names like James Harden, Marcus Smart, Jeff Teague, CJ McCollum and VJ Edgecombe appear.

Guards who defend and have the ability to handle the ball just hit. If they’re efficient scorers, they’re almost foolproof.

UNC’s Caleb Wilson is, funnily enough, the only player in this prestigious top four that everybody can seem to agree deserves to be there. The eye test crowd thinks he’s Giannis, and the stats crowd seems to think he might not be far off.

The reason they think that is one of the most astonishing visual and statistical displays of athleticism from a forward prospect in his one-and-done season. Wilson just does everything an elite athlete does. He dunks (67 in 24 games), rebounds (10.5% OREB, 22.2% DREB), blocks shots and gets steals (4.4% BLK and 2.8% STL) and is so dominant he got to the free-throw line twice for every three field goal attempts.

There’s also the fact that he’s someone of impressive feel, too. Obviously the stocks back it up, but he’s also a really good playmaker (a 1.4 assist-to-turnover rate is really good for his size!). His weakness is touch. Wilson shot just over 71 percent on free throws (66th percentile), only 58.5% on layups, 25.9% on 3s and 44.4% on a solid volume of long 2s.

If anybody had the athletic tools to get over that, though, it’s Wilson.

Arguably an even better scorer is Brigham Young’s AJ Dybantsa. The toolset Dybantsa puts on paper is the kind that goes first in just about every draft. He stands 6 feet 10 inches in shoes, a wingspan greater than 7-feet and the hops to dunk just about everything.

How does he put it to use? Well, the dunking is part of it. Dybantsa, being a two or three depending on lineup, logged 43 dunks on 48 attempts in 35 games played. Out of all players in BartTorvik.com’s database, that’s the 17th-most by a player to take 6.5 3s per 100 possessions – Dybtantsa also handled the highest usage by a long shot.

Dybantsa’s downhill creation is the primary facet of his top-pick candidacy. On top of his ability to go up and over, he was 72 percent overall at the rim. Additionally, his mid-range shot making is excellent, if not a tad over-hated. Dybantsa took a lot of these, almost eight per game, but at a 46.3% clip, only 11.9% of his 126 makes assisted, it’s a symptom of shot-making beyond the value of the shot.

Dybantsa’s 3-point volume is lower than scouts would want, and there’s reason to be he might just not be as good a shooter from 3 as he needs to be. Volume reigns supreme, however.

The real thing keeping Dybantsa out of the top three is how his athleticism manifests outside of scoring. Despite his verticality, Dybantsa was a 17th-percentile offensive rebounder (4.7%) and a 20th-percentile stock generator (2.8%). As mentioned near ad nauseam, these are feel indicators, something Dybantsa was often maligned for.

Ultimately, scoring and handling of major usage (while having a 22.1% assist rate) is a pathway to success. Does Dybantsa have the defensive and rebounding chops of past tall wings with major scoring talent (e.g. Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant)? No, but the chances he comes out successful regardless is immensely high.

TIER 1: FUTURE MVP CANDIDATE(S)

1. Cameron Boozer, Duke

I’ve settled on Duke’s Cameron Boozer being at least a forehead above his peers for a couple months now; at least by enough to deserve his own tier.

This isn’t an argument that Boozer isn’t flawed, but that he has more translatable qualities, physical tools and elite strengths than his peers. Let’s look down the list: He’s an elite scorer (22.5 points per game, 65.3% true shooting, 30.3% usage), rebounder (10.2 rebounds per game, 12.5% OREB/22.1% DREB), an incredible playmaker (25.6% assist rate, 1.65 assist-to-turnover), especially for his size (6 feet, 9 inches, 250 pounds with a 7-foot-1 wingspan), and is a solid defensive event creator aside from weaknesses on that end (4.7% stock rate).

Let’s talk about weaknesses briefly, because it’s not a lot. For one, Boozer added weight for the college game, limiting explosiveness and his ability as a finisher. He shot just 64.5% at the rim, which is far from elite despite elite overall efficiency. He’s never been a defensive centerpiece, but the added size also limited his mobility, which shone in his drop coverage and center minutes.

Aside from that, it’s not much to poke holes into.

Boozer’s been a knockdown 3-point shooter for years with a completely Morey-ized shot profile (only 52 non-rim 2-point attempts this season, 10.0% of total shots). He lived at the rim, primarily, though, getting there at ease all year. It took a legitimately historic shot-blocker in Ugonna Onyenso, as previously mentioned, to limit him.

Even in games where his scoring was subpar, Boozer’s feel was elite. He’s a special passer for his size and was inarguably the most effective and prolific offensive engine in the country this past season, if not one of the best in the last 35 years.

It’s also worth noting he’s 18 for another month. Boozer was college basketball’s best player as one of it’s youngest, perhaps the biggest example of youth as an additive in the entire class.

I have very few concerns about translation. Even with spotty defense as a primary rim protector, Boozer’s feel allowed him to have enough an impact on the possession economy – with talented defenders around him – that he was still an impact piece on that end. You don’t get to the second highest box plus/minus in college basketball history by being a one-way player.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

These players don’t typically come into the public eye until much later, however. U17 competition is the last time they’ll pop up on draft adjacent Twitter and Instagram feeds until the exhibition cycle of the McDonald’s All-American Game, Nike Hoops Summit, Jordan Brand Classic and more roll around.

Then, for the lucky 12 who make the roster, it’s FIBA U18 AmeriCup.

For Team USA, that roster is as prestigious as ever. Coached by Dayton head coach Anthony Grant, the roster features seven potential one-and-done draftees from the 2026 high school class, as well as the best talent the 2027 high school class can offer.

Here are the players from the 2026 class who have caught my eye, good or bad, and the 2027 players I’m keeping major tabs on.

Subscribe now

RECENT

Prospects & Concepts

Bruce Thornton is hard to miss

Read more

3 months ago · 5 likes · Logan Adams

Who Stands Out?

Quentin Coleman, Illinois

G, 6’4”, 190 pounds, 17 years old

Coleman has been the most productive player on Team USA, despite struggling to find his shot. He was the best prospect in Missouri, leaving Principia High School as the 13th-ranked prospect in the 2026 class by 247Sports. He was a late riser, coming into the calendar year ranked 90th and committed to Wake Forest. The switch to Illinois was a result of his ascension.

He’s hung his hat on a 40.9% true shooting thus far, failing to get to the free-throw line even once, and going just two-of-eight on 3-pointers. For the most part, it’s the only thing Coleman has failed to do at an elite level for this squad.

He’s pulled in 25 rebounds in the first two contests, including 10 offensive rebounds. He’s also been the most efficient distributor on the roster, coming in tied for second in assists per game, committing just one turnover for a 7.0 assist-to-turnover ratio.

Coleman lacks some of the indicators of translative physicality that scouts will demand, especially if things go south in the early NBA career of fellow Fighting Illini Keaton Wagler. Offensive rebounding and greater ease of dunking will pull some weight, and if he can shoot, too, it just might not matter.

Overall, Coleman’s been the biggest winner for Team USA’s incoming collegiate class.

Colben Landrew, UConn

W, 6’7”, 220 pounds, 18 years old

Landrew’s 2026 high school ranking never really caught up to what a lot of scouts in more niche circles think of his game. He’s a big-bodied 6-foot-7 wing with a 6-foot-10 wingspan and an absolute flamethrower from outside.

So far, he’s put all of that on film and sheet for Team USA. Landrew’s let it fly from 3, taking a team-high 10 attempts in the first two contests. Though he’s shot just 30 percent, weighing his field goal percentage down to under 40 percent, he’s taking the shots he’s made the forefront of his game throughout his high school career. On top of his shooting influence, Landrew’s handled with care, producing twice as many assists as turnovers, and impacting the possession economy on defense with a team-high 2.5 steals per game.

The numbers aren’t mind-blowing on the surface. However, Landrew’s in the mold, physically and statistically, of the type of wing that wins games in the NCAA and NBA. At UConn, under coach Dan Hurley, he’ll be deployed to do just that.

Who Has Underwhelmed?

Bruce Branch III, BYU

F, 6’9”, 190 pounds, 17 years old

To say Branch has been unproductive would be a lie. He’s third on Team USA in minutes per game, while averaging a near double-double with 8.5 points and rebounds per game.

The issue has come in how Branch projects. As the foremost reclassified prospect in the 2026 high school class, he was in contention as the top player in 2027 before going up a year and committing to BYU and coach Kevin Young. Branch is a lean 6 feet, 9 inches and has profiled himself as akin to the Paul George-brand of wings that has scattered the NBA in recent years, scoring 20 a game, handling the ball and defending the opposing team’s best player.

Branch hasn’t looked the part. He’s struggled to win off the dribble, lacking strength in his body and handle, delegated to a small-ball five, play-finisher role. While playmaking has been a decent surprise, especially against Mexico, where Branch had four assists (tied for second on the team), his fit in this role is lacking. His physicals have kept him from being the defensive event creator he needs to be, and his lack of shooting touch has limited his mismatch capability at the five (zero-for-one on 3s and five-of-nine on free-throws).

Branch has produced, yes. However, the reasons above give me pause in his ability to stack up in the Big 12 as one of the class’s youngest prospects.

Taylen Kinney, Kansas

G, 6’0”, 180 pounds, 18 years old

I’m fairly confident Kinney will continue to fight for the PG1 spot in the 2027 NBA Draft, despite a lackluster showing in FIBA U18 AmeriCup thus far. On the surface, he’s been efficient in the ways scouts have come to expect – four-of-six from 2, three-of-six from 3 and 3.0 assist-to-turnover rate. Kinney finds his shots in the flow and distributes with poise.

The reason he’s gotten the fourth-most minutes in Team USA’s guard room, behind Coleman and two high school class of 2027 players, is size (and the on-court product of it). Kinney’s been among Team USA’s least productive defenders and rebounders, despite being a vocal leader on the court and showing activity. A set of high shoulders and long arms aids Kinney’s issues. But, especially under a coach like Grant, who likes guards to crash the glass and pick up full court, Kinney appears the least equipped.

That said, Kinney’s been the purest “point guard” of the bunch. His poise and ability to deliver passes across the court are the reasons for that. While not the greatest athlete on the floor, his effectiveness has been notable offensively.

Ethan Taylor, Michigan State

C, 7’0”, 230 pounds, 18 years old

Taylor’s been another stock riser, though, a more questionable one than some of the other entries here. He was highly courted by legendary Michigan State coach Tom Izzo in his recruitment, yet he will likely back up Charlotte transfer Anton Bonke as a freshman. As a seven-footer, Taylor has interesting traits (size, finishing, everything that comes with it), but fails to fill in the gaps his size can’t.

As a lob threat and rim protector, Taylor’s been reliable. He’s taken just four shots as Team USA’s starting center in both contests, but doubles that total in free throws — an area he’s shot just 37.5% at. Taylor’s rim protection has looked real, and his size is formidable, allowing him to finish possessions on the glass as well (8.5 rebounds per game). However, the processing has been rough when Taylor isn’t receiving the ball mid-air.

Tools are the sell with Taylor; however, it may take a year or two to see them find their use in the collegiate level.

Which ‘27s Stick Out?

Adan Diggs, Millennium HS

G, 6’5”, 180 pounds, 17 years old

For the sickos out there, Diggs is the headlining prospect of a group that doesn’t feature many of the consensus top five or 10 names in the 2026 class. Diggs initially reclassified from the 2028 high school class to be where he is now, and as one of the younger players on Team USA, has flourished as its leading scorer.

On top of it, he’s slotted in as a fantastic reactive playmaker and great rebounder. Diggs averages 8.0 rebounds per game despite just being 6 feet, 5 inches. He plays incredibly instinctively with the reaction time to match, and the shooting has been more than passable thus far.

Davion Thompson, Link Academy

G, 6’2”, 170 pounds, 17 years old

If you polled 100 scouts with eyes on this event, I don’t think a single one would have been able to guess Thompson would be the only Team USA player over 20 minutes per game through two contests.

Thompson has been remarkably effective as a scorer, slightly less so – but still effective – as a playmaker and active on defense, all while showing the game is still slowing down. He’s made a couple of iffy decisions and took a couple of tries at the rim against Argentina to get used to the level of competition, but he’s been fearless through two games. It’s equated to value, too, as Thompson ranks second behind Coleman in plus/minus.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

In the 2025-26 NCAA men’s basketball season, 30 players in high-major conferences shot 150 or more mid-range jump shots. Only nine of those players shot over 47 percent on those shots; all the way at the top, Ohio State’s Bruce Thornton, the historic program’s all-time leading scorer, sits at 57.7% on 175 mid-range jump shots.

Thornton isn’t just unique in his efficiency between the rim and the 3-point line. He’s a uniquely efficient scorer overall; one who shot 75.5% at the rim, 40 percent from the 3-point line and 82.9% at the free-throw line – equating to a 66.5% true shooting.

His clip at the rim, among the top-40 mid-range shooters in the country in terms of volume, also ranks first. His volume was lower than the others in his group. That’s for an obvious reason, one untouched to this point: Thornton is small.

At the NBA Combine, Thornton measured just 6 feet barefoot, putting him just a shade under his listed height at Ohio State of 6 feet, 2 inches, or 74 inches tall. That measurement is half a foot shorter than the next smallest player out of the 10 most effective high-major players in the country (who handled at least a 15% usage).

Efficiency aside, Thornton’s been mocked as a second-round pick for much of the year – even an undrafted prospect before the mass withdrawal of non-seniors. Thornton’s size played a role in that, along with him simply being older at 23 years old when he takes an NBA court for the first time. He helped himself slightly, weighing in at 223 pounds with a 6-foot-5 wingspan, however.

Both are solid indicators of defensive translation for guards, length and body mass, with Thornton’s steal and block rates just barely hitting the thresholds for passable defensive guards. While he doesn’t create many turnovers on one end, another superpower of Thornton’s is limiting his own mistakes.

Thornton’s 3.0 assist-to-turnover is a marker of elite ball security, especially considering his 23.2% usage and relatively mediocre 21.9% assist rate. Thornton’s combination of low-mistake, high-efficiency play is the exact intersection necessary for smaller, non-traditionally athletic guards to hit to find NBA success.

Among drafted guards (players 6 feet, 5 inches or shorter) since 2008 with a steal rate of 1.9% or less, the majority who found success either were, or turned into, nuclear shooters. They also positively impacted the turnover economy while being lackluster defensive event creators.

Jamal Murray and Jalen Brunson are the poster boys of this query: All-Star caliber guys who not only saw the court despite being bad defenders, but played through their physical shortcomings with elite shotmaking, feel and control.

Prospects & Concepts

You shouldn't care about combine measurements

Read more

3 months ago · 4 likes · Logan Adams

Thornton’s All-Star trajectory is not as easily predictable as Murray’s, who was the seventh pick in a stacked class. Murray, who was drafted at 19.3 years old, was over three years younger than Thornton will be when he gets drafted, more likely in the early-to-mid second round. Youth-adjusted production at the collegiate level is the first thing most scouts look at when evaluating players, knowingly or not.

The Brunson parallels are where things start to get really interesting for Thornton. It’s not fair to compare the two, but Brunson’s path to success in the NBA provides a good guideline for Thornton. Brunson, drafted 33rd at almost 22 years old, checks many of the same boxes as Thornton’s scouting report.

The scouting report below is Brunson’s from Kevin O’Connor’s 2018 NBA Draft guide.

Now, there were a few things KOC got wrong here, most notably the second bullet point about lacking the elusiveness for elite shot-creation. His bullet above about Brunson’s “deception, change of pace and advanced footwork” directly contradicts it.

Brunson doesn’t create shots in the ankle-buckling, Kyrie-an way that has made and failed many a-mixtape darling, but he fights, battles and carves out space. Thornton does the same, using his bulk and low center of gravity to bump, pivot and carve away at space. It’s a method more similar to Kawhi Leonard than Steph Curry despite being much, much smaller; yet the efficiency matches.

Thornton’s scoring bag is summed up in the four-clip montage below from his 32-point game against Michigan State (footage via CBS Sports).

• First clip: draw two off-ball, bully his way to the rim.

• Second clip: come off the screen, read the defender’s decision, drill the 3.

• Third clip: one-on-one, he reads the top foot, attacks and scores.

• Final clip: drives, bumps and touches a floater in over the top.

Beautiful, quick and efficient basketball. Not one bobbled ball, moment of hesitation, or even a volley of set-up moves. Just buckets.

Thornton isn’t the best playmaker in this guard class. His passing bag is almost entirely secondary to his scoring bag, and oftentimes, he’s looking to make plays for others reactively, rather than proactively.

To be fair, he’s had some of the worst teammate talent of any high-major player in the country. Thornton’s 11.6 box plus-minus ranked eighth in the nation, more than twice the next guy on Ohio State in the stat (Juni Mobley with a 5.5 BPM). He was one of two high-major players to record a BPM over 10.0, without a teammate over 6.0. BPM isn’t everything, but as a broad stroke for impact and context, it’s useful.

Is Thornton, Brunson? In all likelihood, no. However, those traits, good and bad, are areas where scouts have routinely missed, time and time again. After all that trial and error, you’d think Thornton would be harder to miss.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Chris Cenac Jr. should be a prolific shot-blocker. He’s not.

In 918 minutes for the Houston Cougars last season, Cenac blocked just 18 shots, coming out to an average of just 0.5 blocks per game, swatting an estimated 2.6% of shots Cenac Jr. saw while on the floor. There’s reason to believe even that figure, ranking in just the 45th percentile nationally, was inflated, as when Big-12 All-Defensive selectee Joseph Tugler left the floor, Cenac’s block percentage dropped to 1.5% – 24th percentile nationally.

So, why should he be so elite in this category?

The NBA’s foremost event preceding the NBA Draft is the draft combine, an event where a select number of early entrants are interviewed, measured and, if they so choose, pitted against each other in scrimmages. Cenac put forth elite measurements.

Tested as a forward, Cenac measured fifth in his position group in standing reach (9’0.50”), second in height without shoes (6’10.25”), first in wingspan (7’5.00”), eighth in standing vertical leap (33.0”), 14th in maximum vertical leap (37.0”) and fifth in the shuttle run (2.84 seconds).

Conventional wisdom dictates that measurements like this should come with elite shot-blocking, among other traits like dunking, rebounding, etc. Cenac’s defensive rebounding was elite, ranking third in the Big 12 with a rate of 26.1% – one of the few defensive metrics to not take a hit when Tugler left the floor – but was nowhere near as effective on the offensive glass.

Cenac’s discrepancy is a product of the incorrect evaluation and attribution of what athleticism looks like on a basketball court, how valuable it is and what actually goes into those traits we attribute to athleticism. Defensive potential is the biggest example of this discrepancy.

Prospects & Concepts

2026 NBA Mock Draft: Post-Lottery Edition

Read more

4 months ago · 6 likes · Logan Adams

Let’s look at an adverse example. Santa Clara’s Allen Graves was an underwhelming combine performer. Also tested as a forward, Graves ranked 11th in standing reach (8’10.50”), 12th in height without shoes (6’7.75”), 22nd in standing vertical (27.5”), 19th in maximum vertical leap (34.0”), 11th in wingspan (7’0.00”) and 27th in shuttle run (3.18 seconds), yet was the far more productive defender than Cenac.

Graves’ stock numbers were historically good, as one of the only players in NCAA history to hit his marks as a freshman. Graves’ 5.0% block rate ranked 76th-percentile nationally, additive to his 100th-percentile steal rate of 5.0% and 20.0% defensive rebounding rate – an 84th-percentile mark.

Despite being trumped in every athletic metric the combine is meant to measure, Graves destroyed Cenac in just about every metric that is supposed to be a product of measurement. The reason is that those metrics, stocks especially, are not metrics of athleticism, but of feel and physicality. Elite measurements are just an addition to that baseline.

The difference in passing feel between Graves and Cenac is decisively clear, even more so than the defensive discrepancy. Graves’ 2.44 assist-to-turnover ratio dwarfs Cenac’s 0.82 ratio. In college, the “athletic” metrics like shot-blocking don’t always lend themselves to playmaking feel, but those who have both typically make it to, and excel in, the NBA.

This is to say combine measurements are useful, but only if they show up on the court first. Margins matter in the NBA, a league that is – needless to say – bigger than the NCAA.

Prospects & Concepts

Braylon Mullins and the Vassell-McLemore paradigm

Read more

4 months ago · 4 likes · Logan Adams

Another example of how combining measurements can be misleading to defensive potential is in the comparisons between two of the elite guards in the 2026 class: Darius Acuff Jr. and Kingston Flemings.

Acuff measured larger than some expected, standing 6 feet, 2 inches without shoes with a remarkable 6-foot-6.5 wingspan. On the other side, Flemings came in slightly taller at 6 feet, 2.5 inches, but with a less-than-inspiring 6-foot-3.5 wingspan, likely shorter than his height in shoes.

That said, Flemings was far and away the better defender between the two last season. The Houston guard logged a steal rate of 3.0%, taking the ball away on over twice the possessions Acuff was able to with a 1.3% steal rate.

Steal rates aren’t everything – there’s always going to be prospects who slip through the cracks of what is conventionally and historically seen as valuable – but Acuff’s is more than conventionally low, and indicative of lackluster processing and physicality translation.

Historically, this stacks up. Guards with similar measurements like Collin Sexton or Reggie Jackson, who marked comparably low steal rates, ended up not only being bad defenders in the NBA, but also coming up short as playmakers.

Meanwhile, the outlook for guards with Flemings’ defensive metrics – alienated from wingspan, height, etc. – is much brighter. Highly-drafted guards who got steals simply hit at a higher rate. They didn’t always turn out to be good defenders, but their ability to process the game and handle physicality at the college level translated to the NBA. Meanwhile, those who didn’t create turnovers rarely learned to and had to find ways to get on the floor through raw shot-making. Even among those capable of doing so, even fewer made it to an All-Star, All-NBA, or even starter level.

Ultimately, athleticism is an additive factor. Size, above all other tools, matters, but basketball is a sport played with one’s mind. Nobody in the 2026 NBA Draft class shows this more than Houston’s two one-and-done prospects; Cenac and Flemings, in how their production and skill set is at odds with the “potential” their tools prescribe them.

The fallacy of potential, tied to numbers without substance measured and logged in a setting alien of basketball has caused general managers to swing and miss time and time again, betting on the development of skills and traits out of thin air. Traits that history says rarely develop in the first place.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

The 2026 NBA Draft lottery has concluded, and excluding trades further changing the order, we now know the final order of the picks. For those who haven’t seen the order yet, it fell as such:

1. Washington Wizards (N/A)

2. Utah Jazz (+2)

3. Memphis Grizzlies (+3)

4. Chicago Bulls (+5)

5. Los Angeles Clippers, via Indiana Pacers (-3)

6. Brooklyn Nets (-3)

7. Sacramento Kings (-2)

8. Atlanta Hawks, via New Orleans Pelicans (-1)

9. Dallas Mavericks (-1)

10. Milwaukee Bucks (N/A)

11. Golden State Warriors (N/A)

12. Oklahoma City Thunder, via Los Angeles Clippers (N/A)

13. Miami Heat (N/A)

14. Charlotte Hornets (N/A)

Below are the picks I would make, along with how I think it shakes out, and why.

1. Washington Wizards

PREDICTION: AJ Dybantsa, Brigham Young

MY CHOICE: Cameron Boozer, Duke

The Wizards were potentially one of the last beneficiaries of a lottery that still somewhat benefits tanking. They gathered assets at the trade deadline, including win-now moves for Trae Young and Anthony Davis, benched everyone worth playing and ended up with the top pick in the draft.

The consensus pick for this spot is AJ Dybantsa, and frankly, he fits how the Wizards feel as a franchise at this point. Dybantsa is a special talent with the ability to become a three-level scorer and a solid playmaker. However, there’s a bit of conflation between aesthetics and upside with Dybantsa. His length and ability to score – and do so efficiently in a way conducive to highlights – but the flawed playmaking and subpar defense make for a higher probability of Dybantsa’s production not matching his impact.

Alternatively, I’d go Cameron Boozer; my top player in the class, and someone I see in a tier of his own. Boozer brings just about everything to the basketball court, especially on the offensive end – efficient scoring on and off the ball, elite rebounding and playmaking, and he gets stocks. Defense is where he falters, but his cognition and size should pull some weight on that end. I’d expect Boozer to lean out in a wing/forward-esque role, closer to where he was in high school.

Generational is a term thrown around too often, but as far as college prospects go, Boozer’s as good as they have come in the 21st century, and the type of player that can change a franchise.

2. Utah Jazz

PREDICTION: Darryn Peterson, Kansas

MY CHOICE: Darryn Peterson, Kansas

There’s an alignment here where the best player available is also the best positional fit, being Darryn Peterson. There’s a chance Peterson is the best player in this class if he can overcome the injuries and issues he dealt with in his single season at Kansas. His scoring, defense and upside as a playmaker. At the very least, he’s a truly elite “3-and-D” player who can add athleticism and on-ball scoring.

On the Jazz, Peterson’s a fit on a team in transition. The hope is he can play either guard spot as last year’s top-five pick Ace Bailey develops into a valuable starter, but with the return of Walker Kessler, the addition of Jaren Jackson Jr. and the addition of Peterson, the Jazz have a strong future ahead.

3. Memphis Grizzlies

PREDICTION: Cameron Boozer, Duke

MY CHOICE: Caleb Wilson, North Carolina

The Grizzlies may have ended up in an ideal spot, one where you really can’t be mad regardless of who they pick. It’s not the best spot, but if you’re a franchise that likes to have your destiny chosen for you, this is what you were hoping for.

The differing factor, if Dybantsa and Peterson go 1-2, this is the best spot. Boozer is, as previously mentioned, my top player in the class by a good bit. Lucking into him at three is just as good, if not better, than lucking into the first pick. He’d provide all the same things he would for any team (just about everything) and he and Zach Edey, assuming health, would single-handedly make a dominant rebounding team.

If he’s not there, though, my choice would be Caleb Wilson, UNC’s shot-blocking, transition-running, poster-dunking, 6-foot-10 big man who looks like he wants to do just about everything, too. Alongside several value pieces, again, assuming their health, he’d insert instant production and tantalizing potential.

4. Chicago Bulls

PREDICTION: Caleb Wilson, North Carolina

MY CHOICE: AJ Dybantsa, Brigham Young

The Chicago Bulls’ task is very easy: take whoever falls. In my predictions, that’s Caleb Wilson. If the teams drafted how I would, it would be AJ Dybantsa. The top four of this class are seemingly set in stone; there just appear to be differing opinions on order. Unless Chicago is unreasonably high on someone else, they have the easiest choice in the entire class.

Both players would provide something different, but valuable. For Wilson, it’s high-paced synergy with their plethora of guards, using athleticism to get them out in transition and finish plays, even handling on the break and making plays for others. For Dybantsa, it would be inserting on-ball shot-making into a group that sorely needs it.

5. Los Angeles Clippers

PREDICTION: Keaton Wagler, Illinois

MY CHOICE: Aday Mara, Michigan

The Los Angeles Clippers are perhaps the luckiest team in the NBA Draft. They took a swing trading All-Defensive center Ivica Zubac to the Pacers for a 2026 first-round pick, protected picks 1-4 and 10-30, alongside Bennedict Mathurin. The gamble paid off, and the pick fell right into the range the Clippers needed.

The draft truly starts here in terms of capacity for chaos. Keaton Wagler is my tentative prediction, the 6-foot-6 combo-guard who led Illinois to the Final Four in his freshman year, and the biggest riser of the 2025 high school class. Wagler’s shooting and playmaking would be a seamless fit, but my choice would be the towering 7-foot-3 Spaniard out of Michigan, and the best defender in the class, Aday Mara.

Mara is an elite shot-blocker and passer above all, but his ability to score inside is a true cherry on top in a league dominated by players who have positional size and the ability to make plays for others. Mara looks the part of an elite defender and role player, but he could be much more.

6. Brooklyn Nets

PREDICTION: Nate Ament, Tennessee

MY CHOICE: Kingston Flemings, Houston

There’s capacity for chaos with this pick, unlike any others. The Nets swung on several point guards last year, and still seem to think Egor Demin is one of them, whom they took eighth overall in 2025. Demin was followed quickly by Nolan Traore and Ben Saraf as well, putting them in a precarious position with the best players on the board being guards.

I decided not to trust them in this prediction, taking Nate Ament, whose name you will not see the rest of this mock. Ament is someone I believe should have returned with a low likelihood of successfully scaling as an athlete to the NBA level. My choice instead would be Kingston Flemings, the electric Houston guard with an elite first step, awesome shot-making, high-energy defense and potentially the best playmaking package of any guard in the class. In the top six, you take the best player and throw fit to the wind.

7. Sacramento Kings

PREDICTION: Darius Acuff Jr., Arkansas

MY CHOICE: Bennett Stirtz, Iowa

The Sacramento Kings have needed a point guard forever. The good news, despite slipping to the seventh pick in the draft, they should have a plethora of options. I don’t know if they’ll make the right one (but who does?).

My gripes with Darius Acuff Jr. have been his size and defense not often equating to successful, impactful NBA players. He may put up All-Star numbers, but they’ll probably be lacking some type of substance, given how his defense can outweigh his offensive excellence. I’d offer Stirtz as an alternative, an older, but better prospect, in my opinion, who should offer elite scoring and playmaking from day one. Stirtz has dominated all levels of collegiate basketball in several divisions.

He might not be a franchise piece, but Sacramento needs a player like him.

8. Atlanta Hawks, via New Orleans Pelicans

PREDICTION: Kingston Flemings, Houston

MY CHOICE: Yaxel Lendeborg, Michigan

The Hawks are in a good spot. They were the most improved team in the league in terms of future from the moment they acquired the Pelicans’ 2026 unprotected first-round pick in the Derik Queen trade, then saw Jalen Johnson take another leap into an All-NBA talent.

Their options shouldn’t be detrimental as long as they take a good player, and I like my prediction and choice for them equally. Flemings provides an offensive spark deserving of real reps, and keeps up with their top defenders on the other end, while Lendeborg provides all-around impact and size.

9. Dallas Mavericks

PREDICTION: Mikel Brown Jr., Louisville

MY CHOICE: Allen Graves, Santa Clara

Mikel Brown Jr. said at the draft lottery that Dallas is his “favorite city in the country.” Those are the types of quotes that get you taken where you want to go, especially if you’re already projected in that range.

Brown would be a fine choice at nine, for a team that doesn’t have many real point guards. The Cooper Flagg experiment was somewhat successful, though the pathway seems to be adding pieces around him that can playmake for others, as well as let him go to work. The best guy for that, in my opinion, is Allen Graves, who can play forward alongside Flagg, complementing his best strengths as a lengthy, rangy defender and a playmaker with size.

10. Milwaukee Bucks

PREDICTION: Yaxel Lendeborg, Michigan

MY CHOICE: Mikel Brown Jr., Louisville

The Bucks are in a tricky spot. Giannis Antetokounmpo could be on the move if this off-season doesn’t go perfectly, and the Bucks have a lot of things that need to go right to meet that standard. Nailing the 10th-overall pick is the first part of it.

Yaxel Lendeborg would be a great option: a proven winner with all-around impact that will slot into any lineup, with or without Giannis, seamlessly. Mikel Brown Jr. is the upside swing – one that could pay off in the short-term but also could be tantalizing enough to keep Giannis, if that’s the direction the Bucks pick. Brown’s shot-making and playmaking bring about comparisons to Giannis’ last All-Star teammate, Damian Lillard, and if he can show enough of that, it will be just that: enough.

11. Golden State Warriors

PREDICTION: Brayden Burries, Arizona

MY CHOICE: Keaton Wagler, Illinois

The Warriors are another team in a funny spot. Aging stars define a roster with no real cornerstones, as quietly good (or loudly misperceived) Brandin Podziemski has been. The choice for these types of teams, in my opinion, is just to go with the best player available.

The Warriors haven’t always scouted that aspect the best, but Brayden Burries is just as good a pick as any here, with his diverse scoring, athletic indicators and rebounding/defensive value. He’s older, and measurements could come back underwhelming, but it’s hard to doubt just how good he is.

Wagler seems like a slide here, but in my opinion, he’d easily be the best player available, with outside shooting, offensive rebounding and playmaking to boot, making him one of the stranger, but effective on-ball stars to come out of college.

12. Oklahoma City Thunder, via Los Angeles Clippers

PREDICTION: Jayden Quaintance, Kentucky

MY CHOICE: Jayden Quaintance, Kentucky

Jayden Quaintance to Oklahoma City seems like a match made in hell for the rest of the league if his precarious knee is intact. The 6-foot-10 forward will still be just 18 on draft day and one of the class’s biggest mass monsters and best defenders. The Thunder also have the unique ability to swing on Quaintance, with enough talent to let him develop and recover slowly, something others can’t afford.

Quaintance’s defense is his calling card, and his tape at Arizona State last season, which is what scouts will solely be referring to, is eye-popping to say the least.

13. Miami Heat

PREDICTION: Labaron Philon Jr., Alabama

MY CHOICE: Tyler Tanner, Vanderbilt

“Heat Culture” is always a term that gets thrown around during draft time, as people anticipate the Heat to take the hardest working, biggest “dawg” available to them at the pick they have. It rarely seems to be the case, though. Instead, the Heat go for talent, and rightfully so. They’ve drafted well, molded talent to culture, instead of trying to find talent within culture. Their issue is they’re usually just good enough to avoid top talent.

Both Philon and Tanner are great talent picks, as two of the most productive point guards in the country this past season. I have a preference for Tanner due to his defensive and shooting outlook, on top of being the superior athlete. Tanner would fit in nicely at the point guard spot as a gritty defender and high-octane athlete who ran one of the country’s best offenses like a savant.

14. Charlotte Hornets

PREDICTION: Hannes Steinbach, Washington

MY CHOICE: Hannes Steinbach, Washington

I’m a huge proponent of compounding on one’s strengths. The Hornets were the best shooting team in the league this past season, making the most 3s, attempting the second-most and shooting at the third-best percentage. There are no elite shooters I’d feel comfortable taking in this range, so what else do the Hornets do well? Rebound.

Hannes Steinbach is the best rebounder in the class, and has been for years. He’s massive, with huge, soft hands that gobble rebounds like a Thanksgiving turkey, and those soft hands lend themselves to shooting down the line, hopefully. If not, Steinbach’s still an elite finisher, rebounder and has some of the best hands in recent memory, making him a solid defender when it comes to poking balls loose.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Regardless of how his NBA career turns out, UConn wing Braylon Mullins has cemented himself in Huskies history with his game-winning heave against Duke to make the Final Four. It was a shot that many thought secured Mullins’ spot in the 2026 NBA Draft, so when he announced his return to Storrs, Connecticut, less than a month later, it came as a surprise.

However, Mullins’ profile is one that, while enticing in some ways, features plenty of common pitfalls that lead highly drafted prospects to come up short early in their careers.

BIG BOARD

Prospects & Concepts

2026 NBA Draft Big Board: Pre-Combine Edition

Read more

4 months ago · 8 likes · Logan Adams

Mullins’ size is a big factor. UConn lists him at 6 feet 6 inches and 196 pounds, though conflicting reports from previous years see him listed under 6 feet 4 inches, with a relatively middling wingspan.

As menial as it may seem, the difference between two or three inches, margins matter in the NBA. The average NBA shooting guard stands 6 feet 6 inches tall in shoes and has a 6-foot-9 wingspan, according to Databallr.

The conflicting measurements line up closely with 2013 draftee Ben McLemore, who returned a lengthy career, yet never had a positive impact. Alternatively, if Mullins shows up to the 2027 NBA Draft Combine and is in fact closer to his UConn measurements, he compares similarly to Devin Vassell, who has been a valuable piece for the dominant Spurs this year, and measured 6 feet 7 inches with a 6-10 wingspan at Florida State (Vassell did not test at the NBA Combine in 2020 amidst COVID-19).

Despite the alternative paths, there are similarities between Vassell and McLemore as prospects, notably efficient, high-volume 3-point shooting and similar rebounding and assist rates.

What set Vassell apart as a prospect, aside from size, was three factors: turnover aversion, self-creation and defensive production. How Mullins aligns with and improves in these factors, separating himself from McLemore’s pitfalls, will play a large role in his success in the NBA.

Vassell’s assist percentage wasn’t mind-blowing at Florida State, logging in at just 11.2%, lower than McLemore’s 12.6%; however, there’s a staggering difference in how often the two turn over the ball. As competition increased, as well, Vassell committed fewer turnovers while McLemore committed more.

For mid-to-low-usage prospects, turnover rate is paramount to success. Ideally, prospects who aren’t creating much are shooting the ball when they touch it – an action that turnovers are rarely a part of. Failure to add on-ball impact aside from shot-making in combination with being turnover-prone lends itself to negative impact on offense and is why, despite being a knockdown 3-point shooter, McLemore was a sinkhole as an offensive piece during his NBA career.

While Mullins’ assist rate is 9.5% suggests even less of an on-ball role than either McLemore or Vassell, his 9.9% turnover rate is right where it needs to be to hopefully circumvent this weak point.

The hit rate on guard-sized players with low usage is already slim, meaning Mullins is fighting an uphill battle, though turnover aversion is a big part of some of the success stories. Adding self-creation, or wider guard skills, in his second season with UConn would be paramount for making this battle less of a struggle.

Mullins was assisted on 65.1% of his shots this past season, with zero unassisted dunks and over 90% of his 3-pointers coming off a teammate’s pass. Bringing these numbers down would suggest Mullins has added primacy to his offensive skill set.

How Mullins gets to his shots is part of the equation, too. Out of 400 play-type possessions logged by Synergy Sports, 194 (48.5%) came off spot-ups and off screens for Mullins, which are inherently off-ball play types. Off-screen shots, specifically, where Mullins was 98th percentile in volume, tend to be assisted looks.

Another issue inherent to off-ball players is low free-throw rates, one of Mullins’ biggest dark spots as a prospect. Mullins is a good free-throw shooter, hitting well over 85% of his looks dating back to high school, but volume has always been low.

High-volume free-throw shooting not only suggests an ability to deal with and a willingness to accept contact, but simply lends itself to efficient offense. Free-throws are the ultimate double-whammy for an offense, especially with a shooter like Mullins, putting defenses in foul trouble and the offense at the line for the most efficient look in basketball.

Free-throw rate is an area in which McLemore exceeds Vassell. McLemore’s 0.345 free-throw rate dwarfs Vassell’s 0.221 rate, which is more than double Mullins’ 0.104 clip. For his warts, McLemore got downhill, albeit on plenty of off-ball actions designed to do so, evidenced by his high assisted rate at the rim.

Mullins’ profile currently suggests little more than an elite shooter, akin to a Matt Thomas or, of course, a Ben McLemore. He rarely gets downhill, rarely gets to the line, doesn’t initiate and rarely sees shots outside of the system. How much of that is due to UConn’s system is hard to determine, but priors for Mullins are positive, with far more self-creation in Adidas 3SSB samples.

Especially in the turn of events where Mullins measures closer to McLemore, his self-creation and playmaking development will be paramount. Guard-sized players with the skillsets of off-ball wings have a scary low hit-rate in the NBA – size is an unavoidable advantage in the NBA, and the bigger Mullins checks in, the less his future hinges on transitioning into a more on-ball role.

RECENT

Prospects & Concepts

What 'stocks' do and don't mean

Read more

4 months ago · 10 likes · Logan Adams

Finally, defensive production is one of the differentiators between Vassell and McLemore that Mullins would lean into to maximize success in the NBA.

Vassell’s 2.8% steal rate and 4.1% block rate were elite for a wing of his size, and predictive of scalable feel and physicality to the NBA level. As discussed in “What ‘stocks’ do and don’t mean,’ stocks are not necessarily just an indicator of being good on defense – Mullins is a solid defender as is – but a sign of processing from the side of the court opposite offense.

Mullins actually isn’t that far behind Vassell.

His 2.2% steal rate solidly exceeds most benchmarks for stocks you’ll see in queries, and his 2.6% block rate is equally impressive. The 1.5% deficit between him and Vassell may suggest the speculated size difference is true, with marginal differences in wingspan and height leading to Mullins blocking fewer shots, but it’s still great for both guards and average-sized wings, especially elite shooting ones. More importantly, however, Mullins exceeds McLemore in both metrics.

Mullins’ defensive production is a suggestion that there’s more to his offense than meets the eye. Processing is directly aligned to stock production, and though Mullins’ low self-creation and playmaking rates are alarming, hope lies on the other end of the court. Additionally, touch is in Mullins’ corner.

His calling card has always been his shooting. While Mullins only shot 33.5% from 3 in college, his priors, finishing and free-throw shooting – the latter two on low volume – suggest a much better shooter. As he hopefully grows as a playmaker and self-creator, his shooting will aid him along the way.

Mullins’ decision not to declare for the 2026 NBA Draft is a sensical one, regardless of its surprise. He undoubtedly had a successful freshman year, making the National Championship game as a starter and consistent producer, but continuing to grow in the ways someone like Vassell has is paramount to overcoming some of the most common pitfalls for players in his archetype.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Allen Graves has been a mind-warp for the more traditionally-minded scout. He’s a big, stocky guy who isn’t center-sized and didn’t do a lot of the eye-catching stuff on offense you’d commonly find on a highlight reel (poster dunks, ankle breakers, pull-up 3s, etc.).

Despite this, it’s hard to deny Graves’ elite offensive impact. He’s remarkably efficient, with a 61.3% true shooting (fifth in the West Coast Conference), doesn’t turn the ball over and is a dominant force on the offensive glass, pulling in the second-most second-chance rebounds in the WCC despite playing the fourth-most minutes per game on his own team.

These factors have given Graves one of the most impressive statistical profiles on offense of any prospect, regardless of class, in recent memory. He maximizes possessions, both in volume and in value, taking high-quality looks while adding to the number with his impact on the boards.

Graves is historic in another aspect too, though, one that doesn’t come with the same direct correlation to impact: stocks.

Prospects & Concepts

2026 NBA Draft Big Board: Pre-Combine Edition

Read more

4 months ago · 5 likes · Logan Adams

The shorthand term for steals and blocks as a collective is divisive as a predictor of good defenders. Most basketball fans will advocate for blocking shots and stealing the ball as good things, though not inherently good markers of a great defender, often favoring “intangibles” like hustle and effort that don’t show up in the box score. This assessment is flawed – great shot-makers will always make shots over great defenders – but it has some merit in some cases.

A prime example is James Harden, who led the league in steals during the 2019-20 season, while being a notably bad overall defender. Another is Hassan Whiteside, a high-volume shot-blocker who led the league in the category for two years, yet graded out as a negative defender.

Graves led the WCC in steal rate at 4.9% (seventh in the NCAA), with a matching block rate that placed him fourth in the conference. Despite that, Santa Clara became a notably worse defensive team with Graves on the court. In fact, the Broncos rebound, steal and block less with Graves on despite his elite individual numbers.

So, what do stocks mean?

Avinash Chauhan (@100Guaranteed), a writer on Substack and for Swish Theory, has written and theorized extensively about this and finds himself with ample property on Allen Graves Island.

“Having a high block or steal rate probably indicates good defense … but the box score is ultimately an abstraction of what’s going on,” Chauhan writes, preempting his thesis on stocks as a predictive tool. “Naismith or whoever decided the act of grabbing the ball after it clanks off the rim should be called a rebound; it’s all just abstractions of action.”

Box score statistics weren’t made with the idea that they’d be used to predict who will be good in the NBA. In actuality, they probably were tracked with the initial purpose of comparison, attempting to expand value beyond points. In a sense, they’ve succeeded, but as Chauhan pens, it’s all abstraction.

“What filling the box score indicates is a mastery of level,” Chauhan writes. “Box-score numbers are separate from skill classifications, or bifurcations of offense and defense into something more singular. It’s basically goodness.”

Regardless of the intention in their implementation, or lack thereof, box-score statistics have evolved into something of value; not just in scouting but in basketball itself. Winning the possession game is a direct indicator of winning, just as making more shots or different types of shots is, and just as assisting on more shots is an indicator of a better-flowing offense.

“Especially at youth levels, stocks are a very important diagnostic tool. It never fails,” Chauhan writes. “The greats always showcase excellent stocks, great passing, efficient scoring, and strong rebounding. I know it seems like I named every stat, but that’s really how it goes. Nikola Jokić seemed super average, but he was one of the best prospects ever when you use that skill singularity lens of cognition.”

In a vacuum, stocks indicate nothing. A player could be an outlier defender, producing elite stocks, but without the well-roundedness it takes to be an incredible basketball player, they mean little, capping players out at the level of someone like Matisse Thybulle. It’s the same with any singular skill.

When scouts like Chauhan point to stocks with Graves as a predictive tool of his unstoppable greatness, they don’t do so based on it projecting Graves’ defense as some all-time trait. Instead, it’s an additive part to the whole picture of Graves: a player who rebounds remarkably well, scores incredibly efficiently, makes plays while protecting the ball and, yes, creates box-score caliber events on defense.

Prospects & Concepts

Darryn Peterson's interior scoring and learning from Cooper Flagg

Read more

4 months ago · 3 likes · Logan Adams

Harkening back to Harden as a prime example, his volume of steals isn’t an indicator that he’s providing elite defense by any measure; it’s an indicator he’s thinking the game faster than almost anybody on the court at a given time. Elite stock producers tend to be elite offensive players due to their ability to process information quickly.

“Leading the league in steals is probably the best example of this,” Chauhan writes. “It’s just a level of awareness and cognition that demonstrates that they understand the level (one is at). Especially for perimeter creators, it is a highly important checkbox.”

Players like Stephen Curry, Tyrese Haliburton, Harden and more have all, at some point, been elite at generating steals. Of course, they are all elite offensive minds and game-changing players.

“The causal mechanics take is that they’re an awareness indicator,” Chauhan writes. “Maintaining dominant production with strong stocks just shows a different level of basketball thinker. The link between stocks and offensive goodness is not that intuitive, and I’m sure it’s why certain people get exasperated when stocks are brought up for certain projected offensive juggernauts. But the fact is that at the highest levels of basketball, it’s the high feel masters of the game that really run the sport.”

Perhaps the reason Graves has sent many into an acrobatic masterclass of rationalization is not because of aesthetics or any inherent issue in his game. It may be because of the contradictory nature of stocks as a predictive tool.

Praising Graves for his stock production, as he produces a negative swing on the defensive end, seems to suggest stocks are a fallacy. The logical jump one must make to see them as a predictor of something greater, feel, is difficult; but once made, and thus combined with his all-around production, the level of mastery Chauhan emphasizes is hard to ignore in Graves.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

The General Lack of Names

The 2026 NBA Draft is not just unique for its depth and star power, but it’s lack of names. This is an absurdly talented class, with likelihood that a full rounds-worth of players return multiple-contracts in the NBA, many more at least having their foot in the door.

However, as NIL has caught up to the NBA’s rookie contract offers, we’ve seen big names drop out of the draft, bringing their talent back to college to accrue millions in NIL money and potentially boost their draft stock in the process. Patrick Ngongba II, Braylon Mullins, Motiejus Krivas and many others will now see themselves amongst the top of 2027 NBA Draft big boards after returning to school.

However, this is a talented class. While some return options are still pending, it’s hard to look at the top of this group and not note the worthiness of its praise. The best top four of the decade sees a lottery-caliber group of no less than 15 more names behind it, with many other freshman swings and veteran breakouts behind them.

This is an elite class.

The Guard Class Rankings

The quickest issue people seem to take with the 2026 NBA Draft and individual rankings seems to center around how the top of the class’s guards are ranked. As is shown above, my top five point guards are as listed:

1. Kingston Flemings

2. Keaton Wagler

3. Mikel Brown Jr.

4. Bennett Stirtz

5. Darius Acuff Jr.

Regardless of how you shake it, these are the names you’re most often going to find at the top. Labaron Philon, Ebuka Okorie, Tyler Tanner and others may find their way into the group, but this is as close to a consensus group of five as it gets.

I made a tweet earlier today that criticized some rankings of these five, targeting nobody, merely making a general analysis.

Here’s what I value in my rankings: projectable impact, translatable skills and size/athleticism. Through my evaluation, Flemings and Wagler hit those markers the best, with someone like Acuff Jr. not doing it the same way, despite tremendous box score numbers.

At the end of the day, each one of these guys is ranked in my top 11, meaning while one is over the other it’s not a landslide advantage, nor is it an indictment that anybody is a bad player.

Caleb Wilson vs. AJ Dybantsa

What translates in the NBA? Size, athleticism, processing and defense tend to suggest ability to step up more than anything else. What’s missing that tends to be a consensus marker of superstardom? Scoring.

AJ Dybantsa could be the best scorer in the class. He has great size, shows an ability to finish above the rim, but doesn’t always process well nor is he a productive defender. Caleb Wilson overtook him in my last board as I’ve started to weigh this more. Wilson is a tremendous athlete with better measurables and statistics than Dybantsa, while being one of the nation’s best rebounders and defenders.

Dybantsa makes the case on scoring and the traditional aesthetics of “upside,” the zeitgeist of draft talk year after year – as well as less-than-traditional ones that keep me from “fading” him – but as I’ve narrowed down and finalized my decisions, Wilson has overtaken him.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

If Darryn Peterson, the Kansas product and potential No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, were to have a signature shot, what would it be? A pull-up 3 from deep range or a quick-trigger pull off a screen might come to mind. After all, the 6-foot-5 guard was most often aligned as among the 2026 draft class’s top shooters, while lamented for his lackluster aggressiveness getting downhill.

However, the shot that Peterson took with a higher frequency relative to the rest of the NCAA was his floater. Peterson took 42 floaters this past season, making 19 of them – an 84th percentile frequency with 59th percentile efficiency.

Prospects & Concepts

The real indicators of stardom

Read more

4 months ago · 4 likes · Logan Adams

The floater is basketball’s ultimate touch shot: one nobody has any business taking without the ability to make them at an elite level, most often utilized by undersized bigs as a short-roll counter or small guards playing “is it a lob?” with the low man.

Peterson is neither. He’s a wing-sized, bursty handler who can get up and over the rim with relative ease if he so chooses. The floater isn’t a counter or an elite method of catching the defense off-guard; it’s a crutch representative of an aversion to physicality.

The obvious excuse for this is injuries; the boogeyman of Peterson’s season, leading to DNPs aplenty, including in some of his biggest matchups. However, this was something even Peterson’s high school coaches had discussed.

Looks like these are bad shots; ones where Peterson picks up too early, either out of habit or fear, and takes a relatively inefficient look when a better one is present.

The issue is not the shot itself. It is the shot left on the table.

Peterson, as mentioned, is remarkably twitchy, quick and flexible off the dribble. He can finish above the rim or get acrobatic enough to go up and under the defender for mid-air hijinks. It’s on film, and statistics back it up as something he’s good at, yet it’s not something he’s trying to do enough, weighing down his overall efficiency.

Over the last three major samples Peterson has put forth – last season at Kansas, his senior year at Prolific Prep and his last season playing Adidas 3SSB – he’s gone 66.5% at the rim on 245 attempts; an elite conversion rate on a pretty underwhelming sample. With Kansas, Peterson’s frequency at the rim ranked in the 12th percentile nationally.

Again, this is not something that can be chalked up to injury – Peterson’s senior season at Prolific Prep saw him finish with 16th-percentile frequency, though the drop-off from 86th-percentile efficiency to 53rd stands out.

Assuming the latter does play into the hamstring and cramping issues Peterson was having, the hope is that once in the NBA, Peterson can return to his high school and AAU levels of efficiency, but the volume will need to rise.

There’s nothing wrong with Peterson having a floater. In fact, the most recent No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft uses it quite often, and though he hasn’t been the most effective scorer, the way he gets to his floater fits with the rest of his shots. I’m of course referring to Cooper Flagg.

While Peterson has never finished with a higher than 32nd-percentile frequency, Flagg has never finished with worse than 40th-percentile frequency, seeing his rate climb as his on-ball duties have grown.

That said, Flagg still finds room to get to his floater, which he uses as a genuine counter to his downhill attacks. Flagg is relentless, getting to the rim with a genuine ferocity around the cup, wanting to bring down his defender along with the rim as he goes up and over.

Flagg shoots his floater with 82nd-percentile frequency and 77th-percentile efficiency. He’s the rare on-ball scorer with real size who gets to it often because he’s so dynamic around the rim that defenses are willing to sell out to stop him. Peterson has the tools to do the same, despite being four inches shorter; his dunks-per-rim-attempt are similar if not better than Flagg’s.

There is one advantage Peterson has over Flagg that has allowed him to be viewed as an elite-among-elite scorer, with efficiency to match: shooting. Peterson has one of the quickest triggers in the 2026 NBA Draft class and he knows it, shooting 13.9 3-pointers per 100 possessions at 38.2%. He also gets to the line, with a 37.1% free-throw rate and an 82.6% clip from the free-throw line.

Peterson doesn’t just project as an elite shooter; he is one. That alone will mean his shot profile will inherently be different from Flagg’s, and ideally, that’s at the sacrifice of the floater.

Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey is much maligned for his roster decisions and treatment of players (just ask James Harden), but one thing he absolutely was ahead of the curve on was the maximization of the basketball court. Rim and 3-point attempts are mathematically superior to all other field goal attempts, and a healthy dose of free-throws won’t hurt.

Peterson’s missing the most effective part of that puzzle: an elite shooter from the 3-point and free-throw line, but an aversion to the rim could handicap him not just as a scorer, but a playmaker and offensive focal point. Injuries or not, Peterson’s track record sticks out, and the floater, while valuable as a tool, has been a crutch of his for too long.

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

I talked a good bit in my last piece, “The cautionary tale of Jason Crowe Jr.”, about the conflation of bucket-getting and stardom. Scoring alone, just like defense alone or any other singularity in basketball, can’t be evaluated in a vacuum, even though it often is.

Collin Murray-Boyles is a prospect and player who represents the inverse. Someone who isn’t a flashy scorer, yet provides immense impact, going back to his time in college because of what he is capable of outside the vacuum of scoring, evidenced in his role bringing the Toronto Raptors back to a tied series in the first round of the NBA Playoffs against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Prospects & Concepts

Morez Johnson Jr.'s many splintering pathways and the question of margins

Read more

5 months ago · 6 likes · Logan Adams

Digging a little deeper, we see Murray-Boyles is averaging 1.32 points per shot. It’s not the highest-volume, sexiest diet in the world, existing on a lot of putbacks, shots under the rim, short jumpers and floaters, but it works, and is remarkably efficient for Murray-Boyles. This alone has made him an impactful offensive player, as one of the most effective scorers, regardless of diet or volume, in the postseason.

Adding to his offensive efficiency, Murray-Boyles is adding possessions more often than he is conceding them. Through four games, Boyles has logged more than twice as many offensive rebounds (13) as turnovers (6). With Murray-Boyles on the court in the Playoffs, the Raptors grab more offensive rebounds overall, commit fewer turnovers overall, shoot better and more often from inside the arc and get assists on vastly more of their field goals.

The cost of this is fewer 3-pointers and a slower pace, and while that seems bad, it’s a trade-off for maximized possessions. Inherently, the closer you are to the basket, the better quality the shot. Murray-Boyles doesn’t just sacrifice 3-pointers; he sacrifices jumpers as a whole, battling to the rim for a 2-point shot distance of about a foot-and-a-half closer on average.

Additionally, this basket bludgeoning opens up higher quality looks from outside the line, drawing the defense in for easier kick-outs and open looks. Ultimately, the only correlation between pace and another statistic is randomness: fewer set plays, inconsistent player-to-player positioning and more turnovers.

Murray-Boyles has helped Toronto even this series by maximizing possessions on offense and providing solid defense. It’s a trait every superstar has, from Nikola Jokić to Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to Victor Wembanyama. In their own unique brand, these stars maximize offense and create more possessions on defense. They do have an advantage that Murray-Boyles doesn’t: positional size.

Size is paramount in basketball. That’s the most obvious point anyone can ever make when talking about the sport. Standing 6 feet, 7 inches and 245 pounds with a 7-foot-1 wingspan, Murray-Boyles has solid heft and length, which, on top of his cognition, allows him to be a great defender, but for someone who plays a center-esque role, his impact on defensive rebounding and shot-blocking doesn’t mirror his impact on the offensive end in smaller lineups.

Murray-Boyles is constrained to this role not just because of his lack of primacy as a handler and shortcomings as an outside shooter, but because of the immense impact he brings to the areas described above.

Positional size is what may limit Murray-Boyles from becoming an All-Star caliber of player or better, but he’s already beginning to build a reputation as an impact player because of his elite offensive rebounding, influence on his team’s shot diet and efficiency, and playmaking on both ends of the floor.

The traits of a star may not always show up in the sexiest possessions on the basketball court. Murray-Boyles has undeniably starred for Toronto as arguably the most impactful player in a series featuring six former and current All-Stars, doing so through cleaning up messes on the glass and making easy looks around the rim, but those types of plays, while traditionally not falling into highlight reels, win basketball games.

Consider Subscribing!

Prospects & Concepts is a reader-funded newsletter ran solely by myself, Logan Adams, a soon-to-be college graduate looking to break into the sports journalism world. Help support my dream by subscribing for just $5/month or $50/year.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive access to:

• Any and all current, past and future content that is or may be behind a paywall.

• Ability to comment on every post.

• Access to the subscriber-only chat.

• Ability to gift subscriptions to friends, family, etc.

• And so much more!

Use the link below to subscribe and support Prospects & Concepts today!