Once the summer arrives, more likely than not you’ll be on the lookout for that one guy who is going to carry your offense.

RAPM models and other means of data-driven analysis have greatly advanced our understanding and appreciation of low usage, ancillary-pilled glue guys in every position, and, conversely, has diminished the league-wide value of PPG-heavy primaries that command a lot of the ball, but don’t contribute much in other areas of the game.

Nevertheless, the lead guard still reigns supreme in the modern NBA.

In the 2026 NBA Draft, these archetypes again dominated the first round selections: Keaton Wagler, Mikel Brown Jr., Darius Acuff Jr., Kingston Flemings, Bennett Stirtz, Christian Anderson, Ebuka Okorie and Christian Anderson Jr. were all top-20 selections that can be reasonably placed within the lead guard spectrum as incoming prospects.

Amongst top paid players in the NBA you’ll see plenty of high load-bearing guards; some of them justify the money they’re being paid, some of them don’t. This summer eyebrows were raised when the Cavaliers and the Wizards dished out mouth-watering contracts to Donovan Mitchell and Trae Young, respectivelly.

It’s hard to see those two particular contracts aging well, but one thing is for sure: between the multiple high lottery picks and hefty extensions, the lead guard bias is well and alive in the NBA, and some of the most prominent specimen of that archetype can rest well knowing there’s a pile of money waiting for them at home.

It’s what makes the archetype so important and precarious at the same time; nailing down the draft selection and subsequent extensions can be some of the most crucial decisions you have to make as a GM trying to build a winning NBA team, both with regards to playing personel and cap management.

The compromise

Proposing a broad definition that would capture the essence of what is actually a lead guard isn’t as easy as it seems. Modern lead guards will almost always be high usage, but there’s players who eat a lot of shots across the entire positional spectrum.

Also, we’d miss out on unique players like Tyrese Haliburton, who is one of the best offensive orchestrators in recent memory, but who’s not exactly high shot usage. Not all ball-dominant guards are high assist either; they’re the most obvious flawed exhibits of the archetype.

Meanwhile guards aren’t the only ones who carry high assist volumes either, so the USG/AST relationship alone doesn’t really work as a sound role separator in the NBA.

Luckily, modern NBA allows for even fancier player tracking, and it’s on-ball percentage that presents a much more reliable, singular metric for lead guard separation. For example, the category leaders last season were pushing close to 50% in on-ball rates, while Nikola Jokic, NBA’s leader in AST%, who also carried 12th highest usage, was at just 25%.

As mundane as it sounds in what was thought to be an increasingly positionless sport, handling the basketball and triggering the initial action remains one of the most reliable proxies for offensive role separation.

The highest non-guard on-ball percentages last year belonged to Deni Avdija (35.2%) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (32.8%), far away from where most of the highest offensive load bearers at the PG spot land.

Last season’s Avdija is probably the best current example of a wing being squeezed into a lead guard role, with some rather predictable results: though overall he was a highly positive net offensive contributor to his team, Avdija simultaneously led a league-worst offense in terms of turnover percentage.

So, an imperfect definition that, in broad terms, does the job, is this: a lead guard is a perimeter-oriented, below-average sized player who carries the highest unassisted shot volume and the most sizeable on-ball percentage on his team as a primary initiator of the offense. That way, we can largely weed out players that are functional engines of their offense from other positions, while also maintaining suboptimal and flawed instances of the archetype.

Every threshold of performance, as always, is arbitrary and, at points, precise roles, especially those that closely tread alongside multiple archetypes, can be pushed by context one way or another.

My study found 51 players with >500 mins last season who could conceivably be interpreted as lead creators, with names ranging from obvious candidates like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic, to Dillon Brooks, who the Phoenix Suns tasked with the highest self-creation load in his entire career.

On average, the player who falls into the cluster of lead guards will have a significantly higher proportion of his shots unassisted, he’ll assist and take many more shots than an average NBA player and, on average, be 3 inches shorter, and a significantly worse offensive rebounder.

The scope of players who qualify is pretty wide, and that also emphasizes the qualitative variety within the archetype: it includes some of the best players in the league, as well as struggling rookies like Nolan Traore or Ben Saraf, or the recently retired Russell Westbrook, who laboured through his last few years in the league.

Considering the negative correlation between high offensive load and defensive performance, the lead guard will most likely be a compromise defensively.

Out of 45 true lead guards in my 25-26 study, just 8 logged >0 in D-DPM last season, one of them being Kawhi Leonard, a wing in a high usage offensive role that the algorithm treats as a lead guard.

The aforementioned negative correlation here could not be understated: heavy on-ball volume has consumed the defensive impact even for players who actually had strong prior indicators of athleticism and defensive cognition.

For example, it’s not totally inconceivable that Westbrook had the priors to follow a development path in close alignment with Jrue Holiday, his eventual replacement at UCLA, before he peaked as one of the greatest offensive load-bearers of all-time.

Yet because his development went on a completely different path, even at his athletic peak Westbrook was a neutral defender at best (which, when you consider his otherworldly offensive output, is actually great). On the whole, based on my lead guard study, the median O-DPM of the archetype was 1.16, while the D-DPM median stood at -0.64 in 2025-26, meaning you should expect an average player of the archetype be a tangible negative defensively.

So, for most lead guards, the most plausible way to productivity will be to impose a really strong offensive footprint that justifies supplementary roster building and rotational scheming to offset your net negative impact on defense, while simultaneously trying not to be a 1st percentile defender in the league.

If you are 1st percentile defensively and command a ton of the ball, the only plausible way out is to be like peak Trae Young.

This is where so much of the boom-or-bust nature of the archetype is rooted in. Being just really good offensively and terrible defensively results a Cam Thomas-type flame out where you end up without a team despite averaging 22.5 points per game as a 22-year-old.

This makes the offensive load bearers who aren’t major compromises defensively quite possibly the single rarest and most valuable archetype in the game. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Cade Cunningham are the two most prominent examples now. The two highly intriguing young players with the potential of following their footsteps to varying degrees are Dylan Harper and Ryan Rollins.

Their unique abilities and tools are immensely useful not just on defense; the single biggest utility of their two-way ability is the enabling of possibly gamebreaking multi-guard lineups, which don’t just lift some of the offensive burden off the shoulders of SGA and Cade, but just generally allow for a cleaner, superior offensive process that’s harder to prepare for defensively.

Both the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Detroit Pistons are now actively exploring the possibilities of multi-guard lineup architectures, enabled by the two-way nature of their superstars.

The Thunder have dumped Lu Dort, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe this summer and have a working proof-of-concept with the SGA/Ajay Mitchell pairing. Their decision to acquire Bennett Stirtz in the 2026 NBA Draft underlines a major roster building shift in favour of multiple self-reliant perimeter guys offensively, at the expense of guys who would just shoot the basketball when presented the opportunity.

The Pistons are moving in a similar direction as well with a draft day acquisition of Ebuka Okorie and their playoff experimentation with lineups featuring both Cunningham and Daniss Jenkins.

The supernova

The lead guard framework can be broken into further sub-categories within itself, with the obvious distinction being between your ‘normal’ lead guards and supernovas, aka players who basically have an ability to carry an offense by themselves.

One thing that is particularly curious about the supernovas is that even though most of them will be a major defensive compromise, in the vast majority of cases they still have to cross a certain degree of functional athleticism to simply stick around.

Curiously enough, one of the best singular separators between NBA’s elite load bearers and busts who fail to translate their game from college is hitting functional block rates as a prospect, and it applies even to those guys who aren’t really thought of as being very athletic within the broader context of the league. For this, I’d like to circle back to @NileHoops’ query for offensive supernovas, where one of the filters is >0.6% blk.

This does feel counterintuitive and may feel like one of them cherry picked queries that the ball-knowers of Twitter rally against vehemently, yet hitting a certain block rate as a prospect is actually a great proxy for measuring if a player crosses a functional athletic threshold required to play at the very highest level.

Having an above-baseline block percentage can be a sign of multiple highly useful, functional microskills and physical traits, such as vertical leap, athletic explosion, wingspan, ability to extend, and just a general, additional proxy for feel.

NBA is quite comfortably the most athletic league in the world and in that context it’s easy to forget that around 95% of players are just ridiculously athletic and big, even if the optics of the league can make it seem otherwise.

So if we relaxed that query a little bit, there’s an 0.6% blk cut-off line that’s as clear as anything you will see today.

If we were to relax that query just a bit more we’ll see that there’s at least a couple of highly productive lead guards in Kemba Walker and Payton Pritchard who sat below the arbitrary 0.6% blk threshold as prospects.

In both cases, their saving grace was that they were drivers of elite shot quality, while suppressing turnovers effectively.

For example, peak Walker would usually rank around the 96-97th percentile in 3pa/100, visit the line frequently and log roughly around 90th percentile in scoring turnover suppression, ensuring a super clean offensive process, designed to effciently soak up the ball handling duties with minimal mistakes and above average efficiency.

The result was that Walker peaked at around top-5 offensive players in the 2017-2020 period, according to RAPM.

On the face of it, there may not be a ton of functional difference between Pritchard and DJ Augustin.

Yet Augustin was quite possibly one of the worst regular rotation players of the 2010s, who inexplicably hung around the league for 14 years while being a net negative player for the vast majority of his career. He left almost no playoff footprint and was quickly squeezed out from the 2015-16 Thunder, the best team in his career, by a rookie Cameron Payne.

It’s conceivable that the massive production gap between Augustin and Pritchard could be at least in part influenced by Pritchard’s more favourable developmental environment. However, the general point still stands: Pritchard’s RAPM numbers have been shooting through the roof in recent years, even if he did have some challenges scaling up his offensive load with Jayson Tatum injured for most of the 2025-26 season.

Again, most of it comes down to a much cleaner offensive process, which last year was especially apparent when the mid-range driven offensive creation of Jaylen Brown was taken out of the equation.

Pritchard’s offensive responsibilities surged without Brown and even if his turnovers and efficiency took a hit, the Pritchard on/Brown off lineups were better offensively than Brown on/Pritchard off, mostly because Pritchard’s offensive process eschews mid-rangers in favour of threes and elevates the Celtics to one of the best teams in the league in terms of suppressing turnovers.

If we were to go back to the proper supernova profile, the NBA has been moving away somewhat from a roster building model where a superstar is tasked with carrying his team’s offensive fortunes almost by himself, with the rest or the roster supplementing defense, ability to shoot off the catch and finish plays at the rim. I doubt we’ll see anything similar to MVP Westbrook, peak isoball James Harden or Luka Doncic when he was the leader of the Dallas Mavericks in the next few years.

Therfore we have to adjust our criteria accordingly. In 2025-26, I’d say, these guys were the true productive, modern supernovas of the NBA.

The vast majority of their positive contributions will come from a disproportionate impact on two of the six factors: oTS% and oTOV%.

This idea should form the basis for your primary guard evaluations in the NBA Draft: if you’re really high on a certain guard prospect, you need to have sound reasoning for them making a sizeable impact on at least one of those two factors.

Being just good likely won’t return the clamored star outcomes and, if a player lacks an ancillary base to scale down offensive touches and remain impactful in other aspects of the game, he’s more than likely to bust.

LaMelo Ball is unique in this short list as he’s also an incredibly positive oREB contributor from the guard spot, having a career 4% OREB rate as a ball-dominant guard; the posession of outstanding ancillary skills helps in any situation, in any role and it should never, ever be dismissed.

Increasing your team’s shooting efficiency is the chief task of a supernova, as +oTS% impact reigns supreme. The most intuitive way to do that is simply being able to eat a 99th percentile shot usage rate and shoot efficiently from the field, but this is easier said than done: the bar for efficiency is incredibly high and possibly unattainable, if you aren’t an outlier 2pt scorer or go to the line much.

+oTS% impact is odd because it’s not necessarily tied to a player’s own TS% numbers, as we have seen with the Pritchard example; it’s totally conceivable to be a driver of efficient scoring while not being a very efficient scorer yourself.

If we went back to the same query we used before, only SGA really stands out in a unique way with his own efficiency, logging a +8.6% rTS% metric, which is almost mind-bending considering how many shots he takes and that his process is centered in the mid-range.

It’s no wonder that the player with the worst rTS% is also in posession of the worst free throw rate. Living at the line and knocking down your free throws is a highly reliable, replicable way of being a positive influence on scoring efficiency as a primary.

However, some players like Ball, Cunningham and, even to some extent, Maxey and Brunson, are capable of driving heavy +oTS impact despite not having standout efficiency themselves; they mostly do it by increasing both the shot quality and efficiency of their teammates.

This will likely come from an elite integration of pull-up shooting threat (emphasis on threat, since the most crucial aspect isn’t hitting the shot itself, but your scoring threat drawing two people to the ball), quick processing of the game and technical passing proficiency. Ball and Cunningham are also uniquely qualified to see over defenders with their additional height.

Meanwhile the worst lead guards with heavy on-ball duties can have a positive oTOV% impact, but they will almost always be a drag on oTS%.

A lot of the time the lead guards that are a major drag on oTS% simultaneously won’t be positive oTOV% influences either because some of the procedural issues on offense (i.e. poor shot diet or an absence of a requisite passing ability) can be a cause for both.

Even in most cases where a lead guard is a drag on scoring efficiency, yet helps to control turnovers, it’s just so hard to beat the meta; even those who are -oTS% but +oTOV (23’ Spencer Dinwiddie, 24’ Terry Rozier, various iterations of Dejounte Murray) will be highly suboptimal players, likely not worth building around, if they don’t simultaneously give a strong defensive impact.

After dominating the EYBL circuit, Smith Jr. was the consensus national high school player of the year in his senior season for Paul VI.

In the 2025 FIBA U19 World Cup, he was selected as the defensive player of the tournament, despite playing a year younger. Smith Jr. managed to stand out in a team that made up the core of the freshman class in this year’s NBA Draft, which is no small feat, even if FIBA competitions aren’t that predictive of future NBA success.

So naturally for Smith Jr., the number 3 RSCI recruit in the class of 2026, expectations will be sky high in what will likely be his only year playing college basketball.

As you can already sense from the priors, Smith Jr., just like Caleb Holt, who I wrote about last week, is another high-end prospect in this class who’s in or somewhere around the ‘he’s small and not really a point guard’ predicament.

I talked about Holt and his alleyways to beating this particular meta, including being a disproportionately positive influence on the offensive glass and imposing a high degree of physicality for his position.

Smith Jr., though functioning roughly around the same archetype, is a vastly different player, and will have to forge a different path as a PG/SG hybrid. Generally, based on his priors, Smith Jr. is a tough player to project a query for.

It’s likely there will be a level of role-relative 3pt rate suppression (though his shooting volume has seen a year-over-year increase) and rim-reliance, which can potentially be mediated if he posts a high free throw rate and improves his stroke from the line, which remains somewhat of a paint point as Smith Jr. enters college basketball.

Running the break

Smith Jr. headlines another high-end freshman recruit class for coach John Calipari - he is joined by Abdou Toure, number 13 RSCI recruit in 2026, as well as JJ Andrews (No. 16) and Miika Muurinen, who returns stateside after what can only be described as a very odd year in Europe.

With Billy Richmond III, one of the most athletic wings in high major basketball, returing for a sophomore year in Fayetteville, Arkansas will boast one of the most athletic and transition-potent teams in recent memory, and maybe even all-time.

Gone are the players like Darius Acuff Jr. and Meleek Thomas, who were major beneficiaries of Razorbacks’ ultra-athletic and transition oriented offense, without actually being very athletic (at least by extremely high standards of the team) or contributing to the creation of transition opportunities.

In that sense, recruiting Smith Jr. to at least partially replace Acuff Jr., who made his impact through passing and shot creation, means Arkansas is leaning on their defense, athleticism and transition prowess even more than last year.

In 25-26, Arkansas finished as the 14th fastest team in adjusted pace in D1, while simultaneously having the lowest tov% (a likely product of playing in transition so much) and 6th best blk% (a major vehicle for transition opportunities).

So, for Smith Jr., there will be an abundance of opportunities to run and score on fast breaks. Attacking early is instinctive for Smith Jr., a player who immediately becomes one of the fastest guys in all of college basketball.

Smith Jr. isn’t just fast in a straight lane, he’s great at changing directions, shifting gears and the weight of his body from one side to another, making him not just a potent weapon to run in pure transition, but also an outlet for other forms of early offense.

This, besides from going from coast-to-coast, includes a budding ability to create and make jumpshots, which will likely be taxed to a higher extent in college because of Arkansas’ roster construction.

With regards to Smith Jr.’s half-court play, I think it’s pretty clear that the jumpshot and overall scoring efficiency will be very much up and down for him as a freshman playing tough SEC competition.

At points, his non-dunk rim finishing can still leave some things to be desired, especially as Smith Jr. drives into the paint with multiple defenders who are in time for their rotations, or simply taking off from too far and rushing his layups at higher speeds, possibly pointing to some problems in deceleration process.

In many ways it feels like it’s easier for Smith Jr. to decelerate when he has a defender in close proximity, acting almost as a tool to slow him down via physical contact.

I think overall, with regards to his half-court play, there will be a lot of pressure for free throw process to translate.

Smith Jr. is interesting in that regard because, unlike some truly physical guards, he doesn’t really rely on strength or proactive search of contact under the basket to get himself to the line.

Instead, it’s mostly a mix of him being able to touch the paint at will because of his handle and explosive first step, which consistently puts defenses at a disadvantage. Smith Jr. has little problem beating the first defender off the dribble with his exceptional change of pace and direction.

Once Smith Jr. beats the first defender, his speed exerts additional pressure on backline defenders to rotate in time.

Generally I just love the way in which Smith Jr. operates low; his combination of vertical pop, speed and low center of gravity makes him a pretty rare blend. Here’s another play illustrating what I’ve mentioned earlier: Smith Jr’ just ripping through past his defender on the elbow area, focing both a rim rotation and a dig, which provokes a slight contact and sends him to the line.

The creation

All of the stuff I’ve talked about up to this point is really important for Smith Jr. to keep a high floor: the ancillaries, high feel and defense should be able to save him in case the shot never develops and he remains within that unwanted ‘neither a 1 nor a 2’ positional framework.

Like it was the case with Tyran Stokes, the 4 year pre-NCAA priors I’ve posted aren’t really reflective of year-over-year improvement. In his senior year at Paul IV, Smith Jr. shot 36.9% from three and 72.4% from the line, which isn’t very good, but nevertheless a noticeable improvement.

At this point in Smith Jr.’s career, it’s probably best to just go under screens when he handles the basketball in pick and roll situations; this helps the defense to not only prevent paint touches and force pull up jump shots, but also to stay with original assignments.

At the same time, the developments in that regard have been heading in a positive direction because of Smith Jr.’s innate ability to create space, which sees an exponential increase in value as his shot develops further.

A lot of his ability to create shots hinges on being able to lift off two feet like it’s nothing, significantly increasing his point of release, thus making it difficult to contest those jumpshots even for bigger players.

This area is where I’d expect to see a lot of the self-creation centered around for Smith Jr. at Arkansas; with defenses being happy to go under screens and the Razorbacks likely pairing their star freshman with multiple bad or mediocre shooters, he’ll likely have to spend time in the mid-range.

With regards to passing, Smith Jr. doesn’t feel like a real point guard, but with 1.7 a/to over the last 4 years, he uses on-ball reps efficiently for a non-primary.

At points he can fall into the trap of uber athletic downhill drivers where he’s just so locked into driving into the paint, he misses clear passing windows to shooters in the corner and the slot, like in this clip where Smith Jr. drives himself into a clogged paint after forcing multiple players to rotate.

At this point Smith Jr. is best when he’s looking to actively leverage his downhill ability and budding shot creation to draw 2 players to the ball and then make simple reads for shooters.

Defensive versatility

Lastly, a few words about Smith Jr.’s defense, which actually has to be the main and most clear selling point for him right now.

There’s very little doubt that Smith Jr.’s defense will translate seamlessly to the collegiate level, helping to flip Arkansas from an average to a possibly elite defense.

I have my qualms about Razorbacks’ center rotation defensively (I admittedly am not super familiar with Paulo Semedo, their redshirt freshman big), but they have so much high quality insulation from their wings and guards, they’re bound to defend really well.

Smith Jr. will be a major part of this. On a per 40 basis, he creates as many stocks as Stokes, who, at least in his final high school year at Rainier Beach, defensively was pretty much their center.

Besides the obvious defensive play creation, which will yield high stop% rates, Smith Jr. is so intriguing on that end of the floor because of his versatility, posessing the requisite skills for perimeter containment, nail/elbow help actions, secondary rim help, rebounding and even paint anchoring.

For example, on this play Paul VI were actively looking to keep Smith Jr. as a defensive anchor in the paint via off-ball switching designed to keep him guarding the rim, which he eventually does with a successful contest at the rim.

Here’s another play demonstrating Smith Jr.’s defensive versatility, this time, guarding a Spain action.

On this play he basically has to cover off two players after one of the defenders gets taken out of the play by the ‘screen the screener’ action once the initial pick is rejected.

Smith Jr. reads the play very well to tag along with the roller in a timely manner, at the same time keeping his eyes locked on the ball handler to stay in place for a contest; by now it’s needless to say that his ability to leap off two feet with on a quick load time helps to contest rim shots in a highly effective manner.

The Wildcats were heavily reliant on freshmen like Koa Peat, Brayden Burries and Ivan Kharchenkov, they didn’t really have an offensive engine from the point guard spot in the realest sense of what that role entails, while their big Motiejus Krivas was coming off a foot injury that cost him virtually the entire 2024-25 season.

Arizona were ranked 13th in the pre-season AP poll, only to throw a couple of early season haymakers against elite teams in Florida and UConn. Tommy Lloyd’s squad were arguably the 2nd best team in the nation last season behind Michigan, against whom they ended up losing in a highly anticipated Final Four matchup which ended up a bit too one-sided.

Jayden Bradley was often thought of as Arizona’s leader, but in reality, their main source of success was outrageous size and physicality inside: Krivas recovered from his injury and played better than ever, Tobe Awaka was the best pound-for-pound rebounder in the country, while Peat brought and additional layer of interior presence and vertical athletic ability.

Meanwhile, their guards Bradley, Burries and backup Anthony Dell’Orso mostly played a varying degree of what could be described as an area between a 1.5 and a 2.

Peat, Bradley, Burries, Dell’Orso and Awaka, all major parts of Arizona’s success last year, have all left the program. However, coach Lloyd scored a major off-season coup by bringing back Krivas, a player that, at least in my opinion, is the best NBA prospect from the 2025-26 Wildcats roster. Kharchenkov is also back for a sophomore season, which is huge.

The biggest new piece to complement the returning European core of Krivas and Kharchenkov is star freshman Caleb Holt, the number 2 RSCI prospect in the class of 2026, just below Tyran Stokes.

Holt’s recruitment makes total sense for Arizona: I have some legitimate concerns over his offensive profile from what I’ve picked up, but with Krivas returning and Arizona recruiting JJ Mandaquit to play the point, the Wildcats again don’t really have a PG offensive engine in its truest sense; yes, Mandaquit’s priors indicate him being an excellent and efficient passer, but the shot creation economy isn’t there yet to complete the profile.

As you can see from the pre-NCAA stats above, Holt is closer to an undersized guard-wing hybrid, rather than a lead guard. That’s quite a complicated role to play, and it requires you to bring a lot more to the table than just shooting.

Offensive inversion

Full transparency: all of my evaluations before a prospect has even touched the floor in college are based on incomplete information, blending that info with general playstyle traits that I’ve observed while watching that player myself.

So, that’s where I’m operating with Holt as well. 3.9 assists on 1.2 a/to over 112 games in high school and FIBA competitions doesn’t exactly scream a true lead guard material, nor really does the 24.5% usage. This is a suboptimal coctail for a player that’s very generously listed at 6’5” (I’d guess he’s much closer to 6’3”).

Now, the good news: he’s rumoured to have very long arms, somewhere in the range between 6’9” and 6’10”. With the fiasco of rumours about Keaton Wagler’s supposedly 6’10” wingspan last cycle, I’ll exercise a degree of scepticism until the NBA Draft Combine hits next May.

Whatever Holt measures, his playstyle and bulky frame make him the ‘he plays bigger than he is’ prospect in the class of 2026. He will do a lot at enhancing and compensating for Arizona’s interior presence, which is a pretty odd thing to say about a player sliding right into the guard/wing intersection offensively.

Holt’s 3.2 offensive rebounds per 40 minutes look extremely good even before you adjust these numbers for size. Arizona don’t have Peat or Awaka anymore, but Holt will absolutely do his part at making up for lost offensive rebounding equity from the shooting guard position.

These archetypical oddities are exactly the reason why Holt is such an intriguing prospect that’s capable of beting the untersized wing meta in a unique way.

If we look beyond providing and disproportionate +oREB influence, I believe that arguably the main offensive sell with Holt is that he’s a true outlet for offensive inversion.

Chris Steed, one of my favourite x’s and o’s guys on Twitter, has repeatedly talked about the value of being able to invert the offense, I highly suggest you look up some of his stuff.

Neither Prolific Prep’s, nor Arizona’s roster provides infrastructure for proper 1-5 or 2-5 inversion, but Holt’s high school sample has some fascinating examples where his schematic usage was adjacent to a big.

For example, here Prolific Prep run Holt in a cross action on the baseline to get a deep post position, forcing against a guard that doesn’t possess the requisite physicality nor aptitute for guarding so deep on the block.

On the first play here, Prolific Prep run an off-ball screening action designed to guide their wing and big to the slot and get Holt a deep paint catch. Notice how easily Holt moves his defender to create an angle for the catch on his weak hand.

Second play comes right after with Prolific Prep going with Holt in the post, only for him to get fouled as soon as there’s an entry pass.

Expect Holt to be a difficult assignment in guard-to-guard screening actions, especially as his shot develops further.

Outside of that, historically Holt has had strong free throw rates (40%), seamlessly blending in with Arizona’s physical style of play from last year, which yielded an 11th best free throw rate in the country.

In many ways, as odd as it sounds, Holt is coming in to at least partially replace the output of Peat and even Awaka.

Both of them, especially Awaka’s singular rebounding ability, can essentially only be replaced in the aggregate. With his disproportionate position-relative influence on the offensive glass, as well as with his ability to invert the offense, Holt is likely more important at that particular aspect of Arizona’s roster construction than people may realize.

Last year, the Wildcats’ interior-driven offense dramatically suppressed 3 point rates (363rd in the country), so I’d expect Holt’s volume to sit around, or slightly lower, than what Brayden Burries logged last year (8.6 per 100) on a higher overall usage than Burries had (21.6%).

O decent amount of usage will likely come off secondary actions and play finishing. Prolific Prep liked using Holt in off-ball screening actions, with their best shooter Alex Smith, now of Ohio State, being a strong outlet for backscreening.

Though Arizona don’t seem to have an equivalent to Smith’s movement shooting threat, but they can reasonably run plays for Holt with Krivas screening away from the basket.

Some secondary driving actions can include an empty corner screen rejection, flare screens and stampede drives, though the one caveat I have with Holt operating as a driver off the catch is his average vertical athletic ability off one feet, which can often fail to carry him all the way through to the rim and force to settle for runners/floaters from a few feet out.

Two faces on D

Defensively, Holt has one of the best steal rates on a per 40 basis in the class, yet just 0.5 blocks help reinforce the idea of him being a largely ground-bound player.

Plays like these where Holt snatches the basketball on the defensive glass (before turning it over on the other end) demonstrate that he’s a far superior athlete jumping off two feet, when he has enough time to load and jump off a stationary position.

In terms of team defense, Prolific Prep would usually ask Holt to be very agressive on help actions, sinking really deep into the paint to reinforce the backline defense, converging in the paint and leaving open shooters in the opposite corner.

This isn’t a dig at Holt in any way shape or form as it’s probably how Prolific Prep wanted him to play defense. In that particular clip, this is reinforced by the fact that it was one of the first posessions in the game, so both teams were most likely using coverages that they had planned ahead in practice.

On this play, Holt actually does well to quickly recognize a split p&r coverage on a horns screen, which put Prolific Prep at a major disadvantage. Again, Holt gets very deep and leaves a corner shooter open.

It’s something that I’ve noticed watching these past NBA playoffs: teams are much more willing to leave corner fillers without a ton of on-ball ability or shooting versatility open in order to a) hide their worst perimeter defenders or b) have good defenders roam off them.

Overall, seeing how Arizona tries to utilize Holt defensively will be very fascinating.

Like last year, the Wildcats’ defense will have two distinct faces: one is a drop-based defense anchored by a 7’2” center in Krivas, and the other one is a much smaller set-up based on hard hedging, ball pressure and switchability.

On Krivas-led defensive lineups, Arizona is all about rim deterrence.

Holt, and for that matter, other defenders in the guard and wing positions, will play a supplementary role to Krivas. On ball, he’ll be required to go over screens and chase ball handlers, trailing them from behind as Krivas drops to guard the paint, while the wings converge and stunt.

When off-ball, Holt will likely guard on the elbows a lot, enforcing the second level of defense to force opposing guards to either pick up the dribble, reset or throw lateral passes away from the basket.

Arizona’s somewhat conservative defensive approach which really doesn’t force that many turnovers will probably put a cap on Holt’s steal rates.

Either way, Arizona’s roster that provides for two different defensive schemes will provide an interesting exercise for his eventual NBA translation.

In reality, there’s nothing truly unfortunate about Stokes’ position; it’s possible that his camp consciously stayed away from the loaded 2026 Draft to increase his chances of going 1st overall a year later, considering Stokes will turn 19 in a couple of months, which made him eligible for 2026.

This could conceivably generate some dull and meaningless narratives about Stokes ‘evading competition’ and ‘being soft’ by refusing to go directly against AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cam Boozer and Caleb Wilson.

That particular perception could be reinforced by Stokes’ advanced physique; he was definitely good and big enough to play college ball in 2025-26.

In reality it’s probably the smartest thing he could’ve done, despite spending another year in an environment where skill and especially physicality-wise, he was a good step ahead of his competition. The NIL means there’s really no rush to to start earning NBA money, while simultaneously giving yourself the best chance to max out your future earnings as the 1st overall pick.

So, on this website, we’re here to slice through any bullshit about ‘softness’ and similar vague categories that don’t really say anything. All of the noise around the 2027 class being weak and disappointing following this year can overshadow what a special prospect Stokes actually is.

When we look at these particular priors that cover a long period of time (in this case, from 2022 to 2026), we must recognize that they aren’t necessarily closely reflective of a player’s year-over-year development (we’ll get to that later); they’re merely a broad representation of general playstyle tendencies.

Having that in mind, Stokes is poised to become the next young prospect who has got a body of a power forward, while simultaneously posessing the handle and the feel to have the offense legitimately run through him.

In fact Stokes’ integration of size, age, offensive rebounding, passing and stocks will likely have him nailed down as an elite, bust-proof prospect that’s worthy of an at least top-3 selection in almost any draft.

This, or for that matter, anything close to the query above should be very much attainable for Stokes, even with his rather modest offensive rebounding numbers on a per 40 basis.

I specifically lowered the oreb% bar because that hasn’t exactly been the strongest suit of Stokes’ game, but at the same time I’m assuming he can confidently push past the lowest baseline for him to be considered at least a serviceable offensive rebounder at his size, mainly because he was asked to do so much creative work in high school that he kind of had to at least partially neglect crashing the offensive glass.

The star pathway

Watching Stokes operate in a high school setting as a 19 y/o for Rainier Beach can be a bit odd because he was just so much bigger than his peers. Last season already it felt like he’s physically much closer to the NBA than he is to an incoming college freshman.

Kansas will hope that Stokes’ provides them the offensive focal point they have craved so desperately for the last few years. Ever since winning the national title in 2022, the Jayhawks have consistently logged top-15 defensive squads in the nation, only for the offense to languish in the 30s, 40s, or, last year, even 60s. The Jayhawks will rely heavily on both Stokes and fellow freshman Taylen Kinney pretty much from day one.

Elevating a program that’s been labouring offensively is a heavy task for an incoming freshman, yet last year we saw so many young guys carry blue-chip programs to another level, it’s not inconceivable Stokes could be the next in line.

Going from Darryn Peterson to Stokes as the premier freshman may feel slightly underwhelming for Kansas fans, but I’m confident that with Stokes’ advanced feel for the game and progressing passing ability, he could actually be an easier young guy to build a winning team around since his productivity isn’t as tied to shotmaking as was the case with Peterson.

Stokes’ physical advantage, ability to back people down and draw fouls means he consistenly has to soak up double teams. Even if his deliveries aren’t always pinpoint from a technical standpoint, the plays stand out at an instinctive level: the quickness and great decision timing once he draws two to the ball are indicative of Stokes’ advanced feel.

On top of that, being 230 lbs, Stokes has an inherent physical advantage over his peers which enables him to move his opponents in the mid-post, while the height advantage allows him to see over people and generate better passing angles.

Generally, you just absolutely have to love a player who, at Stokes’ size, has the cognitive presence to manipulate double teams the way he does it.

Here’s a couple of plays illustrating that: Stokes has a great recognition of stunt defenders, slowing and delaying his dribble with the intention to force a defender to commit to a double team, methodically peeling him away from his assignment to free up a cut and force a defensive rotation (clip 1), or just probing the defense until he creates a better angle to spin towards the basket (clip 2).

Advanced feel for the game is a pre-requisite for any player aiming to be a reliable offensive creation outlet, whether you’re an engine from the guard position, wing or center.

However, one could reasonably ask about Stokes’ shooting as a roadblock to high-end offensive outcomes. After all, the priors don’t paint the rosiest of pictures: over 123 games, he shot just 28.8% from three and 61% from the line, despite getting there a ton.

However, these samples cover multiple years, so they’re not the best reflection of year-over-year improvement. For example, in the 2025 EYBL season, Stokes shot 69% from the line (while getting there A TON), compared to 64% in 2024. Reportedly (per MaxPreps), Stokes shot 78% from the line at Rainier Beach, a monumental improvement which, at least for me, puts him comfortably at the top of the pre-season 2027 NBA Draft big board.

Overall Rainier Beach was an interesting set-up for Stokes: he was truly omnipresent for his team on both ends of the floor.

Offensively, he was required to create both from the post and the perimeter. I don’t have the 3pt shooting stats from his senior season, but they aren’t that important since a lot of the shots he took were really difficult attempts off the dribble.

At 19, the difficulty of those shots is far more important than any raw 3 pt percentages, and further development in perimeter off dribble creativity is what opens up true two-way star pathways for Stokes.

At points it even feels like Stokes isn’t yet full comfortable taking all those OTD threes; both in 2024 and 2025 EYBL circuits, his 3pt rates hovered just around 20%. The hesitation could be felt even last year: Stokes was prone to turning it over once he couldn’t beat or get rid of the ball once the help defense gapped, then declining the jumper and eventually turning the ball over.

The omnipresence

In the context of high school basketball, Stokes’ impact could be felt basically in every aspect of the game. For Rainier Beach, he was their best rim protector, rebounder, transition threat and by far the most proficient outlet of offensive creativity.

Defensively, I can see how his at points superficially lackadaisical style of play can rub some people the wrong way. Though at Rainier Beach he was asked to do that intermittently, Stokes isn’t really the most active at pressuring the ball.

Often times, he would often assume a function that resembles a coach on the floor: Stokes would point for off-ball switches and organize the defense from the backline, himself looking to remain in areas closer to the basket, where he’s the most effective.

This type of play style where he’s not always uber aggressive at pressing and chasing the basketball, hedging or commiting to hard closeouts on the shooters may seem like Stokes’ lacks an elite defensive motor, but I believe it’s more of a schematic adjustment, rather than a systemic problems with motor.

Here’s a good example of what I mean: Stokes basically guarding as an off ball defensive anchor in the paint and refusing to close out on a shooter, instead pointing his teammate to do so. With both of them busy pointing, neither one closes out and the shooter drains an open three.

I fully believe this to be a product of poor execution and communication, rather than anything bad to do with Stokes and I actually think it’s smart to use him this way: Stokes is best defensively when he’s anchoring that backline and utilizing his energy in a constructive manner.

This style of defense consistently produces the goods for Stokes as his advanced defensive feel and timing allows him to anticipate plays in advance; Stokes is never in a rush to overcommit to a defensive play or expose himself to fouling too much, which at least partly helps explain his good stocks against PF/40.

It’s no use pulling him further away from the basket (though at points Rainier Beach did ask him to guard at the top of a 3-2 zone) not just because of his smart and effective defense, but also the rebounding: Stokes logged 8.5 defensive rebounds per 40 over the course of 4 years in the Cerebro sample, making him one of the premier defensive rebounders in the class of 2026, regardless of size, role and position.

When Stokes is pulled further away from the basket, or is guarding in an open court or generally outside of a set half-court structure, he’s instincs empower him to be great at reactive recovery and open court defense.

Stokes’ two-way omnipresence is best embodied by his ability to quickly turn defense into offense, as he sits at an invaluable intersection of defensive play finishing (stocks/rebounding) and ability to run the floor with the basketball in his hands, being a constant source of easy early offense buckets.

With NBA being a league where the dominant lineup building ideas are in a constant yo-yo state, and seeing a lot of teams go really big and heavy, I wouldn’t be shocked that at some point in his career Stokes’ finds a decent amount of utility as an undersized, switchable 5.

Last season, Michigan was lead by UAB transfer Yaxel Lendeborg; the year prior, Florida’s key players included Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin and Will Richard, all of whom played at mid-major schools before their success for the Gators.

With the 2026-27 college rosters basically set, let’s try and predict the 10 best players to transfer up from mid-major schools, according to their projected BPM.

The research is adjusted for conference strenght and largely based on the historical mid-to-high-major skill translation data.

It only accounts for mid-major players who played >40% of their team’s total minutes last season.

The BPM projections are on the median side and don’t really factor in team context; it’s likely that players who play well and are in great team contexts will overperform the projection because of a true shooting boost provided by having better teammates, but, as you can see from the table above, TS%, as a statistical category, falls in the ‘mostly noise’ category, so any major attempt to factor in TS% projections would likely do more harm than good.

So, let’s move to the top-10.

1. Myles Byrd (San Diego State → Providence)

Byrd has been a long-time favourite for some folks in NBA Draft Twitter circles and, having decided to finally swap San Diego State for an ambitious Providence team, he has a plethora of replicable skills that should translate well to Big East basketball, making Byrd the most obvious candidate for impact mid-to-high major transfer.

Admittedly, since breaking out in 2024-25, Byrd’s progression has stalled somewhat: his finishing at the rim has only improved modestly and there’s real concerns regarding his touch both inside and outside.

Though he’s always been a solid free throw shooter, Byrd’s career best 3pt shooting season stands at a mere 31%, despite him operating on a heavily assisted diet. That and a sub-3% career offensive rebounding rate keeps Byrd locked out of the invaluable oreb-stock-3pt shooting integration.

Despite that, it’s just impossible to quit a singular wing stopper as an NBA prospect. He’s going to be very good for Providence and after that, we’ll see how it goes.

2. Jackson Holcombe (Utah Valley → Utah)

Despite playing for Utah Valley in the Western Athletic Conference, the model fully expects Jackson Holcombe to handle the transfer-up to the Big 12, projecting roughly the same BPM he logged last season.

There is really no shock to see him so high on the list as he’s the exact type of ancillary-pilled wing you can expect to have a comfortable time translating up to high-major basketball.

Holcombe is fascinating because he lifts up his team on both ends of the floor: he defends, rebounds and, most importantly, has real passing chops, grading out extremely well at running the pick and roll and finding cutters on limited volume. The turnovers are on the high-ish side, but Utah brought TJ Burch from Wright State and a 21 y/o Noam Yaacov from Oostende to handle the PG duties. They can reasonably be expected to control Holcombe’s turnovers.

The major question remains his shot; Holcombe took just 42 threes in two years at Utah Valley. Offensively, he lived in the paint, but shooting 61% at the rim with less than a tenth of his rim attempts being dunks can be a difficult scoring process to translate. Expect Holcombe to double his 3pt shooting volume at Utah.

3. Tyshawn Archie (McNeese St. → Texas A&M)

Moving from McNeese State to Texas A&M, Tyshawn Archie is the first proper lead guard on this list. It’s just so appropriate to see him move to A&M: this is the most obvious mid-major guard that fits the Buckyball philosophy of the second year Aggies head coach Bucky McMillan.

Buckyball is largely based on forcing turnovers, playing very fast and launching a lot of threes, so that’s why Texas A&M grabbed a lead guard from a team that was number 1 in turnover creation, while launching 12.4 threes per 100 posessions to replace players like Pop Isaacs and Rylan Griffen.

One of the reasons why the model loves Archie so much is his uncanny ability to block shots at a very modest size.

With Archie struggling to get to the line or score from the paint, even at the mid-major level, expect him to push 13-14 3pt attempts per 100 at Texas A&M.

4. Logan Duncomb (Winthrop → Notre Dame)

Duncomb’s rocky collegiate career finally broke through last year at Winthrop, where he scored Big South Player of the Year honors, subsequently earning a move back to high-major basketball to Notre Dame at age 23.

He will provide the Fighting Irish with a high level of interior physicality they lacked so badly last year, ranking just 159th in offensive rebounding and 203rd in free throw rate. Creating extra posessions and going to the line at will are some of Duncomb’s best traits, while also being some of the most translatable.

The value of Duncomb getting to the line is exponentially increased by him actually being a really solid free throw shooter and a passer.

Going from Winthrop to a high-major basketball team almost always entails a scaling down for a high-usage big, but I believe Duncomb to be different to a extent. He’s not much of a shot blocker or rim deterrent, so most of his value proposition derives from offense; it would probably be counterproductive to recruit a player like Duncomb, who was one of the most effective post players in the country, and then take offensive touches away from him.

I think factoring in his profile, team context, passing ability and free throw shooting efficiency, running a good amount of offense on the low block through Duncomb will result in productive hoops for Notre Dame.

5. Terrence Hill (VCU → Tennessee)

A breakout sophomore year at VCU earned Terrence Hill a high-profile transfer to Tennessee, where he’s going to be tasked with replacing Ja’Kobi Gillespie. From a stylistic standpoint, Rick Barnes is basically looking to clone Gillespie, a 3pt maxer that controls turnovers on offense.

Last season, Nate Ament’s mid-range driven self creation had a negative impact on Tennessee’s turnover suppression, so swapping that not just for Hill, but also Wake Forest’s Juke Harris is sound process by the Volunteers.

With Hill, the questions are on the defensive end. His turnover creation was poor even by mid-major standards: Hill stopped just 1.7% possessions defensively, ranking 16th percentile, with opponents turning the basketball over 2.5% less and logging a +9.8% free throw rate swing with Hill on the floor, which could indicate a degree of inability to keep opposing guards out from the paint.

Hill is a really solid addition offensively for Tennessee to follow a successfull blueprint set by Gillespie, but he’ll need all the defensive insulation Tennessee can provide.

6. Drew Scharnowski (Belmont → Duke)

Duke made a shrewd portal acquisition by grabbing Drew Scharnowski, who had his breakout year at Belmont last season.

There’s reason to be concerned about a 6’9”, 215 lbs mid-major center who doesn’t have a single positive shooting indicator.

But there’s also reasons to be positive: Scharnowski does crush some of the proxies that have a strong track record of translating from mid to high-major basketball, with his athletic ability and feel for the game standing out at mid-major level in a hugely impressive way.

Duke has a deep big rotation next year: the starting center spot is occupied by Patrick Ngongba, with blue-chip recruits Cameron Williams and 17 y/o phenom Joaquim Boutmje-Boumtje also looking for their minutes.

Considering the fact that premium size has become an absolute necessity in order to compete for NCAA title, expect to see Scharnowski playing alongside the aforementioned guys; I assume stacking multiple bigs was actually an important idea behind the formation of this Duke frontcourt.

While Scharnowski’s pairing with Ngongba may seem awkward at first, high feel players are always a good bet to figure things out, while simultaneously providing one of college basketball’s most exciting examples of the Twin Theory in 2026-27.

7. Tomislav Buljan (New Mexico → Maryland)

Playing for New Mexico, Tomislav Buljan was a freshman only in name: the Croatian was one of a few notable European players who began playing collegiately at an almost ridiculous age of 23.

So, Maryland aren’t getting an up-and-coming European prospect; they’re getting one of college basketball’s most physically imposing, athletic bigs who should be able to adapt to the demands of Big Ten basketball.

These are the exact qualities that makes Buljan a favourite of the translatability model. Listed at 6’9”, he’s one of the better rebounders at that size in recent memory, closely mirroring Tobe Awaka’s unique impact for Arizona last season.

If this was my personal ranking, I’d probably have a few more qualms about Buljan. Between him and Pharell Payne, Maryland don’t have a properly sized center and their tallest player is freshman Baba Oladotun, who’s more of a lean, oversized wing who can provide backline help.

Still, with Payne returning from injury and Buljan reinforcing the frontcourt, Maryland should be significantly better than last year; at the very least, they’ll be extremely tough to keep away from the glass.

8. Drew Fielder (Boise St. → Alabama)

Drew Fielder has earned a transfer back to high-major basketball after an excellent season at Boise State.

Alabama recruited Fielder to replace Aiden Sherrell, who has moved on to Indiana. This makes a ton of sense since coach Nate Oats, college basketball’s most loyal adherent to the principles of Moreyball, used Sherrell as a floor spacer from the 5 position to successfully drive up both rim volume and efficiency.

Fielder was clearly the best mid-major portal option to recreate Sherrell’s impact.

The 2.6% blk for a center isn’t great at all, and the defense is where Fielder fails at adequately replacing Sherrell. I’d expect to see him spend time in a wingified big role as well, possibly alongside Alabama’s other portal pickup Brandon Garrison.

9. Damarion Dennis (Wyoming → Texas Tech)

Damarion Dennis, one of the most unique small guards last season, arrives at a Texas Tech program looking to replace Christian Anderson, the 18th overall pick in most recent NBA Draft by the Charlotte Hornets.

With Dennis (and other mid-major recruit Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn), the Red Raiders are merely looking to recreate Anderson in aggregate, or possibly even move in a complete different direction.

As a sophomore at Wyoming, Dennis played in a rather precarious role that can only be described as a 6’1” wing, getting a good amount of his scoring from transition and cuts. This allowed him to achieve a >60% efficiency scoring from two.

This is a difficult profile to translate. However, Sam Hoiberg and Jamaree Bouyea provide a couple of different and successful variants for Dennis’ further development; there’s a chance that Dennis’ athleticism, tov% suppression and promising shooting from the line (87.4% over his first two years) provide an escape route from the ‘wing in a guard’s body’ predicament.

10. Kashie Natt (Sam Houston St. → Oklahoma St.)

Kashie Natt remains in an eligibility limbo, and so do I; this is a player I liked so much, I even had him on my final 2026 NBA Draft board, without knowing a definitive answer on whether he’s eligible for college ball next season. A more detailed write-up on Natt can be found in my draft board notes. He remains on this list conditionally.

10. Kyle Evans (UC Irvine → NC State)

A new center in Raleigh, Kyle Evans is going to have a clear role for NC State - be their defensive anchor by blocking shots and rebounding the basketball.

A simplified playstyle based on sliding into a role which requires a couple of the most stable and translatable traits makes Evans a good bet to provide exactly what NC State expects from him.

There’s somewhat of an asterix to that: to be fair, mid-to-high-major transfers with >10% blk aren’t that common. The statistical stability of block percentage translatability is mostly provided by a) non-shot blockers who remain that way regardless of comp level and b) average or slightly above average shot blockers, roughly in the 3-5% range.

Meanwhile, over a small-ish sample, the results of elite mid-major shot blocker translation aren’t super smooth.

There’s an asterix to that though: even if Evans doesn’t hold his 11.8% block percentage, the chances are that he finishes in the 9-10% range, which would be excellent and still validate the model’s prediction.

While making roster building decisions, each and every one of them should ultimately be geared towards increasing your odds of winning an NBA championship. This has never been more true than in the current parity era, where the league has largely eliminated the big market advantage and drastically increased the likelihood of swift title-winning roster breakups by introducing the 2nd apron rule.

With that in mind, the general basketball discourse has swung towards a somewhat comical situation where every title winning team, or, in some cases, teams that make deep playoff runs, are often treated as blueprints for roster building. In reality, they’re aren’t as much a blueprint as they are a vehicle for confirmation bias.

The late 2010s Rockets were a historically good offensive team thanks to James Harden heliocentric style of basketball, married with elite floor spacers? That is the blueprint to follow. Now, everyone’s looking for their own heliocentric offensive engine, while the price of 3-and-D wing archetypes shoots through the roof.

The 2023-24 Celtics crush the rest of the NBA with a roster of oversized 3 point maxxers, with their shortest player in the starting lineup being a 6’4”, 220 pound defensive locomotive that you can invert your offense by having him stationed in the dunker spot while your floor-spacing 7’3” big handles the basketball?

Look at how the Celtics destroyed the Mavs, a heliocentric team, built to cater to the strengths of their transcendent, heliocentric superstar Luka Doncic. This is a clear message of what wins these days. You can’t win without size in the modern NBA. You can’t bet everything on a single player carrying you to a championship. Duh.

Fast forward two years, the New York Knicks go on a generational heater to win their first NBA title in 53 years, lead by a… heliocentric small guard Jalen Brunson? Who isn’t even an elite passer and a vulnerable defender? So, suddenly we CAN build championship winning teams around that? Good, we have our proof-of-concept, now let’s bump Darius Acuff Jr. on our boards, because he kind of looks like Brunson.

And all of a sudden it feels like most of the space has already forgotten the supposedly invaluable roster building lessons of the 2023-24 Celtics or the 2024-25 Indiana Pacers that were one game away from winning it all.

The unpredictable nature of parity-era NBA, where every highly successful team is paraded as a proof-of-concept for predetermined roster building notions and player archetype biases, can put an average fan into a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance, especially if the memory of that fan has enough capacity to extend at least a few years back.

If you’re a loyal supporter of a your team, looking to engage in basketball discourse with your peers and step outside of the surface area analysis, navigating and making sense of this particular environment can be challenging. This wasn’t the case at all in the 2010s where you basically had to possess the best basketball player of all time in LeBron James or possibly the greatest gamebreaking roster in NBA history (the Golden State Warriors) to have a realistic pathway of winning a championship.

The rest of you had to live to fight another day, taking bold swings and hoping to get lucky (2019 Raptors), or looking to forge your own way of breaking basketball, which is what the Moreyball era Rockets were trying to do, only to fall at the cruel hand of variance in the 2018 Western Conference finals.

In this article I wanted to expand on some of the ideas laid down by @DBCJason, who, in a piece about his draft philosophy, wrote about reducing variance as one of the pillars in player evaluation and the exponential nature of impact. Meanwhile, Luc (@AtTheLevel) proposed his idea of a new basketball revolution at the intersection of 3 point attempts and offensive rebounding.

I consider both of these works really worth your time if you’re into NBA Draft and roster building.

When one leads, others follow

What I like about those two articles is that they, in their own way, are an attempt to explore new ground in team building philosophy, instead of a cowardly submission to replicating median-level outcome variants of great teams.

My modest idea in proposing an advancement to team building theory is this: if you get enamored with the roster building ideals or philosophy of a team that just won an NBA title, went to the finals or had other forms of major, easily quantifiable success, with the aim of replicating that success by copying their methods, or trying to mirror their star player archetypes in the Draft, you’re probably already way behind.

To represent that idea, I drew this simple curve, roughly breaking down the impact of novel roster building concepts or ideas. It divides the lifespan of a certain team building concept or idea into three stages: the first stage, the exponential advantage, is where you want to be as a team as much and as often as possible, with the y-axis representing the level of advantage and x-axis representing the lifespan.

The exponential advantage stage is the beginning of the lifecycle of a particular idea or concept, similar to, for example, the adoption of new technologies. If you’re the early adopter/originator and that particular idea is working, you have a major advantage over the rest of the field.

Once it becomes more and more difficult to deny, others begin to take notice. At that point, it enters a proliferation stage, where there’s tangible, replicable proof of that concept. This is where the advantage starts to slowly dwindle because the idea begins to get copied at scale.

The final stage of a concept is the plateau where employing a certain idea becomes the standard. Staying with technological parallels, being a savvy user of computers and internet 25 years ago may have been an advantage in a job market of 2000, but in 2026, it’s about as basic as washing your hands after going to the bathroom. If you’re not doing that, there’s probably something wrong with you.

There’s a somewhat unusual trigger that lit a fire in me to attempt to explore that idea in depth.

I got here by examining the NBA potential of Jaxon Kohler, a rather unheralded prospect, who just finished his collegiate career at Michigan State and, predictably, went undrafted. Kohler underwent a prototypical, slow-burning 4-year development under the guidance of Tom Izzo, playing second-fiddle as an underclassman, and then seeing a gradual role increase in junior and, subsequently, senior years.

The reason why Kohler is at least of some interest to me as a draft prospect is that in the 2025-26 season, he finally proved he can launch threes at volume, which, pairing with elite offensive rebounding numbers, makes him a prototypical 4 playing at the intersection of spacing the floor and contributing extra posessions to your team.

The ease of isolating Kohler with the legendary 2010s floor spacer Ryan Anderson in a query and their uncanny statistical similarities as prospects is guiding me to a conclusion that Anderson is a close comp for Kohler; their Bart profiles share some eerie similarities as they both live at the intersection of size, shooting and offensive rebounding.

If we were to look at this comp at face value, having the benefit of hindsight of Anderson’s career, this would make Kohler a top-20 grade evaluation in the 2026 NBA Draft at bare minimum.

Anderson’s offensive peak in the early part of the 2010s was truly bonkers. When playing for the New Orleans Pelicans, Anderson logged multiple 3-year stretches of >3 O-RAPM, while his DARKO O-DPM impact was at an astonishing 97th percentile in 2013-14. This was a legitimate top-20 offensive player in the NBA, playing on a 34-48 roster.

Nowadays, the early 2010s Pelicans aren’t really thought of as a revolutionary NBA team, but they were one of the first real success stories of rimfluence through big spacing, enjoying tremendous offensive benefits of Anderson slashing mid-range touches in favour of threes and rim attempts.

And when I talk about Anderson’s shot distribution optimization, I’m not talking just about Anderson himself. The threes he hit consistently were valuable, but the real value was the latent impact on the shot quality of his teammates. Having to closely guard a power forward who was bombing threes at league-leading rates on the perimeter was novel. It opened up the lane for others. It severely weakened the second line of defense. It forced bigs to guard in areas they weren’t comfortable. Teams and players had to adapt. Those who failed to, descended into irrelevancy.

The latent impact on teammate shot quality was apparent in the case of players like Jrue Holiday, who saw mind-bending leaps in both rim% and frequency when sharing the floor with Anderson. This type of rimfluence as a power forward with a sole function of bombing threes and crashing the offensive glass then served as a blueprint for floor spacing bigs over the next decade or so.

Posessing a player who was pushing them towards the precipice of possibly the biggest basketball revolution in history, the New Orleans Pelicans ultimately didn’t fully grasp the advantageous position they were in at a time when you could still hear the replication of a boring cliche that went ‘live by the three, die by the three’.

They had Anderson providing unholy levels of rimfluence without commanding on-ball reps, only to fail at scaling a highly successful offensive concept.

The Pelicans were among the lowest 3 point rate teams in 2013-14 (Anderson’s season was cut short due to injury that year). They were just 22nd and 19th in subsequent two seasons, all with peak Anderson on the roster. While the Pels remained mired in mediocrity, the Golden State Warriors ascended to the top of the NBA, becoming the most consequential team in modern basketball history thanks to their transcendent shooting.

This was the moment when the idea of 3 point maxing and its effect on floor spacing became apparent and widespread, even if the Warriors didn’t exactly have an Anderson-like floor spacer at the power forward position. The rest of the NBA was playing catch-up, the 3 point rates started to go up. Appropriately, Anderson himself ended up on the Moreyball era Houston Rockets.

Here’s a graph representing an increase of 3 point attempts for a median NBA player over the last 26 years.

For example, Anderson’s 10.8 three attempts per 100 posessions were good for 98th percentile frequency in 2013-14. In 2025-26 NBA season 10.8/100 only represents the 77th percentile. A floor spacing PF bombing threes at league-leading rates isn’t singular anymore, therefore the advantage provided doesn’t gap the rest of the field. The league has adapted and is looking for advantages elsewhere.

If we circled back to Anderson’s O-DPM and O-RAPM charts I showed earlier, his impact curve dived in a dramatic fashion; the former 97th percentile offensive player found himself out of the league at just 31. Injuries played a part. But as offenses spread out further away from the basket, defenses began to emphasize length, ground coverage and switchability, slowly killing the transcendent value of a what was ultimately a limited player from an all-around perspective. His skill was rapidly proliferating and somewhat decently replicable.

Right now, if we circled back to Kohler and fully bought his shooting touch leap from last season, there’s simply no plausible pathway for him to mirror Anderson’s impact from 2012-16.

These days, forcing a floor spacing power forward into taking 15 threes per 100 posessions, which, pertencile-wise, would be equivalent to Anderson’s output in 2013-14, would essentially amount to overexposing your offense to both variance and the shot making influence of a one-trick pony. It would likely overstretch Kohler’s shooting ability, diminishing his +oREB influence in the process.

Earlier in this piece, I called Kohler a prototypical floor spacing 4. The general team building idea I want to propose is this: if a particular role or skill/trait intersection can reasonably get slapped with the label ‘prototypical’, it has probably already proliferated to an extent that having a player who’s 90% of on-court value can be reduced to that particular intersection probably brings little value. Kohler’s value would rise exponentially if he could trickle this skillset down to the small forward spot, but he can’t, meaning he’s closer to a replacement-level player than the transcendent impact of Anderson in 2012-16.

Side note: I believe Yaxel Lendeborg to be the player that could get closest to replicating what Anderson did in his Pelicans era, mostly because of his offensive play type versatility, premium size and shooting, all of which should enable him as a legitimate combo forward.

Most great teams aren’t replicable

The proliferation of pace-and-space playstyle yielded enormous leaps in offensive productivity. In 2004-05 NBA season, the average league-wide offensive rating stood at 106.1; this was the first year of the Steve Nash-led, 7 seconds or less Phoenix Suns. It was a team that notably went against the grain by employing a novel style of offense which transformed Phoenix into a contender over the course of one summer.

In 2023-24, the year the Boston Celtics won, NBA teams, on average, scored 115.3 points per 100 posessions. In an era of elevated offensive productivity, the Celtics gapped the rest of the field, setting what was at the time the 4th best single season net rating in NBA history. They took 50 threes per 100 posessions, meaning that literally 1 out of 2 posessions ended in a long shot. The second closest team, the Golden State Warriors, took 42.8 per 100. While doing that, the Celtics scored 123.2 points per 100 posessions.

Seeing the Celtics dominate to that extent could’ve made you think that basketball is a solved game. There’s a clear, optimal strategy, so it’s really just about executing it as well as possible.

Yet just a year later, the Oklahoma City Thunder logged the 2nd best net rating of all-time with just the 17th highest 3 point attempt rate in the league. The Houston Rockets won 52 by exploring the inverse relationship between effective field goal rates and offensive rebounding, which is a truly bold and fascinating idea. They missed a lot: Houston was just 23rd in effective field goal percentage, but their dominance on the offensive glass was so pronounced it elevated them to 13th offensive rating in the league.

A byproduct of playing oversized, uber-athletic lineups that crash the offensive glass at historic rates was the 4th best defense in the league.

The Rockets weren’t a truly great team in 2024-25, but the prevalent feeling was like they had something interesting going. There’s no guarantee Rockets ever win a title playing like that. Style and a clear roster aren’t enough to win everything; you also need players who execute at the very highest level.

Here I’d like to circle back to @DBCJason’s and @ChuckingDarts idea of exponential nature of impact. The basic premise is simple: there’s a very finite, narrow list of NBA players that truly matter in high-leverage situations. The jump from the 90th percentile NBA player to 95th percentile is more valuable than from 50th to 70th.

@ChuckingDarts’ idea was basically that if you’re not an All-NBA or All-Defense level player, your production in high-leverage playoff situations is easily replicable, in other words, you don’t really matter that much. I agree with the idea per se, though I would probably think of a different categorization than All-NBA or All-Defense considering these are narrative-driven media awards that often resemble beauty contests. I don’t think Julian Champagnie will realistically be either an All-NBA or All-Defense player in his career. I also don’t think he was inconsequential in the Spurs run to the finals.

Here’s why I think trying to copy the best teams isn’t a good approach: these teams and, often their playstyles, are shaped by these players. The Knicks may have went on a generational heater in the 2026 Playoffs, but their team still had 4 guys who were either in the 99th or 98th perentile in DPM.

Meanwhile, the 2024-25 Rockets, as sound as their idea underlying idea was, simply didn’t have the talent to go beyond what they eventually ended up achieving that year. Their best players were a 2nd year wing with a problematic offensive game and a 32 year-old big with a long injury history.

Ultimately, your best, 99th percentile NBA players are the ones who shape winning teams. There’s no way around it, you can’t build a great team without at least a top-10 player in the league. The very best, as @DBCJason explains, are the ones who introduce something new. The 5 best 2025-26 players in the NBA according to RAPM (Jokic, SGA, Wemby, Kawhi and Giannis) are all unique, with very few player comps that make any sense. Trying to copy them will likely just produce worse variants or total busts. None of the new Giannises have really amounted to anything in the league.

There’s no secret that the NBA roster building process has a good amount of variance built into it. I don’t know how it’s going to look after the NBA Draft Lottery reform from next year onwards; possibly, the level of variance will go up another notch. The only thing you can do as an NBA GM, really, is to guard against that variance as much as you can. The cruel reality is that one team gets to draft Victor Wembanyama, while the remaining 29 have to figure out how to beat him.

With that in mind, in the last part of the article I’d like to propose 5 conceptual ideas to NBA roster building, largely stemming from the phenomena I talked about up to this point.

Go against the grain

Up until very recently the NBA teams were still enamored with the 3-and-D archetype wings, which culminated in Zaccharie Risacher going 1st overall in 2024. This year it felt like there was a shift going on with Nate Ament falling to 13th, despite, as the rumours said at the time, his potential draft range began as high as 6th.

I think for a modern NBA front office, it’s imperative to always push boundaries of dominant discourse because consensus is still rooted in outdated stereotypes. It’s just so easy to spot major market inefficiencies in NBA draft: look at all the ‘upside-swing’ type busts selected from around 6th overall to end-of the lottery. Then look at the amount of successful senior prospects that were selected in late 1st, 2nd round or who went undrafted.

An example I like is Memphis Grizzlies selecting Zach Edey 9th overall in 2024, which, by all accounts, was a masterstroke.

Virtually all of the arguments against Edey were rooted in consensus groupthink: too old, too slow, not enough upside, style won’t translate. Yet, in his rookie year, Edey had the 7th highest +oREB influence in the entire NBA. If I knew a 9th overall pick will be a 99th percentile player at any of the six factors at ANY point it his career, I’d probably say that’s a really good return for a 9th overall pick; Edey was that as a rookie.

Even if his collegiate, back-to-basket playstyle wasn’t replicable in the NBA, Edey was a singular prospect, purely because nobody has ever been so big and so dominant on the glass and, on top of that, spaced the floor vertically as he did. The collegiate usage and playstyle should’ve been a non-factor in the evaluation because he had all the necessary attributes to contribute without post touches he got at Purdue.

Drafting 3-and-D’s, or, for that matter, any other heavily-proliferated archetypes that just replicate the impact of current players in 2026 can be excused if you’re a contender already in posession of elite players and looking to fill out a roster, but not when you’re tanking, or are team on ascend.

It’s the team building stage to push new ideas, take risks and look for the overlooked.

2. Identify small scale successes that aren’t mainstream yet

Here I wanted to circle back to one of the ideas I proposed earlier in the article: if you’re copying roster building ideas and philosophy of teams at the very top of the ladder, you’re likely already behind, and by a good distance. It’s especially true for tanking or franchises trying to move up the competitive NBA ladder.

The 3pt bombing power forward providing an unholy amount of latent value through teammate shot quality improvement was hidden on average New Orleans teams where an emerging Anthony Davis was the only real subject of interest for NBA’s general public.

Smaller scale successes can be traced back even further. For example, later career Al Harrington significantly bumped his 3 point attempt volume from the PF position; his years taking over 9 threes per 100 posessions in New York and Denver were actually the peak of his offensive productivity.

It’s hard to consider Dirk Nowitzki a ‘small-scale’ success, but in a way, the early 2000s basketball was still so heavy on the mid-range, it likely failed to fully tap into Dirk’s perimeter ability, purely because a 7 footer with an elite shooting touch was so novel at the time. Dirk heavily operated in the mid-range and, unlike Anderson or Harrington, was much more of a real offensive engine by means of shot making.

Still, at his peak, Nowitzki was pushing absurd levels of +oEFG influence, including both his shot making and improvement of teammate shot quality, without having to be an elite passer.

3. Push ideas to the max

As much as this piece is about forging your own path to team building greatness instead of trying to replicate what’s already working for very good teams, I believe in taking inspiration on a more abstract level. I generally believe in the necessity of abstract and conceptual thinking as means of providing framework and reasoning to team building process. The process is random if there’s no intellectual framework behind it. If the process is random, then the results are random as well.

For example, by 2023-24 NBA season virtually everyone was taking a lot of threes, but the 2023-24 Celtics pushed the idea to the edge. To an extent, this is something that the Houston Rockets are trying to do with offensive rebounding and a double big lineup of Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams.

In that respect, I think the Charlotte Hornets were one the most interesting team in the NBA; the fact that this team was definitely on to something makes the LaMelo Ball trade even more infuriating.

While the Rockets are maximising the amount of posessions, the 3-man synergy between Ball, Kon Knueppel, Moussa Diabate and Brandon Milller was historically good at utilizing posessions because they took AND made 3s. When they missed, they crashed the offensive glass and, on top of that, outside of Diabate, made free throws at an elite rate, making them quite possibly NBA’s best users of possession, at least in the regular season.

They were on the precipice of breaking basketball before throwing all of this away.

Throughout the last few months, I have professed my fascination with free throw percentages as a vastly superior proxy for projecting shooting prowess than 3 point percentages, a much more noisy, context-driven stat. Everyone knew Knueppel was a great shooter, but nobody thought he’d be the best shooter in the NBA as a rookie.

I myself had discussions about.Knueppel’s perceived limits as a shooter in the 2025 NBA Draft cycle, mainly stemming from his supposedly limited ability to self-create threes, when his singularity as a shooter was simply lying in the age/3 point attempt/FT% integration. This slices through wrongful assumptions like a hot knife through butter.

It’s an interesting idea to explore further: the three pointer is the highest variance shot in basketball. But the 2025-26 Hornets are implying that there’s actually a way to cut through that variance by employing the highest volume 3pt shooter in the league and knocking down free throws at an elite rate. What if we can really max out both the TS% and OREB% at the same time?

4. Chase outliers

Knueppel, by all accounts, is an outlier and quite possibly the best shooting prospect in some time. So to be able to push ideas to the max, you need players that are way beyond just good in certain aspects of the game. Settling for anything less will likely bring, well, mediocre results.

I won’t really get into ideas behind finding and acquiring franchise guys; there’s multiple factors at play here including a team’s aptitude for finding talent, player development and, yes, luck.

The current NBA landscape is interesting because it doesn’t just reward teams for correctly identifying and developing outliers at the very top of the best player lists; catching smaller scale outliers in the 2nd round or in undrafted free agency is extremely valuable purely because of their positive long term effect on the cap situation.

‘Small scale outlier’ can sound a bit paradoxical, but the NBA has a class of perennially underrated, underpaid players who espouse elite traits. For example, both Javonte Green and Jordan Goodwin could conceivably be called outliers because their ability to rebound the basketball on the defensive end at sub-6’5” had little-to-no precedent. On top of that, they both cleared baseline passing metrics for scaled down wings and created turnovers at elite rates.

Yet, Green had to play 4 years overseas before even getting a shot at the NBA and, eventually, becoming a solid rotational player. Goodwin didn’t have to struggle for 4 years overseas, but he bounced around the NBA before finding a home in Phoenix at age 27. Multiple NBA teams dumped a player who logged a 96th percentile stop% as a rookie and had NCAA priors to back it up.

Goodwin may be a bad offensive player, but his defensive output deserves scheming around; you can reasonably say that about other players, like Matysse Thybulle. I’d call this a reverse Jalen Brunson: metrics that try to capture Brunson’s overall impact on the game often underrate him because of his defense. But Brunson’s offensive output is such that it’s worth isolating him defensively through smart roster building and good coaching.

Yet, this concept has a much wider application among great offensive/bad defensive players.

5. Plan ahead to beat emerging trends

In general, guards and small forwards who rebound at elite rates are an archetype that hasn’t been explored enough to my liking. If NBA is moving towards maximising posessions (by rebounding on the offensive glass and suppressing turnovers), then the obvious counter are multiple posession limiters with varying degrees of duplicative skillsets built to negate

The only team clearly moving in that direction are the Orlando Magic, who had two of the top-7 +dREB influence players who aren’t either C’s or PF’s last year on their roster.

In theory, this should have at least a few other positive impact areas on the team; for example, having PG-SF players grab a significant amount of team defensive rebounds should be able to increase transition opportunities.

The value of opposite skills, like defensive rebounding for guards, rises exponentially the further down the posessional ladder you go; having a player like Jalen Suggs who grabbed 14.2% of available defensive rebounds last year, brought a -2% opposing ORB% swing in favour of the Magic.

In the case of 2026 NBA Draft, the players who could reasonably be considered as heavy position limiters who push back on the posession maxing trend and limit posessions by providing plus rebounding and turnover creation value from their positions are Kashie Natt, Joshua Jefferson and Allen Graves.

The final part covers 10 remaining prospects in my top-30: Darryn Peterson, Keaton Wagler, Tarris Reed Jr., Kingston Flemings, Yaxel Lendeborg, Karim Lopez, Aday Mara, Kashie Natt, Caleb Wilson and Koa Peat.

Darryn Peterson

Ranking on my big board: 2nd

I wont’t really get into Darryn Peterson’s cramping problems which supposedly derailed his one and only season at Kansas. As you might have noticed in my Jayden Quaintance writeup, I lean towards abstaining from making conclusions about medical conditions.

Without having any additional information it’s hard to tell how much of Peterson’s playstyle was affected by injuries, but what is clear that his game was pushed outside of the 3 pt line in a major way: compared to the 50 game pre-NCAA sample I have on him, Peterson increased his 3 PT rate by 10 percentage points.

The main concern with Peterson is that he eats shot usage like a primary guard, but clearly doesn’t pass like one.

Though he doesn’t appear on the query, the maxed out version of that archetype is Donovan Mitchell, but with the consensus turning slowly against him, it’s useful to inject a degree of scepticism into Peterson’s projection and think about just how far can you go with him as your primary option.

Mitchell historically has always been an excellent scorer, a loyal adherent to the principles of Moreyball by always being among one of the highest volume 3 PT takers and makers in the league. But he has consistently done nothing to improve the shot quality of his teammates and, unlike his reputation suggests, has, in many ways actually been a playoff dropper.

The collegiate sample is very limited with Peterson missing games, but the 2025-26 season entails him suffering from similar high usage/low assists problems befitting the archetype.

For instance, Peterson’s shooting gravity could theoretically open up things for his teammates, especially Flory Bidunga, Kansas’ excellent play finishing big, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Historical passing comps of Peterson don’t entail PG outcomes either though it’s important to note that he does avoid some of the pitfalls of undersirable high volume, score-first type guards, mainly by keeping his turnovers at a very low rate, resulting in a highly positive turnover influence on his team’s offense.

Throughout this cycle I’ve undergone a correction in expectations for Peterson and I encourage you to do so as well, if you still believe in him as the next iteration of Kobe Bryant who’s going to break defenses with transcendent scoring ability.

I’ll circle back to the query above as I believe his high-end outcomes are closer to where Klay Thompson was at his peak.

This entails a sizeable degree of on-ball displacement for Peterson; the ancillaries, TOV% suppression and defense are there for me to maintain a strong degree of optimism that leads to a high-end placement on my board.

Keaton Wagler

Ranking on my big board: 13th

Wagler sits at a precarious intersection of low BMI, below average athleticism and very little additional wingspan. That particular metric turned out to be quite possibly the single most disappointing data point in the entire NBA Draft Combine since Wagler was actually rumoured to have really long arms.

Wagler had the luxury of playing with Ivisic brothers who are both 7’2” and can space the floor, so he, despite not being explosive or super athletic with his first step, generated a high volume of rim drives, 94th percentile, to be exact. S

Since Ivisic brothers essentially covered for one another at the center spot, there’s on on/off data to see how Wagler’s rim volume alters when he doesn’t have the best floor spacing in the nation. But by now there’s an almost irrefutable pool of evidence of floor spacing bigs having positive rimfluence on their teammates, so dismissing Wagler’s offensive context would be a terrible mistake.

A good amount of Wagler’s evaluation hinges on his positional perception; to try and answer that we need to look at how he did in different lineup combinations, especially comparing his minutes with and without Kylan Boswell.

The increase in on-ball reps with Boswell off the floor mainly resulted in an uptick in shooting volume, without really scaling up the assist rate to a true primary, suggesting his process as a lead guard is more geared towards scoring the basketball himself.

Illinois’ strong offensive infrastructure and Wagler’s shooting ability meant that any TOV% control value that was lost when Wagler took over as PG (as shown by decrease in A/TO) was made up by leaps in scoring efficiency, leveling out the overall offensive net rating impact.

However, 0 dunks on the season for a player that’s 6’5” without shoes, as well as poor stocks (which need an upwards adjustment because of Illinois systemic foul avoidance) and weighs just 188 pounds is quite a turn-off. His frame is naturally so slight, it feels like any significant weight gain would come with unfavourable biomechanical alterations and higher injury risk.

Wagler’s fans will point to a 36-inch max vertical, but the problem is that it only shows his ability leaping off two feet.

It is, however, an important part, because leaping off two feet is highly useful for offensive rebounding, and this particular aspect of his game refrains me from pushing Wagler out of the lottery. We now have tangible evidence of recent Illinois’ non-big prospects (Kasparas Jakucionis, Will Riley, Terrence Shannon Jr.) taking major leaps in offensive rebounding and then successfully translating that skill to the NBA.

At the end of the day though, I believe Wagler’s lack of 2 PT equity is a ceiling capper and the slender frame/below the basket style of play makes significant developments unlikely in that area.

The biggest resource to tap into 2 PT scoring development is mid-range counters which were heavily suppressed by Illinois rim-or-three style of play but Wagler, despite being a very good 3pt shooter, doesn’t really possess truly outlier shooting indicators as his FT% hovered around 80%, which does make me question his pathway towars being an effective mid-range creator.

Tarris Reed Jr.

Ranking on my big board: 27th

As much as I believe in questioning authority and challenging the established methods of player evaluation, I have to give credit where it’s due: in 2024, coach Dan Hurley and UConn pulled off a major transfer portal coup by recruiting Tarris Reed Jr., a 6’10” big with a negative BPM, playing on a hopeless, Juwan Howard coached 8-24 Michigan team.

Fast forward two years, and Reed Jr. leaves college basketball having lead UConn to their 3rd NCAA tournament final in 4 years, establishing himself as a borderline NBA prospect in the process.

Offensively, Reed Jr. is a pretty straightforward player: sub-60% from the line on his career, any shooting projection is all but cooked by now, so Reed’s NBA ambitions are tied to him making it work as a somewhat undersized center, with an offensive game based entirely inside the paint.

In my analysis, Reed Jr. didn’t really have a very close NBA physical proxy, with the closest being Emeka Okafor, with a similarity score of 69.9.

He was a pretty heavy post-up player at UConn, but most of those touches will be gone in the NBA. A 4.3:1 rim-to-dunk ratio, meaning Reed Jr. isn’t much of a vertical spacer, murks up his offensive translation.

However, Reed Jr. does hit highly functional rebounding and stock rates; he does crush pretty much every mass indicator except for dunking, all while posessing a 7’4” wingspan, 9’2” standing reach and a 263 lbs pound frame, indicating potential to play up to his height defensively.

On top of that, a 2% STL and 17.8% AST rates imply an above-baseline feel for the game.

Kingston Flemings

Ranking on my big board: 5th

At just 183 pounds and with the 5th lowest wingspan among all combine participants, Flemings was one of the bigest losers of the NBA Draft Combine. If there’s one area where you aren’t that fascinated with Stephen Curry comps, it’s the anthropometric measurements.

These anthros make it unlikely that Flemings would be a good fit in two-guard lineups. It means that questions about Flemings’ 3 point shooting become of critical importance as he had the lowest 3PA/100 attempt rate on Houston’s roster outside of their centers JoJo Tugler and Diafra Sakho.

How much of that was suppressed by the system? The Cougars delegated most of their 3 PT shooting to Milos Uzan and Emmanuel Sharp, as well as Chris Cenac Jr., who simply had to take threes in order to survive at the power forward position, so there weren’t that many 3 point shots remaining for Flemings.

Compared to the high school sample I have on Flemings, his 3 PT rate suffered a 11 percentage point drop at Houston.

To try and project Flemings’ shooting translation and potential to increase his 3 PT volume, I ran a query approximating freshmen who likely, for one or another reason, had their 3 PT rates suppresed in college in favour of a high volume of mid-range shots.

Outside of that, Flemings has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on his teammate shot quality. Though Houston systematically suppresses rim attempts (they’re usually in <5th percentile in rim attempts per 40) in favour of reduced passing volume and offensive rebounding opportunities (limiting turnovers and maximising posessions), Flemings’ rimfluence was apparent.

When Flemings sat, Cenac saw his roll attempts slashed by more than half, to the detriment of Houston’s offense considering Cenac’s capabilities as a dunker. Without Flemings, those opportunities were largely ditched in favour of pick and pops.

You can reasonably hold Flemings’ late season drop-off against him and interpret it as a sign of stat inflation stemming from an easier early-season schedule, but I’m inclined to think it’s mostly noise coming from a tougher shot diet and shooting variance.

Despite concerning anthros, Flemings is the premier rimfluence guard in this class; I also have a ton of confidence in his jumpshot development and defensive improvement over the course of a year at Houston. Therefore, after much deliberation, and multiple shifts of opinion, I’m ending the cycle with Flemings as my PG1.

Karim Lopez

Ranking on my big board: 26th

Playing in Australia, Karim Lopez, admittedly, wasn’t exactly a prospect I was super tapped into.

With the NIL cannibalizing virtually all non-NCAA pathways to the NBA, following Lopez closely wouldn’t have been the most productive thing in the world with the resources I’m working with. For that reason, if Lopez turns out as an excellent NBA player, I’m ok with missing.

As much as I’d like to board another NCAA player who could turn out to be a victory on the margins for an NBA team, completely fading a young, large wing who’s an excellent rebounder and generates both steals and blocks would be unwise.

Yaxel Lendeborg

Ranking on my big board: 8th

The elder statesman of the 2026 NBA Draft, Yaxel Lendeborg will push the question of ‘how high can we draft a player who’s about to turn 24 before he sets a foot on an NBA floor’ to the max.

History hasn’t been kind for old lottery picks in recent years, which is why teams are wary of using a high 1st round draft pick on 22 or 23-year-olds. I believe this to be a huge logical fallacy stemming from the fact that teams have simply been burning their lotto/mid-first picks on wrong senior players.

The fact that you’ve selected Ochai Agbaji 14th overall while simultaneously allowing Collin Gillespie or Julian Champagnie to go undrafted doesn’t tell anything about seniors being lower quality prospects, as much as it tells about poor player evaluation and overindexing individual or team accolades at the collegiate level.

Lendeborg will be the next old prospect who boasts a high-end collegiate pedigree to get drafted in the top-20. I believe he can buck the trend of your Agbajis, Kisperts, Duartes and Knechts: he’s simply too big, too strong and too skilled to fail at the NBA level.

Lendeborg’s transition into a combo forward was one of the driving forces for Michigan’s success.

Before the season there were questions as to how the big 3 of Aday Mara, Morez Johnson Jr. and Lendeborg will fit together, but Yaxel’s portability helped elevate their lineups to almost unseen heights; to put it simply, any combo of these three on the floor made an absolute meal out of anybody who stood in their way.

As it’s typical for a highly regarded college senior entering the NBA Draft, Lendeborg is perceived as a low-ceiling, high-floor prospect, and that floor is largely provided by Yaxel’s ancillaries

Though his shooting leap glues his profile together and turns him into a viable combo forward at the next level, Lendeborg’s production isn’t tied to his shooting at all; this is a crucial part to his eval since I don’t expect Yaxel to be a usage carrier at the next level.

He’ll probably hover around 20% usage at the peak of his career so it’s his ancillaries and ability to keep the turnovers low will be some of the traits that’ll likely turn him into an extremely productive NBA player that’s capable of producing in high leverage situations.

Aday Mara

Ranking on my big board: 11th

There’s a decent chance Mara ends up as one of 5 most productive players in this class on a per minute basis.

The ‘per minute basis’ is a key element here: it’s very rare that players of Mara’s size end up playing more than 25 or 30 minutes per game; even the San Antonio Spurs were compelled to invest in a Victor Wembanyama backup so that his regular season minutes per game average would go slightly below 30.

Obviously, even with outrageous, comparable anthropometrics, calling Mara a paella-flavoured Wemby would be a stretch. With Mara, I still have some legitimate questions with regards to how he adapts to the fast-paced environments.

At UCLA, Mara played in a slow offensive system of Mick Cronin. Moving to Michigan proved to be a shock to the system as the Spaniard was prone to turnovers at the beginning of the season, with the Wolverines playing one of the fastest paces in the country.

Then, at the start of January, the Wolverines began to slow down somewhat.

The pace drop-off coincided with a decrease in turnovers for Mara, as well as a slight increase in minutes.

On top of that, Mara’s ceiling is capped by poor touch (sub-60% from the line on his career) and a lack of defensive cognition/agility (<1% stl rate), resulting in a wide blk%/stl% gap. It’s clear that defensively Mara’s primary impact will be felt by means of his rim protection and deterrence: his anthros are some of the best ever in NBA Draft Combine history.

The 9’9” standing reach is tied for all-time best with Mark Williams.

At the end of the day the size/OREB/rim deterrence/vertical spacing combo means Mara is likely to be a very productive NBA player easily worth a lottery selection, even if he’s only capable of giving around 25 minutes a night, and could possibly be untenable in particular high leverage NBA playoff situations.

Even with the turnovers, Mara projects as a legitimate hub through which you can run an offense, making him a rather straightforward bet to be a positive NBA player.

Kashie Natt

Ranking on my big board: 29th

Combo guard Kashie Natt was the final addition my board, despite his ambiguous collegiate eligibitily status after commiting to Oklahoma State for 2026-27.

Natt played his only season of D1 ball at Sam Houston, which, paired with him being 23 years old, is a straightforward path to undrafted status. I don’t know exactly why is that the case; yes, he may not have the upside of a 19 year old entering the NBA as a one-and-done, but the JUCO → late-bloomer D1 star pipeline is pretty good at farming draft day steals and margin wins.

So, Natt, in my opinion, has a good chance to follow that path. Sam Houston St. was actually a decent D1 program last year, finishing 111th in KenPom, above established teams with superior resources, such as Maryland, Utah or Memphis. Natt was the heart and soul of this team.

His BPM of 7 was excellent, resulting in one of the widest BPM gaps relative to team average among all D1 seniors last season.

Natt is the type of ancillary-pilled outlier I want to hunt for when looking for potential unheralded players to make the jump from mid-major basketball to the NBA. One of the reasons for that is because ancillaries - rebounding, shot blocking and turnover creation - are much more stable than scoring indicators, especially at volume.

Pound-for-pound, Natt is possibly the best rebounder in this entire class, a heir apparent to Jordan Goodwin who had his breakout year for the Phoenix Suns in 2025-26.

Goodwin is a solid example of the aforementioned ancillaries stability and NBA translatability from mid-major programs. If we’d approximate the usage adjustment in comparison to Natt, Goodwin’s stl% rates would be somewhere in the same ballpark.

In theory, Natt shooting sub-50% at the rim and 54.7% from 2 as a 23 year old at a mid-major school should crush any hopes of offensive productivity in the NBA.

But if we’re sticking to the Goodwin comp, I believe Natt may actually have more offensive outs. First of all, the on-ball displacement won’t be as pronounced: he was already a secondary guard at Sam Houston with 20.4% usage and 15.6 ast% rate. A good part of Goodwin’s breakout year in Phoenix was rooted in him catching heat from 3 on a markedly higher volume than he was used to.

Natt certainly projects as a better shooter from 3. Though I expect him to be a -rTS% player throughout his career, stable shooting from deep makes NBA translation that much easier; with that level of posession maxing, physicality and athleticism, Natt only needs an opportunity.

Caleb Wilson

Ranking on my big board: 3rd

Wilson’s legendary season dunking the basketball came to an abrupt end in February due to a hand injury.

Still, it was a season to remember for Wilson. He offers such a rare blend of cognition and physicality for his size he feels bound to be a solid NBA contributor even if he doesn’t hit his high end development offensively.

It’s pretty rare for a freshman big to carry a heavy offensive load and keep the turnovers down to the extent that he has as the North Carolina. The Tar Heels didn’t really have a backcourt infrastructure to properly support what was one of the best frontcourts in the nation before Wilson went down with an injury.

Wilson is an athletic specimen and while his game does need quite a bit of refinement, the tools, baseline feel and outstanding rebounding at his size means Wilson is one of the closer Kevin Garnett proxies in recent memory.

Wilson’s athletic ability and skillset pertains to him being a major engine for transition opportunities; he’s uniquely gifted in grab-and-go situations to both drive all the way to the rim as well as set up others in early offense.

The UNC star’s anthros point towards him playing as a PF in the NBA.

Though the weight/WS combination largely rules him out as a full-time NBA center, hold this against Wilson at your own peril considering his applied mass indicators point to a player who plays both bigger and heavier than he actually is.

There’s some reasonable concerns with how he stacks up offensively at the next level, however, it’s remarkable the extent to which Wilson managed to be an offensive engine for the Tar Heels AND keep the turnovers down without a proper guard infrastructure; his 17.1 unassisted points per 100 posessions were good for 99th percentile.

Despite wonky shooting indicators I have the confidence Wilson will be fine offensively, at least to a degree, mainly by driving up the transition frequency, being a premier lob/cut threat, posting up, providing connective passing and offensive rebounding. That’s a wide variety of offensive skills.

Koa Peat

Ranking on my big board: 23rd

Any bets on Arizona’s Koa Peat hinge on his ability to provide outstanding value through his feel for the game and play finishing.

The thresholds that Peat crosses in that particular intersection are indeed impressive, but you can immediately spot some problems.

One, the successful examples in that particular intersection are either A level athletes with superior anthros (Zion, Simmons, Wilson) or bigs (Ighodaro, Edey, Mara). It’s a bit risky to call both Wilson and Mara as successful exhibits of their archetypes, but I’ll go ahead and cautiously do that since I believe in both of them as NBA players.

For Peat, a player that’s considered an early bloomer, shooting 62% from the line is depressing. Even more so is his 1.3% STL rate. He was a -2.3% influence on Arizona’s Moreyball rate when he was on the court, stemming from an inability to shoot threes and a self-creation diet heavily leaning on short mid-range jumpshots.

It’s likely Peat likely provides little-to-none line-up flexibility, with his production locked into a single position and particular lineup architectures.

There’s clear problems with Peat as an NBA player. Yet, I can’t dismiss a young player with strength, athleticism and above baseline feel for the game. Feel triumphs over everything, so I still expect Peat to figure it out to some extent.

So the question for a team that’s going to end up drafting Peat should be just how highly do you value his strong skill intersections and ancillary production from the PF position? How much of your team building resources do you need (or are willing) to invest in order to get the best out of him?

This part features Hannes Steinbach, AJ Dybantsa, Joshua Jefferson, Dailyn Swain, Morez Johnson Jr., Zuby Ejiofor, Allen Graves, Ebuka Okorie, Chris Cenac Jr. and Brayden Burries.

Hannes Steinbach

Ranking on my big board: 19th

The question of positional translation is paramount for Steinbach. Despite putting up monster rebounding numbers, Steinbach basically split his minutes at the 4 and 5, starting alongside fellow big Franck Kepnang, and commanding the paint as a solo big when Kepnang sat.

On the season, Steinbach had a sub-4% block rate and his minutes at the 5 did see a slight shot blocking jump, but despite that, with Steinbach at the 5, Washington’s defense clearly suffered. The subsequent impact on shot blocking traits feels rather damning for Steinbach as a 5.

Washington’s opponents also shot and made a higher volume of shots at the rim with Steinbach as the anchoring big.

Yet, offensively Steinbach kept a largely 5-adjacent playstyle, boasting a significantly higher post-up frequency than Kepnang in double big lineups, also lapping his frontcourt partner in other big-like action frequency like scoring on rolls and putbacks.

Playing a starting center with negative shot blocking and rim deterrence abilities is one of the most reliable one-stop solutions if your goal is to funnel yourself towards a bottom 10 defensive rating in the NBA; I strongly believe that any team serious about contending at the upper echelons of the league should refrain from drafting Steinbach, if the intention is to play him as your starting center in the longer term.

Steinbach’s productive starting-level outcomes are largely tied to his functionality in double big lineups where he wouldn’t have to anchor a defense. Steinbach’s primary value as a second big is clearly rooted in his ability to rebound.

It’s more likely than not he develops a stationary shooting ability at some point, but with limited on-ball equity on the perimeter (<10% ast and big-type creation) I have my qualms about whether Steinbach is ever impactful enough as a shooter.

It is my belief Steinbach’s most likely outcomes are somewhere in the Jock Landale ballpark: a solid backup big worthy of a pick in the late 10s/early 20s.

AJ Dybantsa

Ranking on my big board: 4th

AJ Dybantsa has finished his only season at BYU ranking among all-time offensive load bearers and had a noticeable usage bump in mid-February after Richie Saunders went down with a season-ending injury.

You’re not drafting AJ Dybantsa to scale him down into a tertiary offensive role; he’s going to have the ball a lot in the NBA, so we will be evaluating AJ through the lens of a ball-dominant wing who’s going to take 20+ field goals per night regularly in the NBA.

Dybantsa’s game is largely based inside the arc and around the mid-range; more than half of AJ’s shots came in the long 2 area, giving him a Moreyball rate of just 45%.

Though Dybantsa is a functional playmaker, considering he’s going to have the ball in his hands a ton, he essentially shapes his team’s offense in his own image. The 22% ast rate on all-time usage and a muddy shot diet are a couple of aspects that make it difficult for me to buy into AJ as an elite offensive engine in the NBA.

The pressure on his shotmaking translation is immense because for Dybantsa to fully justify the pre-draft hype, he’s going to have to make a sizeable +rTS% contribution for his team. And to do that when you’re mostly based in the mid-range area is really hard. I struggle shaking off the Jaylen Brown/RJ Barrett/Paolo Banchero comps, and not in a good way.

If we’re looking for positive aspects, Dybantsa’s ability to grift fouls may be the single most redeeming quality as a primary.

I dislike that level of 3 pt suppression in favour of long 2s, the ridiculously high on-ball equity, just an average passing volume and a high degree of neglect towards your athletic gifts on the other end of the floor. I won’t say you can’t build a championship winning team on that type of player - there’s definitely a feeling of elevated variance in NBA playoffs with the Knicks winning this year and Pacers going 7 games in the finals last season.

But I’m adamant building a championship winning team around Dybantsa will be more difficult purely because he needs specific lineup architectures catering to both his strengths and weaknesses.

At the same time, there’s a good chance Dybantsa’s additional length and athleticism (he dunks every third of his rim shots) eventually takes him way beyond Brown, Barrett or Banchero.

A good amount of my process this year was based on chasing outliers both on the high and low ends of the board, and if there’s anything truly singular about Dybantsa, it’s this particular integration.

Joshua Jefferson

Ranking on my big board: 24th

Joshua Jefferson is quite a tough player to evaluate because he’s one of the forwards who functioned as a true offensive engine for his team, with Iowa State, wingifying their nominal guards Tamin Lipsey and Kyllian Toure to different extents.

In Jefferson’s two years at Iowa State, the Cyclones had their two best offensive seasons under TJ Otzelberger. The Jefferson-Lipsey pairing was highly synergetic mainly because Lipsey is an excellent stabilizer at the PG position: though his offensive output isn’t that of a true engine, his ability to control turnovers was crucial.

Jefferson’s positive NBA outcomes hinge on him figuring it out offensively and providing value through his feel and ancillaries.

He probably turns it over a bit too much to justify giving him as many on-ball reps in the NBA as he got in college. He throws a lot of risky passes from the top of the key, pinch and mid-post.

On the other hand, a large wing with a strong rebounding, defensive playmaking and feel integration, depending on the price, is always a worthwile bet to stick around in the NBA.

The aforementioned ancillaries and feel are so crucial mostly because of how flawed Jefferson’s scoring profile is.

Throughout a 4 year career at St. Mary’s and later Iowa State, Jefferson’s improvements scoring the basketball were modest. His usage bump this year coincided with a pretty terrible dip in 2 point scoring: in half-court, Jefferson made just 46.6% of his 2 pointers, a number adjacent to freshman guards in this year’s class. Needless to say that’s not ideal, considering Jefferson is 22 and almost 6’8” barefoot.

A career 72% from the line and just 5 three point attempts per 100 posessions aren’t really something that can project tremendous development as a shooter.

Because he never really developed a reliable shot from 3 and isn’t an explosive athlete by any means, Jefferson’s point-forward scoring process wasn’t exactly adherent to Moreyball principles.

Jefferson had just 17 dunk attempts on the season, while operating near the basket quite a bit. He struggled in most non-primary actions, including scoring on putbacks.

Operating inside the arc without elite athleticism or touch around the rim puts Jefferson in unsavoury queries of older guys who struggle with scoring efficiency and don’t really have steep, projectable shot development curves.

Dailyn Swain

Ranking on my big board: 13th

I had a lot love for prospect Swain in the 2025 NBA Draft cycle before he decided to pull out of the draft and transfer to Texas, so him being so awesome for the Longhorns in 2025-26 feels like a justification.

A highly important note on Swain: though his on-ball abilities were clear at Xavier, it was at Texas he was essentially fleshed into a point forward.

The playstyle at Texas and its’ NBA replicability is a critical part of Swain’s evaluation, possibly even more so than for other prospects. At Xavier, Swain was considered a borderline NBA prospect. At Texas, he played himself into the consensus 1st round, and possibly even higher, which means that this sample carries heavy weight.

If you needed a blunt answer to that question, I’d say most probably no, and the reason for that is that the 3 PT attempt suppression and turnover economy just don’t add up to a productive translation of this playstyle.

Among players with >25% usg on @draftballr’s 2026 big board at the time of making this query, Swain has by far the highest creation turnover (TOV / creation burden) rate.

On top of that, Swain doesn’t really carry enough of a p&r passing volume to sustain and justify a really high volume of on ball reps; it obviously isn’t a single player’s fault, but the point forward-Swain driven Texas offense was just 347th in assist rate.

Size is king in the NBA and Swain’s high end outcomes as a potential offensive gamebreaker are tied to him being able to essentially be an oversized 2, but for that to happen I think it’s neccessary to drive up the 3 pt rates, which is going to be tricky since, despite having the touch, Swain remains a hesitant 3 pt shooter.

I believe Swain and his playstyle do start to bleed value the higher we go up the positional ladder.

Luckily for Swain, I think he has enough ancillary production to survive the NBA as an offensively overqualified combo forward, so this remains a player worthy of a late lottery grade.

Morez Johnson Jr.

Ranking on my big board: 12th

For more on Johnson Jr., I direct you to my article for The Center Hub I wrote in January.

I largely stand by it and I think Morez’s value proposition as a combo big capable of filling multiple roles deserves a lottery grade. The testing numbers at the NBA Draft Combine was great as well.

Zuby Ejiofor

Ranking on my big board: 21st

I try to refrain from the influence of absolute highest leverage of hoops on my draft evaluations, but I did think about Zuby Ejiofor when watching Karl Anthony-Towns be the most effective antidote to Victor Wembanyama in the NBA finals.

Ejiofor’s ability to take on a significantly higher volume of on-ball reps is an extremely encouraging development, vaulting him from a fringe NBA draft prospect, pigeonholed into an extremely unfavourable archetype, into an undersized combo big, posessing both the size and driving ability of a potential matchup nigthmare.

This particular development of Ejiofor was a life saver for Rick Pitino’s St. John’s team, whose 2025 summer recruits at the guard position were questionable, to say the least. Outside of transition, pretty much every efficient play type for the Red Storm was driven by Ejiofor.

Regrettably, St. John’s refrained from playing Ejiofor alongside their other uber-productive big Ruben Prey. Per hoop-explorer’s lineup tracking, Ejiofor played all of his minutes at the center spot, with Prey backing him up, so the collegiate sample provides no proof-of-concept for Ejiofor playing as a 4.

His poor defensive rebounding for a center required quite a bit of insulation: even playing with two outstanding wing rebounders in Bryce Hopkins and Dillon Mitchell, overall rebounding numbers were very much middling.

Allen Graves

Ranking on my big board: 7th

Any attempts to do a long-form analysis on Santa Clara’s outstanding redshirt freshman Allen Graves would fall way short of replicating the standard of quality in this outstanding piece by Avi and Gav.

If I could add anything to the Graves discourse, I’d just humbly make a couple of points.

First, if you’re turned off by a -4.8 defensive rating swing with Graves on the floor, don’t be; it’s mostly a product of him being positionally displaced as a center and backing up a 7’2” big Bukky Oboye.

It’s not conceivable to expect a 6’9” player to be as good at rim deterrence and paint defense as Oboye. Just perceive Graves as a combo forward at the next level and you’ll be alright.

Secondly, with NBA scouting network now reaching virtually every place in the world (and most elite prospects choosing the NCAA path anyway), as well as NIL pulling non-blue chip players with remaining eligibility back to school en masse, grabbing an all-time draft day steal is more difficult than ever.

Draft steals are still very common, but at the same time I don’t believe that in 2026, NBA teams would conceivably let Nikola Jokic, a player with an outlier combo of mass, basketball cognition and touch, fall all the way to 41st. Essentially, pulling a steal of that magnitude now feels close to impossible.

The most plausible narrow pathway towards anything resembling that nowadays, I believe, rests on 3 components: young age, RSCI misevaluation and playing college ball in a low-key environment, devoid of high-profile individual accolades and deep NCAA tournament runs.

Graves hits all 3 of those criteria. Don’t be shocked when he’s great in the NBA.

Ebuka Okorie

Ranking on my big board: 10th

Speaking of young, misevalued by RSCI and playing college ball in a low-key environment, meet Stanford’s Ebuka Okorie.

Consensus has overlooked Okorie for the most of the cycle, and in a lauded draft class full of (at least what I consider to be) flawed lead handler bets, he at the very least belongs in the conversation.

As you might have read in the first part of my notes, I discussed the heavy hit on LaBaron Philon’s ancillary production caused by a role shift, a rather precarious tendency for a rim-reliant, ball-dominant guard lacking both size and athletic ability.

Though the margins may seem small to the naked eye, Okorie and Flemings are the clear two stock champions in this group; ability to cross both the >1% BLK and >2.5% STL rates is a testament to their underlying athletic and defensive cognition traits, all of which were exhibited under a heavy offensive strain.

The superior anthros back up most of what you’re seeing on here. Okorie leads this group in BMI; his speed, advanced handle and lower center of gravity pertains to an absurdly low tov% rate. He has very long arms, boasting one of the largest wingspan differentials in the entire draft.

The scariest parts in Okorie’s profile are all related to passing volume.

Per hoop-explorer, his passing volume to cutters and rollers was just in the 12th and 25th percentile, respectively. Okorie misses passing windows, while his extremely low turnover percentage may be a double-edged sword, as it could signal an aversion to risk and high leverage reads.

Nevertheless, even without the passing, Okorie may be an outlier because of all the offense he creates for himself; in terms of self-creation in this draft, it’s really Okorie and Dybantsa sitting in a different stratosphere compared to anyone else.

Admittedly, I did get some cold feet relative to Okorie at the very end of the cycle. I’m kind of hedging my bets here by placing him 10th because there’s a non-zero chance that’s just a Collin Sexton with better defense.

Chris Cenac Jr.

Ranking on my big board: 17th

In one of NBA Draft group chats on Twitter Cenac was called a ‘boring’ prospect, which I thought captures him pretty well.

That isn’t as much a dig on Cenac as it is a description of a player who’s ceiling is largely capped by his below-average feel for the game and low aptitude for breaking defenses down with on-ball skills.

Despite cognitive limitations, there’s clear pathways for Cenac towards becoming a solid NBA contributor. This was further enhanced after he posted outstanding anthropometric measurements during NBA Draft Combine.

These measurements are awesome for a guy who spent most of his time at Houston playing the 4, and it’s likely a role where he’s going to be best at the NBA level as well.

Cenac’s advantages as a basketball player became apparent as the season went on: his physicality (indicated by great rebounding numbers), athleticism (2:1 rim:dunk ratio) and high RSCI ranking clearly point to a productive, high floor big with intriguing skill intersections.

Cenac gets his fair share of stick for his below-average feel for the game, questionable decision making and very limited on-ball equity, and I was certainly guilty of that myself when evaluating Cenac as a high school player.

But Kelvin Sampson has showed the way for Cenac’s future employees: isolate him from decision making on the ball, allow him to crash the glass, fill the lane and trust the long ball. That’s how freshman Cenac’s turnover rate, with all of his supposed bad habits and poor feel, was brought down to just 11.4%.

As a 4, Cenac adds value by helping you win the possession battle by pressing down turnovers and creating second chances, akin to a bigger, more athletic Dean Wade.

Outstanding defensive rebounding also means Cenac can enable two-big lineups where the other big is on the leaner, more mobile side, i.e. Evan Mobley, who’s been a great defender throughout his career, but bleeds some of his defensive value because he struggles boxing out and grabbing defensive rebounds.

His pairing with JoJo Tugler (11.1% DREB rate) at Houston serves as a solid proof-of-concept for the hypothesis.

This particular pairing ended up highly synergetic because they covered for each other’s shortcomings so well: Tugler was a stock machine who couldn’t grab a defensive rebound, while Cenac was a below-average shot blocker and turnover creator who, conversely, was a monster on the glass.

Sometimes the best solutions are the ones that are the most apparent.

Brayden Burries

Ranking on my big board: 20th

Before proceeding towards any Burries evaluation, we need to lay down at least the basics of team context at Arizona.

Despite their guard Jaden Bradley getting the Big 12 player of the year honours, stylistically the Wildcats were driven by their frontcourt, Motiejus Krivas, Koa Peat and Tobe Awaka, who were the most consequential players to both their playstyle and team success, relegating both Bradley and Burries to somewhat ancillary roles.

This meant that Burries’ profile at Arizona was adjacent to a wing/secondary guard hybrid, he created just around 55% of his own shots, when lead guards usually cross the 70% unassisted threshold.

Arizona essentially pigeonholed him in an undersized wing/guard hybrid rola, in that sense comparing him against such recent NBA players like Jared McCain, Monte Morris, Reed Sheppard, Jase Richardson, Miles McBride etc.

For me personally the defining characteristic of Burries is that he… kinda doesn’t really have any truly defining, standout characteristics? It isn’t ideal considering his deceptive freshman status as a player who’ll turn 21 in September. He’s not really a posession maxer, while his turnover rate is decent, it’s not anything out of the ordinary considering his reduced offensive role.

This really puts a lot of pressure on him making it as a shooter, which, by all accounts, is his primary strength on offense, making him into a bit of a ‘did the ball go in’ type prospect.

The indicators are somewhat strong and with Arizona’s 3 point attempt suppression i believe Burries has the capability to scale up the 3pt volume, but that doesn’t necessarily predict NBA success by itself, especially when you don’t really grab offensive boards.

Burries is good at turning opponents over. Also, being one of the heavier guards in this years draft class (26.4 BMI) are decent indicators for defensive success, but Burries doesn’t really have the premium wingspan or athleticism, mostly binding him to the ground as a defender.

Burries’ athletic testing was really good with a 38.5 inch max vertical, but empty gym testing is a slippery slope and can potentially lead to false positives.

At the end of the day I don’t really mind Burries as a prospect and I’m not mad at any placements starting with late lottery; I just personally prefer the prospects I ended up putting above him.

This is the table that I will either look upon fondly in a few years time, or it will haunt me forever.

During the next few days I’ll publish my three part big board notes about every prospect in my top-30.

The first one is here. In this part, I’ll cover 10 prospects, chosen in a random manner: Cameron Boozer, LaBaron Philon, Jayden Quaintance, Ugonna Onyenso, Bennett Stirtz, Rafael Castro, Nate Ament, Darius Acuff Jr., Bruce Thornton and Mikel Brown Jr.

Cameron Boozer

Ranking on my big board: 1st

There’s an argument to be made that Cameron Boozer is the greatest American basketball prospect since LeBron James: there’s very little precedent for Boozer’s box score production over the last couple of decades, even if we look beyond the age factor.

With all the accusations of a below the rim game that seemingly won’t translate to the next level, Boozer managed to put together an almost primary guard-level offensive profile that, when you factor in his ability to score inside the arc AND a highly projectable shooting touch, makes him an outlier in comparison to other prospects that went through the NCAA system over the last couple of decades.

He did all of this possesing a bruising physical profile that resembles players like Al Horford, Kevin Love or his dad Carlos.

For those worried about Boozer’s abilities as a number 1 option, in limited samples he has done fine both as a pull up shooter and rim driver. In addition to that, Booz is an excellent live dribble passer for his size which makes him a matchup nightmare in 4-5 or weak side pick and rolls, slips, he’s going to be viable in zoom actions both as a handoff man and coming off pindowns.

All of this while dribble drives aren’t even Boozer’s primary creation play type, with that being post-ups.

As a below-average stock generator with little rim deterrence ability, Boozer’s value will be maximized playing alongside an anchor big.

With Kevin Love being a one of the closer proxies for Boozer defensively in terms of a heavy offensive load-bearer in a PF position, he presents an interesting case of baseline defensive impact through rebounding. This is something Boozer’s eventual team will want to max out because of his outlet passing, a trait that has been underused at Duke.

At the end of the day I believe there’s a pathway for Boozer to become a more impactful defensive player in the right infrastructure; he lacks footspeed and hip mobility but there’s a chance he makes some of it up with his basketball IQ and good hands.

LaBaron Philon

Ranking on my big board: 25th

A projected 1st round pick in 2025, LaBaron Philon came back for a second season at Alabama with the intention of catering to the lead guard-related desires of NBA front offices.

He saw a substantial increase in on-ball reps after Mark Sears left the program. Sadly, all of this came at the expense of his ancillaries and, especially, defensive production.

Philon, who attempted 172 shots at the rim and just 5 dunks all season, will become NBA’s next rim-heavy, undersized, ball-dominant guard who scores under the basket.

As I’ve talked about many times before, it’s an aspect that’s quite difficult to translate to the next level, with even NBA’s elite offensive below-the-rim engines struggling with poor scoring at the rim.

His uptick in 3pt volume and 2pt scoring are encouraging, but one has to account for the fact that Alabama, under coach Nate Oats, has a very clear way of playing offense.

The play types through which Alabama generate most of their offense are very stable year in, year out, despite an ever-changing personnel, so both Philon’s process and results are likely more system-derivative compared to an average guard in the draft.

On top of that, Alabama is one of the fastest teams that has mastered both spacing and sealing for guards driving to the rim. Philon enjoyed his partnership with Aden Holloway; collectivelly, they made up one of the best offensive backcourts in the country.

With him on the floor, Philon got a 5.3% efficiency bump from 2. Their adjusted rim frequency and scoring peaked in 2 guard lineups; with either one of them off the floor, Alabama resorted to a level of 3 point bombing that could shake even the fiercest adherents of Moreyball.

The margin for error for guards carrying heavy shot usage in the NBA is so narrow. The possible soft landing in case you are displaced from on-ball touches is provided by the ancillaries, which, sadly in Philon’s case, haven’t been there in his role this season.

Philon is an interesting case because he did spend his freshman year at Alabama in a much more scaled-down setup alongside Mark Sears, where he stocked up (and rebounded) quite a bit more.

A potential task of reshaping Philon into a quasi-Cason Wallace feels insurmountable considering Wallace has a +20 pound advantage, +0.8% stl advantage on Philon’s freshman season, all while posessing a +6 inch wingspan differential relative to his height.

Some of Philon’s closer proxies, sadly, aren’t Wallace, Jrue Holiday or De’Anthony Melton, but rather Scotty Pippen Jr. However, Pippen’s 3.4% STL rate at an absurdly high 34.4% usage at Vanderbilt likely provided for a much higher defensive playmaking ceiling compared to what Philon amassed throughout his two year career at Alabama.

Jayden Quaintance

Ranking on my big board: 6th

Quaintance is one of the most difficult players to rank. There literally isn’t anything we learned about his development as a basketball player throughout his 4 game sample at Kentucky.

The only thing we really learned is that his injury situation is precarious: more than a year removed from a major knee surgery, Quaintance still clearly protects his right leg as he lands on dunks.

At Arizona State, Quaintance’s ability to jump and move his feet with astonishing fluidity was mind-boggling.

There’s a chance that a 6’10”, 255 lbs human body isn’t supposed to move like that and it foreshadows long-term injury problems, especially considering Robert Williams, often thought as Quaintance’s closest NBA proxy, has struggled staying healthy throughout his career as well.

I remain high on Quaintance and his placement reflects me being okay with missing because of injuries; I operate on the basis of basketball data and as scared as I am for Quaintance’s long-term health, heavily leaning into any assumptions I might have in that regard would amount to bad process.

For a more thorough read on Quaintance I direct you to a piece I wrote on him last year since his Kentucky year can be rendered meaningless in terms of on-court production.

Ugonna Onyenso

Ranking on my big board: 16th

Through my own defensive modelling and analysis I came to a conclusion that Virginia’s Ugonna Onyenso is quite possibly the most underrated player in this draft and, bar for Ebuka Okorie or Allen Graves dropping into low 10s or 20s, could be the biggest steal of the entire draft.

At 6’11” barefoot, close to a 7’5” wingspan, Onyenso has a body befitting the archetype of an agile, athletic and smart defender at a premium length.

High (2%+) STL rates for players of that size are often a sign of solid agility and defensive cognition, indicating they could potentially be a bit more than your park-in-the-paint style defenders, despite the fact it’s the shot blocking ability that catches your eye with Onyenso.

Even at modest usage rates, Onyenso’s ability to keep the turnovers low is pretty impressive and likely attributable to his vertical spacing, ability to catch the ball on the move and keep it safe.

Once you have that nailed down, the offensive rebounding and dunking ability give Onyenso a decent chance to clear a baseline offensive production needed to stay on the floor in the NBA.

Onyenso shot sub-70% at the rim despite having close to a 2:1 rim-to-dunk ratio; having suboptimal non-dunk touch at the rim can be feel a bit iffy. A potential way out of this predicament is Onyenso’s improving shooting touch from further out.

In 2025-26, he, all of a sudden, started taking threes for Virginia after essentially not having any attempts prior to that, possibly an indication that at the age of 21, his shot became functional enough to begin launching them at a small scale during games. It’s possible there’s still quite a bit of additional shooting development curve remaining.

I tried comparing Onyenso’s shot projectability to another Virginia alumn Jay Huff, a big who also began shooting at an older age. Huff’s senior season sample faces a similar problems to Onyenso, so I padded their free throw percentages which brought them closer together.

Huff still clears Onyenso in both 3PA/100 and FT%, but it has to be noted that Huff was 2 years younger than Onyenso on draft night.

Bennett Stirtz

Ranking on my big board: 9th

There’s a reason believe that Stirtz, plagued by ‘old, low ceiling’ accusations often slapped on older prospects without due consideration, is actually contrary to how he’s perceived as a prospect.

Possibly the craziest part about Stirtz’s offense is the fact that he shot over 60% true shooting efficiency, including 58% against top-50 opposition, despite the fact he self-creates a larger part of his shot diet AND gets virtually no transition efficiency boost in the form of easy fast-break layups, all because Iowa plays the slowest offense in the country.

Everything Stirtz does is in half-court. The fact he maintains a 93rd percentile 2pt half-court scoring efficiency as a play creator is bonkers.

This is not to say that Stirtz is the new Jalen Brunson but the fact I was able to isolate them in a single query with just 5 filters should point to an upside beyond a backup point guard worthy a selection in the 20s.

The athletic limitations (poor rebounding, mediocre measurements, rebounding, stocks and a lack of explosive first step) put a limit on what Stirtz can achieve at the next level, especially defensively, but his profile also pertains to some level of portability.

At least offensively, there’s a chance that a scaled down Stirtz is viable in potentially gamebreaking two guard lineup architectures, essentially functioning as a Cam Spencer-style 1.5.

Beyond defense, the other concern with Stirtz is how he translates from Ben McCollum-led, highly specific offensive systems, because we haven’t seen him outside of that context.

The painstaikingly slow offenses at Drake and Iowa were designed to centralize decision making in Stirtz’s hands, while also allowing him to stay on the court virtually at all times.

Rafael Castro

Ranking on my big board: 30th

Playing ball at George Washington in the Atlantic 10 conference as a senior by itself is probably a bigger turn-off for NBA front offices than it should be, making Rafael Castro a strong candidate to be one of the wins on the margin in the 2026 NBA Draft.

The most interesting thing is Castro’s uncanny ability to force steals at his size - he’s going to be just the third player 6’10” or taller in the Bart database to record a 3.5% STL rate or better.

We may remember Greg Monroe as a below-average big defender in the NBA, but it wasn’t for his ability to get steals; this particular ability translated from college to the NBA pretty smoothly.

The fact that Castro forcessteals like a wing makes for an additional challenge trying to conceptualize the archetype and fitting him into pre-existing player frameworks.

Another peculiar aspect to Castro’s profile is that he crushes the two main physicality proxies for bigs (dreb% and ftr%), despite the fact he doesn’t really boast exceptional anthros: standing at 6’9” barefoot, Castro is the same height as Quaintance or Morez Johnson Jr., yet his 224 pound frame trails both of those guys by a wide margin.

It’s interesting that pairing Castro’s exceptional defensive rebounding and free throw rates with his wing-like ability to generate turnovers, we mostly get wing, or even guard-adjacent NBA outcomes.

This is both exciting and nerve-wracking for those few who are brave enough to board a mid-major player who could conceivably go undrafted. The exciting outcome is Castro being an exceptionally agile big who also crosses the required rim protection threshold.

The nerve-wracking scenario is Castro turning into a positionally homeless player stuck in G League purgatory and entirely out of the NBA ecosystem in 2-3 years time.

We can reasonably assume that due to the lower level of competition the 26.3% DREB and 78.1% FTR carries a mid-major tax, which is where the Castro eval becomes a little bit murky.

Without any sort of projectable shot, exceptional athleticism or a requisite turnover economy (Castro had a 26% turnover rate in his 10 games against top-100 opposition in 25-26), it can definitely feel like the GW alumn is pigeonholed into an undersized, low BMI center role.

At the end of the day, me boarding Castro is basically saying that the level of production, even at a mid-major level, can only be dismissed so much, especially as that production is pointing towards a big with exceptional agility and defensive IQ.

Nate Ament

Ranking on my big board: 29th

One of the top RSCI recruits coming into the season, Ament had a fair share of struggles in his lone season at Tennessee.

I believe that by all accounts, Ament was overstretched offensively as his self-creation game wasn’t refined enough for him to carry an almost 28% shot usage.

Even Ja’Kobi Gillespie, their lead guard, wasn’t exactly an engine for self-creation; in 24-25 playing for Maryland, he turned out alongside Derik Queen, who carried an abnormally high creative load for a center. After moving to Tennessee, Gillespie functioned as somewhat of a hybrid between a lead and a secondary guard, placing an additional burden on Ament to manufacture offense.

The said offensive overstretching for Ament resulted in a rather terrible shot diet where off-dribble shots were king and he badly struggled making them.

It all adds up to quite a funny situation where Ament, often thought of as a 3-and-D type prospect, actually was one of the least Moreyball-pilled prospects based on his collegiate sample.

There’s good reasonsto believe that won’t be the case in the NBA, but if that was the only problem with Ament as a prospect, we wouldn’t worry over him too much.

So let’s move to the major red flags: Ament couldn’t crack 38% from 2 in half-court

To realize just how much of a bust indicator that is, here’s the worst 2pt shooting prospects to be drafted since 2020, with every one-and-done player highlighted. With his 43% shooting from inside the arc, Ament will slot right below the middle of this query.

We can conceivably push back by saying the 0.77 points per mid-range shot is a product of the said offensive overstretching. Ament would have the 4th highest usage in this query and it’s about to drop down once he’s in the NBA as he won’t be asked to manufacture long 2’s for himself.

But shooting 51% at the rim on just 17 dunk attempts as a player who’s about to get drafted in the top-10 based on his exceptional POSITIONAL SIZE of all things is historically bad.

Ament will have to make his money in the OREB/3PA intersection if he wants to reach any lottery-end outcomes.

Though again, this query is a bit generous considering Ament’s 3p volume and ft%; a couple of high end players on this query like Lauri Markkanen and Brandon Miller were either much bigger (Lauri is essentially a 7ft wing) or more athletic (Miller), therefore I feel fairly confident fading Ament on my board.

Darius Acuff Jr.

Ranking on my big board: 22nd

Darius Acuff Jr. is the most controversial prospect in the class. At points the discourse around him was so toxic it was impossible to have a reasonable conversation about him as a prospect, so for the last few months I consciously stayed away from talking Acuff.

For this reason I won’t dwell too much on him in this piece: Acuff Jr. is clearly a talented scorer and a playmaker, but his numbers were boosted by playing alongside the best collection of athletes in the country, as well as a somewhat heavily assisted 3 point shooting diet.

Acuff has some of the worst defensive cognition and activity indicators you’ll ever see in the NBA Draft and it feels like he’s bound to be one of the worst defenders in the league once he’s there, bordering on unplayable, especially in playoff situations.

As I mentioned, he’s a strong offensive player, but that’s about it; for me to be high on such a defensive liability like Acuff, he’d have to carry a supernova-level shot usage and assist%, which he didn’t, nor has he shown outlier touch capabilities (81% from the line). He plays mostly under the basket and his 2 point scoring from half-court doesn’t stand out in any particular way.

This profile feels closer in line to someone who I’d expect to be a star in the Euroleague.

For a team that drafts him, Acuff Jr. will likely sell tickets, provide both points and passes worthy of highlight reels, but once that team will have to get serious about winning and deep playoff runs, the amount of defensive insulation required will likely be not worth the trade-off.

Bruce Thornton

Ranking on my big board: 18th

Likely to be drafted in the 2nd round, Ohio State’s senior guard is a more consequential prospect than you think.

Well, at least I personally treat him as consequential for my own philosophy. The common line of thinking among analytically-driven NBA front offices and amateur evaluators is ‘process over results’, something I subscribe to heavily as well.

Thornton is a player who looks to subvert the paradigm, putting my own flexibility as an evaluator to the test.

Measured at 6’0” barefoot, he misses pretty much every statistical criteria of what I’d want from a real offensive engine - ability to carry high usage, assist, free throw or 3PA rates, or if not, be a heavy volume driver to the rim. Thornton isn’t any of those things.

While carrying a non-primary usage, Thornton can shoot from deep, but he has a precarious affinity for short mid-range jumpshots, while being a bulky guard that’s glued to the ground. Over the course of 4600 minutes played at Ohio State, an exceptionally large sample, he made a grand total of 2 dunks. Yikes.

Here’s a scatter plot of the 2025-26 NBA landscape, examining a relationship between a high-ish volume (>5 atts/100 poss) of short mid-range attempts and the overall 2 point efficiency.

To put it simply, nobody really likes short mid-rangers. The five players with the most SMR/100 attempts in the NBA are Dillon Brooks (overextended offensively), Ja Morant (perpetually injured and losing explosiveness), as well as Jalen Brunson, Ty Jerome and TJ McConnell, NBA’s gold standard for scoring in that area.

As important it is to value process over results, another pillar of a sound scouting philosophy is spotting outliers. My personal conclusion is that there’s a decent chance Thornton is one of them.

We can hold the hard-to-translate scoring process against Thornton, but I can’t ignore just how remarkably good he is from the short mid-range: both Thornton’s 4.3 non-rim attempts per 40 mins and 65.4% from that area rank in the 96th percentile. His overall 2pt% is just abnormally high for a small, glued-to-the ground guard.

He did play in a somewhat unusual context as for two seasons, Ohio State turned out with two undersized backcourt players with sub-2% steal rates in Thornton and John Mobley Jr., predictably yielding abhorrent team stock rates.

OSU did little to insulate their undersized backcourt duo’s defensive deficiencies by having no other standout defenders and abstaining from any real rim protection. Thornton’s 1.9% steal rate was the best on the team and if you’re building a serious basketball roster, it’s simply not good enough.

It’s no wonder that despite Thornton’s sustained collegiate excellence over the course of 4 years, the Buckeyes saw limited team success.

The defense can reasonably be viewed as a turn-off, but I’m very intrigued about Thornton’s unique build. In my database tracing back to 2015, Thornton has the highest body mass index out of any drafted NCAA guard over that timespan.

Mikel Brown Jr.

Ranking on my big board: 15th

Brown Jr., I feel, is one of the closer prospects to Trae Young in recent drafts, with all the good and bad it entails.

Of course, Young, at his peak, was a truly singular player, who simultaneously was possibly a top-3 offensive and one of the very worst defensive players in the league; it’s extremely unlikely Brown Jr. will end up replicating anything like that.

I think there’s definitely things to like with Brown Jr. offensively. At Louisville, by shouldering a large perimeter creation load, he showed he has a highly positive impact on teammate shot quality.

There’s a similar story with Brown Jr. being able to shoulder a high volume of pick and rolls to maximize the value of Sananda Fru, a 2:1 rim-to-dunk ratio player who’s archetype begs for a a p&r partner to utilize his rim running and lob threat.

His athletic indicators are really odd and your guess as to how Mikel will turn out in the league defensively is probably as good as mine; he’s pretty tall, the steal numbers went up as the season progressed, so that’s good, considering that this was very worrisome coming into the year.

Previously, Brown Jr. couldn’t even get steals against terribly inferior FIBA competition for Team USA, so seeing signs of improvement in that area is encouraging.

Brown also had 10 dunks on the season which is pretty good considering he played just around 40% of total minutes for Louisville.

It remains to be seen whether his pairing of solid free throw rates and top-of-the-class 3pt volume, two metrics that normally have a negative correlation, isn’t just a byproduct of a relatively small sample size, skewed by the fact he played out most of the weaker non-conference schedule and then missed a larger part of ACC and NCAA tournament play.

I have little doubt he can put up 3 point shots, but the ability to get to the line is something I’m wary of overindexing. Even if the FTR is sustainable, it doesn’t necessarily lead to positive NBA outcomes.

Shockingly, Brown had just 1 offensive rebound over 21 games he played ALL SEASON, which is comical for any player regardless of size, health status or team context.

Also, the turnover economy is questionable and without much scalability, Brown Jr. needs to be a legitimate engine, making him the quintessential boom-or-bust type prospect in this class. The placement right down the middle of my board is reflective of that particular boom-or-bust nature.

I strongly believe those rankings hold too much weight in projecting future NBA prospects. It’s also painfully obvious that those guys who were considered blue chip recruits coming out of high school, they often get more leeway if they struggle during their freshman or sophomore years.

At the same time, every year, there’s players like Jase Richardson, Thomas Sorber or Reed Sheppard, somewhat unheralded high school recruits who turn into one-and-done level prospects.

Who will be the next ones to follow that path in the 2026 NBA Draft cycle?

To try and answer that question, I’m continuing my class of 2025 deep cut series (since it’s the second piece, we can now officially call it a series!) where I try to single out underappreciated high school recruits coming in to play college basketball.

In the first article I analyzed Michigan State’s Jordan Scott and Providence’s Jaylen Harrell; you can find that piece here. Now, let’s dive into the games of another two freshmen that I’m excited to see in college.

Najai Hines, Seton Hall, 6-10, 265 lbs

Najai Hines helped his stock tremendously during the summer with a standout performance at the Peach Jam finals. Hines decided to capitalize on that momentum with a late reclassification to 2025, joining a Seton Hall program that bottomed out in the Big East last season with a 2-18 record.

With his reclassification in July, the Plainfield, NJ native entered the 2025 top 100 of the major recruiting services; ESPN has him at 74, while 247sports ranks Hines as the 71st best prospect in the class of 2025.

Hines was reportedly recruited by some more prominent college programs like Kansas, Indiana and NC State, but chose to stay close to home at Seton Hall. I don’t have any intel, but I’d assume those programs wanted to recruit Hines for 2026.

Seton Hall isn’t just close to home for Hines; it also presents an opportunity to come in, get some playing time and make an impact as a freshman. I don’t think that Hines, without an elite high school profile and playing for Seton Hall, is a very realistic one-and-done candidate at this point, but I do see him as someone who could garner some NBA interest, go back to school for another year and be a two-and-done guy.

When Hines stepped on the court in EYBL competitions, he immediately stood out with his massive frame. At 6-10, 265 pounds (per school website), the Seton Hall big was virtually impossible to move for his peers who had to double or even triple team him every time he caught the ball near the basket.

At the same time, Hines is much more than just a big body down low. He blends his physicality with solid hands, great footwork, ambidextrous touch around the basket, a surprising amount of agility and coordination in tight spaces. Hines’ trademark move in the spin, which he can do both going to his left and right.

His brute strength means that Hines can create layup angles with his shoulder against any single post coverage, but at the same time, he’s adept at anticipating double teams and turning away from incoming help defenders. It’s super hard to knock the ball out of Hines’ hands in the post; most of the time he’s going to make some sort of a play, whether it’s a shot, a pass or a foul drawn. During 2025, Hines flashed a highly turnover-averse play inside the lane, commiting just 1.8 turnovers per 40 minutes.

Hines can also step out a bit further away from the basket and then make his way to the cup via his silky smooth feet and strenght.

With his frame, Hines is outstanding setting on-ball screens and provides for an interesting long-term offensive profile, combining his feet, size and a developing passing game to function as a DHO/backdoor hub.

Hines’ build also entails that he probably won’t ever be an explosive play finisher or frequent dunker. High level play finishing is one of the most important, yet an underrated big skills. If we’d look at the historic data, elite play finishing (>75%) is a trait that’s almost exclusively reserved for bigs with a high dunk frequency.

Hines is unlikely to ever be in those convos. He’s not a major threat to dunk rolling to the basket or in self created situations in the post. The Seton Hall big isn’t a major lob threat either; on this clip we can see his teammate overvaluing Hines’ athleticism and trying to throw him a lob which he can’t finish first-time, but he still does an admirable job to catch, gather and go up for a layup.

At the same time, Hines isn’t grounded to the floor in a Zach Randolph-like manner. He does have some pop off two feet, especially after catching the ball at the dunker spot where he can quickly gather and go up for a slam.

With his reclassification, Hines immediately enters his name among the best paint defending bigs in the incoming college freshman class.

Per Cerebro, during 21 games in 2025, mostly in EYBL competitions, Hines had a mind-boggling 5.2 blocks on just 3 fouls per 40 minutes, which is better than any of the top incoming centers, including guys like Chris Cenac, Malachi Moreno or Jaden Toombs. The sample size is smaller though, so take that with a grain of salt.

Hines isn’t just someone who sits deep in the paint and blocks drivers in help defense situations; Hines can cover some ground on the closeouts, show and recover, he does a great job staying low and timing his contests, as well.

Despite that, Hines definitely is far from being a mobile big, which is apparent there’s more ground to cover. He struggles when he has to defend in larger spaces and go from one side to the other quickly. Hines can be exploited defensively by bigs who can shoot, attack off the dribble or run in transition, as well as small ball lineups.

Hines badly needs some good conditioning work and that’s one of the reason’s why I think he’s not a one-and-done prospect.

Most elite high school prospects are capable of going through the 8 minute quarters without essentially ever having to sit down for a rest. This is not the case with Hines as he rarely gets through for more than 4-5 minutes without having to come out; and it’s no secret that the level of intensity increases the higher you move up the basketball ladder, so the base conditioning threshold goes up accordingly.

I wouldn’t be shocked if Hines is unable to play more than 50%, or even 40% of total minutes for Seton Hall this season, especially if he can barely jog back on defense after missing at the other end, like on this play (which, funnily enough, ends in him getting an open transition layup).

Jerry Easter, USC, 6-5, 185 lbs

In the multiple Link Academy games I’ve watched over the summer (and, fact check, early autumn), I came away with an almost treacherous idea that guard Jerry Easter may actually be the best prospect on that roster, and not the highly regarded Houston big Chris Cenac.

Per 247sports, the Toledo, OH native had interest from multiple high-major schools, including Michigan State, Ohio State, Vanderbilt and SMU, eventually choosing to go across the country to play for coach Eric Musselman and the USC Trojans.

Easter has consistently put up big numbers in his high school career, but the status of a blue chip prospect has evaded him. ESPN has Easter as the 45th best incoming prospect in the class of 2025, while 247sports ranks him at 51.

I believe there’s a very good chance that Easter comes in and makes an impact for USC as a freshman, especially with the unfortunate events surrounding his fellow freshman Alijah Arenas, who now looks likely to miss the most, if not entire 2025-26 college basketball season.

USC lists Easter at 6-5 and, while we know that schools like to be generous with height and weight measurements, the former Link Academy star does look at least somewhat close to that, which gives him a solid basis and next level projectability.

On tape, one of the things that pop with Easter is just how rapid he is with the ball in his hands. He’s a solid defensive rebounder for his position (5 DREB per 40 in pre-NCAA action, per Cerebro) and has a knack for creating early offense.

As a scorer, Easter’s game is heavily predicated on racking up paint touches in half court.

He’s not an explosive athlete at the rim, but Easter does have quite a bit of initial burst and handle, being able to get low and shift his weight from one side to the other, also posessing one or two dribble drive counters as he approaches the rim. From what I’ve picked up, Easter does favor going to his right with the ball, but the shifty nature of his game makes it difficult for opposing defenses to keep Easter out of the paint.

His offensive game has a couple of major flaws: first of all, Easter isn’t much of a shooter from the perimeter. Over an 89 game pre-NCAA Cerebro sample, the USC guard shot just 27% from three. What’s as concerning is that Easter doesn’t generate enough volume from downtown with a mere 25.5% 3pt rate.

Here’s a couple of clips illustrating his aversion to 3 point shooting. A) Easter passing up an open shot on a closeout and B) he creates a shooting pocket with a nice behind-the-back move, but again he hesitates, does an unnecessary pumpfake and the shot ends up terribly short.

I don’t have a lot of data on Easter’s in-between game, but from what I’ve watched it doesn’t seem like he can carry a high volume mid-range scoring. A low 3 point volume, rim reliant guard that’s not super athletic vertically can be a tough intersection.

On occasions, it can lead to Easter fading from games offensively, like in a matchup against the Boozer bros and Columbus, who did an excellent job at packing the paint on defense and denying paint touches for Easter and his teammates.

One of the reasons why his lack of 3 point shooting and volume is particularly disappointing is that when Easter actually draws closeouts, he’s good at attacking them. He has that quick drop of the shoulder, a negative step to leave defenders behind, backed up by solid court awareness and patience to actually make sound decisions when he’s in advantageous positions.

Overall, making good decisions is something that Easter thrives on, especially in transition where he can make up for some potential half-court shortcomings.

One of the best aspects to Easter’s profile is his high level of defensive playmaking. According to Cerebro sample, the former Link Academy guard logged 2.3 steals per 40 minutes, which isn’t top of the class, but a very solid number nevertheless.

Easter has the speed and a pair of active hands to make him a threat as a help defender. He’s good at sneaking up on players from the blind side, creating high value live turnovers that turn into easy buckets at the other end.

EuroBasket 2025 is in the books now, so if there’s any Germans reading this, congratulations on now becoming the European champions as well; the German basketball emergence in the post-Dirk era is truly a sight to behold and something I DID NOT have on my bingo card when the Mavs legend retired.

At this point we’re also pretty much done with the pre-season analysis of the big 3 of the 2026 NBA Draft (ICYMI, here are my pieces on Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer and AJ Dybantsa)

With less than two months until college basketball starts, it’s time to look at some less heralded and in, my opinion, underrated incoming freshmen.

Jordan Scott, Michigan State, 6-6, 180 lbs

Before arriving in East Lansing, Jordan Scott cemented himself as a bona-fide Virginia basketball legend after winning yet another state championship for South Lakes high school in 2024-25 season.

Unfortunately, his achievements didn’t entirely get through to the people at the major basketball player ranking services. ESPN has Scott ranked just 86th in the Class of 2025; at least 247sports are somewhat higher on Scott at 54th.

From what I’ve picked up so far (which is, disclaimer, not everything), Scott may be one of the most underrated players among the top 100 recruits. He’s nowhere to be seen on 2026 NBA big boards and if you Google ‘Jordan Scott’, the first result is the daugher of the British filmmaker Ridley Scott.

But I strongly feel Scott (the basketball player, not the filmmaker) is going to shock a lot of people next season and may even get his name into one-and-done convos, if he’s given the opportunity at Michigan State.

Scott has legitimate NBA wing size: he’s around 6-6/6-7, carries a plus wingspan and is very nimble on his feet. On top of that, Scott is a high feel wing who is strong at every level of pass/dribble/shoot skillset. One of the ways in which he (#20 in black and then white jersey in the other game) exhibits his feel for the game is making excellent decisions in transition and early offense, both as a driver and a passer.

Scott stands at just 180 lbs; he’ll obviously add muscle, but the narrow frame means it’s unlikely that he’ll ever dominate with his physique. Statistically, one of the ways it manifests itself is through low free throw rates (just above 20% per Cerebro sample).

He’s probably going to be a bit too easy to move for some stronger, more experienced Big Ten guys.

On film, we can see a couple of examples where Scott a) fails to carry his drive all the way to the rim, instead stopping and settling for a tough shot and b) gets bumped off on a drive and doesn’t quite get the balance on the runner.

The lack of physicality means that it’s tough for Scott to both take and manufacture contact at the rim, which leads to more in-between shots, but the good thing is that he counters his lack of brute strength with nimble feet, a highly functional handle for his position, good small space coordination, polished touch in, around the lane, as well as from the 3 point line.

In this reel he makes a couple of awesome 3 pointers, but one of the things I’ll be looking for with Scott is just how much he can tap into his 3 point volume and perimeter self creation, considering his release point isn’t very high and the release itself isn’t really quick and has a slight hitch to it.

Scott also has some versatility as a passer, logging an impressive 2.8 a/to; it’s very likely to be inflated by a sample of just 22 games, as well as some lighter comp that Scott faced relative to the blue-chip prospects.

On defense, outside of his physicality concerns, Scott has shown himself to be a smart defender with good hands who knows how to use his length to block shots or get himself into gaps.

I’m still slightly on the fence on whether Scott can be a 1&D player, mostly because of his HS comp concerns since the jump to Big Ten basketball is going to be a significant and Tom Izzo can sometimes be reluctant to play his freshmen too much.

But at the same time, coach Izzo is someone who’s still trying to do things his way, via recruiting and developing HS players, instead of going to the portal.

Michigan State again didn’t add any high level transfers and also lost Jase Richardson who turned himself into a somewhat of an unlikely one-and-done player. There’s minutes up for grabs in that rotation for sure, and Scott brings a lot of stuff to complement the Spartans’ upperclassmen.

Jaylen Harrell, Providence, 6-5, 210 lbs

A Needham, MA native, Jaylen Harrell has decided to stick relatively close to home and join a Providence team that desperately wants to see improvement over its abysmal 6-14 in Big East record in 2024-25.

Harrell’s name is barely registered on the mainstream recruitment services. You won’t find him in the ESPN 100 at all. On3 has Harrell as 88th, while 247sports lists him as the 80th best recruit in the class of 2025.

Look, we can ask questions on whether Kim English can lead Providence back to regular NCAA tournament as a coach, but as a recruiter, he’s as astute as ever.

I don’t think Harrell, playing for Providence and being absent of a high level HS player profile, could realistically turn himself into a 1&D prospect. It most certainly won’t happen. There’s a huge risk trying to tie Harrell into any future NBA projections because he’s a really old high school player, as he’s born in January 2006, according to the Friars website.

But I can definitely see Harrell impressing and earning himself a move to a high profile program.

Providence lists Harrell at 6-5 and at the 2023 Nike 100 his wingspan measured at 6-8.5, though he’s not vertically athletic at all. His high school teams mostly used Harrell as a secondary offensive creator, taking over the creation duties once the ball has been brought up the floor and the initial defensive rotations were taking place.

Harrell’s bulky frame, polish, versatility and scalability provides for an intriguing offensive profile - Harrell has a lot of both perimeter and in-between game. For a high school player, he’s had solid 3 point shooting percentages throughout his career, especially as he’s a pretty high volume guy who takes a good amount of contested shots off the dribble.

He doesn’t get a lot of lift on his jumpshots, but Harrell is still able to get his threes off some pretty tight spaces because he gets into his shooting motion smoothly; the energy transition and release are quick, while the flick of the wrist is excellent as well. Harrell’s solid shooting fundamentals are underscored by his great free throw shooting percentages.

Harrell has quite a bit of in between game as well, here he is knocking down some mid range jumpers and hitting a nice floater.

One of the most exciting things about Harrell offensively is how his bulk helps him exhibit some features that are traditionally associated with bigs. For example, Harrell is a very solid player both in the post and in mid-post.

He can carve out space and receive the ball close to the basket or further out. He’s very solid at facing up in those situations, but he also has the strength, footwork and touch to back down players all the way to the basket. He’s a good enough playmaker make quick, snappy reads out of the post to find teammates that are spotting up or cutting to the basket.

Harrell also provides some interesting moments as a guard-to-wing screener and a DHO hub.

Harrell’s offense is limited by a lack of burst and vertical pop. He does have a handle that’s functional enough for him to get into the paint on pick and rolls or early attacks, but his low free throw rates relative to usage do suggest a degree of inability to get to his spots.

On this clip you can see Harrell struggling to attack a switch one-on-one before completely misreading the situation and trying to release the pressure with an ill-advised pass.

Throughout his high school career, Harrell was a good, but not spectacular passer; I guess the best way to describe it would be functional.

The biggetst problems I see with Harrell are on defense. The Friar is not a big stock creator, nor is he a capable POA defender, nor he has a great defensive motor.

When watching Harrell’s high school games, it seems like defensively, he’s just kind of there, not really looking to make plays. His lack of defensive awareness and attention to detail at that end of the floor can put pressure on his teammates and lead to easy points for opponents.

Here’s a few clips of Harrell’s poor moments on D closing out, guarding in a BLOB situation, exhibiting bad defensive footwork in the post and failing to execute an off-ball switch.

In many ways, Porzingis played more like a guard - he could shoot off the dribble, pass, put the ball on the floor and leak out in transition, which made him quite a headache for opposing head coaches who often didn’t have a defender that could counter Porzingis combo of skill and size.

Around that time the term unicorn was born to describe a prospect that’s as rare as he’s valuable.

10 years on, NBA teams are still clamoring for the unicorn big archetype, with the most successful examples right now being Victor Wembanyama, Evan Mobley and Chet Holmgren.

Enter Chris Cenac, a 6’10” prospect and a projected top 10 pick of the 2026 NBA Draft who certainly doesn’t play basketball like your traditional big.

For 25-26 season, he’s headed to play college ball for the Houston Cougars and legendary coach in Ralph Sampson. I’m slightly conflicted by Cenac’s fit at Houston. As we’ll talk about it later, he has a slightly chaotic, often perimeter-oriented style that could be at odds with the highly scripted, slow paced offense that Kelvin Sampson employs.

He’s a questionable fit with JoJo Tugler, easily one of the best defensive players in the nation, but who, at the same time, does very little on offense.

I personally don’t like playing two bigs with questionable-to-low feel indicators. Cenac turns it over a lot, racks up fouls and scores at what could be described as average efficiency for a 6’11” big.

But collegiately at Houston, it may just work because Sampson isn’t about good offense anyways, and you still have Milos Uzan and Emmanuel Sharp who can shoot you out from offensive slumps.

Shot, handle and post play

The way in which Link Academy used Cenac offensively was interesting, and this is where the ‘unicorn’ stuff comes in. Despite a big frame, Cenac spent a ton of time outside of the paint.

He joined half-court sets as a trailer a lot. Here Link Academy does a great job at clearing out the paint as Cenac explodes to the rim on the fake handoff.

He does launch some threes (17.6% 3PT rate) on low efficiency (26.1%). Some of these long shots seem more like a product of poor process and lack of functionality in other areas, instead of something that comes to Cenac as a natural part of the game.

At this point he does seem to have problems with decision making and takes poor shots off the dribble, essentially bailing out defenses by giving them a favourable shot which they don’t even have to work for that much.

To his credit, Cenac has some touch and he has experienced some encouraging development in that department. Last year, in 18 games for Link Academy, Cenac shot 12/33 (36%) on three pointers. He also made 77% of his free throws, which is a marked improvement over a wider 2 year Cerebro sample (72%).

I do like some of the long shots he takes within the flow of the offense.

As much as I believe that the pendulum has swung too far towards shooting bigs and that it’s an overrated skill for centers, especially if you don’t have a dribble/pass skillset to complement the shooting, it’s always a good sign for a big to be as unpredictable as possible and to be able to pop and knock down open threes.

Sadly, at this time I don’t think that at this time for Cenac, neither dribble, nor pass skillset is at the level required for him to truly maximize his improving shot and effectively attack the closeouts that he commands in pick and pop situations.

With the ball, Cenac struggles navigating tight spaces and help defenders actively plugging the gaps, often driving into traffic and losing posession.

However, the flaws are there to see. One of the things I picked up from watching Cenac’s film is that he struggles in the post, sometimes even against favourable matchups.

On the first clip Cenac gets the ball in mid-post, but instead of trying to back down his opponent to either get to the basket or force a double team, he just jacks up a super tough, contested mid-range shot which falls in.

On another occasion Cenac again faces up instead of posting his player and spends too much time on the ball deliberating his next decision before eventually losing it. He’s not helped by his teammate either as the bizarre cut across the court drags the dig defender to the strong side and he ends up swiping the ball out of Cenac’s hands.

To begin this game against Columbus, Link Academy went to post Cenac in consecutive posessions, only to get his handle, footwork and physicality exposed.

Overall Cenac doesn’t yet hit a lot of notes for a high feel big. Some of the most common statistical proxies for feel are A/TO, STL%, PF/40 and TS%. Going by the current state of things, Cenac likely hits only one of those criteria (TS%), especially if we factor in last season’s shooting improvement that I mentioned before.

He’s decent at generating steals, but at the same time Cenac fouls a ton, which limits his overall impact on the game.

I’d argue that the ‘always draft high feel’ applies to every position and every role in today’s NBA but it’s pretty much a necessity for any big willing to play an expansive offensive role.

Reason for optimism?

Conversely, I think there’s reason for optimism for Cenac as his game does provide room for scalability. That’s a highly underrated and crucial trait for projecting a future NBA player’s role.

As I mentioned, Cenac is a developing shooter; besides that, he’s one of the best rebounders in the class and a highly versatile defender who’ll have the opportunity to really polish up and make use of his tools under coach Sampson.

Playing a rigid offensive system in a scaled down role at Houston could actually help Cenac simplify his game and to establish a clearer path towards an NBA role. In addition to his 6’11” frame, Cenac has plenty of additional length by means of a 7’3” wingspan and a reported 9’1” standing reach.

Cenac comfortably falls into the category of athletic bigs who can finish plays on rolls, cuts and dunker spot relocations. Last season, per Synergy, Houston was a 97th percentile team in terms of pick and roll frequency, so their style of play should provide enough opportunity for Cenac to refine his game as a roller.

At least what I’ve picked up in the few games watching Cenac is that he’s comfortable finishing through contact. On this clip Cenac, trailing the play in transition, demonstrates an impressive knack to carry contact at a pretty high speed.

He manages to finish the play despite taking off from quite a bit of distance and has the athleticism to hang in the air right until the layup angle opens up.

Cenac’s mobility allows to project a high degree of defensive versatility. He’s comfortable switching onto smaller guards, which is a highly appreciated trait in NBA front offices.

While the combo of length and mobility is really impressive, I’ll be closely watching Cenac’s defensive motor and physicality (on both ends of the floor) at Houston as those are a couple of clear areas for concern.

Those comps were largely based on aesthetics: Yessoufou and Edwards are both of similar height. The latest Baylor Bear is built like a rock, does move around and even gets into his stepback mid-range jumpshots in a similar manner to the Timberwolves star.

In part thanks to these performances on a prominent setting, Yessoufou comes to Baylor with his NBA draft stock being as high as ever and he’s touted as a potential one-and-done, maybe even a top10 draft pick in 2026.

Yessoufou played his high school ball for St. Joseph in Southern California. In February, he became the state’s all-time scoring leader, breaking a record that stood for more than two decades.

In his last season, Yessoufou shot 56% from the field and 34% from three.

Here’s a larger, 85 game pre-NCAA Cerebro sample for Yessoufou; important to note that Cerebro samples do lack some important games, especially from 2025 high school season.

Yessoufou’s frame is massive - broad shoulders and upper body strength enabled him to dominate high school opponents in the paint, which is especially apparent in his rebounding numbers. He’s reportedly around 6’5” in length and has a 6’9” wingspan, measured during the 2023 Nike Elite 100 camp.

The Beninese prospect is older than most of his freshman peers as he was born in May 2006, something to have in mind as well.

Fleshing out the half-court game

Yessoufou is headed to Waco, Texas as he’ll be playing for coach Scott Drew and the Baylor Bears, a Big 12 program that’s been churning out one-and-done NBA Draft prospects for a while now.

Their latest star freshman should follow in the footsteps of Jeremy Sochan, Keyonte George, Yves Missi and VJ Edgecombe. Bart Torvik currently projects Yessoufou to play 76% of total minutes for Baylor - it’s likely that the wing will be an important piece for coach Drew pretty much from day one.

A sizeable offensive adjustment likely awaits Yessoufou though as he won’t be the main man on offense anymore. They brought in some guard transfers in JJ White (Omaha) and Dan Skillings (Cincinnati), as well as Oregon State transfer Michael Rataj, who’s likely to play alongside Yessoufou at the 4 and who’s playstyle does command quite a bit of usage.

Despite a California high school scoring record, Yessoufou’s half court game is still absolutely a work in progress. As a perimeter player, how does he affect the game offensively if his shooting and passing are still very much shaky?

The obvious answer is a blend of rebounding, strength and interior finishing ability. According to Cerebro, Yessoufou had 3.2 offensive rebounds per 40 minutes, so he’s outstanding at providing extra posessions relative to his position by means of crashing the glass.

An immediately translatable microskill for Yessoufou at Baylor will be transition scoring on grab and go opportunities. Those are likely won’t be available as often as they were in high school as Yessoufou will inevitably be pushed out further on the perimeter than he was used to.

Yessoufou’s sturdy frame allows him to be an effective screen and roller to the basket, an action in which he was used a lot in high school.

Yessoufou’s half court offense right now is heavily predicated on strength, being able to carry and finish through quite a bit of contact at the rim, including on post-ups, drives, triple threat situations etc.

The question is just how much of that advantage carries over as Yessoufou progresses to college and, eventually, the NBA.

The boring (and predictable) answer is that the advantage will be there, but, relatively speaking, it will decrease as he moves up the levels.

Therefore fleshing out his half-court skillset will be paramount for Yessoufou - he’s going to need to be both a better shooter, a better passer and a more consistent handler of the ball.

The thing with Yessoufou is that the flashes are very much there, it’s just that he’s yet to put it together for longer stretches: in other words, the tape is full of both highs and lows. He does love those decelerating Ant-esque pull-up or stepback jumpers going to the left, sometimes setting them up with an initial in-and-out dribble.

Yessoufou has an explosive first step which helps him get to the basket. He gets really low on his drives, quickly jabbing to the right and then rapidly shifting the weight from right to left to beat single point-of-attack coverages, as well as some weak-to-moderate gap defense.

Despite flashes Yessoufou’s pass/dribble/shoot skillset still poses some major questions pretty much at any of those three layers.

The shooting is vastly improved, but at just 34% makes on 29 three point rate, is it scalable enough to be an impactful skill at Baylor? Can the elbow middies going to the left be a consistent, effective counter to packed paint defenses? Can he maintain a solid overall efficiency on a similar shot diet? Yessoufou tends to drive to his left a lot; isn’t he a tad too predictable? How well does he have to shoot to compensate for a lack of passing and court awareness?

That area of the game hasn’t been very kind for Yessoufou, who has logged negative assist-to-turnover ratios in 3 of his 4 seasons at St. Joseph’s, including 24-25 (80 assists to 86 turnovers).

Yessoufou isn’t a very good live dribble creator and gets tunnel vision going downhill. On this play you can see him attacking the paint and collapsing the defense, but just completely missing multiple great opportunities to kick the ball out to the perimeter.

Stronger gap coverages to deny driving lanes can cause a whole lot of problems for Yessoufou. For all of his ability to get low and quickly shift weight onto his left, he can really struggle trying to keep his balance, stumbling his feet as he drives or gets showed by a helping defender.

A defensive dynamo

As Yessouofu fleshes out his offensive game in half-court, at this point, Ant is a far-fetched comp for Yessoufou. Right now a more likely NBA comp would be someone like Lu Dort of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Their build is largely similar: they’re both bulky and very close in terms of height and wingspan. Both of them excel as physical defensive enforcers at the point of attack who have the tools to navigate pick and roll defense and put pressure on opposing ball handlers.

Per Cerebro sample, Yessoufou created 2.6 steals and 1.3 blocks per 40 minutes of action.

Because there will likely be struggles creating offense in half-court, carrying over a high level defensive playmaking to the collegiate level will be paramount.

His physicality and strong hands allow for a lot of agression on entry passes, creating high-leverage turnovers that turn into easy points on the other end.

One thing I’ll be closely monitoring with Yessoufou in college is how good of a team defender he is.

As Luc (@AtTheLevel) explained so eloquently in his piece about Ricky Rubio, who was an extremely productive defender despite his obvious athletic limitations, was actually supremely productive at that end of the floor because of his team defense and stock creation, which are often underrated relative to POA or 1-on-1 defense.

In his article Luc uses Dort - a player that I’ve also used as a comp for Yessoufou - as an example of someone whose defensive impact over his career has, to some degree, been overrated, mostly due to his easy-on-the eye, powerful 1-on-1 defense at the point-of-attack against some of NBA’s best offensive initiators.

While on the other end of the spectrum you have guys like Matisse Thybulle, Robert Covington or Ricky Rubio, who aren’t necessarily as good at 1-on-1 defense, but their overall defensive peaks clear Dort.

Why is that important in the context of Yessoufou? Well, I haven’t seen enough of him to arrive at a conclusion on where precisely he lands in that Team vs 1-on-1 D spectrum. Considering that Yessoufou is only 19 and hasn’t even played a single D1 game yet, he likely has a lot of development left before he hits the NBA floor.

From what I’ve seen (and read) on Yessoufou, the defensive feel could still very much improve.

For example, in this clip I would’ve liked him to be a bit more active defending in the gap and go for a dig on this inverted pick and roll. As he was guarding, Yessoufou didn’t recognize the two main things: his teammate was at a considerable size disadvantage and he needed help from the wing position to provide secondary rim protection.

Second of all, Yessoufou was matched up against a struggling shooter in Caleb Wilson, so leaving him open in the corner is likely a much better decision than giving up a driving lane.

I think those types of defensive plays will be something that, at least for me, will carry the most weight in terms of where I end up on Yessoufou in 2026 Draft cycle.

To make the NBA and be a productive player, you have to be very good on at least one end of the floor. The best players in what Owen Phillips (now of the Denver Nuggets!) rightfully describes as NBA’s weak-link era, are those who are impactful on both ends of the floor and can’t be exploited by opposition.

At least right now I think the most conceivable pathway for Yessoufou to becoming a productive NBA player is playing excellent defense.

Everybody’s good, everybody’s flashing tremendous potential, everybody looks like an early candidate for a top 10 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft.

Unfortunately, that is almost never the case; there’s usually multiple guys who are top 10 high school recruits, but in a year’s time, they end up returning to college and, in some cases, almost falling out of draft radars completely. The top 10 of class of 2024, per ESPN, had Donovan Freeman at 6, Ian Jackson at 8 and Jalil Bethea at 10.

At the same time, less-heralded guys like Kon Knueppel (19), Jase Richardson (25) or Jeremiah Fears (40) or Thomas Sorber (56) ended up as one-and-dones. Kudos to guys like @henrynbadraft for having Richardson and Sorber as lottery grade prospects before they played a single minute of college basketball.

So, who is this year’s Richardson or Sorber? If I had 3 guesses of a 2026 one-and-done guy that’s outside the top 20 for major high school recruiting services, one of those guesses would definitely go towards SMU’s Jaden Toombs.

Height-wise, Toombs is probably undersized, standing at 6’9”, or barely 6’10” at the very best. But he does have a reported 7’3” wingspan; long arms and standing reaches often redeem all sins. Well, not all, obviously, but a lack of positional size is one of them.

Born in May 2007, Toombs will be just over 19 on draft day, so his great high school profile isn’t inflated by him dominating younger opponents.

Offense and shot diet

One of the main traits of Toombs’ offensive profile is his outstanding efficiency (65.2% TS) which he achieves without an explosive play finishing ability. Toombs is mostly a below the rim guy, so expect that dunks will only compromise something like 10-15% of his overall rim diet.

His overall offensive efficiency is boosted by a 78% free throw percentage. There’s a realistic chance Toombs could eventually extend his range as he has at least some sort of 3 point volume in his shooting diet alongside an excellent FT%, though slow release means it’s unlikely that Toombs’ shooting will ever command strong gravity. It also remains to be seen if he could put the ball on the floor as a driver and attack closeouts.

3.2 assists on a 1.5 assist-to-turnover ratio with just 21% usage is pretty impressive as even some high feel bigs can hover around or slightly under 1 A/TO as freshmen.

Toombs is very strong on the glass. Among 247sports top 50 class of 2025 recruits, Toombs’ 14.4 rebounds per 40 minutes trail only Cameron Boozer, Chris Cenac and Malachi Moreno. Toombs just gobbles up the offensive glass as his 5.4 OREB is one of the best in the class.

All of this stuff screams of a productive player that helps you win posession battle and, in turn, basketball games. Here’s where I think Toombs’ offense could land him in historical Bart queries.

I’d say the lack of athleticism for his position is Toombs’ biggest worry offensively. By playing with the filters and removing <30 dunks, we immediately a couple more good outcomes.

To Toombs’ credit, at least at the high school level, he did very well to balance out his lack of athleticism with outstanding touch in and around the lane.

Technically, Toombs touch is really soft, which is backed up by aforementioned free throw percentages and low volume 3 point shooting. In this reel you can see Toombs go to work in the post, cut and score on a sweet, high arcing floater, and then catch the ball and finish in transition.

Toombs has some nice flashes of footwork: on this clip he quickly turns to his left shoulder, recognizes the blind side helper and goes under the rim for a finish.

In 103 pre-NCAA games tracked by Cerebro, Toombs had 5.4 offensive rebounds per 40 minutes. Among 247sports’ top50 class of 2025 recruits, he only trails Kentucky’s Malachi Moreno, a 6’10 that’s a full year older.

Toombs’ long arms, as well as good timing and positioning, are the traits he mostly relies on the offensive glass. Look at the extension of that 7’3” wingspan to not just get his hand on the offensive rebound, but to tip it in as well.

Here Toombs combines his offensive rebounding with lane touch to get and extra posession and score the ball for his team, doing a nice job to keep the ball high and get up a shot quickly.

Toombs was a very strong post player in high school, so naturally, facing double teams wasn’t something alien to him.

In addition to that, during last couple of years, his feel really started to shine through, to the point where it becomes a pretty clear separator relative to other incoming freshman bigs outside of Cameron Boozer.

So Toombs did really well to leverage his post gravity and make passes out of double teams and helps. His processing on these plays is pretty snappy and he can also put some distance into his passes.

The general approach to getting doubled is excellent. He anticipates these types of coerages and looks to find a teammate as soon as he recognizes an advantage, keeping the defense on its heels and in constant rotation.

There’s a couple of caveats to Toombs’ offensive profile and its translatability to college game (and, eventually, the NBA).

I don’t have the numbers on me, but on the eye he looks a player who enjoyed a heavy post-up diet in high school - I’d assume something like 30%+ of his shots came from post-ups. A byproduct of that is that there just isn’t a lot of variety in his passing game as well, as you can see, for example, in this compilation from the 2024 AAU circuit, where it’s mostly Toombs getting an entry pass, facing a double team and then kicking it out.

At SMU, I’m very much looking forward to seeing Toombs in more actions that would be replicable in the NBA - more rolling to the basket, popping, dribble drives, DHO, zoom actions, backdoor cuts etc.

One of the better non-post pass that I was able to find was this outstanding backdoor look, though even that was on a well-scripted weak side backdoor play. Even though it was a designed play, I can’t help but admire Toombs execution and passing technique here.

Overcoming the 6’9” frame

Defensively, Toombs will have to prove he’s able to overcome a lack of positional size. The 7’3” wingspan is great and goes a long way, but it’s not an outlier. For example, Sorber’s, who’s of a similar build, wingspan measured at 7’6” during the NBA Draft combine.

They obviously aren’t definite yet (we’ll only know when Toombs hits the combine), but his reported anthro measurements are closer to NBA forwards, rather than bigs.

Toombs does generate good stocks, but at least at the high school level, they weren’t eye popping to an extent where we could say that his frame isn’t of major concern.

Toombs often defends deep, using his positional sense and long arms to make plays on defense. Here he denies a baseline drive before quickly shifting his body to make a defensive play at the rim.

Outside of the wingspan, Toombs best defensive traits are on the mental side: he’s smart, has great timing, rotates very well, rarely gives up on a play, makes multiple efforts and deters rim touches.

Longer term it will be interesting to see how Toombs functions in larger, better spaced courts than he’s used to in high school.

He’s not super quick and can be exposed defensively when left to cover a lot of ground on the weak side, especially closing down on good corner shooters who can also put the ball on the floor a bit.

Well, he’s probably going to be a big since it’s the most impactful defensive position and length (newsflash) is super important. He’d be long not just in terms of height, but he’d also have a gift of ++ wingspan and standing reach. He’d be bulky to push around in the paint, but also agile enough to step out on the perimeter, hedge and recover back to his position.

The perfect defender would be switchable and, if called on, enable your team to play a switch-all defensive scheme. He’d generate stocks. He’d be adept both as an on and off-ball defender.

I’m not saying that a 17-year-old, playing Big 12 basketball for the Arizona State University is the perfect defender because you simply can’t be perfect at that age (or, pretty much, any age). But his defensive and physical profile is pretty darn close to what I described in the first three paragraphs.

That young man is Jayden Quaintance, now at Kentucky and coming off an unfortunate ACL injury that cut his freshman season short in February. Staying in college for 2 years was always the plan; since Quaintance was born in July 2007, he was inelgible to be selected in the 2025 NBA Draft.

His age-relative production on defense has been stellar, landing the Kentucky Wildcat in some strong historical queries. Mind the fact that Quaintance was 1-2 years younger than any of the other prospects mentioned below.

Playing for Arizona State, Quaintance was huge defensively in many catch-all metrics. His DPM, measuring defensive impact based strictly on box-score numbers, stood at 4.2, 7th among all D1 freshmen. The overall stocks (11.9%) were good for 97th percentile.

DRAPM, according to CBB Analytics, sat at 2.5 (93rd percentile). Quaintance logged 0.07 defensive win shares per 40 minutes (75th percentile). With Quaintance on the floor, ASU had -17.1 defensive rating compared to when he was off.

One could raise a hypothesis that this metric is noisy considering Quaintance played in the easy non-con buy games and skipped some tough Big 12 matchups due to injury, but this idea largely falls apart since the def rating differential in conference play jumped to an even better -18.8.

Why is he so good?

I really hope Quaintance makes a full recovery and comes back stronger than ever; it’s pretty scary to think of what he can do defensively at Kentucky, especially considering he has an upper hand on his 2007-born peers because of an additional season of college development.

Seeing Quaintance play D1 ball for the first time in November last year, one aspect that popped pretty much immediately was his unique ability to block jumpshots. Quaintance is reportedly 6’10” with a monstrous 7’5” wingspan. This is an outstanding defensive foundation, anthrometric measurements that are roughly on par with, say, Thomas Sorber.

But what Sorber or most other very good defensive prospects with outstanding wingspan and standing reach measurements don’t have is Quaintance’s incredible ground coverage and lateral pop, which help to drastically expand the shot contest (and block) radius, reaching the ball at height points that are simply unfathomable for normal defensive prospects.

Outlier physical tools enable Quaintance to perform many defensive roles. Here he is sitting in the gap, positioning himself pretty close to the basket in order to help on the drive.

When the ball gets kicked out to the corner, Quaintance actually turns his back on the corner shooter, but the agility and athleticism are such that he still recovers to block the seemingly wide open three.

Quaintance is adept at executing various coverages on the perimeter. On the first clip, he absolutely gobbles up a perimeter guard switch.

The second play underscores Quaintance’s incredible agility and hip mobility as he briefly shows the ball screen before sliding back to recover and block a rim attempt.

The 17-year-old Quaintance was already not just a highlight defensive playmaker, but a very strong overall rim deterrant as well.

Per CBB Analytics, Arizona State’s opponents had 18.7 rim attempts per 40 minutes with Quaintance on the floor, compared to 20.2 rim shots per 40 with him off.

Here are some examples of how Quaintance deters rim touches from an early February home game against Kansas State where ASU came out with imposing defense to start the game, anchored by none other than the freakish defensive prospect in #21.

In this reel you can see Quaintance execute multiple high level early game defensive actions: he makes a timely rim rotation to force a kickout from a rolling Coleman Hawkins, gets a brief perimeter switch before switching back in time and denying a paint touch to a roller, executes a very well-balanced weak side closeout to deny a driving angle and quickly opens his hip to get a great contest on a drive by Hawkins.

Quaintance doesn’t just deny paint touches, he significantly lowers the quality of those shots as well. ASU’s opponents shot 64.9% at the rim with Quaintance off compared to 58.6% when he was on the floor, meaning the now-Kentucky big has made a 6.3% difference in opposing rim conversion rate in 2024-25 season.

Compare the shots Kansas State took in the previous reel to a couple of easy interior looks from post-ups and lane entry passes the Wildcats got when Quaintance sat on the bench.

Probably the most underrated and overlooked data point of Quaintance’s defensive profile may be foul aversion, especially in relation to defensive playmaking.

He logged 3.5 fouls per 40, which, on paper, is in a ‘not great, not terrible’ territory. But simply adding the three most obvious points of context - age, position and overall level of defensive playmaking - makes it an excellent metric. Quaintance is one of just 5 high-major D1 freshmen since 2008 to log 8%+ BLK and 2%+ STL rates on less than 4 fouls per 40 minutes.

Per CBB Analytics, Quaintance had a 1.45 personal foul efficiency rate (ratio of blocks + steals to personal fouls) and 1.02 block per personal foul rate, all good for 99th percentile in D1.

The great defensive playmaking/foul aversion combo again stems from Quaintance’s outlier tools. He’s an excellent, fluid mover and vertical leaper who already has advanced timing on his blocks; Quaintance doesn’t even need to be very handsy and take agressive swipes at the ball as he can simply track and meet the offensive player at the basket by letting his hips, length and vertical pop do the work.

Generating offense

Offensive end of the floor is a slightly trickier part of the eval. In terms of overall impact, ASU had just +0.6 off rating with Quaintance on the floor. For a player of such athleticism, 53.6% true shooting isn’t great.

Per Synergy, he wasn’t great in any particular offensive action outside of transition, but ASU weren’t very successfull creating turnovers as a unit (14.1% opponent TOV, 3rd bottom in the Big 12), nor were they big on playing fast (107th in adjusted tempo), so it probably wasn’t the right environment to squeeze out Quaintance’s transition potential.

The two most concerning aspects to Quaintance’s offensive game for me are his hands and shooting.

Let’s start with the latter: I usually wouldn’t hold poor shooting against such a high caliber defensive prospect, but Quaintance’s freshman season set the bar at a concerningly low level. He was just 6/32 from three for the season. The fact he launched more than 1 three per game on abhorrent efficiency is a testament of a player that’s still largely on the lookout for his offensive identity.

Some of these threes are simply a product of a bad decision making process, with Quaintance settling for pull-up shots after running a minimal amount of structured offense - or, in some cases, none at all. This gives the defending team a super desirable shot which they almost didn’t have to work for.

Another thing that tanked the overall scoring efficiency was free throw shooting. Quaintance made just 34/71 (47.9%) free throws, despite going to the line at a decent rate (40.1% FTr).

Long term, if this sort of poor FT conversion persists, it could severely diminish Quaintance’s offensive floor; NBA offenses are so efficient now that fouling a sub-50% FT shooters, especially if they’re super impactful on defense, in theory makes more sense than ever. We’ve very much seen that with Mitchell Robinson in the 2025 NBA playoffs.

Despite that, athleticism should provide a solid offensive floor for Quaintance and Kentucky is pretty much an ideal development place for a toolsy prospect to help him build out an offensive identity.

Scoring wise, Quaintance needs to spend more time cutting, rolling or positioning himself at the dunker spot. He converted 70% of his rim attempts on the season and was 84th percentile in dunking frequency. Though these are both decent metrics, Kentucky needs to up the frequency at least into the 90s, so that play finishing establishes a strong offensive floor that’s worthy of a top 5 NBA draft pick.

I’m also intrigued by creation flashes. Quaintance had a negative (0.8) assist-to-turnover, but I’d say overall he did admirably at balancing playmaking and keeping the turnovers relatively down. It’s pretty common even for good passing bigs to have a slightly negative A/TO at this age.

Passing is probably the most tangible ceiling raiser for Quaintance and an area of his game I’m super excited to see develop at Kentucky.

Playing for Arizona State, he had strong flashes of advanced live-dribble passing ability. What I like about those plays is that they aren’t some sort of scripted backdoor passes arising from good offensive sets, player and ball movement. It’s legitimately just Quaintance going to work and setting up great looks.

Here a full-court press by Arizona State forces a turnover, Quaintance trails his way back into the play and delivers a sweet, slightly delayed drop off bounce pass for a dunk.

He’s a good midpost playmaker as well, especially when he can turn a post-up into a face-up or see double teams coming. Here’s a pretty snappy read to punish BYU for sending another man on the ball in the post.

Of course, Quaintance does commit what I would call turnovers that are fit for a 17-year-old: he can throw an odd lazy pass, be lax with the ball, go for passing windows that aren’t there or simply overestimate his own ability to throw high leverage passes.

I am somewhat concerned about Quaintance’s hands. They’re big, but he’s not the cleanest catcher, nor does he have the best grip on the ball while dribbling.

ASU’s opponents did create a number of turnovers via timely gap defense on Quaintance. A lot of times he struggled driving all the way to the basket because opponents would have a defender at the nail who would dig on Quaintance’s drives, throwing him off and turning over the posession.

On some occasions, Quaintance would struggle seeing and anticipating help defenders coming from the other side as he is posting-up.

Looking back at last year, the U18’s produced 4 players who went on to become first round picks in the 2025 NBA Draft - Noa Essengue, Nolan Traore, Kasparas Jakučionis and Ben Saraf.

Are we topping this for 2026? My gut feeling says no, though I’ll be completely transparent and admit that there are multiple people on draft Twitter who follow FIBA prospects more closely than I do.

It’s a shame that France’s Adam Atamna missed most of the tournament of the injury, but there were still some standouts that I’ll be keeping an eye on for the forseeable future. Let’s dive into their performances.

Ian Platteeuw, 7-2, C, Spain

Though Guillermo Del Pino was the hero in the finals, it was Ian Platteeuw, the supremely skilled 7-2 big heading to play college ball for Davidson, who claimed the MVP.

It’s hard to not get excited about a player thats as tall and as skilled as Platteeuw. He led the Spanish team in total assists (23) on 2 assist-to-turnover ratio, which is excellent for an 18-year-old big playmaker who throws a ton of high leverage passes.

The word ‘special’ gets thrown a lot in the scouting circles, but Platteeuw is truly a special passer for his size. The most impressive aspect of his playmaking profile in this tournament for me personally was just how adept he was at making high value reads from various situations on the basketball court.

Here’s an 18-year-old 7-2 guy making some truly outstanding passes not just from the post or short roll, but live dribble or transition opportunities generated off his own defensive rebounding as Platteeuw was one of the better rebounders in the tournament (6.9 RPG).

The big man can really put the ball on the floor and create paint scoring opportunities for himself as well.

However, there are some things about Platteeuw that do scare me - these are the traits he’ll have to improve at Davidson to become a true NBA prospect. One of those traits is his paint defense as poor big defenders, at least for me, are one of the easiest to fade NBA player archetypes.

Platteeuw recorded just 4 blocks the entire tournament, and, looking at a broader Cerebro sample, the situation isn’t too great as well (1.4 BLK per 40 minutes). His pick and roll defense skills are still very much developing; Platteeuw isn’t great at preventing paint touches yet and can get lost retreating to the basket, often overcommiting to either the roller or the ball handler.

The Spainiard is not an explosive finisher and didn’t seem like much of a lob threat. He isn’t vertical nor super physical which creates some uncomfortable moments when Platteeuw catches the ball deep. The lack of physicality also manifested in low free throw rates (13 FT attempts on 60 field goals).

Diego Garavaglia, 6-7, F, Italy

Italy’s Diego Garavaglia has made a big impression in this year’s U18 Eurobasket and is likely to be on my first 2026 NBA Draft big board.

He did have a couple of underwhelming outings against Spain and Latvia which tanked his shooting somewhat to 59% TS, but overall Garavaglia was really good, displaying two-way versatility and feel that warrants NBA attention.

At least for my money, Garavaglia was the best non-big defender in this tournament. Activity, coordination, strong hands and good base are his main tools. On this clip you can see some of Garavalglia’s best defensive traits, helping on the drive and preventing the opponent from turning the corner, and then playing the gap to make a steal.

His signature game came in the quarterfinal win against Serbia where Garavaglia had a total of 10 stocks (8 steals and 2 blocks), including one chasedown block.

Part of Garavaglia’s intrigue in this tournament was just how adept he was at quickly turning defense into offense. He does that via outstanding defensive rebounding and event creation on defense. Here’s a couple of almost copycat clips where Garavaglia grabs a rebound, quickly attacking the open space and navigating traffic to set up teammates for easy transition layups.

Offensively, Garavaglia is a versatile connector who flashed an improved 3 point shot and has multiple ways of attacking. He moves well off the ball and is an intriguing option for guard-to-guard screening actions, after which he can pop and either shoot threes or attack off the catch.

On his drives, Garavaglia is aggressive, efficient and doesn’t really waste too many dribbles. Here the Italian gets to the rim after a zoom action in just two dribbles.

His ability as a connector was underscored by an excellent assist-to-turnover rate of 3.

Garavaglia has decided to skip college basketball - at least for the time being - instead signing for Ulm Ratiopharm, the German club that has become a common NBA springboard for European talent.

Dovydas Buika, 6-6, G, Lithuania

Despite a difficult-to-comprehend defeat against Latvia, Lithuanian guard Dovydas Buika for sure made an impression.

Buika is a versatile guy offensively, logging good shooting percentages and assist-to-turnover ratios for his entire career so far.

Decent size and a pretty polished handle already allows Buika to be a smooth pick and roll operator - he’s actively looking to get and attack switches on the perimeter, utilizing his multi-layered passing ability to make plays for himself and his teammates. He posesses a nice ability to quickly process stuff and delay decisions until the right moment.

There’s some juice to Buika’s downhill driving ability. He’s capable of getting to the lane both by creating separation himself and off secondary. Here’s a sweet play from a group stage game against Greece where Buika executes a really good chain of actions: a crossover, a stepback, pumpfake and a step through to generate a lane touch.

Buika is an excellent defensive rebounder for his position and can also make some plays on defense that he turns into quick opportunities on offense. Attacking early has been a common theme for Buika in the U18’s - he thrives in open space and is someone who’s comfortable going into his actions early in the shot clock.

Buika is a solid playmaker on defense (2.5 STL per 40 on Cerebro’s 93 game sample) - he’s agile, active and well coordinated, but one shortcoming thing he’ll have to somehow overcome in the long run is a neutral wingspan.

Buika should absolutely command high major D1 attention, but rght now it seems like he’ll stay with Žalgiris Kaunas, which would certainly mean that Buika is not a prospect for 2026 NBA Draft.

Pavle Backo, 7-0, C, Serbia

The tournament in Belgrade didn’t go well for the hosts, but their big man Pavle Backo did quite a few things to put himself on the map. Backo finished with a 71% true shooting percentage and shot well from pretty much anywhere around the floor.

Backo loves to pop and receive possession at the top of the arc or around the nail area. He’s excellent at putting the ball on the floor. He’s not a unicorn-type guy, ala 7 footer who crosses people up, but his handle is functional and there’s little wasted motion.

The Serbian blends it with upper body strength, good footwork and a pristine left handed hook. Backo’s really hard to knock off his stride as he goes downhill; even if as a defender you manage to prevent him from turning, the center is still able to get back to his strong hand and get off hooks from really tight situations.

Backo loves to go to his left both in his post-ups and rolls, often employing spin moves and shoulder bumps to get angles for his hooks. A phenomenal job on the first clip to avoid the steal as well.

One of the positive aspects to Backo’s tournament was his 3 point shooting flashes. He barely gets off the ground on his shots, so Backo is unlikely to ever be a high volume shooter, but his ability to shoot off the catch is now commanding some respect and opening up driving opportunities.

He’s not athletic and plays mostly below the rim and maintains a heavy post-up diet. One of the data points I found poor by Backo is that he had just 3 assists on the tournament.

He commands a lot of defensive attention backing down, so, in situations like these, Backo could really do with reading double teams and seeing the floor better to pass out of these situations and keep the offense in a better flow.

Long term, questions about his mobility will be asked. He does have the potential and tools to be a good paint defender and rim deterrent, but that part of the game is not fully fleshed out for him yet. For a 7 footer, Backo didn’t have good block numbers neither in ANGT competitions, nor here in the FIBA U18s.

Stefan Joksimovic, 6-4, G, Slovenia

Slovenia wasn’t a threat to win the tournament, but they had one of the standout guys in guard Stefan Joksimovic.

The Slovenian is born in the 2008 - in fact, late 2008 - so if he remains on an encouraging developmental trajectory for the next couple of years, he’s eligible for 2027 NBA Draft where he’d still be one of the youngest players in the pool.

Joksimovic was one of the most efficient scoring guards in the entire tournament from half-court. Per Synergy, he logged 55.6% TS in half-court, good for 85th percentile in the U18’s. Joksimovic. had the 3 ball going for him in this tournament, shooting 38.2% (13/34).

He had a tremendous shooting game against Latvia, which started with them going under an on-ball screen for Joksimovic, only for him to knock down a long ball. His range was really impressive as the guard consistently knocked down shots that are a step or two outside of the FIBA line.

Over the course of the tournament, Joksimovic flashed some real nice stuff off the dribble for a player that’s not even 17 Jet. Here’s a couple of excellent moments where Joksimovic breaks down defenses with his handle and then excecutes high level live dribble reads.

What I like about Joksimovic is that despite his good shooting, he continued to pressure the rim and flashed real downhill creativity.

Here he does a great job attacking early off a high pick and roll, freezing the dropping big with a nice hesi and excellent footwork and getting an easy layup.

A rather similar situation ends with a little drop off pass. It’s really nice to see how advanced Joksimovic’s process is at just 16 years old with rapid gear changes and flashes of passing manipulation.

There’s multiple areas on which Joksimovic needs to work on to become an NBA-level prospect (which is totally normal for a player of his age). First of all, despite Joksimovic’s lane attacks, he struggles finishing over traffic and contact, which is one of the reasons why he doesn’t go to the free throw line a lot.

He doesn’t yet have the confidence in his ability to find layup angles, which he absolutely needs to find eventually as Joksimovic isn’t super explosive vertically. He seems to take off from too far trying to finish on his drives. Joksimovic could really do with working on how he initiates contact or playing off two feet, a weapon that has been utilized so well by someone like Kon Knueppel.

Defensively, Joksimovic has ways to go as he especially needs to learn how to move his feet and prevent driving angles. Here’s a couple of defensive clips where Joksimovic gives up a switch (or, in the second instance, a wide open three) way too easily.

Up to last year, BYU was hardly considered a premier destination for top-end talent like Dybantsa, but now the tables have turned completely.

Dybantsa is going to spend his single college season, playing in one of the best conferences in the country, under a head coach with deep NBA connections AND get a bag full of $$$? Feels like a no brainer.

He’s the number 1 player in the class of 2025 according to ESPN and On3. Despite that, I’m starting the 2026 NBA Draft cycle with Dybantsa at 3, in a slightly lower tier than my top 2 prospects in Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer.

It’s hardly a dig at Dybantsa. He’s an exceptional prospect, especially at the offensive end of the floor. The top of next year’s draft looks so strong that someone has to be 3rd. Let’s explore why Dybantsa isn’t your average prospect, at the same time going over reasons as to why I have him slightly lower than Peterson or Boozer.

Here’s another look at the per 40 stats for the big three.

What TS%?!

You only need a couple of data points to see why Dybantsa is such an outstanding scoring prospect. The first one is almost 65% true shooting which he accumulated in pre-NCAA and FIBA competitions. For a volume scorer like Dybantsa, anything over 60% is very good. Hovering around 65% is truly outstanding.

He does that on a good perimeter diet: Dybantsa’s 3 point rate (32.1%) is higher than both Peterson’s and Boozer’s. He also gets to the line (38.4% FTr) and knocks down his foul shots at a good rate (over 80%).

If his TS% and 3 point rate hold up at a similar level for BYU, we’ll be looking at a pretty rare company of freshmen who managed to blend elite scoring efficiency with a heavy perimeter diet. Now, Dybantsa’s pre-NCAA 3 point rate is not as high as for most of the guys in this query, but I’d expect quite a bit of offensive optimization for him at BYU since the Cougars were 25th in the country in 3 point rate last season.

In other words, Dybantsa is probably taking more 3s and less long 2s next season.

A lot has been made of Dybantsa’s struggles beating people 1-on-1 off the dribble and creating advantages from iso and p&r situations, but you have to factor in that being (at the very least) 6’9”and having that kind of shooting ability is a source of advantages pretty much every time down the floor.

In high school, defenders simply didn’t have the length to effectively contest Dybantsa’s jumpshot, an advantage that’s likely to persist at the collegiate level and the NBA for multiple reasons: A) Dybantsa’s game is perimeter oriented, so he’s guarded by shorter players B) he gets a lot of lift on his jumpshots C) he stays in the air for quite some time and releases his shot late.

All of this means that Dybantsa is almost impossible to contest and extremely dangerous essentially from every single shooting spot. In this clip reel, you can see him come off a down screen on the elbow, rising up and knocking down a jumpshot over Peterson, walk into an early three and make a tightly contested shot from the corner.

At the same time, Dybantsa is a special movement shooter coming of cuts, screens, BLOBs etc.

The outlier length for his position, OTD shooting gravity, long strides, strong gather step and body flexibility can also be a constant source of lane drives and free throws.

But, like I mentioned, Dybantsa sometimes does struggle to create separation vs set half-court defenses and good point of attack defenders who can move their feet and wall of drives, resulting in some really tough jumpshot attempts. From playmaking side of things, Dybantsa can get some tunnel vision when he fails to create separation.

For Dybantsa, rounding off his mid-range and mid-post game is going to be paramount, as well as for his coaches to actually go to that aspect of his game.

Dybantsa’s shotmaking ability from those areas can really simplify your offensive game.

For example, here Utah Prep throws him the ball in mid-post from a SLOB action; this is immediately an advantage created. I think in those situations Dybantsa absolutely commands a double team. If it doesn’t come, then he can simply create a little bit of space and knock down a jumpshot.

Mid-post can also be another way to get to the line for Dybantsa. He’s been excellent at drawing fouls recently and simply lived at the line during this summer’s FIBA U19’s World Cup.

On this clip, Dybantsa’s s mid-post gravity forces Prolific Prep to collapse into the paint to help on a potential drive or a jumpshot. Dybantsa executes an excellent one handed pass to the opposite corner for a wide open three.

This stuff is super important for Dybantsa because I don’t think he’s as good a playmaker as, for example, Peterson. In Dybantsa’s pre-NCAA per 40 sample he had a lower A/TO despite carrying a markedly lower usage.

I don’t really like Dybantsa initiating the offense as I think it enables some of his worst offensive traits.

This is Utah Prep’s first posession against Prolific Prep. After a pick and roll, Dybantsa draws two defenders on the ball, but completely botches at least one excellent (top of the arc) and another really good (opposite corner) passing window. The ball stops and the posession ends in a turnover.

I view secondary actions as firmly the best source of offense for Dybantsa - it puts him in an offensive flow and utilizes his shooting gravity to the benefit of his team. Some of his best driving moments came when he got opportunities to drive the baseline, reject the screen and explode to the rim.

There’s a similar case with Dybantsa’s playmaking from secondary actions. He commands hard closeouts, which he can then attack and make plays for himself or his teammates all night long.

The motor

Now, the biggest reason why Dybantsa is in a lower tier than Peterson or Boozer is his defense. I think saying his defensive motor is ‘up-and-down’ would be slightly inaccurate as it feels like it more often leans towards ‘down’, rather than ‘up’.

Despite freakish length and vertical pop, Dybantsa has recorded somewhat underwhelming stocks numbers per 40 (1.9 STL and 0.8 BLK). The low blocks are especially concerning given Dybantsa’s physical tools to play weak side help defense and block jumpshots.

At this point I can’t say too many good things about Dybantsa’s defense. He does occasionally guard the point of attack, but he’s mostly stationed on the weak side in half-court sets.

In these clips Dybantsa doesn’t really go for plays in the gap, essentially standing still and letting opponents get looks at the rim.

For now, Dybantsa is not the one to aggressively attack high leverage defensive play opportunities - he isn’t really active stunting or digging. For example, in the first clip Dybantsa is well positioned to rotate from the weak side, but doesn’t even get up to contest at the rim.

The second play provides a nice opportunity to be active with his hands and go for a swipe at the ball, which he doesn’t do and it ends with a pass to an open guy in the corner, though eventually he does a decent job rotating and denying a baseline drive.

On this occasion, Dybantsa is ball watching as his assignment cuts from the corner and gets an easy lauyp.

He did get to guard some point of attack in a Grind Session matchup against Peterson. Dybantsa’s POA defense chops suggest he’s vulnerable at that aspect as well, posessing a tendency to open his hips up a bit too widely, or being lackadaisical in ball screen coverages.

Fortunately, a lot of this stuff is due to motor/effort, things that can be somewhat coached into a young player. Dybantsa doesn’t need to be an Alex Caruso on that end of the floor to hit high-end outcomes.

The tools will always provide a solid basis and a defensive floor for Dybantsa. He has already flashed he can crank up the motor for stretches, stepping out and making great defensive plays.

For me, Peterson is just slightly ahead of another incredible young player by the name of Cameron Boozer, who is due for a tall task - replacing Cooper Flagg as Duke’s superstar freshman.

The son of former NBA veteran Carlos (and the twin brother of Duke guard Cayden), Cam Boozer is regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, high school player of all time, so it’s only natural that he generates so much hype heading to Durham.

Him, Peterson and BYU’s AJ Dybantsa make for a pretty incredible top 3 prospects in the 2026 NBA Draft.

After some consideration, this is where I landed: right now for me it’s Peterson, then Boozer just slightly behind him and then Dybantsa trailing them both. So the tiers would be something like Peterson and Boozer (T1) and Dybantsa (T1.5).

Again, let’s look at their per 40 profiles:

More than a bruiser

Now, I wouldn’t be shocked if Boozer ends up at 1 for me at some point in this cycle. Under Jon Scheyer, Duke has shown that it can put together outstanding teams led by top-tier freshmen who churn out some insane statistical profiles in the process.

I don’t think Boozer is going to be any different in that aspect. He’s probably the most accomplished high school player ever, a bona-fide pre-season 1st team All-American and a legit National Player of the Year contender.

Boozer is THE cerebral prospect and will likely be the analytics darling of the 2026 NBA Draft cycle - incredibly smart, efficient, versatile, but also imposing physically. Watching him last year I described Boozer almost as the ultimate product of the positionless basketball, the offensive player we’ve been ultimately heading towards for the last decade.

His offensive profile is outstanding: Boozer logged 68.2% TS in 117 games tracked by Cerebro and had roughly the same 3 point rate as Peterson who is a guard. In addition to that, Boozer has been a very solid and efficient playmaker and an outstanding offensive rebounder. Here’s a rough profile of what I would project for Boozer in his one and only year at Duke.

Boozer’s offensive versatility is unique. He’s listed at 6’9”, 245 pounds, which makes him a very solid bruiser under the basket. But there are things that put Boozer way above your average bruising big.

He may look like a bruising forward at the first glance, akin to his father, but he’s a low-key explosive athlete laterally.

Look at this play from the Chipotle Nationals. Boozer takes the ball coast-to-coast off the defensive rebound, getting his weak foot ahead of his direct defender, shielding him off with his hip and then shrugging of the help defender via a eurostep.

Boozer should easily have a 20%+ DREB for Duke this season as he gobbles up space like it’s nothing. That should be a constant source of early offense for the Blue Devils as their new big is excellent at launching outlet passes for easy layups in transition.

Boozer’s handle is one of the things that set him apart from his peers in high school. At 245 lbs, he’s big, but Boozer has a low center of gravity and dribbling skill to shift that weight and change directions with the ball super quickly, as evidenced in the first clip.

His passing execution is somewhat hitchy (though it works out in the end) here, suggesting there’s room for improving live dribble passing ability.

Similarly to Cooper Flagg, Boozer has so many ways of unlocking his playmaking skill, especially as his 3 point shot continues to improve.

Scheyer’s Duke has been rather post-averse (9th percentile post-up frequency in 24-25), so making plays from short roll situations is going to be paramount. Luckily, Boozer definitely falls under the category of high feel bigs who process the game quickly and make correct decisions.

The 1.5 pre-NCAA A/TO really good. I don’t think he’s as good a playmaker as Flagg, but I could easily see Boozer having a 1.7.-1.8 A/TO on 18-20% AST in his freshman year, which would be a pretty high threshold for a guy at that size point.

Boozer’s 3 point shooting has really improved in the last couple of years.

He’s always had a lot of arc on his shot, but the base was a bit off. Now Boozer does a much better job at generating lift with his legs and releasing the energy in a smoother manner than before when his base was much more stiff.

The 3 point shot has improved to a point where it’s a rather significant part of his dominance. Boozer is now able to punish p&r guards for going under screens. During the 3 games at the Chipotle Nationals, Boozer’s 3 point rate jumped to 40.5%.

This adds another layer of threat for Boozer as a p&r and p&p screener because now defenses need to account for ability to spot up and knock down shots.

Boozer mostly played at the 5 in high school, so he was the primary on-ball screener, often combining with his twin brother Cayden.

As you can see in this clip, Cameron’s spot-up gravity takes away the rim protecting big as he needs to cover off a 3 pointer at the top of the arc, giving Cayden a lane for this sweet runner.

Defensive projection

With Boozer going to Duke, he will face inevitable comparisons to Flagg, now of the Dallas Mavericks.

They’re both of similar size and play roughly the same position offensively. Flagg finished his freshman season with 15 BPM and I wouldn’t be shocked if Boozer lands somewhere near that number, especially if his scoring efficiency holds at 63-65% TS, which is totally possible considering his rapid improvement in shooting the ball from distance.

I think the biggest concern with Boozer right now is what role he’ll play at the next level defensively.

At Columbus, he was mostly anchoring the defense at the 5, but that’s unlikely at Duke, let alone the NBA, considering he doesn’t really have outlier anthropometric traits, like ++ wingspan or hands, he’s not super gifted vertically nor does he have the defensive hands of, say, Collin Murray-Boyles. At 6’9”, anchoring a defense in college and the NBA like he did in high school is going to be much more difficult.

Even when he was playing defense at the 5 in high school, Boozer would sometimes end up late in rotations or get himself too deep in the paint and concede floaters. On occasions, he’d simply wouldn’t have the wingspan to contest or block layups, especially as the big was shelding with his weak arm.

Boozer’s stock creation is good but, at the same time, not elite. Pre-NCAA, he had 2.2 STL and 2.3 BLK per 40. I think the STL part is very solid, it’s somewhere around where Flagg landed on a per 40 basis, including his HS, FIBA and NCAA sample. But the blocks are not indicative of an elite paint defender.

This rough approximation, again, puts Boozer firmly in the wing defender combos.

Still, Boozer is strong and smart enough to be a very good defender, solidifying his status as a two-way prospect that would, at least for my money, absolutely justify the 1st pick in the NBA draft.

With this cycle, the three main attractions for the next 12-ish months are pretty clear. They go by names of Darryn Peterson, AJ Dybantsa and Cameron Boozer.

Now, Dybantsa is the only guy out of the big three that I have already somewhat covered since, unlike Peterson or Boozer, he played in the FIBA U19’s World Cup this summer.

Now it’s time to go a little bit deeper into those three awesome NBA prospects and see where I land at this very early stage of the cycle.

Some of the pre-NCAA per 40 stats are really eye-popping. For example, both Boozer and Dybantsa had phenomenal true shooting numbers, despite living on a pretty significant perimeter diet. Peterson had the highest usage of the three, likely tanking his overall efficiency, but his stocks are almost too good to be true

Here are their per 40 profiles:

Why Peterson?

So, why I landed on Peterson as my number 1 prospect to begin this cycle?

To be honest, it’s Peterson over Boozer by the tiniest of margins for me. The Kansas guard had the worst TS% out of the top 3 guys, and by a pretty comfortable margin. His pre-NCAA TS% (56.5%) would be below the NBA average in 24-25 (57.6%).

At 34.3%, Peterson commanded the heaviest usage - also by a comfortable margin - out of him, Boozer and Dybantsa. This is already a slippery slope. There’s a very finite number of NBA players who can sustain that kind of usage in a winning situation. Not being big, carrying 30%+ usage on below-league average shooting efficiency now lands you a 2-year, 28$ million contract offer from the team that drafted you (hi, Cam Thomas).

Don’t think Peterson is to land in a similar position as Thomas as he’s going to be safeguarded by his likely top 3 draft selection.

But there’s stuff that I think separates Peterson from your average high usage, high volume guard.

The roster construction at the Prolific Prep forced him into a very high usage role, as his co-stars were Winters Grady and Niko Bundalo, mostly off-ball players.

Despite carrying high usage, Peterson had a better A/TO than both Boozer and Dybantsa.

I’m pretty much sure his USG at Kansas drops below 30% as they won’t need to ride Peterson’s self-creation as much as they did at the Prolific Prep, at the same time giving him enough touches to build up an outstanding offensive profile in somewhat of a scaled down offensive role, logging somewhere around 57-59% TS.

Peterson is probably a closer comp to Dybantsa than he is to Boozer. What puts him over the top is that I just like Peterson’s approach to the game more than I like Dybantsa’s; he’s much more of a proper initiator of the offense, consistently looking for early advantages and entry passes.

Peterson has the best A/TO out of the three despite the fact that: A) he carries the highest usage and B) he goes for more high leverage passes, generating a very good amount of rim assists.

Peterson combines insane athletic explosion with outstanding handle and a bag full of spin moves which help him get almost anywhere he wants on the floor, unlocking the full extent of his playmaking ability.

And Peterson is a natural passer at that, posessing a couple of elite playmaking traits: ability to engage (sometimes multiple) defenders on his drives and delay decisions, often executing high value passes in mid-air.

The fact that Peterson is so athletic, can get to his spots and beat opponents off the dribble almost any time he wants means that he lives in the lane both as a scorer and a passer.

As a lane scorer, Peterson is uber athletic, being able to finish with dunks in traffic. He’s about as good at riding contact as any guard prospect in recent years, which applies to both when he’s scoring and passing the ball.

Combine that with his downhill footwork and a wide array of hesitation moves, where Peterson just freezes out his defender before suddenly exploding to the rim, and you have a tremendous rim pressuring guard prospect.

At the same time, a high usage role also meant a healthy dose of tough shots in Peterson’s diet. He’s very capable at taking over a game with his pull-up scoring ability. When the OTD shot is going in, Peterson is even more dangerous as he can leverage his shooting gravity into more lane drives.

Overall he does have a somewhat low 26.8% 3 point rate, which in HS may be due to his outlier athleticism and rim pressure. Developing reliable counters from mid-range and 3, or being able to efficiently take on a heavier diet of jumpshots will be crucial for any of Peterson’s two-way superstar outcomes. With his profile, there’s almost no in-between as the NBA keeps fading inefficient, volume scoring guards.

Here’s where I think Peterson could land realistically in his season at Kansas in terms of his offensive output.

Outlier stocks?

In spite of all of what I said, the craziest part of Peterson’s per 40 statistical profile absolutely has to be the stocks numbers.

According to Cerebro, in 50 pre-NCAA games he had 3.9 steals and 2.2 blocks per 40 minutes, which would put Peterson firmly in an outlier defensive playmaker prospect category. His 6.2 stocks per 40 is better than, for example, Carter Bryant, who, (including his NCAA sample) had just 3.8 stocks per 40.

Now, if we were to break it down, Peterson’s sample definitely has a good amount of noise in it.

First of all, it’s just 50 games, compared to 117 for Boozer and 77 for Dybantsa.

Secondly, it’s very much skewed by Peterson’s games from 2022 and 2023, when he was just 15 and 16 years old. 6 of his 50 games in the sample are from the 2023 FIBA U16 America’s tournament, in which Team USA was trouncing opponents by 60 or 70 points, winning the final against Canada by 82 (yes, you heard that right).

In that tournament, Peterson logged 7.5 steals per 40, playing less than 20 minutes per game, but, as you are probably aware by now, it’s a severly overinflated data point as most teams in such tournaments struggle to even get past half-court line playing Team USA.

At the same time, we shouldn’t look past the fact that Peterson is an outstanding defensive prospect. At 6’5”, the Kansas freshman has a reported 6’10” wingspan. Combining that with freakish athleticism and a very good motor, he has a chance to be a special defender at the next level.

I think some of his best defensive chops are off-ball - here’s a reel of Peterson being a disruptive defender, playing the passing lanes, guarding at the nail, generating points in transition via defensive playmaking and denying paint touches.

In addition to that, he’s a good defensive rebounder for his size, logging 7.4 DREB per 40. I tried to project his NCAA defensive stats and, even the more conservative freshman queries (15%+ DREB, 1%+ BLK, 3%+ STL and 3+ DBPM) mostly produced either wings, bigs, or outstanding defensive guard prospects like Jalen Suggs.

Disclaimer No. 1: I obviously haven’t seen every game. I’ve actually missed quite a few.

Disclaimer No. 2: Summer League is a weird place where really good young players don’t necessarily play a good brand of basketball, so evaluating these performances through the lens of NBA translatability can be somewhat of a futile exercise.

But in a way, the disorganized nature of Summer League play makes Richardson’s performance against Toronto even more impressive.

Richardson played for a total of 25 minutes. For large stretches, the Raptors ball pressure was absolutely killing Orlando: at times, pesky guards like Chucky Hepburn or Jamal Shead made it really hard for the Magic to just get the ball past half-court.

After forcing a couple of on-ball turnovers or disrupting half-court possessions to a significant degree, Toronto’s guard duo was clearly reveling in their defensive impact.

In total, Orlando turned it over 29 times. Incredibly, Richardson was responsible for just 1 turnover, despite being pressured not just by aforementioned Hepburn or Shead, but also by guys like Collin Murray-Boyles or A.J. Lawson. Richardson finished with 19 points on 68% true shooting, 8/9 from the line, +10 in a game that the Magic lost.

Richardson’s performance was all-around offensive impact 101, even if, in the grand scheme of things, it was just a meaningless Summer League game.

Evasive Jase

The first offensive posession of the game has Richardson bringing the ball up the floor.

The general school of thought is that his ceiling is capped by an absence of a realistic pathway towards a primary creator role as an undersized guard. As high as I am on Richardson, I don’t think he’s a primary guard in the mold of Jalen Brunson or Cade Cunningham.

One of the reasons why is that Richardson is overreliant on his left hand dribbling the ball. But at the same time, the ability to keep the dribble alive, absorb pressure, put the defender on his hip and turn the corner really pops for Jase.

This is a pretty weird posession as it feels like Shead fouls Richardson at least a couple of times and it also seems like Jase double dribbled (unless the ref thought that he lost possession, which I don’t think he did), but the chaos ends in a layup.

There could be multiple reasons why Richardson slid to 25th on draft day. Among them is the secondary role, lack of height and, most plausibly, injury concerns stemming from his knee problems in high school.

But I also think that the NBA, at least among casual fans, still undervalues connective guard play.

The overall poor structure of play in the Summer League is an interesting exercise to see how a solid guard connector can stabilize a team and execute plays at a really high level.

There are multiple ways in which Jase is an outstanding connector. One of those is that he can really come off screens on hand-offs and make timely passes in his stride.

Richardson sat at around 4:30 mark in the first quarter and the Raptors gradually started closing down the 6 point deficit they had before the substitution.

Toronto especially started ramping up the pressure to start the second quarter. Hepburn was super agressive at pressuring the ball, Orlando’s offense looked discombobulated and, all of a sudden, the Raptors were in front before Richardson was subbed back in.

Playing for Michigan State, Richardson had an excellent 2.3 assist-to-turnover ratio and it’s pretty easy to see why.

Though his handle is not elite, he makes it up through his physical (low center of gravity, agility) and mental (anticipation, quick thinking and tight space coordination) traits. On this play Richardson gets hedged by Murray-Boyles, a super disruptive defender with a 7’0” wingspan and magnetic hands, only to spin his way out of trouble.

Being able to counter agressive perimeter coverages is super important for a guard. In this particular case, the Raptors end up sending two defenders to the ball at the logo. If you’re able to wriggle your way out of a tight situation with such quickness, it’s an immediate advantage for your team. Sadly, Noah Penda gets caught in two minds and turns it over.

2nd half takeover

The second half of the Magic-Raptors game brought more of the same stuff. Magic were turning it over a lot, but looked a much more stable unit every time Richardson was on the floor.

The main difference was that Richardson really took over as a scorer after the break.

This was one of the most impressive plays of the game. The Magic have Penda initiate the offense and bring Jase up from the corner. Richardson ends up attacking from the top of the arc and does an outstanding job at punishing the Raptors for their defensive coverage by side-stepping a Murray-Boyles hedge and attacking the lane.

For Richardson, the game comes a bit slower that for your average rookie. He already has a knack for delaying decisions until the right time, as it was the case with the pass to the dunker spot.

Despite making the pass, Richardson still has the presence of mind to continue the play and relocate into the open corner, where he ends up getting the ball and making an open three.

As the Raptors ball pressure failed to turn the posession over, or to even force Richardson to pick up his dribble, balanced aggression turned into overagression, especially attacking and putting an emphasis on denying strong side drives.

Jase was able to exploit that via behind-the-back dribbles to either draw fouls or get himself into the paint.

Toronto’s increasingly aggressive approach to perimeter defense meant that Richardson took all of his 9 free throws in the second half.

He did his best to keep the Magic in the game until the very last minute. Here Richardson again beats Murray-Boyles off the dribble by keeping the ball low and using his hips to protect himself from the hands of CMB.

To finish off the play, Richardson again demostrates a great knack for both layup angles and timing, engaging the rim protector just enough to be able to get off a high arcing shot.