This year instead of ranking everybody, I am going to have a list of prospects I would not draft. This does not mean that they are necessarily not top 58 prospects. Rather that they are overrated enough such that if they slide far enough to be value in my eyes, it likely means something is horribly wrong with them.
So instead the efficient solution is to simply not rank them, and focus on the prospects who can be realistically picked.
Amen Thompson
Ausar Thompson
The main issue with the Thompsons is that they were 20 year olds playing high school competition, and the default position should be skeptical.
I have no strong prediction what to expect from them in the NBA, as I have yet to subject myself to watching OTE basketball. But intuitively, the super high IQ mediocre shooter comps who racked up triple double stats like Andre Iguodala, Grant Hill, and Scottie Pippen seem like pie in the sky.
If either of them do succeed, it will more likely be in Jaylen Brown sort of way, where they are good players, but in a flawed way where they get overrated and their team ends up paying them $60M/year to be slightly above average starters.
Maybe they can be better than Jaylen Brown as better passers, it’s tough to say for sure. But I’m skeptical of their upside tail being that strong, and the bust risk is real.
Jordan Hawkins
Hawkins is a great shooter who thrived at getting a massive amount of 3PA from off ball movement, and made 38.8% 3P 88.7% FT as a sophomore.
And that is his one strength. He is 6’6 with a skinny frame and short arms (6’6.75 wing) which is a cursed size because it tricks teams into believing that a prospect is almost big enough to be a wing. In reality, this size is small for SG and is typically bad defensively.
Hawkins exacerbates this issue by being bad defensively independent of his size issues. He has subpar feel and awareness and at age 21, he is running out of time to learn to fit in on this end. He may be unplayable on D in the regular season, let alone the playoffs.
Further he has a loose handle. He is a decent athlete and can create a bit of offense on occasion from the respect his shooting gravity commands, but his ball skills are sorely limited for a 21 year old guard.
He has some chance of being a JJ Redick type. He is a bit taller, longer, and more athletic than Redick, but Redick had a much higher defensive IQ. Redick also started college 14 months younger than Hawkins, and was a solid starter as a freshman. Conversely, Hawkins could barely get playing time as a freshman in spite of being older than sophomore Redick.
Further, JJ shot 91.2% FT (!!!) over his NCAA career and never made less than 39.5% 3P in a season over four years, whereas Hawkins has only had one good shooting season where he made 88.7% FT 38.8% 3P which is a smaller + less stable sample.
And in spite of all of this, JJ still took several years to get significant NBA minutes. Even if Hawkins succeeds, it may not happen until after his rookie contract expires, and he may come available for a much lower price than a mid-1st round pick before it happens.
Ultimately Redick is roughly the pinnacle of optimism for Hawkins, and he is likely closer to something like Anthony Morrow in the OK-ish outcomes or John Jenkins is the bust scenarios.
Jalen Hood Schifino
Nick Smith
Nick Smith Jr. and Jalen Hood-Schifino are the prodigal SG’s in the class who both seem like they will bust more often than not.
It’s tough to say who is more likely to succeed. Nick Smith Jr. is younger and has the possibility that injuries held him back, but he is such a dreadfully bad mold of a small mid-range specialist. JHS is a better mold since he is bigger and passes more, but was horribly inefficient and bad on defense for a slightly older freshman.
Either way, they both are merely decent shooters now and both need to become absolutely wet to have a chance in the NBA. NSJ has better odds of becoming something, but JHS is more likely to be useful in the scenarios where he hits.
Rayan Rupert
Almost every year there is at least one international who randomly gets first round hype for no reason, and this year Rupert is that guy.
He is young as he just turned 19 in May and has a long wingspan at 7’2, and that is about the extent of his strengths.
He had a poor season in Australia, averaging 6.8 pts 2.4 rebs 0.8 ast 1.1 tovs on 48.9% TS in 18.1 minutes per game. Australia is not a particularly good international league, and nothing about his performance projects to be a quality NBA player.
Statistics are not everything, and sometimes younger guys overperform in the long run, but this rarely happens with internationals who are typically not as athletic as American prospects.
Maybe he can defend well enough to hang around the league as a passable rotation player for a bit, but Rupert is a high risk, low reward prospect.
Kris Murray
Murray could not get NCAA rotation minutes until he was 21 years old, and it is difficult to think of any example who took that long to get minutes and succeeded in the NBA.
Kris and Keegan were old freshmen at Iowa, who turned 20 in August before the start of their freshman year. Keegan played a productive 18 minutes per game (mpg) off the bench, while Kris played a measly 3.3 mpg over 13 games. More than 11 players on the roster got greater than double Kris’s total minutes, which reeks of not being a future NBA player.
The following year Kris played a solid 18 mpg off the bench, but was limited by a perplexing 2.5 fouls per game— most of any player on the roster. Meanwhile Keegan had a monster year as one of the best players in NCAA.
This year as a 22 year old junior, Kris finally had his first season as a starter averaging 35 mpg, but did not sniff the production of 21 year old Keegan. He is not remotely close to Keegan as a prospect, and frankly it is difficult to imagine he would be getting 1st round hype if Keegan was not his twin.
Keegan had a decent rookie year, but was it that inspiring to want to draft his vastly inferior brother? He made 41% 3P and did not do much else. Perhaps the rest of his game develops in time and he becomes good, but he is an older rookie and if his 3P% regresses and with limited development otherwise, he can still have a fairly bland career.
And it doesn’t make sense that Kris, who shot 35% 3P 70% FT in his NCAA career (which began at a geriatric age) will be a 40%+ 3P shooter in the NBA. And even if he shoots it well, he will still be far worse than Keegan in all other aspects of the game.
Honestly I’m not buying it with Kris. I think he’s a fake prospect and if he has any sort of useful career, then it’s time to seriously reconsider the implications of twin magic.
Dariq Whitehead
Whitehead was #1 RSCI entering the season, and disappointed about as badly as possible. He was a terrible decision maker, with bad shot selection and turnovers. He was a complete flop athletically, as he rarely created his own shot at the rim and had just 2 dunks. He was also soft, as he rebounded like a small guard in spite of being 6’7, and hardly ever went to the free throw line.
The one saving grace of his season was that he shot it well, making 43% 3P on 98 attempts and 79% FT on 29 attempts. But he was not supposed to be an elite shooter, so if this is small sample size variance and his shooting is merely good, it is difficult to see how he contributes to an NBA team.
The upside is that he is extremely young, not turning 19 until August, and he was hampered by injuries that may have limited his performance. He still has a chance of becoming something.
But it’s hard to see the appeal. Even if his athleticism is better than he showed at Duke, he is still a below average athlete and a bit undersized for SF. His decision making cannot be blamed on the injuries, because it was terrible in the Nike Hoop Summit too.
You need to basically pray that his shooting his real, that his athleticism is better than he showed for Duke, and that he makes major gains to his ball skills, defense, and decision making over time. It’s a dubious value proposition.
Whitehead is too young to be counted out, but he’s going to bust often and it’s tough to see the outcome where he offers a big payoff for a late 1st or early 2nd.
Maxwell Lewis
Maxwell Lewis has nice SF dimensions at 6’6’25” barefoot with 7’ wingspan, and is fairly fluid which makes him a competent penetrator, and he is also a competent shooter with 35% 3P 79% FT in his two years at Pepperdine. It’s a reasonable start to his profile, but it all comes crashing down due to his poor basketball IQ.
Lewis is a turnover machine on offense and a turnstile on defense, which results in him being a 0 way player. He played for mid-major Pepperdine who went 3-25 in conference games that he played in over his two years. If he can’t win as a mid-major basketball player, how is he expected to win in the NBA? He turns 21 in July after the draft, so he isn’t young enough to have major upside for improvement.
Also it’s not clear what role he is expected to play in NBA. He was a high usage scorer for Pepperdine, but a horribly inefficient one at that. He cannot be trusted as a frequent NBA ball handler.
So the upside is likely to use him as a floor spacer who is capable of attacking closeouts, and pray that he improves from a good shooter to elite and that he uses his tools to become passable on defense rather than a travesty. There is some chance it all works out and you end up with something like Terrence Ross, but it’s an uninspiring value proposition.
Seth Lundy
Seth Lundy’s selling point is that he made 40% 3P on 6.4 attempts per game this year.
His weaknesses are everything else. He has a decent wingspan at 6’10.25, but only measured 6’4 barefoot which makes him a SG. And in 4 years of NCAA basketball, he never averaged a full assist per game, peaking at 0.9 assists as a senior.
He was also an older senior who turned 23 in April, and never was a good college basketball player until his senior year, when he got to play in one of the best offenses in the country run by the best point guard in the country in Jalen Pickett.
Overall for his NCAA career he shot 36.8% 3P 81.4% FT, which is good but far from elite. He averaged 0.7 assists vs 1.1 turnovers for his career, and he is almost certainly going to be a bad NBA defensive player.
Essentially he is an old, one dimensional pretty good shooter, and it is hard to see how he fits as an NBA player.
GG Jackson
GG entered the season with hype, but had a disastrous freshman year for South Carolina, as the Gamecocks were by far the worst team in SEC and had the program’s worst season in 58 years.
Much of the blame can be laid on GG, as he was an inefficient black hole who averaged a putrid 0.8 assists, 2.7 turnovers, and 47.4% TS and played terrible defense.
The one saving grace for GG is that he is the youngest prospect in the draft, turning 19 in December, which gives him a long window to improve if he stays focused and works hard.
But during the season he went on instagram live to blast his coach for not giving him the last shot in a game, as if he earned it by playing like a walking trashcan for the entire season. And if this wasn’t enough, he was a disaster in pre-draft workouts and interviews.
This all suggests that he will be fortunate to have an average developmental arc. But he was so terrible for South Carolina, he needs an outlier development arc to succeed, as an average arc will surely result in him busting.
Thus it will be shocking if GG does not bust. He should be considered undraftable.
Emoni Bates
Bates joined an Eastern Michigan program coming off their lowest kenpom ranking of #316 in the site’s 26 year history. Then they ended up ranking one slow lower at #317 with Emoni leading the team.
Granted, 5 new teams joined D1, and they actually improved by +0.8 points per 100, but the team performed better with Emoni off the court than on. Per hooplens.com:
Emoni has similar physique, mannerisms, and style to Kevin Durant, except he has t-rex arms (6’9), is only an OK shooter instead of elite (33% 3P 75% FT NCAA career), and has single digit IQ both on and off the court. He rarely passed the ball with 1.4 assists vs. 2.5 turnovers, and he is a disaster on defense.
Emoni might be the only prospect in the draft who is a bigger lock to bust than GG Jackson. But it’s a really close race.
Thank you for being the only sane person to acknowledge that ranking Lundy over Pickett is insane, given who drove that bus last year
I'm here to defend Kris Murray, at least a little bit. He will never be the player Keegan is; he doesn't have the same instincts, footwork or touch, and he has always been too left hand dominant. Keegan also is just basketball obsessed, while Kris has never seemed quite as serious. The age thing is somewhat valid, but you're not taking into account that the twins were extreme late bloomers. Google image search a picture of them as seniors at Cedar Rapids Prairie; at age 18 they looked like 15 year olds. At Iowa, Fran didn't play Keegan enough his freshman year when he was clearly the best option at forward, instead opting to give his sons a combined 40 min/g. The next year, Kris was clearly the second most talented player on the team, but again Fran had to get his kids in 40+ min/g. It was absolutely infuriating.
That said, I do agree that I wouldn't take him where he is currently projected in round 1. If you're drafting him expecting to get Keegan, you will be disappointed.