[3rd pick] Who do you want?

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5489974/2024/05/14/nba-draft-lottery-alex-sarr-mock-draft/

1. Atlanta Hawks: Alex Sarr | 7-1 big | 19 years old | Perth Wildcats
2. Washington Wizards: Zaccharie Risacher | 6-8 wing/forward | 19 years old | JL Bourg
3. Houston Rockets: Matas Buzelis | 6-10 wing/forward | 19 years old | G League Ignite

I’ll preface this by saying I think the Rockets should, and will, trade this pick. There has been enough trade smoke around this team over the last few years surrounding the draft and by all accounts, Houston is open for business.

But even if the Rockets don’t find anything on the market more enticing than keeping their pick, Buzelis to Houston intrigues me.

Given that this is a draft open to more interpretation, the “best player available” is in the eye of the beholder. If this team is being molded by head coach Ime Udoka, Buzelis’ versatility and size are both desirable.

I’m aware of the shooting fluctuations during his season with the G League Ignite. I’m aware of his lack of physicality and struggles as an on-ball defender. Still, Udoka favors players with wide-ranging skill sets, like Amen Thompson and Jabari Smith Jr. Buzelis’ shooting mechanics are fluid and give me more reason for optimism than what the splits say. An underrated ball handler with a soft touch, three-level scoring and playmaking upside, in addition to solid team defense? Yes, please. I also think Buzelis is the kind of player who will blow your socks off in an individual visit or set himself apart in a combine setting either with his measurements or in drills.

Buzelis has a good understanding of team basketball that could blend well with two high-level thinkers/passers in Alperen Şengün and Fred VanVleet. He could also line up alongside Smith when Udoka wants to go small and give Houston another floor-spacing option. Buzelis brings options for a team looking to diversify as much as possible. — Iko

4. San Antonio Spurs: Nikola Topić | 6-6 lead guard | 18 years old | Crvena zvezda
5. Detroit Pistons: Donovan Clingan | 7-2 center | 20 years old | Connecticut

 

John Hollinger’s board

Tier I - Best bets in bad class
1. Ron Holland | F | G LEAGUE IGNITE | Age: 18 | Height: 6-8 | Position: F
2. Stephon Castle | W | CONNECTICUT | Age: 19 | Height: 6-6 | Position: W
3. Donovan Clingan | C | CONNECTICUT | Age: 20 | Height: 7-2 | Position: C
4. Reed Sheppard | G | KENTUCKY | Age: 20 | Height: 6-3 | Position: G

Tier II - Promising teenagers
5. Alex Sarr | C | PERTH WILDCATS | Age: 19 | Height: 7-1 | Position: C
6. Nikola Topić | G | CRVENA ZVEZDA | Age: 18 | Height: 6-6 | Position: G
7. Matas Buzelis | F | G LEAGUE IGNITE | Age: 19 | Height: 6-10 | Position: F
8. Rob Dillingham | G | KENTUCKY | Age: 19 | Height: 6-3 | Position: G

Tier III - No-frills college vets
9. Kyle Filipowski | F, C | DUKE | Age: 20 | Height: 7-0 | Position: F, C
10. Devin Carter | G | PROVIDENCE | Age: 22 | Height: 6-3 | Position: G

Tier IV - Talented but I have questions
11. Johnny Furphy | F | KANSAS | Age: 19 | Height: 6-9 | Position: F
12. Isaiah Collier | G | USC | Age: 19 | Height: 6-5 | Position: G
13. Zaccharie Risacher | F | JL BOURG | Age: 19 | Height: 6-8 | Position: F
14. Dalton Knecht | G | TENNESSEE | Age: 23 | Height: 6-6 | Position: G
15. Cody Williams | F | COLORADO | Age: 19 | Height: 6-8 | Position: F
16. Tidjane Salaun | F | CHOLET | Age: 18 | Height: 6-10 | Position: F
17. Ja’Kobe Walter | G | BAYLOR | Age: 19 | Height: 6-5 | Position: G
18. Jared McCain | G | DUKE | Age: 20 | Height: 6-3 | Position: G

Tier V - Sleepers
19. Oso Ighodaro | C | MARQUETTE | Age: 21 | Height: 6-11 | Position: C
20. Trey Alexander | G | CREIGHTON | Age: 21 | Height: 6-4 | Position: G

Spoiler

Clingan:
Longtime readers know I don’t put as much stock in drafting centers as I do other positions. If it weren’t for that, Clingan would have a case for the top spot on my board. Even with my anti-center bias, Clingan seems like a fairly obvious starting 5 man with a possible All-Star ceiling. At this point in a weak draft, that becomes an enticing value proposition.

Clingan isn’t just tall, he’s huge all over, with thick legs and a strong frame from top to bottom. He’s capable of overwhelming smaller players in the post, but UConn didn’t bring everything to a screeching halt to run stuff for him the way, say, Purdue did for Zach Edey. Instead, the Huskies took advantage of Clingan’s facility as a passer from the elbows. His best work on the block often came in early offense with quick transition seals; he runs the floor shockingly well for his size. Watch here, for instance, as he first smothers a drive at the rim, then cooks four of the five opponents in transition despite starting from his own baseline. (Bonus: That's my No. 2 prospect, Stephon Castle, throwing the crosscourt dime to set up the finish.)

Defense, of course, is where bigs make their dough, and Clingan excelled here. Relative to recent drafted centers, his 12.2 percent career block rate in college isn’t quite in Walker Kessler territory, but it’s superior to that of Mark Williams or Jalen Duren and nearly matches Chet Holmgren’s 12.9 percent. On top of that, Clingan showed well on tape in picking up smaller players on the perimeter and sliding with them to meet their shot at the rim. Watch him against Illinois prospect Terrence Shannon Jr., for instance, in the NCAA Tournament.

While Clingan only shot 55.8 percent from the line for his career at UConn, there is some level of hope he can stretch out a bit. Watching him shoot before Huskies games, his stroke looked surprisingly game-ready.

Clingan’s draft combine medical report will be important since he had a foot injury that teams will want to research. But heading into the week in Chicago, nobody seemed overly concerned that it could crater his stock. The injury was to a tendon, not a bone, and the latter is more what freaks teams out with players of this size.

Sheppard:
There are some obvious standout items on Sheppard’s prospect resume, starting with his sizzling 52.1 percent 3-point mark in his lone season in Lexington.

He backed up that shooting display with 83.1 percent marksmanship from the charity stripe. Equally impressive for a small guard, he shot 55 percent on 2s and had a high assist rate (8.4 dimes per 100 possessions) for a player who was often playing off the ball. His knack for hit-ahead passes particularly stood out.

Sheppard’s shooting volume wasn’t as high as you might expect for somebody this successful from 3, but the eye test reveals a quick, compact, textbook release off his right shoulder that could allow him to up his volume if he hunts the shot more. Sheppard also showed enough flashes of shot creation and off-the-dribble juice to think he could play point guard full time at the next level, which is important given his size. It wasn’t needed at Kentucky, however, as he played nearly all his minutes alongside the zippy Rob Dillingham (See below).

Sheppard’s defensive event creation rate also stood out. A block rate of 2.5 percent is basically unheard of for a player this size (he swatted 23 shots in 33 games — Kentucky’s starting center, by comparison, blocked 26), and his steal rate of 4.5 percent was phenomenal.

That said, his steal rate doesn’t account for some of his defensive weaknesses, as he resorted to gambling at times to make up for his size deficiencies and iffy lateral sliding. Sheppard’s anticipation is off the charts and he’s great in passing lanes, but he doesn’t put a ton of heat on the ball one-on-one and at times was beaten on straight-line drives with alarming ease.

The tape showed multiple instances like this one where he’s stuck with his feet while a guard glides past him.

As a smaller player with short arms, Sheppard also may struggle if he has to play the wing. That’s one reason he had to gamble so much for steals in the first place.

That said, there are too many positives in Sheppard’s profile to push him any lower than this. At worst, he’s a knockdown shooter, and high rates of assists and steals in particular historically indicate a player who can progress heavily in other areas as he develops.

Risacher:
I’m not sure any player’s stock has yo-yo’d as much as Risacher’s in the last year. After a disappointing performance at the Nike Hoop Summit followed a poor shooting year in France, Risacher was seen by some as a fringe first-rounder. This season, his 3-point percentage rebounded sharply, and Risacher suddenly moved into the discussion for the No. 1 pick. Both pendulum swings now seem like overcorrections, with shooting variance spiking the punch scouts were drinking.

Let’s take a step back. Risacher has obvious pathways to rotation-level usefulness: He’s a tall wing who can move on the perimeter and showed very good lateral quickness in particular. He has a solid feel for the game, and his shot, while a bit hitchy at the top, is reliable enough to demand the opponent guard him.

But once we start raising the bar to lottery-level pick, the questions become louder. One thing in particular that NBA teams have consistently underpriced is that the French League just isn’t that good. Turkey and Spain, to name two, are much, much stronger. It’s one thing if a guy like Clint Capela or Victor Wembanyama destroys the league as a teenager, but Risacher isn’t doing that – he has a modest 14.8 PER in 57 games for JL Bourg. At the French League level (and in EuroCup play as well, one notch below the EuroLeague), he’s fine … but he’s not an elite player.

Historically, drafting players like this from France hasn’t ended well. The two perimeter players in the last two decades who hit as imports from this league were Evan Fournier and Nic Batum, who both had much more impressive numbers in their pre-draft seasons. The ones who didn’t – the Frank Ntilikinas and Sekou Doumbouyas – were overdrafted based on seasons a bit worse than the one Risacher is having, but Risacher’s statistical profile is much closer to those guys than to Batum and Fournier. (I’m leaving Bilal Coulibaly out of this for now, as we don’t know how the story ends.)

History isn’t destiny, and it’s possible Risacher outperforms these comps. But his lack of on-ball juice at this level is a tell that his upside is probably more as a plus role player than a star, especially given that his shooting isn’t a lock and his thin build and lack of toughness raise added questions.

Risacher has shot better this year, hitting 38.9 percent of his 3s, but it hasn’t been on huge volume and his pedestrian shooting marks on 2s (51.6 percent) and from the line (71.9 percent) haven’t budged at all from a year earlier. Overall, big forwards are rare enough that he’s worth drafting, but a team would feel much better about the pick if it isn’t counting on him becoming a starter.

 

Yeah, … “Well he has similar/comparable/favorable numbers to Jalen Green and Green would go #1 so Holland is my #1 guy!” (And that he had Holland #1 previously)


“Holland's numbers stack up well against Jalen Green’s with Ignite and are superior to every other Ignite perimeter player who has come through. That happened despite Holland missing the final two months of the season, when his increasing experience would have given him an edge and when the rest of the G League is at its most depleted due to call-ups and fewer assignment players.

In his Ignite season, Green posted a 15.4 PER with 61.3 percent true shooting; Holland had a 15.8 PER on 56.5 percent. The shooting numbers were bad, but Green played on a more coherent team and thus also was only asked to carry a 23 percent usage rate at this level, not Holland’s 28 percent. Also, keep in mind that Holland’s free-throw rate was pretty massive for a perimeter player; four free-throw attempts per game may not seem like much until you remember the G League shoots one attempt that counts for two points. Only 10 players in the whole G League matched his rate. And even with Holland’s brutal early turnover issues, his assist and turnover rates were essentially the same as Green’s age-18 season.

Green would be the No. 1 pick in this draft; I think Holland should be too.”