[2022 NBA Draft/1-3] Jabari Smith Jr., F, Auburn

Redrafting the 2022 draft
https://theathletic.com/4355853/2023/05/09/nba-draft-paolo-banchero-chet-holmgren/

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Here, I’m going to redraft the top 20 based on how I would rate them now. It’s worth noting, in all caps, THIS IS NOT A RANKING BASED ONLY ON HOW THEY PERFORMED AS ROOKIES. Rather, it’s a ranking based on where I’d rate them on how they performed this year, how some of the holes in their game translate toward being patched up and how they figure to grow and mature. This is a future-based ranking using past samples as data, including this year as the most important sample, but also previous data that I’ve collected over years of scouting them, as well as placing a premium on positional value.

For instance, I would have voted Walker Kessler in my top three for Rookie of the Year this season. He was incredibly impactful for the Utah Jazz. That does not mean I would take him over someone like Jaden Ivey, who I think possesses immense upside as a creator long term and who showed tangible growth in highly important areas that could make him a genuine star. All things being equal, All-Stars and superstars who can create their own shot are the players who move the needle. Kessler has immense upside still on defense, but guys who have that kind of ceiling on the ball are the ones you take the shot on if you have the opportunity to pick them. That remains true here. That’s how you take your team to the next level.

Without further ado, here is a redraft of the 2022 NBA Draft that will assuredly make every fan base extremely happy and not at all result in me fleeing from the internet to shield myself from the takes in the comment section and my Twitter mentions.

1. Paolo Banchero | 6-10 forward | Orlando Magic | original selection: No. 1

The answer has to be Banchero at No. 1 if only because of the offensive upside he’s shown. No rookie has shown more potential to be a No. 1 option for a team down the road. Banchero averaged nearly 20 points, seven rebounds and four assists per night, but more importantly, he did it as the guy who is at the top of scouting reports every night for Orlando. With all due respect to Franz Wagner, who is probably a more complete player at this stage, Banchero is the one teams put their best opposing defender on because of the mismatch problems he creates. He’s 6-foot-10, 250 pounds and has the handle of a guard. He plays with both pace — being able to change speeds and create his own advantages — and force. He draws fouls at an elite level for a young player. But most importantly, he sees advanced passing reads already and is quite impressive in dealing with doubles and different coverages. The issues with Banchero’s game are twofold. First, his jumper has been extremely inconsistent. He has good touch, but his mechanics need some work. Second, like many rookies, he needs to improve defensively and become more of a presence there. But Banchero has real potential to give his team extreme marginal advantages at both the four and five positions due to his mix of fluidity, coordination, power and skill. Even though I think one other rookie has more upside than Banchero, we should feel certain Banchero is going to be a very high-level player for years to come.

2. Jalen Williams | 6-6 wing | Oklahoma City Thunder | original selection: No. 12

Williams is the player who most quickly spiked up the board this year. He already looks like a potential star next to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. His full-season numbers look a bit more pedestrian than you’d think, averaging 14 points, four rebounds and three assists. But the second-half leap has NBA personnel jealous that they didn’t buy into Williams as a lottery pick like the Thunder did. Over his last 20 games, Williams averaged 19 points, six rebounds and four assists while shooting 55 percent from the field, 45 percent from 3 and 88 percent from the line. More importantly, he did it amid the Thunder’s surprising push for the Play-In Tournament. Beyond the numbers and winning, Williams just looks like a future All-Star out there. At 6-foot-6 with a 7-foot-2 wingspan, he does most of his damage inside the arc, with a weird mix of old-school tricks and new-school drives on well-spaced courts. He finishes both below and above the rim. His ability to extend his arms and finish gives him an enormous advantage, especially when mixed with his handle and touch. Most importantly though, Williams makes the right play every single time while maintaining productivity. He hits passing reads with ease. Defensively, he takes on tough assignments. He’s the kind of complete player whom teams search high and low for to pair with a superstar. Players who produce at this kind of efficiency are typically All-Stars in the future. That’s why Williams jumps his teammate below him in this redraft. We have too many positive indicators about what he will be in the future.

3. Chet Holmgren | 7-0 big | Oklahoma City Thunder | original selection: No. 2

This is where the fun starts and where I expect some push-back. I’m still all-in on Holmgren and debated slotting him in at No. 1 here after ranking him as my No. 1 player in the class pre-draft. There is no higher-upside player in this class, and there is a real chance I feel dumb in a year’s time if Holmgren immediately steps in and becomes the guy I think he’s going to be. Outside of his frame, which seems to be improving in his year out of action due to a foot injury suffered over the summer in a pro-am event, Holmgren is as complete a player to enter the NBA in a while. He has elite size and length measurements as a 7-foot center with a 7-foot-6 wingspan. He is an elite rim protector, using unbelievable anticipatory skills to be able to make a consistent impact. He can slide his feet a bit and guard out in space and was an elite help defender for a young player. On offense, he can actually handle the ball out in transition for his size, he’s a sharp passer particularly in high-low situations away from the rim, and he has potential to hit over 40 percent from 3. He fits every single box the Thunder look for as an organization that has prioritized plus positional size, length, skill and basketball IQ. To put the cherry on top, Holmgren’s work ethic seems not to have slowed down, and he’s one of the most competitive players I’ve evaluated in the decade I’ve been doing this, itching to get back on the court. The only reason I don’t have him at No. 1 is simply the question over how the frame holds up long term. For the two players above him, I just had to default to what they’ve already shown. But don’t get it twisted: If Holmgren hits, he’s going to be the best player in this class.

4. Jaden Ivey | 6-4 guard | Detroit Pistons | original selection: No. 5

Ivey is kind of the end of a tier for me. I’m a strong believer in his upside. After starting the season poorly, I was incredibly impressed by Ivey’s growth throughout the course of the season. At Purdue and through the first part of his season in Detroit, Ivey was going 100 miles per hour, trying to beat everybody to the rim and not slowing down to see what was going on around him. However, the grown in the second half of the season was stark. He played much more often off two feet, using a skip step in ball-screen actions to string defenders out and force help defenders to make decisions. This is a big part of why Ivey’s assist rate skyrocketed in the second half of the season. He averaged 16 points, over five assists, and about four rebounds while shooting nearly 42 percent from the field, 34 percent from 3 and 75 percent from the line. The finishing is still in question, but he has also added more of a game in the midrange as the season went along. The Pistons knew Ivey wouldn’t be a finished product upon reaching the NBA. They knew he needed more reps in ball screens and more experience to be able to learn how to attack NBA-caliber defense because he just didn’t get to a run a wild number of them in college at Purdue. For him to be processing all of this and figuring this out on the fly is incredibly impressive. As long as his finishing improves and he continues to improve from the midrange, Ivey has every potential to reach the All-Star ceiling scouts thought he had entering the draft.

 

5. Shaedon Sharpe | 6-6 wing | Portland Trail Blazers | original selection: No. 7

This is just a bet, and I get that it might look wild on its face. For a large portion of the season, Sharpe was flashy but not quite effective. He posted some highlight-reel plays that made the rounds on social media, and he consistently hit spot 3s. But he was very limited early on, basically just sitting in the corner, running the break and cutting baseline to try to find open angles and passes. Defensively, he was all over the map, still learning on the job while playing his first games above the high school/AAU level. But by the end of the season, Sharpe was a different dude, the kind whose athletic tools were starting to pop in an enormous way after a year’s worth of skill development in the NBA. In Sharpe’s final 10 games of the season, he averaged 23.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 4.1 assists versus only three turnovers while shooting 46 percent from the field and 38 percent from 3 while taking on an enormous role within the offense. The Blazers only won two of those games, but I’m not sure it really matters. For Sharpe to have showcased this kind of immense upside — even in the last month of the NBA season, where games are frankly not really all that indicative of high-leverage basketball — is incredible. The learning curve he was on throughout the early portion of the season was immense. For him to come around by the end of the season and post an efficient 24/6/4 line in a 10-game stretch completely blew my mind. And it was the culmination of full-season growth. Over the 17 games prior to that 10-game explosion, Sharpe averaged nine points while shooting 51/40/76 in 21 minutes per night. He was getting better.

If I were redrafting this class, I just don’t think I could pass on Sharpe beyond this point. His upside athletically is too great, and he can be the kind of athletic, dynamic shot-creating wing whom every NBA team dreams of. My guess is that this ranking looks silly almost no matter what in five years. Sharpe is either going to drastically exceed this and be an All-Star, or he’s going to be much worse. But in an NBA where superstars are the ones who move the needle, Sharpe’s close to the season showcased more star upside than any stretch of games from any of the players ranked below him.

6. Jeremy Sochan | 6-9 wing/forward | San Antonio Spurs | original selection: No. 9

I was higher on Sochan than most entering the draft, having him No. 6 on my board. I’ve seen no reason to move off that rating. Outside of his shooting, Sochan remains everything teams look for in a high-level developmental prospect. He has genuine size at 6-foot-9 with a massive wingspan, and he’s willing and able to take on tough on-ball defensive assignments in addition to playing strong help defense. Offensively, Sochan took the on-ball reps he was given this year and really blossomed. Over his last 17 games, he averaged almost 16 points, six rebounds and three assists while making good decisions and expanding his game. On top of that, he played this entire season as a teenager at 19 years old. He and Zion Williamson are the only players to play a majority of their rookie seasons as teenagers and average 11 points, five rebounds and two assists while shooting 45 percent from the field. If you expand it to include 20-year-olds, you still only get 21 names. Outside of the players to do this in the last two years (Evan Mobley, Josh Giddey, Alperen Şengün and Scottie Barnes), the other 16 players all went on to make an All-Star team in the future. Sochan feels like a reasonable bet to do the same, given how advanced he is defensively and how well his skill set game profiles into where the game is going long term. He is a cleaned-up shot away from stardom.

7. Keegan Murray | 6-8 wing/forward | Sacramento Kings | original selection: No. 4

I had Murray a bit lower than this on my board pre-draft, even though I expected him to be able to come in and impact the NBA earlier than most other rookies as a more-developed 22-year-old. Indeed, Murray was quite good on a terrific Kings team this season, averaging 12 points and five rebounds while shooting 45 percent from the field and 41 percent from 3. I thought he got better defensively as the season went on and was an impact player in the playoffs. Murray averaged 10 points and six rebounds while shooting 48 percent from 3 in the playoffs, playing 28 minutes and proving he can stay on the court in big moments. Most importantly, after three difficult playoff games, Murray improved drastically in the final four, averaging 15 points and eight rebounds while shooting over 51 percent. Murray looks exactly like what was expected of him pre-draft. I compared him to Tobias Harris before the draft, and I still feel like that is the most likely outcome: a player who is super efficient offensively, can occasionally create his own shot and not be a sieve defensively in big moments. Harris had a five-year stretch from 2017-22 when he averaged 19 points, seven rebounds and three assists while shooting 48 percent from the field, 39 percent from 3 and 85 percent from the line. I think that’s probably the ballpark for Murray, with a peak of averaging 20 points per game at some point. I’d rather take a flier on the greater upside of the players above him, but I think there is a case for him as high as No. 3 if you think his shot creation has a little more juice than I’m projecting.

8. Jabari Smith Jr. | 6-10 forward | Houston Rockets | original selection: No. 3

Smith had a rough year. But I’m still buying in and believing in his long-term potential. He falls here from where I had him ranked pre-draft, but his end-of-season run offers some real reason to think positively. An elite shooter throughout his career in high school and college, Smith shot just 30.7 percent from 3 this season. In 52 games from Halloween through March 1, Smith shot just 39 percent overall and 27.8 percent from 3 with more turnovers than assists. Throughout the year, it seemed like Smith struggled with his role. The team didn’t run much for him, and he was largely stuck hanging out in the corners while guys like Jalen Green and Kevin Porter Jr. dribbled around. But Smith also didn’t take advantage of his opportunities as they came early either. Things came together by the end of the season, though. In his final 20 games, Smith averaged 16 points and eight rebounds while shooting 47 percent percent from the field and 37 percent from 3. This is the guy the Rockets thought they were drafting when they picked him at No. 3. On top of that, Smith was relatively useful throughout the year on defense, providing length, switchability and a help-side presence when necessary. I’m a little worried about the on-ball creation upside, which is something I thought he would bring to the table by virtue of some of the elbow actions you might be able to run for him where he shoots over the top of defenders with his high release point. But he’s a bit further away than I thought as a ballhandler, and I thought he was pretty far away from making an impact there and as a passer pre-draft. Still, Smith is 6-foot-10, I’m a believer in the shot, and I buy the defense. I think the worst-case scenario remains that he is a starter who helps you win playoff games as a role player.

9. Walker Kessler | 7-1 center | Utah Jazz | original selection: No. 22
10. Bennedict Mathurin | 6-6 wing | Indiana Pacers | original selection: No. 6

 

11. AJ Griffin | 6-6 wing | Atlanta Hawks | original selection: No. 16
12. Jalen Duren | 6-11 center | Detroit Pistons | original selection: No. 13
13. Dyson Daniels | 6-7 guard | New Orleans Pelicans | original selection: No. 8
14. Mark Williams | 7-2 center | Charlotte Hornets | original selection: No. 15
15. Tari Eason | 6-7 wing | Houston Rockets | original selection: No. 17

Eason was as productive of a rookie outside of the top four this season, and he did so with sheer activity. I’m not sure there was a rookie whose motor ran hotter more consistently than Eason’s. He filled the box score every night in just 21.5 minutes per game, averaging 2.4 offensive rebounds, 1.2 steals, 0.6 blocks, an assist and also 9.3 points per game. Eason is going to play in the NBA for over a decade simply because he outworks everybody. The reason he doesn’t come higher here largely has to do with his overall skill level right now. He was one of the worst finishers in half-court settings in the league, shooting just 44.2 percent, per Synergy, along with a putrid 38.2 percent on attempted layups. On top of that, Eason only went 5-of-24 on pull-up jumpers this season and only made 33.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot jumpers despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of them were classified as “unguarded” by Synergy, a number that was in the 20th percentile league-wide. That 33.9 percent mark was fourth-worst among those other players in the 20th percentile of guys who don’t get guarded from 3, behind just Russell Westbrook, Jalen Smith and Herb Jones. The skill level has to drastically improve for Eason to be a difference-maker in the playoffs. But if he can do that — heck, if he can even just consistently make a catch-and-shoot 3 — the ceiling is through the roof due to his length, strength and versatility.


16. Christian Braun | 6-7 wing | Denver Nuggets | original selection: No. 21
17. Jaden Hardy | 6-3 guard | Dallas Mavericks | original selection: No. 37
18. Andrew Nembhard | 6-5 guard | Indiana Pacers | original selection: No. 31
19. Ochai Agbaji | 6-6 wing | Utah Jazz | original selection: No. 14
20. Malaki Branham | 6-5 guard | San Antonio Spurs | original selection: No. 20

Others

Johnny Davis, Washington Wizards | original selection: No. 10
Ousmane Dieng, Oklahoma City Thunder | original selection: No. 11
Dalen Terry, Chicago Bulls | original selection: No. 18
Jake LaRavia | original selection: No. 19; David Roddy | original selection: No. 23 | Memphis Grizzlies
MarJon Beauchamp, Milwaukee Bucks | original selection: No. 24

TyTy Washington, Houston Rockets | original selection: No. 29: I still like Washington. He was quite good in the G League this season, averaging 23 points and dishing out six assists with a 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Having said that, he struggled enough in his NBA minutes in terms of efficiency and has some potential issues defensively. I like his processing speed and his overall game as a complementary guard, but I was too high on him ranking him as a top-15 player.

Peyton Watson, Denver Nuggets | original selection: No. 30
Max Christie, Los Angeles Lakers | original selection: No. 32
Christian Koloko, Toronto Raptors | original selection: No. 33
Jaylin Williams, Oklahoma City Thunder | original selection: No. 34
Jabari Walker, Portland Trail Blazers | original selection: No. 57