A terrible NBA Draft looks exactly like a brilliant one. Of course, the fashions change from year to year. What was fly in 1998, when Vince Carter, Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce were available, would not be drippin’ in 2024, when it will take a sharp scout’s keen eye to find anyone who’ll one day wear an All-Star uniform.
In the green room, though, each player is delighted when his name is called, so long as it’s called close enough to the beginning of the show. The lottery picks will all make significant money; No. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher will earn about $12.6 million in his first season, even if he turns out to be more like 2013 top pick Anthony Bennett than 2012 top pick Anthony Davis.
You could put a bunch of crummy actors into the same wardrobe worn by Aaron Paul, Giancarlo Esposito and the great Bryan Cranston and call it “Breaking Bad,” but it wouldn’t be the same show. The NBA Draft never changes its look, even though the characters do. It can fool you that way.
In opening the network’s coverage, ESPN’s Malika Andrews noted the draft was “wide open.”
That’s so you keep watching.
Had she said, “historically bad,” you might not have had the incentive to stick around.
SN’S NBA DRAFT HQ: Live picks tracker | Pick-by-pick grades | 2-round mock
Certainly, it’s possible we all could turn out to be off the mark regarding the 2024 NBA Draft. The entire league once was wrong about Manu Ginobili, Draymond Green and, goodness sakes, Nikola Jokic, each of whom was selected in the second round. So it’s conceivable Risacher, whom the Atlanta Hawks chose at the top of the draft, could become the next Anthony Edwards.
It’s hard to get really excited, though, when the No. 1 overall pick played for France in the gold medal game of the FIBA U19 World Cup last July and scored … no points. He played 23 minutes. He attempted one shot, grabbed two rebounds and committed five turnovers. And the No. 2 overall pick, Alex Sarr, was on the same team and scored just eight points in that loss to Spain.
For the tournament, Sarr ranked fifth in scoring – on his team. Risacher was tied with him. This France team was not some overwhelming teenaged Dream Team. They finished second in the tournament and only won a semifinal by three points against a U.S. team whose leading scorer was Villanova’s middling Mark Armstrong.
Why was this draft so dependent on underwhelming French prospects?
Because the landscape was even more vacant among the American collegians.
This is the second consecutive season in which the class of recruits entering NCAA basketball was substandard, but the group that entered in 2023 was even poorer than in 2022.
MORE: Biggest NBA Draft winners and losers
Using the Recruiting Services Consensus Index (RSCI) as a guide, we can tell you that 10 of the 18 top-20 prospects who competed in Division I this season failed to average double-figure scoring. A year ago, it was just seven of 20 who fell short of that standard.
There was no freshman selected as an All-American – first, second or third team – by any of the four selectors that contribute to the NCAA consensus. From 2010 to 2023, there were a total of 28 freshman players, an average of two per year, who made either consensus first or second team. There was no year in that stretch without at least one freshman All-America selection.
Among the freshman of the year selections in the power conferences in 2023-24, only Notre Dame’s Markus Burton averaged more than 15 points, and he did so for a 13-20 team.
The quality of freshmen matters to the draft because the lure of NBA money is profound for the best young prospects, and the rookie salary scale removes the incentive that once existed to establish one’s self as the definite first or second pick.
The real jackpot now comes after a player establishes himself as elite (Tyrese Haliburton was extended for $245 million with the Pacers during his fifth year out of Iowa State) or even good (Nic Claxton earned a $100 million deal from the Nets after averaging 11.8 points and 9.9 rebounds).
Of course, as the draft entered the second half of the first round and Tennessee’s terrific Dalton Knecht still was sitting there wearing that black suit with the massive pendant around his neck, the 2024 NBA Draft began to look at least a little better.
You can get that guy with the 17th pick? Must be a heck of a draft.
Yeah, it’s not. It was just a lot of teams grasping at teenaged prospects earlier in the evening, hoping that less talented young players might get better with age. It did happen for Knecht, after all, through his time in junior college and at Northern Colorado and finally in one season under Rick Barnes at Tennessee. So anything is possible.