23 Questions for the 2023 Draft Class
Is it just me, or are these articles getting longer as the years go by?
The 2023 NBA Draft is about eight months away, meaning we have plenty of time to figure out which players are legitimate pro prospects and which need more time before entering the draft. As those questions get sorted, we also like to pay attention to the storylines and external factors that will influence the decisions prospects make.
In that vein, we’re asking 23 questions ahead of the draft that are most pressing and could have the largest impact on the upcoming draft class.
1. Can the Overtime Elite program develop the jump shots of Amen and Ausar Thompson?
Recently, we wrote a long-form piece on the Overtime Elite experiment and its future in draft settings. The 2024 draft cycle will be a major one for the OTE program with so many top prospects heading down to their headquarters in Atlanta to train. The 2023 class has a few prospects, with Jaylen Martin and Jazian Gortman showing enough potential to be on draft radars. But the crowned jewels are the Thompson twins: Amen and Ausar.
Both are projected anywhere from the top five of the draft to the middle parts of the first round. As prospects, they have clear athletic upside as freak leapers, solid passers and big bodies on the wing. But both have clear flaws as prospects, mainly their shooting.
There’s a lot of responsibility on the OTE program, not just to grow their brand and level of competition, but to help their players improve within. If the Thompsons can show growth as shooters this year, OTE will emerge not just as a viable alternative to college in terms of exposure but development. Basketball needs such an alternative.
2. How does Jon Scheyer balance frontcourt minutes between Kyle Filipowski, Dereck Lively, and Mark Mitchell?
Despite the retirement of arguably the greatest college basketball coach of all time, the Duke Blue Devils are not taking a step backward in the talent department. New head coach Jon Scheyer has an embarrassment of riches with the top recruiting class in the nation, featuring three fantastic frontcourt producers.
All three new freshmen — Kyle Filipowski of Wilbraham-Monson, Dereck Lively from Westtown, and Mark Mitchell from Sunrise Christian — have desires and hopes to be one-and-done candidates. Yet none of them are clean fits to play the 3 in college basketball, meaning the minutes sharing between them in the frontcourt will likely play a role in determining who has the strongest case to go highest in the draft.
All three have their clear strengths and flaws. Lively is the best defender of the bunch, an elite rim protector with size and the only true 5-man out there. While Filipowski can play some small-ball 5, he’ll more closely resemble Matthew Hurt on the defensive end than a true rim protector like Mark Williams. Only against certain opponents will those minutes be truly effective on D.
To us, the leading candidate to be odd man out is Mitchell. Lively is a guy we have a top-ten grade on and love what he brings to the floor defensively. If he’s on the floor, a more natural floor-spacer like Filipowski makes much more sense than a questionable shooter like Mitchell. This is conjecture on our part and is not an indictment of the natural talent any of these three possess. Scheyer has good dudes, he just needs to structure things correctly to get the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.
3. Do we see more success from reclass candidates like GG Jackson and Tyrese Proctor?
The recent trend of prospects reclassing to join college sooner has been met with inconsistent results. Last year, three such elite prospects moved up a year: Shaedon Sharpe, Emoni Bates, and Jalen Duren. Sharpe and Duren were drafted in the lottery; Sharpe got that distinction without even playing a college minute.
Bates, on the other hand, was run out of Memphis and transferred to mid-major Eastern Michigan, where he’ll try his hand in the MAC. Such a disappointing fall could serve as a warning to some prospects not to push their luck and move into the collegiate ranks too early.
This year, a few candidates went the reclass route. Tyrese Proctor decided to move up a year to join the Duke Blue Devils and their star-studded class. Proctor will likely play a facilitating role, but he’ll have to beat out Jeremy Roach, the incumbent starting point guard and heady game manager, before he ends up with creation duties in late-game situations. New coach Jon Scheyer has a crucial decision to make: win games now (and likely lean towards Roach) or prioritize the recruiting relationships (by letting Proctor show out, thus entrenching his Duke team as a location for one-and-done prospects to prioritize).
Ugonna Kingsley Onyenso moved up a class to join the Kentucky Wildcats, a team with an already deep roster and a bonafide Naismith POY candidate at the same position in Oscar Tshiebwe. Kingsley may take the year to learn from Tshiebwe and prepare for a major sophomore season. Otherwise, the decision to head to the Wildcats is one that may not yield a lot of return for the 2023 NBA Draft.
GG Jackson is heading to South Carolina to play for new head coach Lamont Paris, and this will be a fascinating scene. Jackson is more athletic and has a much higher ceiling than a guy like Proctor; he’s almost like Shaedon Sharpe in terms of his high school outlook. Yet Jackson isn’t very polished offensively, making him a prospect somewhat in danger of slipping if the numbers don’t go his way. We think both guys end up as lottery picks next year, but there are certain individual hurdles they must clear to get there.
4. Can we preemptively stop the ‘how does he impact winning’ questions about GG Jackson?
Speaking of Jackson, the Gamecocks landed a top recruit but likely won’t see that vault them into the top tier of the SEC. Auburn, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida are all in a tier slightly above where Carolina is roster-wise. Other than GG, the Gamecocks don’t really have a pro prospect for 2023 and lost a lot from last year’s squad.
What we could see is another top-tier talent and one-and-done lock miss the NCAA Tournament. Anthony Edwards, Ben Simmons, and Markelle Fultz all went first overall on poor teams. Darius Garland missed the NCAA Tournament at Vanderbilt. At some point, we have to look at the recent trends and stop asking the silly question of ‘does this prospect impact winning’ simply because he played on a poor college team.
Jackson’s game isn’t built to play a takeover role on a collegiate team. He’s a decent mismatch scorer, but he isn’t polished as a number-one option, has some issues with his handle in tight spaces and is more of an athletic transition player than a true half-court savant. Holding South Carolina’s offensive struggles (or overall struggles) against him doesn’t make much sense to me. We should judge Jackson based on the film he shows and his individual potential, not based on his team’s success.
Now we jump into a few quick hitters…
5. Does Terquavion Smith see a spike in his draft stock?
Last year, Terquavion was one of our favorite prospects. He played really well at the NBA Draft Combine (heck, he was one of the few guys to actually play) and came away with top 20 buzz in many circles. He chose to go back to school because, frankly, he really likes NC State, and loyalty/ competitiveness are two major parts of his appeal. This class is a little deeper than last year’s, so there’s a chance that even strong improvements don’t result in a major leap up draft boards for Terquavion.
6. Which sophomore joins Terquavion and takes a giant leap forward?
A year ago, Jaden Ivey, Keegan Murray, Johnny Davis, and Bennedict Mathurin all made sophomore leaps to become lottery picks. The opportunity may not be there for multiple guys to jump into the top ten, but as we’ve written before, there are plenty of candidates to move well into the first round.
Creighton’s Arthur Kaluma and Stanford’s Harrison Ingram are two forwards with major upside, and Dayton big man DaRon Holmes is a sleeper first-rounder. Point guards Tyrese Hunter and Trey Alexander could also move up boards and solidify themselves as draft favorites. Other outside candidates: Emoni Bates (Eastern Michigan), Daimion Collins (Kentucky), Jaylon Tyson (Texas Tech), Matthew Cleveland (Florida State), and Brandon Murray (Georgetown).
7. Do the Oregon Ducks have too many bigs for Kel’El Ware to shine?
Kel’el Ware. Nate Bittle. N’Faly Dante. All good enough to be on the floor. Bittle is a stretch-5 at 7’0” tall. Dante has a ton of potential as a rim protector. Ware is a legitimate top-10 talent. Complicating matters is the presence of athletic 4-man Quincy Guerrier.
The Ducks are huge. There are only so many minutes to go around. They’ll likely be really good again this year, but it’s a lot of talent overlapping at one or two positions. That could hurt Kel’el Ware’s draft stock the most — he’s incredibly talented and by far has the highest ceiling of any player in that rotation. If he cannot develop enough positive habits and discipline to stay on the floor over all the other options in Oregon, we may see him start to slide a bit in the draft.
8. Do the Baylor Bears have too many good guards?
A little less troubling of a problem: many guards that can play. Freshman Keyonte George isn’t a point guard, but is a confident scorer with the ball in his hands. That limits touches for the other guards — Adam Flagler, LJ Cryer, and Langston Love. To be honest, this is less about having enough touches to go around and more about how the three of them separate themselves. We’ve seen major attributes in all of them that we really like. Cryer and Flagler both averaged over 13 PPG last year and were efficient shooters. Love brings much of that to the table as he recovers from a torn ACL.
George is a streaky isolation scorer; when he gets going, he’s on. How Scott Drew is able to manage the rotation and touches in the moments when Keyonte is going could be the difference in him being a top-five pick and falling to the back-half of the lottery.
9. Will Villanova’s Cam Whitmore crack the top five in the draft?
The changing of the guard from Jay Wright to Kyle Neptune could bring about a few changes to what has long been one of the most dependable development environments in the nation. Whitmore, incredibly athletic with a lot of size and skill, has a shot to be a top-five pick this year, something that hasn’t happened to a Villanova Wildcat since Paul Arizin since 1950.
Yeah… Whitmore is the best freshman pro prospect to ever come through Villanova. He’s a sensational athlete, but we rarely see one-and-done guys go to ‘Nova, and the Big East hasn’t been a standard spot for those players lately. He’ll bring eyeballs there in major ways, while the unknown of his preseason injury and a new coach in Neptune will certainly muddy the waters. Preseason expectations are sky-high.
10. Are on-court offensive restrictions harmful to Kentucky prospects?
Over the last few years, John Calipari has started to pivot towards transfers as opposed to loading up on six freshmen All-Americans every year. Last year’s crew (as well as this year’s) is built around Sahvir Wheeler and Oscar Tshiebwe, two non-shooters who need to be catered to. Tshiebwe is a great finisher around the rim, but playing him with another big kills spacing. Wheeler is a non-shooter and cannot really play off-ball.
The existence of those two as stalwarts in Calipari’s attack, combined with other frontcourt talents like Daimion Collins and Jacob Toppin, really shrinks the floor for the Wildcats. It takes away from the ability to let others play with the ball in their hands since there are so many non-shooters around them. Does that harm Chris Livingston or Cason Wallace as potential one-and-done guys?
Calipari is an elite coach and an even better recruiter. But something about the roster construction and strictly defined offensive roles the last few years is making them a more difficult group to evaluate.
11. Can Houston win a national championship?
Kelvin Sampson transforming the Cougars into a perennial top-five team doesn’t get discussed enough. Now they may have the most talented team they’ve seen under his watch. Two legitimate first-round one-and-done prospects in Jarace Walker and Terrance Arceneaux, a veteran backcourt in Marcus Sasser and Jamal Shead, a defensive glue piece in Tramon Mark, and their stereotypically strong defensive-minded big men.
This team is for real — a legitimate title contender built to win games in March. Going the distance will help attach the ‘winner’ label to guys like Sasser, Walker and Arceneaux, three guys with first-round intrigue and aspirations.
12. Is the rise of Brandon Miller all talk or legitimate?
The rumor mill has been pretty loud this Fall in regard to Alabama freshman Brandon Miller. Every person we’ve talked to around their program or who has seen him play has been incredibly impressed by Miller — not just as a scorer but in the way he handles himself. Miller’s game translates well to being ‘the man’ and having an offense run through him. It sounds likely that he proves this season that he’s capable of winning in that role in college.
As a pro prospect, the jury is still out. We want to see the eye test for a guy like Miller to check on the improved shooting range and defensive acumen. With size, individual scoring, confidence and solid athleticism, he could be the one guy who keeps trending upward and becomes a top-five selection in the 2023 NBA Draft.
13. Will Arkansas roll through the SEC?
Jokingly, Eric Musselman has earned the nickname ‘The Transporter’ for how he continually nails the transfer portal. More names are pouring in: The Mitchell Twins from Rhode Island, Trevon Brazile as a good shot blocker from Missouri… these guys plug the frontcourt gap left behind by Jaylin Williams.
The Muss Bus combined those great additions with three stud freshmen with legitimate first-round or even top-ten potential. Nick Smith (3rd nationally), Anthony Black (18th) and Jordan Walsh (19th) are all 5-star recruits and helped the Razorbacks earn the second-rated incoming class.
What do you get when you combine the second-ranked recruiting class, six total transfers, and a few returning pieces from a Sweet Sixteen run? Perhaps an SEC title and further success in March. Their development as a national powerhouse may be here to stay, though we definitely have questions about their spacing in the half-court.
14. Will any of the highly-touted freshmen struggle?
With COVID serving as a great interruption in the basketball development of high schoolers over the last few years, scouting has become a little bit more difficult than normal. Some athletes struggle to make the transition to college (for a number of reasons) and can really put up difficult first-year campaigns.
Last year, several top-20 prospects had disappointing years, including Patrick Baldwin Jr., Peyton Watson, Caleb Houstan, Emoni Bates, and Daimion Colins. Will there be any freshmen that follow suit?
We wrote earlier this scouting season about a few prospects ranked in the top 20 nationally that we don’t believe are one-and-done candidates, so many of those feel like the choices we would lean on.
Jordan Walsh at Arkansas and Mark Mitchell at Duke are tertiary cogs in star-studded recruiting classes and have the least amount of offensive polish of their groups. Dillon Mitchell is pretty raw skill-wise, and Kyle Filipowski of Duke has a game much more suited for college than the pros.
15. Will there be any unforeseen late-risers to become one-and-done prospects?
Just as there have been top-15 guys that don’t produce well their first year in college, several guys on the tail end of the top 100 find their way into the first round as a one-and-done product. Last year, Blake Wesley (119th on the 24/7 rankings) was drafted in the first round. Jaden Ivey, who went 5th overall after his sophomore year, was ranked 99th in 2020. The point here: the recruit rankings are prone to miss on guys.
There are a few guys outside of the 24/7 top-40 that we are pretty high on. Judah Mintz (60th) going to Syracuse is one guy we think will put up numbers and has the traits to really pop.
We also really like Roddy Gayle (48th) at Ohio State, Desmond Claude (99th) at Xavier, Rodney Rice (102nd) at Virginia Tech, and Daniel Skillings (103rd) at Cincinnati. If you’re looking for a deep sleeper, go watch Kentucky freshman Adou Thiero.
16. Is the transfer portal going to blockade freshman production?
Over the last few years, the explosion of the transfer portal has made college an old man’s game, and the portal is a ‘get rich quick’ scheme for college coaches to exploit. The result: more programs and coaches that traditionally favored bringing in young talent turning towards veteran production.
We saw it last year at Kentucky, where John Calipari preferred Jacob Toppin, Oscar Tshiebwe, and Kellan Grady over the likes of Daimion Collins and Bryce Hopkins. Peyton Watson could barely get off the bench at UCLA, and Emoni Bates at Memphis struggled to crack their veteran rotation.
The point is this: several teams that brought in both freshmen and veterans (Arkansas, Texas, LSU, Ohio State) could be opting to win games with the old heads, thus resulting in fewer minutes for the young guys.
17. Which of the Gonzaga guards step up?
Jalen Suggs and Andrew Nembhard are gone, leaving a void in the backcourt for the perennially elite Gonzaga Bulldogs. Drew Timme and Efton Reid provide a great one-two punch down low, and Julian Strawther is a solid 3-point threat on the wings.
We like both Nolan Hickman and Hunter Sallis, the two leading candidates to split backcourt reps with veteran Rasir Bolton. Hickman is a little bit more of a shooter and natural scorer, while Sallis has a few more lead guard tendencies with a blend of on-ball and off-ball play. Scouts we’ve talked to are split on which Zag takes a big leap forward.
18. Who is this year’s mid-major breakout?
Last year it was Santa Clara’s Jalen Williams. Bones Hyland rose the year before. CJ McCollum and Damian Lillard were breakout guys in the past. There seems to be a pathway for mid-major guards to rack up a high usage, and therefore generate trust in their game based on the volume they’re given.
We’ll give two candidates to watch: Zach Hicks at Temple and Isaiah Stevens from Colorado State. Stevens is a polished, well-rounded point guard that has played three years in college already. He may be a tad undersized and too old to be on many first-round radars, but he can shoot (career 39.5% from 3), rarely turns it over (a more than 2:1 A:TO), and will eat up a larger role in the Rams’ offense now that David Roddy is off to the NBA. While an injury will sideline Stevens for the start of the year, we’re big on him as a pro prospect.
Hicks was a prolific shooter as a freshman in the AAC and has reportedly expanded his game heading into his sophomore season. He’s a solid athlete, has good size/ length, and if he can finish consistently will be a well-rounded 3-and-D type of prospect moving forward.
19. Can two high-feel non-shooters coexist in the same offense?
Year three of the G-League Ignite experiment brings two elite talents to the table with clear lottery potential: Scoot Henderson and Sidy Cissoko. Henderson, a projected top-two pick by most media outlets, played with the Ignite last year and showed clearly dominant stretches. He’s fantastic in ball screens, can score and pass, and is an elite NBA athlete.
He only shot 25% from 3.
Add in Cissoko, the international point wing with great feel as a passer but just as putrid shooting splits, and the Ignite may be facing a spacing crunch. They have options in the frontcourt to invert their spacing with shooters (in theory) such as Leonard Miller and Efe Abogidi, but it’s hard to depend upon those teenagers to be lethal enough spacing threats around such high-feel passers. We wonder if the floor shrinkage will hurt either or both in terms of draft stock.
20. Do any of the elite collegiate bigs prove themselves as true NBA prospects?
There’s little doubt that college basketball is chocked full of dominant big men. The game is still post-up friendly and lets these guys play a deliberate style inside. We can think of nearly a dozen fantastic upperclassmen bigs who spend most of their time inside of 15 feet and could become All-Americans this year.
Oscar Tshiebwe, Kentucky
Drew Timme, Gonzaga
Armando Bacot, North Carolina
Hunter Dickinson, Michigan
Trayce Jackson-Davis, Indiana
Zach Edey, Purdue
Adama Sanogo, Connecticut
Ryan Kalkbrenner, Creighton
Colin Castleton, Florida
Despite their collegiate success, it’s hard to envision these guys becoming first-round picks. Very few bigs who are 20 years or older get drafted in the first. Perhaps one or two of these guys show enough dominant production or a new skill set that intrigues a franchise enough to take them earlier in the first.
21. Who is this year’s sleeper team from a major conference?
It seems like an annual tradition at this point for one team to come out of nowhere to make the NCAA Tournament. Last year, Iowa State received an at-large berth under first-year head coach TJ Otzelberger. Two years ago, Georgetown and Oregon State ran through their conference tournaments to punch a ticket.
Often, these ascents are fueled by draft prospects who fly under the radar during the preseason process. The Cyclones had Tyrese Hunter (now at Texas), the Beavers a solid guard in Ethan Thompson (now in the G-League), and in 2019, Nickiel Alexander-Walker and Justin Robinson carried Virginia Tech as high as ninth in the nation.
Of course, predicting a surprise is somewhat futile by nature — if we saw it coming, it wouldn’t be a surprise. So we’ll give two answers: one team that can finish the year ranked in the top ten not currently slotted there and one that doesn’t get enough love as an NCAA Tournament hopeful.
We see Connecticut as possessing top-ten potential. Hurley can coach his ass off, they have experience, size at every position, and a legitimate inside presence in Adama Sanogo. Jordan Hawkins is a breakout candidate, Tristen Newton was a great addition on the transfer portal, and Andre Jackson is a super athlete who thrives in transition. If their guards take care of the ball, they’ll be really good.
22. Will there be an international prospect taken in the lottery other than Victor Wembanyama?
Related to this thought is another important question: who is the best international prospect in the 2023 draft class outside of Victor? The likes of Tyrese Proctor (Australia) and Baba Miller (Spain) are playing in college next year, so it’s hard to know whether we should count them as true international prospects. Both have lottery potential and are very young while already putting together proven track records.
Other names we’re watching are Sidy Cissoko (G-League Ignite), James Nnaji (Barcelona), Nikola Djurisic (Mega), and even Rayan Rupert (NZ Breakers). Djurisic has our top spot preseason, but the athleticism of every other prospect could cause him to get passed by.
Why is this such a pertinent question?
23. Will the 2023 draft class be the most loaded in recent memory?
It wasn’t too long ago that we were discussing the transcendent nature of the 2021 class. The top six in that class by our rankings (Cade Cunningham, Jalen Green, Jalen Suggs, Scottie Barnes, Evan Mobley, and Jonathan Kuminga) were all capable of going first overall in other drafts. They’ve lived up to the hype, as plenty of others (Josh Giddey, Franz Wagner, Davion Mitchell, Alperen Sengun, Herb Jones) are making immediate impacts.
Somehow, the 2023 class feels more chocked full of one-and-done talent. The big names at the top of Victor and Scoot stand slightly above the rest at the outset of the season. Scorers like Dariq Whitehead, Keyonte George, Nick Smith, and Amari Bailey all have hopes to go in the top ten. Big men Kel’el Ware and Dereck Lively are massive and show the perfect traits for the modern NBA game. Cam Whitmore, Amen Thompson, Ausar Thompson and GG Jackson are all elite, top-shelf athletes with enough skill to put a major impact on a game. Don’t sleep on Arkansas’ Anthony Black as a top-ten prospect, either.
The point is, this may be a year where a team picking in the 10-13 range ends up with a guy that could have gone fourth or fifth just a year ago. That’s a wild swing, and shows why so many teams are stockpiling picks in 2023: it’s not just about vying for Victor at the number-one spot. Getting multiple lottery picks can yield a superstar pairing to propel a franchise deep into the future.