Dariq Whitehead: 2023 NBA Draft Scouting Report
Injuries robbed Whitehead of a great freshman season. Can he regain his form from high school, and how do those injuries complicate his projectability as a prospect?
What a difference a year can make.
Coming into this season, Dariq Whitehead was my top college basketball prospect for the 2023 NBA Draft and a guy I saw as a top-five pick. The confidence and mental approach he had in high school, combined with real size at 6’6” and three-level scoring flashes, felt so legitimate and tantalizing. If he got outside of Montverde, where he shared the floor with other great high school players, his role could expand and Whitehead could the best overall scorer in this class, I surmised.
Unfortunately, nearly a year later and a bumpy path has knocked that cart off the road. Whitehead suffered a foot fracture in August while working out for the Blue Devils, a fracture that required surgery. He missed a major portion of the pre-season process and came back in November looking like a shell of himself athletically. He couldn’t separate off the bounce, wasn’t shifty when creating his own shot, looked a little top-heavy with his frame, and couldn’t stay on the floor for long stretches.
Whitehead’s freshman season got better. He pushed through, despite keeping his minutes somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes a night. His role was almost entirely as a spot-up shooter, with occasional bursts of self-creation or mid-range pull-ups. He was blending into a switching scheme at Duke that encouraged him to pass off assignments as soon as he would get driven past. In essence, everyone tried to manage just enough so that Whitehead could make it through the year with as much functionality as possible.
Once the year wrapped up, Whitehead went under the knife again, opting for a second surgery on his foot. Two procedures on the same foot merely months apart cannot be too comforting for NBA teams, especially knowing that will take him out of pre-draft workouts to see them with their own eyes. Yet there is a silver lining, one that many online are pointing out. The need for an additional procedure validates what many have known throughout the year: we haven’t seen a healthy Whitehead yet.
As far as draft stock goes, Dariq will be one of the most volatile and difficult to predict. His high school tape is excellent and, if you believe he can and will regain that form, should make him a lottery pick on its own. The college tape and injury concerns could push Dariq all the way down to the tail end of the first round.
For our scouting report, I tried to look into his performances at both levels. Combining the upside shown in high school with the reality of his performance at Duke is difficult, but necessary to fully contextualize what we’ve gotten out of Whitehead thus far.
Standing 6’6”, athleticism runs in Whitehead’s family. His older brother, Tahir Whitehead, is an NFL linebacker, and his uncle Willie Whitehead also played in the NFL. The athleticism that Dariq showed this year (understandable hampered by his foot) was not up to par with NBA standards. While I’m unsure of where to come down on how much his injury should impact his NBA draft stock, a re-watch of his high school tape actually revealed a few more concerns about Whitehead’s rim pressure and athletic burst than I originally envisioned. That realization has been a tough one to overcome.