Not one sure thing in the 2026 NBA draft
It's so hard to succeed in today's NBA
DAVID: On Saturday night, my wife was visiting my daughter in DC. I thought I would put basketball aside for a few hours and have a cocktail. I turned on the World Cup.
And then a basketball writer texted, and I ended up talking to him for an hour and a half about this draft.
Mostly what I told him is that “you guys are out of your minds” if you think all these guys in this year’s draft are ready to be core players for NBA teams. I just don’t see it.
HENRY: Steve Magness just published a story, based on academic research from across sports. The takeaway is that every sport is terrible at talent identification. In one study, less than one percent of the elite prospects in German youth soccer even became professionals.
With the draft Tuesday and Wednesday, and Jay Bilas warming up his voice to tell us how incredible all of these prospects are, it’s probably a good time to bring up this story we published in May, looking at decades of data, showing that only six percent of draft picks become good players for the team that drafts them. Six percent.
DAVID: You did that incredible research and it won’t be any part of the ESPN broadcast, that’s for sure. They’ll talk about every pick like he’s the guy to save a franchise.
I just went through every pick from 2020 through 2024. That’s 150 first-round picks.
First question: did they make an impact for more than a month or two for the team that drafted them? The obvious choices are Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball (2020); Cade Cunningham (2021) and Stephon Castle (2024). Throw in guys like Onyeka Okongwu (2020) and Anthony Black (2023) who clearly are difference makers for the teams that drafted them or traded for them on draft night.
How many of that 150 total made the “good list”? 46.
In total, less than a third of those first rounders have proved, on their original team, that they belong. For every Franz Wagner and Alperen Şengün we had a Patrick Williams or Kai Jones.
Then there’s a group of players who found themselves on a second team. All-Star Deni Avidja, Eastern Conference champion and hero Aaron Nesmith, and most recently, Thunder sparkplug Jared McCain. Absolutely zero Wizards, Celtics, or Sixers fans were excited their team drafted those guys on their draft nights knowing they would be stars, starters, or clutch bucket getters for other teams. Some players, like Bennedict Mathurin and Obi Toppin, both appear to be long-term players, it’s just that neither of them were deemed to be important enough to keep despite being lottery picks on successful teams.
To my eyes, plus solid metrics, 70 of them have yet to prove they are going to make any difference, or worse, they are complete failures to this point. From Josh Primo and Jeremy Sochan (no, the Spurs are not perfect) to Johnny Davis and Killian Hayes, lottery picks and first rounders drafted after the top 14, nearly half of the top 150 picks the past five drafts excluding the most recent one (judging rookies should never come too harshly), are still question marks, at best. So, 46 “good to go” guys plus those 70 leaves us 34 players we still are not sure about. Are you sure Shaedon Sharpe is going to make it as a key rotation player for a good team? I’m not, so he’s in this “TBD” list (though I put Scoot Henderson in the good to go group thanks to his more consistent progress). Jarace Walker showed a huge jump in 2026, his third season, on a tanking team. TBD. Same as Jett Howard, who’s been bad for most of two seasons but his shot can be a lifesaver in Orlando (though his defense is a worry)--it’s too early to make a call.
We are talking about just less than a third of first-round picks stand to make a difference within four years. If you keep this in the front of your mind while you watch the draft, then you’ll start to feel more like I do watching. By these odds, maybe ten first-rounders will succeed for the team that drafts them. Can you imagine ESPN selling that reality?
HENRY: You and I have been talking about basketball for decades, and there have been hundreds of times when everyone is all excited about … some prospect like AJ Dybantsa … and in a way that feels blasphemous to the bigger world of basketball commentary which is already projecting All-Star games, you often add something along the lines of “he might make it.”
