The draft isn’t about being right

And the success of this class will show what really matters

BY DAVID THORPE

ADEK BERRY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

I’ve put 30 years into evaluating talent and helping NBA players reach their full potential as one of the few experts in a growing field. As a career coach and player-development specialist, it’s important for me to view players objectively, without rose-colored glasses.

The myth of the NBA draft is that each year mostly bad teams get the opportunity to select a transformational player. Ownership and team marketing firms really sell that idea like it’s a ticket to Disney World. But it’s far more of a crap shoot. 

In fact, you could put the top-50 names from this year’s draft on the wall and start chucking darts.

At minimum, 15 will become solid NBA players. History suggests at least one future All-Star or even an All-NBA player will come from this draft. At this point, however, no one strikes me as a can’t-miss talent.

College coaches I greatly respect rave about Kentucky guard Reed Sheppard’s passing and shooting. I know about the intriguing talents of UCLA’s Adam Bona. Isaiah Collier of USC stands out to many as the best point-guard prospect in the draft—or did prior to playing his first college game. They’re all among the players with a chance to become solid NBA players, even starters, maybe stars.

But many players in this draft will fall short of projections because their NBA teams lack a sense of urgency when it comes to player development. The prospects themselves are too young to manage those duties on their own.

I’ve long told Henry Abbott that certain prospects will be outstanding anywhere—that their talent supersedes everything. That’s LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, Zion Williamson, Joel Embiid. But I didn’t see Tim Duncan or Kawhi Leonard the same way. Chet Holmgren is a safe bet to duplicate this year’s numbers on a different team, but I don’t think Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was a lock to reach his heights with a different franchise. 

In other words, thinking that everything hinges on making the “right” pick is the wrong approach. Those darts you threw? The winners hit players drafted by teams with the best player-development programs (or those with parallel support systems). 

Ranking NBA teams by their player-development programs would probably tell us which teams we’d be declaring winners of this draft five years from now.