Here’s an NBA Draft strategy that should provide winning results

In 2024, the NBA Draft is still a crapshoot.

Transitioning from college, the G League or international ball is brutally difficult, and aside from the occasional LeBron James or Victor Wembanyama, the “sure thing” prospect doesn’t exist. 

Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker were penciled in as the next faces of the NBA after their 1-2 selection in the first round in 2014, while Anthony Edwards was panned as a relatively weak top pick in 2020. Now, Edwards is on the cusp of superstardom with the T-Wolves and neither Wiggins (Golden State) nor Parker (Cleveland) are on his level.

The draft is almost 75 years old, and there’s still no exact science to it. Still, selecting based primarily on talent — as opposed to just a stellar college resume — remains the best draft route a team can take, especially if that team is drafting in the latter half of the first round. 

Production in college is an added benefit, but outside of the lottery, taking a player with NBA-level talent has proved to be successful. The best place to find that talent is often on the list of top high school recruits from the year prior. If those guys are still available as the draft ticks into the 20s and 30s, then something went wrong during their single year in college. 

That makes sense, because like the transition from college to the NBA, the transition from high school to college is a massive, too. Players move out of their hometowns and experience life on their own for the first time while simultaneously being expected to perform at a high level on the court.

Sometimes it doesn’t work.

Numerous things could have gone wrong in that one year. Maybe the player attended a school where he got stuck behind a four-year star. Maybe he and the head coach didn’t see eye-to-eye, maybe an injury sidelined him for most of a season or perhaps his work ethic wasn’t up to the standard of a blueblood program. 

Maybe he was just bad when he played. 

Seldom is the player free of fault in these situations, so NBA teams shouldn’t ignore these potential red flags. But these reasons (usually) shouldn’t dissuade them from taking a hyper-skilled player in the later stages of the draft.

Peyton Watson was the 12th-ranked player in ESPN’s 2021 Top 100 high school basketball rankings, a five-star recruit behind Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren and Jabari Smith, all now rising stars in the NBA. 

Watson committed to UCLA, where he was, bluntly, not good. In 12.7 minutes per game, he averaged 3.3 points, 2.9 rebounds and shot 32.2% from the field. When he played, he didn’t produce much for the Bruins and this sour year tanked his NBA Draft prospects.

Still, the Nuggets took him in the first round. Now he’s a star defender and a vital part of Denver’s future.

Jalen Johnson was the 13th-ranked player in the 2020 version of those rankings. Though his time at Duke was objectively more successful than Watson’s time at UCLA — Johnson averaged 11.2 points and 6.1 rebounds as a Blue Devil — he wasn’t the dominant force that a consensus five-star recruit is supposed to be, causing Johnson to slip down draft boards too. 

Atlanta picked Johnson 20th and he quickly became a building block next to Trae Young, averaging 16 points and 8.7 rebounds in 2023-24.

Shaedon Sharpe was the third-ranked player in the class of 2021 and committed to Kentucky, where he never stepped on the court for reasons that still aren’t fully clear. But his talent was so undeniable that Portland took him in the lottery (seventh overall), and now he’s the most important piece in the Trail Blazers’ rebuild, flashing high-level creation ability his rookie season.

This isn’t a foolproof plan.

Sometimes a player struggles in college for legitimate reasons and the red flags are waving so much that they follow the player to the NBA. Sometimes taking the four-year, winning player is a safer pick — see Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks — and that strategy likely results in finding a solid NBA player more times than the big swing on an ultra-talented player will. 

But a team drafting in the late first round probably already has plenty of talented players on its roster, so why not swing for the fences? It’s not a sure thing, but when high-level talent is available to take, teams should be willing to ignore a bad college year and take the talent.