2018 NBA Draft: Big Board
This Big Board reflects a projection of the long term NBA careers of this year’s entrants. I place significant emphasis on stylistic fit in the modern NBA, and thus, heavy deference is given to shooting, playmaking ability, perimeter defense, and positional versatility. Furthermore, there is a surplus of centers in today’s league and plenty of value for low cost in the marketplace. The glut of big men requires that a highly-drafted center must have a sizable impact that far outpaces the quality of a replacement-level or rotational big, or one sacrifices the value of their lottery pick. In more pragmatic terms, there is a large quantity of similarly skilled bigs in the league and fewer outliers. On the wing and in the ball handler spots, the skill level is distributed less evenly. Drafting near the top gives teams a higher chance to find a player on the upper end of that skill distribution. Drafting a big in that spot carries greater risk due to the higher likelihood that he will not exceed the mean skill level.
Despite the vast array of skilled big men in today’s NBA, the 2018 NBA Draft is one characterized by wing depth as well as talented centers that vary wildly by physical maturity and potential outcomes. The field is 30+ players deep, and talent abounds. There will be opportunities to find rotation-level players at minimum in the 2nd round. It is possible that there are as many as five franchise centers in the lottery, and there is a diverse array of fascinating prospects beyond the consensus top-five bigs. Sorting these big men and the order in which they are drafted will likely be the story of the Draft, and will determine the manner in which the other selections shake out.
The most interesting and difficult aspect of projecting this draft is weighing upside versus safety. Many of the bigs as well as some of the wings have high floors, but a group of the guards and wings have higher ceilings than those high-floor prospects. Weighing the gravity of those floors against the likelihood and importance of those ceilings is the crux of the draft. The projections below are done in a vacuum. Some teams are more risk averse and would do better to select a high-floor player, while others may need a spark to sell tickets or invigorate their fan base and may be more prone to drafting a riskier player with a high ceiling. I attempt to outline these projections in each scouting report.
On a formatting note, I have tiered the big board below for the purpose of highlighting where separations exist between talent. There are times where the difference between number 4 and 5 or the difference between 13 and 14 is larger than the difference between 5 and 6 and so on. Tiering the board helps differentiate these separations. Furthermore, this document was quite long and caused computers to slow down when pulled up on one page, so I published 30 individual scouting reports which can be accessed by clicking the player’s name.
Big Board (Click hyperlink in player’s name for full scouting report)
Tier 1
Tier 2
3. Trae Young
Tier 3
Tier 4
7. Zhaire Smith
10. Miles Bridges
Tier 5
14. Kevin Huerter
15. Elie Okobo
16. Lonnie Walker IV
17. Josh Okogie
18. Troy Brown Jr.
19. Robert Williams
20. Kevin Knox
Tier 6
21. Landry Shamet
22. Jacob Evans
23. Keita Bates-Diop
Tier 7
25. Collin Sexton
26. Kenrich Williams
27. Jevon Carter
Tier 8
28. Melvin Frazier
29. Donte DiVincenzo
Honorable Mention (in order): Jarred Vanderbilt, Justin Jackson, Khyri Thomas, Bruce Brown, Aaron Holiday, Gary Clark, Dzanan Musa, Shake Milton, Rawle Alkins, Jalen Brunson, Anfernee Simons, Grayson Allen, Gary Trent Jr., Jarrett Culver, Dakota Mathias
