NBA AM: How Mock Drafts Have Changed

How the Draft Picture Has Changed

The earliest mock drafts are often released almost two full years before the actual draft takes place. Considering how many of each year’s top prospects are one-and-done studs, these early mocks come out when the most notable players are still seniors in high school, which obviously leads to some early speculation that looks silly 18-24 months later when real life catches up to the some of the guesswork by even the business’ most esteemed draft experts.

While we here at Basketball Insiders publish our fair share of mocks over the course of the year, the good people at DraftExpress typically are the first to publish any sort of in-depth mock draft, and their first shot at the 2016 NBA Draft hit the web for the first time in September of 2014. Steve Kyler’s mock draft on-site here came out just this past October, about a month before the NCAA regular season got underway and any of these guys had played a single game.

Both sites got a lot of things right, but as is the case with these sorts of super-early predictions, a lot has changed.

March Madness is just around the corner, and as we all know there’s a lot that can happen both there and at that NBA Draft Combine later this spring that can change teams’ minds. But at this point, while the NCAA regular season heads toward its conclusion, we’re starting to get a sense of how the draft picture is going to shape out within a certain margin of error.

Seeing that picture round out makes it all the more interesting to have a gander at those earlier mock drafts that, while spot-on in regard to certain prospects, completely missed the boat on some others. The following is a look at the biggest changes between what experts thought would happen with this draft class and what actually appears to be shaping up a few months away from the draft itself:

Skal Labissiere’s Draft Stock Tumbles

Leading up to the 2015-16 college basketball season, there was an expectation that top prospects Ben Simmons and Labissiere would create considerable headaches for whatever NBA GM ended up with the top pick in this upcoming draft because both were viewed as elite, can’t-miss prospects. Now, all these months later, Simmons is being compared to LeBron James and Labissiere looks like he’ll be lucky to even be selected in the lottery.

Already 7’0 and unbelievably athletic, Labissiere has been muscled around all season as a member of the Kentucky Wildcats, and his poor rebounding numbers are a testament to his inability to establish himself as a presence in the paint. His numbers are even worse against top-50 teams than they are against the worse ones, and while he’s showed more than enough promise in terms of his defensive efficiency, he looks absolutely lost on offense more often than not. His instincts on that end are, so far, not very good.

Assuming he still declares for the draft this year (and he probably will), Labissiere is still a likely first-round pick based on athleticism and potential alone, but his actual play this year has been far from elite, and that’s not just because he plays for a loaded Kentucky team.

Brandon Ingram Establishes Himself as No. 2

While Ingram has been considered a top-five pick in this upcoming draft pretty much every step of the way, he has legitimately established himself as the second-best player in this draft, and there are some experts starting to wonder whether he should actually be getting more consideration as the No. 1 overall selection ahead of Simmons.

As ESPN’s Kevin Pelton points out, Ingram actually had a higher wins above replacement player projection for part of this season, and his skill set as a huge 6’10 shooter with range makes him an invaluable asset in today’s NBA. He’s also almost a year younger than Simmons (and several other prospects in this class), potentially giving him more time to develop and more elite years in the league.

But frankly, no one is taking Ingram over Simmons, despite the flashes of top-pick potential this year, but it’s also starting to look like nobody is taking anybody over Ingram at No. 2. At this point, that looks like his floor in the 2016 NBA Draft.

Malik Newman Goes From Top-5 to Second Round

Coming out of high school, Newman was one of the top five recruits of his class, which meant that the slashing scorer entered Mississippi State with big dreams of becoming a top-five draft selection the following June. A combination of inefficiency on offense and a few nagging injuries, however, has started to drop him out of first-round consideration, making it more likely that he’ll return to college for a sophomore year than accept such an uncertain NBA fate.

Newman is a scorer, but he just hasn’t shown the ability to create at the college level. That’s the kind of thing that worries NBA scouts and pushes a draft stock downward. Currently fighting a nagging back injury, Newman hasn’t even been given much of an opportunity to turn things around for himself. One thing’s for certain: he might not even be selected in the first-round this year, let alone the top five, so an extra year of seasoning could be in the books for him.

Buddy Hield’s Meteoric Rise

One thing nobody will argue with: Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield is one of the most entertaining players in college basketball right now. As a 6’4 senior, he doesn’t offer quite the same promise as some of the other players being considered around the 10-15 pick range in the draft, but he is having one of the more notable out-of-nowhere seasons in college basketball right now and generating a lot of buzz for himself in the process.

No mock draft from a year or two ago featured Hield anywhere on it unless it was deep into the second round, but now he’s shooting threes at an elite clip, which is a perfect skill to develop ahead of entering a league where few things are valued more.

Hield works his butt off and has proven his maturity and leadership over the course of this season in Oklahoma. That, combined with his actual numbers, have made him an intriguing player for middle-to-late lottery teams in need of a shooter. Nobody has risen more in the last six months than Hield.

Buying Into the Luwawu Hype

Outside of Dragan Bender, who generally has been labeled the top Euro player in this draft class, French prospect Timothe Luwawu has come into his own as one of the most intriguing international kids available this year. Currently playing for Mega Leks in Serbia, the same team that brought up Nikola Jokic, Luwawu has transformed into the sort of two-way wing that NBA teams salivate over. He’s tall (6’7) with a massive wingspan (6’11) and he offers both athleticism and shooting ability, according to DX’s Jonathan Givony. Defensively, he can guard four positions well and has the sort of quick hands that help make the Mega Leks defense so formidable.

He’s 20 years old and didn’t gain much traction with scouts a year ago when he first entered his name for draft consideration. His move to the Adriatic League this season has massively improved his stock, though, which is why it looks like he could be a first-round pick (and maybe even a lottery selection).

Calming Down on Diallo

Because of some questions about his high school transcript, Kansas freshman Cheick Diallo was forced to sit out the first five games of this season, which turned out to be a huge problem for a really talented kid that just hasn’t been able to carve out a role for himself on Bill Self’s loaded Jayhawks roster since.

Diallo, the former No. 7 overall prospect in the country, is long, quick and talented, especially defensively. But he hasn’t gotten the playing time at Kansas to help him stand out as a potential lottery pick, playing more than 20 minutes just once this season. Early mock drafts had him as a borderline lottery pick or better, but now he’s fallen into the late first round or early second round, with his seemingly limitless potential still serving as his strongest selling point.

Perry Ellis (29+ MPG) graduates this year, so minutes are in theory opening up for the Kansas frontcourt moving forward. Another year at school might be the best bet for Diallo at this point, because he still has a ton to prove before teams consider him as a sure-thing first-round selection, let alone a lottery possibility.

Kentucky Proves Fatal for Isaiah Briscoe

When Isaiah Briscoe, a former McDonald’s All-American with charisma for days, made the decision to attend the University of Kentucky, he did so with the understanding that UK would be the machine that catapulted him into the first-round of the NBA draft after just one season in the NCAA.

He probably thought at the time of declaring that he’d prove valuable enough in a crowded point guard rotation to get the minutes he needed to make his point, but thanks to massive years from Tyler Ulis and Jamal Murray, that just hasn’t been the case. Scouts can forgive a lot in terms of playing time and production when it comes to Kentucky players, but Briscoe will have a big decision to make this spring. Should he declare despite a less-than-stellar freshman year or come back next season when those point guard minutes should be all his?

Once a sure-thing mid-first rounder, Briscoe now looks like a second-round pick with a tough decision to make about his future.

*****

By no means does any of this mean that the draft picture is settled. A strong tournament or impressive combine showing could turn things around for a few of these bubble guys, but the point is that from the time we all start looking at mock drafts to the time that the mock drafts actually start carrying some credence, a lot can happen. Plenty of things change even after these guys are ranked appropriately and drafted onto NBA teams. Nothing is a given in this league, obviously, but it never stops being interesting watching how expectations shift and players respond.