Every year, the upcoming NBA draft class gets hyped like it’s a new season of The Bachelor. The taglines are more or less the same; just replace the words “shocking,” “intense,” and “drama” with “loaded,” “deeper,” and “upside.” Sometimes the hype is real. It’s usually not. It’s too early at this point to make strong declarations when prospects haven’t logged a single second in college basketball.
However, as we look ahead to the 2018 draft, we do know one thing: Its allure is completely different than that of the draft we witnessed in June. The class won’t have the same depth featured in the 2017 draft, which had a loaded lottery and mid-to-late first-round talent deep into the middle of the second round. Right now, 2018 is looking relatively shallow. But it’s also looking enormous. Whereas the 2017 draft was flooded with guards in the lottery, 2018 will feature a glut of bigs—DeAndre Ayton and Mohamed Bamba headline the more traditional bigs, while Michael Porter Jr. brings a 6-foot-10 size at forward. If the NCAA lets 6-foot-11 high school star Marvin Bagley reclassify and play college ball this year (which would make him draft eligible in 2018), the hype will reach a boiling point.
We’ve had only one draft so far this decade that was defined by its size—2015, which included Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis, and Myles Turner. In a league that’s getting smaller and faster, bigs have been forced to diversify their games or perish. Ayton, Bamba, Bagley, and Porter are all extensions of the futuristic archetypes set by that Class of 2015; they are the embodiment of the league’s natural progression. Toss in Slovenian prospect Luka Doncic, a 6-foot-8 multipurpose playmaker, and it’s clear the future has been absorbed and adapted. Over the past three years, the NBA has made it clear that players need versatile traits to thrive in the future. The next generation has clearly been paying attention.
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Originally Posted by Mythrol
