first post in a long while, but with how interesting this draft class is shaping out at the top, definitely worth a write-up. we're mainly going to talk about Darryn Peterson, AJ Dybantsa, and Cam Boozer, unsurprisingly. grab your popcorn.

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Darryn Peterson: the ultimate question is "at what point?"

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As of this post, January 24, Darryn Peterson is still my number one overall prospect. Not by much, I'll say. The draft community is currently going through one of the more dramatic swings as far as his reputation goes. I should start by saying that generally, with how elite this class has been, at no point was it ever crazy to have AJD or Boozer ranked over Darryn. That was and still is a highly vindicated opinion. I'm mainly writing this though to give some pushback on the recent developments on Darryn's status with draft scouts. It's not that I don't share the same concerns, but ultimately I still don't think they outweigh the reasons for a team to draft him first overall. I don't need to explain the Darryn Peterson issue, first because everyone sees what's going on, and second because despite seeing it, nobody can offer a concrete explanation as to what exactly is going on with him. So just to start, it seems reasonable for me to talk about him as a basketball player first and foremost.

I won't generalize what specific criticisms people are starting to have of his skill, but I do think they're being misattributed to the whole availability problem. For the sake of this post, let's just crudely characterize those concerns as, "Making shots is not enough for me at this point." It feels like these concerns are turning into an argument that whatever is going on with him behind the scenes is what's stopping him from doing anything other than shoot the ball. I don't like this narrative. Darryn Peterson was a point guard in high school, and currently within the Jayhawks scheme, he straight up isn't a PG anymore. And the incredible thing is that in his new role as a pure SG, he's still making the right decisions and the right plays most of the time he has the ball. He almost has the ability to put the game in slow motion. His understanding and utilization of his shotmaking ability and athleticism are elite. As soon as the ball is in his hands he decides if he's gonna shoot, make a simple one-away pass, or drive. If he drives and creates a look at the rim, he'll shoot, and if he doesn't, he'll pass, stay active off the ball and try to get into another good position. So many guard prospects overthink and get themselves in trouble. Darryn's plain and simple ability to comfortably score is just phenomenal. So now the question is, how much value is Darryn creating with this workload?

As of right now, Darryn has the 14th highest BPM of any freshman in the Torvik era, EVER. And he's doing it in HALF the minutes the other guys on that list did it, on a program that is pretty easily in the bottom-third of teams on that list. (By this I mean, for example, Darryn's Kansas team is much worse than Flagg's Duke team.) His TS% is also second highest among any guard on that list, with the exception of one Kingston Flemings, who is a total stud, but not the focus of today's post. So again, even overlooking that DP's been pretty severely separated from his natural PG role, he's still impacting the game on an undeniable level, and doing so almost effortlessly. And in the limited high leverage minutes he's played, he's also shown the ability to take over the game, like against Texas Tech. So everybody knows what the sell is on Peterson as a player, now it's time to compare it up against the concerns about his availability.

We can talk about injury concerns first. It is no secret that he's been nursing some sort of hamstring injury over the course of the year. The question is how serious is it, and how much of what we know is smoke? His camp has an obvious interest in keeping injury news under wraps. I won't downplay the significance of a potential hamstring injury. Of the "mild" injuries an athletic guard can have, hamstring is up there with the scariest of them. But if it was that bad, I think he'd be playing way way less. As much noise as we make about it, he only has 1 game under 20 minutes played. And it goes both ways because that level of injury is only concerning because how badly it can destroy a player. So to me, the idea that he's hiding a secretly crippling injury while still playing the amounts he is, is hard for me to take at face value. Again, I'm not saying he's perfectly healthy. He clearly is not. But looking at NBA draft history, and thinking about how a reasonable NBA team would draft, I don't think I could pass up on his elite talent because of this.

So now we move onto the alternative theory, which is that he's not playing due to some sort of character issue or other personal reason. Before we even get into some of the speculation here, drafting based on character is an even more difficult sell. Things would have to be REALLY bad on that end for an NBA team to not pick a guy of his level first overall because of it. And it would by far be one of the most insane cases of that happening. The most recent and most legitimate instance of that would be Cam Whitmore falling as far as he did in his draft, and he is a decent chunk below Darryn's overall prospect value. Now we've heard a number of random guesses: a day or two ago Stephen A Smith pedaled some rumor that it had to do with him not getting enough NIL money. Others have said he just doesn't get along with his coaches. There has been endless gossip about whatever it might be. But worse prospects have had more serious character issues that did not deter teams from taking them. Even among active NBA players, it's just not that common for teams to get pushed over about that kind of thing- at least not without opposing leverage, something NBA players have that prospects simply do not. We've seen prospects entangled in extreme legal troubles, tell teams not to draft them, and more without it dissuading teams.

I always need to clarify this in any conversation I have about Darryn, I'm NOT saying I'm not concerned. It is a problem. It gives me pause every time I watch him play, and there are still several months of the draft cycle left, which could potentially see this situation getting even worse. I just don't think right now that an NBA team should, or even would, pass up on him solely for what we've seen so far. If the question is, “at what point do you pass on him,” my answer is Not Here. The last thing I'd mention is that whether or not he does go first overall is not going to give us an answer to any of this. With the 3 dudes at the top of this class, NBA teams are sure to have varying opinions and rankings, so we'll never know for sure on that end. This is to credit the other two guys- at any point of the cycle, I could reasonably see an NBA team having basically any permutation of the Big 3.

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AJ Dybantsa: applying himself more and more

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AJ has gotten better every week in my opinion, and I think the theme with his season so far has been proving that his athleticism is being put to use the right way offensively. In a lot of ways, he's bucking the trend for prospects of his type. For a lot of other historical prospects of his size and position, there's a ton of focus on how they're generating looks at the rim. Unassisted finishes at the rim are a huge emphasis in that department, and he is packing in that trait big time. I don't even have the exact numbers right now but his self creation is unbelievable. He's something north of 70% at the rim and I think under 25% of those are assisted. At the volume he's doing this, paired with his FTR, it's just nuts. Now I do think visually, there's more potential for him to develop. He picks up the ball so early in his drive, almost at the free throw line if not just outside it. This works because he's a premiere athlete, and the second you think he's stuck in a bad position to score, he makes some insane stride and generates an open shot. Just because this works well now doesn't mean he can't add onto it- I think if he learns to extend his dribble, even the tiniest bit more, he could be getting even more buckets. The deep jumpshot is doing fine, probably even a bit above average for his size and wingspan, but that's not something I think he should focus on at all. He could be shooting way worse from deep than he currently is and I wouldn't really mind that much. It's just not what his game is about. Of course though, if he can be a 35%+ perimeter shooter that's all the more reason to love him. But I wouldn't be surprised if he dipped below that, nor would I really care.

I think defensively he still has much more room to impose his frame. His pressure, from game to game, is still quite inconsistent. I think this is partially because he's moved around so much, bouncing between being a swing defender and a POA defender, and it can be hard to balance those two assignments. Against Houston, for example, he had select possessions against Kingston Flemings, Milos Uzan, and Chris Cenac, and those are really different match ups. I can appreciate he's trying to be cognizant of these differences and play each possession situationally, which is one reason why he has an impressively low FC/40 rate. But on the other hand, I do think I'd prefer to see him just be a pest and body up everybody with the same intensity. Especially since he does have the mobility to do it, without a doubt. The other weird thing is, inside the arc, he sometimes refuses to contest with his hands. I have not been able to figure out a consistent reason for that. When closing out a shooter, he does, but in other random situations he just doesn't. It's kinda weird, and I'm not sure what's up with it. Not a huge hang up, just something I think should be noted about his FC/40. Overall, he's crushing it. All these guys are really, really good.

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Cam Boozer: also being super underrated, for different reasons

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In a weird way, Cam might be the most pure basketball player of the big 3. He just plays to win, and is so self-aware. And I think Jon Scheyer and his Duke teammates deserve a ton of credit, because the synergy between them all is beautiful to watch. We've seen a lot big, "hub" type prospects in college basketball that you can immediately tell have a play style that won't be sustainable in the NBA. Cam Boozer is NOT one of those players. His tendencies to action high and work low are really consistent with those of NBA offenses, and he's shown excellence on both levels. I do think he could be a much cleaner and more effective screener, this is one of the concerns about his extremely heavy feet, but outside of that he's been massively productive high to low. He has immense strength, and despite being a little shorter than ideal for his position, is scoring inside at a premium rate and efficiency. It kinda feels like over the season he hasn't been posting up as much as he used to (don't have data to back this up), but when he does he gets his work in early and uses that strength to dig into the block. His playmaking skills are well ahead of schedule for bigs, and the AST% shows for it. He certainly doesn't live above the rim, but I think people are overly dismissive of his athleticism. He's an elite rebounder. He's even shooting 39% from three on more attempts than Dybantsa currently, and I actually think he has room to improve there. He gets a lot of wrist and thumbpad under the ball which can cause horizontal spin; you might notice his misses whirlwinding out of the cup. But that's a major nitpick and can easily be cleaned up, not to mention he's shooting it very well to begin with.

Defensively, I think there are some concerns. He's still a very high IQ player, is handsy and forces turnovers well. He isn't lazy by any means, but that heavy footedness is going to be a challenge as he steps up to pro level athleticism, both horizontally and vertically. And anybody keeping up with Cam knows that his presence as a blocker is pretty poor. He has a lower BLK% than Drew Timme, so... I'll let you interpret that. But long term improvement in these areas is under-recognized among bigs, and I don't see any of this being a very prominent issue for him. I would say of the big 3 prospects, landing spot for Cam might be the most relevant. Just as a big, it requires a more active intention from the team to feature him in the ways that he'll be most effective- at least compared to a guard or a wing.

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Conclusions and where I'm at

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Right now, I have it Darryn, Cam, then AJ. But again, please, please do not interpret this as some dramatic declaration one guy is way better than the others. We've had some excellent draft classes over the past few years, and yet, this would be the DUMBEST time to be that naive. These are 3 amazing, amazing prospects. That's the current order I have them ranked, but it isn't to take away anything from any of them. They are all true number one prospects.

thanks for the read, don't be a dick in the comments, and let me know what's on your mind. peace out