2023 NBA Draft Preview – Wembanyama prize of the draft, but tons of talent throughout

The 2023 NBA Draft takes place Thursday, at 8 ET on ESPN and ABC. The San Antonio Spurs won the draft lottery. They hold the rights to select Victor Wembanyama.

Wembanyama is expected to go first overall. That would snap a streak of 13 consecutive drafts that a college freshman was taken No. 1.

The last non-freshman selected No. 1 overall was in 2009, when Blake Griffin was taken with the Top pick after his sophomore season.

Wembanyama is in line to be the sixth player to be selected No. 1 overall without having played in college. He’d be the first since Andrea Bargnani in 2006.

The Spurs have had the first overall pick twice before, selecting Tim Duncan in 1997 and David Robinson in 1987. Both had enormous success with the Spurs.

Best of the Rest

In addition to Wembanyama, three other Top-5 prospects did not attend college (Scoot Henderson, Amen Thompson and Ausar Thompson). If all four get selected in the Top-5, it will match 2001 for the most Top-5 picks that did not attend college.

That year we saw Kwame Brown (high school), Tyson Chandler (high school), Pau Gasol (international), and Eddie Curry (high school) get selected within the first four picks.

Analysts are split on who the No. 2 pick will be between Brandon Miller & Scoot Henderson (ESPN’s Jonathan Givony has Miller going 2nd to CHA in his latest mock).

If Henderson were to go 2nd behind Wembanyama, it would mark the first time since the 2003 draft that the top-2 selections were both non-collegiate players. (2003; 1st LeBron James – high school, 2nd Darko Milicic, sorry Craig! – international).

Pick Breakdown

The Pacers (7, 26, 29) and Jazz (9, 16, 28) each have 3 first-round picks, it would mark the third consecutive draft multiple teams have three first-round selections.

There are 7 teams with multiple first-round picks, tied for the second-most in any draft in the Modern Draft era. The only draft with more was 2014, when 8 teams had multiple first-round picks.

On the flip side, there are 9 teams currently without a 1st round pick, which would be tied with the 2014 & 2016 drafts for the most teams not to make a 1st-round selection since the draft has had 30 first-round picks starting in 2005.

The Orlando Magic have multiple lottery picks (6, 11) and if they use both, it will be the 5th time in team history they select multiple players in the lottery, along with 1998 (2), 2000 (3), 2014 (2), and 2021 (2).

No other team has made multiple lottery selections in the same draft more than 3 times (Clippers).