1. According to Jonathan Givorny of ESPN, the depth of the next draft is perking up. Now, there still is no one in the top slots that says franchise player, or future GOAT, but depth in good rotation players is beginning to improve, so a mid-teen lottery pick like our Indiana pick or the Detroit second ought to help rebuild the roster.
Is this shaping up to be a relatively deep draft after all?
One year ago, I went on "The Lowe Post" podcast and said "this is the worst high school [senior] class we've seen in 20 years," referencing the group of now freshman prospects expected to be the backbone of this year's draft class, adding that "I wouldn't want to be picking at the top of next year's [2024] draft."
A year later, I feel similarly. Unlike when the San Antonio Spurs landed Victor Wembanyama last season, it's not worth going through the misery of the seasons the Detroit Pistons, Washington Wizards or Spurs are currently having to end up with the best odds on lottery night this year.
We are far from the type of star power atop the 2024 NBA draft we've come to expect over the past decade, in terms of prospects you can reasonably hope will develop into franchise-caliber or All-Star-type players.
The lack of talent in the 2024 draft is no longer a controversial opinion to have among NBA executives, where it is a frequent topic.
Some have taken that several steps further, universally panning the 2024 draft as a bad class -- not just at the top -- but as a whole for the entire first and second rounds. However, that does not appear to be accurate based on what we've seen thus far and what is certain to come between now and June.
I would argue that this is shaping up to be a relatively deep draft, not that different from years prior in terms of the number of players likely to have productive NBA careers. Finding players to take off our Top 100 prospect rankings isn't that easy. There are a lot of good players in college this year, especially upperclassmen, and it's one of the better drafts we've seen in a while on the international front.
Several college players elected to go back to school at the 2023 withdrawal deadline, and that will very likely be the case again this year. There's certain to be significant movement still as the biggest games of the college basketball regular season are about to unfold in the coming weeks, followed by conference tournaments, the NCAA tournament and the pre-draft process.
Last February, not many people had Bilal Coulibaly (No. 8 pick), Kobe Bufkin (No. 15), Brandin Podziemski (No. 19), Olivier-Maxence Prosper (No. 24) or Ben Sheppard (No. 26) slated as high as they ended up going in 2023, and there will be plenty of similar cases this year.
That's why it did not surprise me to see long-term-thinking front offices such as Toronto, Utah and Washington acquire extra 2024 draft assets over the past few weeks. History says there will be good NBA players selected in the middle and end of the first round, as well as in the second round. Teams are just going to have to work a little harder this year to find them. -- Jonathan Givony
2, Expiring contracts... John Hollinger's take is that teams are becoming more conscious of the value in large expiring contracts if they want to acquire significant talent by trade. And so he is reversing his thought that the Raptors will just waive Bruce Brown's 2024-25 team option, but may opt to keep him for trade purposes.
Some excerpts, since this is behind the paywall.
Welcome to “Next Year.” Yes, there is still a season to play out and a wide-open title race, and several teams used the trade deadline to address needs that may come up between now and June.
But even more, the trade deadline has become the de facto start of the 2024-25 season. Most of last week’s trades were made with at least one eye (if not both) on the roster-building challenges that teams will face in the year ahead, especially those teams who are over the luxury-tax apron.
We saw this need for flexibility come up in a couple of other places, notably Toronto and Memphis.
For instance, I said last week there was no chance Bruce Brown’s $23 million team option for next year get picked up, and thus that it was surprising the Raptors didn’t get something for him before the deadline. Upon further review, I may have spoken out of turn. There is, actually, one really good reason to pick up it up, which is to use it as a de facto trade exception later in the year. While the Raptors seem angled more toward being a cap room team this summer by declining Brown’s option, they can easily pivot to using only some of the room and then having Brown’s expiring contract soak up the rest.
