2023 NBA Draft Big Board 3.0
My third big board update for the 2023 NBA Draft! Some big time risers & fallers, plus some sleepers not featured elsewhere! Not to mention fun tiers and stuff!!
In this third iteration of my 2023 NBA Draft Big Board, I wanted to focus on creating a more in-depth dichotomy of the prospects we have spent the last several months evaluating. Often basketball players are stereotyped due to their physical dimensions - the short guy is the point guard, the tall guy is the center, and everyone else falls somewhere in the middle. Other times we try to classify players by their role - this guy is a shooter, this person is a rim protector, and this prospect is an athletic defender on the wing.
When it comes to the draft, evaluating for fit is extraordinarily important. If a person joins a company that doesn’t fit their personality, their ideals, and their sense of self, then that person is not likely to thrive in that context. The same applies for basketball players, maybe even more so - in a game so fundamentally based on rhythm, how can one survive in a state of constant stress and discomfort?
In this iteration, I wanted to break down prospects by three different factors:
Role: How large of an impact can you have on winning?
Timeline: How soon can you impact winning?
Likelihood: How likely are you to reach this level of impact on winning?
This allowed me to characterize players in roles that could be used to contextualize a player’s fit in a way that didn’t rely on position or immediate need. For instance, the Boston Celtics are a lot more likely to draft an Instant impact player rather than a Long-Term one. Given that they have Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown on their team, the C’s have less need to gamble on a potential Star or even Starter level player; instead, they could prioritize a Potential Core Rotation prospect over a Fringe Starter, since the increased likelihood of an impact to winning is more valuable to a title contender than the fringe chance at a future starter-caliber player.
Without further ado, the updated board:
