Over the past month, we attended practices, scrimmages and official games featuring the top rising freshmen at the McDonald's All American, Jordan Brand Classic and Nike Hoop Summit events. Starting this weekend, our focus will shift to the 2020 NBA draft and beyond, as we attend the NCAA's first live period of recruiting. This manifests itself with the opening weekend of AAU and the Nike EYBL, Under Armour Association and Adidas Gauntlet sessions in Dallas.
Before that, it's time to update our 2019 mock draft, reflecting everything we learned over the past month, including which players have made themselves eligible for the 2018 NBA draft.
Some players will likely return to school and be reinserted back into the 2019 mock, but for now, we're focused on who is likely to stay. A handful of players who are currently testing the waters but are not projected among the top 50 prospects in our latest Top 100 have also been included in our 2019 mock. We will update as necessary.
The theme of 2019 -- as with most draft classes lately -- is extreme youth. The top 10 projected picks are currently teenagers, with only one -- Daniel Gafford, who surprisingly passed up being a likely top-20 pick in 2018 -- already enrolled in college. Young players, deservedly or not, get the benefit of the doubt in projections of this nature, but they will need to back it up in college, or they will see their stock crash quickly should they not produce as freshmen.
The 2019 crop is considered to be fairly shallow at the moment, with many NBA teams privately expressing frustration about the lack of elite prospects that have emerged, particularly from the graduating high school senior class. While likely more serious of a concern in this instance than in the past, this is not an uncommon refrain at this stage. After all, new prospects emerge suddenly every year seemingly out of the blue, while others improve drastically, which will add much-needed star power and depth to a group that is currently lacking in both departments.
For example, no one was talking about Donovan Mitchell, Luke Kennard, John Collins, Justin Patton or D.J. Wilson in April of 2016, but they all emerged over the course of the next year and became top-20 draft picks in 2017, with Mitchell now a strong contender for Rookie of the Year.
Similar things can be said about Trae Young, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Robert Williams, Zhaire Smith and to a lesser extent Mikal Bridges this year. All were unheralded to varying degrees coming out of high school and have emerged as likely top-20 draft picks in 2018. Sometimes patience is required with young players, who tend to develop at vastly different paces, even into their mid-20s, as we see with All-Stars such as Stephen Curry, Goran Dragic, Kyle Lowry, Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler, Marc Gasol, DeAndre Jordan, Paul Millsap, Isaiah Thomas and countless others.
The supposed weakness of the 2018 high school class certainly opens up the door for sophomores, juniors and seniors to emerge as top-20 draft picks in 2019, in not all that dissimilar a fashion to what we saw in the 2016 draft, in which 11 of the top 21 picks were neither freshmen nor teenagers.
Note that a number of elite high school juniors -- Jalen Lecque, A.J. Lawson, Ashton Hagans, Tyrese Maxey, Cole Anthony, Josh Green, Bryan Antoine, Scottie Lewis, Precious Achiuwa, Charles Bassey and Chol Marial -- are all technically eligible for the 2019 draft from an age standpoint, as they were born in 2000 or earlier. They will also have to graduate from high school sometime before the 2018-19 NBA regular season starts, though, in order to fill that requirement of the NBA age limit, something that could very well happen in some instances. Lecque, Lawson, Hagans and Maxey are all reportedly eyeing reclassifying to the 2018 high school class already, while others (like Marvin Bagley III last year) may be plotting to do the same.
ESPN's Future Power Rankings were used to project draft order. Track all traded draft picks here.