The NBA draft is unpredictable. Prospects who start the year unnamed on any mocks can skyrocket into the lottery, while teams sometimes give up on top-10 picks before their second NBA contract.
Who have we historically overvalued and undervalued? More importantly, what does that mean for future drafts?
ESPN draft experts Jonathan Givony, Mike Schmitz and Kevin Pelton break down why they had six recent prospects rated too high or too low.
Rated too low
Caris LeVert | 2016 draft: No. 20 (Brooklyn Nets via Indiana Pacers)
Caris Levert always had significant NBA potential. We had him projected as a lottery pick early in 2015 before a foot injury sidelined him for the remainder of his junior season at Michigan. He was projected in the late teens as a senior, when he injured his foot for a third time at the start of conference play, derailing that season as well. By the time the draft rolled around, LeVert was projected firmly in the second round, as many teams said their doctors recommended they take him off their draft board altogether due to the recurring injuries.
The Nets surprised many by shrugging off the medical red flags and picking LeVert 20th regardless, and they have been rewarded handsomely. He has developed impressively, averaging 19 points and five assists per game in his third season, looking like one of the bigger steals in an underwhelming draft class.
There are plenty of other examples of players who were deemed to have medical red flags that ended up exceeding their draft position -- Joel Embiid, C.J. McCollum, OG Anunoby, Malcolm Brogdon, Myles Turner, John Collins, Spencer Dinwiddie, Willie Cauley-Stein. We'll have to see what happens with players such as Harry Giles, Michael Porter Jr. and Lonnie Walker, who fell recently due to injury concerns, but there's an argument to be made that teams are too sensitive to medical red flags, especially when it comes to picking other players with inferior talent.
It's difficult to find too many examples of players like Brandon Roy (or Embiid to an extent) who were red-flagged and then had significant injuries later in their careers. It's not even clear how much that matters in those two cases. Jordan Adams, Perry Jones and Jared Sullinger are a handful of inconclusive examples, but it's worth exploring whether there's a market inefficiency here that could be exploited by forward-thinking teams. Somewhere, Jontay Porter, who is out for the season with a torn ACL and MCL, is nodding his head in agreement. -- Givony
Jaylen Brown | 2016 draft: No. 3 (Boston Celtics)
Back in 2016, Jonathan and I debated how much criticism Brown deserved for inefficient scoring during his lone season at Cal. Two and a half years later, it has become clear that I was wrong and Brown was in a terrible spot for his skills.
He was lucky to get drafted into an ideal role with the Celtics, emerging as a starter in Year 2. Though I wonder how differently Brown's career might have played out in a less stable situation, he has improved his outside shooting and harnessed his defensive potential in Brad Stevens' system.
I wasn't quite as low on Brown as his infamously poor stats-only projection -- which ranked 101st among players in that year's draft -- but I still had him behind many players who are struggling to make an impact in the NBA. One thing I've learned from Brown's example is to be more conscious of players out of position. Only after that year's draft did I get Brown's stats split by position from Ken Pomeroy of The Athletic, which revealed how dramatically more effective Brown was playing power forward with better floor spacing than at small forward next to a pair of non-shooters. -- Pelton
Domantas Sabonis | 2016 draft: No. 11 (Oklahoma City Thunder via Orlando Magic)
I wasn't sold that Sabonis would ever be anything other than a third big man in the NBA, and I should have put more value in those 1,922 developmental minutes he spent at Gonzaga. He was able to expand his game in West Coast Conference play through trial and error, yet also challenge himself against non-conference powerhouses.
I put too much stock in what he couldn't do -- his lack of length (6-10½ wingspan), spotty perimeter shooting and foul-prone defense -- and didn't credit his physicality, motor, touch, savvy around the rim and feel like I should have. I wondered if his best offensive skill as an interior scorer would hold up against NBA-caliber shot-blockers. Through seven NBA games this year, Sabonis is shooting 70.2 percent from 2-point territory and 75 percent at the rim in the half court, second best in the league among players with more than 40 attempts. He has been blocked at the rim once all season.
He rebounds everything, knows how to play out of dribble-handoffs and understands his limitations around the rim, relying on head fakes, angles and touch. Lastly, I didn't value Sabonis' intangibles and rate of improvement at virtually every stop like I should have. He had all the signs of a prospect who would maximize his potential, which was a stark contrast to a prospect like Mario Hezonja (addressed below).
Even if he might be best killing second units and could still have trouble against the Rudy Goberts of the world, Sabonis helped me realize the premium we need to put on skill, feel, toughness and intangibles over sheer measurables now.
-- Schmitz
Rated too high
Mario Hezonja | 2015 draft: No. 5 (Orlando Magic)
I helped lead the Hezonja hype train prior to the 2015 draft, and remained an inhabitant of Super Mario island probably longer than I should have amidst his NBA struggles. At Barcelona, I saw a 6-8 wing who could play above the rim, shoot on the move and bring positional size on defense, plus an edge that helped him put 22 on Real Madrid in a EuroLeague game and 18 against the Spanish power in the ACB finals. I too quickly dismissed his 15 goose-eggs that season, while ignoring the fact that he was a shooter who didn't quite make enough, blaming an often politically driven club like Barcelona for his erratic minutes and not digging enough into why that might have been the case.
Hezonja was an early-bloomer, firmly on the radar after winning MVP of the 2011 U16 Euros. He showed out at the 2012 U17 Worlds, averaging 20.8 points in just 27.5 minutes. The following two seasons after that tournament, though, Hezonja played only 898 minutes. During his draft year he saw 945 minutes, but his playing time was unpredictable at best, which led to turmoil with the club and a short leash. So over the course of three years -- from age 17 to 20 -- Hezonja played only 1,303 total first-division minutes. It sounds simple, but basketball players develop by playing. Outside of a few rare exceptions, these late-teenage years are crucial for growth, and Hezonja could be a much different player if he were loaned out to a smaller club where he could learn on the fly.
Nikola Jokic logged more than 2,000 minutes from 2013 to 2015. Does he reach this level without playing as a 3-point shooting, facilitating center at a fairly low level in the Adriatic and Serbian Leagues? What would he look like now if he had signed with a huge club at age 18, where he'd likely be sent to the post for 10 minutes per game? Even if it's not at the highest level, being able to develop with in-game reps is crucial, as we saw with French guard Elie Okobo, who went from likely undrafted in 2017 to a fringe first-rounder in 2018 after playing just under 1,000 minutes on the ball in Pau-Orthez.
Hezonja never had the opportunity to tap into the explosiveness he showed at a young age or develop his handle and feel with in-game reps. By the time he got to the NBA, Hezonja was more or less an inconsistent shooter with limited ball skills, an alarmingly low free throw rate and an average feel. So as we look toward this year's draft class, it's important to keep in mind who has been able to play a lot of minutes with freedom, like Goga Bitadze with Mega Bemax. -- Schmitz
R.J. Hunter | 2015 draft: No. 28 (Boston Celtics)
Hunter ranked 13th in my 2015 draft projections, ahead of fellow shooting guard Devin Booker and the Celtics' other first-round pick, point guard Terry Rozier.
While Hunter had made just 31 percent of his 3-pointers as a junior at Georgia State, I felt based on his strong free throw shooting (85 percent) and 40 percent 3-point shooting as a sophomore that Hunter would be a knockdown shooter in the NBA. That hasn't proven the case. Hunter has made just 28 percent of his limited 3-point opportunities in the NBA (78) and a blah 35 percent in a larger G League sample.
Even if Hunter had been as advertised as a shooter, his defensive limitations would probably have kept him on the bench. Scouts were right that the 6-foot-5, 185 pound Hunter wasn't strong enough to deal with NBA wings. As a result, he lasted just one year in Boston and has bounced around since, most recently getting waived by the Atlanta Hawks in training camp. -- Pelton
Dragan Bender | 2016 draft: No. 4 (Phoenix Suns)
Two weeks shy of his 21st birthday, it may feel premature to write off Bender's NBA prospects. The Suns have indicated they've seen enough after two highly discouraging seasons, though, as he's out of the rotation and had his $5.9 million fourth-year option declined.
At the 2014 Under-18 European Championship, a then 16-year-old Bender amazed NBA scouts with his ballhandling, passing, shooting and defensive playmaking instincts. He dropped 34 points with 14 rebounds in 29 minutes on Sabonis and Lithuania, and he followed that up with 21 points, 17 rebounds and 9 assists against Latvia, looking every bit the part of a top pick in the process.
There's a good case to be made that Bender came to the NBA too early at age 18, with just a handful of Euroleague minutes under his belt in which he mostly failed to make an impact. If Bender were American, he likely wouldn't have even been eligible to be drafted until a year later, and a ho-hum season of college basketball may have convinced him to wait even longer. Kristaps Porzingis and Dario Saric surprised some by being patient in waiting to make the jump to the NBA, and in hindsight it's possible this same approach could have benefited Bender. (Of course, Bender has secured $13.4 million in his young NBA career, so it's easy to understand why he made the jump when he did).
The Suns' coaching staff tried to make Bender into a small forward early on. It seemed he was more likely to succeed as an ultra-versatile big man who stretches the floor, pushes rebounds up the open court and switches on everything defensively. Bender's lack of physicality and aggressiveness never gave him a chance to realize that potential, and the fact that his jumper abandoned him didn't help matters. Sources close to the situation have expressed disappointment with Bender's work ethic since arriving in the NBA, something that wasn't helped by a poor team culture surrounding him in Phoenix.
Bender's confidence appeared depleted in the preseason, as he looked tentative and uncertain. There's still time for Bender to find a new environment and carve out a productive NBA career, but it's safe to say he is unlikely to live up to his early billing. NBA scouts will always keep his example in mind when evaluating the trajectories of European teenagers who wow in FIBA junior settings. Of the successful European players currently plying their trade in the NBA, almost all of them were highly productive in Europe first. That's not to say that teams will stop drafting unproven teenagers anytime soon, but they probably aren't going to take them as high as Bender was picked in 2016. -- Givony