Virtually everyone thinks the Washington Wizards will pick AJ Dybantsa with the number one overall selection in the upcoming NBA Draft. Yesterday, Greg Finberg checked in with draft experts and eight of eight named Dybantsa as the top pick.
At -390, FanDuel has Dybantsa as the overwhelming favorite to go first. His top rival is Kansas guard Darryn Peterson at +300.
Naturally, my stat-based draft propsect evaluation tool — Ye Olde Draft Analyzer (YODA for short) — says they might be wrong. Or, at least
that there might be a better choice. As you may have guessed from the headline, YODA thinks the best prospect in a strong draft is Duke forward Cam Boozer.
This is not about to be a “trash Dybantsa” type of article. It’s just…Boozer has a lot of strengths, and some of the critiques may not be accurate or meaningful. Let’s start with the strengths:
His strengths start with overwhelming production. Per 40 minutes, Boozer averaged 26.9 points, 12.2 rebounds (4.0 offensive), 4.9 assists, 1.7 steals, 0.7 blocks, and 3.0 turnovers. The scoring came with elite efficiency — the two-point percentage of someone who does nothing but dunk, and the deadeye 39.1% percentage of a three-point specialist.
He wasn’t a specialist, though. He got to the free throw line 8.8 times per 40, and indication that he stressed defenses, played effectively in traffic and against defensive attention, and still scored at a high rate. He shot 78.9% from the line.
His passing was a plus for a forward. He produced enough assists to show a willingness to set up teammates along with genuine skill, enough turnovers to indicate he tried to make plays, but not so many turnovers to think he was being reckless.
Basically, if you’re an NBA team and you need a guy who can score inside, Boozer can do it. If you need someone to knock down threes, you can’t do a lot better than Boozer. Ditto if you want rebounding. And maybe he could be a high-post passing hub and dribble handoff operator. At 6-8 and 250, he’s a good candidate to be a bone-rattling screen setter.
The knock on Boozer is that he’s too small and not athletic enough to become an elite NBA player. And while athletic freaks sometimes are NBA greats, there’s an abundance of all-timers who were ordinary athletically — at least by NBA standards. And there’s an even greater abundance of guys with elite tools who failed at the NBA level. Athleticism matters, but basketball is still a game of skill.
Plus, Boozer’s size is more than adequate. In YODA, I use a measure that combines height and wingspan. Research indicates that guys with long arms relative to their height tend to become productive NBA players. Boozer fits that mold while also measuring just above average in height for a forward. In other words, don’t worry about the height.
Don’t worry much about his agility either. At the Draft Combine, he was average for a forward. It’s not a strength, but it’s not a weakness either. If he’s a weak link in Washington’s defense in 4-5 years, I don’t think it’ll be because of his feet.
If you want to worry, focus on his leaping. His vertical measuers were a little below average at the Combine, and his blocks were on the low side at Duke last season. Don’t fret too much — the vertical measures weren’t low enough to warrant a ding in YODA, and other statistical indicators of applied athleticism (steals, offensive rebounds) were strong.
Best guess: the various available measures indicate that Boozer’s athletic tools are at least adequate to the rigors of NBA competition.
Don’t worry about fit either. The Wizards need talent everywhere. He works well as the “pure” forward in a three-man rotation at forward and center with Alex Sarr and Anthony Davis. It doesn’t matter much who starts or finishes — Sarr is more center than forward but can fill either role. Ditto for Davis, who has expressed a preference for forward in the past.
Plus Davis is likely to age out (or get traded) before there’s any risk of a minutes logjam. The Wizards could do a lot worse than Sarr at center and Boozer at forward. Finding a rim-running backup big shouldn’t be too onerous a chore — and they already have some versatile forward/wing types on the roster.
Am I 100% sold? No. I listen to the experts who have scouted these prospects since high school. I pay attention to folks like Matt Modderno, who watch eleventy billion college games per season and know the prospects backwards and forwards. I won’t speak for Matt (he does a good job of speaking for himself, and if you’re not subscribed, you should be), but I think he’s one of the experts who thinks Dybantsa is the top prospect.
But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest it might be wise to at least tap the brakes and look deeper before locking in Dybantsa. The Wizards talent evaluation team is likely (hopefully?) doing just that — reviewing video and stats, evaluating interviews, talking with people to determine who these kids are as people before making a final determination.
A month out from the NBA Draft, are we really sure Boozer isn’t the best player, best prospect, and best fit for the Wizards? Because I think he might be.
