Sports
Ranking the Highest Ceilings from the 2023 NBA Draft Class – Bleacher Report
We’re fewer than three months removed from the 2023 NBA draft. No one from the class has logged a single regular-season minute.
So, determining which prospect has the highest ceiling (as opposed to who’s the safest bet to be the best) will mean taking a look at their performance at previous leagues and levels, physical characteristics like size and athletic measurements and tons of subjectivity. Extrinsic factors such as the general direction of the game were considered too.
And after tossing all of that into an analysis stew, the top five prospects (based on ceiling) from the 2023 draft are below.
First, though, a look at some players who are worth mentioning but didn’t quite sneak into the top five.
Anthony Black: A 6’7″ playmaker will always bring some level of intrigue, and Anthony Black does just that. His 3.9 assists and 2.1 steals as a freshman for Arkansas are interesting, but a 30.1 three-point percentage and 70.5 free-throw percentage suggest he has a long way to go as a shooter.
Bilal Coulibaly: The French teammate of another prospect we’ll discuss later, Bilal Coulibaly just turned 19 in July and is 6’7″ with a 7’2″ wingspan. Those numbers and his athleticism make him, at the very least, an intriguing defensive prospect. If he can improve as a creator and shooter, the Washington Wizards may have something special.
Taylor Hendricks: Taylor Hendricks appears to have the agility necessary to play some 3 in big lineups, but he’s also big enough (6’8″ with a 7’1″ wingspan) to play some small-ball 5. That potential versatility and a 39.4 three-point percentage in college are enough to push Hendricks to this section of the slideshow.
Dereck Lively II: The No. 2 recruit in his high school class, Dereck Lively II is 19 years old, 7’1″ with a 7’7″ wingspan and coming off a freshman season at Duke in which he posted an absurd 12.7 block percentage. If he develops even a hint of understanding of NBA-level rim-running and rim-protection, he can be a dynamic interior weapon.
Age: 20 (21 in November)
Size: 6’9″ with a 7’0″ wingspan
Thanks to his shooting, Brandon Miller is probably in the conversation for the highest floor of any 2023 draft prospect.
During his lone season at Alabama, the 2023 No. 2 pick took 7.5 threes per game, made 38.4 percent of those attempts and shot 85.9 percent at the free-throw line.
Even if he develops into little more than a floor spacer with forward size, he should be able to help a team’s bottom line for years to come.
But a few other numbers from college suggest there’s a chance he might be more. In 2022-23, he averaged 3.5 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.5 blocks per 100 possessions. Those aren’t huge numbers at the college level, but they’re at least worth noting.
And at 20 years old, there’s plenty of time for Miller to explore those areas of his game.
Age: 19 (20 in February)
Size: 6’2″ with a 6’9″ wingspan
Scoot Henderson is a dynamic athlete who’s sported an NBA build for years, despite the fact that he’s still a teenager.
In some of his G-League action, despite often playing against competition significantly older than him, he was able to physically dominate possessions in a way few at that level can.
His feel for the game is advanced beyond his years too. That and a willingness to pass led to 6.8 assists in 2022-23, which ranked 11th among qualified G-Leaguers.
With those attributes alone, it feels pretty safe to bet on Henderson’s floor. So, why is he No. 4 on this list?
First, and perhaps most importantly, the two potential playmakers ahead of him have legitimate wing size. Henderson’s 6’9″ wingspan helps offset his lack of height, but it doesn’t quite measure up to those ahead of him.
Second—and this is more specific to Henderson, as opposed to a comparison with those ahead of him here—his shooting in 2022-23 has to be at least mildly concerning.
He has plenty of time to improve, and a 41.7 field-goal percentage in the range of 15 to 19 feet from the hoop, suggests there’s something to work with, but he was inefficient everywhere else. And that includes from three, where he shot 27.5 percent this season.
Age: 20 (21 in January)
Size: 6’6″ with a 7’0″ wingspan
If we were to simulate the careers of everyone in the 2023 draft class 100 times, Henderson might wind up better than both of the Thompson twins a majority of the time.
But the absolute best-case scenario for each of Amen and Ausar is probably a little better than Scoot’s. Again, that has a lot to do with their size (big playmakers are increasingly important in today’s game), but both are also top-tier athletes who put up good assist numbers (6.1 per game for Ausar, 5.9 for Amen).
And they get the same leeway as Henderson when it comes to being able to develop their outside shots (Ausar made just 29.8 percent of his triples during the 2022-23 season in Overtime Elite).
Separating the two for purposes of an exercise like this is tricky. There are certainly arguments to have either in the No. 2 spot, and Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Wasserman did a bang-up job in comparing the two pre-draft (and no big deal, he also nailed Ausar going to the Detroit Pistons and Amen going to the Houston Rockets).
But Amen gets the slightest of edges for a reason explained in his slide.
Age: 20 (21 in January)
Size: 6’6″ with a 7’0″ wingspan
Determining upside is always subjective. It has to be, unless you have Back to the Future‘s sports almanac.
And it’s especially tough to make a call between two prospects who are twins, have almost identical physical measurements, played for the same team prior to entering the NBA and posted eerily similar numbers for that team.
But that’s the task in front of us at the moment, and Amen being ever-so-slightly more explosive and being a bit more of a natural point guard right now gives him the edge.
The Houston Rockets signing Fred VanVleet may delay this a bit, but Thompson can be a bona fide point guard. And starting him there means you can fill out spots 2 through 4 in a lineup with like-sized, switchable players who’d add to the unpredictability of the team on both ends of the floor.
Age: 19 (20 in January)
Size: 7’4″ with an 8’0″ wingspan
Simply put, we haven’t seen an NBA prospect like Victor Wembanyama since perhaps 1969, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was entering the league.
Wembanyama’s measurements alone are eye-popping. The way he moves around the perimeter like a wing is hard to believe, even when watching it in real time. And his instincts on defense suggest he could be a difference-maker on that end as early as this season.
And his upside isn’t entirely theoretical.
The French league he played in isn’t quite on par with some of the others outside the NBA, but it’s superior to American college basketball, and he just won MVP behind 21.6 points, 10.4 rebounds, 3.0 blocks and 2.4 assists in 2022-23.
If he reaches his ultimate ceiling (which could be something like 90 percent of Rudy Gobert on defense and 80-85 percent of Kevin Durant on offense), he’ll go down as an all-time great.
That outcome isn’t guaranteed, and there may be a longer adjustment period than some expect. But on upside alone, Wembanyama is one of the best prospects ever.
