2023 NBA Draft Top 100 Big Board: Wembanyama at the top; plus, Emoni Bates returns

We’re three weeks into the college basketball season, which means we’ve finally gotten eyes on many of the best NBA Draft prospects across the country. It’s time to come up with a starting point for my 2023 NBA Draft big board, and boy, have I struggled more with this at this point of the season than I have in previous years.

It’s still early, but many of the highest-rated freshmen in the class have either been injured or not quite lived up to expectations. Potential top-five picks Nick Smith Jr. (Arkansas) and Cam Whitmore (Villanova) have yet to play. Dereck Lively and Dariq Whitehead missed parts of the preseason for Duke and are just now being integrated into their team’s rotations. Players with strong reputations such as UCLA’s Amari Bailey and Adem Bona and Kentucky’s Chris Livingston have not exactly set the world on fire. South Carolina’s GG Jackson is only 17 years old. Oregon’s Kel’el Ware and Texas’ Dillon Mitchell have yet to really carve out immediate high-impact roles, especially on offense. That’s seven of the top-10 recruits, in addition to a few other five-star recruits scouts were excited to get eyes on to start the season. On top of that, many of the best players returning to college basketball this season were big men who decided to stay an extra year of college basketball because the NBA is not all that enthusiastic about selecting centers.

Once you get outside of the top 10 or so on this list, the 2023 draft is wide open, with plenty of room for underrated freshmen and upper-class risers to crash the party. There is so much up in the air that it’s truly difficult to slot them in any sort of genuine order by the second half of the first round. Last year at this point, 18 of the players I had ranked in the first round ended up getting drafted there, with six others ending up in the top-41 picks. This year, I would argue many more slots are up for grabs, and I think my confidence interval would be much wider on potential draft ranges. You should consider this much more of a watch list than a tried-and-true ranking.

Here’s where I stand at this point:

Breaking news: Victor Wembanyama is really good

Victor Wembanyama remains the clear top prospect in this draft. I’ve written a lot about him already this season, and I don’t know that there is much new to say beyond the fact that he keeps backing up his elite play with more elite play. He is 18 years old, and he’s leading the French League in scoring and blocks and is second in rebounding. He’s shooting 50.8 percent from the field, 31.6 percent from 3 and 76.5 percent from the line on a shot diet that is largely self-created. And the numbers aren’t empty, as his Metropolitans 92 team is in first place in the French League right now. Wembanyama is hyper-competitive and doesn’t back down from anyone, and his tape is just bananas. As I’ve written previously, he’s a prospect unlike anyone we’ve seen before. That’s not to say he’s the best prospect ever; he’s just an entirely novel one.

For instance, look at this play that broke evaluators’ brains from last weekend.

That’s a 7-foot-4 center! That is an impossible play. It doesn’t even make physical sense for someone that big to be able to do that. But yet, only someone that big could actually achieve that given the ground he has to cover. And he does stuff like this every game.

As long as his injury checks come back clean, this is the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. It’s not even a question. He’s only further solidified his position there in scouts’ minds as he’s returned to France and dominated the pro league.

Brandon Miller looks like the breakout freshman of the class

Throughout the preseason, Brandon Miller is the guy about whom you would hear from scouts who went down to Alabama’s practices. They would rave about his size, how strong he looked as a shooter and how impactful he’d been as a mismatch nightmare. Scouts who went to the McDonald’s All-American game felt strongly about his defensive play when he was challenged there. All of it was beginning to add up to a player ranked outside of the top 10 in his recruiting class potentially bursting onto the scene and developing into a top-half-of-the-lottery pick.

That’s certainly not set in stone yet, but the signs are pointing upward for Miller. In his first game, he posted a 14-point, 13-rebound double-double. In his next three games, he hovered between 19 and 28 points, eight and nine rebounds and had three assists in each. He’s been consistently terrific in every game so far for the Crimson Tide, with Nate Oats knowing exactly how to use him successfully in his pace-and-space, wide-open offensive scheme. He’s using Miller in a ton of dribble-handoff actions where Miller can just flatten out behind the screener and fire from distance off movement or just off screening actions that allow him to fly up to fire from 3. Oats also has Miller space from about 27-30 feet away from the rim typically in spot-up situations away from the action. Teams haven’t caught on yet that Miller can actually shoot from that distance. He was 15-for-29 from 3 in his first four games, firing from distance confidently with no regard or concern for potentially missing. He takes them perfectly off the hop or off a one-two and can hit them with balance. Miller has taken more than 50 percent of his shots from 3 so far, and he occasionally gets a bit too happy floating away from the rim to try to hunt shots that way. But NBA teams won’t exactly mind that strategy given how essential it is for players to be able to fire from that distance as they start their careers.

I have Miller at No. 6 right now, and I think I’d be surprised if he ended up not going in the lottery.

Alabama’s Brandon Miller (Marvin Gentry / USA Today)

Emoni Bates returns

It took way longer for Emoni Bates to finally have the breakout game everyone expected of him when he entered college basketball last season at 17 years old amid heavy fanfare for Memphis, but the 6-foot-9 wing finally looks comfortable in a new environment close to home at Eastern Michigan. He dropped 30 points against in-state powerhouse Michigan in his first game and looked pretty great doing it. He hit some outrageous shots, including a fadeaway one-legged “Dirk” stepback as well as a few deep pull-up 3s. In four games so far, he’s averaging 21.3 points and shooting 48 percent from the field and 45.5 percent from 3. He’s younger than most of the freshmen in this high school class, as he was originally a part of that group. So why am I being a bit conservative here and placing him at No. 34?

Frankly, it has to do with the diet of shots Bates has to live off mixed with his physical tools. Bates is very tall for a wing at 6-foot-9, but he has a very thin frame that doesn’t project to absorb contact well as he moves up levels and doesn’t have much length to make up for it. That’s going to cause issues when it comes to attacking the basket and finishing, as well as simply getting anything other than a stepback jumper consistently. In his four games, he’s had to live off making highly contested shots. So far, 80 percent of his catch-and-shoot shots have been guarded, per Synergy. I went through his tape and tracked all of the 32 pull-up jumpers he’s taken this season, and I counted only eight that were relatively clean looks. The other 24 were tightly contested with a defender within about a foot of him. This is a pretty typical shot for Bates.

He fluidly creates separation by stringing together multiple moves before getting to his stepback and firing. He gets a clean look for just a split second, which is all he needs with his lightning quick gather and release. But that is a tough shot, and I don’t know how much faith I have in it being sustainable. I don’t think there is any player in the country I’ve seen this season living off a more difficult set of shots. And as you move up levels, that only serves to get harder. Players get longer and more athletic and smarter defensively. Bates also has a low release point that could be exacerbated as he faces those bigger, longer players at the next level. He’s going to have to work to find easier shots, likely by playing off the ball and becoming a terrific mover without it. He needs to improve there and needs to improve defensively in a big way too. He floats on that end far too often and would be a substantial liability in the NBA at this stage.

But it remains exceptionally difficult to find players — especially teenagers —who are this big and have this level of touch and balance off pull-ups. Bates is far from a finished product, and while he does have some real athletic deficiencies in terms of explosiveness that are likely to plague him as he moves up levels, he is a fairly live, quick-twitch guy when he’s on the ground and has the ball in his hands. Any strength that Bates can put on moving forward will be critical. He needs to add some contact balance while he’s on the ground to extend his drives a bit more.

My bet is that Bates does not end up in this range at the end of the season. I think he’ll either end up much higher or much lower on my board depending on how the season progresses. But this is an encouraging start, and one worth being excited about given the relatively unfair hype train that has surrounded Bates from the time he was 14 years old.

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Terrence Shannon Jr. is realizing his upside

Illinois’ Terrence Shannon Jr. is the guy I’ve gotten the most positive notices about from scouts and college coaches in regard to improvement this season. When he declared for the NBA Draft back in 2021 after a third-team All-Big 12 season, he was told he needed to work on two critical things. First, he needed to improve his jumper. Second, he needed to be much more willing and capable as a driver with his right hand, as the lefty was very one-hand dominant.

It’s clear Shannon has done an immense amount of work on improving his jumper over the last two years. The mechanical tweaks are real, as it’s a much smoother looking jumper than what we’ve seen from him in the past. But really, it comes down to his own hard work over the last two years. He hit 38 percent last season in an injury-riddled season in which he often played through back pain. And now this season, where he’s been healthy, the fluidity has really come through. Here’s an example of Shannon’s jumper from 2021. You’ll notice there is a minor hitch at the top of the shot, and the rhythm throughout it isn’t nearly as smooth.

And now here is one from Illinois’ recent game against UCLA, where Shannon caught fire and melted the Bruins’ faces with eight 3s. Look at how much smoother the gather is. He’s playing with more bend, which allows the weight transfer to come through more cleanly from his lower half. It also looks like he’s adjusted the shooting pocket slightly and now has less off-hand interaction in the shot. Additionally, look at how comfortable he is handling the ball with his right hand. He’s changing gears and has no fear dribbling with that hand now in a threatening manner.

We’re through five games, but Shannon is averaging 21 points and shooting 54 percent from the field and 48 percent from 3. It’s a small sample, but the mechanical tweaks look real and functional and translatable to sustained success. The handle has drastically improved, and he’s not just trying to blow by everyone in a straight line anymore. He’s changing pace and shifting gears with both hands and is comfortable as a driver when attacking the rim. He’s also turned into a legitimately high-level passer, particularly out in transition. Getting him out in the open court in Illinois’ spacing-conscious scheme compared to Texas Tech’s grind-it-out style has been an enormous help for him due to his athleticism. He’s getting to show scouts skills that they didn’t quite know he had.

Physical tools have never been the question with Shannon. He’s long been an elite athlete vertically, and he’s explosive. It’s always just been about scouts waiting for the skills to catch up. Well, they have. If he continues along this trajectory, shoots 40 percent from 3 and keeps leading Illinois toward the top of the Big Ten, it’s hard to see how an elite athlete who is 6-foot-6 and can play either wing position doesn’t go in the first round. These are the kinds of players NBA teams are hunting everywhere for.

Diamonds in the rough?

Because many of the highly touted freshmen haven’t blown scouts away, it’s opened doors for other players to raise their hands as potential first-round picks. I have guys I’ve really enjoyed watching so far, but I can’t say that I feel particularly confident in many of the players I have ranked from No. 20 onward. I’ve slotted a lot of freshmen in that range who fit what the NBA is looking for from a positional and skill standpoint, but they all have their own sets of holes.

• Michigan’s Jett Howard is off to a strong start, hitting shots from distance and operating as a secondary playmaker at 6-foot-8. But he’s been really rough on defense and struggles to contain anyone off the bounce. But he profiles really well from a skill standpoint toward what NBA teams are looking for.

• Ohio State’s Brice Sensabaugh has been terrific as a mismatch scorer, attacking the rim with strength and firing with confidence from 3. But he hasn’t really produced anything outside of points and rebounds and needs to really make strides there to enter Ohio State’s starting lineup. Still, his scoring acumen is real.

• Duke guard Tyrese Proctor out of Australia really impressed NBA personnel who went down to Duke to see the team’s prospects in the preseason. His passing and defensive acumen really stood out. But he’s also shooting 27.5 percent from the field so far, and outside of a seven-points-in-five-minutes run while being defended by a substandard defender in Kansas’ Gradey Dick, he hasn’t been able to really threaten anyone from a scoring perspective.

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• Texas guard Tyrese Hunter has been one of the best players on one of the best teams in the country, having improved as a jump shooter from 3-point range while continuing to bring his tough on-ball defense and table-setting skills even while playing off the ball a bit more often than people expected. But he’s a 6-foot guard, and the track record on 6-foot guards in the last few NBA Drafts is not strong. Teams struggle to find a place for them in today’s league.

• Drake wing Tucker DeVries is the best movement shooter in the class, a spectacular weapon coming off screens and dribble handoffs with range out to 30 feet. But NBA scouts have real concerns about his ability to hang defensively at the next level despite being 6-foot-7.

• One player who has excited scouts is UCF freshman forward Taylor Hendricks, an athletic 6-foot-9 wing/forward who is making 42 percent of his five 3-point attempts per game while also blocking shots and providing defensive value. But he doesn’t seem to have a ton of game off the bounce yet. I’ve speculatively added him at No. 49, but I would like to see UCF play some more real teams. He was terrific against Oklahoma State, scoring 16 points and grabbing 12 rebounds. But can he consistently take care of business in those moments? We’ll get another chance to find out against Miami this weekend.

• California Baptist’s Taran Armstrong keeps getting better. He was the best player on the court in CBU’s first two games against high-major competition this season, but that was also against Washington and Minnesota, two teams expected to finish near the bottom of their leagues. He’s arguably the best passer in college basketball as a 6-foot-6 point guard, and his frame has really filled out to where he doesn’t get bumped off the ball as easily. He’s also seemingly improved as a shooter. But his handle is a bit loose against heavy ball pressure for someone who would be a below-average NBA athlete.

• Finally, UCLA’s Jaylen Clark is my favorite player in the country this season. He’s the best player without the ball in his hands. He flies around defensively and disrupts every single possible action with his elite hand-eye coordination and terrific quickness. He’s a contender for the national Defensive Player of the Year award, in my opinion. He’s both an on-ball stopper and a help-side menace due to how hard he plays. But the fun surprise for him has been the offense. Clark is averaging 16.4 points, eight rebounds and 2.4 assists so far this season. His 3-point jumper has clearly improved, although I don’t think it’s something scouts will feel all that confident about yet either. If he can shoot it, I think he’s a surefire NBA player at 6-foot-5 if only because the defense is that good. I have him in the top 60 right now. But I’m probably higher on him than most.

The main key with all of these players is that scouts want to see drastically more of them. We’re dealing with an incredibly small sample of games here, which will give plenty of others a real chance to emerge. There are plenty of others I would have loved to rank. As mentioned above, building a ranked board at this point is something of a fool’s errand, but hopefully this gives you a nice starting place on who to keep track of this season as college hoops heats up.

(Top photo of Victor Wembanyama: Aurelien Meunier / Getty Images)