Sam Vecenie is a college and pro basketball writer who has a real focus on the draft and evaluating talent. I feel like he has an ongoing attitude about Coach K, but I appreciate the hard work he puts into his craft and his evaluations of individual players, and teams, seems fair.
He writes for the Athletic and just published an analysis of the Top 50 players on rookie contracts. He puts them into tiers, and I thought it was worth sharing to substantiate just how much talent we have seen come through over the past 4 years. To respect their copy write, I'll just list the tiers and where our players fall. These are each accompanied by detailed analysis
"NBA Rookie Scale Prospects Ranking: The top 50 prospects"
https://theathletic.com/1860883/2020...-50-prospects/ ($$$)
Tier 1: Franchise players who can be the best players on NBA Title Teams
2. Zion
3. Tatum
Tier 2: Potential Hall of Fame Trajectory
6. Ingram
Tier 3: Multi-time All-Stars
None
Tier 4: High-level starters with All-Star upside
None
Tier 5: High-upside prospects, but there are flaws here
24. Bagley
26. RJ
28. Reddish
30. Wendell
Tier 6: Starting caliber players and “what happened with the 2019 Rookie Class?”
45. Kennard