Colorado's Tristan da Silva rocketing up NBA Draft boards after NCAA Tournament run

The Buffs standout should have NBA evaluators salivating and just took some national exposure for everyone to get the memo

Colorado v Marquette / Dylan Buell/GettyImages

Tristan da Silva is a case study in everything great about college athletics.

The journey for Colorado’s big man started four years ago, but in a way nobody expected. Tristan’s brother, Oscar, who was playing for Stanford at the time, suffered a scary head injury in Boulder. Both teams came together in a moment of sportsmanship.  Ultimately, that was an aspect of the recruitment that Colorado head coach Tad Boyle admits was a topic of conversation, but also was not a deal breaker. In the end, Tristan’s parents felt very comfortable with him going to Colorado. 

Boyle would add that most of his recruitment was done ‘sight unseen’ at da Silva’s Senior Day. It was the global covid pandemic that presented some issues and being from Germany made conventional visits to the da Silva residence a little trickier. Boyle had experience scouting Oscar and felt confident about what he had in front of him, putting a full court press on the family. 

Tristan has gone on to have a stellar career with Colorado. He embodied the role of being a “Senior leader” and was the steady hand beside KJ Simpson, who was the floor general. Colorado would not have been in the position they were to make a tournament run, if it wasn’t for the steadying influence da Silva added to the team. Throughout most of the 2023-24 season, every Buffs player not named Cody Williams was dramatically undervalued and under-projected by national pundits. 

March Madness: Colorado’s Tad Boyle set to coach against one of his best friends

Let’s not get confused, Williams is one of the prospects that simply jumps off the screen. The former McDonald’s All-American continues to make news and is no doubt an NBA lottery pick. The surprise was that Williams picked Colorado over every other school in the nation. He’ll likely go within the top five of this year’s draft, but if we’re brutally honest, Williams missed more games at Colorado than he played. There was a significant development expected under Boyle tutelage. The question was never how high does Williams go, but when. It’s only now we’re starting to see him anywhere from within the top ten. The only draft related questions were directed at Simpson and da Silva. 

For most of the season draft pundits have had da Silva firmly in the latter half of the second round. Something that should feel borderline disrespectful for anyone who has watched him play over the past two seasons. Is Tristan the second coming of Dirk Nowitzki? No. Can he play the stretch four at the NBA level and bring a Euro skill set to the table? Absolutely. One of the issues facing projecting future NBA players is an affection for those volume scorers. Everyone is looking for the next 30/5/5 guy. While there is evidence to support the idea that da Silva can score in bunches and score a variety of ways, to put the expectations of Nowitzki, Gasol, or even Peja would be unfair by any measure. In today’s NBA there is absolutely a place for da Silva and pulling up the back end of the NBA draft is really underselling what he’s good at. 

When projecting any player, much less Tristan specifically, the team makeup and distribution of production, how the team is constructed and expected to perform must be part of that evaluation. It’s clear most national pundits neglected to see that. Da Silva is an all-around quality player who can do a little of everything and a handful of specific things very well. But, he’s also on a team where the offense needs to run through Simpson, there is a new addition ‘anchor’ in Eddie Lampkin, Jr. and Williams. That’s not even taking into account important contributors like J’Vonne Hadley, Julian Hammond, Luke O’Brien, Javon Ruffin or developing bigs like Assane Diop and Bangot Dak. 

And yet, all of that to contend with da Silva still had the second-highest scoring average, fourth in rebounding, third in assists, fourth in FG%, sixth in three-point percentage, and third in free throw percentage. On a team that saw three of their big four face injuries midseason and still managed to finish second in the Pac-12. Yet, most pundits saw him as a player one or two bad games away from not getting drafted. 

Fast forward to the NCAA Tournament play-in game. Da Silva put up 20 points, three rebounds and went 64 percent from the floor. In the next round against Florida, a game no one outside Colorado thought they could win, da Silva again carried his weight. He racked up 17 points, five rebounds, four assists and shot 70 percent from the floor. Not to mention, a similar performance in the loss to Marquette. And just like that, low and behold, the national pundits started to change their tune on da Silva. He finished the Tournament averaging 18 points, four rebounds, three assists, nearly two steals, and shot 60 percent from the floor.

The primary conclusion is that da Silva’s stock is rising. He’s ready for the next level. He’s not going to catch top waves right out of the gate, but there is a place in the NBA for the Buffs standout. And it’s not pulling up the back end of the draft. It took being on the national stage for all this to happen. Da Silva is starting to get the attention and respect he deserves. In a landscape of one-and-dones, he’s refreshing and much further developmentally than most of the players who will be drafted based on upside and not production. Da Silva’s leadership will be an asset to any locker room he enters. Somewhere mid-to-late first round is where he should be drafted. It’s just a shame it took national pundits this long to figure out what da Silva actually can do.