Wide Array of Draft Projections for Jalen Smith as October Draft Order Now Set
While last week’s lottery revealed where teams in the top-14 will pick in the upcoming NBA draft, plenty of mystery remains on where former Maryland forward-center Jalen Smith will be selected based on several mock drafts published in the wake of the event.
The most recent mock drafts published following the lottery project Smith to go anywhere from the early teens to the second round, a range that may seem extreme but demonstrates just how much guesswork there is in analyzing what NBA teams will do on draft night, especially with the entire pre-draft process altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic this year.
Bleacher Report’s Johnathan Wasserman is the highest draft prognosticator on Smith, projecting him to the New Orleans Pelicans with the 13th pick. He profiled Smith as a player rising up draft boards last week, calling him “one of the few bigs in this draft who's both a physical paint presence and a threat from outside” and adding that scouts feel “there is more to his game than he was able to show in Maryland’s offense.
“The Phoenix Suns (No. 10), Sacramento Kings (No. 12), New Orleans Pelicans (No. 13) and Boston Celtics (No. 14) could each use a stretch big in their rotation,” Wasserman wrote. “Most would view Smith as a long shot to go in the No. 10-14 range, but NBA teams won't see him as that big of a reach.”
Other prognosticators, like SBNation’s Ricky O’Donnell, don’t project Smith to come off the board that early. O’Donnell sees the 6-foot-10, 225 pound big man falling out of the first round entirely, suffering the same fate as other Maryland players that have left early in recent years, including Bruno Fernando, Justin Jackson and Diamond Stone. Sports Illustrated’s Jeremy Woo doesn’t view Smith as a can’t-miss prospect either, but sees him as a good fit for teams in the late first round, projecting him to go to the Milwaukee Bucks with the 24th pick.
“The Bucks have a well-documented affinity for stretch bigs, and Smith has a chance to capably make shots and protect the basket, which should make him a candidate at this spot in the draft,” Woo wrote. “His athletic shortcomings and physical stiffness are going to cap his upside, but he’s a good schematic match for Milwaukee and might be able to make the most of his ability in a situation like this. There’s not a lot separating the bigs in this range, but Smith’s fit is pretty solid here.”
The majority of mock drafters have Smith going in the mid-to-late first round range, including ESPN’s Jonathan Givony and The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie, arguably the two most respected NBA Draft analysts, who have him going to the Timberwolves with the 17th pick and to the Denver Nuggets with the 22nd pick respectively. Vecenie shared both the good and the bad with Smith in his most recent write-up:
Smith is a smooth-shooting, weak-side-shot-blocking hybrid big man with some bouncy explosiveness that allows him to run the floor and finish above the rim. A former five-star recruit, Smith took an enormous leap this season in averaging 15.5 points, 10.5 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game, while hitting 54 percent from the field and 37 percent from 3. With the league looking for more bigs who can step away and knock down shots, Smith is a terrific fit for the modern game. His stroke is simple and easy, with mechanics that should allow him to step away and knock down shots beyond the NBA line.
Having said that, he’s a bit stiff, though, and it could really hold him back from reaching the sum of what his skills say he has potential to be. How the rest of his frame develops will tell the story on whether he can stick at the NBA level, as he needs to be able to move a bit better away from the basket in defense, as well as hold up as a defensive rebounder. I’d anticipate his range is in the No. 15 to 25 area right now.
Mock drafts are an inexact science that never play out as predicted and there’s rarely a league consensus on draft prospects after the first 10 picks or so, so it’s no surprise that projections for Smith are all over the place. It makes sense, too. While it’s conceivable that there may be a couple of lottery teams high on him, there could be other players that those teams like that fall unexpectedly and throw a wrench into things, an even more likely scenario this year than previous years since the draft is expected to be more wide open than usual given the perceived weakness in prospects at the top. No selection -- not even the No. 1 pick -- appears set in stone right now with the draft less than two months away.
Additionally, players like Smith are especially hard to project nowadays given the difference in how individual NBA teams value and use big men in the three-point era. There’s a lot of similarly ranked bigs projected to go in the same range this year as well, including Big Ten foes Xavier Tillman (Michigan State) and Daniel Oturu (Minnesota), which means the order in which they come off the board could be largely influenced by team needs, preference or style of play.
In previous years, players could get a chance to separate themselves at the NBA Combine, but according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the league reportedly isn’t planning on bringing the top draft prospects together to be evaluated in one setting this year. Players are still expected to get a chance to workout for individual teams at their facilities, but that will likely lead to even less of a consensus on prospects since those workouts won’t be viewed league-wide.
The NBA Draft is scheduled for Thursday, October 16 and will be televised nationally on ESPN.
Basketball & recruiting writer