Draft preview, Part 1: Three tiers, three players, and a deep hope of drafting 'The Guy'

As the Spurs line up their draft board, we take an early swing at the groups of players from which they'll be picking. At the top, the hierarchy seems clear.

Click here for Part 1 & Part 2 of the offseason preview, in case you missed them.

It’s not a stretch to say May 16 could be the most angst-ridden day in Spurs-World since Game 7 of the 2013 NBA Finals. Game 7 of San Antonio’s first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers in 2015 might be in the conversation, but I’m not sure most fans felt they had the juice to repeat that season anyway. Regardless…

Just envision what that stressful Tuesday evening is going to look like two weeks from now: You’ll be holding your breath for each pick as it’s called, laser-focused on every team just staying put in its most likely draft position until it’s time to announce the four franchises that were drawn in the lottery; there will be flop sweat, and potentially more drinking than usual on a weeknight; prayer circles will form, rituals will be performed, and promises of becoming a better person may be made to a higher power in exchange for a favorable result. It’s all on the table for this one.

Roughly 95 percent of that event isn’t going to be an enjoyable experience, and you can crank that up to nearly 100 percent should the Spurs slide past a certain point. But them’s the breaks when you’re at least partially relying on luck to hand you a gift from the heavens. San Antonio’s decision to dive this deep into the rebuilding process wasn’t solely based on the man at the top of this particular draft class, but his presence was a major, MAJOR factor in the willingness to do so. And now its fate will be decided by ping-pong balls.

As the Spurs meticulously craft their own draft board, I’m going to take a swing at replicating what it might look like. So keep in mind: This is not an effort to create a consensus tier system, but an attempt to build one through a Spurs lens before eventually creating a board of my own. The next three newsletters will break down five tiers comprised of 10, maybe 11 players (still on the fence about one or two guys!) who I believe will be in play for the first-through-seventh picks — the range in which San Antonio will be drafting barring any type of trade-back scenario.

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God Tier:

Victor Wembanyama, Boulogne-Levallois Metropolitans 92
Height: 7’4 (or maybe 7’5, or 7’6 by next month)
Weight: 230 lbs
Wingspan: 8’
Age: 19

For anyone who hasn’t been closely tracking the spectacle that is Victor Wembanyama, or who worries the hype may be unwarranted, just trust those in the know who tell you they’ve never seen anything like this dude before. Because, with apologies to Ralph Sampson, nobody ever has.

Wembanyama projects to be a transformative defensive presence, capable or erasing anything from dunk attempts to step-back 3-pointers. His tremendous length and natural instincts allow him to patrol the entirety of the painted area and still be in position to deter shots around the basket. He’s mobile enough to play up high in pick-and-roll situations, force the action to develop way out on the perimeter, and still recover to defend the rim if he’s beaten off the dribble.

There are even moments when he’ll bait ball-handlers into thinking they have a clear path to the basket by keeping his head turned away from them before flipping his hips, taking one massive step and swinging a lanky limb into that player’s previously unoccupied air space. He’s a defensive cheat code who’s going to rewire the programming of every offensive player on the floor, including veterans who have been around the game for literal decades.

It’s not often we can say a single prospect has the potential to completely alter the way offenses operate in today’s NBA, but Wembanyama could be the embodiment of that ultra-rare archetype. He’s ubiquitous — everything, everywhere, all at once.

Offensively, he’s even more of an alien. Imagine a player who’s just about the size and build of Shawn Bradley isolating defenders on the perimeter, taking them one-on-one, spinning into fadeaways over either shoulder, feigning an attack off the dribble before stepping back for a 3-pointer, or firing up RUNNERS from 25 feet. He’s got all that in his bag on top of being a post-up threat and major presence on the offensive glass. Point blank, Wembanyama is a threat to score from anywhere on the court, no matter the situation.

He has weaknesses — his thin frame makes him prone to bullies on defense, and his facilitating and decision-making have to improve — but they’re almost not worth considering at this juncture considering his strengths. By far the biggest concern is his health, as that body type has not fared well historically in the big leagues. But unless some massive red flag is raised during workouts or at the NBA Combine, nothing will prevent Wembanyama from going No. 1 overall. He’s not just a franchise-altering player, but someone who could potentially change the entire league.

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This-Is-Fine Tier

Scoot Henderson, G-League Ignite
Height: 6’2
Weight: 195 lbs
Wingspan: 6’9
Age: 19

Henderson would be a legitimate candidate to be selected with the first pick during most draft cycles, but it just so happened he became eligible the same year as the unicorn listed above.

An elite athlete with a physically imposing frame, very long arms and giant hands, Scoot is one of the rare “smaller” guards teams should be comfortable taking early in the draft as a centerpiece. He doesn’t have a wide array of one-on-one shot-creation tricks, but his strength, burst, length and flexibility allow him to consistently beat defenders to the paint and finish against size at the basket. When you have the ability to explode past or around the man guarding you, there’s no need for cuteness.

From a Spurs perspective, he’s coming out of the factory built to plug and play. Henderson is already an excellent pick-and-roll operator at just 19 years old, and the Ignite ran a TON of ball-screens for him this season. He kills “drop” coverage — which is what many G-League opponents try to use against him — with his pull-up jumper and floater game, and he’s excellent at maintaining a live dribble, snaking through the set and patiently elongating plays until the shot becomes available, or until the defense collapses and he can fire a pass to the open man.

Because his 3-point shot is questionable at this juncture, defenders almost exclusively went under the ball-screen in the pick-and-roll against him this season. It didn’t really matter though, even considering his inconsistent jump shot. If Henderson didn’t like the look coming off the first screen, he and his pick-and-roll partner would cleverly set up a re-screen to flip directions and give him the space needed to eventually work his way in toward his sweet spots in the mid-range. He’s such a threat to attack the rim that defenders are going to sag way off until he can improve upon his 27.5-percent mark from the 3-point line, but he’s still quite capable of getting hot.

That is a very low number from deep, but his mechanics and mid-range success — Scoot hit 43 percent of his pull-up 2s — suggest there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic. Besides, if the shot isn’t going down, Henderson is excellent when leveraging his driving ability and pull-up game to find teammates once the help comes.

Again, if you’re San Antonio, you love the stuff this guy puts on tape considering the way your system operates, as he excels at hitting shooters in the weakside corner once he gets downhill out of the pick-and-roll. Defenses must account for penetration and the rolling big by bringing the low man in to help, and Scoot has an off-the-dribble fastball he can throw for strikes whenever the opening presents itself. Additionally, when defenses decided to bring two to the ball, Henderson consistently showed he could make the right, quick pass to a connector and keep the offense humming if he wasn’t able to immediately beat the double-team off the bounce.

Defensively he’s got the physical traits to suggest he’ll be just fine at the point of attack. But I have to say, the Ignite — and a lot of these G-League teams — just weren’t good defensively, and it’s difficult to gauge how much Henderson did or didn’t impact things on that side of the ball when watching tape. There was frequent miscommunication all over the place, and you wonder how anyone could be totally locked in when things are just that messy on the whole.

He will no doubt have to learn the nuances of playing defense at the next level — from reading and navigating screens to maintaining awareness off the ball — but I’m just not concerned about that aspect of his game at this point. He should, at the very least, be a capable backcourt defender who could potentially become a disruptive on-ball force with his length and strength.

I genuinely wanted to keep these short-ish and save the deep dives for later, but I am undisciplined. Love Scoot. He’s got to develop a more consistent shot, and he’s got a lot to prove defensively, but it’s difficult to find many glaring weaknesses in his game that present long-term concerns. He’d be one hell of a consolation prize.

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Hope-And-A-Prayer Tier

Amen Thompson, Overtime Elite
Height: 6’7
Weight: 202
Wingspan: (I’ve seen anywhere from 6’9 to 6’11)
Age: 20

There are three players in this draft who look like The Guy to me, at least at this juncture. Despite the terrifying jumper, Amen Thompson is one of them. There are simply very few substitutes for an athlete of this caliber who possesses the most valuable skill set in the game.

Thompson seems to defy the laws of physics — either that, or he wrote them himself in another life. Not only is his start-and-stop explosiveness largely unmatched in the entire world of basketball, but his ability to slither around defenders and slip through gaps hardly makes sense for someone his size.

He can contort his body through any sliver of space — of which there will be much more in the NBA — often turning defenders into traffic cones even when they’ve dropped back or sagged off in coverage. Form a wall around the rim and you’d better hope all the cracks are sealed, because he’ll find them, if he doesn’t elect to just blast right through the barricade with his strong frame.

Additionally, Amen is a very crafty ball-handler who can get in and out of trouble with relative ease and use nice touch to create good looks around the rim, where he shot nearly 60 percent this season. And his ability to effortlessly explode off the floor and float through the air makes it almost impossible for shot-blockers to get to the ball once he’s elevated.

But NBA defenses will be ready. Given the awful shooting numbers and rough-looking mechanics he displayed with Overtime Elite (sub-30 percent on both catch-and-shoots and pull-ups) he’s going to get all kinds of space at the next level. But if you can’t shoot, you’d better be able to pass. And Amen can pass.

Because of his explosiveness and finishing ability, help defenders must constantly be on high alert. Thompson cannot be left isolated, otherwise he’ll likely smoke whoever is in front of him. When the swarm comes, he has the ability to make quick decisions and accurately connect with open shooters along the perimeter or bigs rolling to the rim.

Like Henderson, Amen is built for the Spurs’ motion system. Gregg Popovich and Co. love to create opportunities for players on the move, and if Thompson finds himself in situations where the defense hasn’t had a chance to load up, he has the potential to skewer them. The pressure he’ll put on defenders going under the pick as the primary option coming off ball-screens will be tremendous; and if the defense elects to sell out on the drive, Thompson will have all sorts of space to kick to a spot-up big like Zach Collins, who is going to have enough time to lick his finger, stick it in the air and test for ventilation currents before he even has to think about shooting.

And if that jump shot even sniffs a league-average mark at any point in his career? Lord help you. It MUST improve if he’s going to hit his ceiling, and it is the element of his game that has him looking up at Henderson in these rankings. But even if it remains subpar, his athletic gifts and ability to facilitate will make him a defensive focal point on a nightly basis.

On top of all that, everyone you talk to raves about Thompson’s character and work ethic. It is this writer’s humble opinion the Spurs should not think too hard about their selection if Wemby and Scoot are off the board and they’re next in line to pick. Unless unexpected health concerns arise in the coming weeks, Amen feels like the guy.

Part 2 coming soon…

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