Now that the 2022 NBA Draft Combine is in the rearview mirror, teams around the league can make some final conclusions about each prospect.
Every year, two of the most interesting takeaways from this scouting event are the official measurements and the athletic testing scores. Based on what we saw last week, we can make some comparisons to previous participants who went on to play in the pros.
The goal of this exercise was not to predict how a player performs on the court or even offer context about their playing style. Instead, this should at least help provide some useful information about the size and athleticism of these prospects.
Before we get into that, however, let’s review some important details.
For starters, these are just physical comparisons! If you want to read about how some of these prospects view themselves, for example, The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov compiled a very helpful list of their answers.
Player comps are how we, and teams, make sense of draft prospects. I asked 27 draft prospects to give the player comps for themselves as they pitch NBA teams. Their answers reveal how they think of their games and who they believe NBA teams value now.https://t.co/XZVOLt1Q4b
— Mike Vorkunov (@MikeVorkunov) May 24, 2022
While I do believe these physical comparisons are useful information to understand a prospect in terms of their build and athleticism, I’m not sure if there is very much correlation to on-court success. There are plenty of more athletically gifted players than Nikola Jokic, for example, who have not won back-to-back MVP honors.
Even with the practical utility of these data points, they can always change. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Durant were much skinnier when they came into the league. But their measurements can give teams areas that the player will need to work on once drafted into their organization.
Also, especially over the last few years, most of the projected lottery picks were not full participants in the NBA Draft Combine. While plenty went through the camp (and used it to improve their draft stock), many top players in the league do not have official measurements to reference.
So if you think that Jaden Ivey is giving Ja Morant vibes, you might be proven right! But we are not able to make that comparison using this particular database because neither was tested in their pre-draft evaluation.
Regardless, although these comparisons aren’t an exact match, they are at least rooted in actual numbers. You can check this app, which was built by Mark Cheung, for any prospects who participated in the NBA combine or G League Elite Camp that did not make the list included below.