The NBA draft projections for USC’s Isaiah Collier were in the 10-14 range right after the NBA draft lottery in the middle of May. Then they started moving toward No. 17, then to No. 19, then to No. 21 in a recent College Sports Wire projection.
As it turned out, even those final few projections before the 2024 NBA draft which had Collier in the 19 to 21 pick range overestimated how much NBA teams would value him. The USC product fell all the way to No. 29 on Wednesday night. He did get a first-round selection, and he did avoid the ultimate disaster of being invited to the draft and then not hearing his name called at any point in the first round, forced to spend a night thinking about being snubbed by 30 NBA teams. Yet, the fall to 29 is still jarring for a prospect who was viewed as a potential top-five pick when the 2023-2024 college basketball season began in early November of last year.
Collier dominated Kansas State in his USC season opener. The Trojans looked, on that night, like a potential top-three seed in the NCAA Tournament. Collier did look like a top-five-caliber pick. He scored three and-one baskets in the first half of that KSU game. That’s hard to do. He was the best player on the floor by a large margin, playing his first college game as a freshman.
It never got better from there. Collier’s season was marred by injuries — that much has to be said — but he also never felt comfortable in Andy Enfield’s system. Now Collier gets a fresh start with the rebuilding Jazz. He is likely to go through a rough first season, but if he learns what he needs to learn, he could be a really good NBA player by 2027.
We’re definitely pulling for him here at Trojans Wire.
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