USC’s Isaiah Collier now has his landing spot for the start of his NBA career. Collier was picked No. 29 by the Utah Jazz in the 2024 NBA draft on Wednesday night.
Collier fell quite a lot on draft night. He was projected in the 17-21 range by a lot of forecasters and mock NBA draft creators. He was generally expected to be a top-20 pick in the last two weeks before the draft.
Collier’s fall on draft night mirrored the long-term fall he suffered over the course of the past college basketball season and into the start of the offseason. Right after the NBA draft lottery several weeks ago (in mid-May), Collier was projected as a No. 11 pick to the Chicago Bulls. At the start of the college basketball season, Collier was widely seen as a potential top-five pick with a top-three ceiling. It was a steady decline for Collier from November to late June. His stock was never higher than after his dominant season-opening game against Kansas State on Nov. 6. That was the high point of his USC career and his NBA stock value. Everything went downhill from there, and Andy Enfield couldn’t develop him during the season. The injury he suffered in the middle of January didn’t help, but even if you account for the injury, Collier very rarely played at the level of a No. 1 recruit in his (2023) class, or at the level of an NBA lottery pick. He gets to start over in Utah on a young Jazz team which is unlikely to make the playoffs next season. Collier can learn on the job in a low-expectation setting.
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