2026 NBA draft thread

[mvossman]

I think the desire to play fast is something we should keep in mind as we think through prospects...draft and free agency.  I think the low turnovers also help Wagler's cause to be a Mav priority if he's available.  Now that I'm watching him more, I don't think his D is as bad as I might have feared based on his small frame.  The NBA will be different and fighting through screens will be a problem, but he at least works at it.

The thing that gives me the most pause about Wagler is watching him try to navigate hard hedges on PnR plays.  He never turns the corner on anyone.  This will limit his usefulness as a main ball-handler at the next level.  I'm not sure what the counter will be, but it shows his limited athleticism in a way that detracts some from how high I'd rate him.  Still high, but not 5th/6th pick high like some now have him.  

Here are two Advanced Stat lines for guys available in this range that I found interesting (knowing some don't give a rat's a$$ about this).  The WS/40 and BPM's are very similar for these players, but they get in different ways.  One is more heavily skewed toward O and the other is more balanced between O and D:

              Player 1       Player 2
PER          22.2              24.1
TS%         .625             .597
TRB %       8.9               8.4
AST %      14.5              23.3
STL %       2.8               1.7
TOV %      10.2              10.5
USG %      23.2              25.0
OWS          3.7               5.4
DWS          2.7               1.7
WS            6.4               7.0
WS/40        .226             .234
OBPM         6.2               8.9
DBPM         5.8               3.5  
BPM           12.0             12.4

FWIW, Flemings is in this same range in terms of WS/40 and BPM, but has a much higher AST %.  Acuff is lower (as you'd expect, his D numbers hurt his overall advanced metrics).  Similar for Philon.  103 year old Yaxel Lendeborg has fantastic numbers...but, he's 103 and in his second senior season (literally a man among boys).  

Player 1 is Burries and Player 2 is Wagler.  Surprising that Burries has the higher TS%.  It was a little surprising to me that so many of their numbers were so similar.

I think it gets even more interesting when you put some context around these numbers.

I wonder if Burries playing off ball contributes to his higher TS%?  Wagler is on the ball a lot.

Flemings team is not as good offensively as Arizona or Illinois.  I wonder how much that impacts his offensive numbers?

Philon is an interesting case study.  If he had come out after his freshman year, a big part of his draw was his defense.  But in his sophomore year he took over the offense, had a massive usage rate, and his defense suffered significantly.  When looking at these guys defense, I think there needs to be some discounting depending on how much offensive responsibility they have (maybe Acuff is not quite as bad as he seems?).  The outlier here is Flemings, who has a fairly heavy offensive responsibility and yet still has the best defensive numbers (although how much of that is due to Sampson priorities?).

For me, I still have Wagler/Acuff/Flemings a notch above Burries/Philon due to their combination of youth/upside and offensive responsibility.  If Mavs are picking 7, I'm probably going to go for which ever one of those three guys is left.  If the Mavs are picking later and those guys are all gone then its going to be an interesting choice between Burries and Philon.