Ausar Thompson's lucky charm (2024)

The Atlanta Hawks, despite having a three percent chance, have won the 2024 NBA Draft lottery. Here is the full draft order.

1. Atlanta Hawks
2. Washington Wizards
3. Houston Rockets
4. San Antonio Spurs
5. Detroit Pistons
6. Charlotte Hornets
7. Portland Trail Blazers
8. San Antonio Spurs (via Toronto Raptors)
9. Memphis Grizzlies
10. Utah Jazz
11. Chicago Bulls
12. Oklahoma City Thunder (via Houston Rockets)
13. Sacramento Kings
14. Portland Trail Blazers (via Golden State Warriors)

The Pistons and Wizards had the best shot of earning the No. 1 pick. Detroit moves down for the third straight season.

This is the room where the NBA Draft Lottery results will be announced during a broadcast at 3 p.m. ET.

With 75 minutes until the broadcast, it's quiet in here.

You know all about the stage where each team's representative during the broadcast sits. But near the foot of the stage there are circular tables for officials from each participating team.

Individual draft prospects, including Alex Sarr and Cody Williams, have seats reserved in the front row.

By the way, the room where the broadcast originates is different from the closed-off room where the actual lottery drawing takes place.

A group of media members, including The Athletic's Mike Vorkunov, will watch the drawing from that room. That group of journalists was ushered into that room at about 1:30 p.m. ET and had to hand over their phones before they walked inside.

Topić has not played since early January due to a knee injury he suffered after leaving Mega Basket and returning to Crvena zvezda for the second half of its season.

Topić did enough to rise up the scouting board before that injury, and league sources remain unconcerned about its long-term severity despite his extended absence.

In 13 games for Mega Basket, Topić averaged 18.6 points and 6.9 assists while shooting 52.4 percent from the field. He’s a dynamic ball-screen distributor and consistently lives in the paint in the Adriatic League, which consists of teams from the six countries that once made up Yugoslavia.

He can execute nearly every pass in the book once he gets that downhill advantage and hits teammates with flair and creativity. Topić also scores proficiently at the rim, using inventive touch in finishing high off the glass and around rim protectors.

Clingan helped himself as much as any player in the NCAA Tournament, leading Connecticut to a national title. His elite interior defense was arguably the most important part of the equation for the Huskies, which can be seen by Connecticut’s defensive improvement throughout the season.

What you’re getting in Clingan is an elite drop-coverage big who profiles as an elite rim protector by NBA standards. I feel confident he’ll be a starting center in the NBA. His mobility at his size is too good, and he’s stronger with a more physical frame than Walker Kessler. I also think he’s a better rebounder than Kessler due to that ability to anchor on the interior.

However, the biggest difference between the two comes as a passer. Clingan is a legitimate passer with awesome vision for a center. He’s comfortable running dribble-handoff actions at the top of the key but can also reject them if they’re getting overplayed and just try to make a pass himself. He averaged nearly two assists per game over his final 18 games and had a 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

In this draft, if you’re telling me I’m getting an elite defensive big who finishes inside and passes well, I’m taking him in the top 10.

Collier is an explosive, physical guard who can push tempo and get into the paint at will due to his strength and first step. Because of that strength, he can attack the rim and finish at a high level, using his power to maintain his balance through contact.

Then on top of it, the skill he didn’t get to show as much this year due to the team around him is his passing. His assist numbers underrate that part of his game, as he’s capable of hitting sharp dump-offs around the rim as well as kickouts.

The concerns are two-fold. Collier is still developing as a shooter from distance. That will likely be the swing skill of his game.

Can he consistently hit pull-ups? Can he make shots off the catch regularly? If he does, he’ll be a starting point guard. If he doesn’t, then he might be more of a backup.

Second, he needs to improve defensively. His hips are quite tight and he struggles to drop to stay in front of his man. He got blown by a bit more often than you’d hope for someone of his length and athleticism.

The NBA released its list of early entry NBA Draft candidates Tuesday, featuring 195 players from the college basketball and international ranks — but notably, several high-profile college stars and former top recruits were not included.

Among the notable players not included on the NBA’s list — which signifies those players are returning to college basketball next season — are North Carolina guard RJ Davis, Arizona guard Caleb Love and former Kentucky guard D.J. Wagner.

Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich’s reaction was like that of everyone else when Victor Wembanyama first arrived in The Alamo City after the San Antonio Spurs made the French teenager the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.

He had seen hours of video of Wembanyama’s games in France and the October 2022 exhibition games in Las Vegas that featured Wembanyama and the G League Ignite’s Scoot Henderson, whom the Portland Trail Blazers would select third in the 2023 NBA Draft.

Yet, he still needed to see what Wembanyama would do against NBA competition. He steered clear of great expectations for his new star, but by this season’s end, Popovich acknowledged that even the hype that came with his new “generational” big man had been insufficient. A major factor in the coach’s awakening to Wemby’s true level of excellence derived from the rookie’s willingness to be coached by Popovich and his assistants.

“He was much more malleable and accepting, expanding his role, expanding his game, both defensively and offensively,” Popovich said during a season summation and ahead of the NBA naming Wemby the rookie of the year on Monday. “You’ll have to ask him if he was planning on leading the league in blocks when he came, but that was like a requirement. We wanted him at the basket and we wanted him rebounding and blocking shots.

Typically, Popovich avoids comparing players. Such exercises, he avers, are fool’s errands. But while evaluating what he had learned about Wembanyama this season he made an exception.

“He’s made me understand that he has those Tim Duncan qualities of innate basketball IQ and a fire that he wants to be the best,” said Popovich.

The most common response I get from evaluators on the NBA side regarding Edey is the Nos. 15 to 25 range. Not quite a lottery pick, but a solid first-round pick due to his production and toughness in college. Edey’s regarded as an excellent screener and interior scorer who is likely to establish his position even against many of the strongest players the NBA has to offer. He can knock down foul shots and is aggressive on the offensive glass due to his 7-foot-10 wingspan.

The big questions come on defense. Edey got better over his four years at Purdue and particularly excelled in its drop coverage scheme. But putting him in more space in the NBA is seen as a concern in terms of guards and bigs turning the corner on him and beating him to the rim too easily. He’s seen as a good bet to become a backup center at least, with some potential to become a starter if his development goes right over the next couple of years.

Reed Sheppard might’ve gone to Kentucky envisioning a multi-year career, but he simply played his way out of that reality. The 6-foot-3 Sheppard, named SEC Rookie of the Year, USBWA Freshman of the Year and NABC Freshman of the Year, led the SEC in steals and true shooting percentage and hit 52.1 percent of his 3-point attempts. He averaged 12.5 points, 4.5 assists, 4.1 rebounds and 2.5 steals. He’s the only high-major player in the last 30 years with at least 75 made 3s, 75 steals, 140 assists and 20 blocks.

Sam Vecenie’s latest NBA mock draft for The Athletic had Sheppard going No. 4 overall. Also, “If the right team ends up at No. 1, it’s even possible he at least gets a workout and meetings to prove his chops with that team,” Vecenie wrote. “It’s almost impossible for a college player of any age to be this productive and efficient.”

Throughout the season, Stephon Castle consistently took on the toughest assignment on the perimeter and wing defensively for Connecticut, a top-five defense in the country, and found success. Need someone to chase potential first-rounder Baylor Scheierman around screens? Castle can do it. Need someone to defend at the point of attack? Castle can do that. What about a big wing creator? Castle will do that, too, and shut off his water, just like he did in the Elite Eight against Illinois’ Terrence Shannon Jr.

Shannon came into that game averaging 27.2 points over his prior 15 games. Castle held him to eight points on 2-of-12 shooting. In the Final Four, he took on the Mark Sears assignment at point guard. Sears scored 24 but only nine of those points came on Castle, and four of those nine came on heavily contested attempts that Sears maneuvered around or shot over the top of to make. He made life miserable for one of the best guards in the country this season and made him work for every bucket. Against Purdue in the title game, Castle took long swaths of time on Braden Smith, who only scored two points when being guarded by Castle.

If that’s all he did, he’d be worth a first-round pick. But Castle also was quite good on offense. He averaged 12.5 points, nearly six rebounds and three assists while posting a 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio. He had 21 points in the Final Four against Alabama and was the team’s best offensive player, then followed it up with 15 against Purdue. I thought he had a real case as Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four, especially when accounting for the defensive job he did on Sears and Smith.

Alexandre Sarr has the highest upside of any prospect in this class and has improved greatly this season playing overseas. Defensively, Sarr has a chance to be special. He covers well in space for his size. He flies around the court and can stay in front of small players. At the rim, Sarr is an intimidating presence because of his length. And if he’s not blocking shots, he’s likely disrupting them.

Offensively, there has been some fun, intriguing stuff from Sarr with the ball in his hands in both transition and a half-court setting. I also believe he’s shown good-enough touch to be a legitimate shooting threat at some point in his career.

Ultimately though, Detroit would be selecting Sarr for who he could become on defense. This franchise desperately needs elite rim protection in the frontcourt, and I’m not sure there is a better prospect in this class who could both check that box and grow into more than just a lob threat on the offensive side of the floor.

My biggest questions with Sarr are about his current level of competition. That stuff is always hard to gauge, particularly with someone of Sarr’s age. He’s also not a great defensive rebounder. He’ll need a more punishing big man next to him at the NBA level, I believe, to have success sooner rather than later.

Yet, if the majority of this stuff ends up clicking, Detroit could end up with a very special player. I’m just not sure, with how fragile the franchise is right now, that it can afford to take a gamble on a prospect if there is legitimate trade interest in the No. 1 pick that could yield proven, good NBA players.ge

Five of the 14 picks in the NBA Draft Lottery have been traded by their original teams. Here's the breakdown:

• No. 6: The Toronto Raptors dealt this pick to the San Antonio Spurs in a 2023 deal for Jakob Poeltl, but the selection is top-six protected. If it stays in the top six, Toronto will retain the pick, but if it winds up at No. 7 or below, San Antonio receives it.
• No. 8: Currently belongs to the Utah Jazz, who have a top-10 protection on the pick. But it lands outside the top 10, it will go to the Oklahoma City Thunder as part of a 2022 trade for Derrick Favors.
• No. 9: The Brooklyn Nets originally owned this selection, but it will go to the Houston Rockets thanks to the 2021 James Harden deal.
• No. 12: This pick was originally Houston's, but it will go to the Oklahoma City Thunder from the 2019 Russell Westbrook trade. However, Houston does have a top-four protection on it, so they have some chance to keep the pick.
• No. 14: Originally the Golden State Warriors' pick, this selection was sent to the Portland Trail Blazers by way of the Boston Celtics' 2023 Jrue Holiday trade. Boston had acquired the pick from Memphis in the 2023 Marcus Smart trade, and the Grizzlies had acquired the pick from Golden State in the 2019 Andre Iguodala trade. The pick is top-four protected, so if it lands that high, it will stay with the Warriors.

Assuming the Pistons land the No.1 pick, one way they can add more proven, NBA talent — which is needed and also more realistic than adding a star at this stage — is by trading it.

Consider this proposal: The Pistons trade their 2024 first-round pick (No. 1), Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren to the Brooklyn Nets for Mikal Bridges, Dorian Finney-Smith and a 2025 first-round pick (via Phoenix Suns, top-14 protected).

Parting ways with both Ivey and Duren is risky, as both are very young and still have upside despite rocky sophom*ore seasons, but this is the situation Detroit finds itself in. It has to make an aggressive moves in order to make serious strides. Cade Cunningham, who has the highest trade value on the team, isn’t going anywhere. Ivey and Duren both have value around the league, and while this free-agency class is meh, Detroit can address both positions in the open market.

In this scenario, the Pistons address a significant need on the wing, getting one of the better 3-and-D wings in the NBA in Bridges and a very solid 3-and-D wing in Finney-Smith. Both players have multiple years left on their respective contracts. Having those two with Ausar Thompson, Simone Fontecchio and Quentin Grimes would mean Detroit being legitimately set at the wing rotation for several years. As for the Nets, who had a disappointing season and appears to have a real ceiling as constructed, they should start rebuilding around youth, and the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft and two recent lottery picks in Ivey and Duren is a really good way to begin that process.

Furthermore in this trade scenario, the Pistons still will have roughly $34 million to use in free agency, while this deal opens up about $15 million in cap space for the Nets (after they sign the No. 1 pick).