2026 NBA draft thread

[Scott41theMavs]

Yeah, but even if they finish best case scenario at the 6 spot. They're far more likely to jump in the top 4 or slide back to 7 or 8 than stay at 6. Kind of crazy that the 6th spot only has an 8.6% chance of actually picking at #6.

There's no way to know how teams stack the guards in this draft. Even this board is all over the place. Either way, I think for me the drop off is really at 9. The top-4 are pretty locked in, then the stack of Guards. That rounds out the top 8 for me. The order won't really matter if the Mavs are getting the last man standing...

The Grizz and the Mavs (and those top 5 tank seed teams) are trying to lose games; the Pels are not. I would look for the Pels to win about 5-6 of their remaining games. They will finish #8 odds if not lower. The race is between the Mavs and the Grizz, for which the Mavs will have to be extremely disciplined in tanking the rest of the way. They probably cannot afford a single win more if they want to finish sixth. I would guess the Grizz don't win more than one more game, if that, the rest of the way.

The true goal is just to finish with as high of odds as possible and cross your fingers to move up. If they don't move up, then there's a chance they can get one of the small number of second tier guys if they finish sixth and end up with the seventh or eighth pick. There isn't much chance at all if they end up seventh and pick eighth or ninth. To me, it's clearly Dybantsa-Wilson-Peterson-Boozer-Acuff-Flemings, and then essentially a pupu platter of choices. There may be a star left on the board somewhere, but to me, that guy, whoever he is, is clearly a diamond in the rough whom a Presti-Nellie-Pop genius GM would have the skill and insight to be able to identify, although a lesser GM talent might luck into him. 

To reiterate, I am 100% out on Brown. I do not want him with a fox, I do not want him in a box, I do not want him to be our pick under any circumstances. Wagler is probably my pick for the seventh-best in the draft - if not the strangely-underrated Philon - but others have eloquently noted the major concerns with him. Yes, his ceiling is Haliburton. His floor is a very mediocre 3-and-D guard - not what you want to end up with the seventh or eighth pick in this draft. Intangibles are going to be simply gigantically important with him.