Who are the early 2021 NBA Draft risers?
Here are six players that have caught my eye through the first month of the season.
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It’s been a while since I did one of these, but now that we are nearly a month into the college basketball season, I wanted to take some time to talk through some of the prospects that have caught my eye for one reason or another.
No. 1 on this list is Jalen Suggs, and we’ve officially reached the point in time where a real conversation need to be had about who to take with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft.
But that’s a different conversation for a different day. (Teaser!)
Anyway, here are six players that I found myself impressed with through the first four weeks of the season.
KEON JOHNSON, Tennessee, Freshman
6-foot-5, 186 lbs
8.4 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 2.6 apg, 1.8 spg, 0.8 bpg
He’s not the best player in this freshman class, and he’s certainly not a sleeper (not anymore, at least) by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think that Keon Johnson is my favorite prospect in this year’s draft class and the guy that will get drafted higher than you’d expect based off his stats and the fact that, you know, he comes off the bench.
For him, it all starts on the defensive end of the floor. He is an elite defensive prospect. And when I say elite, I mean elite. At 6-foot-5 and 190 pounds, he can guard anyone from point guards to wings. He’s incredible on the ball, having shown the ability to just eat up an opposing team’s best player multiple times already despite the season being so young. He can flip his hips and beat a driver to a spot. He can jump passing lanes. He never gets screened. He never seems to get tired. He’s already landed a couple of highlight-worthy blocks this year.
There will be more to come as well, because he is just a sensational athlete.
And I’m not strictly talking about leaping ability here. He’s nimble. He’s fluid. He’s lithe. Oh, and he’s one of those guys that can elevate in any situation — off his right foot, off his left foot, off two feet moving right, off two feet moving left. This makes him a terror in transition, as well as a very real threat as a slasher.
The key moving forward for Keon is going to be skill work. What is he going to develop into as a shooter? He’s hit a couple of threes this season, and his jumper certainly isn’t broken, but it is a work in progress. How much does he develop as a ball-handler? He’s shown flashes of being a good passer that can read the floor, can he continue to grow as a facilitator?
It’s important to take all of this into context as well. Keon is one of the younger prospects in this class. He won’t turn 19 until March. He also missed the majority of his senior season coming off of a knee injury, and that led directly into the COVID shutdowns. He hasn’t really played since the summer after his junior year in high school.
Combine all of that with the fact that the intel coming out of Knoxville is that Johnson is a worker and a great teammate, and you get a prospect that I’d be willing to take in the top seven in this draft.
KAI JONES, Texas, Sophomore
6-foot-11, 218 lbs
8.8 ppg, 4.6 rpg, 45.5% 3PT, 75.6 eFG%
Kai Jones is the guy in the 2021 NBA Draft class that I think is the most likely to go from being somewhat off the radar to being drafted, maybe as high as the late-teens, because of his ceiling.
Now look, there are a lot of things about his game that need to be improved, and that’s something that we are going to get to, but the bottom line is this: Jones stands 6-foot-11, is capable of making catch-and-shoot threes and has the ability to do things like this off of the dribble. This is against All-American Jeremiah Robinson-Earl:
Here he is squaring up All-American Garrison Brooks and hitting a pump-fake, one-dribble pull-up with less than two minutes left in the Maui title game:
Here he is hitting All-American Trayce Jackson-Davis with a jab step, blowing by him, taking him out of the play with a pump-fake and dunking:
He can do all of that other stuff that NBA fives need to be able to do. He’s a lob target and a vertical spacer. He can run the floor. He has the athleticism to protect the rim. But the thing about Jones is that these plays are momentary flashes of brilliance. He’s not even starting for Texas right now, and while that has a lot to do with how good the Longhorns are, it’s still a sign that he’s a work in progress.
And, honestly, he should be! Jones didn’t play organized basketball until he was 15. He didn’t play basketball, period, until he was 12. He grew up as a long jumper and a high jumper in the Bahamas. He came to the States as a high schooler. It makes sense that he is still learning just how good he can be, and that he hasn’t quite figured out weak side rotations and defensive positioning. You understand why he has a frame that can stand to use some muscle. Track athletes aren’t exactly know as body builders.
He’s a project, but when that project starts with this foundation, there’s reason to invest.
JASON PRESTON, Ohio, Junior
6-foot-4, 187 lbs
19.3 ppg, 7.8 apg, 6.0 rpg, 52% 3PT
Jason Preston is the best story in college basketball. It’s been covered ad nauseum at this point. His mother died when he was in high school. He moved in with her best friend, as his father wasn’t in the picture and his extended family was in Jamaica. He was a 6-foot, 140 pound benchwarmer as a senior that scored all of 52 points that season.
He enrolled at UCF as a student before ending up at a prep school in Tennessee. He grew four inches. He posted some highlights of his games from what amounted to the JV team on twitter. Ohio head coach Jeff Boals offered him a scholarship based off of those videos. Now, as a junior, he’s arguably the best mid-major player in college basketball and a potential pro.
That, my friends, is a journey so unbelievable that when it’s made into a movie, people will call it unrealistic.
But it’s the truth.
Preston, however, is more than just his story. At 6-foot-4 and 185 pounds, Preston is a ball-screen maestro. His ability to use angles and change of pace to create space for himself is elite. He knows how to use his frame to shield off defenders that go over screens against him, and you have to go over screens because he’s a knockdown shooter. His footwork is masterful. He has a terrific touch in the mid-range. His ability as a live-dribble passer is impressive.
Preston raised his national profile on the opening weekend of the season, when he went for 31 points and eight assists in a game where Ohio should have beaten Illinois in Champaign. But that wasn’t just a one-off performance. He’s averaging 19.3 points, 7.8 assists and 6.0 boards this year. He averaged 16.3 points and 5.0 assists against Villanova, Baylor and Utah in the Myrtle Beach Invitational last November.
I’m not sure what his impact will be defensively. He’s more athletic than he looks, but he doesn’t have tools anywhere near the level of “NBA point guard”. The biggest concern for me, however, is whether or not he can impact a game without being a ball-dominant player, because I’m not sure he’s quite good enough to be a ball-dominant lead guard in the league. That said, he is 6-foot-4 and, over the last two seasons, he’s shooting 48 percent on catch-and-shoot jumpers.
It’s a long season and there will be a lot more tape to pour through, but for my money, Preston is well worth a second round pick.
NATHAN MENSAH, San Diego State, Junior
6-foot-10, 230 lbs
8.8 ppg, 7.2 rpg, 1.5 bpg
The biggest reason that San Diego State, prior to that BYU disaster, was able to continue to win despite losing their starting backcourt — including All-American and first-round pick Malachi Flynn — is because they’re continued to be one of the toughest defensive teams in the country.
Mensah is the biggest reason for that. A 6-foot-10 center with a wingspan that is reportedly 7-foot-5, Mensah is an immense presence in and around the paint. He can block shots, he’s a lob target and a vertical spacer. And he’s now 230 pounds. It’s wild to think about just how good the Aztecs would have been last season had he been healthy for the second semester.
But what makes him so interesting as a prospect is his ability to switch out on the perimeter. There were multiple instances against Arizona State where Mensah was switched onto All-American point guard Remy Martin and kept Martin from doing anything. Bigs with his measureables and his ability to move their feet against small guards are not easy to find.
Now, Mensah is raw offensively. He doesn’t have great hands and he’s not the best finisher or floor-spacer. If he was, he wouldn’t be in school right now.
JALEN WILSON, Kansas, RS Freshman
6-foot-8, 215 lbs
14.3 ppg, 8.0 rpg, 37.5% 3PT
Jalen Wilson, a redshirt freshman at Kansas that played just two games last season after breaking his ankle, has been one of the country’s biggest surprises through the first three weeks of the season, developing into something of a go-to guy as a five as Bill Self has been forced to play small this season.
Wilson scored 21 of his 23 points in the second half of a come-from-behind win against Kentucky in the Champions Classic. He went for 23 and 10, hitting the game-winning three, in a win over Creighton in the Phog. He’s been more effective on the glass than 7-foot center David McCormack early on this season. Those are promising signs.
But there are concerns.
For starters, through eight games, Wilson has a total of two blocks and one steal. He’s not an impact guy on that end of the floor right now, and I’m not sure that he ever will be. He’s also had some trouble finish against length around the basket. If he could make a layup against North Dakota State, Kansas wouldn’t have been down in the final minutes at home. Against Texas Tech, Wilson was finally treated like the star that he is turning into against a team that didn’t mind playing a wing at the five, and he was held to seven points on a night where he took as many shots as he had turnovers (four).
He’s certainly been intriguing through the first month of the season.
But tracking how he does in the best defensive league in country will determine where, or if, he should be drafted this spring.
JOE WEISKAMP, Iowa, Junior
6-foot-6, 212 lbs
15.9 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 42.4% 3PT
I was never worried about the shooting with Joe Wieskamp, even after his three-point percentage dropped below 35 percent as a sophomore. He’s a driller, we know that. And he has size, we know that, too.
Where Wieskamp needed to improve was with his physicality as a defender and his toughness as a driver and a finisher.
And he’s proven to be much more effective at the latter this season. Wieskamp has been able to put the ball on the floor and get to the rim . He’s never going to be asked to be a slasher at the next level, but being capable of attacking a close-out and making defenses pay for selling out to run him off of the three-point line will make a difference.
Defensively, he’s still very much a work in progress. But Duncan Robinson was a work in progress as well. Now, Duncan is one of the five best shooters on the planet, if not the best shooter on the planet, and putting Wieskamp into that conversation is certainly something of a stretch right now. The point, however, is that smart teams can find a way to take advantage of players that do have an elite skill as long as they are, at minimum, functional at everything else.
And Wieskamp?
There is certainly a world where he is a functional defender with time.
And that’s all he really needs to be,