The Athletic

We’re three weeks into the college basketball season, which means we’ve finally gotten eyes on many of the best NBA Draft prospects across the country. It’s time to come up with a starting point for my 2023 NBA Draft big board, and boy, have I struggled more with this at this point of the season than I have in previous years. It’s still early, but many of the highest-rated freshmen in the class have either been injured or not quite lived up to expectations. Potential top-five picks Nick Smith Jr. (Arkansas) and Cam Whitmore (Villanova) have yet to play. Dereck Lively and Dariq Whitehead missed parts of the preseason for Duke and are just now being integrated into their team’s rotations. Players with strong reputations such as UCLA’s Amari Bailey and Adem Bona and Kentucky’s Chris Livingston have not exactly set the world on fire. South Carolina’s GG Jackson is only 17 years old. Oregon’s Kel’el Ware and Texas’ Dillon Mitchell have yet to really carve out immediate high-impact roles, especially on offense. That’s seven of the top-10 recruits, in addition to a few other five-star recruits scouts were excited to get eyes on to start the season. On top of that, many of the best players returning to college basketball this season were big men who decided to stay an extra year of college basketball because the NBA is not all that enthusiastic about selecting centers.