NBA Draft 2019: Player comparisons for all projected first round picks

The 2019 NBA Draft is less than three weeks away! As the big day draws closer and closer, Busting Brackets looks at the projected top 30 picks and comes up with a NBA player comparison for each.

It’s like clockwork.

Every single year, it’s the same thing. Several months of collegiate and international basketball are consumed at a rapid rate by the media and fans alike, with stats and highlights and storylines fueling national narratives that stick to prospects, often generating unintelligible levels of hype as June’s draft draws closer.

Everyone attempts to claim what prospect is capable of what, trying to find the next this or the next that, struggling to quantify who a prospect could be at the next level and how they could play and impact the game. Scouting is hard work and often too arduous for the average fan, or even the average talking head, and understanding the nitty gritty details of player styles and skill sets involves a lot of deep thinking and length research.

That’s where comparisons come in.

Every draft cycle, media publications seek a compromise when it comes to evaluating prospects and providing this information to consumers, often using comparisons to current NBA players as a means for simplifying the process of understanding who a prospect is and what they can be. Inherently, it’s not a bad idea. Looking at the current league and figuring out where the next wave of young guys fits into everything is a natural thing to do, and for the most part, coming up with player comps is pretty fun, especially when players boast eerily similar measurements, personalities, or statistical profiles.

The issue with making comparisons, however, is how flawed the process often is, for both fans and media members alike. Generally, they’re imprecise and inaccurate (i.e., mostly bad), often making wild comparisons that aren’t based in reality. A player that performed horribly at the college level shouldn’t be compared to an NBA superstar just because they look alike or have similar measurements — that’s just foolish. Likewise, comparing picks 1-60 to current NBA role players and starters is malpractice, considering just how many players end up busting. And, generally, you’re not going to have anywhere close to 60 guys contributing, and more often than not, most players selected in the first round don’t pan out, either.

Such is the nature of the NBA and the draft — it’s not quite a crapshoot, but the unpredictability and uncertainty of it all makes it difficult to come up with accurate (or even semi-accurate) comparisons.

But, we’re going to try to come up with some, anyway.

The purpose of this project is, one, to just be fun and lighthearted more than anything, but also to attempt at contextualizing players’ styles and measurements (and everything in-between) to come up with comparisons that aren’t outlandish or maddening.

This piece isn’t meant to say that Player X will turn out just like NBA Player Y. It’s more of an attempt at trying to figure out how they’ll be used at the next level, based on similarities in skill, IQ, physical tools, and other defining factors. If someone is compared to Isaiah Thomas, that doesn’t mean that the player will go on to average 28.9 points per game at some point in their career; rather, it means that they’ll be utilized in a similar manner offensively, and will have similar shortcomings on the defensive end that will have to be hidden. Similarly, someone being compared to Rudy Gay or Garrett Temple or Luke Kennard doesn’t mean that these prospects will be mirror images of these established NBA players, but they could carve out similar roles and play styles upon entering the league.

Players won’t be compared to legitimate starters or all-stars if they don’t genuinely profile/project to be such players, whether it’s based on their physical profiles, statistical production, or expected draft spot, so expect for some comparisons to be somewhat conservative.

For the sake of not having to use a million decimals or fractions, all measurements will be rounded up unless noted otherwise, and will be placed alongside the players’ names for the sake of getting background information out of the way without listing it within the comparison explanations over and over again. Measurements can be a little superfluous, but they’re relatively important for understanding how players are similar, since most prospects and their doppelgängers discussed here come in at similar measurements (for the most part, anyway).

Now, before we get into the actual comparisons, let’s go through a quick-fire round of horrible comparisons that are floating around that are absolutely nonsensical and flawed, that way we don’t have to delve into them later, shall we?

• Zion Williamson is NOT Julius Randle — that comp is only floating around because they’re thick lefty forwards who are power-dunkers. That’s the only way they’re similar, and this comp wouldn’t be made if they weren’t both left-handed.
• Ja Morant is NOT Russell Westbrook — they’re both fun downhill athletes with great vision, but Morant is nowhere close to the athlete that Westbrook is, who has a historically-unique mix of explosiveness as a one- or two-foot leaper with exceptional strength as a point guard. Just look at a photo of Westbrook and a photo of Morant and you’ll recognize how silly of a comparison that is.
• RJ Barrett is NOT James Harden — that’s just silly. They’re left-handed and play basketball. That’s it.
• Cam Reddish is NOT Paul George — they look similar when they’re standing around, sure, but once they step on the court and play, it’s quite obvious why that comparison is foolish, and that’s no knock on Reddish.

With that out of the way, it’s time to come up with some semi-reasonable player comparisons for our projected first round picks of the 2019 NBA Draft, courtesy of our very own Brian Rauf’s post-lottery mock draft.

So, who is the next DeMar DeRozan, or the next Robert Covington, or the next James Ennis? And, for the love of all things holy, is there anyone slightly comparable to Zion Williamson?