Naturally gifted player with the ball in his hands and a dynamite scorer from anywhere on the court, Vanderbilt Basketball’s Darius Garland is a top-five player in the 2019 NBA Draft.
Darius Garland, a small-framed point guard who played all of five games for Vanderbilt–who went 0-19 in SEC play–is currently the widely considered 4th best player in the 2019 NBA Draft. How did we get here? How is it possible that the zodiac of the draft class, who tore his meniscus after playing a total of 139 minutes of college basketball–coming against Alcorn State, Winthrop, USC, Liberty, and Kent State–blew up after the end of Vanderbilt Basketball’s season, and long, long after he stopped playing basketball.
To my knowledge, Garland hasn’t taken a jump shot since 2018 but he’s still jumped into the top-five conversation for next week’s Draft. No workouts, no combine measurements, no nuclear NCAA tournament run in front of the whole country, nothing. Not a single morsel of basketball evidence over the past six months.
The only recent comparison is the situation with Kyrie Irving, who was first off the board to Cleveland in 2011 despite sitting out most of the season with an injury. Except, with Garland, he wasn’t the obvious best player in his high school class (ranked in the 8-15 range as a senior) and he played for the SEC’s bottom-feeder, not DUKE.
The mystique and–from what the tape shows–overwhelming potential, Garland has draft gurus smitten. Don’t get me wrong, I totally get it. Hell, I’m one of them. After watching this highlight tape (below), I too was swooned and the hot take artist in me took over like one of those devils that sit on the shoulder of 20th century animated characters, convincing me is…is Garland the best point guard in this draft?
Whether or not he is or isn’t, the mere idea that Garland’s catapulted himself into the Ja Morant conversation astonishes me, and well, I’m not even sure who is better. Perhaps I’m a prisoner of the highlight tape like so many NBA Draft twitter warriors. I can’t let that happen, not me! So I scrounged the internet for some full game replays of Garland and after a few dozen migraines, Reddit dot com came through once again with some real footage.
Call the Garland hype crazy or go all-in. You can’t go wrong, really. But if you want a preview (heck, a profile, if you will) of former Vanderbilt point-guard Darius Garland and his potential contributions at the next level, continue reading. If you’re satisfied with the highlight tape alone, so be it, but thanks for the click anyways!
And if you’re truly leaving the article already, at least take a look at this mini-profile I drafted for you impatient ones.
One Page Profile of Darius Garland. More to come on this later. pic.twitter.com/OevhB2dV9I
— Alex Weber (@alexweberON3) June 16, 2019