The Vertical draft insider Jonathon Givony of DraftExpress examines the changing landscape of the NBA draft combine, which wrapped up this past weekend in Chicago.

The 2016 draft class is deep

Teams drafting in the mid- to late lottery appear to be somewhat dejected about the talent outside of the top two picks. There’s a shortage of All-Star-caliber prospects once you get past Brandon Ingram and Ben Simmons, but those outside of the lottery are happy with the options at their disposal.



“From what I can tell, there are 30 potential NBA rotation players sitting there in the 15-45 range,” one general manager told The Vertical in Chicago. “What this class lacks in star power it more than makes up for with depth.”

The pool of high-level basketball talent has been getting deeper and deeper for years now, not just in the United States but also internationally. Over a quarter of the players currently projected to be drafted are international prospects. A shortage of roster spots in the NBA may cause some of that talent to overflow and spill over next year into the NBA Development League. There will be many good players going undrafted as well, some of whom will end up making the NBA (60 undrafted players are currently on NBA rosters).

The game is changing

The level of play at this year’s combine seemed to be significantly higher than last year, in no small part because of the new rules regarding underclassmen testing the waters. But of the 37 players who competed in five-on-five, only a handful will end up being drafted at the end of the first round.



View photos Utah's Jakob Poeltl is one of many underclassmen in the draft. (AP) More

In the past, lottery-caliber prospects would at least participate in shooting, ball-handling and light transition drills. There was also occasional one-on-one or two-on-games in which some of the more highly regarded prospects actually broke a sweat. That seemed to have been scrapped altogether this year, with five-on-five taking center court.

The days of the group workouts in which all 30 NBA teams would pool their resources to conduct workouts for 44 players in a 24-hour period – the Brooklyn Nets' combine or L.A. Clippers' combine, for example – are over as well.

Instead, agents are telling NBA teams that their best chance of seeing first-round prospects on the basketball court (outside of private workouts) is at another scheduled setting.

Over the next three weeks, almost every major agency will be conducting pro days in New York, Los Angeles, Sarasota, Fla., Chicago and Las Vegas. All 30 teams will travel to these different settings to watch agencies put their players through very light workouts designed to highlight their clients’ strengths and hide their weaknesses. NBA executives will be there because they don’t want to miss out. But will they actually learn anything?

Good luck projecting the draft

Because of how little separation there is between the various groups of prospects this year, expect this to be an especially wild draft night in terms of players falling or rising relative from where they are projected. There is very little consensus among teams about which players are best, especially once you get outside of the top 15 prospects or so.



What’s especially difficult is that many players who are described by some NBA teams as not being serious prospects at all are viewed as being the exact opposite by other franchises. You can ask 30 different teams about the same player and get thirty different opinions, with wildly different draft ranges. The adage of, “It only takes one team to like you,” means we could see some major surprises on draft night.

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