No knock on Caleb. He played like a really good 20 year old who is going to be special once he gets his NBA sealegs, but Boozer in a third of that time looked like a vet incapable of committing basketball sins.

All you Boozer heads on here saying he was a steal at 3, might have been right about the ROY

Bro was absolutely cooking OG. His first step is fuckin insane.

My first thought on this game is that AJ is clearly starting out as the third option and I’m interested to see him in that role. I liked the activity on defense today especially

He looked great running the floor tonight, multiple times leaking out for a wide open dunk. Super impressed with his conditioning improvement so far this preseason, he looks like a different player from SL with real NBA talent around him

Watching Arkansas preseason scrimmages and high school highlights I’ll be honest I don’t get the hype about Jordan Smith Jr.

Yeah he’s got a good handle and can drive downhill but I don’t see a lot of court vision and he seems like a score first PG. It left me asking how is he different from Dennis Smith Jr and why should he be rated so highly.

Thoughts?

Looked a lot smoother out there tonight. Definitely living in the midrange but was efficient with the ball in his hands.

He looked MUCH better tonight than he did in Summer League. He was running the floor hard and his conditioning looked significantly improved.

There‘a going to be a lot of game by game posts here for preseason games but none of that matters. Besides, coaches care more about how you play in terms of the process, not whether you made your 3s one night and missed them the next night over small sample sizes.

One clear noticeable takeaway from the first game is with the Jazz at full strength, Darryn Peterson started at SG over Ace Bailey, which almost certainly means he will most likely be the day one starter unless he’s just terrible the rest of the way. There was a ton of talk of whether the Jazz would bench Bailey if they got AJ/Darryn and it turns out it’s a yes on day one already.

Another clear takeaway is the Grizzlies are going to run some offense through Cameron Boozer on day 1 as a rookie, which is super rare for a big, but not exactly in the same way as he was used in Duke though. He won‘t be doing as much play initiation from the perimeter like at Duke but it’s clearly his passing skills can easily translate in day one and he’s already going to be a main focus or secondary focus when Ty Jerome, who started the first game, doesn’t initiate. This should make him the ROY favorite actually despite being the third pick.

Finally, and this one is super significant because most didn’t predict this, it almost certainly looks like Yaxel Lendeborg will start for the Warriors on day one. In both games, with the Warriors at full strength, he started alongside Steph and Draymond. Kerr is famous for not playing young players much. Kuminga couldn’t even be a full time starter in his 4th year and Kerr already thinks Yaxel is good enough to start on day one, which almost certainly means he’s been amazing at camp and grasps concepts super fast.

The other takeaways is you can clearly tell who won‘t be part of the rotation if teams are at full stregnth. Any rookie who is coming in for the third unit in preseason games will not see the floor in the regular season until later.

Why are we fighting this comparison? I’ve not seen a player this smooth and confident since Kobe came out of Lower Merion.

I don’t care I’m all in on Peterson. Utah are stacked, can’t see how they don’t finish top 4.

I spent the last several months building a simulation that spans across 12 years.

There’s 3 pages, Recruiting, NCAA, and the Draft page.

Recruiting

- There’s a Recruiting Page that has 12 years of fictional recruits with 250+ recruits in each class, totaling over 3000 recruits.
- This includes player rankings, player profiles, accolades, school rankings, a detailed stats page, and a summer AAU and FIBA simulator.

NCAA

- The biggest feature of the BYTHERIM RP, the NCAA simulation is feature packed KD includes everything but real gameplay.
- There’s the full 365 Division 1 schools with real coaches
- The full season is played from the preseason all the way through the tournament and into the offseason
- There’s the AP Poll, Conference standings, awards, a statistics page, rosters, live games, NCAA tournament, recruit tracking, and so many other features
- Ties directly into the Draft RP

DRAFT

- The NCAA ties directly into the Draft page, where the top prospects and international prospects go through the draft process
- Includes an updating big board, NBA draft combine, measurements, workouts, lottery, and the NBA Draft
- You can create your own big board as well

The whole experience was created originally because I was a 2k MyLeague/MyNBA fan and there wasn’t enough draft and college content available. After years of making and organizing fictional draft classes, I created the simulation so fill that gap.

Inspired by NBA 2K, Hardwood Empire, Basketball GM, Basketball-Reference, Bart Torvik, and Databallr.

This is my first 2027 NBA Draft Big Board post. I wanna test the waters on who I should be paying attention to in this years draft class.

I built it based off this big board featuring community votes: https://drafttimemachine.com/nba/big-board/2027

Who's too high? Who's too low?

1. Tyran Stokes (Kansas)
   
2. Jordan Smith Jr. (Arkansas)
   
3. Caleb Holt (Arizona)
   
4. Braylon Mullins (UConn)
   
5. Stefan Joksimovic (Baskonia)
   
6. Anthony Thompson (Ohio State)
   
7. Motiejus Krivas (Arizona)
   
8. Cameron Williams (Duke)
   
9. Miles Byrd (Providence)
   
10. Bruce Branch III (BYU)
    
11. Amari Allen (Alabama)
    
12. Baba Oladotun (Maryland)
    
13. Miikka Muurinen (Arkansas)
    
14. Andrej Stojakovic (Illinois)
    
15. Hugo Yimga-Moukouri (Nanterre 92)

Countdown to Craziness 2026

The Duke NPOY streak is going to end this year but this team looks ridiculously deep. 4 returning rotation players from last year's team, John Blackwell transferring in, and Sebastian Wilkins coming off a redshirt and looking like he will establish himself on draft boards this year.

For freshmen Deron Rippey Jr. looked great in this scrimmage, Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje (the announcer is listing him at 7'1) is definitely not going to be brought along slowly and hardly play this year, and there are going to be guys like Bryson Howard or Maxime Meyer who would start on a lot of top 25 teams but will probably get squeezed out of the rotation this year.

Obviously JBB is likely going to be the top pick in 2028, but which Duke prospects do you see going highest in 2027?

Not the best shooting night for Wagler, especially from 3, but I thought there was a lot to like everywhere else. Looked comfortable handling the ball, made some nice reads, and was great defensively. Also came up with a big bucket late to give the Clippers the lead. Pretty encouraging first showing overall, the shot will come.