The biggest story on draft night was the slide of Villanova forward Cam Whitmore, the third-rated player on my board, who ended up going 20th to the Houston Rockets. Whitmore was in play as high as the fourth pick with Houston, but in the final days before the draft, more chatter began bubbling up of a potential Whitmore slide.
Talking to sources around the league, who were granted anonymity so they could speak freely, I noticed two reasons cropping up: One, some teams red-flagged Whitmore’s medicals due to concerns about his knees. Second, his workouts and interviews left teams severely underwhelmed. “Comatose” was the description one source used.
The really interesting part was what happened once we got beyond the ninth pick, past the portion of teams that would have had Whitmore on their short list for evaluation in the first place and past the portion that would have been able to work him out. In particular, once the Magic passed on him a second time at No. 11, all the teams beneath them had to start wondering: Do they know something we don’t? That’s when the risk aversion really kicked in.
There is information in a draft slide: Even if you know nothing else about a player, you know the teams who evaluated the player most closely and had the best pre-draft access ended up at, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Sometimes, this is way overblown (perhaps the player was the second choice on everyone’s board). Other times, it becomes apparent in the months and years after the fact why the slide happened.
In this case, you have to really wonder why nobody in the teens decided the risk was worth the potential reward. To use another comparison, Michael Porter Jr. had the worst medicals I have ever seen in a draft prospect and didn’t exactly blow people away in the interview portion either; he ended up going 14th and more than justified that selection as the third option on a championship team. Whitmore fell to No. 20 even as several players with pretty limited upsides went off the board ahead of him.
The stretch of picks after Utah at No. 9, including a run on one-dimensional shooting specialists with pick Nos. 11, 12 and 14, two other small guards and whatever Jalen Hood-Schifino is supposed to be. Houston finally took the plunge, which was interesting because the Rockets had all the pre-draft intel and homework on Whitmore from considering him with the fourth pick. Some felt he was Houston’s second choice at that spot; amazingly, he was still sitting there at No. 20. Until further notice, this was the steal of the draft.
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