if you check my posting history i’ve got beaucoup posts about how many terrible draft classes we’ve had, and there have been a ton of them. my point is simply that players are more unknown now when they enter the draft than they used to be, and again, i don’t think that’s a terribly controversial take. lottery picks used to be star players on star CBB teams that had high tourney seeds, with the exceptions being the obviously uber “gifted” (see: combine warriors, tall, long, athletic, etc) players and the occasional foreigner. these days it is routine for the top picks to largely come from either the international pool, or from 18-19 year old americans who were role players on teams that may or may not have been any good at all, eg anthony black, jarace walker, taylor hendricks, jett howard, etc. the due diligence that’s required these days to figure out if a guy is a winner, a great teammate, ready for the spotlight, etc, far exceeds what we’ve previously seen for decades. all we know is that they have talent and skills; for the most part, we don’t know who they are as a man, player, competitor, winner, etc. it like we used to.