Of course, Zion Williamson is going first in our first 2019 NBA mock draft, but who will the Indiana Pacers select with the No. 26 pick?
With March Madness creeping up on us and the NBA regular season winding down, it’s time for every team — particularly those lottery teams — to start thinking about the NBA draft. Even for playoff teams like the Indiana Pacers, it’s never too early to play for the future.
For our mock draft, we took a random order (based off last week’s standings) from Tankathon and made our picks from there. You can’t accuse of bias here, because we let the New York Knicks keep the No. 1 pick and didn’t purposefully doom them by not taking the obvious first overall pick.
If you have a moment, follow Jonathan Matthes, Ben Pfeifer, and Luke Parrish on Twitter, as they did the bulk of picks for this mock draft.
No. 1 — New York Knicks: Zion Williamson, F
College: Duke | Class: Freshman | Height: 6’7 | Weight: 285 | Age: 18
Despite missing several games with his knee injury, Zion Williams is too special of a prospect to pass up on. His knee will likely be back to 100 percent once the NBA season begins, but even then, the New York Knicks aren’t likely to be worried about a playoff spot (unless they do get Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant).
No matter who they have on their team, getting Zion makes sense if they want to win games now or in the future. His mix of size and agility isn’t something we’ve seen in a long time, with the easiest comparison being LeBron James.
When you credibly can compare a player to LBJ, that ends the debate on who should go first. It’s as simple as this: There will be other RJ Barretts, but there may never be another Zion Williamson.
Even if Zion never plays another game at Duke, his stat line of 21.6 points, 8.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 2.2 steals, and 1.8 blocks isn’t something just any player can do. Zion could be a very special player in the NBA thanks to his unique physical profile and playing ability that doesn’t fit what his body should let him do.
The man is already a folk hero, the only question now is whether he can translate that into a Hall of Fame NBA career. That’s the sort of expectations he can expect to deal with. — Ben Gibson