NBA Draft: How did the experts do evaluating the 2020 Draft?

Evaluating the NBA Draft experts: John Hollinger

A longtime writer for ESPN and inventor of the Player Efficiency Rating (PER), Hollinger is the former Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Memphis Grizzlies. He now serves as a Senior NBA columnist for The Athletic, writing about many things including the NBA Draft. His pre-draft rankings can be found here.

What he got right: We have to start with John Hollinger’s most beloved player in the draft, DePaul’s Paul Reed. He saw Reed as a true defensive difference-maker with a skill set to become serviceable on offense and ranked him 12th overall. While I likewise ranked Reed as a late-lottery prospect, the other three experts ranked him in the 40s and 50s. While Reed may not be quite the high in the end, Hollinger was a whole lot closer than the rest of the basketball world.

Hollinger was also high on Tyrese Haliburton, ranking the Iowa State guard sixth overall, and was the highest on Payton Pritchard at 30th overall. He was also smart in dropping Memphis center James Wiseman to eighth and Israeli wing Deni Avdija to 16th, both within a spot or two of where they landed in our redraft. Finally, he was very low on the two centers the Charlotte Hornets took, Vernon Carey Jr. and Nick Richards.

What he got wrong: To stump for players such as Paul Reed and Devin Vassell someone had to fall, and that player was Patrick Williams, whom Hollinger ranked 14th. While much of Williams’ current value is projection, his size and skill at this point project to a top-10 player from this draft. He was also the lowest of the group on Leandro Bolmaro, who could still fall anywhere on the board but is looking like he would go in the teens in a redraft. Hollinger also had Immanuel Quickley as low as 55th, which obviously looks like a gargantuan miss given Quickley’s strong rookie season.

Hollinger was a little too high on Killian Hayes (ranked 3rd), Onyeka Okongwu (4th) and Obi Toppin (5th), among the highest in the group on all of those players. Finally, he was the highest on Cole Anthony, ranking him 18th.

Grade: B; I think Hollinger had the best board of any of the analysts, and his belief in players like Haliburton and Reed paid off.