Ranking the 10 best center prospects in the 2023 NBA Draft

Center #4: James Nnaji, Barcelona

Even when players are extremely athletic and have a high upside, they rarely get the proper run in European basketball’s highest levels. Instead, they are better served by playing in the U21 leagues that many countries and leagues have, as they can better show off their skills at that level.

That’s not the route that James Nnaji has taken. He’s been playing with the senior Barcelona team since he was seventeen, barely playing last year but carving out a small role for himself now that he’s eighteen. The allure of Nnaji is that as a young center, he already has great tools for rim-running, shot-blocking, and dunking the heck out of the basketball:

Nnaji will need a few years to ramp up his conditioning, improve his fundamental skills, and learn how to best use his athletic tools on the court, but if a team is patient enough, they could snag him as soon as the bottom of the first round and put him into their team structure with hopes that he can be their starting center in a few years.