(Editor’s note: The Pistons hold the No. 18 and No. 49 picks in the June 23 NBA draft. We’ll preview one candidate for each pick each Monday through Friday leading up to the draft. Players who are consensus lottery picks unavailable to the Pistons will not be profiled.)
First-Round Candidate: Thon Maker
ID CARD: 7-foot-¾ power forward/center, Sudan native who most recently played at an Ontario prep school, 19 years old
DRAFT RANGE: Ranked 40th by DraftExpress.com; 19th by ESPN.com; ranked outside the top 16, among the next group of four at power forward, by NBA.com
SCOUTS LOVE: He’s a 7-footer who runs like a gazelle with an outside shooting touch. Maker has a 7-foot-3 wing span with a 36-inch vertical leap, which at least gives him the tools to be an elite shot blocker. He also appears to have a strong makeup, perhaps fostered by a past that saw him born in Sudan and raised in Australia before coming to the United States and eventually Canada to groom himself as a basketball player.
SCOUTS WONDER: There is precious little actual basketball that scouts have seen from Maker – and what they’ve seen doesn’t match the hype. Even scouts entranced by the physical tools – the size, foot speed and shooting touch, primarily – concede his body needs so much work that it would be optimistic to believe he could help to any degree over the next few seasons.
NUMBER TO NOTE: 2 – the number of points Maker scored in the 2015 Nike Hoop Summit, which featured several players expected to go in this year’s lottery including Ben Simmons, Brandon Ingram, Jamal Murray, Jaylen Brown and Skal Labissiere. He shot 0 of 5. Maker did grab a game-high 10 rebounds in 14 minutes, but this showing – really, about the last time scouts have seen him in a setting where his NBA readiness could be judged – left more questions than answers.
MONEY QUOTE: “I see myself used in terms of reading mismatches. If it’s small, go inside. If it’s big, come outside. And if it’s in between, then work him, make him think you’re going outside, go back inside. Just play chess.” – Maker, after working out for the Pistons June 3, on how he feels he can best help an NBA team
PISTONS FIT: When the Pistons assess any big man – center, conventional power forward, stretch four – the central question always comes back to how that player will mesh with Andre Drummond. Maker, for one, feels he’d be an ideal complement to Drummond. “I’ve seen it. I envionsed it. It’s a successful vision.” An athletic power forward who can both protect the rim and stretch the floor would be an ideal partner for Drummond.
BOTTOM LINE: Some believe Maker is worthy of being picked in the lottery and others probably wouldn’t expend a high second-round pick on him. The Pistons have obvious interest in Maker, interviewing him at the NBA draft combine last month and bringing him to Auburn Hills for a workout earlier this month. Stan Van Gundy and general manager Jeff Bower have done good work to build a roster that doesn’t have a lot of holes in it and the needs they take into their third off-season are few enough to address via free agency or trades. They might decide they’re at a point where they can roll the dice on a player with Maker’s upside and wait on him to develop.
Second-Round Candidate: Joel Bolomboy
ID CARD: 6-foot-9 power forward, Weber State senior, 22 years old
DRAFT RANGE: Ranked 62nd by DraftExpress.com; 43rd by ESPN.com; ranked outside the top 10, among the next group of six power forwards, by NBA.com
SCOUTS LOVE: Bolomboy, despite four years in college, comes to the NBA as an unfinished product who could still have considerable growth potential because of his high-end athleticism. Though born in Russia to a Russian mother and a Congolese father, Bolomboy was raised in Texas and was a raw recruit to Weber State who finished as Big Sky Player of the Year with averages of 17.1 points and 12.6 rebounds a game. Showed a burgeoning 3-point shot late in his college career that furthers the intrigue.
SCOUTS WONDER: Bolomboy, despite his obvious athleticism and size, was lightly recruited out of high school for a reason – production didn’t match his profile. While he improved by leaps and bounds over four years on the Ogden, Utah campus, there are still too many moments he looks more athlete than basketball player.
NUMBER TO NOTE: 1.1 – blocked shots per game. For a player who measured with a 40½-inch vertical leap at the NBA draft combine and a wing span of 7-foot-1¾, playing in a lower-level Division I conference, that’s an alarmingly low number given Bolomboy’s athleticism and underscores concerns about his lack of feel for the game.
MONEY QUOTE: “I think he might be able to surprise some people. The coaches allowed him to step out this year and shoot some threes. He showed the ability to knock down some threes, though he has to get more consistent at it. In our league, the first couple of years, he’s going to shoot the corner three. He runs hard. Can protect the basket because he has long arms. You have to see what he does when he has to step up to another level of competition. But he has the skills to be OK. He’s chiseled. He doesn’t have much body fat on him. Runs the court very well, quick jumper. If you went and said let me put together what a basketball player should look like, he would be one of those.” – anonymous NBA scout as told to David Aldridge of NBA.com
PISTONS FIT: With Anthony Tolliver headed for free agency, the Pistons will be without a prototypical power forward on the roster. They’ll go into the season with Tobias Harris as their starter, but it’s critical that the Pistons add to the position with a bigger player better equipped to guard conventional power forwards in the post. Though Bolomboy takes some projection, it might not be a stretch to expect him to be able to play a very narrow role as a defensive specialist early in his career.
BOTTOM LINE: The history of the draft shows very few players are able to have a lasting NBA career past the middle of the second round. Picking 49th, the Pistons might be looking for one very specific attribute in a prospect that will give him a chance to carve out a niche in the NBA rather than gravitating toward a high-performing player without any sure-fire NBA skill. Bolomboy’s length on top of his upper-tier athleticism for his size make him an intriguing prospect from the former category.