Editor’s note: With the Pistons holding the No. 5 pick in the June 22 draft, Pistons.com today continues its series of previews of potential targets with the built-in assumption that the consensus top-three prospects – Victor Wembanyama, Scoot Henderson and Brandon Miller – will be off the board. Today: Overtime Elite’s Ausar Thompson.)
It’s tempting to save everyone time here and use the cut-and-paste function from Amen Thompson’s draft preview. They are identical twins, after all, so how much different can Amen and Ausar Thompson really be as basketball players?
Not much, is the answer. In the history of the NBA, Horace and Harvey Grant are probably the most famous set of identical twins, though old-timers would argue for Tom and Dick Van Arsdale. Marcus and Markieff Morris, though they could certainly pass as identical, are actually fraternal twins whose games overlap nearly as identically. They were drafted back-to-back in 2011 as were the Van Arsdales in 1965. Amen and Ausar Thompson have a decent shot to be picked back to back on June 22 and the Pistons could be part of that mix.
FIRST-ROUND CANDIDATE: AUSAR THOMPSON
ID CARD: 6-foot-7 guard/wing, Overtime Elite, 20 years old
DRAFT RANGE: Ranked seventh by The Athletic, fifth by ESPN.com, fifth by The Ringer, sixth by Bleacher Report
SCOUTS LOVE: As with his twin brother, athleticism is the standout trait to sell Ausar Thompson’s high-lottery candidacy. He’s got the length, quickness, frame and springs to be an All-Defense fixture once he makes a few laps around the NBA, learns personnel and masters schemes. The variance in Thompson’s outcomes rest on the offensive end and – again, like Amen Thompson – where it remains an open book what Thompson can become. With Overtime Elite, it was Amen Thompson who most often served as primary playmaker, but Ausar did enough to win OTE’s MVP award by averaging 16.3 points, 7.1 rebounds and 6.1 assists while shooting 48 percent from the field. Amen is generally perceived to be a spot or two ahead of Ausar in the draft pecking order mainly on the basis of his supposedly superior athleticism – the twins declined to do any athletic testing at the NBA draft combine – and because Amen played more with the ball in his hands and is thought to be the more advanced playmaker. Whether the difference in athleticism is real or imagined probably depends on which front office is judging it.
SCOUTS WONDER: The two overriding question marks hover over both Thompson twins: 3-point shooting and how to extrapolate their dominance in the Overtime Elite setting to the NBA vs. doing so with prospects coming from backgrounds far more familiar to NBA personnel evaluators. Whether it’s judging one-and-done college players or teenaged prospects coming from international leagues, NBA front offices have 30 years of experience assessing players from those backgrounds and projecting how their performances will translate to the NBA. Even though the G League Ignite is also a relatively new concept, the G League itself is a known quantity and therefore relatively simple to assess how performance in that setting translates to NBA competency. They have zero to fall back on with regard to OTE competition. And the Thompsons are 20 and turn 21 midway through their rookie seasons, making them older than most of those they dominated at OTE. Ultimately, it’s basketball. Size, athleticism and skill set plus diligent assessments of character, focus and work ethic should give front offices some degree of confidence in their predraft assessments of the Thompson twins. But draft projection is always at least as much about art as science and that goes double in this case.
NUMBER TO NOTE: 38.5 – That was Ausar Thompson’s 3-point percentage in the Overtime Elite playoff games, reached on a healthy shot volume of 7.8 attempts per game, encouraging evidence that there’s legitimate hope he can progress to a league-average shooter, perhaps more.
MONEY QUOTE: “I’ve been doing this for 40 years and three or four times a week, they do something I’ve never seen.” – OTE coach Dave Leitao, former head coach at DePaul and Virginia to Mirin Fader of The Ringer in March on Ausar and Amen Thompson
PISTONS FIT: The Pistons surely would have interest in a 6-foot-7 wing with elite athleticism and a 7-foot wingspan to go with it. There are ample reasons the Pistons would fully vet Thompson to come to some determination of his likeliest outcome on the offensive end. The upward trend Thompson displayed as a catch-and-shoot 3-point threat over the course of his OTE season would be a solid starting point for his fit in lineups that include playmaking guards Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey while slotting in alongside Bojan Bogdanovic in the frontcourt and having the defensive versatility to allow Bogdanovic to take on more appropriate matchups. Thompson’s athleticism would be a wonderful complement to Ivey and Cunningham in transition offense, as well. In some ways, Ausar Thompson – most practiced at playing off the ball and a more proficient 3-point shooter at this stage – might be a better immediate fit with the current Pistons roster than his brother, who would have to adjust to playing as something other than a primary playmaker.
BOTTOM LINE: If the first four picks go off as the bulk of NBA mock drafts have it – and Amen Thompson is the pick of nine of the 10 mock drafts NBA.com utilizes in compiling its composite mock draft – then Ausar Thompson might be as likely a pick as anyone for the Pistons at five. Though general manager Troy Weaver is most definitely not one to be influenced by groupthink, if Amen Thompson is by consensus the fourth-best prospect in this draft it stands to reason his identical twin can’t be far off. Couple that with the fact the Pistons have a clear roster need for athletic wings who project as potentially elite defenders and the logic of drafting Ausar Thompson would be fairly unassailable. One of the things that makes the 2023 draft class unique is that after the projected top-two of big man Victor Wembanyama and point guard Scoot Henderson, the next handful or more of top prospects fall loosely into the wing/big guard category. There could be razor-thin margins separating them on most teams’ draft boards. But it would be no upset if the Thompsons come off the board consecutively – and perhaps at four and five.