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2018 NBA Mock Draft: Enter the madness

By Brendon Kleen

EAST LANSING, MI - FEBRUARY 20: Miles Bridges
EAST LANSING, MI - FEBRUARY 20: Miles Bridges /
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BOISE, ID – MARCH 15: Killian Tillie
BOISE, ID – MARCH 15: Killian Tillie /

Even as we enter the frustratingly homogenous portion of the small-ball era in the NBA, there are some teams who have still never had a great floor-spacing big. Portland manufactures spacing by agonizing over each corner 3 — Tillie would change all that.

Setting aside the silly connection between Tillie and Zach Collins, the Blazers’ No. 10 pick last year and the guy Tillie backed up his freshman season, the match between Portland the French import makes sense.

As it stands now, Portland is not a very versatile team, despite playing small — they use Ed Davis and Jusuf Nurkic at center, Mo Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu at the four, and fill in the gaps with guards. That’s where their need to develop Collins into their own unicorn comes in, but Tillie would be a perfect injection of floor-spacing next to a top defender like Aminu.

The sophomore shot 49 percent from distance this season and demolished BYU in the WCC final. He has shot onto NBA radars, and could continue to do so with another big Gonzaga run into April.