2018 NBA Mock Draft: Promises, promises

This is a fit we’ve explored before, and with Michael Porter Jr.’s stock flailing wildly at the moment, it’s the one I’ve landed on for Cleveland. Drafting Carter would give the team a player who fits next to LeBron James while also providing a path toward improvement if James leaves in free agency.

Carter is an interesting modern big man, potentially someone who could bridge the gap between the rim-running De’Andre Jordan type and the guys who will dominate the league in a few years. The new generation of bigs, which is lead by Karl-Anthony Towns and Joel Embiid but calls Al Horford its forefather, plays an exterior-oriented game on offense. The threat of the jump shot sets everything else up.

But to be able to make smaller, slower defenses pay, these guys also have to be able to rebound, play defense and post up against mismatches. We talk about versatility a lot these days in terms of a player’s ability to move up or down a position, but not often enough based on their multi-skilled upside. Carter could be great because he could be good at a lot of things and bad at very few.

The Stepien’s Jackson Hoy put it well writing about Carter’s quickness: “Carter doesn’t really have any holes in his game… It’s hard to see the usefulness of a player like Horford and not get excited about the potential for Carter to fill a similarly impactful role as a heady, do-everything big man.”

Cleveland has swung big in the draft historically, but maybe the relatively “safe” pick here is the one that would allow them to operate in two team-building modes at once.