NBA Draft 2020: 5 under-the-radar returning players

Returning college players get undervalued on preseason big boards, but often make or break the depth of a class. Here are five players who could do this for the 2020 NBA Draft.

NBA Draft classes are defined by their freshmen in the one-and-done era. The last nine No. 1 overall picks have been freshmen, and most of each year’s top 10s are going to be full of more of them. Predictably, each year that has meant that preseason big boards are weighted heavily towards the incoming high school class, who represent the untapped potential that could turn into the NBA’s next great talent pool. Even last year, with what looked like a historically weak freshman class coming in, 10 of the top 14 players on our preseason big board were first-time college players, and eight freshmen ended up drafted in the lottery.

However, returning players often are responsible for the depth of the class, and are what can turn a solid draft class into an excellent one, or a terrible draft class into a salvageable one. The best draft class of the last 15 years is arguably 2009, headlined by a trio of not freshmen, but sophomores – Stephen Curry, James Harden and Blake Griffin. 2014’s disappointing class has been saved not just by its international players, but by multi-year college guys like Dwight Powell and Marcus Smart. And 2019’s outcome, beyond whatever heroics Zion Williamson performs, will be heavily dependent on how Ja Morant, De’Andre Hunter and Jarrett Culver fare.

Growth curves are not linear, and sometimes players do truly need the cliched “another year in school” before truly being NBA-ready. We see that every year with sophomores and juniors who either didn’t play large roles early on, or struggled with inconsistencies, and then put things together in their second or third chance at the college level. Obviously, that makes these players difficult to see coming. Morant and Culver were top-six picks last year, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many preseason big boards that had either in the top-20, even though they both made things readily apparent from the outset that they were the class of the 2019 college crop.

Plenty of returning college players seem poised for the draft spotlight, especially from those who declared for the 2019 NBA Draft and withdrew, or those who performed well in the NCAA Tournament. Of the returning players you’ll see on most preseason big boards, you’ll probably see a lot of names like Jordan Nwora of Louisville, Cassius Winston of Michigan State and Devon Dotson of Kansas. But often, it’s the players we don’t see coming who make the biggest impact on June’s draft order. In the following pages, we will outline five players who could be this year’s late bloomers, from mid-major studs to elite recruits waiting for playing time.