Mark Humphrey/Associated Press As the world continues to adapt to the evolving landscape presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA draft's original date, June 25, has gone unchanged. What has changed, despite declarations of draft eligibility not being due until April 26, is the college stars expected to make the leap toward salaries this offseason.
Following the cancelation of March Madness, four marquee underclassmen have declared for the 2020 draft: Georgia's Anthony Edwards, Auburn's Isaac Okoro, Duke's Tre Jones and Syracuse's Elijah Hughes.
After averaging 19.1 points and 5.2 rebounds, Edwards was named SEC Freshman of the Year and is the oft-projected first overall pick in this year's draft. Okoro earned first-team All-Freshman and All-Defense honors in his impressive season under Bruce Pearl.
Jones picked up ACC All-Defense and All-Freshman honors last season before amping up and becoming the ACC's Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year for 2020. Finally, Hughes led a stacked ACC in points per game this season (19.0) and joins Jones on the All-ACC first team.
Edwards, Okoro and Jones are practically first-round locks, and Hughes, the oldest of the bunch at 22, has obvious first-round upside.
The Georgia product was the first to declare, taking to Twitter to announce that he is "ready to take my game to the next level." He may have originally expected to play football, but the 6'5" gunner has instead blossomed into a shot-happy gunner who seems most content brushing past physicality and then upward above the rim.
The upside of a shot-happy scorer with rarely paralleled physical gifts makes Edwards an archetypal top prospect, but Okoro has also flown into projected lottery picks for the opposite reason: defensive versatility.
While Edwards, Jones and Hughes have all confirmed their declarations via Twitter-Okoro's coach was the one to break the news to the Auburn Plainsman's Nathan King.
Although he shot 60.3 percent from inside the arc and averaged a quality 12.9 points per game, Okoro's calling card is his panache for stopping all breeds of attackers. In February, Pearl was asked whether the team had missed its 6'6", 225-pound wing while he was out with a hamstring injury. Per AL.com's , the coach simply laughed before noting that Okoro gave the Tigers "a fighting chance against the best teams on our schedule."
Stout defense at the wing is crucial and earned Matisse Thybulle a first-round selection in 2019. While Okoro shot worse from deep than Thybulle in college, he is taller than the 6'5" Thybulle and, at 19, four years younger.
Jones, too, fits a defensive mold. The brother of NBA point guard Tyus Jones, Tre has a panache for leading an offense juxtaposed against some defensive snarl. He declared with a simple thank you to his organization and a video.
Duke is a pedigree program, the ACC is a pedigree conference and Jones' comfort piling up honors amid such excellence is an immediate boon to his draft stock. The 6'3" guard isn't the most exciting prospect, but he has professional written all over him.
The final prospect to solidify his early mark upon antsy scouts, Hughes is an intriguing wing whose scoring ability makes up for being an atypical age for first-round picks.
After transferring from East Carolina, Hughes averaged 13.7 and then 19.0 points for the Syracuse Orange. In his most recent game, the 6'6" wing put up 27 points and seven rebounds on a healthy UNC team during the first round of the ACC Tournament.
He may be 22, but there is a precedent for teams finding upside when gambling on older scorers. Kyle Kuzma was 21 when he was drafted at the end of the first round in 2017 and has since become a major contributor and trade piece.
Kuzma is three inches taller than Hughes, but the professional shooter averaged fewer points (16.4) in his final season than Hughes did and shot worse from deep and the line. Kuz notched just 32.1 percent of his threes and 66.9 percent of his free throws, while Hughes hit 34.2 percent (on a whopping 7.1 attempts per game) and an impressive 81.3 percent, respectively.
As we inch closer to the draft, declarations should come raining down. These are unprecedented waters, and it's hard to know which of the mid-tier players will swim to the shore of eligibility or dive back in for another chance at the Big Dance.
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