The 2019 NBA draft is a little over a month away, but what about the 2020 class?Here is a sneak peak at the projected class of the 2020 class and how it affects the Cleveland Cavaliers.
All the focus is on the upcoming May 14 2019 NBA draft lottery, where the Cleveland Cavaliers will find out where they will pick and after the lottery determines where they will pick, they’ll have a good idea of what prospect or prospects are in play from that spot. However, its never too early to look towards next year’s potential draft class.
Things can always change between now and at the end of the next men’s college basketball season, as coming into this past season Zion Williamson wasn’t the consensus number one player and didn’t emerge as that until the games began.
Right now, the 2020 NBA draft class doesn’t have a clear cut number one guy as Sports Illustrated’s Jeremy Woo mentioned earlier this month, and a case can probably be made for a couple of guys.
The teams with the three worst records still obviously will have the best odds at getting the first pick, but the new lottery rules give the middle-lottery teams a better chance to jump into the top four than they had before under the old lottery odds.
A team with a bottom-three record could win the lottery this year, could have a strong improvement the following year and still jump into the top four, as shown by Tankathon’s lottery odds for this draft, for reference.
For now, the guys most often linked to that number one spot in the 2020 draft are James Wiseman, Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels and Cole Anthony. A lot can change between now and next year, but as of now these are the guys that are mentioned as the top guys.
How this year’s lottery and where teams pick next year will determine who goes where considering there isn’t a real consensus out of this class, but if I had to rank the top four prospects in this order I would probably rank them as follows in the coming slides.