NBA Mock Draft 4.0: Picks for the entire first round

The 2022 NBA Draft is fast approaching, and teams are beginning to finalize their full draft boards. In just a couple of weeks, they will need a detailed list of every prospect in some sort of order, with strengths and weaknesses and age and fit all worked in.

That means draft analysts are doing the same thing. As the Combine information is processed and applied, and private workouts happen out of sight, the big picture is coming together. There will be a few trickles of information still coming in, but especially in the public sphere, the information-gathering phase is essentially complete. We now have the requisite information to do a formal mock draft.

We have all the information we are going to get on the 2022 NBA Draft prospects, so let’s do a full First Round Mock Draft for picks 1-30.

Let’s do the full first round, picks 1-30. What are the best marriages of prospect and team? This breakdown will balance my personal draft rankings, available here in Big Board 2.0, with team needs – perhaps with a dash of the team’s drafting tendencies thrown in as a tiebreaker.

We will start at the top, where we will defy consensus opinion and give the Orlando Magic a player who best addresses their biggest need as a team. Since the Big Board summarizes each player’s strengths and weaknesses, we will focus on examing the team fit as we go through all 30 picks.