The 2021 NBA Draft took place less than two years ago. Some of the players selected still cannot purchase alcohol. There are years and years ahead for these players to develop and for the final word on their careers to be written.
Yet even in such a short window, opinions have risen and fallen multiple times on both the individual players and the draft class as a whole. This time last year the class was being praised for its depth and star power; now the class is seemingly a disappointment.
The 2021 NBA Draft looks very different nearly two years later.
The answer is, of course, somewhere in the middle. Players can start hot and then fade, while others can start slow and then take off. Development is neither linear nor consistent; it happens differently for every player, and now always divided into neat little bundles of one season to the next.
Even so, these players are just 16 months away from being extension-eligible, and teams will begin trading them and deciding on fourth-year player options. Even with the mountain of caveats about player development, it’s important to evaluate players now to understand how they stack up to their peers and the rest of the league.
To that end, here is a 2021 NBA Redraft covering the entire first round. Which players deserve to go higher, and which ones have slipped down the list? At the top of the draft, we will emphasize upside more than later in the draft, when surefire contributors are highly valued. With every passing year, however, the promise of upside will lose ground to the reality of current production.
We begin in Detroit, where the Pistons get to add a generational defensive talent with the first overall pick.