Oklahoma basketball: How high is high for Trae Young in NBA Draft?

Buddy Hield and Blake Griffin were the last two Oklahoma basketball players to be first-round, top-10 picks in the NBA Draft.

Trae Young won’t follow Baker Mayfield and give the Sooners two No. 1 overall draft picks in the same year, but he could be a top-five selection in this year’s NBA Draft on June 21, which is almost as impressive.

Young is an absolute shoo-in to become the 49th player in OU basketball history to be selected in the 72-year history of the NBA Draft. It is also all but certain his name will be called in the first round, which would make the former Oklahoma freshman sensation and one of the best players in college basketball this past season the 10th OU player to become a first-round selection.

What is not as certain, however, is how high in the first round Young will go on the night of the draft. It is a fairly good bet he will be selected among the first 10 picks. That has happened only seven other times in men’s Oklahoma basketball history.

Even talking about Young becoming a top-10 overall pick in the NBA Draft represents a dramatic departure from what the experts were thinking about his NBA prospects at this time a year ago, before he had played in his first college game at Oklahoma. Most experts believed that Young could play some day at the professional level, but not this soon.

I would be surprised if anyone had Young as a top-25, or even a top-50, 2018 NBA Draft prospect prior to last season. Although expectations were quite high, as you would suspect with a five-star recruit out of high school, he had no performance record in game competition at the college level, and in a conference as strong as the Big 12.

Flashing forward to today, Young’s performance in his first season of college ball was as good as it gets for any college player, regardless of class standing. His 2017-18 numbers — namely No. 1 in the country in both scoring (27.4 points per game) and assists (8.7 per game) — have earned him high consideration as a top NBA Draft pick, but exactly where he will land and when his draft number will be called will be the subject of some debate over the next 44 days.

Oklahoma Sooners Basketball

Most mock draft boards I’ve seen lately have Young going anywhere from No. 6-12. NBAdraft.net, for example, has Young going to the Sacramento Kings with the seventh overall pick in the upcoming draft (that is also where Buddy Hield is currently, after being traded from New Orleans, where he was the Pelicans’ No. 1 selection with the sixth overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft).

NBA Draft Room, on the other hand, is not as optimistic about Young’s draft position.  They have Young dropping to the 12th overall selection and going to the Los Angeles Clippers

The order of selection is still somewhat up in the air. The NBA Lottery will be held next Tuesday (May 15). A lottery system is used to determine which teams will get the first three picks in the NBA Draft. The 14 teams that did not make this year’s NBA playoffs are the only teams that participate in the annual lottery process.

After the top three picks are determined, the draft order of the remaining 11 teams is determined on the basis of won-lost records (in ascending order from worst to best). The same rule applies to the playoff teams, who are added on and slotted after the playoffs are completed.

Young probably won’t need to concern himself with the teams that make the first three selections in this year’s NBA Draft. After that, you can begin the Trae Young draft watch party.

I’m still holding with my earlier projection that Young’s draft number will be called somewhere between the fifth and the tenth overall pick. If that projection becomes reality, Young would be no worse than the seventh or eighth highest NBA Draft pick in OU basketball history.

And there are some former Sooners on that list who became outstanding NBA players.