Draft Day Receipts
When Top Prospects from the Same Class Face Off
NBA mock drafts and big boards argued over AJ Dybantsa vs Darryn Peterson1 in the top slot for months, nay years until Commissioner Adam Silver finally announced Anicet’s name around 8:05 pm last Tuesday, momentarily confusing everyone until he closed the name with Jr. and we collectively put together “A” and “J” and took a sigh of relief.
The debate is far from over, however, as these two will forever be linked through their place at the top of this draft class. Their accomplishments will always be interpreted in comparison to one another, and their matchups will be heavily studied, scrutinized, and selebrated.2 The games they’ve already played against one another have got to be the most talked about high school basketball games since LeBron James took his talents to Saint Vincent Saint Mary’s.
Naturally, only one of these two incredible talents could be picked first, and the Washington Wizards opted for Dybantsa. So naturally, the question for Peterson was how do you feel about not being the number one pick:3
Immediately before this headline quote, Peterson actually had a very measured, mature response: “there’s always been a chip on my shoulder, so I wouldn’t say [being picked second] added anything else”, but nevertheless it’s fun to aggregate without context, so let’s assume this is going to add a big ol’ chip to his shoulder.
Draymond Green has famously carried a massive chip throughout his entire career, after he fell to 35th in the 2012 NBA draft. He can recite the names of all 34 players selected ahead of him 14 years ago,4 and has said himself, “I will never forget that night. I had to wait all that time. I’m not saying I’m cocky or anything,5 but I felt like I had to wait behind guys I was better than. And I think I’ve proven it.”
Sure enough, even against the number one pick in that draft, Anthony Davis, Draymond has proven it. In 46 games against AD, Draymond has put up more than his career averages in points, rebounds, and assists, and his Warriors have gone 33-13 against Davis’s Hornets/Pelicans/Lakers/Mavericks teams.6
Meanwhile, this year’s WNBA draft also featured suspense at the top, as analysts were split over Azzi Fudd and Olivia Miles. The Dallas Wings ultimately went with Fudd, who’s had a terrific start to a WNBA career and already seems like the obviously wrong choice.
Olivia Miles, who went second to the Minnesota Lynx, is the runaway favorite to win Rookie of the Year, and is even edging into the MVP conversation. It’s safe to say that Miles thought she was the best available player in the draft and she’s been playing like the best player from her class so far.
The chip on her shoulder gets even bigger when she matches up against Fudd.
The Lynx and Wings have played three times already, three wins for Miles’s Lynx, three games dominated by Miles. The begoggled Minnesota Point Guard has nearly doubled up Fudd’s scoring output (20 points per game to Fudd’s 12) in those games, with three more rebounds (four to one) and six more assists (seven to one) per game than Fudd.
As mentioned, Miles is having a fringe-MVP season7 while Fudd is merely having a very good Rookie season, so it makes sense that Olivia’s numbers are better than Azzi’s. But in these specific draft-class face-offs, Miles gets even better, while Fudd drops off.
Fudd has notably improved in these games in one area: steals. She’s already fourth in the entire WNBA in steals with 1.8 per game, and in the three Wings games she’s averaged a whopping 2.3. At least a few of those have been straight up tear-away jobs from Olivia Miles.
But overall, Miles is clearly winning these matchups, even besting Fudd at her foremost skill: three point shooting. Overall Azzi Fudd shoots the ball much better from beyond the arc than Miles, but so far when they’ve faced off it’s Miles who is making more of her threes.
The 2025 WNBA draft was more cut and dry; Paige Bueckers was the consensus mock draft number one, and the Wings ultimately selected her there. She went on to win Rookie of the Year in near unanimous fashion.
That said, there are a non-significant number of analysts, then and still today, that contend that the second overall pick, the 6’6” Dominique Malonga, still a teenager on draft night, will have the better career. Just by watching the last time Dom and Paige matched up, you can see why.
In that June 22 game, ultimately an overtime win for the Wings, Malonga scored a career high 37 points, to go along with 12 rebounds in as dominant a double double as you’ll find in the WNBA. But it wasn’t just that game. The reserved French 20 year old is about as opposite from Draymond Green in personality as you can get,8 but she seems to carry the same chip on her shoulder, taking the games against Paige Bueckers more seriously. She scores over five more points per game, nearly matching Paige’s (normally much higher) output, and that’s despite playing 10 fewer minutes per game.
While Paige plays her typical game against Dom, Dom improves in nearly every area: better shooting splits, more rebounds, twice as many blocks. Paige may not view this as a class superlative competition yet, but she should.
Lets stop picking on the Wings’s number one picks shall we, and go back another year. Caitlin Clark was the obvious number one pick in 2024, to the Indiana Fever, while her rival (at least in media coverage, if not on the court) Angel Reese was taken seventh. No one expected the Fever to even consider taking Reese first overall, but I like to think that Reese is irrationally confident enough that she felt slighted when Caitlin’s name was called first.
To Reese’s credit, her vs Caitlin is actually the most interesting comparison among the 2024 draft class. Two-and-a-half seasons later, it wouldn’t have been crazy for the Sparks to take Reese second overall, ahead of the five other players that walked across the stage before her.9
Still, the first thing that stands out in this chart, is how much more Clark fills up the box score than Reese (except in rebounding of course, where Reese is on pace to be the best ever).
In the games versus Angel, always the most highly-touted, media-frenzied matchups,10 Caitlin plays even better. She has a knack for hitting the big shot, but it’s more than that. In eight career WNBA games against Reese’s Sky/Dream (of which she’s won five), Clark gets more than her usual share of rebounds, assists, and blocks, she commits fewer turnovers, and yes, she makes more of the big shots.
Let me know which other head to head matchups you’d like to see!11
Some players try to operate like metronomes, treating every outing the same, playing their game the way they want regardless of the personalities in the opposite colored jerseys. Others, like Draymond Green and Caitlin Clark, and seemingly Olivia Miles and Dominique Malonga so far in their young careers, feed off any and every post-it note on the bulletin board. They get extra hyped for the marquee matchups, wanting to prove their doubters, including the teams that passed on the chance to have them on their teams, wrong.
Both mindsets can work, but for the fans these narrative driven games are always the most fun to watch. We have a ways to go until Dybantsa vs Peterson I in the NBA, but thankfully we have more of these matchups every day in the WNBA.
FWIW, I side with Max Moacanin and his model at Funnyball that has Cam Boozer projected to be the best player from this draft class, becoming the first great father and great son duo in the NBA.
Typo intentional to fit into my enjoyment of alliterations.
You think he can recite the names of the 25 referees who have ejected him from games?
Ehhh…
The same pattern holds for Draymond vs the 34th pick, Jae Crowder.
Only fringe because of A’ja Wilson’s dominance.
They are the same height!
In order from second to sixth in the 2024 WNBA Draft: Cameron Brink, Kamilla Cardoso, Rickea Jackson, Jacy Sheldon, Aaliyah Edwards.
For what it’s worth I did look at A’ja Wilson vs Kelsey Mitchell, taken first and second in 2018, and what stood out is that Wilson’s Aces are 20-3 against Mitchell’s Fever.