r/NBA_Draft • u/ShotgunStyles • 8h ago
How the Youngest NBA Players Played During Preseason. What Stood out the Most?
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u/BurnieTheBrony Grizzlies 3h ago
Boozer's so good man. They said he couldn't bully NBA talent and he's come in and done just that. Still building the chemistry but the passing is great; those assist numbers will go up.
He just does a little bit of everything and makes winning plays. It's no fluke he's leading this list comfortably in +/-
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u/DollarLate_DayShort Wizards 7h ago
How composed Acuff looks running the Kings’ offense. If you didn’t know it, and you just watched him on the court, you’d guess he’s a year 3 or year 4 player. Rookie point guards aren’t supposed to come in with an NBA ready body while also being able to control the pace of the game.
He’ll be the western conference version of Trae Young. Will average 25 and 8 in his sleep by year 3, and will be a floor raiser. If he plays 60+ games a season, you can book that Kings team for at least 38 wins. Give him a secondary star player and Sacramento will be must see TV.
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u/NAW_MIP_2026 7h ago
I mean the timeline obviously doesn't work long term but him and Sabonis have incredible PnR chemistry already. It makes a ton of sense why the Kings were pursuing Duren over the summer, they would be a super fun duo to watch on offence and then you would basically just try and add as many wing defenders and shooters as you could around them.
You're right though, we haven't seen a small rookie guard just come in and look like an NBA ready offensive organizer like this since Trae Young.
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u/hacxgames 6h ago
Acuff/keegan/duren likely wouldn’t make much playoff noise but they’d be extremely fun
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u/Lopsided_Ad3341 2h ago
Trae hasn't really been a winner tho, no? Besides that 1 yr early in his career where he cooked NYK
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u/DollarLate_DayShort Wizards 49m ago
Hawks’ record From Trae Young’s 3rd year to his last full season:
• 41-31
• 43-39
• 41-41
• 36-46
• 40-42
Not trying to downplay John Collins or Clint Capela, both good players at their peak, neither were close to star players tho… but those were the best players he played with before ATL transitioned to Jalen Johnson
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u/ShotgunStyles 8h ago
Free Bingo square: Hooper Flagg is still one of the youngest dudes in the NBA!
For me, shout out Ebuka Okorie whose paint demon scouting report still remains true. He had limited minutes in preseason but when adjusted for that, he actually jumps ahead of Acuff on this particular list and has the 2nd highest points average. And of course, he does that mostly by attacking the rack. Should be interesting if his 3-ball turns out well.
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u/rThundrbolt 7h ago
11th youngest
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u/ShotgunStyles 7h ago
I said he's one of the youngest, not the youngest. The fact that he's younger than current year rookies like Christopher Brown Jr. and Caleb Wilson is still mildly interesting to me.
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u/Global-Noise-3739 5h ago
acuff is goated
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u/KazaamFan 4h ago
Seems he could easily do 20 and 8 this season
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u/Variation99a 1h ago
No modern day PG has ever put up 20/8 as a rookie so it’s not he can easily do 20 and 8 as it’s more like it’s impossible to put up 20 and 8.
Let’s put it this way. He has a better chance to be under 40 percent from the field than get 20 and 8 because it’s so hard for any young PG to get adjusted to the NBA.
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u/Lopsided_Ad3341 2h ago
Can't play off ball
So you have to run all offense thru him
Is he good enough to justify that? Only a few players are, true superstars. he's extremely skilled but I'm skeptical building a team around him will result in real success
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u/Variation99a 2h ago
That’s wrong. He can play off ball. He’s not Trae Young. He actually had a lower usage in college than Mikel Brown and higher spot up 3 point percentage than almost the entire 2026 draft class.
The biggest misconceptions is you have to build around him or it’s a failure. You never assume the 7th pick of any draft has to be your best player or is a bad outcome.
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u/Lopsided_Ad3341 1h ago
I'm not assuming that just because he's the 7th pick
I'm assuming that because of his play style
It's the harden build where he's all your scoring and assists are going thru him and he doesn't defend
What proof do you have that he can play off ball? I saw a lot of him in college and in preseason and he's ball dominant. And he's great at it but I don't think it'll be a winning formula
Whereas Mikel plays super fast, more of a Haliburton motion offense type vibe. It's Haliburton build vs Harden build
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u/NiceHuckleberry5331 28m ago
He played primarily off ball last night with Ben Simmons playing the point. He scored 13 in one half. Judging anything about him based on the awful preseason approach to rotations and players not playing very much for the Kings is inconclusive at best and irresponsible at worst.
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u/lemanruss4579 5h ago
That Nate Ament has a loooooong way to go to even be a functional NBA player.
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u/FluffyMoomin 3h ago
Where is yaxel on this list????
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u/Variation99a 2h ago
He’ll be better than around half of this list by the time they are 24. Almost half of this list won’t have Yaxel’s floor even in their primes.
Some are obvious like Essengue, Peat, and others but I say Ament too.
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u/thenicezen 3h ago
What stood out to me is how coop is here. Like you'd expect "youngest nba players" would include only rookies BUT GAHDAMN that boy is still young lol. Anyway he's still pretty unbelievable lmao
And Acuff having less than 5 3pt attempts is crazy lol
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u/No_Point904 3h ago
Okorie averaging 10 points in 13 minutes and shooting 57% from the field is pretty impressive.
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u/Variation99a 2h ago
You ended your cutoff at a later date but right before those names would be Jeremiah Fears and Khaman Maluach and both had good preseasons, despite basically the same age as many of these rookies.
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u/Humble_Specialist901 7h ago
Flagg's overall three-point percentage is a bit concerning for me. I understand him struggling his rookie year since rookies need to adjust to the NBA three-point line, but he hasn’t looked good in preseason at all with his three-point shooting going into a second season. Still a very good NBA player but struggling with his 3s.
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u/hacxgames 6h ago
Very good nba player is still underrating him tbh, if he doesn’t take a single 3 for the rest of his career he’s still a better Scottie Barnes, which is an all nba caliber player
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u/NAW_MIP_2026 7h ago
Preseason is such a small sample size it's basically meaningless for judging efficiency, especially for 3 point attempts. He only attempted 15 threes in the preseason.
He has looked great in preseason and if you want an indiciation of his shooing touch he has shot 90% at the line on 21 attempts in the preseason.
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u/Humble_Specialist901 7h ago
Free-throw percentage isn’t as directly correlated with three-point percentage as people think it is. He was also pretty good at the free-throw line last year in preseason, where he shot 100% but struggled with his consistency with his threes in preseason and then shot less than 30% in the regular season.
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u/NAW_MIP_2026 7h ago
It's obviosuly not directly correlated but it's a far better indicator of shooting touch than 15 3pa which see much more variance.
Again my point is mostly that him shooting 4/15 over 3 preseason games is an entirely meaningless sample size.
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u/Humble_Specialist901 6h ago
I’m not just using this preseason sample size to show concern about his three-point shooting. He was 4/13 last year in the preseason, played 70 games in the regular season, and shot 29.5% from 3. And now, going into his second season, he’s struggling again with his 3s. I think there is a decent enough sample size to have some concern about his efficiency with his 3s heading into year 2.
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u/NAW_MIP_2026 6h ago
He was a rookie wing with insane usage being asked to create all the offence for his team last season, it's not concerning at all that he didn't shoot the 3 well. You need to take context into this equation man. Rookies rarely shoot well from 3, let alone when they are asked to drive the whole offence without a real PG.
I'll be a little concerned if his efficiency doesn't get a little better this season with Kyrie next to him, but even still he's a 19 year old adjusting to the league. He shot well in college and has always shot well from the FT line. He just needs time and a real offensive system around him.
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u/Lopsided_Ad3341 2h ago
Criminal omission of Braydon Burries
The answer is him, or Mikel Brown if Mikel Brown had played more games. But he looked the best in his 1 appearance
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u/DrinkCorrect7655 7h ago
Obviously don't overreact over the preseason, but what Okorie has shown so far is promising.
The Pistons system is deep enough to be able to keep him in the oven this year, but if he starts cooking early he could play his way into the rotation.