RALEIGH, N.C. — The ACC producing its fewest first-round NBA draft picks since 2008 on Wednesday night — and the only lottery picks coming from ACC champion Florida State — was a fitting coda to a forgettable ACC season, incomplete as it was.
There was nothing unexpected about any of this, the end of an equally historic if opposite draft run for the ACC that saw it set and then match its own record with 10 first-round picks in 2017 and 2019. In a weak year for star power across college basketball, where some of the best players were at mid-majors like Dayton (Obi Toppin) or not playing at all by January (James Wiseman), the ACC epitomized the talent drain from the start.
That isn't a harbinger of any tectonic shifts in the college basketball landscape, just a natural consequence of the waxing and waning of the talent pool. There wasn't the same level of one-and-done talent across college basketball that there has been in recent years, and Duke and North Carolina being shut out of the lottery for the first time since 2013 — back in the middle of the North Carolina Triangle's seemingly endless Final Four drought of four years — is as good an indication as any of that.
Even in a down year like this, the old-school ACC carries the load at the draft. All three first-rounders this year came from the Original 9, and those nine schools account for 27 of the ACC's 33 first-round picks since 2015.
As always, the pendulum will start to swing back, if not quite all the way, with Duke's Jalen Johnson, North Carolina's Caleb Love and Florida State's Scottie Barnes all being potential lottery picks in 2021. Each has yet to play a college game, so anything can happen. No one thought Cole Anthony would fall out of the lottery a year ago. No one thought Florida State's Patrick Williams would go fourth overall, either.
N.C. State might have incoming freshman Josh Hall in that group, except the Durham native became the second straight Wolfpack recruit to enter the draft ... and then go undrafted. There's a lot of nuance entwined with Hall and Jalen Lecque's failures to make it onto campus or into the second round, but it's still a dubious honor.
Barnes should keep Leonard Hamilton's run of NBA talent going by becoming the sixth first-round pick in six years for the reigning ACC champions-by-default. Hamilton is still chasing that Final Four appearance at 72 — maybe 2020 was the Seminoles' year — but elite recruits don't seem to be worried about that. The pipeline is fully flowing in Tallahassee.
In Anthony's specific case, falling out of the lottery might be the best thing for him; because of his ability and pedigree, he's faced the highest of expectations at every stop of his career, until now. That seemed to weigh on him at times in Chapel Hill, especially when injuries intruded, which was probably the first time he hadn't met the high standard set for him. Things will ratchet down a hair in Orlando; he may yet end up being the steal of the draft.
Or maybe it will be one of Duke's second-round picks, two of whom will be immediate help off the bench, the kind of plug-and-play guys who may not be stars but can help a team win. Both landed in good spots, Vernon Carey in Charlotte and Tre Jones in San Antonio. Carey's the kind of mobile big who has room to sharpen his skill set; Jones isn't explosive enough or a good enough shooter to carry a team, but he can certainly make a good one better.
In a weak draft year when everyone's rolling the dice — the kind of year where it's hard to argue with a boom-or-bust pick like LaMelo Ball to the Hornets third overall — those can turn out to be the best fits. Or there's Cassius Stanley, whose erratic shooting dropped him deep in the second round but is a lottery-pick athlete; the Pacers bought a lottery ticket 54th overall that may yet pay off handsomely.
Throw in Louisville's Jordan Nwora, a polished college veteran, and it's possible, in the long run, the ACC's contributions to the NBA in 2020 will come in the second round, and not the unusually quiet first.
