Apricot's 2026 NBA Draft Tournament: "We're going to get a good player.... That guy has to play."
Voting on the GSW #11 pick
Here are all the Draft Tournaments and Live Draft Day threads since 2020.
This is the index page for the series, in reverse time order. Comments are turned off.
Meet the new Warriors: Yaxel Lendeborg, LaJae Jones, Nick Boyd, Graham Ike, CJ Gunn
GSW pick Yaxel Lendeborg at #11, the most-ready, best-fitting big man available
2026 NBA Draft starts Tue 5:00pm PT; Round 2 Wed 5:00pm (the live draft thread)
2026 Draft Tourney winner: Kingston Flemings; plus other Draft thoughts (including a 2nd round sleepers guide and my own draft rankings)
Finals: Mikel Brown Jr, Cameron Carr, Morez Johnson Jr, Yaxel Lendeborg, Kingston Flemings
Finals
Here are the finalists with their share of the vote.
Mikel Brown Jr 16%
Cameron Carr 8%
Morez Johnson Jr 4%
Yaxel Lendeborg 30%
Kingston Flemings 42% WINNER
Group Stage
Group 1: Mikel Brown Jr., Allen Graves, Hannes Steinbach
Mikel Brown Jr. 49%
Allen Graves 11%
Hannes Steinbach 40%
Group 2: Jayden Quaintance, Cameron Carr, Karim Lopez
Jayden Quaintance 7%
Cameron Carr 75%
Karim Lopez 18%
Group 3: Morez Johnson Jr., Bennett Stirtz, Nate Ament
Morez Johnson Jr 74%
Bennett Stirtz 5%
Nate Ament 21%
Group 4: Yaxel Lendeborg, Brayden Burries, Ebuka Okorie
Yaxel Lendeborg 45%
Brayden Burries 31%
Ebuka Okorie 24%
Group 5: Labaron Philon Jr., Kingston Flemings, Aday Mara
Labaron Philon Jr 8%
Kingston Flemings 48%
Aday Mara 44%
Announcing the 2026 Draft Tournament
The 2026 NBA Draft will take place on June 23-24, 2026.
The Warriors will have the #11 and #54 picks.
I have selected a field of candidates for the #11 pick. In the next three weeks, I will offer them up in small groups for you to vote on.
Don’t worry, this series is for everyone, not just draft experts.
This article will serve as the main index for the entire tournament.
Inspirational verse from Steve Kerr on the draft
“I’ve talked to Mike (Dunleavy),” Kerr said, via ESPN’s Anthony Slater. “I mean, I don’t know the draft, but he feels really strongly that we’re going to get a good player. It could be a 19-year-old. It could be someone older. It’s obvious where we are with the injuries to Moses and Jimmy. You look at our depth on the wings. That guy has to play, and he’s got to earn it, you know. But we’re committed to the development of our young players and trying to do this thing in a way that allows for success down the road, down the road meaning, the end of next season and and beyond. We’re excited about that.”
The field
The 15 players are grouped by random draw.
Group 1
Mikel Brown Jr.
Allen Graves
Hannes Steinbach
Group 2
Jayden Quaintance
Cameron Carr
Karim Lopez
Group 3
Morez Johnson Jr.
Bennett Stirtz
Nate Ament
Group 4
Yaxel Lendeborg
Brayden Burries
Ebuka Okorie
Group 5
Labaron Philon Jr.
Kingston Flemings
Aday Mara
I may add players to the field on request.
Why do we do this Draft Tournament?
The tournament is designed for people who are not draft experts to catch up at a casual pace on prospects in the Warriors range. For this reason, I have sliced it up into a series of smaller votes instead of a massive 16+ player scouting report. These will be spaced out over the next few weeks until the NBA Draft.
The ultimate goal is for you to develop opinions and attachments about the different prospects, so you can
argue with others,
dream about the future,
enjoy the draft with more suspense and emotional investment,
be angry that your favorite wasn’t selected,
and then in the future tell everyone how you had it right and the drafters were a bunch of idiots.
Despite our stellar track record, it’s unlikely we’ll guess exactly whom the Warriors will draft.
And yes yes everyone always wants to trade the pick for someone ready to contribute. Please don’t be obvious and boring and suggest that.
The reason we don’t contemplate this possibility is that there is absolutely no good way to tell trades are possible and what is fan fantasy. I have a low opinion of people making up trades and complaining they haven’t happened.
How have past Draft Tournament winners done?
Our past five Draft Tourneys are preserved on the Internet (with comment threads about lots of different prospects and the live agony of each Draft Night). Some highlights from the past:
2020. Wanting Tyrese Haliburton over James Wiseman at #2. This is the called shot that will cast reflected glory on the Draft Tourney for years.
2021. Top choices were Moses Moody and Alperen Sengun at #7, along with Scottie Barnes and Jonathan Kuminga in the “won’t fall to us” special election.
2022. DNHQ wanted eventual All-Rookie First Team Jalen Williams (but by then it was clear his stock had skyrocketed past #28) and wanted E.J. Liddell (who promptly tore his ACL, sorry)
2023. Top two DNHQ picks at #19 were Dereck Lively II and Jordan Hawkins, two decent choices. I took a rare personal victory lap for basically predicting by name that GSW would draft Trayce Jackson-Davis, Jaime Jaquez or Brandin Podziemski.
The last two drafts haven’t looked great for the overall vote of the Tourneyans (though my own picks have been great, haha). But to be fair, this was at the very very bottom of the draft which is super hard to predict and project.
2024. Jalen Bridges was the winner of the Tourney. He got buried in the 2024 PHX G-League and then the 2025 BOS G-League, so it’s too soon to tell about this choice, but it’s not looking great.
The breakout players available in the 50s were
Our own Quinten Post (#23 in overall class Win Shares), who was barely knocked out in the first round, despite my best lobbying efforts, and I took a personal victory lap for putting Post in the Tourney and then asking for GSW to draft him on draft night.
And Cam Spencer (#8 overall for the whole draft class in Win Shares). To toot my own horn, he was the player I selected for GSW in a public mock draft.
And to keep my ego in check, I note that I liked Antonio Reeves and Coleman Hawkins better than either Cam or Quinten, so maybe I’m only allowed half a victory lap.
2025. John Tonje was the Tourney winner and he promptly got buried in the Jazz G-League and then was traded to the Celtics G-League, where he stayed on a two-way. Time will tell if he sticks in the NBA.
My own Top 3 for the #41 pick, as recorded in our public picks were
Amari Williams. #46 ORL, signed two-way with BOS, made roster with 2 year minimum. We’ll consider that a hit.
Sion James. #33 CHA, played all 82 games, #8 in class in Win Shares. Bullseye hit.
John Tonje. discussed above.
How did you pick the field?
In past Tourneys, I’ve analyzed the field carefully through the lens of BPM, doing very clever cut-offs, and looking carefully at who the Warriors worked out. I’m not doing that this year for reasons I will explain in an Appendix.
I chose 7 mock draft sources1 for being conventional, as we’re trying to figure out the most likely draft picks not the actual best players available. I then looked at every player whose draft range2 intersected the range [9, 14].
Here are the results:
Too Good To Fall
AJ Dybantsa
Darryn Peterson
Cameron Boozer
Caleb Wilson
Keaton Wagler
Darius Acuff Jr.
Projected to be in range of #11
Mikel Brown Jr.
Kingston Flemings
Aday Mara
Brayden Burries
Nate Ament
Yaxel Lendeborg
Karim Lopez
Labaron Philon Jr.
Hannes Steinbach
Cameron Carr
Morez Johnson Jr.
Jayden Quaintance
Requests
I added a few players by commenter request.
Ebuka Okorie
Bennett Stirtz
Allen Graves
That gives us a starting field of 15 players.
The field for a second round Draft Tourney
We didn’t have time to do a proper draft tourney for the Warriors’ number 54 second-round pick. Just so you can cram a little bit before the final exam on Wednesday, here is the field of prospects that I would have picked for the tourney.
The methodology is pretty simple:
I took Tankathon.com mock draft players ranked number 40 through number 75 as these are the most likely to be available at #54 while also being a plausible draft pick and not someone to be signed as an undrafted free agent.
I filtered for players ranked by either BPM or CHAWBPM as 54th or above in the entire nation. Note that this would make them better than the 54th pick, as the rankings would include all college players, not just the ones who declared for the draft.
If you look at last year’s tournament page, I discuss why we use BPM to select good prospects. In fact, Mike Dunleavy Jr has so far valued analytics much higher than Bob Myers. MDJ’s picks have been ranked in BPM (out of all 5,000+ college players who played 40% of possible minutes):
#1 Trayce Jackson-Davis (#3 CHAW)
#11 Brandin Podziemski (#15 CHAW)
#31 Quinten Post (#12 CHAW)
#35 Will Richard (#284 CHAW)
And the pattern holds even if you include undrafted free agents signed on draft night,
#39 Reese Beekman (#8 CHAW)
#70 LJ Cryer (#77 CHAW)
#79 Chance McMillian (#136 CHAW)
The one pick that doesn’t fit this pattern was Alex Toohey who had no NCAA track record so therefore no NCAA BPM. And we all saw what a miss that pick was.
And notably the undrafted FAs even had worse BPM than the draft players.
I filtered out players chosen by BPM that did not appear in the top 250 CHAWBPM prospects and also filtered out CHAWBPM selections that did not appear in the top 200 BPM players.
Here is the list of selected players:
Confirmed workouts with GSW
Ugonna Onyenso, Virginia, C (#6 BPM, #76 CHAW)
Maliq Brown, Duke, Wing F (#7 BPM, #188 CHAW)
Dillon Mitchell, St. John’s, PF/C (#29 BPM, #217 CHAW)
Tamin Lipsey, Iowa State, Scoring PG (#34 BPM, #134 CHAW)
Emanuel Sharp, Houston, Combo G (#58 BPM, #50 CHAW)
Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Tennessee, Pure PG (#61 BPM, #37 CHAW)
Nate Bittle, Oregon, PF/C (#83 BPM, #30 CHAW)
Tucker DeVries, Indiana, Wing G (#126 BPM, #51 CHAW)
Quadir Copeland, NC State, Pure PG (#178 BPM, #49 CHAW)
No confirmed workouts with GSW
Bruce Thornton, Ohio State, Combo G (#18 BPM, #106 CHAW)
Rafael Castro, George Washington, C (#38 BPM, #98 CHAW)
Izaiyah Nelson, South Florida, C (#44 BPM, #97 CHAW)
Nick Boyd, Wisconsin, Scoring PG (#93 BPM, #39 CHAW)
If you are bored, you can dig into their statistics and video highlights yourself.
Following the most cynical view of MDJ, since he’s picked a player whose workouts were concealed the last two drafts, it would be just like him to pick one of the “no confirmed workouts” list. My eye is on Thornton, a sweet shooting, downhill point guard, whose main issue is being a little short and a lot old.
Appendix. What happened to your complicated BPM analysis from past year?
In the last two years, I cooked up an approach to selecting a field which combined looking at strong BPM statistics with tracking which players the Warriors brought to work out for them.
We’re not doing that this year because the last two years were about predicting draft picks in the 50s. When you’re drafting #11, the eye test matters more than ever, and the draft consensus captures that perspective.
Also, the Warriors have made the unusual step of lying by omission about which players they were working out. Most painfully, I would have included Quinten Post and Will Richard in my draft board if I knew that the Warriors were working them out, but despite my best efforts to track the announced workouts, the Warriors in fact secretly worked out those two players and never announced them.
In coming up with a field of possible picks for the second round pick at #54, I will certainly pay more attention to BPM and workouts. (See above.)
So why are you de-emphasizing BPM?
First, let’s be grateful that BPM is publicly available.
BPM not necessarily my favorite measure, but thanks to BartTorvik.com, I can look at the BPM of every college player since 2008.
Even beyond the limits of all context-less analytics, I do find BPM over-rates big men and (perhaps related) is worse at evaluating defense since box score stats for defense are bad.
Thanks to Basketball-Reference.com, we also have BPM for NBA play.
For the sake of this study, I’ll use BPM as a proxy for whatever cool advanced analytics the Warriors use in-house.
However, BPM is more predictive of NBA drafts for older players.
Intuitively, this should make sense. Young players you draft on tools, older players need proven track records since their growth potential is less.
It does correlate to draftability. I analyzed the BPM ranking for players in the last 2023 and 2024 drafts as follows.
For 1 and 2 year college players, BPM rank distribution is pretty spread out. At this young age,
drafters can bet on athleticism, strong fundamentals, or other tools developing for players who didn’t play well in college,
young players may improve / get a bigger role within a single season and the total BPM may not reflect that,
young players may be playing in not their NBA position or role
For 3+ year players, BPM settles in. I did a similar analysis and found:
Almost every prospect drafted has a BPM of #150 or above.
At this age, if you aren’t racking up positive stats, then you aren’t likely to make the NBA.
Many drafters (including GSW clearly) will take long shots in the second round based on good stats, as indirectly reflected in BPM.
If these histograms seem similar, pay closer attention to the difference in scale of each axis.
ESPN — Jeremy Woo (2026-05-15)
CBS Sports — Adam Finkelstein (2026-05-21)
NBC Sports — Kurt Helin / Raphielle Johnson (2026-05-15)
Bleacher Report — Jonathan Wasserman (2026-05-26)
Yahoo Sports (Post-Lottery) — Ricky O’Donnell (2026-05-10)
Yahoo Sports (Mock Draft 6.0) — Kevin O’Connor (2026-05-20)
The Athletic — Sam Vecenie (2026-05-10)
Draft range is simply the interval from the highest mocked position to the lowest mocked position. So if a player’s draft range includes 11, that means somebody mocked them at above #11 and someone else mocked them at below #11.