Overseas Round-Up: Catching Up With the 2023 Top Six

Posted by Admin October 11, 2022 NBA

With most international basketball leagues already in play, some of the top draft prospects who are playing overseas have started showing either promising signs or causes for concern when it comes to their projection to the NBA level. In this overseas round-up, we’ll follow-up on how six of the top international prospects for next year’s draft have started the 2022-23 campaign.

Let’s start with Victor Wembanyama.

Wow.

Wembanyama had an incredible US debut playing a pair of games against G League Ignite in which he averaged 36.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.5 blocks. For the general audience who, beyond those who actively follow the NBA draft, had likely never heard of him, it was a coming out party. For scouts and NBA decision makers it was more of a confirmation that what we’ve been watching for a good part of the past three years is extremely real. He is as good as advertised, if not even better.

For more on Wembanyama and his performance at Vegas, you can check The Fourteen Percent, Draft Digest’s running tracker on all things Victor Wembanyama.

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After missing the season opener due to an illness Nikola Djurisic came back this weekend with a 13-point performance against Igokea, while also adding four assists. Djurisic showed once again his impressive handling and passing ability for his 6-foot-8 size. He missed all five of his 3 pointers, which were mostly off-the-bounce, but it’s clear that Mega has put Djurisic in a high-usage role which will give NBA teams a lot of tape of him as an on-ball creator, in order to evaluate him once the 2023 NBA Draft rolls around.

James Nnaji saw just two minutes in Barcelona’s season opener. This weekend, however, Nnaji led the team in minutes in what was a comfortable 28-point win against Fuenlabrada. Nnaji played an efficient game, putting up eight points mostly off of offensive boards and catch-and-finish situations, while adding six rebounds and three blocks. It will be interesting to see how much Barça’s coaching staff will trust Nnaji to see minutes in tighter games through the season, but if he keeps playing like he did this weekend, it’s easy to envision him carving a definite spot in the rotation.

Despite having a productive pre-season for the New Zealand Breakers, Rayan Rupert has been seeing limited minutes off the bench in his first two games, and it has been hard for him to get into a rhythm: he has scored a total of nine points on 37.5% true shooting through 29 minutes of playing time. Considering his auspicious moments in the preseason, it will be interesting to see how he could look with more playing time, should the Breakers play him for extended minutes as the season goes on.

The early season has been rough for Roko Prkacin at Girona, as he missed all five of his shots and all four of his free throws for zero points in 25 total minutes of play so far. Prkacin has been playing on the interior more, but has been struggling against the size and physicality of the Spanish ACB bigs. His spot on the rotation going forward is unclear after seeing just four minutes in Girona’s latest contest. He will need to find his rhythm quickly for a team that, after starting the season 0-3, will need all the wins they can get in order to avoid being relegated back to the second division of Spanish basketball

Juan Nuñez had an auspicious debut against Euroleague squad Bayern Munich, going for 13 points and showing a level of aggressiveness as a scorer that we haven’t previously seen from him. Nuñez has since come back down to earth with his latest performances, acting more as a facilitator, but the moments of self-creation and aggressiveness he showed in that first game were intriguing. It will be a matter of him finding a balance between aggressiveness and efficiency going forward.

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