On the eve of the NBA Draft, everyone has high hopes. The prospects are hoping to hear their names called early on. The teams are hoping that the players they select will pan out as planned. The fans are hoping that their teams make the right decisions. Everyone is hoping that it will be a night that they remember for a long time.
It’s the same in every sport, of course. NFL prospects, teams and fans are thinking exactly the same kind of things when the draft rolls around each year. So with that in mind, we wanted to compare some of this year’s top NBA Draft prospects (the top eight in the CBS Sports prospects rankings) to NFL equivalents in recent years.
One thing it’s important to remember is that we’re comparing these NBA Draft prospects to the NFL players AS PROSPECTS, so nothing they did once they entered the pros really holds any relevance here. We’re just looking at the combination of traits, strengths and weaknesses and pre-draft storylines to build out a comparison. We’re also limiting the comparison pool to just the most recent 10 NFL Drafts (2016-2025), because otherwise it might take forever to find someone who really fits.
Without further ado…
Flagg is considered a potentially generational type of two-way prospect. He’s been ticketed as a future No. 1 pick for several years due to the seeming likelihood that he becomes an elite player on both sides of the ball. He had a fantastic freshman season at Duke during which he was named the Naismith College Player of the Year (among many other accolades).
Hunter, like Flagg, was the consensus No. 1 prospect in his recruiting class due to his special two-way talent. He was considered a future top pick from the moment he stepped on campus, lived up to the lofty expectations placed upon him, won the Heisman Trophy and eventually was selected No. 2 overall.
Harper is the son of former NBA player Ron Harper, who won a trio of…
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