The Celtics have a couple of rock-solid, but not premium assets, on their hands with the 27th and 40th overall picks in the NBA draft coming up later this month. However, thanks in large part to the NCAA’s ever-evolving NIL landscape, those assets have gotten a little bit weaker in the last few weeks.
27th and 40th obviously aren’t lottery picks or anything, but Brad Stevens and company have made good use of selections in this range in recent years, nailing picks like Jordan Walsh (38th overall), Baylor Scheierman (30th overall), and Hugo Gonzalez (28th overall) in the last three drafts.
This time around, it may be tougher to land a solid young rotation player as more and more draft prospects are choosing to go back to college for big paydays and more time to develop, rather than entering the draft as a late first- or second-round prospect. Only 71 players filed as early entrants in the draft this year, the lowest in recent years, and 35 of those players withdrew ahead of the May 27th deadline.
In Clutch Points’ previous Mock Draft, 10 of the players they had being selected over the two rounds ultimately went back to school, including players they had quite high on their 2026 Big Board, like Amari Allen (#21), Tounde Yessoufou (#33), Malachi Moreno (#35), Milan Momcilovic (#38), Tyler Tanner (#39), Matt Able (#40), Flory Bidunga (#43), Billy Richmond III (#47), Andrej Stojakovic (#55), and others.
Celtics' draft picks got much weaker in value
Unfortunately, that significantly weakens the talent pool once we get into the 20s and beyond, where the Celtics will be picking twice. Maybe they had their eyes on some of the players who withdrew, or maybe those players would have gone ahead of their picks, leaving more options. Either way, it’s a bummer for Boston and cheapens two of the assets at their disposal.
And it’s not like this is novel information; the league understands that these picks are fading in value. In years past, perhaps the Cs could have packaged these picks to move up, or used them as a part of a bigger trade for more proven talent. But the book is out, and teams are going to be wary of moving down in the draft with a steeper talent drop-off than ever.
Surely, there will still be good players who end up going around this range, and the Celtics’ braintrust has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to finding them. But that task has invariably gotten significantly harder in the last month.
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