Our draft expert Sam Vecenie and front office insider John Hollinger are analyzing each pick of the draft:
Vecenie’s ranking: 11
Maluach’s size, length, lateral ability and work ethic are extremely enticing tools for NBA teams. If you look across the league, the NBA prefers to get bigs into their systems when they’re quite young. It’s rare to come across a starting NBA center who played more than two years in college or two years as a draft-eligible player overseas. That’s because tools matter, and coaching staffs have gotten quite good at teaching bigs to use them. Given that Maluach is receptive to learning and coachable, there are teams that will buy into his game and believe they can work with what he has at his disposal.
Ultimately, his upside is the question. For me, Maluach is more of a Mitchell Robinson- or Nic Claxton-style low-usage, high-efficiency big on offense as opposed to some of the more productive high-efficiency rollers such as Jarrett Allen or Ivica Zubac. His higher center of gravity worries me in terms of his ability to add functional basketball strength and roll with downhill force toward the rim. He’ll be awesome on the offensive glass like most of those players. I’m more skeptical than some of the jumper turning into something functional, but it would be a bonus. Still, these players almost always end up returning value if they can defend, and while Maluach has some things to fix there, I believe he will defend well. I see him as something in the ballpark of a league-average starting center. That’s worth a later lottery pick, but I’m also not quite as on board with some who see Maluach as a swing for the fences.
Hollinger’s analysis: Houston made this pick, but the Rockets will be trading it to the Suns once the Kevin Durant trade executes on July 6. The frontcourt-starved Suns had been rumored as a Maluach destination for a while, but he’s a developmental player going to a win-now system. I’m a little worried about the fit if he isn’t able to take rotation minutes immediately and might have gone for Georgetown’s Thomas Sorber instead. That said, if Maluach can’t beat out Nick Richards and Oso Ighodaro, he probably shouldn’t be the 10th pick in the draft.