Six NBA draft projections we got wrong — and why we missed

It should go without saying that the evaluation of NBA prospects is something less than an exact science. A number of factors can cause a player to either outperform or underperform relative to their NBA projection, and each of the league’s 30 teams and their increasingly robust scouting and analytics staffs understand that this notion comes with the territory.

The unknown of future health is always a variable, while factors ranging from “late bloomer” status to “bad NBA team fit” issues to “combine warrior” realities can change the trajectory of a player’s pro career immeasurably. ESPN’s team of Jonathan Givony, Mike Schmitz and Kevin Pelton all conduct an exhaustive degree of evaluation and/or data analysis to help mitigate those unknowns — but any NBA analyst worth their salt will tell you there are no guarantees. And any credible NBA draft analyst must own the misses. With that in mind, Givony, Schmitz and Pelton all identified recent NBA draft picks about whom they were wrong, laying out the factors that led to the errant projections — both on the positive and negative sides of the ledger:

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