A record was broken last Thursday afternoon when, at the 2024 NBA Draft, the Washington Wizards selected Alexandre Sarr with the second overall pick. Sarr is a French big-man prospect, standing at 7’1 aged 19, who just so happened to have spent the past season with the Perth Wildcats as part of the Australian NBL’s Next Star programme. He averaged 9.4 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per game with the Wildcats (playing alongside several kiwi players) and particularly impressed with his defensive abilities. The record that he broke? He’s now the highest-drafted NBL Next Star, beating LaMelo Ball’s third overall selection back in 2020.

Interestingly, there were six lottery picks in 2024 without any USA collegiate experience. You’ve gotta go back a few decades to find the last time that many non-NCAA hombres went this high, back to when dudes could be picked straight out of high school. These days it’s the foreign prospects who are the culprits. The top two selections were both French, with another Frenchman at six. There was also a Canadian, a Lithuanian, and a Serbian also inside the top dozen. The Canadian, Zach Edey (who’s been drafted to the Memphis Grizzlies to replace Steven Adams in the long-term) did go to college but there was an American who came out of the G-League Ignite team to make up for that. If you don’t already know, the G-League Ignite team is an American development-league initiative that seems to have been designed as a homegrown alternative for USA players who might otherwise have gone down an Aussie Next Star route.

Nobody loves a Next Star more than the New Zealand Breakers. They’ve been on this buzz since day one. Apart from the one season where covid lockdowns inhibited it, the Breakers have always cleared a spot for a Next Star on their bench... in fact there was one year when they effectively had two. In the 2021-22 season, they gave Ousmane Dieng the NS honours but liked Hugo Besson so much that they signed him as an import to effectively operate as a second Next Star. No surprises there. This Breakers regime loves few things more than flirting with overseas attention, even if it sometimes comes at the expense of their own backyard.

The Next Star initiative is pretty cool. It’s a way of bringing exciting young talent to the Australian NBL without taking up a roster spot that would otherwise go to a local. The player gets an alternative pathway to the pros with a rarefied spotlight. The league gets free association with the NBA and a bunch of marketing opportunities (no doubt it’s helped with their foreign broadcast deals). Plus there’s usually a buyout involved when a player gets drafted that sees financial compensation filter back to the team. It’s over-hyped, of course, but that’s just the world we live in.

But there are certain things that we, as fans, do need to remain cynical about. Such as the way that NBA Draft coverage has evolved into this year-round industry – with places like ESPN employing full-time ‘experts’ to scout these blokes, creating a media echo chamber that tricks us into thinking there’s some sort of science involved in what they do. There’s no science. Evaluating young athletes is a very subjective task that’s usually only vindicated by hindsight bias. Even if the hierarchy that emerges each year is, on the whole, generally accurate in terms of talent... there’s no way of knowing how those dudes will develop in the coming years. Luckily, such opinions are designed to be short-lived. It’s non-stop information up until the Draft but then it’s a clean slate come Summer League.

Something else to be cynical about is the way that the NBA media works in general. At the 2024 Draft, ESPN had their man Jonathan Givony on the panel spinning yarns about the picks in real-time. Great knowledge. Strong scouting mahi. But did you know that Givony, as well as being (according to his Twitter profile): “NBA Draft analyst at ESPN; Founder and co-owner of DraftExpress.com, a private scouting and analytics service utilized by NBA, NCAA and Int'l teams”... is also on the payroll of the NZ Breakers as an overseas scout? Because he is and he has been for several years. So keep that in mind when he’s doing TV spots like this one ahead of last year’s draft...

This bloke’s probably on the books of dozens of teams around the world so this ain’t to suggest any overt bias at work. He’s still going to list ‘em as he sees ‘em. But accessibility and networking are huge factors when it comes to which prospects get spotted and which prospects get workout opportunities, etc. Thus those Mock Drafts that everyone seems to love, especially the NBL when it comes quantifying their own Next Star hype, are not exactly empirical evidence. They do provide a nice wee introductory profile about the players, strengths and weaknesses and all that, but the rankings are nothing more than (educated) guesswork. Granted, they do get a lot more accurate closer to the draft as teams make their own preferences much clearer.

In the end, it doesn’t even matter where a player gets drafted. They’ll make their money on the next contract. As long as they crack then NBA somehow (be that as a lottery pick or as an undrafted free agent) then that’s all that matters. Nikola Jokic was a second round pick and he’s won three of the last four MVP awards. You have to go back to LeBron James in 2012-13 for the last number one pick to win the MVP trophy (although, generally speaking, the higher you get drafted, the more likely you are to be an All Star – that’s where the educated guesswork comes in).

Keep all that context in mind when it comes to the Breakers because who have a good record of getting blokes into the NBA but they don’t have such a good record of raising their draft stocks. No team has had more Next Stars drafted than the Breakers yet none of the lads that have made their way to Atlas Place have touched the top ten despite preseason expectations (again, guesswork)... unlike Alex Sarr, LaMelo Ball, and Josh Giddey. It’s doubtful whether any of the Breakers lot were drafted any higher than they would have been had they gone to college or the G-League or stayed in Europe instead. We’ve established that draft order’s not that important though. What you do when you get to the NBA is what’s important. So... what have the Breakers Next Stars done in the NBA?

RJ Hampton

Position: Point Guard

Nationality: USA

Drafted: 24 by Milwaukee Bucks (traded to Denver Nuggets) in 2020

Ah yes, the originator right here. Feels like such a long time ago. Hampton played for the Breakers in arguably the most disjointed season in franchise history. This was the season when they had a “Director of Basketball” instead of a head coach presumably so that they could make Kevin Braswell redundant instead of paying him out. Dillon Boucher quit as GM a month out from the start of competitive games. They swapped an import out at late notice. Definitely don’t forget the Glen Rice JR ridiculousness. Or when Corey Webster was refused a release and told he was statistically the worst starting two-guard in the league. Or when Tom Vodanovich got picked up by police after a flight back from Perth for getting a wee bit too intoxicated. Or when Owner/CEO Matt Walsh got suspended for arguing with the referees.

Point being, this was not an environment that would have been easy for an 18-year-old from Texas who had been a five-star recruit coming out of high school but instead announced live on ESPN that he’d be joining the NZ Breakers instead. He wanted to get a jump start on the professional experience before his NBA Draft. He definitely got something.

This was the same year as LaMelo Ball played for the Illawarra Hawks so there was a huge media focus on the Next Star contingent. Hampton certainly had his highlights as an athletic guard capable of getting to the rim. However his defence was suspect and his jump shot subpar – two very normal things even for elite young players but when he was playing 20-minutes per night it didn’t exactly help his team to victories. There was a profile done on him by one of the American publications that suggested his time in Aotearoa had been completely miserable. The team was losing, he was very sheltered with his whole family having moved over... it’s not hard to fathom. The impression always seemed to be that Hampton (and his family) weren’t there to help the Breakers as much as they were there because they felt the Breakers would help the Hampton brand. Probably didn’t help that he wore Breakers legend Mika Vukona’s 14 jersey throughout – which at the point of writing this conspicuously still has not been retired by the club.

A couple of months into the season, RJH suffered a hip injury that caused him to miss four weeks. He returned for about month but then left the team early to prepare for the draft. The Breakers went 4-11 in the games that Hampton played, with Hampton averaging 8.8 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 2.4 assists in 21 minutes per night. He shot 40% from the field and 30% from deep. He had the worst net rating of anyone on the roster who played at least 250 total minutes. Meanwhile the Breakers actually got quite good in those final few months, going on a surge after letting Scotty Hopson take over the reins to finish with a 15-13 record and only miss the playoffs based on points differential. That means they were 11-2 without RJH, by the way.

But of course the NBA Draft folks don’t care about the team he’s playing for, nor even necessarily how good a bloke is at that point in time. They’re all about potential and possibility. Unfortunately that didn’t really work out for RJH either. While LaMelo Ball got picked third overall, Hampton’s preseason predictions of top-five status quickly plummeted and on draft night he sunk to 24th overall. Selected by the Milwaukee Bucks but with his draft rights traded to the Denver Nuggets. Coincidentally, that trade was expanded into a four-team deal that also dealt Steven Adams to the New Orleans Pelicans.

That still made RJ Hampton a first round pick so no dramas there. Being anointed as one of the very best global prospects of that entire year is only a problem if you’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. And, anyway, it’s what you do next that people remember. Hampton signed a multi-year deal with the Nuggets... yet only played 25 games for them before he was traded to the Orlando Magic in the move that brought Aaron Gordon to Denver (who later became a key player in their championship). Playing for a 21-51 Magic team gave RJH much more room to perform, going from less than 10 mins per game for the Nuggets to 25mpg (including his first NBA start) for the Magic. He averaged 11.2 points for Orlando, even winning Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month in May.

But despite a boost in his three-point efficiency, his overall shooting and scoring numbers dropped in year two as the Magic went 22-60 with the worst offence in the NBA. He’d continue with a bench role for Orlando into his third season in the league... but his role declined even further and he was waived during the All Star Break having increasingly found himself playing G-League rather than NBA. Once he cleared waivers he signed with the Detroit Pistons on a two-year deal (at less than half the annual salary of his rookie scale contract). The Pistons instantly gave him a significant bench role averaging 18.5 minutes a night... yet they were also deeply embedded in Tank Mode by then, hence RJH’s record in Detroit was a pitiful 2-19.

Hampton was waived by the Pistons during the offseason and instead signed a two-way deal with the Miami Heat. However, he only played eight games during (totalling 76 minutes of action) before they waived him to try someone else in that two-way slot. Hampton then dropped down to a permanent G-League spot where he was traded from the Heat affiliate to the Washington Wizards affiliate. He signed a 10-day contract with the Wizards towards the end of the 2023-24 season but he never got on the court for them. Thus he returned to the Wizards G-League side. As things stand, he remains with the Capital City Go-Go, though he’s still only 23 years old so there’s plenty of resurgence potential. His G-League stats are pretty sharp with 15.9 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 3.2 assists per game in 26 minutes on 46.2 FG% and 35.7 3P% (29 games played). Overall, Hampton’s four years in the NBA have seen him take the floor in 170 NBA games for four different franchises.

Ousmane Dieng

Position: Forward

Nationality: France

Drafted: 11 by Oklahoma City Thunder in 2022

The Breakers were never going to dump the Next Star strategy after the messiness of RJ Hampton’s season but they did learn two valuable lessons. One was that they had more to offer European players than they did American ones. Two was that it’s best to avoid the point guard position as that’s putting too much pressure on a teenager at the detriment of the team. So they pivoted towards French wing Ousmane Dieng (and also Hugo Besson, who was slightly older and more of a scorer).

Dieng was only 18yo whilst at the Breakers so you can imagine he was the definition of a raw talent. Tall with a huge wingspan and great athleticism, it was easy to see the potential that he had yet he also boasted a wonky jump shot and occasionally looked out of his depth in the NBL. In other words, he was the typical Oklahoma City Thunder draft selection: a physical specimen with we-can-fix-it technical flaws. The Thunder have about a dozen such blokes hovering around their franchise and they only need a couple of them to come good to get their money’s worth. So it was that Dieng did something that no other Breakers Next Star had yet managed to repeat by getting drafted ahead of where he was projected. Picked 11 overall by the OKC Thunder.

He’s been going great with the Thunder too. Making exciting progress. His Breakers numbers had been very similar to Hampton with almost identical minutes, shooting splits, and scoring average. But his NBA impact was much smoother, helped by the fact that he found himself at a franchise willing to invest in his development. Dieng played 39 games in his rookie season, making one start. He averaged 4.9 points and 2.7 rebounds on 32% shooting, peaking with a 22-point performance against an understrength Memphis Grizzlies side (no Adams, Morant, Bane, or Jackson) which remains his career-high.

His second season, the 2023-24 campaign, did see his minutes drop as the Thunder surged into a far more competitive realm, going from a 40-42 record where they lost during the play-ins to a 57-25 record to be the top seed in the West. Dieng played 33 games and his per game stats predictably dipped with that lesser role. The rotation is always going to be more competitive when winning becomes the priority. But there were some sneaky improvements in his per-36 numbers (especially considering these numbers were in the context of a winning team)...

Dieng in 2022-23: 11.5 FGA | 42.0 FG% | 26.5 3P% | 6.6 REB | 2.9 AST | 2.7 PF | 12.2 PTS

Dieng in 2023-24: 11.3 FGA | 42.2 FG% | 30.0 3P% | 5.0 REB | 3.6 AST | 2.2 PF | 13.1 PTS

During the playoffs, the Thunder swept the Pelicans in the first round before bowing out in six games against the eventual-finalists Mavericks. Dieng only got seven minutes combined, remaining on the roster but getting squeezed out of the playoff rotation. However, he did still have playoff success. His regular season appearances tended to come in spells because he split his time between the NBA and the G-League as a key performer for the Oklahoma City Blue on their way to winning the G-League championship. And guess what? The bro Ousmane Dieng got the Finals MVP award.

The Thunder have team options for two more years on his contract. Their playoff run has shown that they’re close to where they want to be and with a young roster they can rely on natural progression to keep on improving. Dieng could easily be a part of that... or he could find himself as trade bait for someone else. The Thunder are a nurturing bunch so he’ll probably get the opportunity to show his progress early next season – he only turned 21yo in May – but his third year will be a pivotal campaign as he auditions for that next contract. Dieng was also selected to the 19-man longlist for the 2024 French Olympic squad though his national team debut will have to wait as he didn’t make the cut from there.

Hugo Besson

Position: Shooting Guard

Nationality: France

Drafted: 58 by Milwaukee Bucks in 2022

Not a Next Star, they signed him as an import, but he would have been a Next Star had the not already had Ousmane Dieng and he declared for the same draft as Dieng so let’s count him as an unofficial entry. Like, Dieng, Besson got big minutes in Dan Shamir’s last season for a Breakers side that finished dead last in the standings. It was a miserable season that did at least give the two French prodigies more room to shine than they may have otherwise gotten. Besson especially, he averaged 27 minutes per night and scored 13.9 points per game (better than any other NZB Next Star). Albeit he only shot 39% from the field and 31% from deep and his defence was pretty sketchy.

Our mate Givony broke the news of Besson declaring for the draft, saying that he’d had an “outstanding” season in the Australian NBL and would be a “potential first round pick”. In truth, Besson was good but inefficient on a bad team, far from outstanding, and did not make the first round cut. But he did get drafted. He was number 58, the final man picked in the 2022 edition (just as Melbourne United Next Star Ariel Hukporti was the last man drafted in 2024), with an Indiana Pacers selection that had already been traded to the Milwaukee Bucks.

Besson did Summer League with the Bucks in 2022 but there was never any intention for him to stay in America beyond that, instead going back to France to kit up for Metropolitans 92 alongside none other than Victor Wembanyama. Mets finished second in the league and second in the playoffs with Besson averaging 9.2 points per game off the bench, although he had to have mid-season surgery on a hip injury that led to a lessened role after he returned. Following that he managed another Summer League with the Bucks, who had remained involved with his development throughout, before signing a two-year deal with FMP Belgrade in Serbia... which lasted for half a season before he switched to Varese in Italy. HB was a solid contributor for both, though whether the NBA will ever beckon for him remains to be seen. The Bucks GM did say last year that Besson remains in their plans... he just didn’t say what those plans were. However, he is currently back in the United States so it looks like he’ll get a third shot at Summer League in 2024.

Rayan Rupert

Position: Forward

Nationality: France

Drafted: 43 by Portland Trail Blazers in 2023

This bloke had by far the most successful Breakers career of all the Next Stars – perhaps not coincidentally despite averaging the fewest minutes per game of any of them. But each and every one of his minutes were earned within a very strong roster. Rayan Rupert continued the European approach yet came with the sturdiest defence, allowing him to maintain an important bench role as the Breakers took it all the way to the NBL finals that season (albeit with the usual negative net rating that these youngsters inevitably bring). Plus he gets extra credit for staying in the NBL right up until the finish line after the previous three prospects had all quit on the team early in order to prepare for the draft.

RR’s Breakers stuff summarised him pretty nicely: very good defender with great athletic range but with limited offensive game (shooting 35% overall from the field and 23% from deep). Add that all together and it was enough to get him drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers in the second round... though that same Blazers team soon traded Damian Lillard to trigger a full-blown rebuild which did put that pick into some further context. Immediate contributions were not going to be a priority. Longer-term development potential was much more enticing... and Rupert fit that bill.

In terms of immediate minutes, the rebuild allowed Rupert to hang around on the main roster for the much of his rookie season, appearing in 39 NBA games whilst also getting a few reps with the team’s G-League affiliate (playing in six games). His overall NBA shooting numbers were similar to the NBL except that he made 35.9% of his triples - a very tidy improvement for a bloke who never made more than two in a game for NZB. All rookies are going to have moments where they look lost as they adjust to the toughest level of basketball and that was certainly the case with this bloke but he certainly showed flashes of his long-term potential.

Much of Rupert’s best stuff came late in the season. After a sporadic role through the first two-thirds of the season, he featured in 25 of the Blazers’ last 27 games and got big minutes in many of them. Of course, this was after the trade deadline when tank season begins so might just add that PTB had a 3-23 winning record when Rupert played more than eight minutes. But there was enough promise there that he should be back for an increased role next season.

Mantas Rubštavičius

Position: Shooting Guard

Nationality: Lithuania

Drafted: Undrafted in 2024

This guy was a little different for a Breakers Next Star recruit. He broke the streak of French prospects, plus he was a little older than the rest – joining the NBL as a 21yo after initially declaring for the 2023 Draft and then withdrawing to squeeze in his year in Aotearoa. This after he’d already created some hype as the top scorer in the U20 European Championships a year earlier. The Lithuanian international was therefore more suited to an immediate impact with the Breakers and he lived up to those expectations.

Despite an injury in preseason, which continued to trouble him for much of the first half of the campaign, The Mantas was able to maintain a steady 20 minutes per game when available, averaging 9.4 points per night (the best of any Breakers Next Star, though less than Besson) and really gaining traction as the team battled for a play-in spot. Even more impressive were his shooting splits of 52% FG and 42% 3PT. He could score in multiple ways. Great shooter. Excellent in transition. Had one of the best offensive ratings on the team. Not as impressive defensively but with enough size for his position that it wasn’t a major issue. He is the only Breakers NS with a positive net rating and it’s not even close. Coach Mody Maor said coming in that Rubštavičius would be “the most impactful Next Star that we’ve seen” and Coach Mody definitely knows ball.

Rubštavičius didn’t get drafted though. The best performing one of these fellas for the Breakers but the least embraced by the draft industry. That’s the dissonant problem, right? The Breakers are trying to win now so want immediate impact. The NBA is looking at the potential of players, not their current levels. And as far as The Mantas went, lot of prospects can score so it’s hard to stand out amongst all the other second round hopefuls.

He did get a lot of undercover buzz – Givony had him ranked the 64 amongst all prospects (there were 58 picks) - so he was in the right range, just had to hope a team would take a fancy to him. That didn’t happen in the draft, nor in the immediate flurry of undrafted two-way contracts that followed, but it he has since agreed to join the Golden State Warriors for Summer League so that’s a good place to start.

Per Game NBL Stats For Breakers Draft Prospects:

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