The unfortunate truth of the National Basketball Association is that even with the league forcing high school talents to wait at least one year from the date of their graduating high school class before being eligible to enter the NBA Draft, the league is still largely drafting players based on long-term projections of their athletic and basketball potential.
And yet, many of those prospects — who are often years away from being able to purchase an “adult beverage” — are expected to contribute as a professional right away, fairly or unfairly. As the saying goes, professional sports are very much a “what have you done for me lately?” business.
So that’s why we wanted to look at some of the youngest NBA talents to enter the league, as well as some of the talents who’ll enter the league in 2019, and see which players either currently have or project to provide the best (and worst) returns on investment for the teams that took them.
