During yesterday's live mock draft, draft analyst Ersin Demir, Kevin Broom, and I alternated picks for other teams but collaborated and tried to reach a consensus for each of the Wizards picks. For full break down of each selection in the top 40 and the ensuing deliberations, tune into the full podcast. Here, I'll just state who we decided between at each pick and who we ultimately went with.
The full draft order is down below for you to see who was already off the board at each pick. Each time the Wizards were set to pick, each of us gave our top three available options to see if we had any shared names to pick between as a way to help find a consensus.
For the 6th pick, Broom had Ace Bailey, Noa Essengue, and Jeremiah Fears atop his board. Demir had Fears, Derik Queen, and Khaman Maluach. I had Bailey, Fears, and Kasparas Jakucionis. Bailey got two first place votes so that made him one of the two finalists. But we ultimately went with Fears because he was the only name near the top of all three boards at the time.
At 18, Demir's top three were Joan Beringer, Nique Clifford, and Thomas Sorber. Broom had Jase Richardson as his best available but didn't think he made sense after selecting Fears. So his next three were Adou Thiero, Bogoljub Markovic, and Drake Powell. My list was Sorber, Liam McNeeley, and Will Riley. Because Demir and I both had Sorber and he was in the next tier of players for Broom, we went with him for Washington with their second pick.
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With the 40 pick, Demir had Alex Toohey, Broom had Alijah Martin, and I had Rocco Zikarsky. Toohey was in the next few slots for both Broom and I as well so we felt good going that route as it also brought some additional positional versatility to the draft.
Did we make the right calls? Let us know in the comments who you would have taken give who was still available at each spot.
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Draft selections
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1) Cooper Flagg
2) Dylan Harper
3) Tre Johnson
4) Kon Knueppel
5) VJ Edgecombe
**6) Jeremiah Fears**
7) Ace Bailey
8) Noa Essengue
9) Derik Queen
10) Carter Bryant
11) Asa Newell
12) Khaman Maluach
13) Cedric Coward
14) Rasheer Fleming
15) Kasparas Jakucionis
16) Egor Demin
17) Collin Murray-Boyles
**18) Thomas Sorber**
19) Jase Richardson
20) Nolan Traore
21) Adou Thiero
22) Danny Wolf
23) Will Riley
24) Drake Powell
25) Nique Clifford
26) Noah Penda
27) Walter Clayton Jr.
28) Liam McNeeley
29) Ryan Kalkbrenner
30) Bogoljub Markovic
31) Hugo Gonzalez
32) Maxime Raynaud
33) Johni Broome
34) Ben Saraf
35) Yanic Konan Niederhauser
36) Sion James
37) Kam Jones
38) Javon Small
39) Mouhamed Faye
**40) Alex Toohey**