Kentucky Wildcats big man Jayden Quaintance is projected to be among the top prospects in next year’s NBA Draft.
With the 2025 NBA Draft now finished, ESPN is already looking ahead to the 2026 NBA Draft, and the folks at the Worldwide Leader are high on Quaintance.
ESPN’s Jonathan Givony projects Quaintance to go 6th overall. In this mock draft, he would have landed with the Memphis Grizzlies.
Younger than several highly touted rising high school seniors, Quaintance had a highly productive freshman season at Arizona State, ranking as one of the best shot blockers in college basketball.
He has a chiseled frame, huge hands, a 7-foot-5 wingspan and is exceptionally mobile. NBA teams will be monitoring how he bounces back from the ACL surgery he had in March, and that might require a slower start at Kentucky.
ESPN’s Jeremy Woo said Quaintance is one of the top returning prospects to watch in college basketball.
While Quaintance is quite raw from a skill perspective, particularly his jump shot, and has a lot to learn with his overall technique and ability to process the floor, his extreme youth for the college level earns him benefit of the doubt, and NBA scouts will be eager to see whether he can take another step forward after transferring to Kentucky. He’ll have a major platform there to try to solidify himself as a lottery talent, but there’s a lot of refinement that has to happen before he’s NBA-ready.
How quickly he returns after his ACL surgery in March will be a factor to watch.
ESPN also released a remaining big board outside of the top 10 and ranked Tulane transfer Kam Williams as 46th overall.
If Quaintance can return to form from his ACL injury, his defensive prowess will be enough to draw a lot of eyes from NBA scouts, and Mark Pope will be able to put him in a position to succeed on offense.
As for Kam Williams, there is a lot of untapped potential, and there’s a good argument that he could be the X-factor for this team after putting together a solid freshman season at Tulane. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s contending for a first-round pick next season.
Other Wildcats like Otega Oweh and Denzel Aberdeen will look to prove they belong in the NBA in what will be their final seasons of college basketball.