Part 1: DEEP Draft Sleepers from LNB Espoirs

The most fascinating players from France's U21 league from 2024

By all accounts, Espoirs typically isn’t a reservoir of NBA talent. It’s the premier U21 league in France, but dominating it has not been the surest sign of future stardom.

For instance, the most productive teen in Espoirs in the last decade was Killian Hayes. He was extremely young (16) and utterly dominated in every single possible aspect. And we know how he fared in the NBA.

But as of late, there have been so many drafted Espoirs alumni.

Based on my database, there have been 9 Espoirs alumni from the last 8 years that have been drafted to the NBA. But 8 of them were drafted in the last 2 drafts. Off the bat, there’s a pretty simple heuristic for finding any relevant prospects that play in this mickey mouse league: youth. All 9 of these alumni logged at least one season under the age of 18.0 in this league. It doesn’t sound like much, but in a U21 league, there’s only a handful of 17 year olds playing meaningful minutes each year.

RealGM is not set up in a way that one can easily access the ages of each player in a given league. So I have to manually look up the birthday of each player after building the database. Due to manually converting birthdays, here’s a disclaimer: I took a few shortcuts and may have skipped some players with outlier low minutes/outlier bad production.

Out of the Espoirs players this year, I’ve tried to pinpoint players that have some inkling of chance being truly productive players at some stage in their career. This is especially fun because there is absolutely no full games/Synergy out there on Espoirs players, other than the occasional cherrypicked highlight video. I’ve embedded a few of these highlight videos, but this is really a useful exercise to see how much I can ascertain goodness and project upside solely off RealGM box score stats.

I’ve split this into two parts, both of which contain sleepers from Espoirs. I do not think anyone appears likely to be drafted at the moment, but this series is divided into sleepers (players with some semblance of pedigree and reasonable tail risk parity) and deep sleepers (hyper-underrated players off the map completely, with real warts but fascinating upside tails).

This iteration involves deep sleepers, where I’m looking for the most fascinating profiles. The next piece will focus on that former group. At the moment, I would be extremely surprised if any of these players was drafted; but even with developmental uncertainty baked into their low draft price, there is enough upside to keep an eye on these guys in the coming years.

1. Adam Atamna

Height: 6'2" 

Birthday: Dec 6, 2007
Team (2024): Espoirs Asvel
Team (2025): Lyonso Basket (NM1)

Out of all these players, Atamna is probably the best bet to be drafted. His age-adjusted production in Espoirs this year was extremely impressive.

Atamna was extremely young this season, just 16.4 at the end of the season. But what’s especially impressive is that Atamna was a pretty legit contributor even last year, playing 250 minutes despite being 15.4 at the end of the season. That means he started the season off despite still being 14!

Based on my database (based on RealGM data), there has never been a player even under 16 who played in Espoirs with remotely close minutes totals. Matter of fact, these are the players in my database that played in Espoirs with an age 17 or under. For clarity, I only went thru the birthdays as far back as 2022, and supplemented with drafted players bdays, so there may be a few guys that I missed. Still, Atamna sticks out immediately.

What’s impressive is that his age 15.4 season not only is the youngest here, but was pretty damn good relative to some of the drafted contemporaries. For instance, Hugo Besson was over a year and a half older, with far worse efficiency, stocks, passing, and scoring output. Matter of fact, Atamna cleared him in every single facet sans total minutes. Besson was a fairly questionable pick even in 2022, but its pretty interesting how much better a 15.4 year old Atamna was compared to a 17.0 year old Besson.

But even a year later, Atamna is still one of the youngest players listed here. Considering total minutes played, there really is no comparison for Atamna’s combination of age and total minutes played.

And yet he might just have the most impressive production profile in a query littered with NBA draft picks. This list is sorted by points/40, which Atamna very clearly leads. But he’s also a highly efficient scorer, shooting 60% on 2s on nearly 9 2PA/40. 54% TS is on the low side, especially compared to his 60% TS as a 15 year old (yes, 15 year old Atamna was 60% TS/17.6 PER).

Atamna’s impressive interior scoring is supplemented by elite stocks numbers. 4% steal in both age 15 and 16 season, and was up to 1.4% block this year. His tweener score (a self created metric that sums per-40 assists, steals, blocks, and 3PA) is second only to Killian Hayes. In fact, his closest comp seems to be Killian Hayes, who was ~ 5 months older but racked up far more assists.

That’s probably the biggest “flag” on Atamna’s profile: he hasn’t taken over playmaking duties in a way that Killian did at the same age on similar usage.

Killian just had a better net impact across the board, with slightly higher steals and blocks to boot. He was a bit more productive too: 5 points higher PER and more efficient But, we can see that his infamous TO issues (he was at 25% TO his pre-draft season) were clearly prevalent as a teenager. Despite far higher passing volume, his AST%:TOV% and A:TO weren’t too far off from Adam.

Further scoring comparison makes it pretty clear that Killian was a superior prospect. He played far more minutes, and he matched Atamna’s strength inside the arc. FTr is a draw: Atamna technically has a worse FTA/FGA (5 FTA/19.1 FGA compared to Hayes 5.8 FTA/15.8 FGA), but Atamna takes way more 3s. FTA/2PA makes it far closer.

The biggest hole is definitely shooting for Atamna. Even though he ripped off way more 3PA than Hayes, his FT% is lower by a bit (82% vs 86% FT for Killian), and he also shot just 27% from 3. While both Killian and Atamna were extremely good relative to the others in terms of interior scoring, we know how Killian ended up playing in the NBA.

(All numbers from Hayes sophomore season in the NBA)

Hayes shooting issues have been well documented by NBA Centel, but his finishing woes are also noteworthy. 42% on HC rim attempts is impressively bad, but so is the fact that just 10% of his total HC shot attempts were at the rim. Hayes had some moments of 3P aversion, but for the most part, his shot diet was centered around 2P dribble jumpers. 42% on 2P dribble jumper is actually pretty decent, but NBA players need counters and ability to bump their efficiency through “efficiency bumping shots”, ie rim attempts, transition, cuts, open 3s, etc. Unfortunately, despite his stellar FT% going as far back as Espoirs, Hayes was a horrible shooter. 29% unguarded 3s is just impressively bad, as is 26.6% on all 3s.

Again, Synergy does not cover Espoirs, which is why so much of the aforementioned analysis is based on RealGM box score data. This also prevents an easy comparison of Hayes and Atamna’s Espoirs derivation of production. Can’t even simply compare dunk numbers.

What we can do is compare their FIBA U16 Euro numbers, which is available via Synergy.

Killian:

Atamna:

The differences seem a bit more stark here: Killian played twice Atamna’s minutes, while scoring more efficiently at higher volume, rebounding better, and racking up far more steals and blocks. He played a bigger role than Atamna while leading his team to gold.

To be fair, a lot of this FIBA tourneys have noisy stats, especially for the top teams, as these teams are more dominant and get more transition opportunities

Killian U16 Transition:

Killian was pretty fucking good in transition, with 83% of his transition attempts coming at the rim, with a pretty monster 25% dunk rate (percent of transition rim attempts coming as dunks).

Atamna U16 Transition:

But Atamna was pretty similar. Despite not getting nearly as much volume as Hayes, he was still at 78% transition rim rte and 21% dunk rate. Worse efficiency though.

Killian U16 HC:

This is why Synergy is so important. Killian’s HC splits are far more concerning. He was at 11 HC rim attempts in 7 games (~203 minutes), shooting just 55% atr without any dunks. Just 22% of his HC attempts were at the rim. 2/5 on 2P dribble jumper seems somewhat low volume, but it also implies a terrible 3/12 on 3P dribble jumpers. It’s pretty fascinating how much worse these splits look relative to his box score/Real GM statline.

Atamna U16 HC:

Well, this is even more stark for Atamna. 0/3 on HC rim attempts in 7 games (~98 minutes). Since he played around half as many minutes as Hayes, we can basically just multiply all these values by 2 to extrapolate his numbers with Killian level minutes. This would scale to around 6 rim attempts and 2/8 on 3P dribble jumpers in the same amount of minutes as Hayes. An even worse 12% of his HC attempts were at the rim, with no dunks.

There are some real concerns with Atamna.

By all accounts, Adam Atamna seems like a worse Killian Hayes. He’s smaller, a worse passer, and his strengths are largely matched by Hayes across the board. Why would anyone bet on Atamna?

I’m not exactly sure to be honest. Killian was definitely better at the same age. But the difference is probably exaggerated in this small sample of U16 minutes, and they’re prolly closer as seen by the Espoirs production. Killian still better, but Atamna does have some outs to being better.

Killian is like an all time shooting disasterclass case. Sure, Hayes’ terrible unguarded C&S 3P profile pre-draft should have been a red flag, but he was really shooting in the high 80s FT from a young age. And until Atamna puts up similarly terrible splits that we can ascertain via Synergy data, it would be unwise to count out Atamna’s shooting development simply by virtue of a clear outlier in Hayes.

Atamna also rips off way more threes than Hayes, who had clear issues in his NBA shooting confidence. A difference of 4 3PA/40 is not marginal, and it probably indicates Atamna’s greater comfort shooting out of a variety of looks. Again, there is very little film out there on Atamna so far, so much of this is conjecture by necessity. But I would bet on Atamna being a far more versatile shooter than Hayes, who was uncomfortable shooting off movement or in varying his momentum during his pre-draft year. Grib and I talked about this on one of our pod episodes (Johnny Davis was another lower 3PA/poor versatility 3P shooter).

Atamna is also a clearly better rebounder than Killian, which doesn’t mean THAT much except it kinda does. There’s a chance Atamna has a pretty decent wingspan based on these numbers, and these numbers are honestly extremely good as to indicate a high motor. Strong rebounding, high volume shooting, and stocks gives Atamna more outs to sticking in the league.

Again, I’ve spent a lot of this rambling about Killian vs Atamna, but we have to remember just how good Killian was in Espoirs: he was prolly the most productive teen in my Espoirs database by a good amount.

Adam, Killian, and Wemby are probably the 3 best here by quite a bit, based on impact metrics/effiency/minutes.

The biggest thing for Atamna is buffing the shot and passing volume. I’m actually pretty optimistic for a passing bump based on his low turnover rate, great offensive rebounding, and ofc two year sample of elite steals. Atamna with a 30% assist rate would immediately make him a better prospect than Theo Maledon, for instance.

The shooting is somewhat concerning, given his terrible 3P% in Espoirs and at FIBA U16 Euros (mid 20s 3P yikes). His strong 3PA/40 and FT% give him pretty decent upside in that end, but we know that these indicators aren’t the end all. Teenage shooting development is variable enough that it’s a decent bet that Atamna makes a shooting leap in the coming years.

The upside here is that Atamna becomes a monster shooter, meets his assist potential, and continues to be a strong rebounder, elite defender, and high volume scorer. He hopefully grows to about 6’3 or 6’4 with a plus wingspan, and potentially leads France to a far better outcome in a year at FIBA U18 Euros.

However, the downside is pretty strong as well. Without becoming a strong shooter or true point guard type, he becomes a devastating mold of shooting guard who can’t shoot. The rebounding may end up to be an anomaly, and he’s simply a worse Killian Hayes.

I’m not sure what to expect. By all indications, he has massively outperformed the likes of Hugo Besson, Theo Maledon, and Ajay Mitchell despite being quite a bit younger than all. Considering all of them were eventually drafted, this gives Atamna pretty decent outs to eventually being drafted himself.

That being said, this isn’t the most impressive group. So many of these drafted young French players were highly unimpressive in the NBA. The most obvious counter would be Wemby, who happened to put up generational production and is also 7’4? Amongst this non-Wemby crop of Espoirs players, there’s a lot of “potential”, but it remains to be seen how useful Espoirs numbers even are. How valuable is it really to hit on “the next Killian Hayes”?

There appears to be a pretty good chance that Atamna is selected in the 2026 or 2027 NBA Draft. He is historically good at the interseciton of age x production in Espoirs, but it’s not like Espoirs has a well-documented history of churning out productive NBA players. There appears to be absolutely no hype surrounding Atamna as a draft sleeper at the moment (prolly bc he’s just 16), and there’s a ways to go til he is even draftable.

I am optimistic about Atamna’s upside for now, and contrary to consensus, I would probably pencil him in as one of the best French prospects of the next few years. He is by far the best bet to be drafted amongst the current Espoirs cohort.

2. Mohammad Amini

Height: 6'5.00" 
WS: 6'9.25" 
Standing Reach: 8'6" 
Hand Length x Width: 8.5"x 9.25" 
Standing Vert: 26.5" 
Max Vert: 33.25" 
Lane Agility: 12.18 
3/4 Sprint: 3.61

Birthday: Apr 26, 2005
Team (2024): Espoirs Monaco
Team (2025):  SLUC Nancy

Amini fills a highly enviable mold. He’s a legit point guard at 6’6 in shoes who can also shoot at high volume.

Amini actually first got on my radar when I was going through the FIBA U18 Asia tourney.

17 year old Amini had a very productive summer of 2022, averaging 21 ppg across 10 games of the FIBA Asia championships. Despite being eligible for the U16s, he ended up dominating at the U18s as well. Playing 34 mpg and putting up 19/10/4 for the U18 squad as a 17 year old is definitely notable.

The clear issue, however is efficiency: just 42% FG in tournaments full of teenagers is concerning regardless of playing up. Some of that was due to high 3PA, sure. But his TS is also somewhat concerning, given the lackluster FT% and poor FTr (just 4.8 FTA/18.1 FGA, or 0.27). 48.6% 2P on 8 2PA/40 isn’t terrible for someone with such a high usg, but poor 2P% and low FTR is one of the most terrifying integrations in hoops. My go-to query is career < 49% 2P and < 35 FTR; there are so many busts man.

Furthermore, FIBA Asia is pretty weak. This is RealGM’s data for u16s going back a decade, and we can see immediately that there are very few notable players here. Obviously Rui is the best player by far here, Princepal Singh was on Ignite a few years ago, Keisei Tominaga had a great run in college, and Kai Sotto had a notably dominant U17 and U19 FIBA run. Still, Rui and Princepal stick out almost immediately due to their combination of ppg x FG% x rebounding x blocks. Amini on the other hand was at a paltry 38% FG, one of the lowest marks here. Even accounting for his massive 3PA volume and strong rebounding, he’s still quite a ways behind many of these guys in terms of interior scoring and block%.

This is just an intro to the biggest flaw in Amini’s profile: a lack of real interior dominance. He may simply not be athletic enough to stick in higher tier professional leagues despite his outlier offensive strengths.

He was definitely more productive at U18 Asia, which is interesting given the seemingly harder comp. But again, how impressive is this really? There really doesn’t appear to be a single player who was ever a viable NBA prospect, besides maybe Hansen Yang. Still, being one of the youngest players listed has to mean something.

Some more interesting numbers. Amini was easily one of the youngest players at the FIBA WC last summer: there was only one other player in the entire tournament listed as 2005 birthday, and only two with 2004 bday. Amini played by far more minutes than any of them, and it appears he was a legit contributor, albeit for an admittedly terrible team. Still, 13.2/4.6/1.4 on 46% FG as an 18 year old vs legit grown men is a cool data point for someone who is absolutely off anyone’s draft radar. And, he seems to have mitigated some of the 2P% issues: combined 55% 2P on a strong 9 2PA/40.

This isn’t the strongest profile from a purely production standpoint. He narrowly missed the pre-age 18 season criterion that all other NBA prospects met. But 22.3 PER as an 18 year old in Espoirs is acceptable, in line with someone like Bilal Coulibaly. He was up to 25 PER as a 19 year old; no one notable played in Espoirs at 19 besides Bilal, who was up to 25 PER.

But generally, this is an encouraging mold. He clearly rebounds and grabs steals at a high rate despite a high usg. The ORB is merely okay for archetype, but 26.5% DREB is ridiculously good; this ORB-DRB combo is typically indicative of high feel players that can overcome athletic slights (think Baylor Scheierman with his generational DRB% and terrible ORB%). This, in conjunction with his remarkably good assist% for height (22%) and low TO% (14%) indicates a very high feel player. This is only corroborated by his 1.5 A:TO and 22% assist.

Again, this is a true point guard type. 22% assist on 26% usage and 1.5 A:TO is extremely good, and even more impressive considering that he’s a bigger point guard. This isn’t a jumbo PG gimmick where a wing-sized player simply dribbles down the court in transition and is labelled a PG; Amini is a legit good passer with ridiculously good feel, and by my memory, he’s one of the most productive wing sized passers of the 2005 generation.

Can Amini shoot? While the numbers aren’t too encouraging, he does shoot at pretty high volume. He got up 219 3PA in just 40 games, good for around 8 3PA/40. We have a two year sample of high volume 3P shooting, although the FT numbers are not as robust as I expected (~ 64% FT, 366 attempts).

STL% > 3, BLK% > 1

2P% > 50%

PER > 20, PTS/40 > 20

Slapped on my favorite productivity combo (20-20 is best for quickly filtering these large datasets of box-score data) with efficient 2P shooting and stocks (feel + athleticism proxies). Amini is a bit older than we’d like, but he was still just 19 at the end of the season. His combination of 2PA and 3PA is pretty interesting, but the immediate comparison is definitely Ilias Kamardine, who matched or bested him in pretty much all facets.

Still, Amini is at least two inches taller than Kamardine, and probably a bit longer as well. This may not seem much, but in this range, that’s all the difference between effectively playing the 3. Amini also crushes Kamardine in total rebounding rate (14.9 to 9.3).

I’ll just throw this here too. Nothing that pressing or impressive. He did rack up a ridiculous 5 FTA/5 FGA, along with 4 steals/40 and 2 assists:1.4 turnovers, but he also showed massive shotmaking luck. Somewhere in the ballpark of 40% on 2s, which does corroborate his poor 2P% at FIBAs. I’ve found the most predictive indicator for Eurocamp is just high volume scoring at decent efficiency, and 18 pts/40 on 47% FG does not move me at all, nor does it worry me. It’s also 3 games, so who cares.

I still haven’t gotten to why I’m so interested in Amini.

This is from NBADraft.net. I can corroborate the BWB measurements, but I have been unable to find any Eurocamp measurements. Some of the measurements just seem flat out wrong: Amini was at 26 inch standing vert at BWB, and I’ve seen multiple other players listed with outlier low standing vert at Eurocamp as well. But it’s hard to mess up a wingspan measurement. 6’6.75 in shoes seems reasonable enough: he’s listed as 6’7 on FIBA’s website. But if he’s really 7’2 WS (which may be unreasonable given he was just 6’9 WS a year ago), then this might be a very legit prospect.

Again, not too much film out there. No Espoirs stuff on Synergy, and I could only find this video from last year. I really cannot tell if he’s a truly special passer a la Josh Giddey/Thompsons from film, but obviously the numbers seem decent enough. If he is a ridiculous passing prospect, then that changes things even more.

But from this, he does look pretty big, and he does dunk quite a few times here . He seems fairly capable of getting a dunk out of the HC, and that indicates a higher than expected dunk ceiling. It’s also a highlight video so I’m going to take most of it with a grain of salt.

At the moment, Amini seems like a Dalano Blanton level prospect. To me, it feels a bit bold but it’s also not the most compelling comp. The pitch has to start with his impressive passing ability and potentially great size. A 6’7 teen putting up 20% assist and 3% steal with 1.5 A:TO has got to be interesting. You do not see dudes who can dribble, pass, and potentially defend well at 6’7. There’s a few impressive steals —> dunks in that video, but he looks a tad slow.

Still TBD if he can really defend well on the perimeter or if he’s a slow, zone-based steal merchant like Jordan Adams. I’d honestly bet on the latter given his pretty terrible sprint drill (3.6 is awful man), as well as terrible lane agility (just 12.61). But given his consistently strong steal rates in varied contexts, as well as that reported WS, he prolly does have pretty solid upside to stick defensively in the league.

The next layer has gotta to be his ability to shoot. He seems to be a borderline savant, so a shooting bump could be in the cards. Nonetheless, getting off as many 3s as Amini does is impressive, esp for a guy who is wing-sized. I’d expect to see a leap into the 70s FT for Amini at the very least, starting from next year. Guys like this do not stagnate in FT%.

And we have to throw in his ability to rebound. That really opens the door for him positionally. Coupled with his strong steal% and huge reported WS, as well as decent shooting proficiency, Amini could legit play up to 3 positions. He can play the 3, which we’ve repeatedly seen is a shallow position in the NBA. His size and physicality gives him outs that many inefficient guards do not, which is why I’m a bit more optimistic despite having worse production than someone like Ilias Kamardine.

The bet on Amini is part production (he’s been historically good at FIBA Asia, outlier good for a 2005 bday at FIBA WC against grown men, and favorable performances at Espoirs and Eurocamp), but it’s really more a bet on mold. This is a very low friction archetype, and he offers a level of versatility that offers an easier path to relevancy in the league. We’ve seen a lot of lackluster players earn legit draft capital/playing time just by virtue of being a part of these low friction molds, and I think Amini has a pretty solid chance of sneaking into the league by selling himself as a D/P/S wing with defensive upside.

The hyper-upside case with Amini is that he’s actually 6’7 with a 7’2 WS, and he improves his agility/sprint scores en route to becoming a real defensive pest. He takes the shooting leap, and ends up somewhere around like 80% FT, 38% 3P on high volume, and he demonstrates that his 2P%/2PA goodness from Espoirs is here to stay. He makes a slight leap as a passer, jumping to over 25% assist while still maintaining the same level of steals+rebounding goodness. This would be a very tantalizing prospect, someone who would potentially be worth a mid first round pick even in a stacked class. I typically make bets based on strong production, and Amini does have a pretty solid production profile. But I think it’s reasonable to believe that he’s only a standard deviation or two away from reaching this “hyper-upside” case just because he profiles as a borderline savant.

Don’t get me wrong: Amini faces a very treacherous road to the NBA. He’s going to be playing in a league that does not really have guys that go to the NBA, he has showcased putrid inefficiency at times, he might just not be a good shooter, and his athletic testing was a bit below average. He also didn’t document a single season in Espoirs pre-age 18, which would typically be concerning if he didn’t also crush FIBA u18 Asia pre-age 18. There’s also a good chance the rate stats are a bit fake in Espoirs, and he might merely be decent at accruing stocks (maybe something like 0.7% block and 2.5% steal); coupled with his poor agility testing, he might be exposed as a fake defender. But this is a guy on pretty much nobody’s radar, and he deserves to garner at least some draft consideration. Amini’s combo of favorable/low friction archetype and strong precocious productivity is pretty rare, and it’s good reason to keep an eye on him.

3. Paul Kabenga Mbiya

Height: 6'9.75" 
WS: 7'6.75" 
Standing Reach: 9'8" 
Hand Length x Width: 8.25" 9" 
Standing Vert: 21.75" 
Max Vert: 26.5" 
Lane Agility: 12.6 
3/4 Sprint: 3.63

Birthday: Apr 11, 2005
Team (2024): Espoirs Asvel
Team (2025): Unknown

Dawg. He has a NINE FOOT EIGHT standing reach. 7’7 WS!! For context, that would be the biggest standing reach in the league from Day 1. Clingan and Zach Edey are both 9’7 SR.

Pretty awful standing vert, and really bad mobility. Seems pretty raw when I watch, and he does have some powerful dunks. Eye test doesn’t look as bad as the numbers, so could potentially hold out hope that he makes strides.

What’s really interesting, however, is Paul’s statistical production.

To get a feel of how young this league is, here are the t15 PER leaders’ birthdays:

Mbiya: 4/11/2005

Logue: 7/18/2005

Martinez: 5/22/2004

Grotzinger: 4/2/2004

Roman Domon: 10/6/2005

Courbon: 1/28/2005

Amini: 4/26/2005 👀 👀

N’Goy: 4/13/2004

Beringer: 11/11/2006 👀 👀

Kalemba: 2/7/2003

Leuko: 3/31/2004

Mballa: 11/2/2003

Boumpoutou: 2/27/2004

Vincennes: 4/10/2003

Diomande: 6/20/2005

Top of leaderboard actually seems to feature more 18 year olds than most years, but as you can see, this is generally a league full of players between 18 and 21. Paul crushing it amongst a cohort of players up to two years older than him is interesting.

That being said, Espoirs is a pretty terrible league all things considered, and all NBA-adjacent talents should be crushing it at age 18. Bilal, Killian Hayes, and Wemby are all examples of recent prospects who crushed espoirs as 17/18 year olds. But especially for this exercise, leading the league in PER is something, even if PER is obviously tilted towards big men with gaudy rebounding totals.

Some of these numbers are ridiculous. 21.6% oreb and 29.2% dreb? 68% TS. There’s some nascent signs of decent feel: just 15.7% TO on 22% usg, and strong 2.8% steal.

Obviously, 5.5% assist and 0.35 a:to is concerning, as is 50% FT.

What’s also interesting is Paul’s one year progression. BAL is not a particularly great league, although its almost certainly better than Espoirs. The sticky stats are steals!! and rebounding, and we can see huge improvements in PER, TS, TO%. By all indications, this seems like a guy who can massively exert dominance, but is also improving at a highly rapid rate. There is nothing about Paul pre-2022, so it does seem like Paul is relatively new to pro ball.

I don’t know where Paul is playing next year; no one has tweeted about him, and no one has written any article mentioning him. For all I know, he might return to espoirs, which would be a clear mistake. He should definitely play Jeep Elite next year, or a sharp NCAA coach should offer him immediately. His track record of productivity, ridiculous measurements, and rapid rate of improvement indicate a pretty cool ceiling. These are the formative years to get in the best possible position to reach that ceiling.

4. Boris Simonovic

Height: 6'7" 

Birthday: June 27, 2007
Team (2024): Espoirs Le Mans
Team (2025): Unknown

Boris plays lots of minutes, he is very young (16.8), and he plays lots of minutes. He’s also of an interesting mold: he’s 6’7 and can really pass (16.4% assist and 1.34 A:TO), with encouraging FT numbers (76%). He currently shoots absolutely no 3s, which is obviously concerning but his strong feel + touch indicates that he could really start shooting. Throw in his size (pretty awesome rebounder), and we may be in for a breakout season next year.

Low tweener score is worrying, although he has time to fix it via a 3P bump. STL could be low hanging fruit given his strong passing + age + oreb.

Here’s the issue with Simonovic: there’s deadass nothing out there on him. He hasn’t played in a single FIBA tournament yet, which I don’t think there’s much of a precedent for amongst drafted international players. What’s crazier is that there’s not even a YouTube video about this guy. Not a single tweet. Maybe he goes by another name, but it’s pretty crazy that there’s not a single piece of media even mentioning Mr. Simonovic.

And it’s really odd, because he does compare pretty well to the French trio drafted this year (Dadiet, Risacher, Salaun).

At the same age, Boris is slightly lower PER, but crushes in every single passing stat, in blocks, and in rebounding. He appears to be a better athlete and better general feel for the game than the other 3 by quite a bit, without really sacrificing too much pure production (15.8 PER vs 16 PER, 18.4 PER, 19.5 PER).

In terms of scoring, he continues to match up favorably in all aspects except 3P volume and minutes. He’s a bit lower scoring rate than the rest, but within 1.3 points/40 of Salaun despite putting up 6 more 2PA/40. He really is a monster scorer inside the arc, and his FT% clears Salaun and Risacher. It’s particularly eery how well he matches Salaun in everything outside of 3P volume.

There’s a real upside outcome with Boris. He simply needs to 1) start shooting with real 3P volume (he shoots 70s from the FT line!), and 2) test very well in anthropometrics ( like Dadiet or Salaun). This really isn’t too out of the ordinary, given his strong ORB and solid block%, along with monster 2PA volume (12.1 2PA x 52% 2P). If these things are both true, then I do not see why he cannot be better than Salaun or Dadiet in two years from now.

This is prolly my hottest take by default, given that literally no one has ever posted a video or tweet about Boris, but this guy seems the exact mold everyone is obsessed with ad nauseam. He definitely needs a better PR team.