As the 2023 NBA Draft approaches, several young athletes such as Jalen Hood-Schifino will participate in the draft combine and hope to be selected as players for the 30 franchises across the league. While we have already heard about the lottery picks for this year such as Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson, several players are yet to be given recognition.
Jalen is one of those players and has declared for the NBA Draft after just one year of college. This shows a certain amount of confidence on his side. Let us take a closer look at his accomplishments and how his playstyle would correlate to the NBA.
Jalen Hood-Schifino is projected to be a first-round pick in the 2023 NBA Draft
It turns out that Jalen Hood-Schifino is among the top 15 players expected to be selected in the 2023 NBA Draft. According to many scouting reports, he is a 6’5 athlete with a 6’10 wingspan. That is an impressive statistic and would mean that he can guard players much larger than him and contents their shots with his wingspan.
Jalen Hood-Schifino studied at Montverde Academy. He developed into a tremendous basketball player and managed to lead their team to consecutive national high school basketball titles. in 2020 and 2021. He revealed that his high school played a role in developing his game as he spent over three hours a day practicing.
That most certainly paid off and he was soon selected to play college basketball for the Indiana Hoosiers. To those who do not know, that is the basketball team for Indiana University Bloomington. He played there for only one year. However, that seems to have been more than enough time for him to decide that he was good enough to declare for the NBA.
“NBA teams were able to see that I can take over a game, create my own shot, run a team, that I have a high IQ, that I’m tough, and that I have a unique pace to my game…I’m looking forward to showing the NBA teams my body measurements matching what’s on paper, my athleticism, and my shooting ability.”
Although he is only 18 years old at the moment and averaging 13.5 points, we love to see this confidence from a young athlete. He seems confident and the NBA scouts respect that. While he won’t be a top 5 pick, he is still expected to be drafted in the first half of the first round in the 2023 NBA Draft.