Thon Maker
Position: Forward
Height: 7-1
Weight: 225
Team: Athlete Institute (Canada)
Thon Maker is a Sudanese 7-footer who played his high school ball in Canada. He considered some college and overseas offers. Then he petitioned the NBA to be included in this year’s draft on the grounds that he graduated from high school last year and basically already played a post-high school season. The NBA agreed. He’s in. That might have been a mistake, or at least premature.
Maker was a Youtube sensation for a while. There are lots of mixtapes out there that use various superlatives like phenom and revolutionary. Turns out, and you will be shocked to learn this, mixtapes and YouTube mashpus frequently feature really good, if dishonest, editing.
NBA
Put another way, the mixtapes were silly as applied to Maker. Even Maker thought so. He is not a revolutionary player. And his phenom status, if he ever had it, is very much in doubt.
Strengths
He is tall. A wise man once said you cannot teach height. Probably a wise short man. Maker has that going for him. According to DraftExpress, he can periodically knock down an open three, he was able to add some weight to a painfully thin frame, and he has a willingness to work. So there’s that.
Weaknesses
So many. The guy is beyond raw. He hasn’t played against top-tier competition. Or even quality college-level competition. Suspect hands. Not super long relative to his height. Good athlete but not great. Still working on his jumper. Still working on his handle. Still working on his passing. Still working on … name it. Major project. Drafting him probably means shipping him off to the D-League for an indefinite period.
How he’d fit with the Sixers
No.
NBA comparison
Maker is a bit of a Rorschach test. Squint your eyes. Give him a good look. What you see probably says as much about you as him. For his part, Maker told various media outlets that he models his game after Kevin Garnett. For the purposes of this exercise, we will stipulate that point while imagining a world where Kevin Garnett never became Kevin Garnett and instead became a considerably lesser version of himself. One-third KG? Two-fifths? Figure out a fraction and go from there.
Meanwhile, Metta World Peace thinks the Lakers should take him.
Draft projection
Late first round, early second round.