Darius Acuff has been invited to the NBA Draft Green Room, a clear sign he is being treated as one of the class’s most coveted names before the June 23-24 draft in Brooklyn, New York. ’s Jeremy Woo reported the invitation, and the move puts Acuff in the group most likely to hear their names called in the lottery.
For Acuff, the timing matters because he is already projected as a top-10 pick. At 6-foot-3, he averaged 23.5 points and 6.4 assists per game in his lone collegiate season, production that helped him win the Bob Cousy Award, SEC Player of the Year and SEC Freshman of the Year, while also making him a consensus First-Team All-American and a finalist-level candidate for the Naismith and Wooden National Player of the Year Awards.
The Green Room is reserved for the draft’s most in-demand prospects, and that is why the invitation matters more than a routine pre-draft note. Acuff’s season gave the case for the call: he led Arkansas to the SEC Tournament title and into the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16, and he became the first player to lead the SEC in both points and assists since LSU’s Pete Maravich in 1969-70.
There is, though, one question that follows him into Brooklyn. Some scouts and prognosticators are uneasy about his defense, even as the rest of his profile points toward the lottery. Acuff averaged 0.8 steals per game, and the gap between his offensive production and the concerns around that end of the floor is the part front offices will have to sort through before they make the first run at his name.
If he goes where he is projected, Acuff would become the fifth one-and-done pick in Arkansas history, joining Moses Moody, Anthony Black, Nick Smith and Jordan Walsh. The draft is now the place where his season gets its final judgment, and the Green Room invite suggests that judgment is likely to come early.
