Sam Vecenie put Anthony Edwards back at the center of his NBA Draft rankings on Friday, and not by including him. The Athletic analyst said Edwards was the big miss on his top-20 list of prospects since 2015, a ranking built around how players were viewed before they entered the NBA.
That matters because Edwards was the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, which makes his absence from a prospects list feel less like a small oversight and more like a public correction. Vecenie made the same rankings last year and still left Edwards out, even as he updated the list again this week.
Vecenie's explanation pointed straight back to the pre-draft doubts that surrounded Edwards six years ago. He said he was too skeptical of Edwards's ability to consistently create rim pressure and paint touches, and said Edwards often settled for pull-up jumpers. At the time, Edwards was also viewed through concerns about his commitment to basketball and his outside shooting, the kind of questions that can stick to a prospect until the NBA starts answering them.
This list also shifted because Vecenie added four players from this month's draft: AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer, Darryn Peterson and Caleb Wilson. LaMelo Ball dropped off to make room. Karl-Anthony Towns, the first pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, came in fifth, a reminder that these rankings are about how prospects looked before they were drafted, not how their careers later turned out.
That is why Edwards stands out so sharply here. He has become the kind of player Vecenie did not fully project, while Towns is now one win away from helping the New York Knicks win their first title since 1973 after spending nine years with the Wolves, four of them alongside Ant. Vecenie's new list does not settle the argument over Edwards so much as it shows how far the gap has opened between the player he expected and the one Edwards has become.
