April 13, 2024
Locked On Women’s Basketball: The Next’s 2024 WNBA Draft Big Board
By The Next
The 2024 WNBA Draft will be stronger at the top than 2023, our draft experts say
In the latest episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, Hunter Cruse, Em Adler and Lincoln Shafer discuss the 2024 WNBA Draft and their recently updated draft board. The draft board provides full profiles of every prospect they would give solid WNBA minutes to — 17 prospects in total.
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Adler explains how the 2024 draft class compares to the 2023 class:
“This class is much stronger at the top, but it’s actually not much deeper than last year. … Where last year you had Aliyah Boston and then a couple interesting prospects behind her in Jordan Horston, Diamond Miller, Grace Berger, etc., in this class you go through a few more names before you get to your Grace Berger of sorts. You go through Cameron Brink, Aaliyah Edwards, Leïla Lacan. A little farther down the board, Carla Leite is sort of in that same tier as Grace Berger, but that’s still [the] end of [the] first round for us. …
“Going through that sort of lens of things, this class is a welcome change from recent classes, where sort of the concept of a mid-first round talent just hasn’t really existed.”
Related content: Read all of our 2024 WNBA Draft coverage
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Shafer discusses a prospect who was particularly tough to evaluate because of her unusual blend of skills: Utah forward Alissa Pili. (Note that the Utes listed Pili at 6’2, but our draft board has her at closer to 6′.) Shafer says:
“[Pili] is very obviously an incredible offensive player who is undersized at her college position, which means massively undersized at her pro position. And I don’t think that she can do the Alysha Clark 5’11 college post player thing and just learn how to play on the wing. And I don’t think that she’s the same level of defender that AC is or ever was.
“And it’s not that she’s difficult to evaluate. But it’s difficult to think about what will translate with Pili and how valuable those skills are in comparison to her obvious weaknesses. … She has obvious strengths and obvious weaknesses. But I don’t know what they mean when you put it all together.”
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