NBA Draft: Is Perth Center Alex Sarr the Consensus No. 1?

At last year’s 2023 NBA Draft Lottery, teams waited with bated breath to win the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes. When it was announced San Antonio was the victor, it was a forgone conclusion Wembanyama would don black and silver.

This year, though, the lottery seems to hold slightly less weight. While teams obviously want the highest picks possible, they likely don’t have a prospect in mind already. This year instead offers the chance at certain prospects with options like trading up, back or out all on the table.

If there was a singular prospect teams were already visualizing on their squad, it’s like French center Alex Sarr, who spent the past season with Perth in the NBL.

For the most part, experts in the NBA Draft hemisphere have Sarr as the outright No. 1 pick. Even the composite ranking sent by the NBA had Sarr in a tier of his own, with only the top-10 teams set to receive his medical records.

Sarr’s ranking makes sense. He’s one of the more proven players in the class — averaging 9.7 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in just over 17 minutes per game in one of the top leagues in the world — and his intangibles offer a baseline of good NBA player with a ceiling of star.

Still, nothing is set in stone with this draft class. Should certain center-laden teams rise to the top, there’s always a chance that Nikola Topic, Matas Buzelis Zaccharie Risacher or more go No. 1.