Man, I’ve been glued to all this Jacob Toppin draft talk lately. Woke up today seeing that new mock draft update floating around and figured, heck, I gotta dig into where the experts are actually slotting him now. Seems like it changes every other day.
First thing I did was grab my laptop still half-asleep. Fired up the browser – went straight to my usual haunts, you know, the big sports sites and those independent draft analysts I kinda trust.
Started pecking names into the search bar like:
- ESPN mock draft 2023
- Jacob Toppin draft projection
- Latest NBA mock roundup
Clicked through a bunch of tabs. Some sites had the same old stuff from weeks ago. Annoying. Had to dig deeper for the fresh takes.
Found one on The Athletic. They’ve got Jacob going… okay, interesting. Later than I thought. Late first round? Felt off based on what I saw at Kentucky.
Hopped over to Sports Illustrated. Different guy there. Had a more optimistic spin, projecting him middle of the second round. Still felt kinda low.
Then bam! Found a newer piece from Bleacher Report.This was more like it. They talked about his combine, those workouts… actually moving up boards lately. That HoopsHype aggregator thing I check sometimes backed it up – showed a bunch of mocks suddenly putting him in the late 40s, maybe even sneaking into the top 40 now. Talk about volatility!
Cross-referenced a few more scouts on Twitter (or X, whatever it’s called now). Man, the opinions are all over the place! You got the “potential freak athlete” camp loving him late in the draft, thinking some team takes a swing. Then the “needs to develop a jump shot” crew keeping him way down.
Basically spent my whole coffee time scouring, comparing notes. My desk looked like a warzone of browser tabs.
So, putting it all together? It’s messy.Consensus ain’t there. But the trend seems to be this: after the combine and workouts, more analysts are warming up to the idea that some team bites in the mid-to-late second round. Think picks in the 40-50 range. That’s higher than I saw a month ago! Few stragglers think he might squeeze into the very, very late first round if someone loves the athleticism and sees something raw they can mold. But mostly? Yeah, second round territory, trending upwards slightly. Gonna keep my eyes peeled for more updates this week – feels like things are shifting fast with pre-draft workouts happening.