Eighty-four of the top high school basketball players congregated in Colorado Springs, Colorado, this past weekend for the annual USA Basketball junior national team minicamp. This event has long been considered the gold standard of high school scouting. The sheer depth of future NBA talent assembled and the way players are pushed to compete with maximum intensity trying out for future camp invites, coveted rosters spots for future FIBA events and the Nike Hoop Summit makes for an ideal evaluation platform.
For the first time in the decade-plus we've been covering this event (which started in 2010), at least a half-dozen NBA teams elected to send general managers or other top-level decision-makers to evaluate this deep crop of prospects, adding to the sense of urgency among participants. Little time was wasted as the players were almost always conducting some type of competitive action during the three-day camp with plenty of instruction sprinkled in from a coaching staff attempting to instill the principles and game style USA Basketball has long been known.
Despite several elite prospects electing not to participate in the event -- Cooper Flagg, Cameron Boozer, Darryn Peterson and Airious Bailey -- the weekend was highly successful, with quite a few lesser-known players stepping into the void to establish themselves as high-end NBA prospects. Coming off a difficult summer, finishing fourth at both the FIBA World Cup and FIBA U19 World Cup, USA Basketball has an important year to restore its dominance at the FIBA U17 World Cup and Paris Olympics, something that wasn't lost on stakeholders at the minicamp. ESPN NBA draft insider Jonathan Givony looks at A.J. Dybantsa living up to the hype, the potential best player in the 2024 class not named Flagg and updates on the sons of two former NBA players.
A.J. Dybantsa looks like a future No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA draft
Coming off a fantastic spring and summer playing as a 16-year-old on the Nike EYBL 17U circuit with Expressions Elite, Dybantsa was the most highly regarded player in Colorado Springs and did nothing to diminish that thinking.