Entering his freshman season at the University of Kansas, expectations were mild for Melbourne-born wing Johnny Furphy. With a name that sounds like it’s been AI generated to star as the main character in a mid 2000s beer ad, the young Victorian was joining one of the richest college basketball programs in history in the 4-time NCAA champion Kansas Jayhawks.
Furphy was expected to slot into a bit-part rotational role for the Jayhawks, as the team returned big name forwards in Kevin McCullar Jr and KJ Adams Jr, as well as Michigan transfer big man Hunter Dickinson, but Furphy eventually forced his way into Kansas’ starting lineup permanently on January 13th against Oklahoma.
Having only started one of the first 14 games of the season, Furphy would start all but one game the rest of the season (the one exception being Kansas’ Senior Night showdown against Kansas State), and finish his season with averages of 9.0 points, 4.9 rebounds and 0.9 steals per game, while shooting 46.6% from the field and 35.2% from three (on 3.8 attempts per game).
Furphy wasn’t really on mock drafts at all before the college season, before steadily climbing his way up as he developed into a solid contributor on a Kansas squad with bigger names. As the Jayhawks starting small forward, Furphy excelled in a low-maintenance role on offense, reduced mainly to corner threes and off ball slashes and cuts, being an effective transition threat, and playing passable defence.
It was this simple yet effective skillset that saw Furphy eventually finish the season as a first round NBA prospect, being mocked anywhere from the end of the lottery to the end of the first round, but most slotting him in to that 20-25 range.
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Still, it was no guarantee Furphy would even enter the draft, as a 19 year old with one reasonably productive season of college basketball under his belt, there was some hesitancy around his projection with some stating he could do with another year of honing at Kansas, especially as other big names like Kevin McCullar Jr were leaving the program.
For those unfamiliar with the process, players have 10 days or so to withdraw from the draft (assuming they haven’t hired an agent) after the NBA Draft Combine, allowing them to test their standing before making an informed decision.
Furphy, for what it’s worth, didn’t blow anyone away with his athletic testing at the combine. NBA executives froth players with large wingspans and elite burst, and Furphy, who measured 6’7.5” in shoes, only had a 6’8” wingspan and a 32 inch max vertical leap, leading some to question how his defensive ability and transition game would translate at the next level.
Nonetheless, Furphy stayed in the draft, convinced that with his production and first round grade, there was no way he’d slide too far. Plus, he got invited to the draft green room, a guarantee of going first round, right?
If I may deviate for a second, but the two day draft process sucked. I hated it unashamedly, for a myriad of reasons.
Firstly, I understand there’s a commercial benefit to spacing the draft out to sell more advertising space, but that doesn’t matter if you have Adrian Wojnarowski live on the broadcast spoiling picks (thanks for letting me know the Pistons drafted Ron Holland 5 mins before they announced it pal), and don’t even get me started on the sanitary second round broadcast, with a B-tier green room for second round draft prospects that looked more like a hospital waiting room for a flu vaccine.
Then there’s the scenario that played out in the draft, with both Johnny Furphy and Kyle Filipowski being invited to the green room, sitting there for the entire three hours or whatever it dragged out to be, not hearing their name called, and just going home dejectedly. Inviting as many prospects to the green room as the NBA did was always a dangerous game to begin with, especially given the added risk of guys sliding, but on a personal level I felt for them.
Anyway, after missing the first round entirely, Furphy fell all the way to pick 35, drafted by San Antonio before being traded on draft night to Indiana, and although it’s disappointing for him to fall so far on an international stage, I actually really like the fit for him in Indiana.
The Pacers are coming off an NBA Conference Finals appearance (and In-Season Tournament Final appearance if you care about that), and have a very settled rotation. Specific to Furphy as a wing, he won’t be expected to contribute right away, and can sit behind guys like Aaron Nesmith, Ben Sheppard, Bennedict Mathurin and Andrew Nembhard, plus whatever they end up doing with free agent Obi Toppin.
Furphy’s style as a low maintenance catch and shoot half court offensive player who can also get out and run will also slot in seamlessly to Indiana’s high tempo style. The Pacers were at or near the top of the league in several offensive categories last season, most notably being the pace they play at. Rick Carlisle’s men love to push the ball, after a make or miss, in lieu of actually playing defence, so while Furphy’s raw athletic testing numbers were a little underwhelming, his play style is a marriage to what Indiana established last year.
Did Furphy get some bad advice and come out too early when he should’ve stayed an extra year in Kansas? Maybe. Will he be a key contributor this year in Indiana? Almost certainly not, and in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s stashed in the G-League for a long portion of the season and allowed to make mistakes and learn on the job.
Nevertheless, while the initial draft experience may have stung for the young Victorian, as far as team fits go in the long run, it’s hard to envisage much better than the speedy Pacers.
NBL Next Stars
A banner night at the draft for the NBL Next Star program, with four players hearing their name called, with Alex Sarr (2nd to Washington), AJ Johnson (23rd to Milwaukee), Bobi Klintman (37th to Detroit) and Ariel Hukporti (58th to New York) all drafted, plus Trentyn Flowers signing an undrafted deal with the LA Clippers.
I’ll have something more detailed on the Next Stars and their draft fits and scouting reports in the coming days and weeks, but for now it’s good to see the program continues to put players in the league.
Also shout out to Western Australia product Alex Ducas for signing a two way deal with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Ducas just wrapped up a stellar career at St Mary’s, averaging 9 points and 4 rebounds over 150 appearances (123 starts). His main value will be as a shooter, as a career 40.6% three point shooter in college, including 43.8% in his senior year.
Programming Notes
It has been a while since one of these, and I didn’t want to overload this with a bunch of small features, so to commit myself to more content I thought I’d spell out what future programming in the coming months looks like for the newsletter.
As mentioned above, I’ll have scouting reports on the NBL Next Stars that are now in the league, I haven’t decided on features for each or one big report, so we’ll see. I’ll also have larger analysis coming up on the Josh Giddey and Dyson Daniels trades, and am trying to organise some Boomers podcasts with the Olympic cycle coming up.
Mailbag
To round out, a small mailbag, because why not.
(I was hopeful in the time I’d been away that Twitter/X embed would work on Substack again…I was foolish).
I can’t believe I hopped online merely an hour after the second round of the draft had concluded and I was greeted with a 2025 “far too early” mock draft. Far too early is the understatement of the century, let me digest this class for at least 24 hours, but anyway.
For those who aren’t wedded to the draft cycle, the 2024 class was considered one of the weaker ones in recent memory (even though it had LeBron’s son in it for crying out loud), but maybe that’s because we’ve been spoiled with so much top end talent in drafts in the last five years, with guys like Victor Wembanyama, Zion Williamson and Cade Cunningham being crowned the number 1 pick a year in advance (laugh at me for including Cade in there, the fact is he was the consensus #1 pick for a year and a blue chip prospect, bite me).
Anyway, while this 2024 draft might not age well in terms of can’t miss star talent, I still think it will produce plenty of great players, but the 2025 draft is about to rival 2023 in terms of hype at the presumed heir apparent as Cooper Flagg begins his journey with Duke.
To that end, I think #WavingTheFlagg is probably the best we’re gonna see from a self-deprecating hashtag perspective. It’s simple yet elegant, and doesn’t involve clumsy forcing in of words to make the point.
Some other examples I quite like include:
#SwoopForCoop
#StayCoopedUp
#NoHooperForCooper
#LagForFlagg
#FlaggForHelp
There’s admittedly not a lot of creativity here, but that’s what happens when the lead prospect is a white bread forward from New England with a plain name.
For starters, I do appreciate the Pistons drafting one of like, five players on the board in the second round that I had actually seen play, so that was nice. I don’t pretend to be a draft expert, and outside of the Australians and the guys that go from the NBL, I’m largely beholden to what I see in brief snippets on ESPN and online.
That being said, I do like the swing that new Pistons basketball boss Trajan Langdon took in this draft with Klintman (and Ron Holland too). Yeah Holland’s shooting is a concern, but the Pistons are in no position to be fussy with talent fits after a season where you set an NBA record for longest losing streak. You get the talent in and figure it out later.
On Klintman, and I will have more on him later this week over on Detroit Bad Boys, but I’m really excited about him as a prospect. Good size and shooting ability, his defence is a bit messy but a wing with some offensive refinement has been a rare commodity for the Pistons recently.
As for the NBL, as someone who has been going to games since pretty much the day I was born, it’s awesome to see how far the league has come perception wise to where there’s no level of competition pushback from the close-minded pro-NCAA crowd. There’s enough positive NBL to NBA stories already (Jae’Sean Tate, LaMelo Ball, Josh Giddey, Jock Landale) that Klintman isn’t going to majorly shift any perceptions more, but of course I’ll use any success he has for some very loud agendas.
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