2024 NBA mock draft - Why Bronny James is projected as a top-10 pick

Although the 2024 NBA draft is still 16 months away, teams are closely monitoring the evolution of next year's class to see how future first-rounders are progressing and how to value the picks they own.

Jonathan Givony spent the past few months crisscrossing Europe, scouring the college basketball ranks and watching dozens of high school games live and on film to get an updated look at how the 2024 class is shaping up.

The NBA has loosened rules on scouting high school players in recent months, making this class more thoroughly scouted than previous classes. That process will continue during the high school all-star game circuit — McDonald's All-American, Nike Hoop Summit and Geico Nationals — in March and April.

NBA team representatives say they've been disappointed with what they've seen thus far from the elite prospects in this year's high school senior class, a group that historically makes up the backbone of the 2024 draft lottery. High school recruiting analysts widely disagree on who the top prospects in the class are, mostly because they don't view any of them as sure-fire, elite NBA prospects you'd expect to see atop their rankings.

We have 14 high school seniors currently projected as one-and-done prospects in 2024, which would be a far cry from the 2022 NBA draft (22 one-and-done freshmen selected), as well as 2021 (21). By comparison, this upcoming class currently has 25 one-and-done players projected to be picked in June (although some will likely elect to return to school).

This has been considered a weak incoming freshman class for some time, but the assumption was that reclassifications and late-bloomers would emerge to change the trajectory of the conversation, something that hasn't happened thus far.

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