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We’re officially on the eve of having one of basketball’s most pressing questions this year answered at the NBA Draft, as the vaunted trio of collegiate superprospects consisting of AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer will finally learn which organizations they will play for and more importantly, where they will be drafted.
For the last few months leading into this NBA Draft, it felt like a foregone conclusion that the Wizards were going to select Dybantsa out of BYU and leave the Utah Jazz, whose owner facilitated the funding for Dybantsa’s collegiate career, with the choice of selecting either Boozer or Peterson with the second overall pick. That choice itself was one that reportedly had Utah stumped, but recent reporting suggests that the Wizards' play at No. 1 may have been Peterson all along.
As these three players sit on the precipice of one of their lifetime’s crowning achievements, what better time to dissect exactly what an NBA team is getting in these three players when they are selected on Tuesday.
AJ Dybantsa, BYU (Freshman, Age: 19)
Simply put, AJ Dybantsa is among the most dynamic wing prospects of this generation. He led the nation in scoring last season with 25.2 points per game, posting a season-high 43 points against Utah in addition to posting a 40-point game against Kansas in the Big 12 tournament. He has the most athletic upside of the three potential top picks by a pretty substantial amount and can operate with elite efficiency scoring the basketball, though the rest of his offensive game appeared raw at times last season.
Dybantsa’s defense needs a bit of polish, but he does possess the tools and traits necessary to become a plus defender in the league. The other side to that is the fact that he’s never had to be a plus defender in his career thus far because he’s such a dominant force on the offensive end. Dybantsa has the highest ceiling of three given his athleticism and offensive prowess, but some of his raw traits are what have kept him from being the runaway top pick in this NBA Draft.
Darryn Peterson, Kansas (Freshman, Age: 19)
For a while this past season, it seemed like Darryn Peterson was going to run away with the NBA Draft discourse, earning comparisons to elite NBA talents such as Kobe Bryant and Devin Booker thanks to his elite playmaking and finishing skills. In addition to Peterson’s offensive traits, he’s also an elite defender who has a knack for forcing turnovers. The hype train was derailed a little bit after he dealt with injuries and asked out of a few games at Kansas, which put him in the crosshairs of the media that felt he was preserving his draft status.
In truth, Peterson was working his way back to full strength from a bout of severe full body cramping that was believed to be rhabdomyolysis. When Peterson was on the court this season, he had moments where he looked every bit of the superstar prospect he was hyped up to be. He tallied a season-high 32 points to beat TCU in overtime in January, and displayed his clutch gene by hitting the game-tying and go-ahead 3-pointers to beat Texas Tech on the road.
DP's offensive game is a bit more polished than Dybantsa's and, ironically, they were born 12 days apart in Jan. 2007.
Darryn Peterson Pre-Draft interview. On what teams see in him and how they plan to utilize him. #2026nbadraft, @NBADraft @Darryn_P1 pic.twitter.com/wcGn1j3AGm
— NBADraft.net (@nbadraftnet) June 22, 2026
Cameron Boozer, Duke (Freshman, Age: 18)
As great as Dybantsa and Peterson were this season, nobody had a year as good as Cameron Boozer. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise considering all of Boozer’s accomplishments in the prep ranks, but as the least hyped of the three super prospects, he outperformed all of them on a game-by-game basis in 2025-26. He averaged a double-double with 22.5 points and 10.2 rebounds per game this year, and reached the 35-point mark twice against Indiana State and Arkansas.
Boozer’s gaudiest stat line of the year, however, was a 30-point, 14-rebound clinic against Stanford that also saw him dish out four assists. Boozer doesn’t quite have the athletic upside as Dybantsa or even Peterson, but he is also the most polished player of the three offensively and possesses the highest basketball IQ of the trio as well. Boozer likely has the highest floor of the trio, but Dybantsa and Peterson’s respective ceilings have made them the more talked about prospects heading into the NBA Draft.
Boozer will be 18 for a few more weeks after the draft, and it's pretty amazing that he was Mr. Basketball USA over talents such as 2026 NBA Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg as a high school sophomore. Will Washington or Utah regret passing on him?
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