Ouija Wonderings Volume #1: 5/18-7/22
In a new series from Rowan Kent, behold the inner workings, reasoning, and thoughts that go into making a draft board, from the offseason up until the day of the draft itself!
Welcome to Ouija Wonderings. I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to call this “Weekly Ouija Wonderings,” but that pace is a tad too ambitious. “Bi-weekly Ouija Wonderings” doesn’t roll off the tongue very well, and “Draft to the Drawing Board” veers too far into punny than funny.
If you trust my saved Word files, I’ve been unofficially putting together NBA draft boards since 2013. Most of my early “work” consists of regurgitated takes I gleaned from hoop mixtapes, highlight videos, and the college games I was lucky to catch on TV, however, and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
For someone who didn’t consider scouting anything more than a pastime in my youth, it’s funny that I thought my opinion on Dante Exum or Dario Saric was based on anything resembling an original idea. I went by the big boards of Chad Ford, Jonathan Givony, and Jonathan Tjarks, to name just a few, and would update my boards mostly in line with what someone else thought.
It wasn’t until college that my volume of tape watched, stats studied, and words written started to catch up with my passion for the draft. Officially, if you go by what I’ve put out online, I’ve been writing for only a couple of years. In that time, I’ve done my best to be transparent about basketball, but I still think I’ve fallen shorter than I would’ve hoped.
So, then, Ouija Wonderings. As a fan, I always wanted to know what exactly went into making an NBA Draft Big Board. How much film? How much math? What’s the right ratio between the two? Which games matter most? How much do intel, workouts, and practices, which most fans don’t know about, factor into the draft process?
There were only a few times I really got to peek behind the curtain, whether that be a model someone released or a statement tweeted out. With Ouija Wonderings, I want to pull that curtain back for my process, not only to hold myself accountable and honest but also to show some other curious soul maybe what it looks like to build a board.
The goal is a bi-weekly newsletter or notebook into what I’ve done scouting-wise. Who did I watch? What did I see? What’s going on in my head? Not all of that has to do with basketball, but most of it will. It’s a sure thing that how I scout is different from how you scout. But that’s the beauty of the draft process.
As a note, this first volume of Ouija Wonderings will be extra, extra long. Instead of two weeks of watching and wondering, you’ll get two months. Read as much as you want, as little as you need, or argue with me in the comments or on Twitter (X). Either way, Ouija Wonderings exists as a window into the mind of a fanatic for the NBA Draft who is still learning and growing year by year.