Dante Exum is Endless Possibility

No matter how much we toss around labels like "sure thing" and "can't miss," the allure of basically every draft prospect is his potential. You look at Jabari Parker, for instance, and you get excited at watching him play next season, sure, but ultimately what you're imaging is Jabari Parker in his prime and in a high-stakes playoff game. All the rehashed tropes about the bright young stars who faded when you thought they'd supernova, about the Dajuan Wagners and Eddie Griffins and Michael Beasleys of the NBA, are only tragic because when we saw them beaming at us on a draft night in June, we couldn't help but imagine them astonishing us in an arena in May.

But even within that frame of nebulous expectations, there's Dante Exum, whose allure surpasses even that of a player like Jabari because so does his mystery. It's not hard to mentally Photoshop Wiggins or Smart or Jabari onto an NBA floor and let that play out in your imagination. That's probably what draft analysts mean when they say Jabari is the most "NBA-ready player in the draft." Sure, he may not win multiple scoring titles, but no scout is sitting in a room full of front office decision makers after watching a Jabari workout and saying "well crap, guys, I think this is the next Yi Jianlian."

Dante Exum, on the other hand, is causing a more polarizing debate. Even Exum's most vehement supporters tend to add caveats to their gushy praise—saying things like, "well from what little I've seen" or "you have to understand, we're not working with much here, but…"

Somehow, both because he was an international prospect and through some purposeful stonewalling from his agent, Exum has avoided a huge portion of the scrutiny that most top prospects are forced to endure, even as they're nitpicked down draft boards. It's hard to say whether all this mystery has helped or hurt Exum's stock, but in his case, any points about where he should or could be drafted are immaterial. Dante Exum, at least for the days leading up to the draft, maybe until he plays in his first summer league game, is not really Dante Exum at all. He's a blank slate. The prospect who can be whatever it is you want him to be.

Again, this is true to some degree of basically every prospect. We don't know anything, really, about any prospect, any more than weather forecasters actually know what's going to happen. We have predictive models, and when a prospect has played multiple seasons, like, say, Doug McDermott, it's easier to pin down a reasonable estimate of his performance as a player. But it's an estimate that only sounds reasonable. It's a small comfort when we realize it's all a lie—that is, until a player drafted 15th overall wins the NBA Finals MVP award. We allow ourselves certain presumptions of knowledge; how else would we entertain ourselves in the weeks between the end of the Finals and the beginning of the free agency period? It's a forgivable offense if for no other reason than that it's one we all tacitly agreed to ignore as it's being perpetrated.

But Exum is so unknown, so impossibly theoretical, that he's something else entirely. There are people who have not watched this guy play for more than 20 minutes of aggregate clips on YouTube who sincerely believe this guy is a future superstar. I know this because I am one of those people. There aren't a lot of rational justifications to be made for this position. I mostly realize that I'm full of crap. But if Dante Exum is going to be whoever I want him to be, at least for these few months before we see him play against NBA competition, then I'm going to choose for him to be this. I'm going to choose to believe in the most spectacularly talented version of Dante Exum that my imagination can muster, and then I'm going to hope my team drafts him.

I'm not saying this is the best way to react to an unknown like Exum. Wanton hype turns a special kind of ugly when it goes unrealized. But rarely do sports, or life for that matter, give you an opportunity to believe in something with so little evidence to the contrary. And that is the final, inexorable pull of Dante Exum: draft prospect.

With nothing on either side of the ledger, no proof for and no proof against, you can believe in all the wild and unforeseeable possibility of an 18-year-old kid. Who wouldn't want to? But it feels more urgent than that. If feels like if I look at Exum like an artist with a blank canvas, and I can't or won't believe in him—that he'll paint something beautiful—is there anything left I will believe in?