In each of the last two NBA drafts, the story at the top of the board has been a lack of American-born top talent.
A year ago, it was all about French sensation Victor Wembanyama. This year, three Frenchmen—Zaccharie Risacher, Alexandre Sarr and Tidjane Salaun—came off the board in the first six picks. Combine that with the last six NBA MVPs being born outside of the United States, and questions about the future of the USA producing star power were valid.
But all that stands to change sooner rather than later thanks to a loaded crop of young American talent that NBA scouts have been flocking to watch for years. The 2025 high school class first caught serious NBA attention two summers ago at the NBPA Top 100 camp, when Carlos Boozer’s son, Cameron, dominated despite having yet to turn 15 years old. And what started as buzz has crescendoed into a low roar as college and professional evaluators spend more and more time watching this talent-packed class.
First, it was Boozer and Cooper Flagg who drew most of the eyeballs. Flagg jumped up a year into the high school class of 2024 last summer, and other stars like Massachusetts native AJ Dybantsa emerged. Now, Boozer and Dybantsa headline a nucleus of top prospects who have NBA teams salivating, just under two years out from their projected NBA draft day in ’26.
“I feel very strongly that this is the best class in a really long time,” one NBA scout who has watched grassroots basketball extensively said.
This is the fourth year NBA personnel are allowed at Nike’s Peach Jam, the biggest high school recruiting event of the summer primarily meant for college coaches to evaluate prospects. Grassroots scouting has become increasingly more important in the NBA though, and most top prospects have been seen by NBA personnel in several different settings before they set foot on a college campus. Who are some of the names they’re tracking most closely?
Flagg, who was the talk of USA basketball’s pre-Olympics camp in Las Vegas earlier this month and is now the clear favorite to go No. 1 in the 2025 draft class, will give fans a taste of this influx of star power in ’24–25 while at Duke. He’s just the beginning of a tidal wave of talent, several of whom are expected to get to college basketball in the ’25–26 season.
Dybantsa, a 6'9" wing who first exploded onto the scene last summer, is considered the top pro prospect in high school basketball right now. His combination of length, shotmaking ability and defensive intensity give him the upside to be a perennial All-Star on the wing in the NBA. As a native of the Boston suburb of Brockton, Mass., the Jayson Tatum comparisons have become common, but his highest-end outcome may be even higher than that.
“He used to be just this gangly deer, and now it’s like he can just toy with guys,” the same scout said. “He can score whenever he wants. He’s defending, the defensive intensity has not dropped off. The other guys [in the 2025 high school class] are going to have a chance to be the best player in the draft, but my hot take on AJ Dybantsa is that he has a chance to be the best player in the entire league.”
Dybantsa’s upside is the highest, but most college coaches Sports Illustrated has spoken to believe the best player right now is Boozer. The consistency with which he has produced in every setting has become impossible to ignore. He averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds in just 20 minutes per game to lead the USA to a dominant gold medal run at the U17 FIBA World Cup this summer. He is putting up even bigger numbers on the Nike EYBL circuit, leading the circuit in both points and rebounds per game on the team with the best record and point differential. His ceiling may not be quite as lofty as Dybantsa’s, but to be this good while still a few days from his 17th birthday is nothing short of remarkable. It’s hard to imagine a world in which Boozer isn’t an extremely productive NBA player for a long time.
Since Flagg’s reclassification, Boozer and Dybantsa have been perceived to be in a tier of their own in the 2025 class, but two other top talents are seemingly knocking on the door.
Darryn Peterson, a sturdy wing born in Ohio who plays for Phenom U on the Adidas 3SSB circuit, wowed everyone in attendance at the 3SSB Championships in Rock Hill, S.C., over the weekend. He scored 38 points against a loaded Indiana Elite team with NBA personnel in attendance Tuesday, then followed that up with monster outputs once college coaches arrived Thursday. He doesn’t have the name recognition in more casual circles that Dybantsa and Boozer do, but those who watched him last weekend spoke glowingly about his game.
Meanwhile, No. 1 2026 high school recruit Tyran Stokes, a teammate of Dybantsa’s on the EYBL circuit, is old enough to reclassify into ’25 and join the ’26 draft class. He was arguably more impressive during the May live period than Boozer or Dybantsa, and longtime college coach turned ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla tweeted after watching Stokes that the versatile forward “will average 25 [points per game] in the NBA someday.”
If Stokes joins the 2025 high school class (as has been widely rumored in college circles for months), there’s a strong case for four players at the top of the ’26 draft looking worthy of a No. 1 overall pick in a typical class … and more names could be rising. Nate Ament, another standout from the Adidas event over the weekend, has been the biggest stock-riser of late, a lanky shooting wing/forward who seems to add something to his game every time scouts see him. Point guard Mikel Brown Jr. (Florida) and big man Koa Peat (Arizona) also shined at Adidas, while coaches flew across the country from the southeast to Phoenix just for a look at another riser in Chris Cenac at the Puma-sponsored NXTPro live event over the weekend.
Development tends not to be linear, and there’s plenty of time between now and the summer of 2026 for things to change. But you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in the basketball world who has spent time evaluating this class who isn’t beaming with excitement over this incoming wave of star power.
“If Tyran [Stokes] is included, there’s a good five guys in the 2026 draft where you’re like, ‘Holy s---, we’ve got something here,’ ” the scout said.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Following Cooper Flagg in the 2025 NBA Draft, American-Born Stars Are Ready for 2026.
