Once upon a time, Duke’s Dariq Whitehead was considered one of the best prospects in basketball. Coming into the 2022 NCAA season, the forward was ranked as the third-best prospect in the nation by 24/7 Sports.
Whitehead was named Mr. Basketball USA and the Naismith Prep Player of the Year in 2022. He also took home the MVP trophy at the McDonald’s All-American Game. The talent is very clearly there. And at 18 years old, he is still very young — the third-youngest player in this year’s draft class.
Yet you would be hard-pressed to find an NBA mock draft today that has Whitehead getting drafted inside of the 20s — we have Whitehead going at No. 22 in our latest mock draft.
The question is why? You typically don’t see this sort of drop coming from such a talented prospect.
But, in Whitehead’s case, the answer is obvious. It’s injuries. Whitehead has been dealing with a foot injury that flipped his only season at Duke on its head.
Whitehead was able to return and play this season, but he certainly didn’t seem to be as explosive as he once was. He had just two dunks while at Duke.
Despite that, Whitehead still put up respectable numbers. He averaged 8.3 points per game this season and shot 42.9% on 3-pointers while nearly half of his shot attempts were coming from beyond the arch in 28 games played.
This stat from our latest mock draft makes that a bit more impressive; it shows that Whitehead has legit NBA range.
“The freshman was 24-for-48 (50.0 percent) on 3-pointers attempted from NBA distance, per Stats Perform, which ranked second-best among consensus top-100 prospects with at least 25 attempts tracked.”
With that said, though, he’s had another setback. His foot didn’t heal properly and he had to have another surgery to correct it, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Even as one of the youngest players in the draft, that’s a bit concerning.
There’s still NBA talent there with Whitehead. Teams will see that. But his injuries will ultimately be the reason why he’ll fall far deeper in the draft than anyone initially anticipated before his collegiate career began.
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