#18: Dallas Mavericks – Aleksej Pokuševski | Power Forward | International
If you didn’t know ahead of time, you wouldn’t realize Aleksej Pokuševski is 7’0″ tall when you watch him play. The skinny, lanky 18-year-old out of Serbia has a finesse about his game that isn’t often seen by a 7-footer.
His draft stock is all over the map, as there are many varying opinions on how his game will project to the NBA, but I like his upside.
He still has a lot of filling out and growing as a player to do, but to call him raw would be doing him an injustice. Pokuševski did a little bit of everything for his Greece team, notching 10 points, 7.3 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.7 blocks, and 1.2 steals. He needs to improve his shooting, especially with the way he plays, but he has a solid stroke.
The question is will he be more like Kristaps Porzingis or Dragan Bender? The answer is probably somewhere in between, but what better team to draft him than the Dallas Mavericks where he can learn under the tutelage of KP himself?