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The 2016 NBA Draft Combine has come and gone, and Vanderbilt's pair of first round prospects have to be feeling good after leaving Chicago. Wade Baldwin IV showed off his freakish wingspan and answered questions about his maturity to reassure ESPN's Chad Ford of his professional swagger. Damian Jones measured out at a shade under seven feet tall, posted a better vertical leap than all but one big man at the camp, and drained basket after basket in a spot-up shooting drill to stand out from the rest of the centers in the draft.
They'll have to wait a little over a month to figure out the first stop in their professional careers, but some pundits have already made their predictions about where the Commodore duo will wind up. There hasn't been a ton of movement on the mock draft front in the lead up to the lottery, but Jones and Baldwin have both seen some modest gains in the latest batch of educated guesses.
| Wade Baldwin IV | |||||
| Mock Draft | Pick | Team | Last | Movement | Last Updated |
| CBS (Gary Parrish) | 24 | 76ers | 24 | 0 | 5/10/2016 |
| Draft Express | 15 | Nuggets | 15 | 0 | 5/15/2016 |
| CBS (Sam Vecenie) | 17 | Grizzlies | 16 | -1 | 5/2/2016 |
| USA Today | 12 | Jazz | 17 | 5 | 5/9/2016 |
| Hoops Hype | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | 4/17/2016 |
| ESPN (Chad Ford) | 20 | Pacers | 22 | 2 | 5/16/2016 |
| Sports Illustrated | 20 | Pacers | 20 | 0 | 5/6/2016 |
Ford's pick here doesn't actually take team needs into account. Instead it's just an overall ranking. Also, the folks at Hoops Hype haven't updated their mock since the last time we did this, so they get a DNP on the whole affair this week.
Baldwin's wide range of projected landing spots offers a huge disparity in the environment where he could begin his basketball career. Gary Parrish has him starting his NBA life in Philadelphia, the basketball equivalent of the wastelands from Mad Max. Or, he could shift to the midwest and land with an Indiana team that could break him in easily behind George Hill on one of the Eastern Conference's top rosters.
| Damian Jones | |||||
| Mock Draft | Pick | Team | Last | Movement | Last Updated |
| CBS (Gary Parrish) | 23 | Celtics | 23 | 0 | 5/10/2016 |
| Draft Express | 22 | Hornets | 20 | -2 | 5/15/2016 |
| CBS (Sam Vecenie) | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | 5/2/2016 |
| USA Today | 29 | Spurs | 29 | 0 | 5/9/2016 |
| Hoops Hype | 23 | Celtics | 23 | n/a | 4/17/2016 |
| ESPN (Chad Ford) | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | 5/16/2016 |
| Sports Illustrated | 21 | Hawks | 26 | 5 | 5/6/2016 |
Damian Jones doesn't inspire the same kind of confidence from NBA writers. None of these mock drafts placed him in the top 20, and three failed to include him in the first 30 picks at all. The silver lining there is a late-first landing spot could place him on talented teams in Boston, Atlanta, or San Antonio. A similar situation worked out pretty well for Festus Ezeli back in 2012.
What's your ideal destination for Jones and Baldwin? Let us know in the comments.