Darryn Peterson wanted to go No. 1 in NBA Draft. It’s actually better he didn’t
Darryn Peterson walked down an aisle at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, a camera following his every step, when the national broadcast surmised that he must be ticked.
Peterson is officially No. 2.
Or another way to frame it: He’s officially not No. 1.
Peterson’s turbulent freshman season at Kansas likely cost him the opportunity to be the first pick in the NBA Draft on Tuesday, an honor the Washington Wizards instead bestowed upon BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa.
Peterson is headed to Utah. He would later tell reporters what all of us already knew: He wanted to go No. 1 overall.
But beneath that initial frustration will settle the slow burn of a clearer view: He got the better outcome.
That’s not because of some newfound motivation for being slighted as merely the second-best NBA prospect in the world, but rather because of something he ought to prioritize, for it has a far greater impact on his success:
Fit.
The Wizards were up first in this draft, but aren’t built to make Peterson their first option. On Monday, they handed point guard Trae Young more than $200 million. On Tuesday, they weren’t going to turn around and hand the reins to a rookie.
It’s not that the Jazz immediately will.
It’s that they can give him the ball and find out.
In 2024-25, his last healthy season, Trae Young was one of the most ball-dominant players in the league. He averaged 8.4 seconds per possession — more than 1/3 of the allotted shot clock! — which ranked second to Jalen Brunson. Young averaged 5.52 seconds per touch, third highest in the NBA. He averaged 4.99 dribbles per touch, also third most in the league.
Young operates with the ball in his hands. A lot.
The Jazz, by contrast, can pretty easily, if not preferably, slide Keyonte George to a combo guard to make room for Peterson to do what he does well: play with the ball in his hands and find a bucket.
“I think it’s going to be a perfect fit for him, based on personnel,” KU coach Bill Self said in a Zoom call after the draft. “I’m sure he’ll be their point guard.”
It doesn’t guarantee his success.
It paves a more evident path toward it.
Kansas moved Peterson off the ball for stretches late in the season, in part to preserve his health, but mostly because they’d found something with point guard Melvin Council. Peterson can score in any role. But he was effective when his health permitted an ability to get to the rim off the bounce, a stretch that was more of a glimmer.
The Jazz can offer him that chance to be at his best — you know, whatever that might be. That’s the still the mystery.
Self characterized Peterson as a player whose ceiling is an eight-time NBA All-Star over the next 10 seasons. But the irony is he described a player KU so rarely saw in games.
Peterson’s unpredictable, last-minute and sudden in-game absences were the backbone for a disorienting season — and the foundation for doubt. KU’s enigma is now the NBA’s enigma. It now settles in Salt Lake City, and maybe that too is an advantage that it doesn’t attract the attention in the nation’s capital.
During his time in Lawrence, Peterson was short with explanations for his absences or altogether disinterested in providing any, a public-facing strategy that allowed others to take control of the narrative. He has since tried to alter the portrayal, though his pre-draft rationale for the cramps — creatine — might have added even more to the mystery rather than subtracted it.
A day before the draft, national basketball insider Jeff Goodman reported that while an NBA general manager believed Peterson was the “most talented player in the draft,” the executive didn’t think Washington could “roll the dice on him.”
That’s one way to view it.
The other: Isn’t it also a risk to not select the most talented player in the draft?
That isn’t to suggest Peterson should have been a slam-dunk choice at No. 1. It’s to suggest that in a loaded draft, his ability should have drawn the fewest doubts. Heck, maybe it still did.
Peterson told The Star’s Shreyas Laddha in Brooklyn that he hopes to show he’s back to the player he was before the cramps.
“Coming for all these guys,” he said, a line he’d repeat in front of the full media contingent.
His short-lived time in Lawrence indicates his health will determine that.
But the fit should help.