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This time last year, Walt Perrin had a pretty good idea how draft night was going to play out. The Utah Jazz scouting guru could look at his board and, with some certainty, map out the first 11 picks, leaving his team with the chance to grab Trey Lyles, a smooth and sophisticated 19-year-old forward from Kentucky, with the 12th overall selection.
But right now, with less than a week to go before Perrin and the rest of the Jazz front office assume their spots in the team's war room, the path to No. 12 has been a little harder to decipher.
"I felt a little bit more comfortable at this stage of the game with our 12th pick last year than right now," said Perrin, the Jazz's vice president of player personnel. "There are probably a few more players that we're looking at at 12. We're working on it."
The Jazz and general manager Dennis Lindsey will have a plethora of choices come Thursday night and, in true Lindsey fashion, every option remains on the table. With one of the league's youngest rosters, the Jazz will explore ways to flip their pick for a veteran contributor. But if the Jazz stay in the first round, they could try to maximize their selection by picking a raw talent who may not be able to contribute meaningful minutes for some time.
"There are prospects that can help us now, in shorter order, that have real defined skill sets," Lindsey said as soon as the Jazz were locked in at No. 12. "And there are several really intriguing prospects that are more what we call 'anticipation picks,' where we're going to have to wait a while. You may not get the return a Trey Lyles got last year."
It's a possibility the Jazz have been exploring since about the time they settled on Lyles last June.
"Dennis brought that up to me a year ago, in terms of trying to look at the possibility of anticipation picks," Perrin said this week. "… Is there a possibility of taking somebody at 12 or trading and moving back or whatever and taking somebody who in two years would maybe be a lottery pick?"
The team has brought in nearly 90 players for workouts and intensely scouted many, many more. With a week left, here are some possible targets:
• Dejounte Murray, 6-5/170, guard, Washington
Murray has been a mock-draft riser, shooting up the boards in recent weeks. The 19-year-old remains a raw talent, but an intriguing one.
The Jazz see Murray as a point guard, but they also see him fitting in alongside Danté Exum in their backcourt.
"They can both play together," Perrin said. "Those two guys can shut down people, I think."
• Skal Labissiere, 6-11/215, forward, Kentucky
Many experts believe the rail-thin Haitian will go to the Orlando Magic at No. 11, but his upside might be too much to pass on if he slides to the Jazz at 12.
"His ability to shoot the ball, to stretch the floor, to protect the rim are elite," ESPN draft expert Chad Ford told reporters during a conference call this week. "The question is does he know how to play basketball? Does he have a feel for the game? Does he have the toughness to play in the NBA?"
Those are big questions, indeed, but there could be a handsome reward for taking the risk on the 20-year-old.
"I think because there aren't a lot of players left that are sure things, that most of those players are just rotation players now, you start to look at Skal and say, 'Look, if Skal hits, he could be Channing Frye, he might even be better than Channing Frye, and if that's the case, he's worth gambling [on],' " Ford said.
• Deyonta Davis, 6-11/237, forward, Michigan State
A big and tremendously athletic power forward, Davis loves to be on the receiving end of an alley-oop lob. His physical tools make him an intriguing prospect for teams in the late lottery. When he visited Utah for a workout last week, he drew comparisons to Jazzman Derrick Favors.
Jazz scouts, however, think Davis' midrange game might be further along than Favors' at the same age.
• Wade Baldwin, 6-4/202, point guard, Vanderbilt
Even with a glut of point guards already on the roster, Ford can see Baldwin landing in Utah on draft night.
"If Baldwin went 12 to the Jazz, that wouldn't surprise me at all," the analyst said. "If he went in the 20s, that wouldn't surprise me, either."
The Jazz have Exum, Shelvin Mack, Raul Neto and Trey Burke all under contract at the moment. But Baldwin's physical tools might be intriguing enough for the Jazz to try to make room.
"The pros are NBA body, NBA athlete, good size for position, and actually even though his shot isn't the most beautiful shot in the world, he shot the ball really well both years at Vanderbilt, which is a big plus on a big point guard," Ford said. "There's a lot of Deron Williams in him, I think, as a player."
There are a host of international prospects who could find their way to Salt Lake City, too. Turkish wing Furkan Korkmaz, French wing Timothe Luwawu and Croatian big man Ante Zizic, who worked out for the Jazz, have also been floated as possible choices for Utah. In Ford's latest mock draft, he has the Jazz selecting Runnin' Utes center Jakob Poeltl with the 12th pick overall.
But even as the experts prep for their work, there's some uncertainty. After LSU's Ben Simmons and Duke's Brandon Ingram go off the board, almost certainly in the first two picks, there is another tier of players followed by some question marks.
"I think there's a general consensus around the league of who the so-called top eight are," Perrin said. "Then there's uncertainty where the rest of those players go."
Because of that, things could get wild come Thursday.
"The mock drafts that I've seen, they've got players that they've listed in the second round who I think are going to go in the first round and may go in the middle of the first round," Perrin said. "… I think there are going to be some surprises on draft night where players go."
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NBA draft
P Thursday, 5 p.m. MT
TV • ESPN