Mock Draft with Ben Pfeifer
6/22/202657 min
The NBA Draft is just days away and Es Baraheni is here with guest and NBA Draft expert Ben Pfeifer to discuss the draft through a first round mock draft. Es and Ben discuss which players will go in the lottery, and how good the 2026 draft class is. Why Cam Boozer, AJ Dybantsa and Darryn Peterson could change franchises. Which guard in the 5-10 range will make the biggest difference? Which late lottery pick is the biggest sleeper?
Host: Es Baraheni
With: Ben Pfeifer
Producer: Andrew Schlecht
Audio/Video Edit: Alex Oliver
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsEs Baraheni· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Good morning, and welcome to The Athletic NBA Daily for June 22nd, 2026. I've got Ben Pfeiffer here to talk about the NBA draft. We're doing a mock draft, the final one before the real thing. Let's get into it. [upbeat music] Hello, everybody. Good morning. You are so hyped, Ben. You are ready to roll. It's gonna be awesome. Uh, you do an incredible amount of work covering the NBA draft. I literally talked to you a week ago- [laughs] ... for Raptors Republic. Uh, but you do a lot of great work. You do it for Essentially Sports News, you also do it for Swish Theory. Uh, and you have, uh, throughout this, uh, kind of draft cycle, you've been interviewing players, doing player breakdowns, film breakdowns with those guys, which I have found very, very enjoyable. Um, there is not, like, five people in the draft world that I like to hear talk about the draft more than you. Uh, so for everybody- Thank you.
Ben Pfeifer· Guest1:03
My guy ...
Es Baraheni· Host1:03
everybody listening right now, go and tap into Ben Pfeiffer, uh, and his draft stuff. Okay, we gotta get through 30 picks here, so we're gonna move rather quickly. We're gonna do a mock draft. We know the order. We're not gonna do trades. There might be trades. Aaron Wiggins was traded, by the way. Uh- The big trade ... big, big trade, the one we were waiting for. That's why Andrew Schlecht is not here. He's probably doing an emergency podcast somewhere. Uh, but Aaron