NBA Mock Draft Dissection with Sam Vecenie
6/20/20261 hr 44 min
The 2026 NBA Draft has been called one of the deepest in recent years and Andrew Schlecht and Alex Speers are back for another episode of the Saturday Slam N Jam. This time Sam Vecenie from the Athletic joins to help walk the guys through his most recent mock draft and dissect it with questions they have about multiple draft prospects. Is Caleb Wilson’s downside being ignored? Why is Yaxel falling on draft boards? Morez on the rise? And which late round prospects could make an impact? Then the guys finish with another round of Andrew vs. the Beat.
Host: Andrew Schlecht and Alex Speers
With: Sam Vecenie
Producer: Andrew Schlecht
Video Producer: Monica Compton
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAndrew Schlecht· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Saturday Slam and Jam here on The Athletic NBA Daily. On today's show, we're talking to Sam Vecenie about the NBA Draft, and we're gonna do some trivia. Today, I've got my friend Al Babycakes Alex Spears with us. Al, what's up?
Alex Speers· Host0:22
Thanks for having me back, Andrew.
Andrew Schlecht· Host0:24
[laughs] So glad to have you back every single week [laughs] and join us to talk about the upcoming NBA Draft. We're days away from the draft. We've got Sam Vecenie here, our expert, uh, here at The Athletic and from the Game Theory podcast. If you're not listening to it, then you probably know a lot less about the draft. Sam, welcome back.
Sam Vecenie· Guest0:43
How are you guys doing? It's, it's good to see your faces. It's good to hear your, uh, dulcet tones. I'm just glad to be here with you. Thank you for having me back.
Andrew Schlecht· Host0:53
We're, we're pumped.
Alex Speers· Host0:56
Uh, c- can I ask you, um, I've been thinking about this draft cycle. I feel like this has been a really fun one between, like, how good the top prospects are, all these guards. As you look back over your drafting career, do you feel... Are you feeling that with this draft cycle? Is, is this a particularly fun one? Do you remember more fun draft cycles that you enjoyed for whatever reason?
Sam Vecenie· Guest1:20
It's a good question, yeah. I think this has been a really fun one. It's been really fun to talk about all these prospects because they're all exceptionally gifted, and