Pelicans draft: Which Green Room prospect is coming to New Orleans?

The 2022 NBA Draft is just over a week away and the New Orleans Pelicans have a lot of options with the 8th pick.

The 8th pick hasn’t produced many stars, but this draft is pretty wide open, with no consensus about who the top guys are outside of the top-3, and you’ll find plenty of argument there as well.

As the draft gets closer, the field starts to narrow, as some guys have taken their names out of the draft ahead of the deadline, and teams start to hyper-focus on the guys on the top of their boards.

Traditionally, a handful of players are invited to come to the NBA Green Room for the draft to capture their live reactions and create a little drama. This year there will be 16 guys invited according to Jonathan Givony of ESPN and DraftExpress.

There aren’t any shocking names here, although I was a bit surprised that one of my draft sleepers, Tari Eason from LSU, was not included in the 16 names.

The New Orleans Pelicans are almost certain to walk away from the 2022 NBA Draft with one of these players on the roster, so which one is it going to be?

New Orleans Pelicans draft: Which Green Room prospect is coming to NOLA?

Unless the Pelicans were to trade up in the draft, you can rule out Jabari Smith, Chet Holmgren and Paolo Banchero, the presumptive top-3 picks.

I would also scratch Jaden Ivey and Keegan Murray off, as it’s hard to see either of them slipping out of the top five or six.

From there it could be just about any of these guys, though Malaki Branham, Mark Williams, Ochai Agbaji and Outmane Dieng would probably all be reaches at eight.

There is a good chance that Shaedon Sharpe and AJ Griffin will also be gone by the time the Pels choose, though either would be a nice fit as younger prospects that don’t need to be good right away.

That leaves Dyson Daniels, Bennedict Mathurin, Jalen Duren, Johnny Davis and Jeremy Sochan. The smart money is that one of these five guys will be drafted by the New Orleans Pelicans, though there are certainly any number of scenarios that would change that.