Sixers Host Six Players for Pre-Draft Workouts
It’s that time of the year.
Camden workouts ahead of the 2019 NBA Draft, which takes place one month from now on June 20th.
The Sixers have five selections, including picks 24, 33, and 34. Today they’ll host the following six players at the practice facility:
- Ky Bowman (Boston College)
- Tookie Brown (Georgia Southern)
- Zylan Cheatham (Arizona State)
- Terance Mann (Florida State)
- Marial Shayok (Iowa State)
- Max Strus (DePaul)
Here’s a little bit about each of these guys, who are upperclassmen and second round projections:
Ky Bowman
6’2″ point guard, junior
19 points 8 rebounds, and 4 assists per game for Bowman, who was fourth on the ACC scoring charts this year behind Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, and Marcquise Reed.
The Sixers need a backup point guard next season, since T.J. McConnell was essentially just covering for Markelle Fultz this year before coming out of the rotation in the Brooklyn playoff series.
They could do worse than Bowman, who is a confident guy with a lot of experience in a good conference. His highlight reel is stuffed with clips of him driving to the rack and getting tough buckets to fall, though he can shoot a bit from outside as well. He really has a dynamic handle and is a skilled, attack-minded type of player:
The main knock on Bowman is that he tried to do too much at times, sometimes putting up wild shots or forcing looks that just weren’t there. That’s likely due to the fact that Boston College was a pretty poor squad and that there was not a legitimate second scoring option during his time there.
Tookie Brown
5’11” point guard, senior
Brown went to Georgia Southern and was the 2019 Sunbelt Player of the Year. He was originally a Mississippi State commit who withdrew when Rick Ray was fired back in 2015. He also declared for the 2018 NBA draft, then pulled out and returned to Statesboro for his senior season.
He averaged 17, 4, and 5 this year playing 35 minutes a game. Biggest question mark with Brown is how he adapts to the NBA game after four seasons of small conference basketball.
Zylan Cheatham
6’8″ small/power forward, senior
You saw him on Sports Center when he did this back in January:
Cheatham is a late second round draft pick on most boards. He’s a red shirt senior who averaged 12 points and 10 rebounds in his lone ASU season, posting 14 double-doubles for the Sun Devils. He sat out this junior year after transferring from San Diego State. This guy is 6’8″, 220 pounds, a really athletic player on both sides of the floor but a raw shooter who needs to improve his offensive game at the NBA level.
Terance Mann
6’6″ shooting guard, senior
Most draft writeups list Mann as an NBA-ready scorer.
He played four years for the Seminoles, this season averaging 11.4 points and 6.5 rebounds per game. He shot 50% from the floor and 79% from the foul line while logging a ton of experience via four ACC campaigns and multiple trips to the NCAA tournament. However, he scored 5 points on 1-8 shooting in his final FSU game, which was the Elite 8 loss to Gonzaga. Some sites note that he’s struggled to perform in big games, and when you look down his log I see a number of single digit scoring outputs against good ACC squads.
Projected late second round draft pick:
Marial Shayok
6’6″ guard/forward, senior
A late bloomer, the 24-year-old transferred out of UVA as a junior and sat out the 2017-2018 season. Shayok had a monster senior year in Ames, scoring 18.6 points per game to finish 2nd in the Big 12.
He’s a smooth shooting guard/small forward hybrid and is a second round prospect since he’s already 24 years old old. Shayok shot 38.6% from three as a senior and has a smooth catch and shoot and pull up game:
Max Strus
6’6″ guard, senior
Strus worked out for the Celtics on Friday.
He transferred to DePaul from Lewis University outside of Chicago, then went on to play two Big East seasons, averaging 20.1 points per game as a senior. He finished fourth on the conference scoring charts and is a pure volume scorer with a really nice stroke from three:
Villanova did a nice job of keeping him in check this season.