Cameron Boozer is the Data Darling
Why the data will say Cameron Boozer should be the slam-dunk first overall pick
If you take a gander at the hundreds of 2026 NBA Draft big boards, overwhelmingly, you’ll find AJ Dybantsa and Darryn Peterson atop the list. The pair possess positional size, jaw-dropping athleticism, burgeoning shot-making, and fit the bill of the modern wing archetype that every front office believes you can never have too many of. However, just behind the two prized possessions of the 2026 Draft is the consensus third overall prospect, Cameron Boozer, and the data is going to say he is their superior.
Statistically, there is no argument between Peterson, Dybantsa, and Boozer. Boozer leads the NCAA in the following categories: Player Efficiency Rating (PER), Offensive Box Plus/Minus (OBPM), Box Plus/Minus (BPM), Win Shares per 40 Minutes (WS/40), and Win Shares (WS). His BPM of 19.82 and OBPM of 13.31 are the second-highest since 2010-11, the farthest Basketball Reference’s leaderboards go back, behind only Zion Williamson’s 2018-19 season, and his WS/40 of 0.3419 is the highest since at least 2009-10. The only player to lead the nation in all five of these categories in the same season since 2010-11 was Zach Edey in 2023-24, who was the reigning national player of the year and a senior.
Simply put, Boozer is having one of the greatest college seasons ever, and the fact that he is a freshman propels his exploits into rarified air. Using those five metrics (PER, WS/40, OBPM, BPM, WS) as our guides, the only* freshman one-and-dones who have led the nation in even one category are Zion Williamson, Anthony Davis, Cooper Flagg, DeMarcus Cousins, Trae Young, Karl-Anthony Towns, Evan Mobley, Kevin Love, and Kevin Durant.
*Basketball Reference’s leaderboards date back to 2009-10 for PER and WS/40, 2010-11 for OBPM and BPM, and 1995-96 for WS
That list alone should be enough to explain why any data-based projection system is going to love Cameron Boozer. There are four number one overall picks, one very famous second overall selection, a third overall pick, and three fifth overall selections. Excluding Flagg, who is in the midst of his own insanely promising rookie season, every one of these players has made an All-Star team, and outside of Zion, each has made at least one All-NBA team. Even though it’s a small sample, their NBA production has been consistently and universally elite.
For context, this season, a WS/48 of .180 would rank 18th, an OBPM of 4.5 would rank 16th, and a BPM of 4.8 would rank 12th in the league. Needless to say, every team would take a top-20 player with the first overall pick. However, that’s not the only reason statistical models will go crazy for Boozer.
Somewhat surprisingly, Cameron Boozer is about six months younger than both AJ Dybantsa and Darryn Peterson. While none of them are old by any means, Boozer, not only being statistically more dominant but also younger, is going to make him explode in draft models, which weigh age heavily.
Even though he looks like he’s 25, he’ll spend the entirety of his rookie season as a 19-year-old, which gives him one of the rarest combinations of current production and age that we’ve seen. Part of the reason Cooper Flagg is such a highly rated prospect is that he is only a month older than Peterson and Dybantsa. Age matters a ton.
Now, I don’t think the NBA draft and scouting communities are completely off their rockers for not ranking Boozer first. While he is a highly productive college player, his player archetype has basically gone extinct in the NBA. Power forwards who aren’t some version of a center or a wing have increasingly found it hard to find minutes, and Boozer fits that mold. His lack of elite athletic traits also raises doubt about his ability to efficiently generate buckets at the next level.
However, the game of basketball is always changing, and it might be swinging back towards Boozer’s archetype. The NBA is experiencing a renewed focus on winning the offensive glass and playing with physicality, which should, in theory, swing power forward back towards its roots. On top of that, he has also been a solid enough 3-point shooter in college to project some level of floor spacing, and he might just be so productive that it doesn’t matter.
At the end of the day, archetypes are just ideas; they’re not real. No one in the league was looking for elite passing and shooting centers with limited rim protection, and then Nikola Jokic came along and destroyed the league. Boozer might be the first mover in a broader trend toward more traditional power forwards, or the scouts could be right.
At the end of the day, Cameron Boozer is going to be a highly productive NBA player. The track record of college freshmen who post such elite metrics is basically unassailable. Does that mean he’ll be better than Dybantsa or Peterson? I have no idea, but what I do know is that he is the prospect who is most likely to make multiple All-Star games within their first five professional seasons. And come draft time, you’ll be hearing some version of this: “Model-driven teams love Boozer.”
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