Top 2026 NBA Draft Prospect Could Avoid the Sacramento Kings?

Sunday’s NBA Draft Lottery is rapidly approaching, and excitement around the basketball world is starting to build—especially for the teams whose 2025–26 seasons have long been over.

Small forward AJ Dybantsa is the consensus top prospect in this year’s draft class and will very likely learn where his new home will be when the first-overall pick is revealed this weekend. Several struggling rebuilding franchises are in the mix to win the lottery, though an NBA analyst believes there is one particular landing spot Dybantsa may want to avoid: the Sacramento Kings.

Tom Haberstroh said:

“I will go as far as to say I think that AJ Dybantsa, if the Kings win the lottery, I think he will pull an Eli Manning. I think not ruling it out is not going far enough. Here’s why I think this. This is a guy who went to BYU, got the money and all of the power and all that at BYU, made the choice himself, and all of the athletes in the NIL era are used to having that agency—they are used to making the decision for themselves… Now in this era, I feel like we are headed towards a situation where you cannot be an incompetent organization, just luck your way into the number one overall pick, and not have that variable looming over you,”

The 19-year-old Dybantsa averaged 25.5 PPG, 6.8 RPG, and 3.7 APG in 35 games played at BYU during the 2025-26 season.