Michigan Basketball: Expect to see a lot more lottery picks

While Michigan basketball has had a lot of success over the past decade, one thing that they haven’t had a great deal of is lottery picks. 

Michigan basketball has a rich history of success. The Wolverines have been to numerous NCAA tournaments, winning a championship in1989. They’ve been to numerous Final Fours, with the Fab Five being their most famous Final Four squads.

A lot of past U-M squads have left their mark on college basketball forever, and fans have been able to see Michigan basketball create some very memorable moments.

From NPOY (National Player of the Year, Trey Burke comes to mind), to NCAA Tournament MVP (Glen Rice comes to mind), to clutch shot-making (Jordan Poole, Burke come to mind), to near-death experiences (2016-17 U-M basketball squad) leading to the unlikely conference tournament and NCAA Tournament runs, fans have seen it all.

While Michigan basketball has accomplished a lot throughout history, there is still one thing that I would like to see happen more often (besides win more national championships obviously, but that will come in due time) for U-M’s program.

That thing is: I want to see more Michigan basketball players drafted in the lottery. Since 2000, only three U-M basketball players have been lottery picks, and two of the three were picked last decade.

While a lot of this can be attributed to some of Michigan’s darkest years (before John Beilein), nevertheless, I would still like to see more lottery picks (especially top-10 picks).

With the 2021 draft lottery literally coming next Thursday (July 29th) now is as good a time as any to highlight this.

More lottery picks are coming for Michigan basketball

2021 is the first year of the new decade, so Michigan gets to start off with a fresh slate and see how many lottery picks it can rack up in a 10-year span. It would seem that U-M will start off the new decade strong with a projected lottery pick (Franz Wagner) going off the board early.

While Franz Wagner initially thought he’d be playing for John Beilein when he committed to U-M,  playing for coach Juwan Howard might’ve ended up being a blessing in disguise.

Even though Juwan Howard didn’t initially recruit Franz, their timelines still lined up, and Franz still developed under Juwan, so I would consider Franz to be Juwan’s first lottery pick (not John Beilein’s last lottery pick).

Anyways, with Juwan Howard putting a strong emphasis on building relationships and developing recruits, U-M should definitely start to see an uptick in lottery draft picks.

Part of the reason that U-M didn’t have as many lottery picks last decade was because of John Beilein’s recruiting strategy.

He didn’t really go after as many NBA-ready high schoolers when he recruited. That’s not a bad thing though. Look how it turned out for U-M when he was here. The program had very strong, sustained success.

I would consider Beilen’s U-M squads to be the early 2000s “Goin to Work” Pistons-esque. They didn’t have “the guy” (well except for Burke for one season) but were made up of a lot of very good complementary pieces that had to work hard together to find immense success.

Juwan’s recruiting strategy is a little different though in that he’s willing to go all-in on these elite athletes and able to win over some of this NBA-ready high school-level of talent and get them to play for Michigan basketball.

To be honest, the media doesn’t really view Michigan as a draft factory, like Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, or North Carolina. Those programs produce lottery picks literally every season (and sometimes produce multiple lottery guys in one draft), but the way those programs recruit is not really Michigan’s style or blueprint.

But just because Michigan doesn’t recruit exactly like these “blue bloods” doesn’t mean it can’t still send a lot of lottery guys to the league.

It wouldn’t at all be surprising if Michigan sends a guy pretty much every year for close to the next decade. I don’t know if Juwan will be at Michigan that long, but as long as he’s coaching the Wolverines, fans and media should all see a dramatic uptick in lottery selections.

If we look ahead a little bit down the road, after Franz, Michigan has Caleb Houstan and/or Moussa Diabate as potentials lottery selections in the 2022 draft class.

Then after that, if all goes according to plan, Juwan Howard’s son Jett Howard (who is a near top-25 player in the class of 2023), will be a potential lottery pick in 2023.

So, Michigan fans should definitely have a lot to look forward to in the not-too-distant future.
After many years of having really good to decent basketball players on the roster (and it not quite resulting in a U-M lottery selection more times than not), it is finally time for U-M to enjoy an influx of true game-changing NBA-level talent, and with that should come lottery picks galore.