Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper and Egor Demin in the same NBA Draft sentence?

Former Suns assistant-turned-BYU head coach Kevin Young explains why he says Demin belongs ... via this Jake Fischer feature on the lanky point guard hoping to crash the lottery on Wednesday night

When the first round of the NBA Draft loads a fast-elapsing five minutes for each selection, while the heartbeats for every executive on the clock race in the other direction, fates of careers and entire franchises truly hang in the balance. A home run swing in the late lottery can resurrect an entire organization. A total whiff can lead to a front office being fired.

That margin for error seems much larger this June, with such wild variance among scouts' rankings and projections of so many prospects. Working within those confines could very well lead some teams to choose the player they deem has the highest possible floor. Or the lowest risk of failure. Or the skill set and tools most likely to translate at the next level.

All of those descriptors might well apply to Egor Demin, BYU's supersized playmaker who is known for his standout feel on both sides of the court.

"He'll have multiple homes," said one Eastern Conference executive, "because he can fit so many places."

His college coach Kevin Young deemed Demin a natural point guard — one who already stands 6-foot-8 when barefoot and boasts a 6-foot-10 wingspan at that. Other teams might be tempted to slot him on the wing as a jumbo secondary creator after Demin flashed some improved shooting efficiency during the Chicago Draft Combine. He's packed on some of the requisite lower-body muscle during pre-draft training, at the behest of his agent Niko Filipovich of BDA Sports International, that a player with his build is obligated to pack. With the NBA Finals headed for a deciding seventh game and having repeatedly illustrated how handy it is in the modern NBA to assemble a roster outfitted with multiple ballhandlers and positional versatility, Young argues that what the scouts see as Demin's floor needs to be raised.