Darryn Peterson vs. AJ Dybantsa: Who to back for No. 1 pick in NBA Draft
Published:
The first-half clock ticks under 5 minutes to play as BYU wing AJ Dybantsa clears out the right side of the floor and sets up to attack Iowa State’s Milan Momcilovic off the dribble. Dybantsa hits Momcilovic with a hesi and then another, crossing over from left to right and into a pocket of space just inside the 3-point line on the right-hand wing.
He rises, fires, takes some contact, and buries the shot. BYU goes up by 3 points on the No. 6 team in the country, with a free throw coming to make it a 4-point game.
It was the pro move in a game littered with pro moves from the 6-foot-9 freshman. In a 79-69 BYU win, Dybantsa scored 29 points on 10-of-17 shooting, grabbed 10 rebounds, dished out 9 assists, blocked a shot, recorded a steal, and played every single second of the action.
“If they need me to play 40 minutes, I’ll play 40 minutes,” Dybantsa said after the game.
He played 39 minutes 3 days prior when BYU played then-No. 4 Arizona on the road. He played 43 in an overtime win 4 days before that. He played 40 in a 5-point road win 4 days before that. During that 4-game stretch? Thirty points per game with an effective field goal rate of 54.1%, 8.8 rebounds, 6.5 assists, and 1.3 steals a night.
Dybantsa is the biggest threat to Darryn Peterson’s claim on the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Bet on him to make good on that threat. He isn’t the favorite right now, but that probably won’t be true much longer.
It’s a 2-man race to be the top pick at Kalshi. Peterson, the enigmatic Kansas guard, has a 47% chance to be the first player selected. Dybantsa has a 41% chance, according to the prediction market. Dybantsa to go No. 1 costs 41 cents per contract.
My knee-jerk reaction is to call Dybantsa the Peterson antithesis. That feels slightly disrespectful to Peterson, who looked like the clear-cut No. 1 just a few weeks ago.
Peterson has played 16 games as a freshman. Fifteen of them have come against power conference schools. He has averaged 19.7 points in 27.5 minutes across those 15 games, while shooting 41.2% from 3 on decent volume (6.8 a game).
He scored 22 in a win at North Carolina. He scored 32 in an overtime win over TCU. He scored 26 on 11-of-13 shooting in a win over Baylor.
But he only has a single 20-point game since, and his minutes have fluctuated wildly — 20 against BYU, 24 against Iowa State, 18 against Oklahoma State, 32 in Kansas’s most recent game after his minutes became a news cycle-dominating storyline.
Is Peterson load-managing? Is he hurt and not saying anything? He missed a game against Arizona with flu-like symptoms, one of 11 total games he has missed throughout the year. When he subbed himself out of the Oklahoma State game, the discourse surrounding his work ethic erupted.
Said ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith on First Take last week: “There is no team in hell that should grab Darryn Peterson No. 1.”
“You’d have to be naive not to be concerned,” an anonymous NBA executive told The Sporting News. “One of the scariest things in the league is a guy who has to be 100 percent to play.”
Kansas head coach Bill Self said in a press conference that the only way Peterson can “change the narrative” is to “finish” games, which he acknowledged Peterson hasn’t done. In a separate response, Self told ESPN’s Myron Medcalf that he has explicitly told Peterson, “Have I really had a chance to coach you yet?”
Peterson told Medcalf that “basketball is my life” and, “If I could have been out there every game this year, I would have.”
Some think Peterson is actually injured.
Regardless of the reason why Peterson’s availability is so spotty, the fact that it is will give NBA personnel pause.
The team drafting first overall later this summer will be desperate for a franchise-altering force in a loaded draft. A miss costs a general manager his job. Without a consensus top pick like a Cooper Flagg or a Victor Wembanyama, uncertainty is a major turn-off.
And that’s all that surrounds Peterson.
“Pregame, Knicks-Pistons, big game, Eastern Conference clash, … every scout, front office person, coach at the game, No. 1 topic on their mind was, ‘What in the hell is going on with Darryn Peterson?'” Zach Lowe, who is as plugged in as any NBA insider in the country, said on The Bill Simmons Podcast this week. “I had so many Darryn Peterson conversations.”
Lowe continued: “The scouts and front office people I know, particularly people who are going to be picking toward the top of the draft, a lot of their job is trying to figure out what’s going on and, if there were a physical thing, at some point one of them would figure out and it would start to get around. Everyone is just completely perplexed.”
What if Dybantsa’s floor is “slightly better Andrew Wiggins”? That’s still a pretty good player. Wiggins is a 12-year vet who started on a team that won the NBA Finals.
Dybantsa’s ceiling, as a physical freak with a huge frame and a stuff-the-box-score skillset, is that of a future MVP. Roll the tape from the Iowa State game. He’s dribbling into pull-up 3s with a hand in his face, finishing with both hands, euro-stepping through the lane, finishing through contact, passing, defending, and rebounding. According to EvanMiya’s metrics, Dybantsa is the eighth-most indispensable player in college basketball; Peterson is 190th.
If NBA personnel conclude that Peterson’s college availability is a question of desire and not a function of health, they aren’t going to take the risk when a significantly safer option is right next to him on the board.
Of course, Kansas could make a deep March Madness run, fueled by a couple of spectacular scoring performances from Peterson, and a February game against a sub-.500 Big 12 team will be quickly scrubbed from the collective consciousness.
(Not for nothing: Kansas has escaped the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament just once in the last 7 years.)
But I do wonder if, once the season ends and the debate really picks up, the non-scoring elements of each player’s game come into focus more. Suppose Kansas goes on a run and Peterson scorches the nets in the tournament. NBA teams want more than just a microwave scorer from their franchise cornerstones. Players that lead teams have to actually be able to lead them.
Peterson averages 2.1 assists and 5.5 rebounds per 40 minutes this season. He has more turnovers than assists as a guard with a usage rate over 33%. In 5 February games, Peterson has played 143 minutes and recorded 3 assists with 11 rebounds.
In 6 February games for Dybantsa, the BYU wing has 47 rebounds and 34 assists in 233 minutes. He has per-40 averages this season of 8.0 rebounds and 4.7 assists with a slightly lower usage rate.
It’s also just as likely that Dybantsa continues his torrid run of scoring. He leads all Division I players in scoring (24.9 points) and he’s eighth in EvanMiya’s player rater. He scored 25 against UConn back in November. He scored 28 against Houston earlier this month. He averaged 29.5 in 2 meetings with Arizona. If Dybantsa leads BYU to the Sweet 16 (or deeper), this discussion could be over entirely.
Take the value right now. Sell high in the tournament if necessary. The calculus for the top pick in the 2026 NBA Draft seems to have changed; back Dybantsa on Kalshi before the market figures it out.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
