LOS ANGELES — Any hint of a smile on Isaiah Collier’s face had long faded by the time his name was called, stuck in the green room for hours on end as his peers walked ahead.
Finally, at the end of the first round of the NBA draft on Wednesday night, league commissioner Adam Silver welcomed the USC freshman to the stage at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Collier rose to hug his family, a tight line set across his lips, saved just two picks away from an entire night in Brooklyn contemplating a draft freefall.
He’s headed to Utah, after the Jazz took him with the 29th pick, and it was a triumphant moment, Collier exchanging a deep embrace with father Dwain inside the green room. But it was a colossally different future than the one projected when Collier first came to USC, the top-ranked point guard in the country in the class of 2023.
Widely viewed as a one-and-done talent from his first footsteps on USC’s campus, Collier was a dynamic blend of both intoxicating power and confounding decisions within his first months of college basketball. He scored in bunches, and efficiently, but his defensive focus waned and his turnovers skyrocketed. After the best game of his college career against Stanford in early January – 26 points, 9-of-15 shooting – he broke his hand in a subsequent game against Washington State, and USC skidded during his months-long absence.
Upon his return, though, Collier’s game smoothed significantly. In his last 11 games in Pac-12 play, the 6-foot-3 freshman averaged 17.6 points and 4.5 assists per game against 2.8 turnovers, showing massive strides as a lead playmaker. Buzz around his profile, however, quieted amid USC’s disappointing 15-18 finish, and Collier slid past even the most negative of draft projections on Wednesday night.
Collier’s body control, strength as a finisher, and upside as a distributor are all among the best in this 2024-25 class, though. And he’ll step into an intriguing developmental situation with the rebuilding Jazz, pairing with last year’s 16th overall pick Keyonte George to form Utah’s potential backcourt of the future.