From the moment Coach K embraced the one-and-done era of college basketball, Durham, North Carolina, has been an NBA factory. Just last year, Cooper Flagg became the sixth Duke player to go No. 1 overall while Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach joined him in the top 10.
This year, five-star freshman Cameron Boozer will be the next one-and-done superstar to go off the board early. Already arguably the best player in college basketball, Boozer is in the mix for the No. 1 overall pick in an absurdly loaded 2026 class.
However, becoming a top pick often means going to a downtrodden franchise, and FanSided’s latest NBA mock draft after the NBA trade deadline last week has Duke fans reliving a familiar nightmare.
FanSided 2026 NBA mock draft slots Cameron Boozer No. 2 overall to Sacramento
For all the players selected No. 1 overall out of Duke, Art Heyman, Elton Brand, Kyrie Irving, Zion Williamson, Paolo Banchero, and Flagg, the program has also produced five No. 2 overall NBA draft picks. That most recent of which was Marvin Bagley III in 2018, to, you guessed it, the Sacramento Kings.
Bagley came off the board one spot ahead of Luka Doncic, an obvious mistake on Sacramento’s part, but Bagley certainly wasn’t set up for success with the Kings. Bagley spent four years with the franchise that drafted him, and the Kings never won more than 40 games during that stretch. He was eventually traded to Detroit and has bounced around the NBA since.
Bagley had obvious limitations as a player that the NBA willingly overlooked because of his tantalizing upside as a volume front-court scorer with positional versatility. Maybe he never would have developed into an NBA star, or even a valuable starter anywhere in the league, but Sacramento has long been a place where promising careers go to die.
Boozer himself has athletic limitations that could show up on the defensive end with his lack of verticality and rim protection. Unlike Bagley, he’s an excellent passer with elite processing and IQ and has always been a winner throughout his basketball career. He could be the type of rising tide that lifts all boats in Sacramento if that’s where he ends up, or he could be shoehorned into an ill-fitting roster and waste away on a dysfunctional franchise.
It’s possible that Boozer is simply too good to fail at the next level. Even apart from being the type of frontcourt offensive hub who thrives in the league, he does an excellent job of leveraging his size and strength defensively to wall off driving lanes and carve out space to dominate the boards. But if there’s a franchise that will test whether or not he’s too good to fail, it's Sacramento, so Boozer and Duke fans have to hope the ping pong balls don’t bounce the Kings’ way in the draft lottery.