Alex Sarr May Be the Most Intriguing Prospect in the 2024 NBA Draft Class

For the second consecutive year, the G League Ignite hosted an international squad in Nevada for two exhibition games brimming with future NBA talent. Last year’s face-off between Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson served as a coming-out party, catapulting them into the spotlight and setting a precedent for the transformative impact these games can have on a young player’s career. This year, the Ignite featured more potential lottery picks than ever. However, their opponent, the Perth Wildcats, may have featured the next towering teenage Frenchman who could go no. 1 in the draft: Alex Sarr.

Standing at an imposing 7-foot-1 with a 7-foot-5 wingspan, Sarr is a skyscraping wing in a center’s body who stole the show by averaging 21.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, six blocks, and two assists against the Ignite. Sarr was ranked 17th on my August big board, but his breakout performance has put him in serious contention for the no. 1 draft pick in 2024. Draft Express, a private scouting and analytics service used by many NBA teams, had Sarr 19th in June and catapulted him to fifth in its latest mock draft.

And scouts aren’t the only people rearranging their big boards after Sarr’s strong showing.

After the second exhibition, I ran into an NBA general manager at dinner who told me that “Sarr might go first,” emphasizing his two-way ability in a draft class with so many uncertainties.

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I spoke with Sarr for about 30 minutes at his hotel the morning after Perth’s second and final game against the Ignite. I found him to be mature, with strong self-awareness about his strengths and weaknesses. He has an intrinsic passion for the sport, which he grew up playing with his dad and brother, Olivier, who plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder. I asked Alex how his game has grown to such an extent that he’s gone from a player many scouts saw as a mid-first-round prospect to the potential first pick.

“I feel like the main difference is just the setting. People saw me playing at the youth level with the national team, where there’s less freedom,” Sarr said. “Here, I have a big role. So playing professionally with the Wildcats, people see me as a different player.”

After two formative seasons with Real Madrid’s youth team, Sarr gained 22 pounds in two years with the Atlanta-based Overtime Elite. Now, the 18-year-old is set to spend a season in Australia’s NBL, and he already looks like a more well-rounded player with a role that has unquestionably expanded. With the YNG Dreamerz in the Overtime Elite program, he averaged only 8.5 shots per game. But now with Perth, he’s playing a more diverse offensive role, and most notably, being plugged all over the floor on defense.

A Defensive Swiss Army Knife

Sarr’s defense is his calling card, as he possesses a rare blend of length, size, instincts, and reactivity. He displayed all of those traits on one play against the Ignite that didn’t even appear in the box score:

The possession begins with Sarr defending center Eric Mika. He nearly intercepts a pass before corralling a point guard and then deflecting another pass. The ball finds Ronald Holland, whom Sarr switches onto for a glorious stretch of one-on-one defense, sliding his feet side-to-side to mirror Holland’s every movement and eventually forcing him to get rid of the ball.

That’s not to say Sarr can’t rack up box-score numbers, too. In each game in Vegas, Sarr logged six blocks, including two on a single possession against my top-ranked Ignite prospect, 6-foot-10 forward Matas Buzelis:

On the first block, Sarr rotated into the paint, recognizing Buzelis’s baseline cut and timing his swat perfectly. On the second block, he showed great footwork by staying grounded as he prepared to go vertical.

And then, on a particularly impressive sequence in the second game, Sarr stuck like glue to Holland, my second-ranked Ignite prospect, before swatting his shot away.

There aren’t many players with all of Sarr’s traits. Jaren Jackson Jr. just won NBA Defensive Player of the Year for the Grizzlies, and the Nets’ Nic Claxton is one of the most versatile defenders in basketball. Sarr could follow a similar trajectory; he’s a perfect fit for the NBA’s current trend toward switch-heavy defensive schemes.

“I see my defense just evolving,” Sarr said. “I’m a good shot blocker. Every time, I try to be aware of everything that’s happening, and I might overhelp. But I just see me being able to guard five positions, I hope in the next few years.”

That propensity for overcommitting was an issue for Sarr in the Overtime Elite, where he mostly played against high-school-level talent but had a tendency to be foul-prone and overzealous in chasing blocks. The real litmus test awaits him in the NBL, where he’ll face seasoned pros.

To thrive, he’ll need to maintain a high motor, refine his conditioning, and most importantly, avoid foul trouble. That’s the first step to becoming the true five-position defender he aspires to be. The second step is bulking up. Sarr was 198 pounds when he joined the Overtime Elite two years ago, and he began to change his body through their strength and conditioning program. Meanwhile, he got taller and longer. Now, he weighs 220 but hopes to reach around 235 or 240 pounds.

“I don’t think getting heavier will slow me down,” Sarr said. “I think it’ll help me just keep building.”

A Maturing Offensive Arsenal

Sarr isn’t just a potential defensive ace; he’s a multifaceted talent on offense. At a minimum, Sarr brings the expected skills for a player of his size.

He is an explosive finisher who dunked 44 percent of his attempts at the rim last season with the Overtime Elite. But Sarr is not just a screen-and-roller. He’s constantly active as a cutter, looking for defensive vulnerabilities to get to the basket.

I asked Sarr about the above play, which he initiated with a dribble handoff. When the ball moved to the wing, he rotated to the opposite corner and then cut baseline for a lob dunk. He explained that from a young age, his father and brother encouraged him to seize these opportunities, often pointing out plays when he had been passive.

“Always thinking about that helped me being locked-in in the game,” Sarr said. “Knowing if my defender’s up, I can get a back cut and he’s not going to see me, so I get something at the rim.”

But Sarr isn’t just an off-ball player who only gets touches at the rim. The aforementioned play began with a dribble handoff, something that could be a fixture for Sarr at the next level. He is a fluid ball handler with a flair for passing. In DHOs, Sarr could pass, attack the basket, or reject the handoff to turn and shoot the ball.

“I could fit in most offenses,” Sarr said. “I don’t see my game just being able to fit only one type of play, so I just got to keep building off of it.”

Establishing himself as a regular perimeter threat would help lock Sarr in as the no. 1 prospect in the draft. He is selfless and fearless at delivering the ball as a playmaker, though he needs to pick his spots and cut down on forcing things. He travels too often and needs to clean up his footwork, especially when attacking closeouts. Nevertheless, his performance against the Ignite offered some tantalizing glimpses of his offensive potential.

Sarr can fluidly handle the ball in the open court, and Perth is already setting him up for Giannis-like downhill attacks from behind half court to get to the basket. It’d be outrageous to expect Sarr to become a historic finisher at the rim like Antetokounmpo, but he can be used in similar ways, which speaks to his potential offensive versatility.

Perimeter drives would become more effective with a more potent shot. Sarr has always shot a lot of jumpers, but he’s never made many of them. Last season with the Dreamerz, he made 21.2 percent of his 3s and 54 percent of his free throws. But against the G League, Sarr converted three out of five attempts from beyond the arc and sank eight of 11 free throws. It’s a tiny sample, obviously. But if he can carry that success throughout the NBL season, it would go a long way toward convincing NBA teams that his progress is for real.

Sarr told me he feels he gets into a better rhythm the more shots he gets, leading to more success. But he also said he made a slight tweak to his mechanics as he brings the ball from his waist up to its release. “I was told to get a lot of motion toward the basket,” said Sarr, who admits his outside shot is a vital skill for his development. “It’s really important, because nowadays, you’ve got to be able to stretch the floor. And it just makes it a lot easier for the guards if there’s not a big guy that’s rotating over to the paint.”

Since his games against the Ignite, Sarr has continued to shoot well: In two games during the NBL Blitz—a 10-team tournament featuring Australian teams—he’s made two of six shots from 3, and five of seven free throws, leading his team to two wins.

“I’m trying to show that I’m one of the best players on the court every time I step there,” Sarr said. “My mindset heading to the games is just hunting on defense, and just trying to get buckets on offense.”

The Journey Ahead

Raised in Toulouse, a French city more renowned for rugby than basketball, Sarr often found himself playing against older competition, thanks to his father and brother. This early experience forced him to focus on the nuances of the game. “I used to play with older guys, so I wasn’t the tallest,” Sarr said. “I wasn’t faster than guys. I wasn’t jumping higher. So I had to lock in on little things or else I just couldn’t play.”

Sarr didn’t dream of playing professionally until he was 12, when he went to a tournament in Spain and started getting recruited by Real Madrid. “I was just playing the game, really just having fun,” Sarr said. “But that’s when I realized, ‘Oh, that’s where Luka Doncic went. Maybe I’m one of them too. I can be like that.’”

As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Sarr what he loves about basketball. “The endless things you can improve on. I think it never stops,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point in my career where you do everything great. There’s always something that you can work on.”

Sarr’s journey in basketball has already spanned continents—from Europe to North America to Australia—and the NBA is the next frontier. The coming year will determine what kind of player he’ll be when he arrives.