Virginia guard Reece Beekman is among the 78 players who on Tuesday got an invite to the 2023 NBA Draft Combine.
This is obviously great news for Beekman, with the caveat being that while 78 players got combine invites, the two-round draft this year will have 58 names called.
The great news is that the invite suggests that the floor for Beekman should be a two-day deal.
The consensus on Beekman ahead of the combine is that he is at best a late second-round pick, with several mock drafts projecting him as going undrafted.
Basically, if he were a team on Selection Sunday, he’d be on the bubble.
Even having his name called in the second round doesn’t guarantee that he gets a full-time NBA gig next year. Kyle Guy, you may remember, was a second-round pick in 2019, and he spent the 2019-2020 season in the G League.
The two-way deal that seems to be his floor pays him in the range of $508,491 – that’s what two-way deals were worth in the 2022-2023 season. I’d assume the money will go up slightly for next year.
A full year in the G League can pay as low as the league’s $40,000 minimum, though a guy coming off a combine invite would be pegged closer to the $70,000 to $75,000 range.
A full-time NBA job would pay in the range of $953,000, which was the rookie minimum in 2022-2023, and again, we could presume that figure would increase a bit for next year.
Those are the three financial outcomes for Beekman.
Even the worst case, a full season in the G League at $70,000 to $75,000, is more than he’d get from playing Virginia’s weak NIL game.
It’s still possible that Beekman goes through the combine, decides that he can work on his game at the college level for one more year with the goal of making himself a first-round pick next summer, and makes the call to return.
I wouldn’t bank on that, though.
He’s as close to having a guaranteed job as he can be with this combine invite.
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Chris Graham
