The next Antetokounmpo: Kostas awaits his draft-night call

His numbers are ordinary. His name is not.

And his potential, that’s still to be proven.

A player who averaged 5.2 points and 2.9 rebounds per game in his lone season of college basketball, primarily as a backup for a team that didn’t finish with a winning record, wouldn’t ordinarily seem like much of an NBA draft prospect. But in this case, the player in question is Kostas Antetokounmpo—who believes that he is ready to follow his All-Star brother Giannis into the league.

On Thursday night, he’ll find out which NBA club agrees.

“I feel like when you do a sport, when you do something, you want to be the best at it,” Kostas Antetokounmpo said. “Since I was little I wanted to be an NBA player. So it’s about time.”

Maybe so, but unlike his brother— the Milwaukee star who might be an MVP candidate for years to come— Kostas Antetokounmpo’s game is nowhere near the elite level.

“He can be really good,” Giannis Antetokounmpo said. “He has a lot of things to work on. But I think he can be really good if he gets with the right team and tries to get better every day.”

The 20-year-old Kostas Antetokounmpo struggled to remain a big part of the rotation at Dayton in his one college season, starting six games early in the year but also playing less than 10 minutes in six others. He had a big game off the bench late in the season to help the Flyers beat Saint Louis, and after that game Dayton coach Anthony Grant pointed to that as the sign of what Antetokounmpo can do.