🏅NBA Draft Special: Carter Bryant

Hey there,

In honor of this week’s NBA Draft, we decided to pull a story out of the closet that we were… I guess really ahead on. This wasn’t just a business story though — we ran this story because we saw why Arizona’s Carter Bryant was undervalued in the NIL market relative to his play.

Ever since we posted this story in February, Bryant has had an absolutely meteoric rise. At the time, he wasn’t even in draft consideration. As of Wednesday, he’s a lottery pick.

We wanted to go back to run that story again. What made us think Bryant was special back then? What caused his draft stock to and skyrocket since then? There’s only one way to find out the answer: Crack open the vault and look at the tape.

If you’re an All-Access subscriber, you’ll remember this story. But if you’re not… well it’s your lucky day. This one has no paywall. Enjoy this FREE edition of NIL Wire All-Access, and consider upgrading your subscription if you like what you see.

Now, let’s rewind to February of 2025…

— Cole and Collin

December 14^th, 2024. Do you remember what you were doing?

I’m thinking you don’t. Let me guess: you were probably sulking around the house, bored, because for the first time in a long time, you couldn’t sink into a couch for ten straight hours watching college football on this particular Saturday. It was Week 16 of the college football season – in other words, the week where the only game to watch was the 31-13 trouncing that Navy handed Army. Pretty boring stuff. In fact, you may have even got up halfway through the game to do Christmas shopping, and no one would have blamed you for doing so. 

But maybe, like me, you’re a college basketball freak, and that day had been marked off for months in advance. Maybe, just maybe, you were seated for the mid-day matchup between the (at the time ranked) #10 Arizona Wildcats and #22 UCLA Bruins. Here’s what happened during that game.

Down 13 points, the Bruins rallied to a 57-54 win by the final buzzer – well, if you want to call it a win. In reality, the Bruins didn’t win that game so much as Arizona lost it. The Wildcats didn’t score a single field goal in the last 8:46 of play, and the loss spawned a plethora of frustration:

That loss dropped Arizona down to the 4-5 on the season – four wins against non-Power conference schools, and five losses to all Power conference schools. Things were looking… well, I guess dark would be the right word. It was the low point of Arizona’s nascent basketball season.

Fast forward to today: the Wildcats are 21-11 as I’m writing this, and one of the best teams in the Big 12. If you’re doing the math at home, you’ll know that they went 17-6 since that December 14^th game – quite the turnaround considering they seemed to be out of NCAA tournament contention about two and a half months ago.

So what the heck happened?

I’m assuming you’ve never heard the name Carter Bryant right now, and I’m not going to blame you for that – even if you’re a Big 12 fan, he’s not exactly at the top of your team’s scouting report. Bryant is a freshman this season, he’s averaging less than seven points to date, and while he’s efficient, he’s not exactly filling up the stat sheet.

But he’s what happened to Arizona basketball. He helped turn the season around, and that’s why he’s getting paid the big NIL bucks by the program. But how? Well, we’re going to have to dig beneath the surface a bit for that.

Let’s get into the film.

What Was Wrong? 

During Arizona’s early season fiasco, the Wildcats underwent a bit of an identity crisis. Caleb Love, their leading scorer and offensive engine from the year prior, shot them out of games with Wisconsin, Duke, and Oklahoma – currying disfavor with fans, and, if you were watching the body language during the game, his own teammates too.

Perfectly fine possessions were ending in step back jumpers with 25 seconds left on the shot clock. There was a palpable impatience whenever the team had the ball – so much so that other teammates began shot hunting too. Everyone seemed to be playing for points instead of wins.

Meanwhile, a lanky freshman named Carter Bryant barely stepped on the floor. He scored 11 total points between the team’s first five losses, and he only eclipsed 13 minutes in one game during that stretch.

But eventually, the Wildcats began figuring something out. Whenever this freshman forward played, good things seemed to happen. You wouldn’t even know it necessarily from looking at the box score, but he was affecting the game in positive ways, slowing things down for the team and completely changing the team’s focus on both sides of the ball.  

The signs were there early. Check out this play from the Duke game, where he bails out Caleb Love’s (frankly, lazy) defensive effort as his defender slips a ghost screen:

Bryant’s leverage here is impressive. He’s able to sprint over to defend the rim, gather as if he’s going to contest the shot, but doesn’t ever leave his feet. Once Love recovers they’re able to give a brief double-team that turns into a transition opportunity. Of course, that transition opportunity ended like this:

I promise I’m not trying to pick on Love here – he’s a great player. Moreso, I think this sequence shows how sloppy the game was for the Wildcats at this point in the season. Bryant wasn’t getting many opportunities at this point, but when he did, he stabilized the entire team. When he wasn’t involved… bad things happened. 

Okay, same game, but a few minutes later. Same issues are still happening on defense:

Immediately after this play, though, we see Bryant impact the game on the offensive side of the ball. It sounds dramatic to say it like this, but he’s upending the Arizona offense’s bad habits.  

We see #5 KJ Lewis try to turn a corner and attack his defender, to no avail. This is usually how the Arizona offense operated to this point in the season – isolate and attack, and if that doesn’t work, try again. But to Lewis’ credit, he veers back out and reverses the ball when an extra defender comes.

Now watch the play but focus on Bryant – whose whole job right now is to draw defenders away from the rim by spacing out. He’s being guarded by Flagg, who gets jumbled on a miscommunicated switch. Bryant gets the ball off of a reversal and cans the shot.

Now I’m not going to sit here and say Carter Bryant changed basketball because of a simple circle move. But it’s worth noting that he’s the only guy that made any sort of movement off-ball that entire possession for Arizona. And, because he canned that shot, Flagg stayed attached to Bryant’s hip the rest of the game, which took him away from the basket and opened up more driving lanes for his teammates.

These small changes matter.

The ‘Cats Turn the Corner

Now let’s fast forward to the Baylor game about two months later. Instead of being a change-of-pace player that gets anywhere from 4 to 15 minutes a night, Bryant is getting at least 25 a game by this point.

He’s also become an integral part of the team’s offense and defense – not because plays are being called for him necessarily, but because his mindset has caught fire. Just look at how much more movement we see out of the offense compared to earlier in the season:

Not to mention he’s guarding the 6’5 VJ Edgecomb on defense – a scoring guard who’s likely going to be a top 5 pick in the NBA draft. Bryant’s athleticism and length allow him to stay in front of Edgecombe, which allows everyone on the perimeter to stick to their man instead of helping:

Notably, Love (or anyone else) doesn’t get face cut in this clip. That focus wasn’t there earlier in the season. Baylor tries to slip the screen here – they probably watched Arizona get diced by it time and time again earlier in the season. But earlier in the season, Carter Bryant wasn’t guarding the ball handler – he was bailing out someone else on the backside.

Now, when Baylor tries this, Bryant slow-plays the switch, and finally directs his teammate to contest the shot at the last second. Edgecombe is good, but making that shot consistently is a tough thing to do.

I wish I could give you more clips than that, but you get the idea. Arizona’s problem was never that they didn’t have talent – they simply needed a cultural shift, and that’s exactly what Bryant’s brought them. Effort, focus, and unselfishness – that’s why Bryant might be a first round pick in the draft.

Bryant’s NIL Impact

And it’s also why he’s worth $637K in NIL, which comes in at 42^nd in the nation for men’s basketball. About halfway through the season, I would have told you that Arizona had overpaid big-time for the five-star recruit. But, as many of these things go, I was wrong. He just wasn’t playing enough.

Bryant’s also a great case study in how we evaluate NIL. Oftentimes we rely heavily on statistics to make our case for why a guy should get paid what he’s getting paid – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, to be clear.

But a guy like Bryant’s impact stretches way beyond the box score. His career high in college is only 14 points... However, his team wins nearly every game when he plays over 21 minutes. It’s uncanny, and undeniable, his impact.

Bryant might go to the NBA next season – he’s certainly talented enough to attract first round buzz. But if he comes back to school, I’d expect his NIL asking price to be much closer to $1 million.

Carter Bryant is the reason it’s really hard to figure out who’s worth paying NIL money to. Some guys that are worth maybe $1 million are left on the bench for the majority of their first season. Other guys are thrust into the limelight too quickly, or given a ton of NIL money in the portal, and thus subject to way more scrutiny from the fanbase for their price tag. Just ask Coleman Hawkins:

The lesson here? NIL valuations aren’t pure measures of talent or value. They’re contextual pieces of information — based on how they’ve played in practice, the games, and so many more things.

Carter Bryant is well worth more than his NIL price tag this season, but we’d never know it if we didn’t get to see him play. But perhaps he actually wasn’t ready to play yet either — then his NIL valuation may have been worse than it is today. Once again, it’s all contextual. Which is why NIL valuation is hard to parse out.

If Arizona goes on a run this season, that number will change. His valuation could double, even, based on his performance in four games. That fact alone should get you to the TV for March Madness — these athletes stand to double their lifetime earnings based off of one or two good games in March. Only in college sports man.

Hope you enjoyed this film study – let us know if you’re a fan of this type of content by simply responding to this email. We’ll see you again soon!