Jay Bilas

On Thursday night, the basketball world turns its eyes toward the young men who will have basketball fans glued to their screens not only on NBA Draft night, but for years to come.

And one of the men who will work on the desk for ESPN’s coverage of the 2023 NBA Draft, Jay Bilas, joins Ariel Helwani today for a wide-ranging conversation about not only what will take place on Thursday, but also an array of subjects, like:

• His memories from the night Nikola Jokic was drafted by the Denver Nuggets in 2014 (17:45)
• How Bilas has built a career out of telling it like it is, even if it puts him at odds with ESPN (26:28)
• The potential of Victor Wembanyama, the French phenom who the San Antonio Spurs will select with the No. 1 overall pick on Thursday night (36:00)
• The NIL movement in college athletics and whether it’s working the way Bilas hoped it would (42:12)

Plus, Bilas goes deep on his law career, his annual basketball camp, his famous Young Jeezy tweets, the TikTok-ification of basketball, and why he feels 1986 No. 2 overall draft pick Len Bias could have been one of the greatest players ever.

Jay Bilas is a college basketball analyst for ESPN. One of the foremost voices in collegiate athletics, Bilas has called games for the worldwide leader since the 1990s. A four-year player at Duke under coaching legend Mike Krzyzewski, Bilas is also a practicing lawyer.

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