Clippers Select Kobe Brown With No. 30 Overall Pick

L.A. selects the four-year forward from Missouri.

The LA Clippers selected Kobe Brown, a forward from Missouri with No. 30 overall on Thursday evening at the 2023 NBA Draft.

Brown, a four-year player, averaged 15.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 2.5 assists per game across 34 contests this past collegiate season. Brown also shot 55.3 percent from the field and 45.5 percent on three-pointers.

Sam Vecenie of The Athletic wrote about Brown in his highly-detailed Draft guide:

Brown is one of the more interesting, theoretically well-rounded players in the class due to his ability to dribble/pass/shoot at his size.

Brown measured in at 6-foot-7 and 252 pounds with a 7-foot-1 wingspan at the NBA Draft Combine in May. Brown can presumably play as a combo forward at both the three and the four for the Clippers whenever he can see minutes.

The problems with Brown come with his age. Brown will turn 24 on New Year’s Day, and the likelihood of tangible progress in his career seems minimal. In a lot of ways, Brown could resemble former Clippers first-round pick Jerome Robinson. Both experienced a huge jump in stock in their final college seasons while being on the tad older side.

To Brown’s credit, according to Vecenie the newest Clipper does have some things working in his favor:

Every NBA team is looking for bigger guys with length who can dribble, pass and shoot. Brown can do that. There’s a world where you can see him playing both as a wing four man and a small-ball five given his strength. He is a valuable rotation player as long as he shoots. That bet is worth a late first-rounder; at the latest, an early second-rounder.

We’ll see how Brown pans out. But this doesn’t appear to be a wait-and-see pick. It’s one, due to age, that has to hit right away.

(More analysis and reporting of this breaking news will follow in the coming days.)