Listening to the many basketball experts analyze young players before last night’s NBA draft is fascinating and instructive.

What are the most reliable criteria to judge them, predict how well they’ll likely fare in the NBA, and understand why certain teams would benefit most from picking them?

I’m not a basketball expert, but here is what I’ve gleaned from their criteria and analyses. First, their college records or records in high-level leagues in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere. Second, their strengths and weaknesses based on several criteria and metrics. Third, their potential to improve significantly, which, of course, will be evaluated differently by various experts. Fourth, how their games, physiques, character, basketball IQ, etc. will flourish, or at least succeed, in the evolving playing style of the NBA. Fifth, how well their assets fit the offensive and defensive needs of a particular team or teams.

Basketball and tennis have much in common, but also major differences. In the latter category, tennis has three different surfaces, is an individual sport in singles, and is played with a racket and mostly outdoors. In the former category, both sports require tremendous athleticism: high levels of speed, agility, flexibility, stamina, strength, energy and explosiveness, hand-eye and foot-eye coordination, reflexes, and jumping.

Sometimes it’s easy to predict future greatness in both sports. In basketball, LeBron James, and last year, Victor Wembanyama, were surefire NBA future stars, if not superstars. In tennis, Carlos Alcaraz, and before him, teen queens Chris Evert and Serena Williams were touted as can’t-miss prospects.

But sometimes it’s more difficult to predict who will make it big or even make it at all. For example, the Cleveland Cavaliers made a disastrous No. 1 pick in the 2013 NBA draft. Selecting the ruggedly built, but untalented Anthony Bennett mystified the experts. They proved right as Bennett was a colossal bust.

Tennis writers also enjoy the challenge of picking teen talents that will become top 50, top 10, and even No. 1 players sooner or later.

My new book — Game Changers: How the Greatest Players, Matches, and Controversies Transformed Tennis — contains a 2019 feature-analysis piece, “Ten Terrific Teens on the Tennis Horizon,” which also includes five more talented young women. Five years later, you can judge how my picks turned out.

Coaches Choice, the outstanding publisher of the award-winning “The Fein Points of Tennis,” will release “Game Changers: How the Greatest Players, Matches, and Controversies Transformed Tennis” in late July.