Three Former Indiana Mr. Basketball Winners Draw 2026 NBA Draft Interest

Indiana high school basketball's highest individual honor doesn't often send three consecutive-era recipients into the same NBA Draft conversation. This year it has. Braylon Mullins (2025), Flory Bidunga (2024), and Braden Smith (2022) each drew meaningful pro attention heading into the 2026 draft cycle, a concentration of Mr. Basketball winners on a single board that reflects how deep the state's pipeline has run in recent years.

The freshest moment belongs to Mullins, the Greenfield-Central product who gave NBA scouts a live-action résumé update on March 29. With UConn trailing Duke and 0.4 seconds on the clock in the Elite Eight, Mullins caught the ball 35 feet from the basket and launched a shot that dropped through cleanly to give the Huskies a 73-72 win and a trip to the Final Four. The moment played nationally within minutes of the final buzzer.

At Greenfield-Central, Mullins was a 32.9-point scorer as a senior, adding 7.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and 3.7 steals per game while shooting 47 percent from three-point range and leading the team to a 23-4 record. He arrived at UConn as a five-star recruit and 2025 McDonald's All-American, his résumé built entirely on scoring volume, range, and defensive activity at a mid-size Indiana program. Those are precisely the traits that produced his Elite Eight shot. The gap between that version of Mullins and a draft selection is currently thin: he averaged 12.0 points per game as a freshman before UConn reached the national championship game against Michigan.

Bidunga, the 2024 Mr. Basketball from Kokomo, operated in a different register at Kansas. The 6-foot-10 sophomore center led the Big 12 in both blocks (2.6 per game) and field-goal percentage (.640) while averaging 13.3 points and 9.0 rebounds across 34 starts. Reports emerged after the season that he plans to declare for the draft. In high school, Bidunga was recruited primarily on physical projection: length, athleticism, and shot-blocking instinct. Two seasons with the Jayhawks confirmed the defensive ceiling. His draft concern mirrors the same gap his recruitment identified: an offensive toolkit still centered on rim finishing with limited creation away from the basket.

Smith, the Westfield graduate who won the 2022 award, enters the draft as the most accomplished of the three. The Purdue senior averaged 15.8 points, 8.7 assists, 4.5 rebounds, and 2.2 steals per game, won the Big Ten Player of the Year award and the Bob Cousy Award, and broke Bobby Hurley's 33-year-old Division I career assists record, logging his 1,077th career assist in the first round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament. At Westfield, his recruitment was built around IQ and feel rather than size or athleticism, and those are precisely the traits NBA evaluators are now weighing against a 6-foot frame that projects him into the mid- to late-second round.

Having three Mr. Basketball recipients from the 2022 through 2025 window generate simultaneous pro attention is not the standard in any state. Indiana IHSAA players watching those three names cycle through draft boards have a concrete illustration of what the award can precede: a path from Kokomo or Westfield or Greenfield directly to an NBA combine, and in Mullins' case, to a logo shot on national television that the entire country replayed.