Bakari Copeland rises from Harlem Wizard to SlamBall draft No. 3 pick

Rumble did not spend the No. 3 overall pick on Bakari Copeland for a tidy basketball résumé alone. It drafted a 6-foot-6, 225-pound scorer with a Harlem Wizards act, an actor’s flair and the kind of aerial burst SlamBall has always prized.

Copeland went third overall in the first round of the 2023 SlamBall Draft on June 28, a seven-round draft that fed the league’s relaunch season at Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas. The league’s return came with a two-year ESPN broadcast partnership covering the 2023 and 2024 seasons, with the schedule running from July 21 to August 19 and the championship game set for August 17 on ESPN2. In that setting, Rumble and coach Ken Carter made their choice count: a nontraditional player whose profile looked built for the league’s contact-heavy, above-the-rim style.

The route to that selection was anything but standard. Copeland came into the league as one of the more recognizable names in the 2023 player pool, thanks to his time with the Harlem Wizards, his work as an actor and his stint as the face of a Lucky Charms commercial. He joined the Wizards in 2023 under the nickname “Glitch,” but the draft case was bigger than branding. Copeland also forced his way into the conversation after not receiving an invite to SlamBall’s Super 24, then landed with a franchise tied to Carter’s championship history from the league’s original 2002 run.

His basketball production backed up the buzz. At Maryland-Eastern Shore, Copeland led the Hawks in 2016-17 with 17.4 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, scored in double figures in 31 of 34 games, and earned first-team All-MEAC honors along with BOXTOROW second-team All-American recognition. Across two seasons in Princess Anne, he averaged 14.0 points and 5.4 rebounds.

Copeland’s game had been announcing itself long before college. At Arabia Mountain High School in Decatur, Georgia, he was the top scorer in DeKalb County, won the DeKalb County and Atlanta Journal-Constitution slam dunk contests in 2013, and was named player of the year on February 20 of that year. After college, he played in Switzerland and Portugal, where he averaged 10.0 points and 3.6 rebounds for CAB Madeira in 2019-20.

That combination is what made Copeland a SlamBall fit: a real scorer, a proven dunker and a player whose personality could travel as fast as the highlight reel. For a league built on spectacle, Rumble’s third pick looked less like a gamble than a perfect match.