INDIANAPOLIS — Trey Kaufman-Renn is a deep thinker and a great talker, so when he goes quiet you start to wonder: What’s happening here? Kaufman-Renn was one of two Purdue basketball players who worked out for the Indiana Pacers on Monday before the 2026 NBA Draft, the other being All-American Boilermakers point guard Braden Smith of Westfield, and TKR goes quiet when someone tosses him a softball of a question:
What do you think makes Braden an NBA point guard?
Kaufman-Renn looks away. One second of silence passes, then two, now three.
“Um,” he says, then goes quiet again.
Another second passes, then another, and another.
What’s happening here? Is Kaufman-Renn stumped? Granted, Braden Smith is undersized for an NBA prospect, but this is getting awkward – until it’s not. Because TKR is about to start talking.
“I think a better question,” Kaufman-Renn says, “is why can’t he be a point guard in the NBA?”
OK, whew. Good answer.
And Kaufman-Renn isn’t done talking, either.
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Yes, he’ll be small for an NBA player
Turns out, Braden Smith isn’t just “small” for an NBA point guard. He’s tiny.
Smith measured at 5 foot 10¼ and 166 pounds at the 2026 NBA Draft Combine at Chicago, which would’ve made him the second-shortest (and second-lightest) player in the NBA this past season, bigger only than 5-7, 159-pound Yuki Kawamura of the Chicago Bulls. Just three other 2025-26 NBA players were listed at shorter than 6 feet tall – Sacramento’s Isaiah Stevens, Dallas’ Ryan Nembhard and San Antonio’s Jordan McLaughlin, all listed at 5-11 – and all three weighed between 180 and 185 pounds.
None of those four players were drafted, by the way, and only Nembhard played a significant role last season, starting 27 of 60 games and averaging 6.6 points and 5.3 assists in 19.5 minutes as a rookie. Nembhard was a good college player, but Smith was much better. How much better? Put it this way: Nembhard began his career at Creighton, then entered the transfer portal and played his final two seasons at Gonzaga – but Gonzaga took him in 2023 only after inquiring, through back channels, if Braden Smith was interested in leaving Purdue for the Pacific Northwest. (He wasn’t.)
Smith’s appearance Monday at the Pacers’ Ascension St. Vincent Center was his fourth pre-draft workout, which means the fourth time he was asked to defend his size. He has two more workouts scheduled this week, with the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets, which means two more times to answer the question.
“Every team I’ve gone to,” Smith was telling reporters Monday, “(they ask): ‘What do you have to work on?’”
Smith’s answer?
“I don’t know that I can necessarily work on it,” he says, “but get taller.”
It’s a ridiculous answer, but then, it’s a ridiculous question. What does Smith have to work on? He’s the best passer in the 2026 NBA Draft class – he left Purdue as college basketball’s all-time leader with 1,103 assists, you might’ve heard – and also scored 1,932 points (eighth in Purdue history), grabbed 673 rebounds (17th) and recorded 249 steals (third). For his career he shot 38.5% on 3-pointers and 83.2% from the line, also among career school leaders.
What does he have to work on? Other than his height, you mean?
Let’s get back to Kaufman-Renn. He was still talking, remember.
“He can do everything on the basketball court,” TKR said of Smith. “There’s not a hole in his game. He shoots well at three levels, he scores, he plays hard on the defensive end, for his size he rebounds. He puts people in the right places, can make every pass. So from an actual basketball perspective, there’s no reason he can’t play (in the NBA).”
Interesting words there.
From an actual basketball perspective…
Remind me: Does an expanded NBA box score list the player’s size?
Take it from Purdue coach Matt Painter, who told me Monday:
“Braden has always been someone who has overcome the odds,” Painter said. “He’s a winner and will have a successful NBA career.”
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Braden Smith, T.J. McConnell comparison
Smith understands the game will change for him in the NBA. No, not because he’ll be the smallest guy on the court. He’s always been the smallest guy on the court, as he was telling reporters Monday, saying it was a fact during his four years at Purdue, and it was a fact during his four years at Westfield.
“It continues to be a factor,” he says of his size, “and I find a way around that.”
The change in the NBA? This one will work in his favor, he figures, because the NBA team that drafts him won’t ask him to become the team’s starting point guard. Not at first, anyway.
“Obviously it’s going to be a lesser role than I had at Purdue,” he said. “So I feel like it’ll be easier on me – three-minute spurts, four-minute spurts where you’re playing super hard, and come off and sit for eight minutes, whatever, then you come back and bring energy.”
Indeed, Smith won’t have to do the heavy lifting he did at Purdue, where he set the NCAA career record for minutes played by a four-year player (5,067). No, in the NBA he’ll be asked to fit into a smaller role as the team’s second-unit point guard.
Think: T.J. McConnell of the Indiana Pacers. And don’t think Smith hasn’t considered the comparison.
“Huge fan,” Smith said of his feelings for the 6-1, 190-pound McConnell. “I watch his game. Been a Pacers guy my entire life almost – been to multiple games every year – just watching T.J. Obviously being similar size, I’ll have to do probably what he has to do in the league even to just make it, so for me, why not watch somebody who’s been successful and has done it at a high level for so long?
“That’s what you’ve got to do, and you take bits and pieces from everybody. I watch Brunson,” Smith said of New York Knicks star and 2026 NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson, listed at 6-2, 190 pounds. “I watch those guys that are able to be successful in this league (against) taller dudes, more athletic dudes, and find a way to survive it.”
First at Class 6A Westfield, where he was the 2022 IndyStar Mr. Basketball, and then at Purdue, Smith has always done what McConnell and Brunson have done: He wins. He makes players around him better. They’re three different players, obviously, with Brunson being more of a ball-dominant scorer and McConnell much less of a perimeter threat, but all three do the same thing at an elite level: exert maximum pressure on opposing defenses.
Smith, who teamed with Kaufman-Renn and Fletcher Loyer for 117 victories at Purdue – a program record for a senior class – was doing it again Monday. And he was doing it to Trey Kaufman-Renn, no less, who was asked after his eighth pre-draft workout if the presence of Smith had improved his “comfort level.”
“No,” TKR said, “it wasn’t comfortable because he was on the other team.”
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Now Smith is making teams around the NBA uncomfortable, because next week one of them will have to justify why they drafted a 5-10, 166-pound point guard in the 2026 NBA Draft – and the other 29, someday, will have to justify why they didn’t.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Doyel: Why draft undersized Purdue point guard Braden Smith? Better question: Why NOT?
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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By Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
