Take anything in life. Whether it’s playing a game of chess or doing your taxes, winning or succeeding at the highest level requires a strategy where you can find an advantage against your opponent or within the system.
Winning at the highest level of the NBA is all about finding advantages within razor-thin margins. If it’s the draft, it could be about maximizing the level of talent you can add on a rookie-scale deal. With scouting, it could be investing in underutilized facets like pro-player scouting where teams can gain an advantage against the field by finding undervalued players in restrictive contexts. On the NBA court, teams and players win at the highest level by creating advantages and effectively acting upon them.
Advantage creation on the basketball court is the ability to create extra rotations against opposing defenses, creating a numbers advantage that opens up easier baskets. Basketball is a sport that is all about creating these extra rotations on the court. That idea is amplified by the fact that basketball has fewer players on the court than other team sports such as American football, baseball, or football. With only five players on the court at a time for a team and individual players able to play 75% or more of each game, the value that impact players such as stars can have is larger than in other team sports (Sanderson and Siegfried, 2003). Having even a slight numbers advantage is often the difference between an offense finding efficient shots versus being deterred by a defense and finding a worse shot.
Think about the 2024 NBA champions, the Boston Celtics, for example. The Celtics run a 5-out offense that maximizes the spacing on the court by consistently having five players on the court who can dribble, pass, and shoot. The increased spacing opens up avenues for players to have larger windows to dribble, pass, and shoot due to the defense needing to give all five players defensive attention, stretching the defense thin. Even within this offensive structure, players need to be able to collapse defenses and put them in scramble mode to create a numbers advantage and truly leverage that spacing. The Celtics’ offense is predicated on this idea of all five players being able to drive and collapse the defense to open up more valuable shots on the perimeter.
The best teams in the NBA can create advantages in different ways, enabling them to be versatile and tackle several different defensive schemes that are thrown at them. Advantages can be created through driving, leveraging strength in the post or even shooting gravity where shooters can move on or off the ball to tilt defenses. Part of the reason that the Celtics had a dominant 16-3 run in the playoffs is that even though their offense was built on the principles of driving advantage creation, they had the versatility to create post advantages through players like Kristaps Porzingis and Jayson Tatum. When healthy, Porzingis was able to create advantages in the post and score consistently in the regular season, the most efficient post-up player in the NBA with at least two post-up possessions a game on a scorching 1.30 points-per-possession.
Drawing two or more players from a standstill without the help of scheme is often the most valuable tool for an NBA offense, and it is often why advantage creation is a star trait. When it comes to the NBA draft, this is often why prospects who can create advantages from a standstill on volume tend to be high draft picks. It is a star trait you can see in top picks like Victor Wembanyama, Luka Doncic, Anthony Edwards, Zion Williamson, and Ja Morant.
All the players mentioned above achieve that level of play not just by consistently creating those advantages, but also by perceiving and capitalizing on them while possessing a counter when defenses attempt to nullify their primary methods of advantage creation (i.e. when the defense clogs driving lanes by helping off non-shooters).
Advantage Creation Vs. Scalability
In the NBA draft, a question arises on how these players bring value to a team when the advantage creation is not to the degree of being a primary ballhandler. How can these players play effectively off the ball if most of their value comes from how they tilt defenses on the ball? This question of scalability arises when talking about these prospects, but I believe these concerns are often overblown because advantage creation is a skill that inherently lends itself to scalability.
With how offenses are built around a player or multiple players’ ability to create advantages, that heliocentric perspective can make it difficult to bring into focus how advantage creation lends to a player supporting an offensive structure off the ball. The degree of value varies across forms of advantage creation, with shooting gravity-based advantages the most scalable off-the-ball with how it stretches defenses. Think of how Stephen Curry completely changes the geometry of the court, without even having to touch the ball, the sole threat of his shot opens up easier shots in other areas of the court.
Even outside of shooting, the skills a player gains through driving advantage creation can help the player scale off the ball. When the player has a high degree of margin with their drives due to the athletic tools and skills they possess, it can create off-ball gravity as well. How, you may ask? Let’s take the example of Zion Williamson who has a truly outlier toolset as a driver but can’t threaten defenses with his shot. How does someone like him keep defenses honest when the ball is out of his hands? A player like Williamson can be sagged off of because they’re not a threat to shoot, but what this does is it gives him a larger window to create an advantage off the ball. It gives him the space to now get downhill, leverage his physical tools more effectively, and collapse the defense to a higher degree, either opening up a shot on the perimeter or an opportunity to score at the rim.
The same skills that Williamson would use on his drives on the ball parlay to a role off of the catch, and change the geometry of the defense in different ways. Post-up players can similarly do this off the ball with drives that turn into post-ups (Barkleys), using their strength to change their proximity to the rim and draw multiple players to protect the rim.
Due to how these traits still tilt defenses off the ball, I believe advantage creation traits are actually the most scalable traits in basketball. That scalability is then amplified by the degree to which a player can create advantages and the vehicle (shooting touch, burst, strength, etc) they use to deliver those advantages. The clear examples I would use are Dennis Smith Jr. (DSJ) and Zion Williamson. The ability to scale off the ball is a lot more effective with a player like Williamson but this does not mean Dennis Smith Jr. can not create off-ball gravity to a lesser degree with the threat of his first step and vertical explosion as a play-finisher. Even though DSJ fell short of his ceiling, his floor was higher due in part to these advantage-creating traits.
Two Feet In The Paint
Outside of shooting gravity, I find that advantages created through driving are often the most efficient ways to create offense due to how quickly these advantages are created within the shot clock and the degree to which it puts defenses in scramble mode. The speed at which these breaks in the defensive shell are typically created makes it more difficult for the defense to react and retaliate, speeding up the ability for an offense to find an efficient shot earlier in the shot clock while also having a higher margin of error to maintain the advantage.
The best drivers in the league also collapse defenses to such a high degree with how deep they can get into the paint. This is a crucial factor when projecting high-level drivers in the NBA: how consistently can the player get two feet in the paint and how complex does their drive have to be to get there? Due to how much ground needs to be covered to recover back out to the perimeter once a deep paint touch is created, the best driving advantage creators can open up high-value shots to the perimeter in strong-side kickouts or even skip passes to the weak side. Two feet in the paint also opens up opportunities for other players lurking near the rim to get easy rim attempts, just due to the defensive attention required by the ballhandler’s paint pressure
Perceiving when these passes are available as an advantage creator is a huge part of being a primary driver, whether it’s being able to find these open shots at the rim or the perimeter on volume.
Advantage Perception
“Advantage Perception is recognizing that there is an advantage and identifying what action, angle, timing and delivery will create the best possible opportunities for the team to score. Advantage perception is about deciding what hurts a defense most at any given time.”
– PD Web
This is what I mean when I say a player has to leverage his advantages effectively. To be a high-level creator in the NBA you need the ability to create advantages to a high degree while also perceiving what shot hurts the defense the most. You need both and let me spotlight that with two examples:
If you can perceive what passes hurt the defense the most but can’t get the defense to completely tilt, you end up with a far smaller shot window.
Here the Creighton Bluejays run a triple drag into an empty-side PNR off of a broken play where Baylor Scheierman (#55) is unable to initially create an advantage off of a drive. Scheierman and Francisco Farabello (#5) set ghost screens off of the drag and Fredrick King (#33) sets a screen to set up the roll for the empty-side PNR. The idea here is for the ballhandler to explode into the space created by the empty side to open up a shot at the rim for King or a pass to the ghost screeners for an open 3. Trey Alexander’s inability to create these advantages from a standstill, especially with the trap from Iowa, forces him to make the pass earlier. Alexander perceives what pass makes the defense hurt, but because he doesn’t create a real numbers advantage with his explosion, the defense can recover back to Scheierman, which makes his shot window far smaller and the offense has to settle for a tougher shot.
On the other side of this, being able to make the defense commit with your paint pressure but failing to recognize these advantages can also hinder the offense.
Here Anthony Edwards (#5) creates an advantage off of his drive, beating Jaden Hardy (#1) off the dribble with his explosion and keeps him on his hip which forces Lively (#2) to play further up on the drive so that Edwards does not have an open shot. The second Lively commits, if there was one more step from Edwards, it opens a lob over the top of the defense or a dump-off finish for Rudy Gobert (#27). Edwards fails to perceive this advantage effectively and it leads to a shot that the Mavs are completely happy with.
The upper-echelon of advantage creators in the NBA need to be able to both create these advantages and perceive them with volume, otherwise, it gives the defense options to deter and force an offense to take an unwanted shot.
The 2024 NBA Draft
So how do we apply this to the NBA draft? The 2024 NBA draft is considered one of the worst in recent times and that may be due to the lack of surefire advantage-creation prospects at the top. There are flawed advantage creator bets in this class, however, I feel like there is one prospect that is going under the radar in this class: a prospect that has both the tools and feel to reach a high-end advantage creation outcome.
Blink And You Might Miss Him
The hardest things to develop to be a volume standstill advantage creator, especially as a driver, are the athletic tools to create advantages and the feel to perceive the advantages. Shooting, and handling development to a lesser degree, can be developed when the touch and coordination are there. Feel and athletic tools are far harder to improve on. The driving prospect needs to show signs of being able to absorb a high volume of self-created drives within their shot diet and the feel to see what opportunities open up with their advantages. Ron Holland is that prospect this year and let me explain why.
Let’s start with the driving. A barely 19-year-old, 6’8″ wing in shoes, 196.8 pounds, and a 6’10.75″ wingspan, Ron Holland’s primary way of getting buckets is as a driver. So how is Ron as a driver, does he create advantages consistently and perceive them? To answer this question I thought it would make some sense to do some statistical analysis and contextualize his driving profile.
I started by compiling a sample that fit these requirements since the 2010 NBA Draft:
- Wing~Forward sized (greater than or equal to 6’6″ and lesser than equal to 6’10”)
- Freshman~Sophomore aged (below the age of 20.5 years at draft time.)
- Top-20 picks (beyond lottery range to account for high RSCI players who may have slid in the draft.)
- From College or G-League Ignite context.
I included Ron in this sample, and I used these thresholds as proxies to fit Ron’s combination of size, age, and talent. Now to measure a player’s driving advantage creation and their passing advantage perception, I captured two stats that could form a proxy. For driving advantage creation, I will use unassisted rim attempts per game to get a fair idea of how many self-created drives a player has. For passing advantage perception, I will use assist/usage ratio to understand how often a player is assisting relative to their usage. While there is noise in both of these proxies, viewing them in relation can form an idea of how a player is creating advantages and perceiving them as a driver.
It’s probably a little difficult to see everything in this visualization, so let’s zoom in to make it easier on our eyes. Since we are looking for drivers who meet the baseline to be a volume advantage creator, let us look at guys specifically over 2.5 unassisted rim attempts a game and an AST/USG ratio above 0.4.
The colors of the dot also represent age to spotlight the production relative to age. As you can see, Holland’s unassisted drive volume is unprecedented at 6.71 drives a game. Over double the volume of players like Paolo Banchero and Paul George, while being almost a year younger than players like that. Now there might be some trepidation with comparing college players with Ignite players, and some of Ron’s unprecedented volume can be explained by the fact that there is more of a developmental focus with Ignite, court dimensions being larger and pace being higher in the G League.
But here’s the kicker, Holland’s volume is unprecedented even against players who played through the G League Ignite context. Players that were closer to Ron’s usage rate (28.1%), like Scoot Henderson (26.8%) and Jalen Green (23.2%), were unable to crack over 4 unassisted drives a game.
Ron Holland (#0) was assisted on only 23.24% of all of his rim attempts, a stat I hand-tracked by watching all of his shot attempts, but how does he do this? Holland uses a combination of elite burst, flexibility, and body control to consistently get two feet in the paint
Holland has this unique ability to keep his upper body upright while getting extremely low on drives and springing back up like an outstretched coil that’s returned to its original state which allows him to explode into tight areas around the rim to access more finishing angles. These movement skills are a product of his body control and you can see it in his driving counters too. He can get extremely far in the paint, despite his slighter frame, due to his explosive burst to beat defenders but it’s his deceleration and change of direction that lull defenses and allow him to get in position to finish the advantage created. The upright upper half also enables him to access more passing angles which he’ll be able to act upon more consistently as his handle develops but this is where Holland’s advantage perception comes in.
Decisions On What Hurt The Defense
Holland’s AST/USG ratio in relation to his unassisted drive volume paints a picture of a player who can carry some creation usage for his NBA team eventually. Holland’s profile steers him clear of maxing out as a pure play-finisher like Anthony Bennett, Kelly Oubre, and Kevin Knox because these players had something in common: extremely low AST/USG ratio (less than 0.3) and low self-created drive volume (less than 2 drives a game). With an AST/USG ratio of 0.58, Holland shows a decent amount of playmaking volume for a score-first wing that is 18 years old in a pro context. The 0.58 AST/USG tracks with other score-first wing-forwards like Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Paolo Banchero, Zion Williamson, Aaron Gordon, Justice Winslow, and Romeo Langford (0.49 to 0.65 AST/USG).
Watching the tape, that number matches up both in how much high-level feel he exhibits as a passer and how he sometimes can be overtly determined to score even when a passing window opens up. Some of Holland’s potential assists also get lost with AST% because it only covers passes where a teammate finished the play. These often counted as turnovers against Holland and it brought his AST/TO ratio to a smidge below 1 at 0.86.
Handling
Holland’s handle has limitations that affect his advantage perception. 61.6% (61/99) of his turnovers were specifically handle-related, caused by early shuffling on drives, not being able to slow his dribble down on some drives, or struggling with stunts and digs at his handle. 38.4% of these turnovers were passing turnovers that were due to a combination of poor ball placement/delivery and teammates not being able to catch passes on the move. Holland’s accuracy as a passer is often affected by his handle as well, throwing errant passes when he’s forced to pick up the dribble.
Holland’s feel is apparent when he doesn’t have to dribble the ball with most of his layered reads coming from a standstill.
His handle has two main issues: ball control and a lack of ambidexterity. He’s often moving quicker than his handle allows for, it’s like his handle is playing catch-up and trying to get back in a race with Holland’s athleticism. This often causes high dribbles when moving north-south, and this causes his handle to marginally mitigate his burst as the dribble does not cover as much ground as his burst does.
The other issue is that Holland is more comfortable using his right hand to finish and pass. He struggles to deliver passes or make finishes at the rim with his left hand, often using his right hand to support the ball when he’s doing this. Problem-solving for Holland becomes more complicated this way as the lack of comfort with his left causes him to access fewer passing angles and finishing angles. He often tries to find ways to finish with his right regardless and this has caused an overreliance on early gathers and windmill gathers to throw defenders off balance and gain access to a right-handed finish.
The combination of these issues also makes it difficult for Holland to gather the ball effectively into passing deliveries, struggling to lift the ball on a live dribble, especially from the left. His AST/USG ratio is mostly explained by these handle issues and it is not an issue of feel or perceiving what passes need to be made to hurt the defense. Holland’s advantage perception is high based on the tape but he is unable to leverage it consistently because of the lack of refinement in his handling and his shooting.
Shooting
The other part of perceiving advantages is deciding when your shot is the best shot to hurt defenses. Holland can take it to the rim with volume, but how does he hurt defenses with his shooting? The results from the perimeter were not great with the Ignite, where he shot 25.2%, but there is some room for optimism with his shot.
Mechanically, Holland has some work to do. He takes a deep dip, pushes his knees outward, and forms a knee valgus when organizing his shot to generate more energy into his release. This is his shooting mechanics accommodating for the strength and stability required to shoot from the NBA line. Additionally, he has inconsistent guide hand usage that causes opposite momentum to his shooting trajectory. He moves his guide hand inconsistently right before releasing, which causes extra rotations on the ball and introduces some side spin at times that causes his shot to be off the mark.
Statistically, some indicators give me confidence in his long-term shooting projection. His touch indicators inside the arc are great for an 18-year-old wing: shooting 73.7% from the free throw line, 33.3% on jumpers, and 37.5% on hooks and floaters.
What I value from Holland’s shooting profile the most is the level of confidence he takes jump shots with and the frequency he takes them considering his high drive volume. He had a 3-point rate of 22%, with high versatility where 49.4% of his shots came off the dribble. To me, this is valuable because volume and frequency when there is touch are the most important statistical indicators of shooting potential because those numbers can be a proxy for shooting comfort, confidence, and how much a coach trusts them to take that shot within the structure of their offense.
These numbers may not look eye-popping at a glance, so let me contextualize his shooting profile against other young wings and forwards that were close to Holland’s passing advantage perception (AST/USG). This should help contextualize Holland’s shot frequency and efficiency against players who similarly assisted the ball relative to their usage.
Shooting projection is complex but Holland has good indicators relative to this sample, grading out on the higher end with free throw efficiency, volume, and efficiency on non-rim attempts inside the arc, and even 3-point rate when you consider how many more rim attempts he had in his shooting profile.
Conclusion
Advantage creation is the lifeblood of NBA offenses and is critical for how efficient an offense can be. As a driver, Ron Holland stands far above his peers with the number of advantages he creates at the rim and the degree to which he puts a defense in scramble mode. His season with the Ignite shows that he can scale his production to a viable creation role in the NBA.
Overall, Ron Holland needs to be able to test defenses with his shot so that they do not go consistently under screens to guard him. With his margins as an advantage creator, the shot will mostly be a counter for his primary form of scoring at the rim. While I do not have the chance to discuss his motor and defense in this piece, these are two aspects of his games that should help him stay on the court early on as the driving advantage creation and advantage perception can be leveraged more effectively with time. The ability to leverage them improving with strength, handling, and shooting development.
His margins as an athlete and the growth he’s shown as a creator since his days in high school (Duncanville), where he played more as an energy big with short roll passing, are real signs that Holland has more upside as a creator. The pitfalls with him are that the handle and shooting may not develop to that degree, but he has a high floor as a play finisher and defender. Take into consideration that this past year was Holland’s first real year of operating as a primary ballhandler. His self-created drive numbers and baseline of advantage perception are tantalizing at his age, and it gives me confidence that Holland is on a development curve where his future NBA team can effectively utilize his creation as a secondary or tertiary valve, and in some high-end cases as a primary.
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