“My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.”

Or, as I probably oversimplify it, “climb the ladder to forget the ladder.” This passage has always stuck with me. Climbing the ladder refers to the constructs we use to advance our knowledge. In essence, once you have used certain tools to conceptualize an issue, you should focus on what you’ve learned rather than fixate on what got you there.

In draft work we are constantly climbing ladders. The name of the game is summarizing a player’s entire future performance in an ever-changing sport in a single numerical number: their rank. To do this we must conceptualize, using shorthand to assign values to various aspects of a player’s game. “Strong handle” we may label to several players on a big board. We give players these labels through visual cues, box score watching, media consensus, etc., all which color in the lines of our conceptualizations of a player. When you rank someone, you imagine their game in your head, but have to shorthand it through a skill grouping (“he’s the most versatile, therefore he’s a lottery pick”), player type (“he’s the best advantage creator, therefore he’s first overall”) or player comparisons (“he’s a Jaren Jackson Jr. type, therefore he is a top five prospect”).

We all do this, it’s the only way to get through it as there is no single perfect measure to represent this complex answer. What I am proposing, however, is to be more explicit about it. This is why I made a major change to my philosophical framework this draft cycle. I took all that I had learned from prior cycles where I had used a top-down model to assign discrete values. I climbed the ladder by internalizing the lessons from this framework, but left it behind to construct an original, new model.

My top-down model in the past worked like this: for every prospect, I would assign probabilities of them being anywhere from a -8 to +8 impact per 100 possessions player at their peak. I then assigned values to each outcome, where +8 was more valuable relative to +6 than +6 was relative to +4, and so forth down the line. There is a limit to how negative a player will be, so everything -4 and worse was scored as a zero.

The goal was to better capture the extreme outcomes, but ultimately fell prey to the same biases that are involved with a pure rank. This system led me to being far too low on Brandin Podziemski, for example. While I liked everything about Podz’ game, I did not assign him any star odds given his mid major competition and seemingly mediocre lateral quickness. I let these two concerns convince me that even in an optimistic scenario he would have limitations keeping him from star upside. Now I’m not so sure.

My 2023-24 model, rather, is bottom-up. It looks at underlying components that make up a player’s relation to the game of basketball. Instead of handing out odds, I grade three factors on a scarcity scale. While I’m still coming up with numbers in a way that’s likely subject to biases, the hope is that this factor-driven approach can drastically reduce them.

The first factor is production. This is essentially how many good things the player makes happen on the court. There are many attempts (such as Box Plus-Minus) to measure this which offer helpful aids in analysis. But there are also non box-score events like screens, deflections, box outs which are technically still production even though not counted. The way I liked to think about production is “how many things does this player make happen almost by accident” to capture the moving block of skill that is a productive player.

The second factor is feel. Now, we already see issues limiting the utility of my model. How does one produce without feel? How can you gauge it separately? Well, I can try. There are some measures that give clues, like assist to turnover ratio and stocks to foul ratio, but that is far from the full picture. Like productivity, but even more so, we must rely on the tape.

Third is dynamic athleticism, i.e. how much dominance a player can assert through physical means. Once again, overlap with the other two, but other clues available like number of dunks, offensive rebounds, drives, free throw rate. But I again find tape-watching essential: how does a player move and will it hold up at the next level?

I took public notes on my process, writing the three pieces linked above to show examples that were helping me determine the definitions. A quick reaction time to swipe a ball away: that is productive but also high feel, and if employing physicality then a plus for athleticism as well.

One major source of comfort in this methodology is that, even if there are overlaps in my grading, it would likely be in fertile territory for growth. The goal is not to measure current performance but that of a player over the course of their NBA career. The traits that fit into all three categories are likely solid foundations to grow upon. These are the undisputed tools that feed into development as much as current production.

One example of how the tri-factor process plays out, obvious to anyone following my content this season, is Jonathan Mogbo. He grades very well in all three factors: he was a highly productive NCAA player (though with competition level questions leading to a very good rather than elite grade); he was a highly effective passer, nailing teammates on structured and improvised reads alike (though his occasionally poor defensive reaction time keeps him from elite territory); his athleticism is unquestionable, third in the NCAA in dunks at 6’6.25’’ and a 7’2’’ wingspan. Why wouldn’t he be a successful NBA player?

However, the issue still persists: this is not a clear measurement of basketball value, more like a fuzzy approximation of ability and developmental slope. The overlap between factors will lead to misses, as my biases inevitably will assign points for gray area traits in multiple categories for some players. A full cycle of providing these grades certainly helped make the lines between factors are clear as possible, but there are still limitations. While the model is bottom-up in dissecting a player’s characteristics, it does not map cleanly to on-court happenings.

That’s why we’re mixing it up again, babyyyy.

I am more than happy with my board outcome, with Zach Edey at the top, and other sleepers in Oso Ighodaro, Terrence Shannon Jr., Dylan Disu and Tristen Newton. But can we do better?

This time, we’re staying completely on the floor in the most literal way imaginable. Once again, we have three factors, but we’re splitting apart by dimensions of basketball impact. Expect a new series of three detailing this new process but the essence is this: how does a player move their skillful self around with pace while applying force? A mouthful to say “how good are they at basketball,” but a better definition of what we’re trying to measure.

In this way we can separate impact by stationary skillsets, movement traits and physical force. All items are indirectly observable through film and box score watching, and therefore have less overlap with each other as tied to direct observation. It will take some training to translate each factor distinctly, but that’s what Swish Theory is for.

Implementing a beta version of this model shows one clear beneficiary who my previous method may have been too low on: Gonzaga’s Anton Watson. While I was still higher than consensus before, now I wonder if he is a legitimate rotation piece. Here’s why.

In my previous model, I ranked Watson low in production, high in feel/processing and mediocre in athleticism. The low usage rate for a super senior was the production red flag in particular. But considering the new model, what exactly does Watson not accomplish on the court?

Anton Watson had a 9.2 Box Plus-Minus, second in the WCC to Mogbo, which he accomplished partially by being skilled for his size. At 6’7’’, Watson can dribble some, shoot some and pass some, all while being a high stocks player on defense. Getting steals is skillful, and Watson has some of the best hands in class to help him do so. While not much of a shooter over his college career, he came alive this season as a 67th percentile efficiency spot up shooter and 74th percentile efficiency on runners. His touch was elite on layups, at 92nd percentile efficiency. He can set strong screens. There are not many areas of the court where Watson can’t have an impact. There is our first dimension.

Watson is also a good mover, not necessarily through mobility (though that’s fine) but intentionality. Watson is always in the right spot, leading to a very good 2.8% steal rate and 2.1% block rate while only fouling three times per forty minutes. He also advanced his driving, up by 40% per game from the season before. Not only is he skilled, but he moves to the right spot to utilize that skill. There is our second dimension.

Finally, Watson is strong as f*ck. He is a menace when he has a head of steam, a perfect 30 for 30 on dunks this season, and with a strong 0.44 free throw rate over his college career. Watson is skillful and able to be in the right place and also strong enough to enforce his will. There is our third dimension.

There were other major shifts in my ranking, too.

Players with substantial rises up my board: Anton Watson, Jaylin Williams, Ulrich Chomche, Dillon Jones, Reece Beekman, Kevin McCullar, Jared McCain, DaRon Holmes II, Dylan Disu.

Players with substantial falls down my board: Baylor Scheierman, Cody Williams, Zaccharie Risacher, Dalton Knecht, Matas Buzelis, Carlton Carrington, Alexandre Sarr.

Let’s see what trends we can parse from these differences.

Summarizing all the stats for these groups shows the risers exceling in two areas in particular compared to the fallers: steals (+47% in steal rate) despite a decline in fouling (-9%) and assists (+33% assist rate, +21% assist to turnover ratio). The increase in steals while declining in fouls points to surgical physicality and movement ability, as does the increase in assists with only modest increase in turnovers. This fits nicely with our new conceptualization of “skillful self moving with pace and force.”

The increase in assists, particularly to this degree, may be surprising, but passing is a substantial factor for covering ground. In particular, this method puts a premium on passers with a variety of deliveries, like Tyler Kolek, Reece Beekman and Dillon Jones. The more ways a player can make the ball move, the more space the opponent has to cover.

While Carlton Carrington has a very high assist rate, he still tumbled down my board due to very poor applied physicality: Carrington has the lowest steal rate of the groups and a sub-1% block rate. A player of Ajay Mitchell’s mold, meanwhile, struggles to pick up stocks without fouling (highest foul rate in both groups at 4.7 per 40 minutes). But he makes up for it in applied force due to his shiftiness on offense. With his flexibility and change of direction ability, his defender feels as if he was pushed backwards: that’s force applied by the ballhandler.

It may be surprising to see some names I was already low on among the fallers, specifically Williams, Risacher, Knecht and Buzelis. All four of them have limitations with their passing and steal rates and are below average in applied force. There is a good chance one of the four proves me wrong, but right now I view them as borderline undraftable players. A major divergence from consensus, with validation depending on the eventual results.

Ulrich Chomche is another standout name, rising from UDFA territory to first round consideration. Chomche is very young at 18.5, playing with NBA Academy Africa this past season. A very unusual profile for the three games with stats available, Chomche shot 33% on few attempts from two but 38% on many attempts from three. He did this while also blocking a ton of fouls and almost never fouling. Watching him, this applied physicality jumps off the page, especially for his age. His passing ability and shooting form are both excellent for a 6’10.25” player of his age as well. In the little game tape that is available of Chomche, he can be found making hit ahead passes in transition, operating out of the top of the key and just generally trying things. While still raw, he may be quite difficult to play against in his prime. The bet is appealing because if he hits, he has access to much more of the game and with more tools to act than someone like the 2024 draft’s number one pick.

There will certainly be flaws in this methodology as well, which is what the next cycle is for. We all use a lens to watch the game, whether aware of it or not, so might as well be explicit about it. This new model does not replace tape or data-based prospect analysis; in fact, it supplements it as the exact purpose. While there remain points of clarification, still, let’s check back in a year from now and see if we have gotten any closer.

The post Lessons from the Draft Cycle appeared first on Swish Theory.

We’ll have to wait and see if Arkansas turns into a prospect factory, but the Kentucky to NBA pipeline through Coach Cal is now officially over. Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham, both projected lottery picks, are the last to join this high-achieving group. But can they reach the illustrious heights of the names above? How do Sheppard and Dillingham stack up to their Kentucky counterparts? 

A Brief Introduction

I wrote about Reed Sheppard in December, and much of my analysis remains the same. Sheppard was shooting 57.1% from three back then, a number so incomprehensible that it seemed impossible for it to hold up. Yet somehow it did. Sheppard finished the season at 52.1% from three on 144 attempts, displaying the versatility to hit spot-ups, pull-ups, and fire from the parking lot. 

Physical tools and creation juice have been the main question-marks surrounding Sheppard. Is he capable of holding up on the defensive end? Does he have the handle and burst to get to his spots against NBA athletes? Still, Sheppard’s knack for being in the right place on both ends of the floor and other-worldly efficiency are enough for him to rank 3rd on Rookie Scale’s consensus big board. 

Rob Dillingham, who slots in at 11th on the Rookie Scale board, is one of the most electrifying offensive players in this class. Dillingham is an elite advantage creator who wins with his shifty handle, killer first step, and silky jumper. He averaged 15.2 points per game in just 23 minutes off the bench. Dillingham uses his gravity well to capitalize on passing windows and find open teammates out of drives and pick-and-rolls. 

As with Sheppard, physicals are amongst the oft-discussed concerns. Standing at 6’1” without shoes and 164 lbs., Dillingham will have to be truly special offensively to leave a positive imprint on the game at the next level. How will he finish amongst the trees against NBA rim protectors? And with his erratic defense, will he be singled out as a weak link?

Pitfalls and Takeaways From the Past

For the sake of this exercise, we will compare the 13 Kentucky guards drafted since 2011 to Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham. (Note that this excludes John Wall and Eric Bledsoe from 2010 due to shooting data inconsistencies.)

2011: Brandon Knight*

2012: Marquis Teague

2013: Archie Goodwin

2015: Devin Booker*

2016: Jamal Murray*

2017: Malik Monk* and De’Aaron Fox*

2018: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander*

2019: Tyler Herro*

2020: Immanuel Quickley and Tyrese Maxey

2022: TyTy Washington Jr. 

2023: Cason Wallace*

*Indicates Lottery Pick

It’s impossible to evaluate the exact success rate of Coach Cal guards given how recently many of them were drafted. But whether they’re getting MVP votes, making All-Star teams, or simply sticking around as starting caliber backcourt pieces, the eye-ball hit rate here is remarkably high. I’d say that Marquis Teague and Archie Goodwin are the only ones who never really found their footing. Early returns from TyTy Washington have been worrisome, but it’s hard to fully count someone out before their third year in the NBA. Either way, all of Washington, Teague, and Goodwin barely snuck into the first round, each drafted with the 29th pick in their respective classes. Simply getting mocked consistently in the lottery bodes well for Sheppard and Dillingham. 

Aside from merely glancing at draft position, other indicators could help us weed out some lower-end outcomes. Let’s look at how each Kentucky guard got their shots up, specifically inside the arc. Here is every prospect organized by (lay-up attempts)/(off-the-dribble two and floater attempts).

Kentucky Guards by Lay-up to Long 2 Ratio: 

This might seem like an arbitrary statistic, but attempting a high number of long twos, along with a low number of rim attempts, could indicate athletic and creation deficiencies. If one can’t consistently create paint touches against college athletes, how will they do so in the NBA? But there’s also a flip side to this logic – getting clean looks at the rim is challenging against NBA length, so having an in-between game to lean on is vital. Notably, the lowest ratio belongs to TyTy Washington, who attempted just 0.38 layups for every floater or pull-up middy. Meanwhile, Archie Goodwin had the highest ratio at 1.72. Finding the balance is key. 

I think a main takeaway is that players should be phenomenal at the shots that they take. For example, let’s compare De’Aaron Fox and Marquis Teague. Both have similar rim-centric ratios at 1.44 and 1.42. However, Fox shot 5% higher on lay-ups, had 13 more dunks, and a 13.4% higher Free Throw rate. If you’re taking a lot of shots at the rim, be an awesome finisher. The signs were also there for in-between development for Fox, who shot 43.6% (24/55) on runners versus Teague’s 17.0% (8/47).  

As far as projecting All-Star outcomes, this metric seems to favor slightly more rim-centric prospects. Those with a lower number of layup attempts to long twos have settled into strong starter/6th-man-ish spark plug roles, such as Immanuel Quickley, Tyler Herro, and Malik Monk. Jamal Murray, Devin Booker, and Tyrese Maxey weren’t necessarily paint-touch machines in college, but all have higher layup ratios than the aforementioned group. 

How do Sheppard and Dillingham Stack Up?

Reed Sheppard’s Shooting

Shooting is the obvious selling point for Sheppard, whose unreal splits pop off the screen next to any prospect in recent memory. Even when compared to our pool that contains plenty of high-versatility and high-volume snipers, Sheppard’s numbers stand out. 

Sheppard shot 52.8% on pull-up twos, 6.6% higher than 2nd place Tyler Herro. It’s worth noting that the PU2 isn’t necessarily Sheppard’s preferred shot, as he gets a significantly higher share of his looks from beyond the arc. As a matter of fact, only Tyrese Maxey and Immanuel Quickley attempted less off-the-dribble mid-range jumpers/40. Even on low volume, Sheppard has displayed a simple but effective mid-range bag, capable of stopping and popping and flowing into pull-ups with ease. Even when off-balance, Sheppard has the touch and body control to finish tough looks. 

Pull-up threes are an area where we can see some evolution in Coach Cal’s system. Many were discouraged from taking said shots, most notably Tyrese Maxey and Devin Booker. Both of the Kentucky guards this year rank top three in pull-up three attempts/40. Again, Sheppard’s efficiency is bananas. Immanuel Quickley and Marquis Teague made higher percentage but on a minuscule number of attempts. Amongst players to take over one pull-up three per 40, Sheppard ranks first by a whopping 12.6%. He’s comfortable getting to his three out of pick-and-rolls and isolations and has the confidence to pull it from way beyond the line. 

And then there’s catch-and-shoot threes, where Sheppard got up a respectable 4.57 attempts/40. That per 40 volume is a good bit behind guys like Jamal Murray (7.32 attempts), Devin Booker (6.76), and Malik Monk (5.98), but still higher than Tyler Herro and Tyrese Maxey (4.28 and 3.33). Sheppard is the group’s most efficient at a blistering 51.4%. The defining features of his catch-and-shoot profile are his range and shot-prep. Sheppard wasn’t tasked with sprinting around screens at Kentucky, but he’s an apt off-ball mover and after-pass re-locator, allowing him to excel on semi-movement looks. 

For those of you keeping track, Sheppard is the most efficient Kentucky jump-shooting prospect on catch-and-shoot threes, pull-up threes, and pull-up twos. He shot a higher percentage all over the floor than Book, Jamal, whoever. Choose your fighter, Reed shot higher. Remember when I said that players should take shots that they are good at making? As far as jumpers go, Sheppard made everything he took. 

Rob Dillingham’s Volume

It’s gone underrated how large a load Rob Dillingham carried offensively. Yes, Dillingham came off the bench and played fewer total minutes than any other player on this list. But when he was in the game, he ran the show. He leads our sample in usage rate, assist rate, and off-the-dribble jumper attempts/40. 

Recall how I mentioned that Reed and Dillingham each ranked top three in pull-up threes/40? Well, it turns out that Dillingham is actually the top dawg by a lot, averaging 3.11 attempts. He ranks 2nd in lay-up attempts/40 with 6.01, well below De’Aaron Fox at 7.52, but above Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s 5.26. 

Dillingham is unlikely to develop into an SGA-level slasher, a player whose height and length give him a massive boost. Further, Dillingham did notably more damage scoring in transition than Shai, whose bread and butter has always been generating half-court rim touches. However, all of this does speak to the level of creator that Dillingham has the potential to be – someone who can threaten the opposition with his pull-up while getting into the paint and putting defenses in rotation. Even without the finishing tools of an SGA, he still creates lay-down windows with his downhill playstyle. 

Dillingham certainly has his physical limitations, as the lightest, shortest, and least lengthy player in our sample. But he boasts some elite creation tools, mainly his handle and stop-and-start abilities. His change of direction while moving downhill is phenomenal. At his ceiling, Dillingham can become an elite off-ball scorer. His herky-jerky style of play will lend itself well to actions away from the ball. Dillingham is tough to stop when running off screens and getting into his jumper or attacking the rim off the catch. He’s incredibly decisive versus already off-balance defenders, and his side-step is a dangerous counter to hard closeouts. On catch-and-shoot threes, Dillingham’s 47.7 FG% trails only Reed Sheppard. 

I’m also high on his ability to initiate offense in transition, using his raw speed to blow by defenders running back and stopping and self-organizing for quick pull-up threes. 

Stocks, Stocks, Stocks

4.6% steal rate. 2.5% block rate. Sheppard is an all-time great events creator for a guard. Cason Wallace, already a plus-impact defender as a rookie, is the closest thing we have with a 3.7% steal rate and a 1.6% block rate. There are real questions about Sheppard’s foot speed on the ball and he lacks the size to guard up for stretches, but man, he might have some of the best hands and feel I’ve ever evaluated. Routine passes around the perimeter turn into turnovers when Sheppard is on the floor. He’s more menacing than you’d expect at the point of attack, constantly stripping opponents. Even on plays where he’s seemingly out of an action, Sheppard covers the ground and can get his fingertips on a ball. 

Given that none of our Kentucky guys can match his stock numbers, let’s at least compare him to all First Round Picks since 2008 with 4+ steal rates and 2+ block rates (via barttorvik):

There are a few players who you might expect to see: Marcus Smart, Thybulle, and Tari Eason. But I think it’s interesting that guys like Harden and CJ McCollum hit these thresholds – two remarkably skilled, crafty, and intelligent scorers – but not players lauded for their defensive aptitude. Perhaps high stock numbers could be indicative of feel, which would also translate to the other end of the floor. This bodes well for Sheppard, who, despite his Smart-esque defensive events creation, is still an offense-presenting prospect.  

With Dillingham, I have genuine concerns about his defensive fit against NBA athletes. His 2.4% steal rate is the 6th highest amongst our Kentucky pool, and while he has some nice moments of peskiness, Dillingham is a chronic gambler whose risky decisions don’t always pay off. He fouls a lot – there isn’t much reason for a one-position defending guard to average 4.5 fouls/40. Without the elite feel of a guy like Sheppard, Dillingham’s defensive ceiling and floor are both low. 

Rob Dillingham’s Efficiency

Knowing that Dillingham is the group’s leader in usage, takes a lot of wild shots, and suffers the physical deficiencies I discussed earlier, where would you expect him to rank in True Shooting? 

If you somehow guessed third, you’d be correct. Reed Sheppard is number one at 69.9%. Another sentence, another ridiculous Sheppard outlier stat. But Dillingham slots in below only Devin Booker. TS% isn’t everything, but it does clearly matter. TyTy, Goodwin, and Teague are the three least efficient of the sample. Dillingham’s splits aren’t in Sheppard territory, but they are still the marks of an elite shooter. 

Dillingham’s Shooting Splits:

• 40.7 Off the Dribble 2P%
• 37.9 Off the Dribble 3P%
• 47.7 Catch and Shoot 3P%
• 52.8 Runner FG%
• 50.9 Lay-up FG%

The only really concerning area of the floor is the rim. Dillingham’s highs are high, contorting his body, absorbing contact, and somehow getting difficult looks to fall. But physical limitations make it impossible for him to finish at a high clip. Plagued by his lack of strength, Dillingham struggles to get clean looks consistently in a crowd, taking off early and trying to twist his way to finishes. His style would lend itself better to someone with more length, as he frequently scoops for extension lay-ups and forces his way into windows that his arms are simply too short to capitalize upon. This can improve as he gets stronger, but how much weight can he realistically add? I don’t expect him to ever be a real free-throw rate tank despite his high rim volume. What’s promising is that Dillingham already has a relatively reliable in-between jumper and boasts feathery touch on his floater, which should help him compensate.

Sheppard the Creator

This is where things get interesting for Sheppard. Everything I’ve said up to this point may have you believing that Reed Sheppard is a can’t miss superstar. But I do question exactly what level of perimeter initiator he will be. 

In lay-up attempts/40, Sheppard ranks 2nd to last with 2.39. He’s ahead of only Immanuel Quickley, whose allergy to lay-ups has been well-documented. Sheppard has the standstill burst to get by the first line of defense, but I worry about his inability to punish defenses with his proceeding steps. He is not someone who carves out space on his way to the paint with big stride lengths or change-of-direction moves. Lacking in top-end length, vertical explosion, and finishing craft, Sheppard has moments where he gets engulfed in the paint. Further, his turnover rate is the third highest of the group, trailing only Teague and Goodwin. He can struggle to navigate tight areas and needs to be better about feeling out gap help and maintaining ball control versus digs. 

While Sheppard’s low per-40 rim volume is concerning, his 1.12 lay-up-to-long two ratio signifies that he still prefers getting to the rim over settling in the mid-range. This mark is higher than Maxey, Booker, and Murray. Sheppard is at his best starting his drives from further back behind the 3-point line, using the space defenders give him as a runway to build up speed. His touch around the rim stands out, finishing at a 57.9% clip on lay-ups, and while his craft could improve, there are noteworthy flashes of in-air adjustments. 

Sheppard’s passing pops as well. Despite ranking last in usage rate, Sheppard is 6th in assist rate. He has real versatility as a live-dribble passer in both the half-court and transition, capable of making inside-out passes with either hand, throwing accurate lobs, and finding teammates for hit aheads. His vision and delivery on kick-outs are uber-impressive, somehow finding open teammates on the perimeter out of a crowd. 

Parting Thoughts

Kentucky guards tend to work out. It feels wrong to say a prospect will excel at the pro level merely because of the college they chose to attend, but between the history of UK success, the film, and their overall stat profiles, I feel confident in both Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard finding their places in the NBA.  

Dillingham has the chance to be a fantastic offensive piece, a guy who can legitimately create for himself and others, while running around screens and carving up defenses as an off-ball scorer. Despite the defensive concerns, his offense is likely worth a top 5 or 6 gamble, especially in a class supposedly devoid of high-ceiling prospects. 

Even amongst our pool which includes multiple NBA megastars, Sheppard is a massive outlier. Nobody has shot like him from all areas of the floor. Nobody has created so many defensive events. This is what upside looks like – outlier skills and youth. Even if Sheppard isn’t a high-flying athlete, his two-way feel for the game is a clear indicator of future growth. 

There are many positive outcomes here – a player who can facilitate an offense, play off other stars, and scale his usage up or down depending on who he shares the floor with. And given how unique an advantage he has in so many statistical categories, I don’t think we can rule out the possibility of an unexpected usage spike in the NBA, in the vein of Tyrese Maxey or Devin Booker. Especially if Sheppard hits a high-end shooting outcome, the extent of the strength and handle improvements he’ll need to undergo will be far less. There is a case to be made that Sheppard is the best prospect in the entire 2024 draft, not just for his perceived safety in a class lacking an obvious #1, but for his upside. 

The post Are Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham the Last Great Kentucky Guards? appeared first on Swish Theory.

Following this line of thought, I decided to gauge the roster complexion of the league’s contenders, defining ‘contenders’ as any playoff participant. Amongst the 16 playoff qualifiers this past season, the average draft capital spent on the top 7 players in their rotation was the 20th pick. However, each team had an average of roughly 3.5 lottery picks in their rotation. Considering about half of each team’s rotation was composed of lottery picks, this discrepancy demanded further investigation. Further examination of roster make-ups would show 14/16 playoff teams featured a second round pick in their rotation and 7/16 had a former UDFA (Undrafted Free Agent) receiving significant playing time.

‘Winning at the margins’ is a commonly understood pillar, and borderline platitude, of teambuilding; lottery picks on 2nd and 3rd contracts, which are undoubtedly present on these rosters, present such a burden to teams’ salary-caps they are forced to roster and play inexpensive players. While cap conservation is certainly a major factor in constructing these teams, it is only a partial explanation. There are teams with untenable salary-cap figures, littered with the extensions of former lottery picks, who weren’t able to make the playoffs. As for the players who weren’t heavily invested into with draft capital, we can infer they were also available to these non-playoff teams. And if these players were available, are currently able to contribute to a playoff team, what prevented these lesser teams from acquiring them?

This may seem like a circuitous line of thinking, but I believe the issues facing these moribund teams to be interconnected. Not only were they unable to identify lottery picks worth defining the context of their roster, they were unable to acquire talent on the periphery who could easily acclimate, and produce, in their specific context. Reed Sheppard and Jonathan Mogbo are two prospects who on the surface have little in common, but in both of them I see unique solutions to the previously described predicament. While Mogbo and Sheppard find themselves on opposite ends of the draft spectrum, with Sheppard being projected to be taken within the top 5 picks and Mogbo a consensus second rounder, I believe they’re both undervalued compared to their respective positions. Both players possess portable skillsets, easily transferrable into any setting and this, in my estimation, supersedes the need to meet any archetypal qualifications.

Reed Sheppard

In many ways Kentucky guard Reed Sheppard has become an avatar for the public perception of the 2024 draft class. Standing at 6’1.75 (without shoes) with a +6’3.25 wingspan, Sheppard’s substandard positional size (per DraftExpress, average point guard measurements are 6’2.25 and a 6’6.75 wingspan), and modest scoring output (averaged 12.5 points per game) are a far cry from typical expectations of a projected top-5 pick. Even Sheppard’s jaw dropping efficiency from this past season has been met with skepticism in the public draft-sphere, with many questioning the feasibility of drastically increasing his shooting volume. Along with only shooting a hair over 8 threes per-hundred-possessions, scattered throughout his tape are instances of Sheppard stymying advantages with his reluctance to score, as seen in the compilation below.

Even the methods by which Sheppard goes about playmaking have been met with scrutiny. So often the hallmarks of a high level guard prospect are a player who consistently creates decisive advantages, and can utilize an array of passing deliveries to capitalize on them. Sheppard decidedly doesn’t abide by this convention, and in fact, rarely throws passes off a live dribble. Sheppard’s rote style of playmaking, shown below, has understandably sparked criticism of whether Sheppard will be able to fit passes into NBA windows.

And this is to say nothing of whether Sheppard will be able to reliably create advantages in the first place. At the moment Sheppard is without an especially advanced handle, routinely struggling going to his left hand and contending with gap help on drives.

So with all these uncertainties calling into question Sheppard’s legitimacy as a top 5 pick, what reason is there to believe he’s actually UNDER-rated as a prospect?

Contextualizing Production

Being fully transparent, many of the previously mentioned concerns were my own. Advantage creation and positional size are two heavily considered factors in the guard evaluation rubric, and Sheppard’s failure to meet this criteria made it easy to dismiss his case for a top-5 pick as a byproduct of an especially weak draft class. However, as Sheppard’s lone collegiate season progressed and the production didn’t waver I was forced to reassess my stance. Reconciling my beliefs of what a top-flight guard SHOULD play like with the tendencies Sheppard continued to display on tape proved difficult, so in search of clarity, I took a look at the numbers.

In order to establish a frame of reference for Sheppard’s statistical profile, I compiled stats I believed were pertinent to a guard’s pre-draft profile. The sample consisted of 41 guards listed 6’3 or smaller who were either: first round picks, or played 18 minutes/game, only guards without Barttorvik.com profiles being omitted from the sample (sorry Mike Conley). The categories tracked consisted of: PNR (Pick-and-Rolls) run per-game, PNR/game (including passes), Half-court rim attempts/game, Drives/game, Free Throw rate, Steal rate, Block rate, and Off-the-dribble 3’s attempted/game. In virtually every category Sheppard’s positioning was polarized, revealing some interesting trends.

For example, take the scatter plot below comparing PNR scoring rate (share of a player’s PNR reps that ends in a shot attempt by the ballhandler) and total PNR reps received by a player per-game.

As PNRs/game increase the less scoring oriented these reps become. This is to be expected, generally players receiving a high volume of PNRs are thought to be a team’s primary facilitator. In spite of this, here we find what is the first of a series of trends bucked by Reed Sheppard. Sheppard had the 4th lowest PNR scoring rate of the entire sample, and was comfortably lower than anyone who’d seen similar PNR volume to him. The average scoring rate amongst players who’d averaged 8 PNR/game or less was 53%. Sheppard, who’d averaged 6.1 PNR/game, had a scoring rate of 39%. Sheppard found himself in the company of Andrew Nembhard and Tyrese Haliburton once again when I’d ranked these 41 guards by Drives and Half-court Rim attempts per game.

Again these are two stats where the correlation seems obvious on its face: the more a player drives to the basket, the more rim attempts they should have. But what commonalities are there in players who do both sparingly? For the 7 players who reside near the bottom of both rankings above, size seems like an obvious culprit. But this explanation didn’t hold up to scrutiny, especially after seeing the players ordered by free throw rate.

Along with Sheppard, Haliburton, and Nembhard, Cason Wallace and TJ McConnell were the only players to fall in the bottom 13 in all 3 categories. And with Sheppard and the Pacers trio being in the bottom 10 of each stat, prompting the question of what’s behind the similarity in these player’s statistical profile? I believe the answer in this case is what I can best describe as ‘Advantage Perception‘.

Typically when advantage creation is discussed what comes to mind are clips like the following, where Ja Morant collapses the defense after rejecting the ballscreen and makes the kickout to Desmond Bane for a wide open 3.

Where advantage perception diverges from advantage creation is the skill doesn’t necessarily require the player to spend much time on-ball, and is as much about navigating offensive pitfalls as it is manufacturing something out of nothing. It is in this area where Reed Sheppard excels, evident in his stellar 2.25 Assist-to-Turnover ratio, but also in his tape. Sheppard was persistent in keeping defenses on their backfoot with pinpoint outlet passes which sparked transition opportunities.

This kind of subtle playmaking is a staple of all 3 previously mentioned Pacers guards, and one of the defining features of an offense which ranked 2nd in the NBA in both pace and offensive rating over the regular season. All 3 of these Pacers guards embody the basketball adage of ‘the ball moves faster passing than dribbling’, and create many easy opportunities with simple hit-ahead passes like the play below.

Sheppard’s effect on the Kentucky offense’s pace is apparent going by the numbers as well. Per Hoop-Explorer, with Sheppard on the court Kentucky ranked in the 99th and 98th percentile in transition frequency and efficiency. In non-Sheppard minutes they still played in transition a healthy amount ranking in the 96th percentile, however their efficiency plummeted into the 17th percentile, an astronomical fall.

This ability to perceive advantages extends to Sheppard’s ability off-ball as well, Sheppard’s adept in relocating off-ball and is well suited to complimenting other creators. The clip below is emblematic of Sheppard’s knack for maximizing his role off-ball. DJ Wagner runs a spread PNR where Sheppard lifts from the corner to remove the tagger, a basic enough task for an off-guard. However, Sheppard recognizes the defense loading up the paint and sinks into the corner, into Wagner’s line of vision, where he attacks the closeout and draws a foul on the shot attempt.

Ultimately all these are microskills, which in a way reaffirms the notion of Sheppard having a high floor but not the high-end creator outcomes associated with a top 5 pick. With low PNR volume, minimal downhill presence, and what seems to be a risk-averse offensive approach, what separates Sheppard from the ‘game-manager’ guards like TJ McConnell (and to a lesser degree Andrew Nembhard)? What avenues are there for creation?

Contextualizing Production: The Kentucky Factor

Similarly to how I’d noticed a trend in the names Sheppard was grouped with when it came to rim pressure stats, over time I’d come to realize near the bottom of both off-the-dribble 3’s and PNR/game was a strong Kentucky contingent. Of the 8 Kentucky guards in the sample 6 were in the bottom 10 of OTD 3’s taken per game and none were in the top half, with Rob Dillingham placing the highest at 21st.

And for PNR/game, 5 Kentucky guards were in the bottom 13, with De’Aaron Fox pacing the group in 17th place out of 41.

Kentucky players being amongst the lowest in PNR reps makes a good deal of sense with how prolific a recruiter John Calipari was during his tenure as Head Coach. With a glut of ballhandling talent, naturally their offense would take a more egalitarian approach. But the absence of any Kentucky players near the top of the OTD 3-point shooting list warranted further investigation, especially considering how integral this shot became to many of these players at the next level.

What I found as I looked into Kentucky’s shot diet over the Calipari years was these kind of shots seem to be explicitly discouraged within the Kentucky offense. Over the past 15 years, per Synergy, Kentucky was in the 42nd percentile of off-the-dribble shots, and this figure is including off the dribble 2’s! And this past season Kentucky was in the 37th percentile of OTD shots taken, despite being in the 93rd percentile in efficiency, and 177th in the country in 3-point rate. The implications this has on Reed Sheppard’s projection cannot be understated, because it’s these shots where Sheppard’s avenue for creation lie.

The reason I’m more confident in Sheppard’s shooting development, even compared to past Kentucky prospects, is the growth in confidence and comfort in these shots he demonstrated over the course of the season. Compare the two PNR frames below, the first from an early season game versus Saint Joseph’s and the latter from a late season conference game at Mississippi State.

Take note of the level of the ballscreen, with Tre Mitchell setting the screen with a foot inside the arc. Versus the frame below where the screener, Ugonna Onyenso, is a few feet outside of the paint.

As the season progressed and Sheppard saw more usage as a PNR ballhandler, Kentucky adjusted their scheme accordingly to fully weaponize Sheppard’s shooting ability. Sheppard acclimated to the uptick in volume well, with each passing month of the season the percentage of Sheppard’s 3s taken inside the first 20 seconds of the shot-clock increased. And this progression was apparent on tape.

Look at the following plays, both instances of Kentucky running ‘Horns’ with Sheppard as the ballhandler. In the initial clip Kentucky is playing an early season game vs Texas A&M Commerce, Sheppard’s defender goes under the ballscreen while the big, who is in a shallow drop coverage, helps. Even with the cushion Sheppard turns down the shot and swings the ball to Justin Edwards. In the clip immediately after this though, UNC Wilmington late switches the Horns action and Sheppard reactively takes the 3.

As Sheppard’s shooting reputation grew in conference play he saw more aggressive coverages and this created closeouts which lead to clearer driving lanes for his teammates.

Sheppard gradually expanded his versatility shooting off the dribble as well. In the comparison clip below, versus Florida Kentucky runs 77 (a double ball screen action), with the x4 (Tre Mitchell’s defender) switching onto Sheppard. You can see Sheppard briefly attempt to get into a stepback 3 before abandoning the idea and swinging the ball. Compare this with the following play where Sheppard does a much better job setting up and selling the drive before hitting the stepback 3.

Projecting this shooting versatility with the improvements Sheppard made as a PNR operator, as he improved his pace and timing making reads out of the core actions Kentucky ran for him.

This development can be seen comparing the two clips above. The first clip from early in the season Kentucky is running 77, Sheppard rejects the first screen, sees the low man cheating over from Antonio Reeves in the corner, but the gap help forces him to make the skip pass early and slightly off target. The lack of patience here causes the pass to be slightly off target and shrinks the window for Reeves to get the 3 off unencumbered.

Versus the 2nd clip, Sheppard is running a spread PNR, but waits for the big Zvonimir Ivisic to twist the screen to create more separation from the POA defender. This simple decision allows Sheppard to place slightly more pressure on the defense (drop coverage), Justin Edwards lifts to the wing in reaction to his defender tagging the roller, and Sheppard finds him with a better timed and more accurate left-handed skip pass.

Sheppard’s reliable decision making and OTD shooting over time can unlock his potential as a driver. As fraught as comparisons can be, I believe Sheppard’s progression could be similar to a player he’d previously linked with in this article, Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton, similarly to Sheppard, was not treated as a potent OTD 3-point shooter upon arriving in the league. Take the frame below for example rookie Haliburton is running the PNR vs the Nuggets and look at the level of the ballscreen and the depth of Nikola Jokic’s drop…

…compared to the screen being set and the respective coverage Haliburton saw in this past playoffs.

The additional spacing in concert with this shooting gravity can unlock Sheppard’s driving potential in a similar way to Haliburton as well. Indiana frequently utilized Haliburton in these ‘Stack’ actions, especially when another dynamic shooter in Buddy Hield was on the roster. The force multiplier shooters of Hield and Haliburton’s caliber expands creases for ballhandlers to penetrate and create.

Along with actions like ‘Stack’ maximizing Sheppard’s shooting talent, there are actions to accommodate for Sheppard’s lack of an advanced handle. Many teams use ‘Get’ actions in early offense to lower the burden on ballhandlers by allowing them to initiate against a shifting defense versus a set defense. Comparing the following two plays is instructive because not only does it place Sheppard next to a player he’d been previously grouped with in TJ McConnell, you can the limitations of the latter compared to Sheppard.

In both clips ‘Strong Motion Get’ is ran, however when McConnell receives the pitchback his defender, Dennis Schroeder, is well inside the arc rendering Indiana incapable of creating an advantage. McConnell’s limited shooting range will often see teams shift into a zone defense to counter his rim pressure. However comparing this to second clip of Sheppard running the same action, the POA defender not only has to go over the screen, Mississippi State’s big has to hedge-and-recover to deny Sheppard a shooting window. This, along with Kentucky preventing nail help by stationing a respected shooter in Antonio Reeves at the wing, provides Sheppard a crease to drive and create separation for a snatch-dribble jumper.

This is of course not to say Sheppard will mirror Haliburton or McConnell’s developmental trajectory completely. However I do think its valuable to reference how both players, undeniably undervalued as prospects, improved upon their strengths and had their weaknesses accounted for.

Sheppard’s defensive projection isn’t nearly as clear, but similar to previous statistical comparisons to his peers his profile is unique.

Sheppard, of the 41 guards who’s steal and block rates were logged, had the highest steal rate and second highest block rate. Candidly though I believe these numbers slightly misrepresent Sheppard’s defensive impact this past season. Possession by possession Sheppard revealed many defensive flaws, as his suboptimal size and length gave him extremely thin margins navigating screens, and he was inconsistent at the point of attack and off-ball. Despite all these deficiencies, Kentucky’s defense was 11.4 points worse with Sheppard off the floor. This speaks to the value of creating, and consistently capitalizing, on turnovers. Sheppard’s size will more than likely keep him from being among the elite perimeter defenders in the league. Even if he’s hidden on non-shooters, the propensity for defensive playmaking should allow him to tread water on this end compared to other offensively slanted small guards in the league.

Jonathan Mogbo

While I believe the misevaluation of Reed Sheppard lies in what KIND of perimeter creator he is, viewing 6’7 combo-big Jonathan Mogbo through the lens of conventional big-man archetypes is responsible for repressing his draft stock. Just as I’d done with Sheppard, I’d wanted to establish a statistical frame of reference for Mogbo by compiling and comparing him to his peers. Instead of using a strict size threshold I used a looser set of parameters on size and selected players based on role, looking for players who had played both the 4 and 5 positions. This group consisted of 45 players and the categories taken were Offensive and Defensive Rebounding%, Assist%, Turnover Rate%, Block%, Steal%, Dunks/game, Halfcourt layups/game, and Halfcourt layup shooting efficiency, all from the player’s pre-NBA season.

Across the board Mogbo was an outlier. The chart below is the Offensive and Defensive Rebounding% of each of the player combined into one bar. Contradicting expectations given Mogbo’s size, he actually tops this group of bigs when these categories are aggregated.

The exceptionalism of Mogbo’s paint production isn’t limited to just crashing the glass, though, as portrayed by the scatter plot below which depicts Halfcourt layups + dunks on the X-axis and the conversion rate on Halfcourt layups on the Y-axis (as a proxy for touch around the basket).

Zach Edey may seem to be a confusing addition, considering the remaining players distinguished are more aligned with Mogbo’s presumed role in the league as an undersized combo-big, but the choice was intentional as to put into perspective the interior presence Mogbo has been. The only players who accumulated more HC layups and dunks/game AND were more efficient on HC layups than Mogbo were Edey, Jock Landale, and Marvin Bagley. Below is a comparison between a stylistic stat (Free Throw Rate) and efficiency stats (3-point shooting and Adjusted Offensive Rating) of the 4 players’ respective teams.

Numbers represent team ranks.

Mogbo’s San Francisco team lands at the bottom of all of these stats, which aligns with the observations I’ve made of San Francisco’s perimeter players being incapable of reliably creating space or advantages for easy opportunities. With Mogbo off the court San Francisco took 6% less shots at the rim, a precipitous drop off, and despite taking less shots at the rim they were drastically LESS efficient as well. In non-Mogbo minutes San Francisco went from 80th percentile efficiency in High-Low efficiency (PPP) to the 51st percentile, and from the 60th percentile in Post-up efficiency to the 40th percentile.

So what relevance does this have to the article’s premise? Why does Mogbo being particularly effective near the basket differentiate his outlook from other undersized bigs? What separates Mogbo from previous undersized big men is the convergence of his interior presence and passing ability. Mogbo ranked 2nd out of the sample of bigs in Assist%, and had the most dunks/game of any big above a 15% assist rate.

While Mogbo won’t be deployed often as an on-ball creator, an exceptional Assist% compared to his peers represents a level of feel which enables him to capitalize on cleaner looks provided by improved spacing and advantage creators. Simple avenues for scoring present themselves like the clip below, where the Memphis Grizzlies run Horns Flare and Brandon Clarke recognizes the opportunity to cut baseline as his defender aggressively helps off him in the strong side corner.

Another crucial factor to take note of in the previous clip is the personnel. Notice Clarke gets this open dunk with Xavier Tillman on the floor, another non-spacing frontcourt player.

This leads into my next major point with Jonathan Mogbo and his overstated difficulty of fitting into lineups. The confluence of off-ball awareness, ballhandling ability, and dynamic athleticism makes Mogbo a prime example of how often the relationship between spacing and modern frontcourt players is misunderstood.

In traditional 2-3 and 5-out alignments, frontcourt players, no matter their ability to shoot from distance, are placed in the corner. This frequently gives opposing teams the upper-hand in game-planning, allowing them to either hide their weakest defensive player on this negative-spacer. Teams may also place their primary rim protector on this player to keep them stationed close to the basket, like in the clip below where Rudy Gobert is assigned to ‘guard’ Peyton Watson in the corner. Gobert is allowed to rotate hard to protect the basket with minimal concern of Watson’s shooting hurting the Timberwolves, and in fact a Watson 3 is considered an ideal outcome for the possession.

Even when the shooter is more respected than Watson in a 5-out alignment, the ‘automatics’ (schemed defensive rotations), allow teams to have their cake and eat it too. Teams can not only help off these average frontcourt shooters; if they are forced to over-help it is with the understanding that their teammate will help and allow them to recover.

The following play is a perfect example of this playing out. After some strained early offense, the Magic flow into an inverted empty corner pick-and-pop between Paolo Banchero and Jalen Suggs, which isn’t successful unto itself but does coincide with a miscommunicated switch between Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell. This break in communication starts a domino effect, forcing Evan Mobley to quickly help on the open man in the corner, opening a crease for Banchero to drive as the ball is swung to him.

HOWEVER, Banchero gets downhill Jarret Allen helps off his man, Wendell Carter Jr., in the weakside corner. This sequence of events triggers an easy kickout to Carter Jr. in the corner, but this is what the defense wants! Simultaneously to Carter receiving the pass, the Cavaliers execute their weakside ‘sink-and-fill’ rotation, with Mitchell sinking into the corner, Garland rotates one pass over to Mitchell’s vacated man, and the Cavaliers defensive shell is able to resume its shape as the remaining players rotate behind Garland. This results in a late shot-clock contested 3.

These automatics play out countless times every game, with mediocre spacers serving as a release valve for opposing defenses. Below is another example of a common weakside defensive rotation taking place but against an offense situated into a 2-3 alignment. In this play the Houston Rockets are switching, and when Frev VanVleet is switched onto Rudy Gobert, Jabari Smith provides early help on Gobert under the basket, leaving Naz Reid open in the corner. This prompts a cross-court skip pass, triggering a perfect ‘X-out’ rotation, with Jalen Green and Smith exchanging assignments on the weakside.

Over the course of the NBA season teams developed a unique offensive wrinkle to throw a wrench into these defensive automatics. The term for this schematic wrinkle is called a ‘4.5-out alignment’ has been documented, discussed and coined by the great Bowser2Bowser (@bowser2bowser on X/Twitter). 4.5 spacing is an alignment uniquely suited to Jonathan Mogbo’s skill, but first I want to layout the basics of this alignment. 5-out spacing, pictured below, has 2 players in the slot, 2 in the corners, and one player at the top of the key.

4.5 out spacing simply takes one of the frontcourt players, typically a non-spacer, and places them into the short corner area (in between the 3-point line and the lane line). The following frame is of the Atlanta Hawks in a 4.5 out alignment with Onyeka Okongwu as the lone big placed in the ‘.5’ role.

4.5 out, and its value can be seen below, in a clip taken from the same Magic-Cavaliers playoff game as the previous clip. Once again the Magic begin in a 5-out alignment until Wendell Carter Jr. relocates to the dunker-spot as Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner run an empty corner PNR. With the Magic finding no success in the initial action, Franz drives and manages to connect with Wendell Carter on a lob.

Now the last few seconds of this play are where the edge is gained from the Magic utilizing 4.5 out spacing on this play. Notice Donovan Mitchell instinctively going to sink into the corner to help on what he assumes will be Wendell Carter Jr parked in the corner. This is a long time defensive axiom being broken in real time!

Jonathan Mogbo’s previously mentioned excellence as a finisher makes him a great fit for this role, with the vertical spacing component being crucial to a non-spacing big’s fit into a 4.5 out role. On top of Mogbo’s quick leaping ability, his ability as a passer unlocks another dimension in 4.5 out alignments. At San Francisco, Mogbo had primarily been used as a short roll passer or the trigger man in High-Low actions.

But I believe Mogbo’s ability to not only pass, but pass off a live dribble…

…lends itself extremely well to expanding this role past simply catching lobs. Similarly to how Amen Thompson has been effective as a 4.5 out ‘big’, being able to connect plays and make a variety of passing reads enables him to play with other bigs.

The following play for instance, Houston runs a RAM (an off-ball screen set for a player before they set a ballscreen) PNR with Jock Landale as the screen setter/roller and Thompson sets an exit screen for Fred Vanvleet before settling into his role as the 4.5 out big. The passing window to Landale’s roll to the basket is well covered so Jalen Green makes the pass to Thompson in the short corner. The paint presence of Landale forces the weakside defender, Gordon Hayward, to crash down as Thompson makes the interior pass.

Thompson cleans up Landale’s miss, but you can see the attention the concentration of size between Thompson and Landale demands. And how 4.5 out lineups can be a counter to teams like Oklahoma City who are comfortable playing smaller. Not only is the interior feed a viable decision for Thompson, because of how hard Hayward is forced to rotate to help, the skip pass to his vacated assignment (Dillon Brooks) is also an option for Thompson.

Paired with an explosive off-the-dribble scoring threat Mogbo’s passing skills can be blended into lineups with another big as well. Like here, where the Mavericks run a spread PNR after their initial double-drag action is snuffed out. Kyrie Irving draws two defenders to the ball opening up the opportunity for PJ Washington to throw a lob on the short roll. Naz Reid uses his excellent recovery skills to break up the pass, but this play puts into perspective how well suited Mogbo is for these asymmetrical alignments. Not only is he fully capable of throwing the lob in the short roll, he can play the Daniel Gafford role as the vertical spacer in the short corner.

Another non-traditional alignment that’s risen in popularity around the league and has bearing on Mogbo’s pro projection is the ‘5-Slot’ alignment. Like 4.5-out alignments, 5-slot helps mitigate the spacing concerns of non-shooting big men while appropriately utilizing the gravity of the big’s paint finishing. As the alignment’s title dictates, the center is simply placed in the slot. With this placement not only does the 5 pull the x5 (player defending the center) away from the basket, it places the center in a position to utilize their ballskills to be a downhill creator. Like in the play below, where Clint Capela gets the ball in a 5-slot alignment and calls his own number on a DHO keeper to get the driving dunk.

Not only does Mogbo possess the handling skills to apply pressure on the rim from these sorts of alignments, he can use his aforementioned passing vision to find teammates when collapses the defense on these drives.

Moments where Mogbo found himself in these asymmetrical alignments were few and far between though, and the typical formatting for San Francisco’s offense found Mogbo playing out of a Horns alignment with conventional Princeton offense principles. The nature of the San Francisco offense made it especially easy for opposing defenses to load up the paint, clog rim running lanes and load up on post-up possessions.

Possessions like the clip above were mainstays in San Francisco’s tape with big’s positioning allowing opponents to place all 5 defenders inside the arc. Even with San Francisco having perimeter players who shot well from 3 this past season, shot versatility from these players was severely lacking, and this greatly simplified closeouts for opposing defenders.

Defensively, Mogbo is uniquely equipped to serve as a switch big when he’s deployed as an undersized center, due to his gargantuan wingspan. In spite of Mogbo standing around 6’8 in shoes, his standing reach of 9’0.5 is only an inch shorter than Jarrett Allen, half an inch shorter than Naz Reid and Wendell Carter Jr., and actually half an inch LONGER than Bam Adebayo. While I don’t see Mogbo’s rim protection being sustainable for long stretches, as it pertains to lineup flexibility his lateral movement enables him to stick with smaller players on the perimeter and impact shots with his length.

Here Mogbo switches onto the ballhandler in the first ballscreen, scram (off-ball) switches back onto his initial assignment when the ball is swung, and switches onto the eventual shooter to contest the shot. Mogbo had one of the lowest block rates of the group of bigs I’d catalogued from earlier, but also had the highest steal rate amongst the group. This speaks to his activity off-ball, where he uses his length to get into passing lanes and force deflections.

Conclusion

Associating Jonathan Mogbo and Reed Sheppard probably seems like a bizarre decision but they are both representative of what has been my greatest shift in philosophy over the course of the cycle. After starting out with a tepid assessment of both prospects, I realized many of my concerns were rooted in archetypal bias. So much of my evaluation of Mogbo and Sheppard was spent trying to explain away production, solely due to their NBA role being murkier than most players in their position. When in reality these player’s were extremely productive DESPITE their respective college programs not catering to their distinct skillsets. Evaluating these two forced me to internalize that uniquely productive players will find unique ways to contribute. In the case of Mogbo and Sheppard, their specific avenues to NBA production: Mogbo as a Swiss Army knife big-man, and Sheppard as an off-the-dribble shooter and rapid-fire decision maker, are additive to virtually any lineup configuration. These attributes fulfill the core tenet of my teambuilding philosophy, the most valuable players are consistent performers who don’t require significant personnel accommodations to realize their potential. This rationale places Reed Sheppard atop my board as the #1 overall player and Jonathan Mogbo firmly in the lottery at #7.

The post Breaking Convention: Reed Sheppard, Jonathan Mogbo, and Identifying Stable Production appeared first on Swish Theory.

They are, after all, the only tangible thing we’re guaranteed, from birth to death, and treating them as we would a sacred place of worship is an act of self-love that isn’t inherently religious. Viewing healthy physical habits the way a spiritual leader views the upkeep of their temple breeds gratitude, if not for a divine creator than simply for having your body to begin with. Of course, such gratitude leads to self-acceptance, and we’re more encouraged to do our daily stretching or follow our diets when we think of them as treating our bodies/temples kindly, rather than being bred out of dissatisfaction with what we’ve been given.

So believe me when I tell you I feel like a reprobate in saying that Nikola Topić is an uncommonly gifted 18-year-old hooper regarding his processing, his understanding of where the pressure points of a defense are at any given moment, and that I’d trade a whole lot of those smarts away for his f***ing shins to be a few degrees more malleable.

First, let’s focus on the rare basketball sense Nikola Topić has, which he displayed this past season in both his time with Mega Basket of the Adriatic League, and after his call-up to Red Star, where he mostly faced Euroleague competition when he wasn’t on the shelf with a left knee injury. (His season was ended by a partially torn ACL).

With Mega, Topić was the offensive engine entrusted with running repeated pick-and-rolls, which became the layout for many of his reads. Over 13 games, he averaged seven assists and three turnovers, but given how often the ball was in his hands, conservative decision-making actually depressed each of those categories, as Topić was occasionally too smart for his own good.

Here, Topić sees two defenders come to the ball as his screen-setter dives to the rim, with the ‘lift’ shooter rising from the strong-side corner. That defender sticks with the shooter instead of recovering to the roller. Great! But then, Topić realizes there’s surely a defender in the other corner he has to worry about, and technically, he makes the right decision to skip it to that other corner to create a catch-and-shoot jumper.

I went through this season’s tape chronologically after watching many of his shots/assists/turnovers from the prior season with Beograd to get a baseline, and it was immediately clear that the young Serb had the 2-on-2 situations down. You know, drive-and-kicks one pass away, hitting the dunker spot on drives, hitting the roll-man vs. drop coverage, dynamic situations in transition, that was all great. Sometimes awesome:

But you saw the wheels really turn for Topić when considering the whole court, and earlier in the season, particularly with Mega, it felt like he perceived potential advantages at a high-level, but not the actual ones, as in that first clip: It’s exciting to see an 18-year-old guard immediately processes two on the ball, and then one help defender, and then another one in the opposite corner…but the highest-value read was probably just to hit the roller anyway, right?

Same thing here, on an empty pick-and-roll where two defenders come to the ball. Topić hits the big at the top of the key, whose defender was the only helper who could recover to that roller; now he has to guard the pall, and Topić is pointing to the next read as soon as the ball leaves his hands:

But Topić probably could have made that play himself, had he not been knee-capped by a fixation on the admittedly correct help defender to fixate on. Which is why I was jumping out of my seat by the end of his season, when Topić frequently took matters into his own hands by not only analyzing help defenders, but manipulating them himself.

Look at him manipulate the low-man on this pick-and-roll with his eyes, allowing him to make the highest-value pass by not just recognizing the potential advantage, but actualizing it:

This is where I believe Topić will add value as an NBA contributor, perhaps next to a renowned advantage-creator. His ability to exploit advantages is on a clear incline, and his sense of defensive pressure points does not disappear when he’s not the ball-dominant, pick-and-roll puppeteer he was at Mega Bemax. Across eight games with Red Star, where he had a larger share of off-ball opportunities, he displayed the type of quick decision-making and connective passing every team wants to surround their big guns with:

Yes, I am high enough on Topić’s decision-making that I’m not overly worried about his 29% 3-point shooting this season with regards to his future as an off-ball contributor, though that should improve too. (He is, historically, a high-80’s free-throw shooter.) But certainly, his sell as a prospect is that of a high-volume on-ball creator who gets into the paint at will, but that’s not all he can be.

Here’s a clip from the very first game of Topić’s 2022-23 season with Beograd, where he roasts a closeout that doesn’t come near the 3-point line:

It’s another positive bit of decision-making off the catch, but it’s also instructive as to the type of driver that Nikola Topić is, even in more static situations like a half-court pick-and-roll. He will pick that ball up early, often beyond the free-throw line, and trust that he can get all the way to the rim or somewhere near it afterwards. For most of his career, this has been a fine strategy, given his straight-line burst and wonderful body control/touch while in the air.

Per Synergy, he shot 68% with Mega this season on half-court attempts at the rim, which does not include a single dunk. That’s explained by a combination of a reported 6’5.5″ wingspan and that tendency to pick the ball up early, which again, didn’t matter much with Mega against Adriatic League competition.

Plenty of his buckets looked like this, where he operates the pick-and-roll, and despite taking his final dribble outside the 3-point line, finishes over the outstretched arms of a big man whose technique and/or athleticism could use just a bit of work:

Or, perhaps something like this, where Topić executed a no-frills, straight-line drive against a big man on a switch, just blowing by him with two dribbles that don’t cover a ton of ground.

No, those don’t dribbles don’t cover much ground, and sigh, it’s time to talk about those shins.

What I’m referring to is a concept known as “shin angle,” referring to the angle between a player’s shin and the floor; the more acute (closer to parallel) it gets with the floor, the more torque/later mobility they have off that step. Think of the most flexible players you know, who can bend tight corners by getting low to the ground or change directions and demonstrate a damn-near truly parallel shin angle like the inhuman Shai Gilgeous Alexander:

This is decidedly not Nikola Topić, who has exemplary north-south pop, but with lateral mobility that belongs on a pavement court the morning after it rained. His routes to the rim take the shape of a banana, rather than a zig-zag. On his very first possession with Red Star in 2023-24, he blows by a poorly executed switch, but instead of careening right off the defender’s hip, his wide angle to the rim allows that defender to recover, though Topić evades him by hanging in the air:

On that play, we see Topić’s other athletic flaw, in that he’s not very flexible with his upper body. His shins get reasonably low to that ground there, but his center of gravity is not. Of course, if SGA and Kyrie Irving are the bar, then we’ll never be satisfied, but this is still quite the difference:

Against Euroleague bigs, Topić started to feel the weight of his driving limitations, for perhaps the first time in his life. He shot just 6-of-14 at the rim, per Synergy — small sample size, I know — but it matched the eye test, as wide driving angles that were exacerbated by aborting his dribble too early turned would-be makes against weaker competitions into some blocked shots and impossible floaters against more mobile defenders:

That said, Topić still showed flashes of downhill production, exposing weakness in point-of-attack defense. When switches and hedges were slightly off-kilter, or defenders were the slightest bit confused by, say, a ghost screen, Topić was more eager to take advantage of that daylight. Somewhat similar to his playmaking strengths and weakness, the tantalizing guard prospect has no problems identifying advantageous driving lanes. It’s creating them that we have to worry about.

I do say tantalizing guard prospect intentionally. Despite a lack of horizontal shake and a consistent outside shot, Topić offers enough talent at such a young age (18 on draft night) that I wouldn’t balk at anybody who has him in the top-tier of prospects.

That does bring me to the first larger question when evaluating Topić, though, one you might be able to guess if you’ve read the title to this piece, and that’s one of complementary skills. In a vacuum, a guard with plus-positional size who has both excellent feel and excellent touch who’s already displayed advanced acumen in the NBA’s preferred pick-and-roll style has to be near the top of your big board, right?

Well, not if you don’t believe in the glue that connects those skills. For Topić, the glue could be the horizontal shake needed to access that superb touch and feel on the ball and shooting off of it; there’s reasons to be skeptical in both areas, particularly the former. And this season, we often saw a lack of burst in small spaces dim his playmaking. Do we think he couldn’t process and execute these baseline drive-and-kicks, or could he not access these because he couldn’t turn the corner on his matchup?

This is the crux of Topić’s defense as well, where his processing and understanding of rotations is as strong as it is on offense, but the end of the floor where his lack of lateral movement skills come back to bite him even more. And speaking of defense, NBA teams will let him access his strengths even less often than Adriatic and Euroleague teams, even beyond the improvement in individual defenders.

Why would an NBA team put themselves in rotation by hard-hedging Topić, the coverage we saw in many of his on-ball passing clips from the first section? Before we even get to drop coverage, will he not have years of seeing teams test him by going under ball-screens or switching? He’s not shy to pull up from three, but brashness is a long way from effectiveness, not to mention a lack of mid-range counters that seem antithetical to his full-speed-ahead driving nature.

Finally, can a worthwhile bet be made on exposing the cracks and slippages of an NBA defense? This, after all, is what I’m most confident about in Nikola Topić’s game, that the spaces created by confusion at the point-of-attack are ripe to be uncovered by his aggressive, north-south nature. However, is a truly enticing ball-handling prospect not one who primarily thrives on creating something out of nothing?

Nikola Topić might have been the most polarizing prospect — non Zach Edey division — in this NBA Draft class before he clocked in with a negative wingspan and a partially torn ACL this month. And after diving deep into his film, despite the obvious combination of production, youth, and skill, I can say I understand the skeptics for the reasons I delved into above.

However, I disagree with them. There is feasible skill acquisition within reach that would secure Topić’s outlook as one of the best bets in the 2024 NBA Draft class to return value as an offensive creator an NBA team can depend on. We’ve gone 2,000 words without discussing his ball-handling ability, just his tendencies.

But those tendencies, namely the early pickups and lack of ground coverage, have far more to do with the shin-angle and flexibility limitations that I think will see marginal improvements as he nears legal (American) drinking age. But even if they don’t, Topić’s handle itself is where my optimism lies.

Topić has the ball on a string, both trusting it in tight spaces and in north-south situations:

There was even a glimpse or two of a late change-of-direction, such a spin move after Topić realized he didn’t have the angle to the basket simply going full speed.

Watching him prove that these dribble counters — particularly that spin move in the lane — are in his bag, but so infrequently pulling them out, is a sign that Topić has rarely had to rely on them when his signature sprints to the rim have been enough to get by. I don’t know how much I trust his horizontal shake to improve, but I do trust that he start taking the extra dribble more consistently.

In his age-18 season, it was in his bag, just unnatural for him. Still, that coveted extra dribble was the difference on possessions like these, first where he draws a foul, and secondly where he makes a poor decision with the ball, resulting in a turnover:

Topić has beaten defenders to the rim all his life by putting his head down and turning it into a track-meet, facing real resistance for the first time in his mid-season jump to Red Star this past winter. There, his circuitous driving routes were exposed a bit, but more importantly, so were his lack of counters. We hardly saw late spin-moves in the lane, or shielding a shot-blocker with his body, and jumping off two feet. It would have helped here:

The glue that has bound Nikola Topić’s strengths together has been his straight-line burst, an ability that’s forced defenses to trap and hard-hedge him in an effort to prevent him from wreaking havoc in the lane. That, however, opened up his advanced play-making; the counter then would be frequent switching, but competition with Beograd and Mega rarely featured a big who could keep up with him. Transition offense was child’s play.

The glue to connect his playmaking and finishing in the NBA will change. No longer will it be enough to put his head down and go, and while the side-to-side athleticism will rarely leave defenders in the dust, this is where skill acquisition will elevate Topić’s game. Shooting, of course, is an obvious swing factor, but so is taking extra dribble to get further into the lane, or to the other side of the basket, prolonging his decision-making window.

Against Euroleague competition, Topić would frequently find himself with no live dribble, about to jump off of one-foot without having created an advantage, a situation he rarely found himself in with Mega or Beograd. His drive was hitting the fan, and he’d have to find a bail-out option rather than a high-level read:

I believe Nikola Topić has the necessary ball-handling ability to build a web of counters, to continue his downhill marches against NBA defenses particularly as his shooting improves, especially as he provides enough off-ball value to earn a longer leash with whatever team drafts him.

Would I still trade much of his basketball sense for that east-west shake we desire in our lead guards? It’d be the safe move, as it would likely assure Topić’s main selling point would translate to the NBA, that he’d at least be able to get into the paint vs. anybody, regardless of the decision-making surrounding his drives. Whoever drafts him would more likely be getting the version of him they’ve seen on film.

Yet, I’m a believer in this version of Topić, the only one we’re going to get, perhaps for the same reason I’m a believer in doing ten minutes of yoga a day. He is a uniquely challenging prospect to evaluate with extreme strengths and weaknesses, but in leaning toward acceptance rather than dissatisfaction, analyzing what tools he has rather that what tools he doesn’t, I’ve found the improvements Nikola Topić has to make are within reach.

The post Nikola Topić Scouting Report: On Complementary Skills, NBA Defenses, and Skill Acquisition appeared first on Swish Theory.

Any sort of useful basketball analysis thereby requires layers of abstraction to simplify its dynamism. In particular, the draft scouting process necessitates that the fluid biopsychosocial complexities of a player are abstracted to foresee potential rather than celebrate dynamicism.

At its core, scouting is intellectual reductionism, an inherent projection of the future rather than the dynamic present.

Abstraction does not, and it should not, have a negative connotation. Reductionism is inevitable, as thoroughly understanding every single minutiae of every interaction under the hood of our bodily mechanisms is absolutely impossible. This is highly theoretical, but it should be. On first watch, 99% of the happenings in a single possession are impossible to be perceived by any human. Some occurrences are objective while others require a sort of epistemological contextualization: the timing of a pass, the angle of a screen, the defensive rotations —all these elements combine in ways that are both tangible and abstract. We innately rely on our abstractions to make sense of the complexity of the game, extracting the essence of each moment without being overwhelmed by its intricacies.

This recourse to abstraction intertwines intricately with linguistic relativism—the notion that our language molds our perception of reality. Consider ballet: to an uninitiated observer like myself, I cannot appreciate a ballet performance, as it would appear as a mundane sequence of seemingly indistinguishable movements. Everything would appear the same. Yet, to an expert, the intricacies of each motion are distinct—a pirouette, a pointe, a pique. Without understanding the associated schema, it is virtually impossible to understand these subtle distinctions and the technical precision.

Language builds perception, and thus perception is restricted by language. This is the essence of linguistic relativism.

When I first learned about linguistic relativism, my mind was blown. Everything that we perceive is simply a product of our language. There’s even some languages with names for more colors, and its native speakers have been shown to literally perceive more colors. Every thought, every idea, every concept that you may deem original and objective has been filtered through these linguistic structures we’ve internalized.

Why does this matter? What does Demon Edey have to do with abstraction and linguistic relativism?

Well, assuming you’re on Twitter, you’ve witnessed the development of two distinct factions of scouting, factions that often clash in the comments of any given draft-related tweet. It’s the statheads vs the eye testers, bart boys vs the tape tribe, BPM nation vs the film truthers.

Of course, neither side is explicitly correct, as it’s typically never useful to over index on a specific approach to scouting. A more holistic contextualization would apply principles from both sides. 

On one end, you have the film truthers, who believe that absorbing information from film and strengthening one’s eye test is the surest way of ascertaining a prospect’s goodness. The more games you watch of a prospect, the more credible your opinion on a prospect’s projection. Some believe that the eye test is partially intrinsic: that certain people are born with an eye for scouting, and that this second nature underlies truly elite scouts.

On the other end, you have the production truthers. From cherry picked bart queries to a proclivity for spreadsheets, this is the side of Draft Twitter that is most frequently maligned. While some spreadsheet scouts’ boards may seem too strongly correlated with box score stats, this is oft by intention to qualify all prospects with a sort of quantifiable precedent.

Zach Edey is the epitome of this divide between the production test and the eye test. 

Edey’s production is undeniable. Edey leads every single college basketball impact metric available. Edey obviously has the greatest box score metrics in decades, but he also has the greatest impact metrics in decades: his adjusted plus/minus, on/offs, etc. have all sharply risen every year of his college career. His effect on Purdue has strongly improved every year, despite rising usage. But for such a promising production profile, Edey faces some of the strongest backlash of any prospect that I can remember.

And to some degree, I do understand it. Every play seems so similar: Edey backs someone down, and either takes a feathery hook shot or dunks it home over the help.  If the only real skill Edey has on offense is posting up, and postups aren’t en vogue in the NBA, how is he going to survive? Sure, there’s been hundreds of 7 footers playing D1 basketball, but coaches just aren’t able to figure out how to stop this specific postup and dunk height merchant.

See, something has to give. If Edey is so utterly skill-less, then how has his impact increased each year so dramatically? You tell me what’s more likely: that the single most impactful player in college basketball was simply a height merchant, or that there’s more to Edey than just postups and size? 

I tend to lean towards the latter, that the true complexity of Edey’s gameplay is absolutely convoluted by the simplicity of his moves. This brings us back to the principle of linguistic relativism – as we abstract the dynamism of each possession into aggregated play types, we must also question whether our evaluative language has constrained the eye test and collective perception of a player’s true ability.

I recognize that this is a long introduction to a long article about a seemingly boring player. But I do think it’s important to be cognizant of our most pervasive implicit biases by virtue of linguistic relativism and abstraction.

I’ve been a strong proponent of selecting Zach Edey with a high pick for a long time. And during this time, I’ve encountered many of the same, invariable talking points against Edey’s NBA future. These critiques often lack creativity, focusing on outdated stereotypes and simplistic heuristics rather than meaningfully considering the applications of such a unique value proposition.

This piece is meant to be a compendium, my attempt of going through the 10 most common arguments against Edey and providing my take. I’ve listed each of the arguments below, and while each section varies in length and approach, I’ve done my best to mix a bit of philosophy, statistical analysis, and projection conjecture. Through this argument-counterargument framework, I hope to also juxtapose the often-overlooked aspects of Edey’s profile with my own philosophies about player development.

Let’s dive into the most productive, most impactful, most physically gifted prospect in decades.

Argument: Edey is a prototypical four year college big, another iteration of Garza, Tshiebwe, and Hansborough.

Zach Edey is not Luka Garza. He is not Oscar Tshiebwe. He is not Kofi Cockburn. He is not Frank Kaminsky. He is not Ethan Happ. He is not Jahlil Okafor. He is not Tacko Fall. He is not Drew Timme. 

Over the last three years, I’ve seen a bevy of shameless Edey comparisons. People basically compare him to slow, post-up oriented bigs who dominated college and failed in the NBA, and use this availability heuristic to prove that Edey is destined to fail too.

Edey is genuinely not in the same stratosphere as these players. Besides being generationally large (seven foot FIVE!!) with generational production, Edey clears these players in yet another very unique way: interior dominance.

To me, interior dominance is the single most important offensive trait for a big. You need to be able to score inside at a consistent level, against a variety of different coverages. From Sengun (50 dunks in his pre-draft year) to Bam (100 dunks in his pre-draft year), strong interior performance is both sticky and highly undervalued by draftniks. 

For instance, perhaps the most ubiquitous Edey negative comparison is Luka Garza. Let me put that comp to rest real quick: Edey had 86 halfcourt dunks in his senior season, and Garza had 8 halfcourt dunks in his senior season. Just a vastly different level of athlete and interior force.

Edey just had the most dominant interior season of the modern era. 109 dunks, 80 FTR, most FTs in a season, 80% at the rim; these are video game numbers. Trust me when I say that no one in at least a few decades comes close to those kinds of numbers. Don’t ignore that ridiculous free throw rate; Edey made the most FTs of the modern era by virtue of his one-of-a-kind controlled physicality. Tshiebwe, Garza, Hansborough, Kaminsky all had some slight issues with their offensive interior dominance, and yet this is Edey’s biggest strength. How quickly we forget, the game is about a bucket.

I could stop here. You can skip ahead to the next refutation if you’d like. I think I’ve done a sufficient job of demonstrating that Edey is nothing like his infamous comparators.

But observers of the game aren’t this dumb. Everything that I just mentioned seems fairly obvious with a cursory film watch: Edey is bigger, stronger, more dominant on both ends, and just far better than any of those names. The impetus for these terrible comps has to be more profound than just similarity bias.

To me, there’s a sort of ad hominem at play, one that stems from contemporary basketball viewers holding a view of modern basketball that is seemingly antithetical to the essence of college basketball. Modern viewers have now grown up on an era of Steph Curry pullups and Rudy Gobert playoff lowlights. The epistemology of the modern college basketball viewer is fundamentally top-down: it starts with these abstracted NBA concepts and then eventually builds down to an abstracted ground truth. We’ve learned to see the world from a POV of pace-and-space, to speak in absolutes of PnR versatility, to internalize its goodness and embrace its principles. This results in the villainization of players that don’t match the physical embodiment of this epistemology. Players like Zach Edey.

I have never, ever seen such extreme levels of vitriol aimed at a player simply for existing.  Some players are natural villains; their antics and post-game pressers are meticulous and designed to receive acknowledgement, and the resulting derision is simply compensation. But there is a genuine hatred for Edey, in a way that is truly baffling; and while some of it can be chalked up to sports fans indulging in their need for a villain, this goes beyond mere fun. 

It’s more than just a bit; Edey is hated by the consensus despite being a pretty unproblematic, high character guy. And this animosity no doubt colors their assessment of Edey as a prospect. This pervasive bias detracts from the ability of many scouts to provide an objective projection of Edey’s skills, reducing a nuanced evaluation to a series of superficial judgments.

The lack of humanization in the draft space is often alarming – how quickly we forget that these prospects are just barely adults. Unfortunately, it’s not too surprising that the same people that despise Edey are now questioning his NBA upside. Ad hominem for the win, again.

Argument: Edey won’t be very good if he’s entering the league as a 22 year old.

Let’s clarify the observations and assumptions intrinsic to this argument.

Observations: 

1. Edey has stayed in college for 4 years
2. Players in recent memory who stayed in college for 4 years have not been very successful, particularly centers. Think Garza, Tshiebwe, Tyler Hansborough.

Assumption: 

Edey seems like he’s going to be next in line amongst these underperforming 4 year players. Seems like a logical relation: age at entry is the demonstrated cause of underperformance.

Unfortunately, this is a classic example of post hoc fallacy. Let’s refute each of the faults in this causality.

The first issue is the timeline. Entering the draft as a 22 year old should not inherently limit any players’ upside, because superstars used to stay in college for four years all the time. Think David Robinson, Tim Duncan, or most HOFers back in the day). So what changed? Why do prospects declare earlier, and why is age now considered an inhibitor of upside?

The reason is simple, but the logic is more complex and not well-articulated. In this modern age of “one and done”, future NBA stars tend to declare early (at age 19/20) because they produce early. There’s an undeniable production aspect of upside that’s so much more profound than an amalgamation of skills. After all, most All-Stars were BPM demons as teenagers. Being really good at age 19/20 is THE indicator of upside; let’s call this phenomenon precocious productivity.

A lack of precocious productivity is why prospects who “break out” at ages 21/22 should face some degree of skepticism: if they were unable to break out until their NBA-caliber peers were in the NBA, then their production holds less merit. Pretty much all NBA-level players should be dominating college basketball by the time they hit their junior and senior seasons.

But it’s important not to conflate all productive age 21/22 seasons as late breakouts. Age is just a proxy for precocious productivity.

Imagine a player who dominates as a 19 year old, 20 year old, and 21 year old. Intuitively, it would not make much sense to demean this player for their age, as they exhibited precocious productivity unlike many of their similar aged NCAA peers. This is the key similarity between the “one and done” modern era and the former era. Sure, a guy like Tim Duncan or David Robinson stayed in college for 4 years, but they were also immediately impactful from day 1: they exhibited impressive precocious productivity.

A great example of this is Trayce Jackson Davis, who was one of the best freshmen in the country, one of the best sophomores in the country, one of the best juniors in the country, and then the best senior in the country (all by box plus-minus). And yet, he ended up dropping in the draft due to age concerns. Say it with me: age is a good proxy for upside, but precocious productivity is an undeniably stronger proxy of upside.

Yes, Zach Edey is 22 years old. But he has some of the strongest precocious productivity that we have ever seen.

By the numbers, Edey has been insanely dominant every season of his college career. He has not one, not two, but three seasons of above 12 BPM (the only player with even two seasons is Steph Curry). Let’s focus on his production during his sophomore season, where he put up a 12.3 BPM, good for 10th amongst every sophomore since 2008. All but one of the names above him were first rounders.

What’s especially impressive is that Edey spent his entire sophomore season as a 19 year old. He was born in May 2002, meaning that he is very young for his class. For context, UConn’s Alex Karaban is only 7 months younger than senior-aged Edey despite being a sophomore. 

This is all very compelling, but I haven’t touched on the most fascinating aspect of Edey’s profile: his absolutely meteoric rate of improvement.

Edey started playing basketball in his sophomore year of high school. 

Usually, I don’t take these “late to basketball” rumors very seriously: not only are they often embellished, but there’s no definitive proof that a late start to basketball implies a more rapid development, barring perhaps a remarkably small window between the late start and entry into the draft.

But within a year of playing organized basketball, Edey was recruited to IMG Academy, mainly by virtue of his height. At IMG, Edey played on the IMG blue team (basically the B team) during his junior year. He played on the Under Armor AAU circuit, and then in his senior year, Edey was promoted to the A team. I struggled to find any meaningful statistics for Edey given his sparse playing time. These are the only stats I could find:

The summer before his senior year of high school, Edey averaged 3.8 points and 3.3 rebounds in 8 games for the Northern Kings, a Canadian 17U team on the Under Armour AAU circuit.

In his senior year, Edey averaged 2.2 points in 11 games for IMG’s A Team.

That’s right: Edey averaged a whopping 4 ppg in AAU and 2 ppg in high school. He was ranked 436th in his class by 247, but his recruiting was definitely driven by the potential of his size rather than his paltry production.

Edey went from a guy averaging 2.2 points per game as a senior in HS to… this:

I don’t know what Edey did in that summer after his senior year of high school, but he had a very strong freshman year. Which player is putting up 63% TS, 5 bpm, and 9 points per game in the Big Ten the year after averaging 2 points per game in high school?

Immediately after Edey’s solid freshman season, he headed to Latvia for the 2021 FIBA U19 International Tournament. He absolutely crushed the competition, leading the tournament in rebounds, double doubles, and efficiency rating, while ranking 2nd in FTs/game and 4th in blocks/game. This tournament was Edey’s coming out party, a definitive benchmark at an age-standardized simulacrum that underscored the robustness of his production. He was named to the All-Tournament First Team alongside four future first rounders: Jaden Ivey, Chet Holmgren, Nikola Jovic, and Wembanyama. 

Over just two years, Edey went from averaging 4 ppg on a middling AAU team to being named one of the top five teenagers in the world

Again, Edey is not your typical four year player. He played against prospects his own age at FIBAs and dominated. He didn’t simply put up gaudy stats for three years straight – he put up one of the most dominant careers in NCAA history. All while being on the younger side for his class and starting at a ridiculously low pre-college production baseline.

Before labeling Edey as a perennial bench big, please think about Edey’s precocious productivity and his monstrous rate of improvement.

Argument: Edey’s offense is too postup-reliant to work in the NBA. 

Before we start here, it’s important to underscore that the strategic and technical skills intrinsic to Edey’s offensive repertoire are indubitably understated by virtue of our friend linguistic relativism. It’s hard to differentiate the intricacies of Edey’s paint domination, and so everything just seems like just another postup or a dunk over future accountants and litigation attorneys.

Yes, Edey is a highly efficient postup player on elite volume. His combination of efficiency and volume on postups probably places him in some elite company, if there was historic postup data. That does not mean that posting up is all that Edey is capable of doing. This is an interesting argument, as it’s the first time I’ve seen a legitimate strength contrived as a weakness.

There’s a couple reasons why Edey’s pure efficiency on post-ups still understates his postup skill. Obviously, Edey’s maintained strong efficiency despite remarkably high postup volume. Purdue’s offense is also fundamentally based on getting Edey a post touch and leveraging his gravity down low. Edey’s postups are defended more aggressively than anyone else; not a single coach in the nation (save Dan Hurley with Donovan Clingan) dares to guard Edey in single coverage. We’ve somehow normalized Edey receiving double and triple teams; he would undoubtedly boost his already strong efficiency numbers if he was guarded more traditionally (he put up 37 points on 60% shooting against future top 5 pick Clingan). 

Furthermore, Edey gets some very shallow post touches. Edey’s post-up radius is much larger than virtually any post-up big I can recall, as he’s able to receive the ball several feet away from the basket and still convert. He has a surprisingly low center of gravity, able to create space with bumps and explode off a drop step. He’s obviously quite strong and coordinated, but he has so many counters within postups, by virtue of his feathery touch and comfort off either shoulder and either hand. This should not be taken lightly: Edey’s ambidexterity development is so impressive given his baseline just two years ago. Add another exhibit in the gallery of Edey’s rapid skill acquisition.

Edey’s combination of sheer size, post gravity, postup volume, postup distance, diversity of counters and efficiency makes him one of the most dominant low post prospects in decades. 

There’s also a sort of hand waving that occurs with Edey’s postup usage. There is (an often correct) assumption that the modern NBA is postup-agnostic, largely because postups tend to be highly inefficient possessions that obstruct the paint. Well, postups are not entirely dead: guys like Bobby Portis and Jonas Valanciunas average ~ 5 postup possessions a game. An especially interesting thought exercise is the exact value proposition of an Edey postup. An Edey postup possession should theoretically continue to be a highly efficient shot attempt given his hyper efficiency and development of counters on a remarkably tough postup diet. It really comes down to the efficacy of his post gravity in the league, which I’m fairly confident about: if teams start throwing aggressive coverages against Edey, he has the awareness to capitalize on advantages. If Edey has legit gravity in the post AND can efficiently sink postups, then there isn’t a particularly intuitive reason why he can’t rely on his postups for SOME offense.

But please, do not conflate Edey being elite on postups with Edey ONLY being good at postups. Again, postups are perhaps the most functional proxy for strength, and Edey’s goodness on postups checks out: he’ll walk into the NBA as the heaviest player on day 1.

The name of the game is deep post positioning. The deeper Edey gets in the post, the harder it is to stop him. But based on his coverage, it’s a deceptively difficult bet to get the ball to Edey deep in the post when he’s getting swarmed. So what Painter sometimes does is roll Edey into the paint. This isn’t officially counted as a PnR for obvious reasons, but the trademark screen and roll allows Edey to get a head of steam into the post, thereby scattering the defense and allowing him to receive and get into the postup.

This is the first of many times where i’m going to highlight Edey’s strong awareness. Edey has been double-teamed in every college matchup and knows that anything short of optimal positioning by the coverage leads to holes that he can exploit. Consequently, he’s developed an exceptional mastery of positioning in the post. Edey skillfully uses his body to create space, bumping the coverage just enough to establish a clear trajectory for a pass from his not-so-great guards. He fundamentally understands the chess match of these matchups, recognizing mismatches like when a guard tags the roll, and pouncing on these advantages. 

It’s hard to emphasize how efficient Edey is at nearly every action. He may seem like a primarily postup player at the NCAA level, but make no mistake: Edey is a legitimately elite roll man. It’s obviously kinda hard to be a consistent roller when teams are pre-emptively packing the paint, which is why so many of Edey’s rolls intentionally lead to a postup instead. But seriously, if coverages aren’t perfectly in position, Edey has no issue rolling and dunking over someone with ease. His catch radius is absolutely ridiculous, with Braden Smith often just throwing it high and trusting that Edey will throw down the lob. It’s a real life “Edey out there somewhere” moment.

I find it interesting how people suddenly lose all semblance of creativity when discussing Edey’s offense. Some players are seen as infinitely malleable balls of clay, capable of incredible skill development simply due to their athleticism. But when it comes to Edey, conversations rarely consider his potential for skill acquisition, despite demonstrated outlier, deliberate growth in critical areas.

Is it not reasonable to expect that the preeminent postup god with counters galore and ridiculously good touch won’t be able to command a healthy number of post touches? When teams aren’t sending triple teams and preemptively blocking Edey’s roll to the paint, do you really think he won’t excel against single coverage? And most importantly, why isn’t the rapidly improving 7’5 center with a 7’10 wingspan, who is already a dominant rim threat and an hyperefficient roll man, given the slightest benefit of the doubt? The name of the scouting game is projection, yet there’s a baffling lack of imagination and recognition of Edey’s potential to simply parlay his size and touch into a more NBA-esque playtype distribution.

Argument: Sure, but what does Edey do without the ball in his hands?

This is probably the most common question that draftniks have for Edey. How does a guy with a 34% usage, the guy with the most 2s made in a single season since at least the early 90s, the guy who can’t space the floor, how does this guy play off-ball?

Before we even get into this, I want to acknowledge that this on-ball/off-ball offensive bifurcation isn’t particularly useful for prospect evaluations. “Affecting the game without the ball” is an overrated concept, particularly for centers, and with the phrase “not being able to play off-ball” typically just a euphemism for not being able to shoot and generate “gravity”. In this case, Edey’s ability to efficiently operate on high usage (an undeniable strength) is being contrived as a legitimate weakness; high usage is being conflated as an inability to operate at low usage.

But it’s important to note that most centers in the NBA are not generating closeouts to the perimeter. Here’s a simple answer: whatever Jonas Valaciunas does “without the ball”, Edey can do without the ball. Setting screens, drawing coverage with deep post position, offensive rebounding, passing out of doubles: Edey is not just feasibly capable but has actively demonstrated how he can “affect the game without the ball”. Let me explain.

First off, Edey is one of the most physically imposing screeners to enter the league in a long, long time. Edey’s arguably the best screen setter in the class, and it’s because he understands the nuances of position exceptionally well. If I was trying to design a player to set impossibly difficult screens to navigate, I would undoubtedly end up describing Zach Edey. Contrary to public opinion, Edey is deliberately swift and adept in dribble handoffs; when he sets screens, they are wide and hard to maneuver.  In particular, Edey is a master of the Zoom action, where a simple handoff near the top of the key gives the BH a full head of steam while also himself providing the threat of Edey on a potential roll.

Why’s this important? Edey is going to be a huge screen assist producer in the league. Not only does he set difficult screens to navigate, but Edey’s awareness in setting screens especially stands out, as he’s a master of positioning. When setting screens, he really understands how to shift the angle of the screen to best inhibit the reaction time of the defense to the ball handler. We’ve seen how useful guys like Gobert and Sabonis have been in generating screen assists; Edey seems likely to be next in line.

He’s even exceptional at disguising his movements in screening actions. One of Purdue’s most frequent actions to get Edey a dunk early in his collegiate career was a screen reject lob action that was based on the aforementioned zoom action. Edey would set up for a standard handoff in but then he would unexpectedly dive towards the basket for an easy finish of the lob, catching the defense off guard. You could really see Edey develop optimal awareness in these situation, as he became more cognizant of his own gravity and how to leverage it to make impactful, winning plays.

This leads me to my second point: Edey is a legit good passer for a big. Edey peaked at 3.7 assists per 100 possessions this year, with a 15% assist percentage to boot. For context: since 2008, Roy Hibbert is the only drafted player taller than 7 feet with an assist rate even above 11%. Edey is at 16%, 13% and 15% in the last 3 years. 

While a common anti-Edey talking point is his 0.9 assist to turnover rate, this understates how well Edey protected the basketball. In reality, Edey is coming off a strong 12.7 TO%, which is pretty damn good for a guy with 32% usage. Turnover percentage measures the proportion of turnovers for a player relative to their total possessions used. So, relative to his usage, he’s actually remarkably good at avoiding turnovers.

I watched all of Edey’s turnovers, and by far the most common cause was aggressive coverage on postups. Such a high proportion of the turnovers were either: 1) Edey getting swarmed as he tries to postup, allowing a guard to poke the ball out of his hands 2) Edey getting intercepted as he tries to pass out of a double team. Look man, if we agree that Edey isn’t going to be posting up as much in the NBA, then 1) is largely a moot point. Interceptions out of double teams is an undeniable issue, but it’s again largely a function of coverage. Still, I’m moved by the fact that he’s able to recognize and capitalize on openings on the perimeter. I’m also not as worried considering that so many of his turnovers are again a function of swarming coverage.

It’s these little things that make me so confident about Edey’s translation. Of course, he’s a generational mover at size, generational size, etc etc. But Edey seems uniquely fit to cognitively fit into NBA game speed. His passing out of doubles, low TO% relative to usage, his counters in the post to garner advantageous positioning, his granular screening tactics: Edey has undeniably good feel. He will be ready for counters in the NBA.

And now, we come to Edey’s most projectable skill: offensive rebounding. Edey enters the league as perhaps its best offensive rebounder from Day 1. How many prospects can you say that about anything? He has two of the best offensive rebounding seasons of all time, and need I remind you that he has a 7’10 WS? 

I hear the term “advantage creation” a lot. I think the discourse around advantage creation is certainly an exodus from its true essence; it’s now applied most commonly to slinky wings with strong movement aesthetic. But in every sense of its literal essence, Edey’s offensive rebounding is the ultimate form of advantage creation. Hell, everything about Edey’s functional strength is a means of advantage creation. Having such a powerful offensive rebounder is also an undeniable way of extending possessions and implicitly leading to more potential advantages. Having the most physically imposing, best offensive rebounder on your team means something, and if Edey is matched against a smaller big, as is common in this era of pace-and-space: it’s over. I know I’m not emphasizing this enough, but being such a force on the boards is a lost art, and it certainly raises Edey’s expected value. 

Purdue went 1/7 on 3s against UConn in the championship. I promise you, NBA teams aren’t doing that shit. The advantages that Edey generates are going to be more momentous, and any sort of double coverage or overcompensation to prevent Edey exerting his wrath on the roll is going to lead to open shots and clear advantages that Edey can extend.

Oh, and the foul drawing? It’s pretty generational too. Edey just put up the most FTs in a season since Armstrong landed on the moon. Blaming refs in college, who are actually pretty lenient towards fouls, is just not accurate, especially since Edey isn’t even remotely grifting for fouls. Edey is a monster foul drawer for objective reasons: he’s extremely physical and an expert at positioning. His strong awareness and physicality will translate, and it is ridiculous to expect anything other than Edey becoming a strong foul drawer in the NBA as he was in college. Unlike lumbering bigs of the past, Edey is also a good ass FT shooter, so hack a Edey isn’t gonna go particularly well.

Again, I find it baffling why the same margins of creativity aren’t being provided to Edey. The criticisms levied against Edey are fairly ubiquitous and can be applied towards any other player. How will Edey score against Embiid? How will Edey adjust to the pace of the NBA? Well, how is a team without a good ass seven footer supposed to guard Edey without conceding advantages elsewhere? The 7’5 center with a 7’10 WS who just led the NCAA in dunks, FT attempts, and offensive rebounding while also demonstrating strong feel on passes and deliberate positioning has the potential to legitimately break our understanding of offense. Walk with me, and dream a little.

It’s not only reductive, but straight up incorrect to imply that Edey’s sole goodness on offense is as a postup threat.

Argument: Edey will not survive on defense. 

This is where things get interesting. The primary issue with impact metrics is that they are most unable to ascertain defensive mobility. Perhaps the best proxy is steal%, but even that has its issues. Unfortunately, while Edey has a solid 7% block rate, he has a career 0.5% steal rate. This is the biggest flag in his profile to me, but he’s not entirely cooked.

Garza, Hansborough, Okafor, Tshiebwe etc were all terrible defensive prospects because they weren’t good rim protectors. They lacked size and rim protection production. This is a trait shared by most four-year college bigs to whom Edey is oft compared. Edey not only has demonstrated efficacy as a primary rim protector for 3 years running, but he also has a 7’10 WS. It’s a terrible comparison.

Let’s take a look at Edey on/off swings this year. When Edey is on the floor, teams shoot 9.2% worse at the rim, and they take 7% less shots at the rim. Teams shoot 7% worse on 2s when Edey is on the court, and opposing team free throw rates drop 9 points. Opponents offensive rebounding rates drop 5.8%, and opponents shoot 4.3 eFG% worse. Overall, Purdue’s defense allows 8.6 fewer points per 100 possessions with Edey on the court. Just look at the colors- These strong swings are indicative of a highly productive drop big. The swings in rim frequency is indicative of Edey’s legitimate rim deterrence.

Edey on/off swings, garbage adjusted, 20234season 

If you’re worried about on/off samples being too noisy in small size, here’s Edey’s on/offs from 2023. It’s the exact same story, demonstrating a two year sample of Edey being a highly productive drop defender.

Edey on/off swings, garbage adjusted, 2023 season 

Just for context, Iowa’s 2021 team had virtually no change in defensive productivity with Garza on and off the floor. 3.1 fewer points per 100 possessions with Garza off the court, with no change in rim %, 2P%, or eFG%. Just an absolutely abhorrent defender, with no evidence of drop goodness.

Argument: Maybe he can play drop, but he’s too immobile to stay on the floor otherwise.

There needs to be a level of nuance to the Edey mobility debates. There’s a faction of Draft Twitter that ignores anything combine-related at all: scrimmages, anthropometrics, shooting drills, agility tests are all non-functional and should be ignored in favor of good ole in-game tape. There’s another faction that takes all the data points of the combine at face value, using them to make macro projections about prospects. The first faction ridicules the second faction for applying Edey’s strong lane agility and shuttle run performances, especially relative to Sarr, Missi, and Clingan, as an antidote for Edey’s mobility concerns.

I don’t find myself in the middle, but rather chasing a new standard, nuance. It’s typically a mistake to ignore any data points, and the combine provides a set of highly standardized data points that can be benchmarked against decades worth of prospects. However, a quick look at the historic applicability of the tests puts some of the Edey pro-mobility discourse to rest. 

First off, there are 3 total agility drills. The three-quarter sprint drill was the one drill that Edey performed poorly in, and unfortunately, that’s the drill that is most correlated with mobility in a traditional NBA context. The most direct application of the three-quarter sprint can be understood as leaking out in transition and in closeout quickness. Furthermore, Edey’s vertical was amongst the bottom of testers. Some of these issues can be masked by Edey’s sheer size, but it inevitably dampens Edey’s ability to self-organize or make longer rotations. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been much discourse about Edey guarding bigger lob threats in the NBA, as I’m a bit worried about scenarios where he’s not quick enough to backpedal and not functionally fast off the ground to contest. There is a slight bit of poster potential on Edey, and this seems like a bigger issue than large space mobility to me.

However, watching Edey compared to last year, it’s clear that he’s made legitimate athletic improvements. His athletic testing improved from last year to this year (especially on max vert and lane agility tests), but so did his ambidexterity. On offense, we’ve seen Edey become more comfortable posting up on either side of the block and not hesitating to use his left hand hook if need be. On defense, it’s the same story, able to contest with either hand. Edey’s development on defense over the last 3 years has been remarkable to watch, with dramatic improvements in his technique and converting awareness to reaction. Further functional vertical improvements will only make his value proposition as a legit good drop big even more robust. 

I’d say some of Edey’s biggest weaknesses right now are slow backpedals and a lack of aggression on contests (often post-backpedal/as he rotates). There are certainly times when Edey’s hands are down as he rotates. But generally, I think there’s some conflation of lacking aggression with staying out of foul trouble. Edey is coming off two straight years of guard-like foul rates (2.4 fouls called per 40 this year), and much of that appears to be by design. It makes sense; the fulcrum of Purdue’s offense needs to be on the court as much as possible, and his length and size alone provide a strong enough baseline of deterrence as it is. It is far too risky for Edey to be in foul trouble, giving rise to his somewhat aggression-averse nature on defense. Especially in the tournament, I think Painter estimated that the opportunity cost of Edey fouling out was far too high; I’d wager that he instructed Edey not to chase as many blocks, consequently deflating his block volume during those last few games.

While Edey’s large space mobility is somewhat questionable, his small space mobility is quite good, and it’s a large part of why he tested so well in the shuttle run and lane agility drills. I also believe that there’s definitely a sort of visual bias at play: since bigger players have longer limbs, their movements appear slower compared to smaller players with quicker, shorter movements. Slower movements do not mean that taller players cover less ground or are slower in terms of timed speed or agility. I think a lot of the criticisms of Edey stem from either unrealistic expectations, or an overemphasis on his lack of large space mobility. 

What’s interesting is that Edey’s strong shuttle run and lane agility performances would intuit that he is a strong backpedaller, but he actually seems to struggle in this regard. Perhaps there is some low hanging fruit, or maybe this is just an intrinsic physical limitation. Regardless, Edey is a very aware defender, especially when flipping his hips in tight spaces. He’s made leaps and bounds in converting from awareness to functional reaction as of late.

So what does this all mean for Edey’s defensive projection? Well, he’s going to be somewhat limited to drop for the start of his career, which he is quite good at. Edey being such a good rebounder should mitigate some concerns with drop; even if he switches onto the ball handler, he’s long and physical enough to fight for the board and avoid an offensive rebound. There’s lots of great drop defenders in the league, so this isn’t a death sentence at all. However, I do think Edey’s rapid improvement curve and innate body control should allow him to eventually play more aggressive coverages. He’s such a smart player, and he has much larger margins to err based on his dimensions. I think he’s able to eventually guard closer to the level and recover without getting brutally beat off the dribble. 

Argument: Edey is a system player and is only good because he is a stat padding height merchant.

“Edey is only good because he’s tall” might be the most ridiculous criticism I’ve ever heard. Was Shaq a height merchant too? Yao? Giannis, Embiid, and Jokic are height merchants? Basketball is centralized on controlling vertical space, and it’s absolutely a benefit to be taller in this game. And while the NBA does have better athletes than college, Edey will still be at a far and away size advantage, especially since Edey has the best measurables in the history of the combine. This guy is 7’4 without shoes with a +6 wingspan and a 9’8 standing reach. It’s absolutely insane to me that Edey’s measurables are somehow being cast in a negative light. 

Let’s look at it from another point of view: Edey’s combination of structural anthropometrics/measurables and functional physical dominance on the court makes him one of the most menacing interior players of all time. The most productive and efficient player in college basketball also happens to be its tallest/longest. Sure, there’s the chance he could have a harder time asserting his physicality against NBA athletes. When Edey plays against the Embiid’s and Gobert’s of the world, he’s going to have a “welcome to the NBA” moment. This is inevitable. It applies to literally every single prospect in the history of the draft- everyone in the history of the NBA has faced an uphill battle adjusting to their contemporaneous physically dominant bigs.

Now, onto the slightly more relevant issue: Edey does get a lot of “system player” allegations. And there’s probably a bit of merit to this: Matt Painter has a history of building offenses around lumbering seven footers, and those players’ translation in the league has been shaky to say the least. However, there’s a great, strongly established means of sniffing out system players: on/off stats. 

The essence of on/off stats is pretty straightforward: if a team’s net rating drops with the player off the floor, that player is likely important. If a team’s net rating rises without a player, that player is likely somewhat of a detriment. It’s obviously a bit reductive, but modern tools allow us to filter out garbage time and games against mickey mouse opponents. There might be some collinearity, but Purdue guard play is just so terrible that it’s probably not an issue. It’s also useful to use a two season sample, as these samples tend to be a bit noisy if not robustly sized.

So, let’s take a look at Purdue’s on/off stats for its last 3 bigs: Matt Haarms, Trevion Williams, and Zach Edey. And let’s use two year on/off samples. We’ll filter out garbage time and only focus on production vs t200 teams:

• Trevion Williams: -4.9 net rating in 2021 (jr), -10.9 net rating in 2022 (sr)
• Matt Haarms: 13.6 net rating in 2019 (soph), -8.8 net rating in 2020 (jr)
• Zach Edey: 13.1 net rating in 2022(soph) , 24.6 net rating in 2023 (jr) , 32.4 net rating in 2024 (senior)

FYI: Haarms was older as a sophomore than Edey was as a senior.

Aggregate two-year net rating of +57 is NUTS. Unsurprisingly, Edey has the best on/off splits in the NCAA since 2018 (this is the farthest that the database goes). We can use RAPM, or regularized plus minus: Edey has the highest RAPM score since at least 2010.

Just for fun, let’s compare this to Garza. Garza had an aggregate +35 net rating in 2020 and 2021 combined vs t200 opponents, garbage adjusted. Good player, good numbers! But Edey’s on/off swings this year (+32) were nearly as good as Garza in two years combined (+35). Again, Garza was not even remotely as impactful as Edey is.

Let this linger for a bit. If Edey’s on/off swings are so damn violent, what does that say about him as a “system player”, and what does that say about the personnel around Edey?

These plus-minus stats aren’t just your typical box score sourced numbers, and you can’t just grab a bunch of rebounds and dunk a ton to boost your RAPM or on/off score. It’s much harder to fake these numbers, as they’re a regularized look at impact; they are meant to sniff out statpadders. Edey just happens to have the legit best impact by the numbers for the last 15 years at minimum.

Let it be known that these include defense as well! Edey is the anchor of a legit good Purdue team, and even bifurcating into offensive and defensive ratings, the on/off swings on defense are just as violent. But you know that now.

Edey isn’t a system player. He is the system. He is the single most impactful college player that we have seen for a long time. 

Argument: Edey will be played off the floor because he cannot space the floor

The biggest misconception about the modern NBA is that centers need to space the floor. That literally couldn’t be further from the truth.

Sure, some of the best centers in the league shoot, kind of. At ~ 5 3s per game, JJJ and KAT pace all centers in 3P volume. Vuc, Brook Lopez, and Jokic are around three 3P/game. AD and Giannis take two 3P/game. But this assumption that all centers need to shoot is generally pushed by casual fans who keep up more with the highlights from the league’s best players. When you go down to even the upper middle tier of centers, you see the three point volume decline precipitously. 

In terms of career 3s made: Jarrett Allen has made 19 career 3s, Ayton has 18 career 3s, Drummond has 15 career 3s, Bam has 8 career 3s, Plumlee and Poeltl have 2 career 3s, Steven Adams and Zubac have made one total three in their entire career, and Mitchell Robinson and Clint Capela have never made a 3 in the NBA. 

Lack of shooting isn’t a death sentence at all. In fact, you can be a quite good offensive center without ever shooting. The corollary is that you have to make up for a lack of shooting elsewhere, namely via inside-the-arc hyper efficiency. All of these nonshooters demonstrate subtleties to their game that makes them consistently dominant interior forces to be reckoned with. Good thing Edey is the most dominant interior scoring prospect that we’ve seen for decades.

We’ve established how good Edey can be without the ball in his bands, and in this section, we’ve so far demonstrated how ubiquitous non-shooting centers are in the NBA. But the million dollar question remains: can Edey actually shoot in the NBA? Let’s do some analysis.

There’s been very very few bigs who come into the NBA as even decent shooters. JJJ, Chet, Wemby, and Kristaps are probably the only notable names. There’s a handful of guys who shot a small volume of 3s pre-NBA, but most were middling FT shooters: Jokic took 2.85 3s/game on 32% 3P with 67% FT, Myles Turner/Vuc/Kevin Love all took around 4 3s/100 on ~70% FT. 

But those tend to be the exception, not the norm. Interestingly, many of the “stretch bigs” we know today were complete non-shooters in college. AD, KAT, Embiid, Al Horford, Sabonis did not shoot at all pre-NBA. Neither did DeMarcus Cousins, Brook Lopez, Paul Millsap, Julius Randle, or Blake Griffin. Even many of the low tier stretch bigs were absolutely non-shooters pre-NBA: Meyers Leonard, John Collins, Robin Lopez, Mareese Speights, Gorgui Dieng, Aron Baynes. If you’re wondering where I’m getting these names, I found this list of stretch 5s. At least half of them were absolute non-shooters pre-NBA, and most of the rest were very low volume shooters.

I can anticipate two criticisms. First, a few of the non-shooters who turned shooters were only non-shooters in their freshman year. As the logic would go, Edey is a senior aged player and is already behind the eight ball in reaching his innate capacity for shooting. That is true, but we have to remember that Edey is a relatively young basketball player. Not only is he young for his class, but he only started playing basketball as a sophomore year in high school! He’s clearly followed an exceptional developmental trajectory thus far, so it’s fair to use these younger players as a point of reference. Also, most of the names I provided were multi-year college guys, so there’s clearly some precedent of non shooting 21 year old → decent shooting NBA big.

There’s pretty much only two ways to ascertain “touch” for non-shooting centers: FTs and non-rim 2s. As a sanity check, JJJ was at 47% on non-rim 2s and 80% on FTs, while Kristaps was at 43% on non-rim 2s and 75% on FTs. Edey is at 45.7% on non-rim 2s and 70.6% on FTs over his 4 years in college. This isn’t too surprising either; Edey’s touch is incredibly good. His coordination and silky touch on hooks and touch shots out of postups is especially impressive, with a remarkably quick release. The speed of release is so quick that it may underlie strong processing skills, a concept derived from embodied decision making.

But obviously Edey’s touch doesn’t mean too much in regards to projecting 3P shooting, as it could conceivably yield false positives. This begs the question: how many non-shooting centers have matched Edey’s touch indicators, and how many of them ended up shooting in the NBA?

Here’s one particularly compelling example: John Collins. Collins made no threes in two years of college, yet he’s transformed into one of the premier pick and pop threats in this league. Despite his lack of three point volume, Collins certainly exhibited touch. In his final season at Wake Forest, Collins shot 74% on FTs and a whopping 44% on non-rim 2s. 

John Collins, 2016-17 scoring stats

Guess who else also happens to be pretty decent at shooting long 2s and FTs. 

Zach Edey, career scoring stats

Upon first glance, it’s evident just how good Edey’s touch is. Even at the rim, his efficiency is astounding. 

Not convinced? Let’s drop these thresholds a bit and see if there’s any historical comparisons. Let’s find drafted players who shot 72% on FTs and 40% on non-rim 2s. We’ll set the volume thresholds at minimum 50 made far 2s and maximum 2.0 3pa/100.

Yes, there are some big misses. Obviously the Zellers never got around to shooting, neither did Nick Richards or Sacre or Brice Johnson, and Bairstow/Hamilton/Osby fell out of the league fairly quickly. But there’s some real success stories here. Thomas Welsh never stuck in the league, but he shot 36% on 132 3P attempts over 2 G-League seasons. Rui and Stewart have really transformed into quite good shooters. Metu, Collins, and Meyers Leonard appear to be the most similar profiles to Edey, and they all ended up shooting decently.  Overall, most of this list ended up pretty solid shooters by center standards.

I won’t get too in the weeds though: I recognize that there’s definitely an element of analytical dissonance in deeming a complete non-shooter as a potential shooter in the NBA simply off some touch numbers. There’s a good chance Edey just ends up a non-shooter like Zeller and Sacre.

But honestly, it would be a disservice to not try to develop Edey as a shooter. Obviously a 7’5 guy shooting threes is not a complete novelty anymore, but it’s still a pretty ridiculous mismatch – his length would make him pretty much impossible to contest. I really don’t think it’s too crazy to think that Edey could end up shooting 1 to 2 threes per game on like 35% unguarded C&S. And if he ends up with a real shot, that raises his ceiling even more. 

Yes, it’s hard to project shooting for bigs. Yes, this is a slightly aged list, and yes, many recently drafted bigs are showcasing perimeter skill in pre-NBA. Yes, this exercise is largely hypothetical, and yes, you may take this with a grain of salt. But for all the shooting projection that is applied to prospects with far worse circumstances, this isn’t too crazy to estimate real shooting development with Edey.

Ultimately, Edey has only been playing basketball since he was 16, he has innately good touch, and bigger players have consistently demonstrated a much longer developmental curve. I’d assume there’s minimal issues with core stability based on his functional strength, and the kinetic control between upper and lower extremities is somewhat mitigated by his inevitably two-motion shot. It’s quite plausible that Edey could shoot on solid volume, and there’s a good chance he doesn’t shoot at all. I trust NBA teams to eventually develop Edey as a shooter.

Argument: Edey would have been an elite pick in the 1980s, but he was born in the wrong era.

This is probably the most ubiquitous comment on any post I see about Edey. Something along the lines of Edey traditionally being a good pick a few decades ago but not worth a good draft pick in the “modern” NBA.

I totally get why we are taxing Edey for era. The line of thinking goes, if Edey was coming out before this fast paced, three-point heavy era, then his weaknesses (not shooting and not mobile) would be diminished and we must just adjust our expectations. But to me, you have to be realistic about the extent of those overadjustments.

1. If you think Edey would have been a top pick during the 80s/90s (back in the good ole days when players played all four years and bigs used to post-up and guards used to handcheck and shoot midrangers), then that tells me that you think Edey would have been an All-NBA/HOF level talent in his prime back in the day. That should be a pretty reasonable expectation for a top pick.
2. If you think this is true, then you would essentially be arguing that there exist certain All-NBA/HOF talents from the 1980s/1990s who would not stick in today’s NBA.
   1. If so, name them. Tell me HOF-level 1980s-1990s guys who you wouldn’t draft. 

This is where I disagree: I think that EVERY All-NBA and HOF level talents from the 80s and 90s, even those with unvalued archetypes by the status quo, would still be quite good in today’s NBA. If you genuinely think that those players would fall out of the league, then that’s fine, but it’s not a natural equilibrium, and now the burden of proof is on you to provide examples of such players. 

So, by this logic, Edey should be able to stick around in the league for a bit. And by the Hollingerian adage that there’s ~20 players that “stick” in the draft each year, maybe taking Edey so high wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Argument: Edey projects as a sixth man type, and that’s not worth a high pick.

This is such a ridiculous concern that I considered omitting this section completely. But I’ve seen it said enough that I need to address it. They revolve around Edey supposedly not being “fit” to play more than a bench role in the NBA, usually because of some worry about durability and health in the pace-and-space NBA.

Edey is one of the most well-conditioned, durable prospects above seven feet in the history of basketball. Out of the hundreds of players above seven feet that have played in D1 college basketball in the last 15 years, Edey played the most total minutes in a single season.

Edey is not just durable relative to centers – he’s remarkably consistent for any star player. He averaged 32 minutes a game over his junior and senior seasons without missing a single game. With a monstrous career 32% usage, the Purdue offense is built around Edey, and opposing coaches primarily scheme against Edey. He lives in the paint, dealing with swarming double and triple teams night in and out, leading the nation in points and rebounds. All while also being the anchor of the team on defense. The brand of basketball that Zach Edey plays is severely physically taxing, and yet his consistency on both ends is absolutely historic. 

Take Edey’s March Madness run. In four consecutive games, Edey never left the floor: he played an average of 40 minutes while averaging well above 30 points and 13 rebounds without ever dipping under 62% TS single game.This is a pretty insane intersection of production and robustness for anyone, and it’s exponentially more impressive given his size.

The bar is so low that Edey is genuinely the first prospect that I can remember who is well over 7 feet tall and doesn’t have durability concerns. This is only more impressive considering that Zach Edey shoulders the most substantial per-game burden of any player in quite some time, regardless of size. Make no mistake; this is indicative of generational durability and potentially generational longevity for his size.

There’s so many possible applications of his generational durability. Perhaps his mobility and defense improves as his usage approaches the level of mere mortals. Maybe the conditioning advantage serves as a schematic advantage, forcing teams to devise multiple solutions to stop him if their primary center is worn out. 

Given the accepted inverse relationship between usage and efficiency, the physical burden that Edey consistently endured over 4 years at Purdue is an important asterisk that may disguise a fascinating upside tail.

Closing Statements:

There are so many independent schools of thought when it comes to projecting upside.

One school of thought includes the skill purists, often maligned for over indexing on the “ball don’t stop” theory: the belief that putting the ball in the basket is the ultimate objective and that prospects who can get a bucket should be valued most.

There’s the calculator boys, who look for strong box score stats and impact metrics. They argue that consistent statistical dominance in key areas often translates well to the NBA

There’s the developmentalists, who believe that a strong track record in formative years is the most reliable indicator of a player’s potential to thrive in the NBA. This school of thought often looks for prospects who have continually dominated despite rising competition levels.

There’s the intangibles enthusiasts, who often pore over hours of draftexpress player interviews to find the prospects that stand out in mental attributes like work ethic and leadership qualities

There’s even the tools truthers, who believe that athleticism is critical to opening up upside avenues. The greatest players of all time were all uber athletes, so chase physical behemoths with monster wingspan, length, speed, agility, and verticality. 

Edey is the rare prospect that crushes every single possible assessment of potential upside. He’s by far the most dominant scorer in college basketball. He’s easily the most statistically impressive college player in decades, putting up historic productivity in every single year as a starter, while crushing the age-standardized FIBA U19 tourney to boot. He’s not a foul grifter, has no personality or character deficits, and of course, this guy is 7’5 with a 7’10 WS with strong mobility testing and outlier strength. 

It’s ridiculous that Edey is being talked about like a perennial bench big. It doesn’t matter how you slice it: Edey’s ceiling is incomprehensible. The fact that Edey has to face Luka Garza allegations is a case study in how innate and learned biases can implicitly lead us to develop heuristics that lack any sort of objectivity. 

There’s also simply a remarkable lack of creativity when projecting Edey. The man 5 inches taller and straight up far better at this beautiful sport than his most frequent comparators, Steven Adams and Ivica Zubac. Why are we hyperfocusing on correctable, reparable, bad-faith analysis of a player with as many generational strengths as Edey? Spare me the lecture on the overuse of the term generational: how many guys in this class have a single, remotely generational trait?

Our engagement with Edey’s capabilities illustrates a broader cultural and cognitive phenomenon: the imposition of narrative structures on the fluid chaos of this beautiful sport. We categorize, simplify, and unfortunately distort the raw dynamism of the  game into abstracted, comprehensible parts. These Boban/Zubac/Garza comparisons, the “matchup dependent, bench big” discourse, the “low-ceiling” narrative; these are all manifestations of how language affects the abstraction of evaluative paradigms, which restrict our perception. Edey’s dominant production is viewed through the prism of systematic accommodation that fundamentally fails to capture the essence of what makes him so remarkable. Exceptional attributes cannot challenge conventional frameworks without a consciously unmasking of linguistically determined evaluative paradigms and their downstream effects. And Edey has some exceptional, dare I say generational, attributes that make him such a fascinating, potentially game-breaking prospect.

Generational height. Generational wingspan. Generational weight. General box-score productivity. Generational impact metrics. Generational efficiency to usage. Generational offensive rebounding. Generational foul drawing. Generational rim scoring. Generational low post scoring. Generational screen-setter. Generational durability.

Not too bad for a guy who averaged 2 ppg in high school just 4 years ago.

The post The Edey Enigma: A Systematic Defense of a Generational Talent appeared first on Swish Theory.

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.

The post Advantage Creation: The Case For Ron Holland appeared first on Swish Theory.

An aspect of NBA Draft Scouting I feel often goes under the radar is the ‘macro’ side of the game. This is something I believe to be the case when pre-NBA Tape is being analysed, but also when people try and project a players’ role in the NBA. Building a basketball team is about building a team that fits together, the goal isn’t just to collect good players and hope for the best. Similarly, I believe when analysing a prospects’ game, the rest of the team needs to be analysed and understood. This allows you to come to a conclusion as to whether the weaknesses will be alleviated with different pieces around them at the next level.

On the pre-NBA point, Mega Basket for the most part are a team built to develop prospects and showcase them in order to be able to keep running. They are a Youth Academy in a league where most teams are acquiring NBA veterans. Mega Basket by contrast had only one player over 30 years old on their roster last season. From an actual on-court perspective, Mega Basket were a team that had shaky perimeter spacing. Andrija Jelavic who will get draft buzz next year was their starting power forward. He’s a willing shooter, but shot only 28 percent from beyond the arc on the season.

From a personnel perspective, Mega Basket underwent some form of turmoil during the season when Nikola Topic left the team at Christmas. With Topic, Djurisic largely was utilised as a wing-driver and off-ball scorer. His game involves Stampede Driving (Catch and Go) and running Pick-And-Rolls after coming off a pin-down.

What was rather surprising to me, was that Djurisic’s role didn’t drastically change after the departure of Topic. Sure, he touched the ball slightly more and there was more urgency to get him touches. But he was still doing the same stuff as before. He just had more responsibility. Nikola Topic’s minutes were divided up between Stefan Miljenovic and Omer Can Ilyasoglu, leaving Djurisic free to play in his comfort zone as opposed to being crowbarred into something he’s not because he’s the best player.

Generally speaking, I project Djurisic to be a wing scorer who compromises nail help with his driving gravity and makes creative passes from the second-side. I believe the Macro to be advantageous to Djurisic as he has a good deal of experience playing in his likely NBA role, and at such a young age at a good-level of basketball. However, I also believe that the poor spacing made it difficult on him as I project him to be a drive-first wing. Interior windows were smaller than they may end up being in the NBA.

His 4.4 3PA per 36 would rank around 150th in the NBA. Some names around there include Josh Giddey, Jaden McDaniels and Jonathan Isaac. I believe him to have larger driving gravity than those names to make up for it. It must also be noted there are some very good NBA wings who shoot fewer 3s than that, so it’s not the be-all-end-all. Mega Basket were in a position where they probably could have done with him shooting more, but Djurisic drives were also arguably their scariest proposition outside of set plays.

Driving

The biggest strength of Nikola Djurisic is his driving game. His handle is good and he’s able to get where he wants to a lot of the time. He’s utilised as a slasher in the Mega Basket system, and he generally looks to drive rather than shoot when he comes off a ball-screen, though I don’t see these splits as egregious or anything.

I normally divide drives into two types. Those that take advantages, and those that create advantages. Djurisic’ is excellent at punishing tilted floors with his driving game which projects well for him being a play finisher.

Double Stagger Screen- Drive Right- Cross Over Left and get the half-dunk. Djurisic’s ability to cover a lot of ground really pops both in transition and against titled floors. Creating advantages via scheme or capitalising on the gravity of another star is obviously the easiest way to get this to pop.

His ground coverage is impressive, but what I find even more impressive is that he’s seemingly in control a lot of the time when he drives to the basket. Take the play below as an example.

Mega Basket go to Pistol Action. The opposition are going no middle and funnelling Djurisic towards the help. He breezes past his man and shows a good second-level move on his off-hand to get a layup as opposed to a floater. Something I noted throughout my scouting was how much better Djurisic got as the season went on. This was partially because Mega got better as a team and things were sped up as they got familiar with the playbook. But he just seemingly got much more comfortable as a driver.

He’s nifty in transition, and seems to have a plan. This was admittedly a sketchy take early on in the season, but he got much more comfortable as the season progressed, as if he had a better understanding of where his team-mates were going to be and where help might come from. This fuels his very impressive 0.46 Free-Throw rate.

He ends up missing the shot, but I love the process here. This was from early in the season. He attacks quickly and covers a great deal of ground. He’s good at stepping around help in the paint, it just slightly lets him down on this occasion. The reason I mention this being early in the season is because it felt as if his head was often in the right place, but he just lacked control. This was not really the case as the season went on.

This was from the February game against Zadar. It may look like a simple transition play, but the speed to adapt to the baseline being taken away into a eurostep and layup high off the glass is extremely impressive stuff. Transition isn’t the same as half-court basketball but these skills are still very valuable.

I’ve mentioned Stampeding the Catch a few times already. This is a niche strategy that has started to rise in the NBA. It involves a player attacking straight off the catch while the ball is coming to them. There are really two usages. One is to get a primary downhill momentum 30-feet or more from the basket (such as in Flip Action). The other is more of a half-court punishment to rightfully loading up help on star players. From the perspective of the player attacking, it requires a good handle and the ability to read defenses quickly.

Aggressive Nail Help is becoming more and more common, with 1 v 1 defense across the board genuinely becoming more of a dying art at the NBA level. In terms of off-ball counters, NBA defenses are comfortable leaving above average shooters open if it keeps their defenders out of rotation. Stampeding is a way of getting right back into the teeth of a defense. Djurisic is excellent at doing this due to his handle, his passing and an emerging floater and pull-up game.

Mega Basket are in their motion offense, the ball handler draws the nail help and swings it to Djurisic who takes it straight off the catch and draws a foul. Note how the closeout was denying Djurisic the middle of the floor. This is a common NBA strategy. For the most part, Djurisic is very comfortable driving baseline which i think adds value to him as a supporting wing player. He may see slightly softer closeouts because of his driving prowess and needing to earn the respect for his jump shot. But I’m a believer in his pull-up game (more on that later).

His interior passing is also a good mesh with stampeding, as he’s able to read the floor before he takes the ball off the catch and work out where help is going to come from. Here he makes a nifty dump-off pass after attacking from the left corner.

He seemed to be pretty self-aware of the fact that his team needed his drives into the paint to create good shots at the rim on a consistent basis, especially if they were not running set plays. On the play below, Djurisic has an opportunity to shoot, but punishes the closeout and makes a nifty shovel pass. Uros Plavsic robs him of an assist on this play.

Something i want to be clear about, is Djurisic’s driving game is not limited to off-ball drives or niche tactics. It’s just an area I think worth noting when projecting his fit with other players. Djurisic improved drastically throughout the season and by the end of the season he was flashing some immense reps as a driver.

Here they deny him the baseline which is probably because he’s more comfortable as a passer when driving to the right hand-side. So he drives and explodes off the low angle when he meets resistance in the paint. It’s impressive how quickly Djurisic is able to react to paint defense, and his size opens up extra finishing angles for him. He became more adept at finishing off the glass as the season progressed.

I’ve mentioned Djurisic getting valuable reps in his potential NBA usage, the play below is another example of this.

Iverson Action. Djurisic reads his defender going under, so he rejects the action and takes it straight off the catch, using a double clutch and a eurostep to turn a floater into a layup. This was a playoff game and despite slightly reduced minutes he played very well in these games, showcasing the season-wide improvement he had.

Generally speaking, the Double Clutch seems to be becoming a favourite of his. This is testament to his handle in general. This play from the Playoffs might be his best finish of the year. Drive -> Hard Step to force the big to his right -> crossover -> double clutch to secure the ball -> finish off the glass. Absolute poetry in motion, showcasing the development all coming together.

Delay sets are a staple of modern NBA offense, here’s Djurisic showcasing his driving chops in ‘Miami’ action, which is a handoff into a ball screen.

He takes the handoff, then just makes one subtle step and eye movement inside, which changes his defenders trajectory. He then takes a wide east-west step. After this he puts his man in jail, fakes a jump pass to freeze the big man then explodes off his planted foot in the same motion and finishes off the glass. He’s one of those players who just does a lot of subtle things when he drives that turn decent shots into good shots.

These ‘Zoom’ sets such as Miami and Chicago are staples of NBA offenses, and Djurisic’s handle and passing definitely open them up to be more fruitful. They’re often a go-to action in the NBA as a way of keeping lower usage players involved, but many of the players being given the reps out of these aren’t as dynamic of drivers as Djurisic. On the play below he quickly splits the PNR in Miami Action and draws a foul.

The poise Djurisic played with as the season went on was very encouraging. Early in the year it just felt like he was always trying to drive as opposed to reading the defense. With Mega Basket’s spacing concerns, this just exacerbated his turnover issues. But by the playoffs he was consistently showing a high-level driving game.

He comes off the screen, and within a second he has the big in hell. Pushing left, then spinning him around, then exploding from a low position for a layup. Mega Basket used a lot of clearout and roll and replace concepts to make drives easier for Djurisic, but with him being this coordinated it honestly isn’t something that’s necessarily always needed.

On this occasion, Djurisic is able to get low and explode off the ground. I would however say this is the aspect of his handle most in need of improvement. He’s able to get low, but there are times when he can really overestimate how good a driving angle he has available to him.

Mega Basket reset after an offensive rebound. Djurisic has a ball screen available to him, but chooses to try and drive. He gets low, but not to much effect. It’s good defense, but rejecting the ball screen wasn’t the move here, the perimeter defender was in a better position to defend his left side as opposed to the ball-screen side.

Shooting, Runners and why Driving is still a factor

Slightly transitioning into the next section on his shooting, I believe part of these driving issues come because of his shot prep.

On this play, stampeding probably isn’t the best option. His defender is parallel to the sideline and he’s got enough space to shoot. He has to at least sell the fact he might take a jump shot. Instead he barrels into a drive, tries to get low and turns the ball over. These issues definitely decreased in frequency as the season progressed, but he does have a slight tendency to get himself into trouble by trying to get low to the ground. It’s good he’s able to get low, but overestimating driving angles is a downside of his approach.

I’ve said previously, but Djurisic took 4.4 3s per 36, which would rank around 150th in the NBA. Part of this is because Mega Basket needed him to do this as even outside of Djurisic they weren’t much of a volume or efficiency 3-point shooting team because of non-shooting centers and streaky stretch 4s. But there is no doubt he is a guy who looks to drive first.

How worried you are by these forced drives depends on how much you believe in Djurisic’s pull-up game. Even as a Djurisic believer, I have to admit that with Djurisic’ shooting, you are buying a lot into process because the results are obviously not fully there. You’re buying into his space creation and perhaps a slight change in approach when it comes to driving vs shooting.

Across the board, his shooting percentages became more respectable this year, jumping from 22 percent to 30 percent from three. His pull-up game got more prevalent as the year progressed. Per my hand-tracking via Synergy, In the first 18 games of the season, he took 2.1 dribble jumpers per game making 28 percent of them. Over the last 18 games, he was taking 3.7 per game, making 37 percent of them.

Synergy has odd definitions on these, but it matched the eye test. He seemed more comfortable taking these shots as the year progressed.

Mega Basket swing the ball to the top of the key, the ’45’ cut creates a one on one for Djurisic. He didn’t create an advantage on the drive, so moves into his step-back. It’s a bit slow at first but the east-west creation at the end to the sustain the advantage is good.

Part of the reason his pull up game may have improved as the season progressed is his driving gravity opened up opportunities for him.

Mega Basket run ‘Delay Chicago Leak’ for a popping big. Jelavic dives to the rim which leaves Djurisic open. His man is clearly worried about a paint attack so Djurisic drops him deeper and then steps into a pull-up jumper. He got good separation on this shot and it’s why the process might be worth buying into.

The playoffs were difficult for Mega Basket. They played well, but the nature of this team is that they are always going to have roster turnover. So to me, it’s encouraging that Djurisic started to flash more in these games.

Crvena Zvezda are in a no middle defense. Djurisic drives to the baseline, sees a roaming defender and steps nicely into a step-back jumper. Mega Basket’s spacing on this play isn’t exactly great. It’s effectively 3-out-2-in with a 31 percent three-point shooter in the weakside corner. The spacing in the NBA should be better for him, but this doesn’t always necessarily lead to better results. With Djurisic, I’m more buying the flashes of space creation with such tough spacing as a platform for more growth.

With the shooting, you’re heavily buying two things, one is the space creation process as I mentioned above.

The other, is banking on his decision making becoming more streamlined at the next level. It’s clear he prefers to drive to the basket. But the question mark is whether this is definitively who he is, or if this is who he needed to be for Mega Basket to be the best version of themselves. Though they’re a developmentally-based team, basketball players still want to win games. He would sometimes stampede out of decent looks for Mega Basket, and that’s something teams may be slightly put off by, especially for a lower usage guy.

One notable thing from the Combine game, was how Djurisic got a heavy dosage of his probable early-NBA usage.

Here, his team run ‘Wide Reject Exit’. The shot prep is good and allows him to turn a disrupted pass into a clean look from beyond the arc. The process here looks pretty smooth.

The final thing to note in his shooting profile, is that a runner and floater game started to emerge as the season progressed.

The sample size isn’t huge, but the ones Djurisic did make were pure. His general comfort dribbling around the mid-range areas is hopefully an indicator that this floater game is here to stay.

Passing

Djurisic’ passing game and your read on it probably guages whether you have him as a borderline lottery pick, or as a second-rounder. Djurisic’ passing tape is the ultimate goldmine for a ‘risk v reward’ discussion. His passing generally meshes alongside his driving game, and he makes some absolutely beautiful passes. He manipulates defenders with his eyes, makes one-handed passes, bounce passes, floated lob passes. Whatever type of pass you like, he’s probably pulled one off.

Mega Basket run ‘Knicks Ricky’ which is a step up ball screen for Djurisic, who has initially come off a different screen in a different direction. Djurisic goes to use the screen, draws the trap and makes a quick wraparound pass to the roller who draws the foul. He’s able to think quickly and do things quickly.

It felt on film as if Djurisic was more creative as a passer when driving right as opposed to left. The sample sizes aren’t large enough to make definitive sweeping statements, but he appears much more comfortable making advanced reads when he was moving to the right hand side. On the left, we were sometimes accustomed to results such as below.

Mega Basket run ‘Strong Spain’. Djurisic comes off the ball-screen and ends up picking up his dribble. He then tries a very difficult pass with his off-hand. He overestimated the window completely. Going quicker into a pull-up jumper here may have helped, but he also should make the pass to the strong-side corner. But at the same time, the player spaced in the corner isn’t a good shooter.

This play illustrates my point, from both sides. At first, Djurisic uses a ball screen to his left, but Partizan send a trap at him. He gets stuck and resets. Next time, he rejects the screen and makes a nice pass with his off-hand which should really end in a wide open corner three.

This assist is one of his best on the year. Mega Basket run ‘Double Zoom’ action to get him downhill. He gets pushed away from the basket but makes a great pass with his left hand while he is falling over. He is capable of passing with his left hand, it just shows up a lot more when he is driving on his strong hand- this isn’t exactly abnormal.

He’s shown great potential at working with a roller. Mega’s center play was sometimes inconsistent and he probably deserved more assists, but some of his passes were very creative and well-timed. I loved this floated lob pass.

Mega Basket run a Roll and Replace type action with a player leaking out of the paint while the PNR goes. Djurisic makes a nice floated pass for an alley-oop. The pass was one that should have been made, but I liked the adjustment when the nail help disrupted him, he floated it with his wrist while low to the ground.

I think a team should tap into his connective passing if they draft him.

He likely won’t see the paint this packed in the NBA, but he’s very capable of extending windows with his handle and making nifty passes. This one was a great behind the back pass, and he had a similar one in the second combine game he played in. In an NBA where a lot of stuff can become heliocentric, I think his ability to deliver multiple outcomes off the second side is extremely valuable.

I’ve made it clear he’s a creative passer. The disagreements some may have, is whether his game is inherently too risky. He turned it over 3.2 times per game which was among the highest in the BAL.

This play is a good example of Djurisic’s risk taking. He comes off a wide-ball screen on an empty-side. The roller is open, but Djurisic tries a bounce pass. In my view, the center should catch this ball. But the other view is that this type of pass probably wasn’t necessary to produce a good result.

Djurisic’ passing depends on the team and the fit. As a believer in the passing, I think the creativity is welcomed and stops the ‘Academy Brain’ type plays that can make half-court offense predictable and easier for the defense to stop. However, some teams and scouts simply are less forgiving to players that needlessly turn the ball over.

It does appear his approach to the game is to take risks and do high risk-high reward type plays. But there is a possible chance this scales down when he has better spacing and is asked to do less. Upon speaking to people who are less high on Djurisic than me, I think this is normally the point where we start to lose each other.

Defense

This section isn’t going to be as long as the others. This isn’t because I’m overlooking defense or because he is outrageously good or outrageously bad. There just doesn’t feel like a great deal to say.

This also isn’t my selling point. I project him to be a passable defender at my highest level of evaluation. His feel is enough for me to think he won’t be a liability off-ball which means he isn’t going to overly compromise your scheme.

One reason for my hesitance to talk in great depth about the defense is because of the role he was utilised in.

Mega Basket were an aggressive defense that overloaded the strong-side of the court and liked to mix in traps at the top of the key. Djurisic wasn’t consistently utilised on the ball, so he spent the majority of the time playing as the weakside low-man. This is quite a tough ask for a 20-year old wing with just 6’7 wingspan. NBA Teams will often use half-court offense to isolate and pick their preferred choice at low-man, but it’s also highly unlikely an NBA team would leave Djurisic in that role early in his NBA Career.

Within this role, his job was to split the difference between protecting the rim and playing to the corner. The results were inconsistent. Sometimes such as on the play below, he was able to execute every part of his job as a low-man.

Here, Djurisic contains the baseline drive and rotates all the way out to the corner, blocking the shot. But there were plenty of other occasions where his help inside was minimal or he left the corner wide open.

I’d say the part of the defense I’d bank on most is the feel.

This clip is from the second combine game. His team overload the strong side which is largely what Djurisic played with in Serbia. He shows good reading of the game to sink at the right time and take away the layup. It’s simple stuff but when he knows his role, I think he can make good plays. It just needs to be way more consistent.

I also like the play below, where he blows up Bilbao Action.

But again later in the play, the resistance isn’t exactly domineering. He’s in the right place, but Vojvodina still get the exact shot they want. Knowing where to be and disrupting the shot are separate things.

On the perimeter, he lacks discipline at times. He can surrender decent driving angles to his matchups. This was extra problematic at times because he was often isolated on a side, which meant there wasn’t always help to bail him out. But we also didn’t see a great deal of him on ball because of the nature of Mega Basket’s defensive scheme. Whether they were hiding him or preserving him is in the eye of the beholder. The likely answer is it’s a bit of both.

My Ideal Fits and Development Plan

A lot has to go right for a prospect to work out in the NBA. It isn’t always as simple someone being ‘destined’ to make it at the next level. It’s something I feel needs more discourse. In my eyes, building a winning team isn’t about just stashing as many theoretical primaries as you can, it’s about fitting things together and answering hypothetical questions about the pieces you do have.

Nikola Djurisic is a prospect I’d feel comfortable taking in the mid-teens in the right situation. But I’m unsure giving a player a ‘grade’ really matters in the grand scheme of things, because his fit on one team might not be as good as a fit on another.

The asterisk to the ‘fit’ debate is that of course, rosters can change. But generally speaking, front offices will always try and build around what they do have, even if popular opinion deems the core to not be worth it. Their job often depends on it.

Here are some things I’d like to see in the team that Djurisic gets drafted by

• Have at least average team three-point volume
• Have a player who draws nail help
• Have size in the frontcourt

The three-point volume is important because even if Djurisic becomes a more consistent shooter, he’s a guy whose best skill is the ability to drive and be creative as a passer. Ensuring he doesn’t just need to become a spot-up play finisher is important. If a team is in need of three-point volume, I have concerns that his game would become heavily geared towards shooting and the stuff I consider to be his swing skills will not be given room to flourish and grow.

I’ve mentioned part of my process is answering ‘hypothetical’ questions. The part of the game I spend a lot of time on is the ability to beat specific defensive coverages. For example, I want to know how my roster or primary ball handler would react to a trap or a hedge. Can the wings shoot, if not, can they drive to the rim and get the defense back into rotation. Does my big man have a good understanding of where to make himself available for a pass? Can my big play on the short roll? These are the types of questions I seek to answer when analysing rosters, because sometimes you cannot X’s and O’s your way out of a situation.

I bring this up, because of my desire to see Djurisic alongside a team that draws nail help. It’s very specific and niche, but the type of thing I care about. Djurisic is an excellent driver and finisher who can punish the defense and get them back into rotation. If a team just wants someone to spot-up, there are better options. But if a team has a primary who plays more in isolation, I feel the off-the-catch game is a nice supporting feature.

Though I’d say I’m not a doomer on Djurisic’ defense, I have to admit the lack of size is a potential issue. So I feel a team with a smaller front-court might not get the most out of him.

This section might feel a little niche to some, but I just think it’s important to outline what you are scared of with a prospect, and more often than not I end up scared of the developmental situation a player ends up in as opposed to flaws in their own talent.

The three teams I feel he fits with are Memphis, Portland and New York.

Memphis

Memphis have reportedly worked out Nikola Djurisic. I feel he’d be a great fit. Memphis overhauled their offensive scheme this year, moving from a more rigid and traditional system to one that inverted the floor more often and utilised creative sets to generate three-pointers. They likely did this because they felt their rigidity worked against them in playoff settings.

A lot of their sets are for Desmond Bane and other shooters to emerge at the top of the key for three-pointers, but they are also adding Ja Morant to the mix whose gravity as a driver is incredible. Djurisic would slot in well in this ecosystem, utilising his driving ability to finish plays later in the clock and punish early loading up on Ja Morant. Sure, schemes can change. But Morant and Bane are locked in, and regardless of how they run offense, space is going to be there for off-ball players to exploit off the catch

Portland

Portland’s young core is intriguing. Scoot Henderson’s rookie year was up and down but I still buy the driving talent and gravity this will create. In Shaedon Sharpe and Anfernee Simons they have two off-ball threats, and Duop Reath might be the most underrated player in the entire NBA as of now. Djurisic is a guy who needs some work, and I feel Portland is perhaps the best fit for him to iron out some of his kinks. Chauncey Billups is a creative tactician who can draw up some sets for him to work on the empty-side alongside the young core they have in place.

Of the three teams I’ve named, this is the only one where Djurisic would be entering a rebuild. The reason I love this fit is because he has a great opportunity for play time, and if Scoot Henderson pans out I feel he’s a player who can fit alongside him.

New York

I think of the three teams I’ve named, the Knicks might be my favourite. Firstly, they have arguably the premier primary player at drawing nail help in the NBA in Jalen Brunson. Tom Thibodeau is underrated as an offensive coach, but more often than not he does like players who can create something from nothing, or at least from the more traditional sense. Djurisic’s driving game could pop in the future alongside Jalen Brunson.

I also think Tom Thibodeau gives his players defensive structure. He can alter his at-the-level coverages but for the most part, his wings do the same thing each game. They hustle, tag the roll and fly out to corner shooters on the weakside. Djurisic has a decent feel for the game defensively, and I think giving him a very specific role will be beneficial to his overall development. Thibodeau can be willing to play defensive neutrals or even negatives if they give him something unique offensively, and Djurisic definitely fits the bill here.

If Djurisic does choose to stay overseas, I like this fit the most of the three. The Knicks are largely locked in with a lot of their core, and bringing him into the fold in say 2026 after two more seasons of developing as a lead guy could be hugely beneficial to the Knicks and Djurisic.

Conclusion and Developmental Thoughts

Overall, I’ve probably made it clear I’m a believer in Nikola Djurisic. I buy the driving game as being a difference maker at the next level, and the pull-up game is one I’d buy into. The biggest concern offensively is probably the spot-up shooting. Though I’ve said ideally I want him to drive to the rim at the next level, at some point he will have to shoot. Part of the work needs to come in his shot approach, at times he decides to drive from good shooting windows. This is partially what makes him valuable as a driver, but balancing it will be key. I also believe his athleticism is hugely undersold.

The passing is good, it’s whether the playmaking potential will be anchored down by the turnovers. He may turn the ball over at a lower rate in a lower usage role, but the creativity does seem to be part of who he is as a basketball player. Your read on this probably signifies how much you believe in him, because the driving game looks to be good. It will also be interesting early on to see the types of closeouts he receives. Guys low in the rotation normally aren’t featured on the scouting report, but I expect people to work out early on that he prefers to drive. Teams may want him to work more on his shot approach and be selective with drives.

Though a ‘grade’ can be different for each team, I’d say generally speaking I believe Djurisic should be a first-round pick. I think his experience in an off-ball role gives him an advantage over many others who will be adapting from being primaries into lower usage players. Defensively, I think you are banking on him not being a negative. The main work needs to come on the perimeter, where he does have a tendency to surrender good driving angles to his opponents. I’d also recommend streamlining his role, giving him a specific duty like Mega Basket did, albeit a different one as I question the viability of him as a low-man helper against NBA level athletes.

The post Scouting Report: Assessing Fit and Maximising Nikola Djurisic in the NBA appeared first on Swish Theory.

The board below contains archetype tags, sourced from my articles for the Stepien discussing rim protectors, shotmakers, connectors and offensive engines. Also included are four custom metrics, gauged subjectively rather than statistically. Scalability is one’s ability to scale up or down in usage on either end of the court. Readiness is where on the contribution timeline a player lands. Specialness is the collective rarity of skills (or, on the flipside, commonness of other traits). Versatility is what it sounds like.

Big Board Spots 1 through 20:

Big Board Spots 21 through 40:

The post Matt Powers’ 2024 NBA Draft Big Board appeared first on Swish Theory.

Every year a plethora of players declare for the NBA draft. In fact, 242 players declared for the draft in 2023 but only 58 were formally selected by NBA teams. Some of these players get picked up in the undrafted market but that still leaves a large percentage of the pool. So what makes it so difficult to attain this level? Why are the benchmarks so high, when in most cases, players are transitioning from the next best level of competitive basketball? Two words answer these questions: scarcity and margins.

The two causes are interdependent, with only 450 guaranteed roster spots and an additional 90 spots for two-way contracts, the competition for each single NBA roster spot is cutthroat. In economics, scarcity occurs when demand dramatically outweighs the supply causing the lack of availability of a resource. Here, the demand for roster spots is exceptionally high and yet there’s an abundance of players that enter the draft pool each year, so how do teams navigate what players are worth giving attention to and then acquire the resources to aid them in their development curves?

While it is a league that loves to imitate, each NBA team has its own unique drafting and development philosophy, however, at the same time there are a few principles that are underlying across the foundations of these teams’ ideologies. With the lack of roster spots, this means only the best of the best in the world can truly attain this level of play, causing the margins to be effective on an NBA court to become razor thin. Teams have to make decisions on prospects with these margins in mind. Questions about how a player works in narrow NBA windows have to be consistently recalibrated throughout the scouting process to effectively project a player.

For teams at the top of the draft, it can be an easier time to navigate this with more well-rounded prospects and “sure-fire” talents at the top of the draft such as Wembanyama, Doncic, and Zion in recent history. Teams have become far more effective at drafting even when comparing it to draft classes from 7-8 years ago. From there, when the “sure-fire” prospects are off the board, teams try to look into prospects that are highly talented and skilled but maybe one or two swing skills away from becoming far more threatening in their roles as NBA players. The Thompson Twins, Tyrese Haliburton, and Jayson Tatum are astute examples of this where teams can deploy the resources to severely alter a player’s development curve and hone in on those players’ weakest link, and this is generally why these prospects are taken in the lottery. Whether that comes in shooting, handling, playmaking, or even feel development, improvement is only possible so long as there is a feasible, achievable pathway to said development.

For instance, to project that a player may improve in a given skill ‘A’, there needs to be an implied pathway where the player is consistently put in positions to develop skill ‘A’ while also ensuring that the prospect even possesses the requisite toolset that gives them the gravity to draw those situations. For example, it does not take much intellectual prodding to realize that a player cannot meaningfully improve as a short roll passer if they can not effectively get downhill, roll to the rim, collapse, draw the defense in, and find the advantage created. If the player does not have the requisite tools to even draw the advantage in the first place, how are they expected to improve on the pattern recognition aspects of feel in those situations? This is where margins kick in from a developmental perspective.

Margins are the crux of how I project NBA players. Essentially, margins are the bandwidth to make errors that do not detract from a player’s immediate on-court value and their development curve, stemming from how a player’s blend of tools and skills aligns with the demands of an NBA context. For instance, it’s been much easier for Jaden Ivey to make handle improvements because of how quickly he gets downhill and gets through the first layer of defense. This enables Ivey to operate with way more space, and his elite burst has warranted the Pistons to run more creation reps through him. In contrast, a far less bursty prospect like Jalen Hood-Schifino doesn’t have the same extent of tools, and that has consequently lagged the development of his handle due to how much thinner his margins for error are.

Margins have always been more of an innate understanding to me but I would like to quantify and systematically visualize how I do that in this piece, highlighting some sneaky returners in the 2024 draft class who fit the margins to be an NBA player along the way. 

Before I begin, I would like to put out a disclaimer. The framework I am laying out is not a one-size-fits-all glove that you can apply on a 1:1 basis to every NBA draft prospect. With how archetypes and comparatives are used to describe prospects, I want to emphasize that evaluating prospects should not be treated like the bottle of Irish Spring 5-in-1 you would use as a swamped college kid because you did not have the time nor the effort to take care of yourself as you trucked along to your 8:00 AM “Intro to Sociology” class. This is only to streamline the process of identifying NBA players and how they could potentially grow and should be applied as a template to do so. Too often archetypes and comparatives are used to put prospects in these neatly defined, cookie-cutter frameworks, and due to the innate biases that this creates, it takes away from the minutiae of evaluation. Each prospect is completely unique in their own way like the crystalline structure of every snowflake; no two prospects are the same and neither will their margins to play in the NBA and grow.

FRAMEWORK: The ‘Funnel’ Method

Once these players who are one or two skills away are drafted, finding NBA players gets even tougher, akin to finding a needle in a haystack the size of Texas. This is not because there is any massive dropoff in talent; rather, the differences in talent and skill sets become so marginal at that point that it truly depends on how a team invests in that player and the team context the player inherits. In these instances when the player is not a primary advantage creator or does not warrant the ball in their hands consistently, I find that betting on outlier production or outlier skills allows a player to carve out a niche on the court and consistent playing time as they scale up to their NBA context. Betting on the outlier gives the player the margins to both play on the court, directly affecting their ability to exponentially grow their development curve.

First, let’s take a stroll down High School Lane. Bad memories incoming? Don’t worry, I just need you to remember a couple of lessons from your math and science classes from back then. This framework takes some inspiration from two key concepts: bell curves and the separating funnel experiment. A bell curve is a graph that depicts a normal distribution, essentially presenting the distribution of a set of values across a sample. It can show a sample’s central values, the highs, and the lows over a symmetrical graph based on deviations from the average. 

On the other hand, the separating funnel experiment is used to separate liquids with different densities. Due to the difference in densities, liquids such as oil and water are easier to separate. Here’s a graphic to explain these ideas better.

While scarcity is a primary consideration from a roster spot standpoint, the issue from a player and roster management standpoint is better defined through saturation. Saturation refers to the chemical principle that nothing extra can be absorbed by a substance. In this scenario, the teams are the substance and there is such an abundance of players with talents and skillsets that fit, teams can do nothing more with their limited roster spots. In the separating funnel experiment, saturation does not occur because when substances cannot mix or be absorbed by one another. Instead, they separate into different levels which can then only be separated to intricate detail through apparatus like the separating funnel. For teams to solve this problem in the same intricate detail, I present the Funnel Framework, combining the ideas of distribution from bell curves and the separation ideology of the funnel experiment.

Let’s flip that bell curve onto its side and map it to the sample of all potential NBA players. The deviations from the average (depicted as standard deviations) are the range of values a player can have on the NBA court and that can be further envisioned with the help of the funnel, where each level is like an immiscible liquid of different densities. These differences in ‘densities’ and how each player separates into each of these levels is how their margins affect the NBA court. As the margins increase for players, they trickle down into the lower levels of the funnels. While I plan to do a more analytical approach to qualify and apply this framework through statistical analysis of the NBA sample in a future piece, this is more of a way to visualize how margins functionally work in the NBA. Each colored level represents a specific set of qualities that improves a player’s margins, intrinsically changing the degree to which a player can carve out a role on the court.

For the sake of simplicity, I have used differentiators for margins at a more surface level rather than pointing out specific tools or skill sets that can provide more value whether in an immediate sense or developmental context. For example, the funnel will not break down whether a player has more touch or burst, or which of those skills is more valuable because the requirements can vary highly between NBA roles. Instead, the framework will focus on what is required for a player at each level, defining how the margins let them trickle down the funnel from both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball from a playoff perspective. Remember as we go through the framework, each level of the framework compounds similarly to the added density of each liquid. This means that each prior level still applies to a player even as they get deeper into the levels of the funnel.

Range of On-Court NBA Value

Functional Basketball Athlete:

This is what gets a player’s foot through the front door of the NBA landscape, what even gets them on the radar of NBA teams. What this level talks about is whether a player’s athleticism functionally allows them to play basketball at an NBA level. I relate this idea to the concept of performance outcomes. From a biomechanics perspective, performance outcomes talk about how effectively an athlete can operate an action or function of the sport they are playing. For example, with basketball, this can be how a player’s biomechanics allow them to effectively lift the ball, swing it up to their shot platform, and being able to release the shot. Another example is whether a player has the leaping mechanics to perform a dunk functionally.

What separates a player who is only a functional basketball athlete versus the levels below this one in the funnel, is that these players can functionally operate the biomechanics function but that performance outcome does not lead to a good basketball outcome. This is where the idea of being “skilled” comes through; just because a player can functionally release the basketball using his biomechanics, it does not mean that the player is accurately getting the ball through the hoop consistently. To be a consistent NBA player, the player needs to have the requisite athleticism to function in their role but they also need to be skilled enough to consistently reach a good basketball outcome.

One-Dimensional Player:

This next level talks about players who tend to be functional NBA players on one side of the ball but they actively take away from their team with how ineffective they are on the other side of the ball. These players can carve out a niche with their functional athleticism and skill on one side of the ball but their longevity in the league tends to be short because of how often they often lose their team’s possessions on the other side of the ball. An example of these types of players can be someone like Shake Milton who can be a microwave scorer off the bench but is consistently hunted on defense or Killian Hayes who was a great team defender but will consistently be sagged off of as an offensive player, taking away from his team’s spacing.

Functional NBA Player:

The next level of the funnel talks about players who can functionally operate on both sides of the ball but do not give a team outlier value in any form. These players are often at the back end of rotations of high-level teams because they can be playable without being a detriment on either side of the ball but they can not drive a team’s identity or provide enough value to help change the outcome of a game. An example of a player like this is someone like Drew Eubanks who can operate as an effective rim protector and as a roller offensively but his ability to do these things does not drive the complexion of a defense or offense which makes him quite replaceable from a team context.

Advantage Creator/Advantage Mitigator (With Help):

The average NBA player on a real playoff rotation can create advantages offensively or mitigate advantages on the defensive end with the help of their team. As PD Web defines it, advantage creation is the ability to create extra rotations for a defense and easy buckets for the offense. Advantage mitigation is the other side of the advantage creation coin where a defensive player can take away the opportunity for an offense to create those extra rotations and get easy buckets, often by mitigating the space an offensive player can operate in. The players at this level are often functional on one side of the ball and can create/mitigate advantages on the other end, for example with the help of a screen to get downhill offensively or when a team uses peel-switching to take away advantages and enable a defender to accentuate their ground coverage. The upper threshold of players at this level tends to create offensively and mitigate advantages defensively effectively with team help. High-end examples are players like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Andrew Nembhard, and Isaiah Hartenstein.

Advantage Creator/Advantage Mitigator From A Standstill:

The best players in the NBA can create advantages from a standstill or mitigate advantages solely using their margins. This level talks about the players who have high margins for error because of the combination of their tools/skills allowing them to create truly outlier value for their team. When creating advantages, these offensive players can automatically draw two players due to the gravity they have with the ball in their hands without needing the team to help them. This can be through shooting gravity like Tyrese Haliburton, downhill explosion to collapse defenses like Ja Morant, or even using strength and size in the post like Anthony Davis. On the flip side, advantage mitigators at this level can take away these extra rotations without the team over-helping using their tools/skills, whether that’s through high-level rim protection like Rudy Gobert or outlier point-of-attack defense like Jimmy Butler. These are high-end examples that help paint a clearer picture of these margins but there is again variance within this level due to the degree of value you can provide as a standstill advantage creator/mitigator. I have defined this variance in value through the two blue levels on the funnel diagram, with the darker blue representing higher-end examples like Haliburton, Gobert, and Morant. Examples of players lower on this spectrum and within the lighter blue level would be someone like Marcus Smart or Desmond Bane where the margins do create some of this value but not to the degree of the aforementioned examples.

The Outliers Within The Outliers:

When a player can create advantages or mitigate advantages to a historic level, it is due to a combination of highly unique tools and skills that enable them to attain this level of production. These tools and skills intersect in such a strong manner that these players can determine the outcome of a game through their margins. Often the players at this level can create advantages or mitigate them through different facets like feel, coordination, strength, speed, length, etc. This causes the margins to be truly unique and therefore affect the game at a historic level. Examples of players like this are Lebron James, Stephen Curry, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Larry Bird. In today’s NBA, players like Nikola Jokic and Victor Wembanyama seem to be on this trajectory as long as health remains their friend.

Developmental Margins

“The grass may be green on the other side, but the grass is always greener where you water it.”

– Wolfgang Puck

The funnel framework helps define the range of on-court value across the NBA sample using margins, but a crucial aspect of this framework is how margins also help slide players down the funnel. Margins are key to helping initially carve a role in the NBA but it is also vital in setting up thresholds for skill development. Margins open up the developmental pathways to add micro-skills or even new skills altogether due to the margin of error caused by their tools, to add onto the initial role they’ve carved out. Having outlier margins in certain areas should allow a player to improve on their flaws because the combination of their tools and skills inherently puts them in a position to have those flaws improved.

An example of this is how I talked about how a lob threat with outlier vertical gravity has the pathway to improve as a passer on the short roll due to the defensive attention they would require. This could also be applied to all types of toolsets if they are outliers. For example, a player with elite burst can expand on their handle due to the defensive attention the player will get as he slices through the earlier lines of defense. Think of Jaylen Brown and how he developed his handle from his days at Cal to where it is now on the Boston Celtics; it’s a byproduct of the defensive attention the combination of his burst, size, and shooting touch provides. These margins to develop are available to the outliers and are often not to players who are not because they do not have the same thresholds to make those same errors due to the depth and quality of talent in the NBA, and this is why it is also a crucial part of how I project players in the NBA Draft.

The Sleepers Of The 2024 NBA Draft

Now that we’ve gone over how margins affect development and playtime in the NBA, how do these concepts project to the 2024 NBA draft?

The average draft class produces approximately 20 NBA players, and these are the guys who often play beyond their rookie-scale deal. Correlating this to the funnel framework, the majority of these players would be defined under the level of players who can create or mitigate advantages to outlier value with team help. When projecting an NBA draft class and creating a draft board, I grade the players that will be at this level of outcome or have the opportunity to reach this level of outcome as first-round grades. The rest of this piece will use the funnel framework and the idea of margins to spotlight a few players I believe fit this mold while also being mocked outside of the top 30 picks on Rookie Scale’s Consensus Big Board:

Honorable Mentions: KJ Simpson, Jaylon Tyson, Melvin Ajinca, and Adem Bona.

Isaiah Crawford

Positive margins: strength, feel, length, coordination, and touch. | Potential pitfalls: vertical explosion and medical history.

Isaiah Crawford is a 6′ 5.25″ (without shoes) wing/forward with a 7′ 0.5″ wingspan who has dominated as a defender and primary creator for Louisiana Tech this past college season. While he has been tasked to create a high degree of offense for Louisiana Tech, he shines as an exceptional advantage mitigator on the defensive side of the ball. Crawford is very effective at ending offensive possessions and creating events as a defender which is apparent from his 5.7 block rate and 3.5 steal rate.

So how does he do this? This is where Crawford’s margins kick in as he combines his feel and athletic traits to consistently create events that lead to early offense for his team. Using his excellent strength, he can impede drives from the perimeter or absorb contact from drivers as a low man. Crawford also stifles offensive players using his hand-eye coordination and length to mitigate scoring advantages, whether it is in a context where he has to recover and block shots or take away space to dribble the ball.

Just look at this play where Crawford (#22) operates as a weakside tagger. For most players, the pass to the weakside corner is available because of how deep the roller has gotten into the paint and collapsed the defense. Crawford completely erases that passing window within the blink of an eye, targeting the ball extremely accurately mid-air with his length and restricting any angle that could have made the pass possible.

As an on-ball defender, Crawford can slide his feet well and move laterally. However, he mainly mitigates advantages here by using his balance and strength to absorb contact to get drivers off balance on the initial bump, where he then uses his length to dislodge the ball and create steals. Even when Isaiah Crawford initially gets beat on drives or space-creating moves from the perimeter, he’s able to consistently recover with his ground coverage and length to get back into the play and take away that scoring advantage. If I had to use one word to describe Crawford’s defensive prowess, it would be the word protean. He’s someone who can be extremely malleable on this end whether it is as someone who can rotate backline and protect the rim, help at the nail, or guard on-ball.

On the other side of the ball, Crawford gives you everything you want out of a dribble-pass-shoot wing. As a driver, he leverages his strength to carve space on drives which enables him to weaponize his touch and body control around the rim and in the intermediary.

Crawford’s driving is accentuated by the threat of his shot from the perimeter; it gives him the momentum to get downhill and further leverage his strength in advantage situations. There shouldn’t be too many questions about Crawford’s shooting where he has had a strong sample throughout his college career of being efficient as a shooter from multiple areas of the court:

His feel is prominent defensively but it also exudes itself with his passing, processing decisions quickly, and acting upon passing windows consistently. Making passes on the move on drives is no stranger to Crawford, consistently making dump-off passes to the roller and kickouts to the perimeter when the advantage is created.

At the NBA level, Crawford will not be asked to create every advantage for his team, and his role will scale down to an off-the-catch scorer who will process decisions well and use his scoring in the intermediary as a counter on drives. Being able to provide positive value in these facets of offense while being a defender who can change the complexion of a defense makes Crawford a highly valuable player within any team context.

The main concern with Isaiah Crawford is the extent of his vertical athleticism, especially after dealing with two ACL tears in the same knee. At the NBA level, this could somewhat affect his ability to protect the rim but as you can see from the tape, these injuries have not taken away from his impact as a rim protector. Teams will have to do their due diligence on his medical history but the combination of Crawford’s tools should alleviate these vertical limitations and give him a higher margin for error.

Ajay Mitchell

Positive margins: positional size, feel, touch, and change of direction | Potential pitfalls: vertical explosion, defensive versatility, and complexity of passing reads.

Complementary guards with size, touch, and strong processing are often tough to find in the NBA, and they are often quite valuable when they can play off of bigger advantage creators. Enter Ajay Mitchell, a 6′ 3.25” (without shoes) guard with a 6’6.25” wingspan tasked with the primary advantage creation responsibilities for UCSB this past college season.

Mitchell is not someone who will create advantages from a standstill in the NBA but it is more about what he can do once he is provided a screen to create space for him. He uses a combination of handling craft, size, and touch to score at all three levels of the court which he leverages with his outlier change of direction and lateral movement. Mitchell can often find finishing avenues in short, tight areas with how well he decelerates and can swivel on the transverse body plane (the plane that passes through the middle of the body and divides the body horizontally). His 58.8% on halfcourt drives, a whopping 3.89 unassisted rim attempts per 40, is a product of these movement patterns that allow him to jostle into tight, but open spaces.

Apart from scoring on drives, Ajay Mitchell (#13) has exceptional passing feel where he mixes in quick trigger single-level reads with manipulation. He does well at maintaining advantages while being able to use hesitation and his eyes to throw off defenders and create new passing windows.

Coming into this college season, Mitchell made huge improvements to his athleticism and shooting efficiency from 3. He had improved on his verticality, strength, and even straight-line burst with more optimal shin angles.

Mitchell does not have the burst to create advantages, but take a look at how much his straight-line burst has improved in the span of two years. His shin angles are far better and due to how much closer they are to being an acute angle from the floor, his ability to generate more explosion laterally from the floor (lateral banking) is improved.

Outside of his athleticism, Ajay Mitchell’s shooting has improved over the years at UCSB. He always had good touch but now that is parlaying into his 3-point efficiency with increased volume each year, his increased strength being a reason for the potential improvement from distance:

On the defensive end, Mitchell often struggled not being able to contain ballhandlers. However, I believe this is at least partly due to being overtasked on the offensive end while being asked to guard up a position in most possessions.

The defense should improve at the NBA level when he’s not being asked to create most of his team’s offense and instead used as a secondary or tertiary creator in lineups, thus enabling him to leverage his lateral movement skills on defense while benefiting from easier scoring opportunities. This could be a potential pitfall with Mitchell if this never improves, which would put more emphasis on the offensive traits that are lacking like being a sub-par leaper in traffic and a lack of volume with multi-layered reads while on the move.

However, as long as the defense is not a detriment, the margins with his touch, positional size, and change of direction should allow him to reach an outcome where he is an advantage creator who uses team help and can functionally operate on the defensive end.

Jonathan Mogbo

Positive margins: vertical explosion, feel, ground coverage, and standing reach. | Potential pitfalls: positional size and shooting gravity.

Jonathan Mogbo is probably the ‘weirdest’ prospect in the 2024 NBA draft. Weird is good though: it’s just another way of saying he is an outlier in multiple areas. Standing at 6′ 6.25” without shoes and a 7′ 2″ wingspan, Mogbo has been the crux of the San Francisco Dons’ offense. He’s an explosive athlete both vertically and in a straight line, which is why the Dons used him as their rim-runner, often springing over the top of the defense for lobs with his elite catch radius. He has some special qualities as a vertical threat: a near-zero load time off of one or both feet, great hang time that allows him to catch lobs that are poorly placed, highly syncopated footwork, and a 9′ 0.50” standing reach that allows him to extend into finishes with ease.

What’s especially intriguing about Mogbo is that he started college as a 6′ 4″ guard but had a huge growth spurt that catapulted him to a smidge under 6′ 8″. All of the skills he acquired as he played as a guard for the longest time like handling creativity and passing feel stayed. For that reason, Mogbo (#10) is an outlier ball handler for a big and when that is coupled with his tremendous vertical gravity, the results tend to look like this:

Where Mogbo really shines is his processing and passing reads. Lob threats that tend to put the amount of pressure that Mogbo does on the rim do not usually have the passing volume or the complexity of reads that can shift defenses. In fact, the group of players who have had over 50 dunks and an assist percentage above 20 is miniscule.

Given the popularity of the Delay action in the modern NBA, Mogbo should be able to weaponize his passing by operating handoffs and finding cutters. This would also enable him to counter with his handle when there are open lanes to the rim out of fake handoffs. When his defender sags off of him, this should give Mogbo the runway to get downhill and collapse the defense, where he can find open passing opportunities to the perimeter on the short roll. Another valuable indicator of Mogbo’s passing is that he throws a good volume of high-risk~high-reward passes while keeping his error rate low at an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.0.

Mogbo also projects to have a high impact on transition offense. As a good defensive rebounder (29.6 defensive rebounding rate), he is fantastic in grab-and-go situations where he can use his handle and open-court athleticism to shift defenses early and open up easier opportunities once the half-court offense is set. Playing him out of the dunker spot can also give Mogbo better opportunities to position himself for offensive rebounds off of misses.

The questions about Mogbo that persist are his lack of shooting and what defensive role he can translate to in the NBA. Mogbo covers ground well and moves in space well enough to mirror the movements of wings and forwards, which can be functionally seen in his 3% steal rate. The common idea is that Mogbo will be an undersized big as an anchor but I believe he projects more as a team defender who erases shots at the rim from the weakside and is switchable enough to guard similar-sized players out on the perimeter.

Playing as a guard for most of his life, Mogbo used to take jump shots but that volume drastically reduced as he grew larger and his role morphed into more of a traditional big. He took no threes this past year, but he notably shot 24 jump shots in 2018 at the Under Armour circuit and 79 attempts throughout his career in JuCo. Although I would not bet on his shooting to improve in a vacuum, there could be an avenue for Mogbo to become a low-volume catch-and-shoot 3-point shooter if a team believes they can improve Mogbo as a shooter and alter his chain of skills. Typically, I would not bet on a 22-year-old to improve their shooting acumen to change this drastically but Mogbo is anything but your typical player. He’s clearly an unorthodox prospect and he’s had an unorthodox development curve as a college basketball player. Perhaps, Mogbo’s physical changes have delayed his functional touch development, with some evidence in his improving free throw shooting: 42.5% on 80 attempts from the charity strike the year before but now at 69.6% on 102 attempts.

Regardless of whether Mogbo shoots or not, his margins with verticality, passing, handling creativity, ground coverage, and reach should help overcome some of his issues of scalability on either side of the ball. Mogbo can scale next to the bigs due to his handle, enabling him to operate as a tertiary handling valve and create advantages with his creativity and explosion.

All in all, these three players have the margins to carve out extremely effective and valuable roles within most team constructs. They can give teams outlier value in different ways while not being a detriment on the other end, expanding their margin for error on the court. While they bring high-level skillsets from day 1, these same margins can allow them to expand their game in NBA spacing, granted that the team that drafts them invests resources in the development of these skills. It could be Mogbo’s shooting improving due to the number of open reps he will get being sagged off of, Ajay Mitchell’s defense improving through better technique and leveraging his tools more as his scaled-down offense keeps him on the floor, or even Isaiah Crawford making multi-layered passing reads on drives because his pattern recognition improves with the number of off the catch drives he’ll need to operate. Using the ideas I have talked about through the funnel framework, I believe these three players will bring back first-round value for teams, and drafting them anywhere beyond the first round will give those teams a true steal in on-court value relative to the players’ contracts.

The post The Importance of Margins and Some 2024 Sleepers appeared first on Swish Theory.

Another advantage NFL draft analysts find with the sheer volume of picks is the ability to pick up on tendencies for certain teams and GMs. One or two NFL drafts can amass a large enough sample to begin drawing conclusions. That isn’t the case for the NBA draft, as many teams end with two or fewer selections.

My inspiration for this project comes from a series created by an Indianapolis Colts beat writer by the name of Zach Hicks, who predicts the Colts’ draft choices by observing past trends for combine measurables and stats. I adore this series (and if you happen to be a Colts/NFL Draft fan reading this, you will too) and wanted to emulate it for basketball.

The Oklahoma City Thunder’s General Manager, Sam Presti, joined the franchise in 2007. He’s the longest-tenured GM in the NBA by a huge margin, becoming lionized in drafting/rebuilding circles. We have a notable sample of Presti draft picks, which can lead us to discover some of his tendencies and preferences. 

Since joining the Seattle Supersonics in 2007, Presti drafted and kept 31 players. We’ll include Lu Dort for his significance, bringing our sample to 32. That’s not nearly large enough to draw definitive conclusions but we can begin to notice trends emerging. 

To predict how the Thunder will draft going forward, I collected measurable and statistical data for each OKC draft pick. The data was collected and analyzed from a prospect’s draft season. A career ranking may result in slight changes that could make up an entirely new project. All stats are from the NBA, Barttorvik and Basketball Reference. Some stats aren’t available for certain international/non-NCAA prospects, so we’ll do the best with what we have.

After analyzing the past 15 years of draft data, these are the factors Sam Presti seems to consider most:

Wingspan: 

Presti’s wingspan has become somewhat infamous and there’s truth behind that. In his 17 years with OKC, Presti has drafted just three players with a +2 or lower height-to-wingspan differential, those being Mitch McGary (2014), Josh Giddey and Tre Mann (2021).

The Thunder weaponize their basketball condors to wreck shop on both ends of the ball. Even after some philosophy shifts over the past four or five seasons, it’s clear how much he values length in prospects, especially guards and wings. Jalen Williams (+10), Keyontae Johnson (+8), Cason Wallace (+6) and Chet Holmgren (+6) all fit the wingspan trope.

Age:

Youth is a critical indicator of star upside and general NBA success and development in the draft and Presti knows this. Prospects who break out early are more likely to be stars and great players alike. Presti has never drafted a 22+ year-old in the top 20 picks. His oldest lottery pick is Jalen Williams (21.2) and his average lottery pick is under 20.

He’s drafted only six 22+ year-olds at all, those being McGary (pick 21, 2014), Josh Huestis (29, 2014), Aaron Wiggins (54, 2021), Devon Hall (53, 2018), Keyontae Johnson (50, 2023) and Sasha Kaun (56, 2008).

As the Thunder push for titles, Presti’s philosophy could begin to shift, leaning towards older more NBA-ready prospects as evidenced by the JDub and Johnson picks. Still, we know Presti values youth, especially early and likely will continue to draft on the younger side of teams.

Productivity:

This isn’t referring to points per game specifically, but rather productivity in other manners. Most Presti picks perform well in advanced, all-in-one metrics. Of the 21 picks with available barttorvik BPM data, all but two (Hamidou Diallo, Lu Dort) posted above a +4.0 BPM.

Aside from more general metrics, Presti prospects tend to dominate statistically in at least one area, whether that be passing, shooting, rebounding or foul drawing. There will always be exceptions, but drafting good basketball players tends to pay off in the long run.

Feel: 

Whatever nebulous term we choose to define some kind of processing, court mapping and instinctual indicators will be a challenge to quantify. Presti prospects do well in assist-to-turnover and assist rate metrics, especially the guards and wings.

This is a point of philosophy shift, as the post-2019 “Rebuild Era” shifted the premium away from raw athletic tools (Diallo, Ferguson, etc) and towards smart basketball players. The average post-2019 Presti pick has an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.4 (but a low assist rate interestingly, dragged down by bigs and Dieng).

OKC’s basketball vision relies on smart players who make quick decisions and process the floor in real-time. It’s the backbone of the roll replace offense and their aggressive defense and Presti will align with that philosophy.

Physicality: 

Physicality best manifests in stats like free-throw rate and rebounding rate which Presti prospects tend to have. Free-throw rate projects driving, finishing and creation as well as any other indicator; Thunder picks in the sample average a strong 31 free-throw rate and guards especially draw fouls prolifically.

Thunder prospects also tend to display a baseline of rebounding ability on the defensive end, indicating verticality, size and motor. Only Terrance Ferguson (4.5%), Alex Abrines (9.1%) and Russell Westbrook (8.4%) rebounded below 10% of their team’s shots during their minutes.

Shooting: 

The Rebuild era marks another shift for Presti in a slightly greater prioritization of shooting as well as feel. Since 2020, Oklahoma City’s draft picks averaged 34% on threes compared to 25.5% before 2020. They’ll still draft inefficient shooters like Giddey (29.3%), Dieng (27.1%), and Jaylin Williams (23.9%). 

For projecting shooting growth, volume is a far more reliable indicator and Presti values this now more than ever. Even if they didn’t shoot well, all recent Presti picks shot the ball, especially for bigs/taller players. In the pre-rebuild era, Presti drafted seven players with a three-point attempt rate below 10 compared to zero post-2020.

Historically, Presti’s draft picks don’t indicate a strong valuation of scoring efficiency or usage. OKC drafts all over the place in terms of true shooting and usage, anywhere from Ferguson (16.2% usage, 47% true shooting) to James Harden (32.6% usage, 60.7% true shooting.

Many scouts regard steal and block rates as important indicators of defensive potential. That isn’t a trend in Oklahoma City’s selections, as the steal (2.2%) and block (3.1%) rates hover around average.

Based on those numbers, here’s what an average Presti draft pick’s stats and measurables look like, sorted by position: 

Guards (11): 199.3 lbs, +5.3 WS differential, 20.1 years, 7.4 BPM, 1.4 assist-to-turnover ratio, 35 free throw rate, 38.2 three-point attempt rate, 14.4% defensive rebound rate

Wings (12): 206.1 lbs, +6.1 WS differential, 20.7 years, 5.7 BPM. 1.2 assist-to-turnover ratio, 27.8 free throw rate, 37.2 three-point attempt rate, 15.6% defensive rebound rate

Bigs (9): 238,8 lbs, +3.9 WS differential, 20.7 years, 7.6 BPM, 0.8 assist-to-turnover ratio, 48.2 free throw rate, 8.0 three-point attempt rate, 23% defensive rebound rate

It’s worth averaging out Presti’s picks post-2019 as well given the notable philosophy toward higher-feel players:

“Rebuild Era” (12): 202.7 lbs, +4.8 WS differential, 20.2 years, 7.2 BPM, 1.4 assist-to-turnover ratio, 29 free throw rate, 37.5 three-point attempt rate, 20.6% defensive rebound rate

Some outliers skew these averages and it’s still not a large enough sample size to feel fully confident, but these numbers provide an interesting baseline and range for Presti’s most valued prospect traits.

Based on Presti’s past drafting tendencies, who are the Thunder most likely to draft in 2024? Currently, OKC sits at 12. Presti loves trading up and down the board, so we will discuss more prospects than those likeliest to be available at 12 and some second-rounders at the end. After analyzing the data with a weight on the factors Presti values most — wingspan, age and BPM especially — I’ve come up with my best guesses at who the Thunder will value.

This is NOT my prediction for who the Thunder will draft. Presti’s philosophies have evolved and his priorities may shift, especially regarding drafting older prospects, as OKC turns to championship contention mode. I’ll provide context for each prospect as some of them will be more or less likely to be OKC picks than the data suggests.

*THE PERFECT PRESTI PROSPECTS*

Stephon Castle, Wing/Guard, UConn

Numbers to know: +3.5 WS (6’9’), 5.5 BPM, 19.7 y/o, 1.9 a:to, 37.9 FTr, 12% DRB, 25.9 3par

On paper, Stephon Castle is the prospect I’d wager Presti covets most. He checks every box: Castle is young, impactful on a great team, and long with great statistical indicators. Presti wings tend to shoot with more volume, but that’s the only knock you can find based on historical trends.

OKC would likely have to trade up to draft Castle, who some have projected as high as two to the Wizards. Castle’s desire to play point guard might also scare the Thunder off given their abundance of ball-handling talent in the backcourt and on the wing, so he might not grade as highly for OKC as his statistical profile suggests. Still, I wouldn’t be shocked to see a trade-up for Castle if he slips a bit down the board.

Donovan Clingan, Center, UConn

Numbers to know: +5 WS (7’6.5), 14.1 BPM, 20.3 y/o, 1.9 a:to, 47.8 FTr, 23.4% DRB, 2.7 3par

Castle’s college teammate thrives in almost all of the same areas as him; Clingan’s production at a young age, huge wingspan and excellent statistical indicators as a passer and athletically all speak to Presti’s preferences. He hasn’t drafted a non-shooting big since Dakari Johnson in 2015 but I’d imagine he would make an exception for Clingan.

Clingan also feels like a possible trade-up candidate for the Thunder as he’s been projected as high as number one to the Hawks. Like Castle though, pushing the chips in for Clingan to pair with Chet Holmgren long-term wouldn’t shock me. It’s not a move I would love as Holmgren is best as a five and Clingan’s spacing is a concern, but the physicality and rim protection he’d add would be immense.

Kel’el Ware, Center, Indiana

Numbers to know: +5 WS (7’4.5), 8.1 BPM, 20.2 y/o, 1.0 a:to, 41.9 FTr, 26.1% DRB, 12.5 3par 

Before this exercise, Ware wasn’t a prospect I expected to rank highly for Presti’s history. I haven’t seen him linked to the Thunder at all, but it makes perfect sense on deeper inspection. Ware shares all of the same profile strengths as Clingan — wingspan, BPM, youth, feel and interior goodness. Unlike Clingan, Ware spaced the floor in college to varying degrees throughout his career.

Ware likely will be on the board at 12 and the Thunder sticking and picking him makes sense based on Presti’s history and the current roster. His shooting fits more cleanly with OKC’s five-out offense than Clingan’s while maintaining similar defensive and interior scoring upside. I love this fit and think it’s one of the most likely options at 12 that most aren’t discussing.

Ja’Kobe Walter, Guard/Wing, Baylor

Numbers to know: +6 WS (6’10), 4.4 BPM, 19.8 y/o, 1.1 a:to, 48.9 FTr, 12.3% DRB, 57.2 3par

If I had to submit an official guess based on Presti’s past selections for the Thunder’s pick at 12, history says it should be Walter. Like those in this tier, he’s extremely long and young with statistical indicators aligning with the data, though his BPM would be on the lower end for Presti picks. 

Lottery is too high for Walter by my evaluation, as his lack of offensive juice outside of off-ball shooting and defensive problems make for a limited ceiling. I’m not sure the Thunder would look to add another questionable playmaker off of the bounce after the Mavericks exposed some of their perimeter creation issues, though. Presti could believe in his three-and-D skillset on the wing and pick him at 12 even if he’s the least likely of the top four fits to end up on OKC to me.

*STRONG PRESTI FITS*

Ron Holland, Wing, Ignite

Numbers to know: +4 WS (6’10.75), 19 y/o, 0.9 a:to, 41.7 FTr, 16.2% DRB, 21.3 3par

We won’t have BPM numbers for non-NCAA prospects which adds some uncertainty for them. Holland looks like a classic Presti wing given his youth, elite athletic and physical tools statistical indicators. His shooting and assist/turnover numbers lag a bit behind most Thunder wing selections.

For myself and many others, Holland is a top-two prospect in the class and should be the pick if he falls on the principle of valuing the best talent available. There’s a strong chance he isn’t on the board at 12 but if he is, I don’t think Presti would let his slide continue.

Tyler Smith, Wing, Ignite

Numbers to know: +4 WS (7’1), 19.6 y/o, 1.1 a:to, 30.5 FTr, 15% DRB, 36.3 3par

Draft analysts don’t associate Tyler Smith with the Thunder often, but his profile cleanly fits their type. Smith is young with a long wingspan, excellent shooting numbers and solid rebounding, passing and free-throw drawing stats. Selecting Smith might be likely in a trade-down scenario, but snagging him at 12 and valuing his size and spacing potential is a possible outcome for the Thunder.

Devin Carter, Guard, Providence

Numbers to know: +6.5 WS (6’8.75), 11.4 BPM, 22.3 y/o, 1.3 a:to 37.6 FTr, 23.7% DRB, 48.2 3par

Carter’s case to be the pick at 12 fascinates me. He’d be the oldest player Presti has ever picked in the lottery but he fits every other indicator best of all prospects in the entire draft: gargantuan wingspan, insane BPM, foul drawing, passing, shooting, you name it. 

If the rumors about Chicago’s promise are true, Carter might not be an option. One could argue his skillset overlaps some with Cason Wallace, who the Thunder spent a lottery pick on last year. But if he falls to 12, my gut feeling is that Presti would draft Carter, valuing his current skillset for a Thunder team hoping to contend for titles now.

DaRon Holmes II, Center/Forward, Dayton

Numbers to know: +4 WS (7’1), 21.9 y/o, 11.5 BPM, 1.2 a:to, 72.4 FTr, 23.7% DRB, 20.8 3par

Aside from his age — Holmes would also be the oldest Presti lottery pick by almost a year — DaRon Holmes is a Thunder big. He’s functionally long and dominated college basketball as a consensus All-American, showcasing the playmaking, handling and spacing requisite of modern bigs.

Holmes profiles closest to a PJ Washington/Aaron Gordon acolyte in this draft and he seamlessly fits OKC’s roster and philosophy on both ends. A big who thrives as a perimeter handler with some interior versatility would have changed the calculus for the Thunder in the postseason. I would not be stunned if the Thunder reached for Holmes at 12. The fit is that good, even if his age would be a trend-breaker.

*POSSIBLE PRESTI GUYS*

Tidjane Salaun, Wing/Forward, Cholet

Numbers to know: +5 WS (7’2), 18.9 y/o, 0.7 a:to, 27 FTr, 15.5% DRB, 53.1 3par

If Presti dips back into the raw French wing well, Salaun will probably be the pick. He’s one of the youngest players in the whole draft with an elite wingspan and well-rounded indicators. European prospects often record lower assist numbers due to stricter assist counting than American hoops, accounting for the lower assist-to-turnover ratio.

Salaun likely wouldn’t contribute much on day one, His two-way upside is immense and he’d provide a strong contingency plan on the wings for the coming seasons if Salaun ends up as the pick. 

Yves Missi, Center, Baylor

Numbers to know: +3 WS (7’2), 20.1 y/o, 5.8 BPM, 0.3 a:to, 60.4 FTr, 16.3% DRB, 0 3par

Missi performs well in many of the main Presti philosophy points: solid wingspan, youth and BPM production. His poor shooting and playmaking numbers don’t fit with Presti’s recent center picks as he seems to prioritize more “modern” perimeter-oriented bigs. As we mentioned with Clingan, Missi makes more sense at 12 if Presti wants to move towards more “traditional bigs” to add size and rebounding in the frontcourt.

Zach Edey, Center, Purdue

Numbers to know: +7 WS (7’10.75), 22.3 y/o, 15.5 BPM. 0.9 a:to. 80.9 FTr, 25.5% DRB, 0.1 3par

We can draw parallels between Edey and Missi’s alignment with Presti’s history. Edey is much older than Missi with more production and similar playmaking and floor spacing hangups. The National Player of the Year’s enormous wingspan, BPM and foul-drawing numbers will all entice Presti. His size, rebounding and interior presence are tailor-made to help OKC, though I’m skeptical he’s the pick due to his age and lack of a shooting presence.

Kyle Filipowski, Forward/Center, Duke

Numbers to know: – 0.25 WS (6’10.5), 20.6 y/o, 10.1 BPM, 1.3 a:to, 38.4 FTr, 22.6% DRB, 25.7% 3par

Sam Presti drafting a prospect with a negative wingspan would feel sacrilegious. But apart from length, Kyle Filipowski is a Presti big. He’s young, extremely productive with the requisite physicality, handling and spacing potential to play on the outside. I’m skeptical Presti goes for another short-armed prospect, though Filipowski’s fit as a perimeter threat and a physical rebounder and defender are ideal if he does make an exception.

Johnny Furphy, Wing, Kansas

Numbers to know: +0.5 WS (6’8), 19.6 y/o, 5.4 BPM, 1.2 a:to, 40.3 FTr, 16.3% DRB, 60.7 3par

Like Filipowski, Furphy slots in with recent Presti selections in every way but wingspan. If the Thunder want to add a young shooting wing with size, Furphy could be one of the better options. He’s most likely in a trade down and even then I wouldn’t bank on the Thunder to value Furphy as much as other longer, even more productive wings later in the draft where age hasn’t been as paramount for Presti.

Jared McCain, Guard, Duke

Numbers to know: +1.5 WS (6’3.5), 20.4 y/o, 7.6 BPM, 1.4 a:to, 23 FTr, 15.3% DRB, 55.4 3par

Presti drafted a shorter-armed guard in 2021 in Tre Mann who isn’t on the team three years later. McCain has youth (despite being an old freshman), BPM, assist and shooting numbers as strengths and he’d fit well as an off-ball shooting, secondary pick-and-roll guard next to Shai and Jalen Williams. But in a crowded OKC backcourt, McCain’s lack of length and physicality likely would lead the Thunder elsewhere. 

Dalton Knecht, Guard, Tennessee

Numbers to know: +4 WS (6’9), 9.9 BPM. 23.2 y/o, 1,1 a:to, 35.4 FTr, 14.3% DRB, 40.6 3par

Knecht would be the third 23-year-old Presti draft pick in his Thunder tenure and the first inside the top 50 picks. That makes Knecht extremely unlikely at 12, though his wingspan meets the threshold and his statistical production for the important markers impress. I don’t expect OKC to strongly consider Knecht even if his plug-and-play offensive skillset would add juice on that end.

*UNLIKELY PRESTI FITS*

Matas Buzelis, Forward/Wing, Ignite

Numbers to know: +1 WS (6’10), 19.7 y/o, 0.9 a:to, 28.3 FTr, 17.1% DRB, 28.8 3par

Shorter arms, poor assist and turnover numbers and limited physicality/ strength mean Buzelis doesn’t match the Thunder’s usual type. Though Presti will draft rawer tall wings like Ousmane Dieng and Aleksej Pokusevski, they often have outstanding statistical indicators elsewhere. Other wing options like Salaun and Holland will probably entice Presti more than Buzelis.

Tristan Da Silva, Forward/Wing, Colorado

Numbers to know: +2 WS (6’10.25), 6.2 BPM, 23.1 y/o, 1,3 a:to, 25.8 FTr, 13.7% DRB, 40.5 3par

Drafting Da Silva would depart from Presti’s typical philosophy; he’s already 23 with a mediocre wingspan and extremely poor rebounding and foul-drawing numbers for his size. Da Silva’s height, shooting and playmaking skill theoretically slot in perfectly to OKC’s offensive system and Presti may value his plug-and-play value. If he was the pick at 12 or even in a trade down, Da Silva would become a massive historical outlier.

Isaiah Collier, Point Guard, USC

Numbers to know: +2 WS (6’4.75”), 3.5 BPM, 19.7 y/o, 1.3 a:to, 49.7 FTr, 8.7% DRB, 25.5 3par

Collier has arms on the shorter side, wasn’t incredibly productive by BPM and hits below thresholds on rebounding and three-point numbers for Presti guards. As much as I adore Collier, OKC has plenty of handling guards on the roster and others in this draft fit Presti’s tendencies. 

*THE ONE BIG ASTERISK*

Cody Williams, Wing/Forward, Colorado

Numbers to know: +6.5 WS (7’1), 2.9 BPM, 19.6 y/o, 0.8 a:to, 39.7 FTr, 9.2% DRB, 21.1 3par

Looking solely at historical indicators, Cody Williams performs poorly compared to most Presti selections, especially in the lottery. His low BPM especially pops out and only his free-throw rate numbers are above the Thunder’s average. 

OKC will likely throw most of this out for obvious reasons, as keeping Jalen Williams around for as long as possible would be reason enough to draft Cody. Williams’ mid-season injury materially impacted his play, as he looked less explosive and confident after returning in January. 

If not for the injury, Williams likely fares much better in the Presti formula, especially given his huge wingspan and age. Cody is probably the most likely OKC pick at 12 and it’s as good a spot as any for him to develop physically and as a shooter.

If the Thunder trade down in the draft, here are some other prospects that fit Sam Presti’s historical type:

Dillon Jones, Guard/Wing, Weber St

Numbers to know: +6.5 WS (6’11), 7.3 BPM, 22.7 y/o, 1.7 a:to, 45.4 FTr, 31% DRB, 23.7 3par

Jonathan Mogbo, Forward/Wing/Center, San Francisco

Numbers to know: +8 WS (7’2), 10.5 BPM. 22.7 y/o, 2.0 a:to, 32.2 FTr, 29.6% DRB, 0.1 3par

Isaac Jones, Forward/Center, Washington St

Numbers to know: +7 WS (7’3), 6.7 BPM, 23.9 y/o, 0.8 a:to, 55.8 FTr, 19% DRB, 0.8 3par

Keshad Johnson, Wing, Arizona

Numbers to know: +7 WS (6’10.25), 7.1 BPM. 23 y/o, 1.2 a:to, 37.5 FTr, 14.8% DRB, 32.6% 3par

Bronny James, Guard, USC

Numbers to know: +6 WS (6’7.25), -0.3 BPM, 19.7 y/o, 2.0 a:to, 30.4 FTr, 15.1% DRB, 53.6 3par

Trey Alexander, Guard, Creighton

Numbers to know: +7 (6’10.5), 4.7 BPM, 21.2 y/o, 1.9 a:to, 20.8 FTr, 14.6% DRB, 35.2% 3par

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