Finding the Fit: Tre Johnson, a Tale of Two Houstons, and Winning Ugly

As we round the corner into the home stretch of draft coverage, set against the backdrop of a particularly dramatic NBA Finals, draftniks are mulling over whether the current crop of prospects they have spent the last calendar year evaluating could hold their own in such a setting. The breakneck pace of the Indiana Pacers contrasted with the frenetic swarming defense of the Oklahoma City Thunder are a far cry from the style of play NBA fans are accustomed to seeing at the highest level, and certainly warrant a recalibration of drafting philosophy to some degree. In fact I believe we are witnessing a tectonic shift in conventional draft thought in real time, the reverberations felt from the success of two notably ‘weird’ teams, spearheaded by equally strange superstars in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton, has made the prospect of drafting unconventional prospects like Jase Richardson and Collin Murray-Boyles more palatable to the average basketball fan. And while I’m always the first to advocate for a expanding the definition of what exactly constitutes a ‘good’ basketball player, I’m not sure becoming more inclusive on its own will yield better evaluative results than it has in the past.

The larger lesson I’ve come away with from this Finals isn’t a novel insight by any means; it was an emphatic reinforcement of what makes exercises like rankings (which I admittedly find great joy in) a futile exercise. In the modern NBA, fit is everything, a fairly banal observation, I know, but in an era where punitive salary cap clauses place a premium on continuity, differentiating between players who can or cannot augment in-house personnel is paramount. Currently, the NBA is approaching a saturation point of talent, where there truly aren’t many players incapable of contributing in any setting. And as the skill level reaches a crescendo, drowning out the noise and identifying the players tailor-made for your current setting is key. And in this class, I’m not sure if there is a player more representative of this idea than Tre Johnson.

In the 2025 draft class, there may not be a more known commodity than Tre Johnson. In 2022 Johnson debuted at 3rd overall in 247’s initial rankings for the 2024 High School class and never dropped below 6th for 247. In RSCI (Recruiting Services Consensus Index), Johnson finished 5th overall. As stat tracking in the amateur hoops space has become more prevalent over the past few years, players are entering college with increasingly robust statistical profiles. This, paired with more accessible game film, makes this current crop of one-and-done prospects maybe the most thoroughly scouted group of players to enter the NBA. Take the evaluation of Tre Johnson below, from 247’s Adam Finklestein.

Written over eighteen months ago, if you were to remove the date, this scouting report could easily be mistaken for a write-up on Tre’s game from his lone season at Texas. If you were to analyze Tre’s game on a more micro-level, Finkelstein’s analysis could be used as support for the validity of ‘prospect determinism’, an idea dictating that players, even as early as high school, are more fully formed than we are willing to acknowledge. Coming into the season, I had made two fairly innocuous posts observing a perceived weakness (Half-Court finishing), and strength (Isolation scoring) in Johnson’s game.

Lo and behold, Johnson remained a subpar finisher in the half-court (46.5% with a 17% rim-frequency) and saw no issues translating as an Isolation scorer. Per Synergy, Johnson was 11th in the country in ISO PPP (.827) of anyone with 100 or more possessions, and the second most efficient freshman of anyone with this high of volume in the past decade (trailing only Dennis Smith Jr). Even with his ineffectiveness at the rim, Johnson’s individual scoring prowess put him in rare air amongst freshmen to have entered the league.

Keep in mind the query above was not conducted on a pool of only drafted players, but on every season of every player to enter the league since 2010. 12 of the 14 players in the query were, or are projected to be, top 10 picks, all were high pedigree prospects. However, even with Johnson’s impeccable resume as a scorer, plenty of evidence calls his lofty draft status into question. The issue of Tre Johnson’s defense is well known by now, and it has been widely recognized as an acceptable risk to take considering the caliber of offensive player Johnson profiles to be. Defenses lapses shown below have been met with a degree of hand-waving.

Texas made it a point to keep Johnson from the action defensively, typically assigning him to smaller, lower usage, perimeter players to suppress his fouling and keep him on the floor. And for as frequently as Johnson’s impressive anthropometric profile is cited as a reason for optimism in his defensive projection long-term, I was only slightly less underwhelmed by his individual defense when he was involved in possessions.

A fundamental belief of mine is that players’ offensive and defensive profiles shouldn’t be assessed independently; often, issues that manifest on one end are related to a player’s behavior on the other. In Tre Johnson’s case, the absence of rim pressure and defensive activity amount to one of the worst cases of applied physicality we’ve seen from any well-regarded prospect in recent memory. In the query below I included all players which met these thresholds in any of their college seasons, no matter the minutes share they played, and included the 14 with the most accumulated ‘Estimated Wins’ to this point of their career (disclaimer these numbers are from roughly the midpoint on the 2024-25 season so may not be exact for active players). The average Estimated Win Total for Top 10 picks since 2008 is 32.4; this group comes in well short of this mark at an average of 18.6 Total Win Shares.

Adjusting parameters in the query in order to cast a wider net and to explicitly search for players whose defensive struggles can’t be attributed to size alone, yielded an even more concerning list. On the left are players within the query with the highest Estimated Win Total. Understanding that a cumulative metric like Estimated Wins could potentially omit recent success cases, on the right are all the players within the query who have been drafted within the past 5 years. The players highlighted below are those who met the query in their pre-NBA season. Virtually all of the players who were selected with high picks, like Tre, were underclassmen whose physical limitations were dismissed as a byproduct of age. And while it’s early enough for these players to shift the perception of their careers, I believe it’s fair to say they have not yet returned value to their drafting team commensurate with the draft capital spent on them.

So, with evidence mounting indicating that, in all likelihood, Tre will be facing an uphill battle on the road to justifying a top 10 pick, what reason is there for optimism? What context would be most amenable to Tre’s skillset, and under what circumstances could a team transform Tre Johnson into an indispensable building block of their roster despite all the evidence to the contrary?

The Two Houstons

The seeds of this piece were planted the weekend of April 4th, after possibly the best stretch of basketball (or at least my personal favorite) so far this year. On that Friday, the recently crowned champion Oklahoma City Thunder were defeated by the Houston Rockets 125-111, and on the next day, a star-studded Duke squad was toppled in a shocking upset by the Houston Cougars 70-67. Both Houston squads came into their respective contests heavily doubted; the Cougars were 5-point underdogs while the Rockets’ spread was set at +6.5 points.

In the Rockets’ case, their victory has probably already been lost to time as an April regular-season win, even over the eventual champions, hardly qualifies as more than a footnote of the NBA season. But the narrative surrounding the Houston Cougars I found much more interesting and in a way was the true catalyst for this piece. For as much respect as I have for the Houston Cougars basketball program I, like many others, was confused as to how a team with no highly regarded NBA talent could have bested a team with three players who could very well be drafted inside of the top 10. Most (well-adjusted) people probably attributed Duke’s late-game collapse to their lack of experience. Per KenPom, Duke was 268th in minutes continuity this season. After a few early-season struggles versus staunch competition, Duke had laid waste to practically every opponent before Houston and as a result they just didn’t have the calluses which can only be formed in tightly contested matchups. This rationale, although flawed, probably does apply, but it still left me searching for a more definitive answer. How were two ostensibly overmatched teams able to overcome a perceived gap in talent and beat two championship-caliber squads? My attempt to find a satisfactory answer to this question has probably transformed the way I think about the game more than any previous exercise.

Anyone lucky enough to watch both games probably recognized the parallels between the two winning teams. Both squads weaponized their physicality via their relentless defense and commitment to the offensive glass to carve out extra possessions.

However, the similarities between these two squads are not confined to their defense and presence on the offensive glass. Further examination shows two almost mirrored stylistic profiles.

The players of both teams also had their individual stat profile curated similarly, with their teams opting for a more egalitarian approach offensively as shown by the tight usage spread between their players.

Even though the significance of these parallels may not be clear at the moment, I believe that because of the Houston Rockets current roster construction, they have positioned themselves to benefit from a market inefficiency which has been exploited by the Houston Cougars for years. And the environment they are cultivating is the exact context where a player like Tre Johnson could be optimized.

The Blueprint

Before delving into the specifics of the relationship between Tre Johnson’s skillset and each of the Houston based teams, I think it is necessary to discuss how the Houston Cougars became such a resounding success, what elements of the Cougars program they should look to replicate, and why the Rockets should consider the Cougar model a roadmap for their own success.

The success Houston has experienced under Kelvin Sampson has been nothing short of unprecedented. Prior to Sampson taking the reins at the onset of the 2014-15 season, the Cougars had been to the NCAA tournament three times in 25 years and were unable to win a tournament game in any of their appearances. When Sampson arrived in Houston, the program was entering its first season in the American Athletic Conference, a league composed of an eclectic group of Conference USA castoffs and Big East schools taking temporary shelter within the conference. Amid the chaos of the ad-hoc league, the Cougars quickly established themselves at the top of the food chain and never looked back.

What is most interesting about Houston’s meteoric rise into the upper echelon of college basketball, is how they managed to attain and sustain their success. Simply put, Houston may be the greatest endorsement for the importance of establishing an identity in basketball, and a cursory glance at their statistical profile would confirm as much.

As we’d mentioned at the onset of the section, Houston’s elite offensive rebounding is no surprise and a consistently low TO% is a staple of any high-performing offense. The success in these two categories making for quality offense shouldn’t come as any surprise. After all, these are pillars of Dean Oliver’s 4 Factors of Basketball Success. BUT what is especially interesting to me is how poorly the Cougars fare in Oliver’s other 2 Factors, Free Throw Rate and Shooting. For being a consistently elite offense for nearly a decade, the Cougars have been comparatively underwhelming with regards to their scoring efficiency. To establish a frame of reference for exactly how rare this confluence of factors was, I conducted a quick query of exactly how often good offenses played this slow with a shot profile as inconducive to success as the Cougars seemingly were.

Since 2008, 53 teams met the query above, with only the 9 pictured meeting these thresholds more than once. The Houston Cougars attained these marks 6 (!!) times. So, how does a team whose offense frequently unfold like the clip below, where the paint isn’t touched ONCE throughout the entire possession, consistently perform to the level Houston does?

What Houston has done to find success at the highest level is implicitly acknowledge the limitations their overwhelming strengths (offensive rebounding) impose on their offense, and they’ve addressed these limitations by strictly and increasingly adhering to the ‘Hands and Gloves’ philosophy.

Houston’s Hands and Gloves

Hands and Gloves is a term coined by the always insightful @nilehoops to describe the symbiotic relationship between players whose skillsets are more based in their physical advantages and players whose strengths are typically utilized in more offensively demanding roles. At the risk of further butchering the definition, here is the quote from Nile’s article articulating the concept.

In the case of the Houston Cougars, they take this concept to the extreme. Despite often ranking in the bottom half of the country in 3PA rate, the Cougars have rostered a bevy of high-volume long-range gunners. Many of which were analytical darlings despite their paltry efficiency scoring inside the arc.

Now the picture is starting to become clearer: in the Cougars’ case, their commitment to maintaining a standard of physicality and rebounding efficacy on the court at all times reduced the potency of their downhill scoring. I agree wholeheartedly with their (assumed) assertion and think the opportunity cost of drives is significantly underdiscussed in the sport. For a team like Houston, where possessions are in short supply, they can ill-afford to risk accumulating turnovers on meandering drives into a congested paint. In addition to the rim aversion present in the majority of guards’ profiles, the lack of playmaking also stands out. Despite almost all the players above being smaller guards (Quentin Grimes and Jherrod Stiggers being the tallest at 6’5), there isn’t a single player with a positive AST%:USG% ratio, again emphasizing how narrowly defined their roles are. The responsibility of ameliorating spacing issues and maintaining the turnover margin falls squarely on these players’ shoulders, with little else outside of this being asked for them offensively. What makes the players pictured above especially unique in the ‘Hands and Gloves’ framework is not just the duty they are tasked with, but the degree of difficulty under which they are asked to execute.

After taking note of these trends within Houston’s teambuilding, I wanted to see if the relationship between a team’s environmental factors was more universal. Specifically, I wanted to see if teams lacking in schemed advantages (as represented by AST%) and multiple spacing options (3Pr) were more prone to placing a heavy burden on the shotmaking talent they did have on their roster. The query below is what I’ve termed a ‘Scoring Stress Test’.

As Mr. Oliver’s 4 Factors would dictate, what these teams sacrificed in their shot quality, they were forced to compensate for in other areas, specifically the TO Margin and Offensive Rebounding. The theory I had posited earlier also seems to be confirmed to an extent, as this query houses some of the best off-the-dribble shotmaking talent of the Bart Torvik era. Below are each team’s leaders in shot attempts for the season in the previous query. Each player is one of the more prolific shotmakers in the country in their respective season, and I do not think it’s coincidental that the two largest players have seen their shotmaking ability translate seamlessly to the NBA.

Now that we’ve established the necessity of high-volume pull-up shooters to teams who find success without traditional markers of an efficient offense, it’s time to discuss this idea’s implications for the Houston Rockets.

Houston Rockets: Closing the Gap

At the time of writing this, the Houston Rockets have just completed a trade for Kevin Durant, sending the Phoenix Suns Jalen Green and the 10th pick in this year’s draft. This trade has been universally praised and for good reason. Kevin Durant is still one of the most efficient scorers in the world, and while Jalen Green is still a promising young player, the value and fit were too good to turn down. With the transaction, the Rockets stand to make a leap not only because of who was traded, but the kind of players that were involved in the deal.

Circling back to the similarities present in each of the Houston teams’ statistical profiles, I want to focus specifically on the sections outlined below.

It is my belief that by trading Jalen Green and acquiring Kevin Durant, the Rockets will make a major competitive leap due to their improvement in these 4 statistical categories. More specifically, the improvement in these statistics will result in the Rockets’ profile bearing an even closer resemblance to the 2024-25 Houston Cougars.

Along with their suffocating defense, the defining trait of the Houston Cougars may be their pace. Consistently ranking near the bottom of the nation, the Cougars would not be able to control the pace to the degree they do without the interplay between their offensive and defensive philosophies. In studies on whether offense or defense has more influence on a team’s style of play, the overwhelming conclusion reached has been that offense has a greater impact on the pace of play. The most evident way Houston goes about suppressing pace is through their offensive rebounding. The two frames below are a perfect contrast in the effect offensive rebounding has on pace and may shed some light on the resurgence of double big lineups.

In both frames, we have the Alabama Crimson Tide, #1 in the country in Adjusted Tempo and the antithesis of Houston’s playstyle. In the first frame, the Crimson Tide are playing Illinois, a similarly modern team that deploys multiple floor spacers along with a stretch big. Illinois runs a ‘Middle PNR’ in 5-out spacing with the ballhandler being Kylan Boswell, who historically speaking, is an extremely ineffective downhill driver. As soon as Boswell steps inside the free-throw line…

…the possession is over. Zero pressure has been placed on the fairly diminutive Bama backcourt to contribute on the glass and they are granted a free release into transition, which culminates in Labaron Philon Free Throws.

Compare this to Houston’s matchup with Alabama earlier in the season, where they are running a similar ballscreen action for an equally limited driver in Emanuel Sharp. Because of their physical frontcourt personnel, Alabama is forced to commit their entire lineup to crashing the glass.

The threat Houston presents on the offensive glass flips the dynamic Alabama saw in the Illinois game. Now, HOUSTON is able to set up their halfcourt defense unencumbered. This forces Alabama to play off kilter and Mark Sears logs a turnover.

Offensive rebounding’s effect on transition play is a fairly well-known concept, and this is an element the Houston Rockets have in spades. The difference in these teams’ ability to establish a pace of play actually lies in their shot profile.

Previously, I’d mentioned the tradeoff the Cougars willingly made between their rim pressure, as represented by their free throw rate and 2P%, and their offensive rebounding and turnover economy. However, there is another, subtler, edge the Cougars gain from removing ‘no-hope’ drives, as you saw from Kylan Boswell in the first clip. By playing a more static style and concentrating on off-the-dribble jumpers and post-ups, the Cougars seldom have their shot blocked. This style of play also rarely puts the defense into rotation, resulting in few drive and kick opportunities and leading to their low C&S (Catch-and-Shoot) frequency over the years. The lack of ‘easy’ jump shots places an acute pressure on their perimeter players to be multifaceted shooters, hence the disproportionate number of off-the-bounce shotmakers on the Kelvin Sampson Cougars.

The relevance of the ‘Average Defensive Poss. Length Percentile’ column in the graphic above is intertwined with the Cougars’ seemingly suboptimal shot diet. In the Cougars’ preferred game state, the margin for error is very thin; along with the turnover variance that comes with drives, blocked shots are a massive variable that cannot be accepted given the constraints of their deliberate style. The devastating effect blocked shots can have on your defense isn’t a phenomenon only present in the NCAA, as Owen Phillips of the F5 pointed out earlier this year. In the past NBA regular season, only Live Ball Turnovers were more detrimental to defenses.

Ultimately, the foundation for the Rockets should be their offensive rebounding and their defense. But because of their proclivity for low-quality rim attempts, there was no top defense more consistently put in disadvantageous situations than Houston.

For context, the r² between Defensive Possession Length and Defensive Rating is -0.47, which by basketball standards is a fairly strong correlation, and the relationship between the two variables is equally intuitive. The more often a defense can prevent early advantages, the lower the offense’s shot quality should be. This is a large part of why we saw higher and higher pick-up points in the NBA this past season and an increased emphasis on turnover generation. The days of thinking of offense and defense discretely are long gone, and the fact that the Rockets mustered a top-5 defense IN SPITE OF their offense actively sabotaging them is highly impressive. And although this was probably not the impetus of the trade, the Rockets may have removed the greatest inhibiting factor to their defense, challenging the Thunder for top unit in the league.

For all the potential Jalen Green has shown as a dynamic and versatile scorer, his personal scoring hierarchy was incompatible with the shape this Rockets roster was taking. Although a score-first guard certainly CAN thrive in the Rockets’ system, it would have to be similar to how the Houston Cougars’ backcourt options have found success: erasing turnovers and relying on prolific pull-up shooting. So far in his career, though, Green has not shown any significant growth in his ability to take care of the ball, as evidenced by his playmaking profile from Databallr.

In Lehman’s terms, Green’s ineffectiveness as a volume scorer has not been offset by sound decision-making as a passer. On top of this, since entering the league Green has finished 1st, 1st, and 4th in Blocked FGAs at the rim. Again, this is in no way an indictment on Jalen Green’s future, but in the interest of maximizing fit for both team AND player, this separation is certainly best for both parties.

Finding the Fit for Tre Johnson

First, for any readers wondering where the previously advertised scouting report is, I’d like to formally apologize for the digression. What first drew me to the idea of writing about Tre through this lens was how specific and pronounced his gifts are. Of course, the shooting is the main draw. I have repeatedly and emphatically stated Tre’s lone season at Texas very well could be the best shooting season from a freshman in the past 15 years. But history would dictate that no prospect with Tre’s negative intersection of applied physicality and defensive instincts could possibly return top-5 pick value. So what is the sell? In short, I believe Tre Johnson could be the ultimate ‘Glove’, and by selecting Johnson a team could take their first step in recreating the revolutionary blueprint laid out by Kelvin Sampson and the Houston Cougars.

The case for Tre Johnson being drafted inside the top 10 is two-pronged. Naturally, it all begins with the shooting, as anyone reading this probably noticed, the archetype most frequently grouped with Johnson in the piece’s initial queries was movement shooter. In an attempt to gauge exactly how much margin for error Johnson’s pairing of feel and touch would give him I conducted the query below, with Ben Taylor’s ‘Offensive Load’ stat used to paint a more complete picture of players’ offensive burden.

Again, Johnson’s profile compares favorably to elite shooters of past drafts, but in Johnson’s case, there’s reason to believe there’s a reservoir of untapped potential compared to past players in a similar mold. Comparing Johnson’s three-point rate and volume to the other players above with the lowest 3Pr in their pre-draft year, Luke Kennard and Tyler Herro, shows the potential trajectory Johnson’s shot distribution could take in the league.

Like Johnson, Kennard and Herro’s college teams struggled to scheme easy opportunities for players. Kennard’s Duke squad was 280th in Assist%, and Herro’s Kentucky team were 194th. When Johnson is dropped into a roster with more connective playmaking talent, he should easily be able to convert some of his contested mid-range attempts into threes.

The Nembhard Corollary

In my opinion there hasn’t been a more fascinating player in the past 5 draft classes than Andrew Nembhard. Nembhard was undoubtedly an elite college point guard, but as a prospect, his statistical profile was fairly non-descript. And compared to other players who are inevitably mentioned as testaments to 2nd round value, its difficult to find the evidence Nembhard was capable of producing to the level he has in the league. What I eventually decided was that the basis of Nembhard’s unexpected success is his exceptional positional size, and in Tre’s case, I believe the same principle applies. When compared to the players in the previous query, Tre ranks first in every measurement and athletic test despite being the youngest of the group.

This should be the foundation of any optimist’s case for Tre Johnson. A suboptimal Texas context, with no significant passing talent to speak of, masked Johnson’s true shooting potential. And when Tre is surrounded by more cerebral, defensively minded, glass-cleaning frontcourt players who can assume some facilitating responsibilities, his potential will be fully actualized.

Currently there’s plenty of evidence that Tre could quickly become a context-changing shooter. Dating back to 2022, Tre has shot 51.8% (29/56) on 3PA coming off screens. Even though Tre is not the most well-rounded athlete, movement shooting is where his athleticism is most functional, and because of the degree of difficulty in his attempts it’s easy to see him placing immense pressure on the defense in this way.

As the season progressed and Johnson became the focal point of opposing defenses (to an absurd degree at times), a common counter was to utilize Johnson as a screener. This is one of my favorite schematic wrinkles, especially in a context where Tre is sharing the court with other non-spacers, utilizing his scoring gravity to trigger mismatches for interior-based scorers should prove effective.

Reorienting Tre’s usage to more of a movement shooter will require more ‘0.5’ decision making, which Tre doesn’t have much experience with at the time. Johnson is much more of a reactive decision maker. Although these aren’t especially challenging reads, I expect this to be a focus early on.

As his processing becomes better aligned with this usage, it will be key for Tre to trim fat from his shot diet as well. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt when accounting for Texas’ personnel, to maximize his potency as a shooter, Tre will need to take these spot-ups instinctively.

In the end, these are quirks in Tre’s game which I anticipate will be ironed out in short order. There’s no real precedent for this precocious a shooting talent failing to translate as a scorer, and frankly, I do not think the shooting on its own is Tre’s ‘superpower’ as a prospect. In my opinion Tre’s penchant for taking care of the ball at such a high usage is truly special amongst scoring prospects.

Above is another ‘Stress Test’ query, but on a player level. On the surface these players do not seem to have much in common, and I’d understand someone’s skepticism in seeing a group featuring one player who is currently playing in China (Tremont Waters) and another who has been above league average TS% 3 times over the course of a 14 year career (Alec Burks) and any desirable company for a prospect. I would argue that this group has the distinction of some of the most resilient scorers in the Bart Torvik era. All of these players demonstrated an ability to manufacture offense independent of their context, and for the players who failed to find NBA success there were typically extenuating circumstances at play. In Tremont Waters’ case his height and inability to shoot early on prevented him from sticking in the league, but even this past season he spearheaded the #1 offense in China. Alec Burks is a more nuanced case, in my opinion Burks came into the league just a few years too late for his game to translate. As downhill guard without exceptional vertical athleticism or the perimeter shooting to keep him afloat, Burks struggled mightily acclimating to the popularization of 3-point shooting that swept the league.

While I don’t foresee Tre experiencing an outlier developmental arc like Donovan Mitchell or SGA due to the previously alluded to physical deficiencies, I am bullish he will become one of the more successful alums on this list for two reasons. First of all, Tre did not have the benefit of being part of a high-level offensive rebounding team, placing an outsized pressure on him to create without logging turnovers. And secondly, I believe Tre’s scoring portability and unique playmaking strengths are tailor-made for the direction the league is headed.

There are 5 games of Tre’s season I found particularly instructive of how his creation situates him to find success at the next level, Texas’ contests with the Tennessee Volunteers and Texas A&M. These teams were two of the best defenses in the country, but interestingly made up 4 of Texas’ 7 best relative performances this season.

Both these teams had stylistic parallels in their aggressive, swarming defense. Tennessee with their frenetic switching, hedging ballscreen coverages, and aggressive gap help. Texas A&M also switched but frequently opted to extend their pressure past half-court to slow down opposing offenses. Both rank near the bottom in the country in opponent 3Pr, willing to cede late clock 3s in order to cut off the paint entirely. This philosophy should sound fairly familiar: aggressive help, comfort giving up 3s, and relentless ball pressure were the defining traits of both NBA finalists! And it was versus these coverages that Tre’s calm under pressure, shrewd interior passing, and dynamic shooting truly shined.

The relevance of Tre’s size amongst shooting-oriented prospects was on full display versus these teams. Johnson was able to make teams play for late and/or lazy switches with his high and dynamic release.

Despite the congested paint, Johnson consistently made high-value passes without turning the ball over.

Johnson’s ability to pass over and around the defense while avoiding turnovers forced Tennessee to tone down their aggression in ballscreen coverages as well. In the first clip for instance, from Texas’ first matchup versus Tennessee, where the Volunteers maintained their hard-hedging ballscreen coverage. Johnson’s ability to keep his dribble alive and see over the lifted bigs allowed him to manipulate and beat the backline defenders in rotation

This occurred to the point where, when the teams rematched in the SEC tournament, Tennessee softened their ballscreen coverage greatly and reduced the nail-help to prevent the defense from becoming overextended. Johnson still managed to find a way.

This is an extremely small sample, of course, and even though the scheme has similar tenets to NBA defenses, these certainly aren’t NBA defenders. But these kind of plays and performances, while always captured in the box score, are what make Johnson the ideal ‘glove’ player in the NBA. With offensive rebounding becoming increasingly prevalent in the league’s meta…

Precise interior playmaking will become a necessity for perimeter players. And Johnson proved himself to be extremely adept with these naturally high-risk passes all season.

Conclusion

It doesn’t take a veteran scout to recognize the flaws in Tre’s game, and typically, any player who requires so many caveats and accommodations should probably not receive the level of investment Tre Johnson inevitably will. But what Tre is representative of, in my mind, is a departure from teambuilding dogma. A player who possesses outlier talent in the areas Tre does can be essential to forming an identity like the Houston Cougars and Rockets have sculpted over the years. What this exercise has taught me is there is a universality to basketball, and any team whose success is rooted in generating turnovers, rebounding, and maximizing the possession battle will require maximal turnover economy and close-quarters scoring from their backcourt. And a guard like Tre Johnson, who has met this criteria at such an early age, would be a defensible choice for any team keeping this roster building strategy in mind. In all likelihood I do not ever see Tre being the best, or even second-best player on a title-winning team, but he does make the acquisition and integration of perennially undervalued interior players a much simpler endeavor. And that may be where the edge lies in drafting Tre Johnson.