Summer Sleepers: Malique Ewin
Last summer, I wrote two articles on scouting: Spotting the Stars and Cason Wallace’s Star Potential. The former was the result of a study of prospect tape for the NBA’s greatest players since the 1990s. The latter, stemming from my watching of prospect tape of the NBA’s greatest improvers over that same period. For both pieces, I searched for common visual cues based on what stood out as unique to the sample of players. The goal was to test the bounds of the eye test.
This summer, I want to apply those lessons to up-and-coming players, first in the NCAA. This will serve both as a useful evaluatory framework for each player; it will also be fertile testing ground to see what eye test cues work and what does not.
Below, I will provide a brief introduction to the NBA draft prospect before diving into the elements of their game. This piece will then look at which Star Traits and Improver Traits this player displays in his tape. By going through these categories with sleeper prospects, I hope to disentangle what translates to higher levels of play, and how.
Malique Ewin, Arkansas
Ewin had the unconventional path of playing for Ole Miss as a freshman before transferring down the ladder to South Plains Community College in Texas. The #1 ranked junior college player after one season there, Ewin then accepted an offer to transfer back up to Florida State. After a season putting up some of the best stats in the woeful ACC, Ewin faces a challenge in stepping up in competition by transferring to John Calipari’s Arkansas in the ultra-competitive SEC.
Ewin’s Star Traits
Perfect: Go Up and Get It
Any analysis of Ewin has to start with his most standout ability: his rebounding.
I have rarely seen a player use his body as well as Ewin, combined with stellar sense of timing, to make himself a consistently useful rebounder. Ewin is elite at finding the ball at its apex, and not just when rebounding – he times lob finishes and blocks well, too.
We will talk later about how consistently Ewin applies physicality to gain advantageous position, but it’s really his ability to grab the ball at its apex that makes him unique. Despite roaming from the basket here and there and some athletic limitations, Ewin put up a top 20 offensive rebound rate among high-major players. As you can see in the tape above, Ewin’s timing makes him a menace in traffic, able to play the five for FSU where he boosted his team’s offensive and defensive rebounding rates. He reminds me of Justin Champagnie or Johni Broome as rebounders above their height in college.
Ewin’s physical tools, including poor foot speed, limit his upside as a shotblocker, but his timing and spatial reasoning to optimize his positioning make him a help-side threat nonetheless. On the offensive end, Ewin is a fantastic lob finisher with 48 dunks on the season, good for fourth in the ACC. Ewin is able to position his body perfectly to catch alley oops even from a full sprint, finishing 77% of his transition attempts.
Go Up and Get It is a star trait due to how stable it is in holding value, and the importance of controlling the possession battle generally. Ewin can overcome some athletic limitations with this ability, sticky in its contribution due to him being able to beat players taller than himself for boards. In the right setting, his lob finishing and secondary shot-blocking could help, too.
Very Good: Pass Through Your Defender
Ewin’s second standout trait is a step below his ‘go up and get it’ ability: his ability to ‘pass through’ his opponent. This often means jump passes, a great way to get an angle on an opponent and showcase instantaneous decision-making. But more generally, the star trait is simply that: any showcase of unique angles gained on an opponent via quick-decision passing.
The first clip above is Ewin’s best in this article, not only leaping to make the pass but also sideways to do so while passing in between two different defenders, with another at his back. An extremely high difficulty pass such as this can only be completed by an extremely high-feel and coordinated player with passing talent.
Ewin lacks consistently great decision-making, likely worsened by FSU’s poorly structured offense with limited talent. But Ewin’s passing shines regardless, and likely could be ramped up even more in a context with better play finishers around him — FSU ranked 280th in college basketball for three-point percentage and 310th in three-point rate…yikes.
Very Good: Unstructured Midrange Touch
Perhaps a surprising trait for his archetype, Malique Ewin displayed high-difficulty touch from unusual positions throughout the season. He is a very good structured finisher, meaning with traditional technique, heavily favoring inside right hand reverses which typically go in. But we care more about his unstructured finishes, meaning those coming from unusual hand positions relative to the ball from difficult angles and/or distances. Ewin passes the eye test, swimmingly, here.
Despite not having hardly any pull-up jumpers or runners, and shooting poorly on a heavy volume of hook shots, Ewin took very difficult layups often, in traffic, from difficult angles and pushing the distance on what is considered a layup, and made an 85th percentile 64% of those. Despite not having access to Synergy data for his community college season, Ewin shot an elite 62% from the field that year.
It is not uncommon for players to have poor free-throw percentages, like Ewin in the low 60s, while hitting a good percentage of midrange attempts. On Bart Torvik, which calculates midrange attempts that may include Synergy’s lengthier layups, Ewin shot 32-83 (a decent 39%) in the midrange with only 12.5% assisted. I’m relying on the eye test here, given the high degree of difficulty of his attempts and frequency of near misses, but an overall two-point percentage of 60% is still good for 12th in the ACC.
Where He Falls Short
There are two other star traits I noted in my study, with Ewin falling short of excellent for both. Perhaps the most important star trait of all – the one that stood out the most and immediately when watching Hall of Famers – is having a “one-two punch.” A one-two punch is a quick scoring option where a player is able to create a consistent amount of space to make it highly repeatable. Think Jordan’s crossover, Kareem’s hook, Duncan’s turnaround bank shot or Shaq’s drop step.
Ewin does not have that, at least not consistently, yet. More success with his hook shot could allow him to settle into using that as a weapon, but that development is far from guaranteed. Diminishing those odds is how not only did Ewin have few post-up possessions this past season, but how Calipari has rarely used them the past two seasons. A good portion of Ewin’s drives were straight-line, though he did mix in some spin moves, with mixed success.
The other superstar trait where Ewin falls short is his hands. Now, they are not bad by any means, as Ewin has a particularly quick reaction time when people try to pass through him. But are they elite, a standout trait at the NBA level? No, and this is a characteristic that is difficult to improve upon – you either have great hands or not. Among 6’10” high major players, Ewin is in the exact middle for steal rate and slightly below average for block rate. A lot of this is not the fault of his hands but rather his limited mobility in space. His recovery tools stink, and he can get burned fairly easily by guards. But he has the vertical and size to block more shots, especially playing the five for FSU, and he simply does not.
A lack of space creation on offense and space closure on defense, worsened by mediocre hands, all but guarantees Ewin will fall short of sniffing stardom as a basketball player. But there are clear points of high competency that will translate well to any level of ball. In particular, his rebounding is likely sticky, and provides a nice floor to value. This is particularly the case given his demonstrated high feel with passing talent. There are qualities that an NBA team would be attracted to.
Ewin’s Improver Traits
Excellent: Initiates Physicality
This goes hand in hand with Ewin’s high-pointing ability to make him a vicious rebounder, but also makes him a particularly good screen setter. Ewin is strong, and feels comfortable squaring his body to an opponent to hit them full on. Ewin lacks perfection here as often a finesse finisher near the rim, but with good touch that’s okay. His 41.4 free throw rate is just mediocre for a big, but understates his physicality seen more in clearing out his opponent. This mixes well with Ewin’s high feel nature, allowing him to place his body in the most obstructing position possible.
Initiating physicality is an important ingredient to improving, considering you need both the strength and willingness to hold your spot on both ends. If you’re losing the physicality battle, that will hurt you every single possession, especially essential for bigs who will be featured rebounders and screeners. But more broadly, being physical means you have a determination about the game that lends well to getting better, generally.
Very Good: Motor
Now we see the picture forming: Ewin simply plays hard. While still prone to conserve energy – Ewin is not the quickest, and perhaps could have slightly better fitness – when he’s in the action, he commits. We see his relentless pursuit on the glass, where he snags 13.7% of offensive rebound opportunities. Ewin is still two notches below perfect in this category, but it’s good enough, especially when combined with his Go Up and Get It and Initiate Physicality traits, to turn into tangible results. We can say with a degree of confidence that Ewin will be a strong rebounder and screener at the NBA level. But we also see avenues to improvement because he simply wants to be in the muck of it.
Very Good: On-Ball Experimentation
Again, we see ceiling limitations in that these improvement scores are falling short of basketball’s greats. But Ewin likely has more juice than people think. My favorite quality of Ewin’s is his tendency to gallop down the floor with the ball, serving little functional purpose but displaying coordination and creativity with ballhandling. He’s an effective ball custodian for his size, turning it over a solid 12.5% of the time on over a drive per game (fellow 6’10” big Johni Broome turned it over 16.9% of the time, by comparison).
Ewin’s 83 midrange attempts isn’t too impressive on the surface, but the attempts were difficult and often highly creative. Ewin has a complex layup package for his size, and isn’t afraid to try difficult moves through traffic (with some brilliant moments of small-space coordination). Ewin also experiments amply as a passer, slinging live dribbles from wing to wing or kicking from the post, just generally an interesting problem-solver on the ball.
On-ball experimentation is obvious in its value for improvement: the more you simply try things, the greater capacity you have to learn what does or does not work, and the greater opportunity to iron out technique. Ewin’s role was somewhat encouraging of his experimentation, but hampered by a clogged paint. Ewin even got some pick-and-roll ball-handler reps this past season, where he showed off his handle, passing and touch for size. He’s a real conductor threat at the NCAA level, and with another season of experimentation under his belt, could develop in unexpected ways.
Very Good: Technique
Much like one’s motor, technique is fairly obviously essential for star players to have, but is often overlooked nonetheless. Steve Nash, for example, would have been an impossible future All-Star projection unless one properly valued just how rare his technical game was. For Malique Ewin, we again get above-average marks, signaling capacity for continued growth as a basketball player.
My favorite insight into Ewin’s technical prowess is his screening, again playing off of his other essential traits of initiating physicality and having a high motor. Ewin squares his shoulders at perfect angles, maximizing impact while staying within the bounds of the rulebook, setting up the ball handler for his optimal route. Ewin weighed in at 240 pounds this summer at Arkansas, ten pounds heavier than a year before, a tank for applying this physicality surgically.
This strong technique shows up in how he uses his body generally, great at properly boxing out as well as finding the right angle to post up deep in the lane. These are small areas which add up given the frequency of screening and necessity of bigs to punish mismatches in the post. Even a few extra inches of wiggle room for a ballhandler to operate is amplified when Ewin sets a screen the majority of possessions. To steal from Josh Url, that’s also advantage creation.
Ewin has strong technique as a dribble-pass-shoot threat given his size, but imperfections still exist with his poor free throw shooting and limited handle complexity. However, we have now demarcated a bevvy of traits which combine nicely. On-ball experimentation mixes with technique to again give Ewin some odds of conducting offense, even if in limited capacity. The short roll suits him well, a thunderous dunker with space who can hit middies and also find shooters (now that he has some). I would bet on him looking like one of the better offensive engines among bigs this NCAA season.
Where He Falls Short
There’s only one improver trait that falls short of a Very Good grade, and that’s small space coordination. A rarer quality even among improvers, small space coordination can vault mediocre players into great ones. This quality means the ability to dance through traffic with precision, displayed by players like Manu Ginobili, Kevin Durant or Pascal Siakam. Coordination to fit through small spaces vastly expands what is feasible and what is not, as major space creation is less necessary.
Ewin does not entirely lack this type of coordination, particularly nimble on spin moves to the basket and precise when setting screens, boxing out or posting up. But his footwork is still generally heavy, another reason why his drive rate was not higher. Lacking both a one-two punch and small space coordination severely limits Ewin’s upside as a scorer.
Ewin generally does well on the characteristics that define improvers, but falls short of perfect for any trait. A better spaced offense might allow for a higher drive rate, perhaps displaying small space coordination we did not get to witness at Florida State. But generally, Ewin is high-feel and plays to punish his opponent. It’s likely he continues to improve.
Wrapping Up
Ewin scores similarly on star traits to improver traits, competent to very good across the board. But he lacks true outlier characteristics anywhere besides his ability to high-point the ball on rebounds or lobs. Good feel and good technique will carry him further, and combine with on-ball experimentation to mean he could surprise people as a conductor, even with the competition leap from the lowly ACC.
The rebounding and screening look to be very strong, with translatability likely. It’s the scoring that will hold him back, though better midrange percentages might be on the way given his high difficulty level of attempts at FSU. He is best suited to being a short roll maestro, especially considering his complete lack of three-point shot (although, it is reported he did shoot threes pre-NCAA).
Ewin is in for a big season in the SEC, likely to be competing for All-Conference teams in a more conducive environment on a team that wins more games. With a potential leap in drive and assist rates enabling more experimentation, Ewin could look like a clear-cut NBA draft pick by mid-season.
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