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.

Braylon Mullins: More than a Shooter

There may not be a player in the country who has seen their public perception improve more throughout the grassroots season than 6’5 G/W Braylon Mullins. Playing for Indiana Elite on the 3SSB (Adidas) circuit, Mullins emerged from relative obscurity over the past few weeks, having spent the last high school season playing for Indiana public school Greenfield Central in lieu of a prep school with a nationally recognized brand.

At first glance, Mullins seems to embody the role of a traditional movement shooter. Taking over 8 threes per game, these attempts make up over 60% of Mullins’ shot diet. And with Mullins converting from three at a scorching 44.6% clip, it seems as though he’s simply executing the role of a shooting specialist at a high level. However, examining the tape will show Mullins, in many ways, is the offensive engine of an undefeated Indiana Elite team which currently boasts an average margin of victory of 19.5 points per game!

Mullins’ broader skillset is what separates him from other impressive shooters in his class, but he very well could be the best long distance sniper in the 2025 class as well. As previously mentioned, Mullins has been extremely efficient on a robust volume of 3’s per game, but his mechanics and versatility are especially notable for a young player. Mullins has total comfort shooting off various play-types, from more conventional movement sets like this Rip Stagger Screen-the-screener set ran below…

to off multiple dribbles in transition…

Or in the half-court, like this Hawk action (a UCLA cut followed by a side PNR) where Mullins takes advantage of any cushion provided to him by quickly transitioning into his shot.

As teams became aware of Mullins’ reputation as a shooter, his seemingly limitless range and hair-trigger release forced opponents to ramp up their aggressiveness on close-outs to run him off the line at any costs. This is where Mullins was able to shine, and his finely tuned process off the catch was put on full display.

Compare these two BLOB (Baseline Out of Bounds) plays. In the first clip Indiana Elite runs a Screen-the-Screener set with Mullins setting a cross screen for Malachi Moreno and receiving an exit screen which he makes the corner 3 off of.

In a similar BLOB play where Mullins sees a much more aggressive trailing defender, he confidently attacks the closeout and his clean footwork allows him to get into his floater attempt on balance and score.

Even plays where Mullins isn’t a primary feature of the action, the speed he’s able to process off-ball and the pace he plays with coming off screens allows him to make the most of his gravity as a shooter. Take the play below for example, Mullins skips the ball to an open teammate in the corner and receives a Hammer screen for, presumably, a corner 3 afterwards. However, instead of settling into the corner Mullins recognizes his defender’s back is turned to him and cuts to the basket, making himself available for a pass from his driving teammate. From here makes an interior touch pass to Malachi Moreno. Even with the pass being bobbled, Mullins shows advanced situational awareness for a high-school player here.

These kind of quick decisions are littered throughout Mullins’ tape, and while these reads aren’t necessarily the most advanced, Mullins’ consistent execution (marked by a sterling 1.21 Assist/Turnover ratio) is the hallmark of an elite, complementary, offensive player.

Ultimately, seeing Mullins’ success on the defensive end is where he completely shed the ‘just a shooter’ label in my eyes. Officially, Mullins has only been credited with 6 steals over 13 games on Synergy. However, much like on the offensive end, Mullins’ situational awareness and high activity level allow him to be an impactful player on this end.

In this clip for instance, Upward Stars runs an empty corner PNR where the guard rejecting the screen triggers a backline rotation. Mullins perfectly times his rotation, sinking into the corner as the corner kickout is made, and his off-hand deflection secures the turnover for Indiana Elite. Mullins’ hand speed and accuracy as a defender help compensate for a slighter frame as well. Plays like the clip below, where Mullins is briefly thrown out of position as his assignment curls the pindown screen, but he capitalizes on the ballhandler being slightly late on the pass with another off-hand deflection.

Mullins has strung together numerous impressive two-way performances so far this spring, but the subtleties of his game on both ends make me confident he’ll continue to rise in stature throughout the summer. Rarely are elite shooting talents able to contribute in as many areas of the game as Mullins, and it is these skills which make him a recruiting priority for the nation’s elite college programs.

Dewayne Brown: Modern Classics

There may not be a position across all sports undergoing more of a drastic transformation than the modern big-man. From traditional back to the basket centers, to stretch 5’s, and now bigs in certain instances being expected to initiate offense from the perimeter, the requirements to be considered a ‘modern big’ seem to constantly be a moving target. What makes Florida Rebels center and Tennessee commit Dewayne Brown such a standout prospect, and in my opinion the most underrated big man in the ’25 class, is how capable he is fulfilling all these roles at this stage of his career.

Brown’s bread and butter currently is his low-post game. Being one of the more physically developed bigs in the class (listed at 6’9 and 250 pounds), Brown has a developed sense of how to create space in the post not only with his size but refined footwork. Brown’s clean footwork and patience in the post allow him to consistently create finishing windows which he can capitalize on as an ambidextrous finisher.

A skill Brown may be best in all of EYBL in is establishing post position as early as possible, however for as talented a team as the Florida Rebels are, they can struggle making entry passes to Brown in the post. This dynamic often forces Brown to create post-up opportunities for himself like the play above, where Brown crashes down from the top of the key to setup a catch on the low-block. Despite the denial on the entry forcing Brown into a suboptimal catch point, his up fake on the drive helps him avoid the rotating topside defender and get an easy finish.

For how inconsistent his team is in creating post touches for Brown, the fact he’s currently sitting 6th in total post possessions across EYBL play, 4th in PPP, all while drawing fouls at the highest clip of any player with 40+ post-ups, speaks to his skill as an interior player. Even when Brown is forced to operate outside of the post, in sets more aligned with ‘modern’ big man play like the clip below, he finds ways to finish. Here Brown keeps out of a DHO and navigates the help with a pro-hop to get the finish.

Along with his footwork, Brown’s hands are his greatest weapon. Areas where explosive leaping ability is widely considered a prerequisite to thrive, like offensive rebounding and rim protection, Brown is able to excel in because of his vacuum hands and timing.

Whether he’s defending opposing bigs like Cameron Boozer on the perimeter…

Or finding himself cross-matched onto wings like Sebastian Williams-Adams…

Brown’s hand accuracy and timing enable him to serve as a positive defensive anchor.

As far as his rebounding ability, for my money there’s not a more consistent presence on the offensive glass at this level than Dewayne Brown. I don’t think there’s a play that better encapsulates his strengths as a rebounder along with the previously mentioned interior footwork than the following clip. Brown’s late hands allow him to snatch the board over Cameron Boozer before Boozer is able to properly judge the trajectory of the missed shot. And when the ball finds Brown he Barkley’s on his drive to create a deeper paint touch, and Euro-steps into the finish over Boozer. From beginning to end this play is a wild display of coordination and agility from a player Brown’s size.

What Brown’s game lacks in above the rim finishes and highlight blocks he makes up for with a poise well beyond what’s typically seen from a young big. The diversity of Brown’s skillset is what makes him exceptional and a prime candidate to outperform his ranking at the next level.

Courtland Muldrew: Seizing Opportunity

The 4th and final EYBL Session took place in Kansas City and flew somewhat under the radar as a number of headlining talent opted to attend USA Basketball’s tryouts for the u18 Americup team. For 6’3 Team Thad guard Courtland Muldrew this scheduling conflict represented an opportunity to step into a higher usage role than he’d previously seen, as his teammate 5-star guard Jasper Johnson attended the USAB minicamp. In Johnson’s stead, Muldrew proved to be one of the best advantage creators on the circuit, despite significantly scaling up in usage.

Muldrew routinely generated deep paint touches without a screen, and parlayed these paint touches into finishes or free throw attempts at an outstanding clip. Over the course of 5 games in Kansas City, Muldrew drew 41 free throws attempts, none of which came in late game must-foul situations. Muldrew’s ability to live in the paint was made possible by an ideal set of driving tools, from a lightning quick first step to contact balance reminiscent of an elite runningback, seldom was any point-of-attack defender able to stay in front of Muldrew.

Here you can see Dwayne Aristode, one of the premier perimeter defenders in the country, unable to stay in front of Muldrew as he drives to his left. And perhaps as impressive as Muldrew’s ability to repeatedly create downhill separation from defenders, is his array of finishing footwork. Muldrew is equally capable of driving and finishing with either hand, and here uses goofy-leg (jumping with the same foot as the hand attempting the layup) to disrupt the timing of the help defender.

The catalyst of Muldrew’s rim pressure is his explosive first step, as his handle is more rudimentary than most primary ballhandlers at the moment. However, Muldrew’s able to remain effective inside the arc due to his intersection of touch and an understanding of how to play off 2 feet. Synergy is somewhat limited categorizing shot types (runners and floaters) but in the four games I was able to watch and manually log Muldrew’s shot attempts, he went 3/7 on floaters, a very respectable number for a player with Muldrew’s volume of drives.

This possession is a perfect example of the interplay between the two skills of Muldrew, he drives off the catch and jumpstops to ensure his floater attempt is taken on balance. This penchant for playing off two feet lets Muldrew access a variety of counters on drive, such as the play below where he gains leverage on Dwayne Aristode after rejecting the screen, and uses the momentum from Aristode’s recovery to create space for a midrange stepback.

What’s so compelling about Muldrew’s driving ability is unlike many downhill guards at the high-school level, whose reliance on getting in the paint often comes at the cost of developing as a perimeter scorer, Muldrew has shown reason for optimism on this front. While Muldrew’s only shot 34% from three on 4.6 attempts/game (12 games), he’s been steady from the line coming in at 89% on 65 attempts. Equally encouraging as Muldrew’s touch indicators is how he’s already shown an understanding of how to enhance his drives with the shooting threat he currently possess. Compare the two plays below for example, in the first clip Muldrew takes and makes a three when the defender provides a cushion to account for the driving threat.

In the subsequent play, Team Thad runs Motion Strong for Muldrew, a set typically ran for shooters. The pace Muldrew plays with coming off the staggers gets his defender to bite on the up-fake, and this provides Muldrew the opportunity to attack the front of the rim.

Courtland Muldrew may not be a conventional point-guard at the moment, but possesses a combination of advantage creation and 3 level scoring tools matched by only a few other guards in his class. And in the previous session when Muldrew was given more decision making responsibilities he showed progression over the course of the weekend. Adding more quality reps running ballscreen actions to his resume, like the play below where Muldrew runs a side PNR and holds the tagging defender with his eyes to pry open a cleaner finishing window for the rolling big.

Chris Cenac: Standout Amongst Standouts

Before he’d even put up a shot, 6’10 big man Chris Cenac demanded my attention from the very first game of his I’d decided to turn on. Cenac’s decision to play for the NXTPRO, the newest shoe circuit sponsored by Puma, made his games more difficult to watch so my first encounter with Cenac was when his Young Game Changers (YGC) team was pitted against JL3 in an early season event. JL3 is far from lacking athletes, but Cenac’s length and fluidity at his size was immediately eye-popping.

Take the following sequence for example, Cenac is pulled away from the basket, with his man settled at the top of the key. When a drive from the strongside wing collapses the defense, Cenac helps-the-helper by sinking into the weakside corner, and keeps eyes on the ballhandler so he’s able to steal the kickout pass. A player Cenac’s size being able to make this rotation is abnormal on its own, the fact Cenac is then able to push the break, and has the wherewithal to find a teammate as his drive is walled off is spectacular.

Cenac would continue to impress as a ballhandler in the open court, even flashing as a live dribble passer.

As is often the case with young bigs with burgeoning perimeter skillsets, Cenac’s process on-ball could be questionable at times, but how consistently Cenac was able to get into his jumper proved his handle was functional at his size. Across 4 handtracked games Cenac was a promising 9/21 on jumpshots (42.8%) including going 3/9 (33.3%) from three. As always, free throw shooting factors heavily into any shooting projection for me, and Cenac was a respectable 17/25 (72%) from the line across this sample of games.

The shooting splits along with plays like this, where Cenac comfortably steps into a 1 dribble pull-up three over a respected rim protector in Xavion Stanton…

Or here where Cenac gets to his spot above the free-throw line and hits a pull-up jumper, is indicative of there being more substance than style to Cenac’s shooting projection.

Anytime a player Cenac’s size shows an aptitude for shooting it tends to become their primary draw as a prospect, but this is a case of defensive versatility being as enticing. As previously mentioned Cenac is a rare mover at his size, capable of playing defensive roles besides primary rim protector because he can guard in space. But he also has the length and discipline as a rim protector to use his size without fouling. In the possession below, YGC’s defense is in a scramble situation after JL3 secures an offensive rebound, Hudson Greer drives into open space and makes the dump-off pass, which should lead to an easy finish for the springy 6’9 forward Nigel Walls. Cenac’s fluid enough to flip his hips and explosive enough to elevate with both arms extended to block Wall’s attempt.

Up until this point I’ve kept the scope of my projections limited to how players may contribute at the collegiate level, however the manner in which Chris Cenac made his imprint on games forced me to acknowledge that he may only be a single season contributor in the NCAA.

King Grace: Guarding His Yard

In Under Armour’s first session, Texas Impact 4:13 G/W King Grace won overall MVP, and considering his statline (24 ppg on 43% from 3 and 54% from the field) a natural assumption to make would be it was Grace’s scoring output which landed him on this list. And while I do plan on discussing some of his offensive merits, what caught my eye was Grace’s doggedness as a defender.

King Grace is listed at 6’4 185 pounds, but with outstanding length and strength for the position he proved to be a suffocating Point-of-Attack defender. Grace would use his physicality to disrupt ballhandlers like the play below, where he avoids the screen and immediately crowds Josiah Sanders’ handle to force him into a backcourt violation.

Averaging 1.6 steals/game through the first two sessions, Grace possesses an exceedingly rare trait for a high-school perimeter defender. Grace’s motor, length, and timing saw him dictating certain possessions. Instead of simply capitalizing on the opponent’s errors or sacrificing his positioning to hunt turnovers, Grace forced opponents into mistakes. Like in the following play, Wisconsin Playground run 77 Flare, Grace going under the 1st screen prompts his teammate guarding the 2nd screen to show at the level before recovering back to his original assignment. The ballhandler sees this sequence play out and makes presumably the correct read by passing to his teammate coming off the flarescreen, but Grace diagnoses the play, and intercepts the pass for an easy transition dunk.

Grace thrives playing this cat-and-mouse game with ballhandlers, and maximizes opportunities in different roles. Here you see him mirror his man to prevent the drive, provides gap help on the secondary drive, but keeps his off-hand in the passing lane as he recovers. This clip is a wonderful distillation of how Grace’s physical tools and defensive anticipation manifest to create havoc and in this case generate a turnover.

Grace’s offensive skillset can best be described as low maintenance. While his handle as it currently stands may not be creative enough to consistently initiate offense, Grace was hyper-efficient in primarily Princeton type sets Texas Impact would run for him. A competent spot-up shooter, Grace’s decisiveness in these actions compensated for his lack of shot versatility. Compare the two possessions below for instance, in the first clip Grace runs off a double stagger and when he’s denied the entry, Texas Impact flows into Bilboa, where a double stagger is set and the offensive player in the corner rejects the first screen, triggering Grace to come off the pindown and take the 3.

In the next clip Texas Impact runs a similar concept out of a 5-out alignment called Point Over, where Grace is setting a pindown, but instead of a second screen the big is operating as the trigger man out of a DHO. As Grace comes off the hand-off the opposing big lifts to take away the 3, and Grace simply drives and finds his big on the roll.

Grace’s tape lacks some of the flash of other wings in his class, but the areas he excels in are typically the most conducive to a smooth transition to the next level.

The post Ahmed’s Starting 5 appeared first on Swish Theory.

Jamarion Batemon: Flamethrower

One of the first players on the Adidas 3 Stripe Select (3SSB) to catch my eye was 6’3 Combo Guard and 3 star recruit, Jamarion Batemon, playing for Power 5 out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Batemon, for my money, is one of the preeminent shooters in the 2025 High School class. Over the first two sessions Batemon shot a combined 42/84 from 3 for a scorching 50% and an equally impressive 10 attempts per game. And while watching games, the degree of difficulty and variety of play-types Batemon was being used in was perhaps the most striking aspect of his performance. Batemon’s team, Power 5, used him primarily as an off-ball player in movement sets. One of the most consistent features of their offense was running Batemon off movement using elevator screens and double staggers like the play below. Batemon draws a foul on the make because of the minimal shot prep he requires to get his shot off.

Batemon isn’t limited to shooting off the catch either, as what makes him such an impressive shooter for his age is he’ll seize any amount of cushion provided to get into a 3pt attempt no matter the variables presented by the game situation. Whether it be in ballscreen actions like the play below…

…or in transition…

…Jamarion Batemon is a threat to shoot from deep virtually any time he crosses half-court. This has allowed him to be a focal point of a Power 5 team which has exceeded expectations so far this season. His proficiency as a shooter was no more apparent than in their matchup with, in my opinion, one of the best teams on not only the Adidas Circuit but one of the best AAU teams in the country in Team Loaded Virginia. Batemon put on a masterful shooting display where he finished with 32 total points and went 9/19 from 3, almost unheard of volume for a high school player.

While Batemon’s potency as a shooter is not in doubt there are areas of his game he’ll need to develop to fully exploit this skill at the next level, namely his comfort as a ballhandler. Batemon didn’t see much PNR usage and due to the threat he presents as a shooter typically saw aggressive coverages in ballscreen action which dissuaded him from attempting to create. However, my favorite aspect of high school basketball is the rate some of these players are able to adapt, and Batemon was no exception. His timing and accuracy as a passer in the PNR improved from Session 1 to 2, and while it often didn’t translate in assists, Batemon’s decisiveness helped keep the offense on schedule.

As Batemon gained experience seeing these coverages he began to develop counters and even leveraged the respect he’d garnered as a scorer to get downhill.

Batemon’s passing growth wasn’t limited to on-ball usage, he was also able to parlay the respect his shooting was given to extend advantages for his teammates. Take the play below for instance, Batemon comes off an Exit screen in a SLOB play, and immediately hits the screener when he draws a second defender. The defense is immediately put into rotation and the initial screener finds an open shooter in the right slot. This doesn’t result in an assist, or even a basket, but Power 5 generates a good look and a potential hockey assist for Batemon, predicated on his shooting gravity.

Ultimately Batemon will need to make significant strides as a ballhandler and defender as he rises through the ranks, but the significant short term growth, in tandem with his strong foundation as a shooter, saw Jamarion Batemon as my biggest riser through the first few weeks of the season.

Josiah Sanders: Driving Offense

My second standout is slightly more off the beaten path compared to many of the other prospects who will be discussed, but 6’4 Point Guard Josiah Sanders was one of the most impressive lead guards and offensive engines I was able to watch during Under Armour’s first and only session to date. Sanders is an unheralded recruit hailing from Denver Colorado, and runs with the Utah Mountain Stars at the moment. Sanders was able to average 26.3 PPG, 8.0 RPG, and 7.3 APG in a 4 game sample in session 1, and as the numbers would indicate his impact on the game was comprehensive, and notably unique.

What first caught my attention with Sanders was the poise and craft he displayed as a PNR operator. While Sanders is a left handed player he is functionally ambidextrous, capable of driving in either direction and making quick, accurate, passes with both hands. Compare the two clips below, Sanders is running similar side PNRs and the moment he senses the helpside defenders cheating over, he whips in skip passes to his teammate in the corner.

Sanders’ vision as a passer is definitely noteworthy, but what separates him from other capable ‘game manager’ type passers at his position is the consistent aggression and acumen he possesses attacking the basket. Despite being 16, relatively young for his class, Sanders’ contact balance and pace as a driver allowed him to place pressure on the defense and create windows to play-make for his teammates. Through the 4 games Sanders played he averaged 10 free-throws per game and a 0.49 free-throw-rate. Sanders effectively toggled through different speeds on drives and his unique cadence kept point-of-attack defenders off balance to where he was able to create contact with second level defenders.

Small details so rare in young guards are present in Sanders’ game, and made evident in the clip above. He isn’t able to create separation from his defender initially, retreats to allow the screener to twist the angle of the screen, and when Sanders drives he initiates contact with the defender to improve his driving angle and as a result draws a foul on his off-hand finish for an And-1 opportunity. Sanders’ penchant for accessing the middle of the floor paired with his patience make him a dynamic playmaker at this stage.

The most glaring flaw currently in Sanders’ game, from what I was able to see, was his versatility as a shooter. Essential for ball dominant guards is an ability to shoot off the dribble and from distance. Sanders finished Session 1 only 3/12 from 3, but there is plenty of reason for optimism. First of all, Sanders’ ball dominance allowed for significantly less opportunities to shoot off the catch, and while attempts weren’t going in he looked comfortable and fluid taking pull-up 3s.

And while some may take issue with this kind of qualitative assessment, Sanders was also an efficient 85.7% from the line (24/28). Watching Sanders I don’t believe there’s a greater discrepancy between ability and notoriety for a prospect in the 2025 class, and teams are starting to take notice, as Sanders received his first Power 6 offer from Tennessee almost immediately after the conclusion of Session 1.

Kai Rogers: Checking Boxes

The first frontcourt player in my ‘Starting 5’, Kai Rogers is also the first player on the list I would consider a national recruit. Already boasting numerous Power 6 offers, the 6’9 Center for Under Armour’s Wisconsin Playground Club was exceptional in the first Session, managing to make his presence felt on both ends. Rogers averaged 3.3 blocks and 1.3 steals over the course of 4 games. While he is an impressive athlete with plus length, Rogers isn’t the quickest leaper, instead winning with an advanced sense of timing and rare dexterity for a young big.

Take the play below for instance, Rogers was primarily deployed in as a drop coverage big in ballscreen actions and here he funnels the ballhandler towards the help when he rejects the screen. Once the ballhandler makes the pass to the roller at the free-throw line, the topside tagger is put in conflict when his initial assignment relocates to the top of the key. This conflict pries open a driving lane for the big to drive, but Kai Rogers immediately engulfs the drive and blocks the shot while its still in the big’s hands, and Rogers makes this play on the ball with his off-hand!

Rogers definitely isn’t perfect protecting the paint and his range as a rim protector is somewhat limited by his footspeed, however he is fully capable of making corrective rotations like the play above and deterring potential rim attempts with his ball tracking ability. Perhaps the greatest attribute Rogers possesses as a shot blocker is his ability to avoid foul trouble despite the rim protection burden placed on him as Wisconsin PlayGround’s only big man consistently featured in the rotation. Rogers never fouled out of a game and averaged a mere 3 fouls per game in Session 1.

For all the potential Rogers displayed on the defensive end, he was almost equally effective on the other end of the floor. Rogers’ fluidity in the low-post along with his physicality allowed him to impose his will on opposing big-men. Adept in scoring with both hands, Rogers’ only warts were possessions where he was over-ambitious, which is to be expected of a young post player trying to expand his game en-route to winning games. But while results were inconsistent, there were moments of self creation from Rogers which are incredibly rare to see from frontcourt players his size.

Rogers’ ability to either function as a lob threat or score on the interior with his back to the basket often forced defenses’ hands, leading to a stellar 0.67 free-throw-rate, but his consistent appearances at the line revealed his greatest offensive shortcoming at the moment as Rogers was only 47% from the line on 19 attempts. Poor free throw shooting doesn’t at all take away from Roger’s projection at the next level, in my opinion, and I am fully expecting Rogers to widely be considered one of 2025’s best big men by summer’s end.

Sebastian Williams-Adams: Point-Center

6’7 JL3 Forward Sebastian Williams-Adams was one of the most impactful players in EYBL play through the first two sessions and his play at these events can best be described as all-encompassing. Williams-Adams played one of the most unique roles I saw across all circuits in how amorphous his responsibilities seemed to be. Williams-Adams was typically used as JL3’s primary rim protector, and despite not being the tallest player in JL3’s frontcourt he was able to consistently utilize his exceptional strength and dynamic leaping to alter shots around the rim while simultaneously holding up against heftier post players. Whereas on offense, Williams-Adams had the second highest share of initiating responsibilities after their more traditional PG Christian Jones. Due to his explosive first step, Williams-Adams was able to consistently collapse the defense and find teammates. The sequence below exemplifies the two-way impact Williams-Adams presented. On the defensive end, JL3 has their first line of defense penetrated by the opposing PG when he sees the JL3 big man cheating up at the level and rejects the screen. The PG drives into the paint unencumbered, but Williams-Adams baits him into a layup attempt by slightly feigning a contest, and instead jumps after the guard and emphatically blocks the shot.

In the ensuing possession, Williams-Adams finds the ball in the corner after the initial PNR is stifled, drives the baseline and as he forces the defense into rotation finds Nigel Walls with an interior pass which leads to Walls being fouled on the shot attempt.

Williams-Adams was relentless in applying pressure on the front of the rim, as while EYBL was inconsistent with their statkeeping and free-throw stats aren’t readily available, Williams-Adams was a regular at the line over the course of the first two sessions. Even without a consistent jumper to attract hard closeouts, Williams-Adams was able to generate paint touches in stampede actions.

And when his primary defender sagged off to prevent clear driving opportunities out of stampedes, Williams-Adams had enough handle creativity and acceleration to manufacture space. Like in the play below, Williams-Adams uses a snatch dribble to draw Caleb Wilson out just to explode past him and draw the foul.

Williams-Adams has a ways to go as a shooter and will need to flesh out this part of his game as he’s forced to play more as a conventional wing, but the combination of physical dominance and two-way creation he’s currently able to exercise eases concerns of how he’ll translate to the next level.

Will Riley: Scalable Offensive Star

6’7 Canadian G/W Will Riley is the rare instance of a wing sized player deserving the moniker of ‘point-forward’. Riley’s ability to soak up usage both as a primary ballhandler and a complementary offensive piece was truly a joy to watch. Riley was equally proficient creating out of ballscreen actions as he was finishing plays as a shooter. His proficiency on-ball was a byproduct of his exceptional touch, advanced screen craft, and depth of off-the-dribble counters.

The interplay between some of these skills can be seen in the play below. Riley sees the POA defender cheating towards the screen and Riley uses double cross to get a step driving towards the basket and the use of the cross-body gather prior to throwing the baseline cutter hold the backline defenders attention just long enough to prevent them from making a play on the ball.

Riley saw almost an equal amount of his usage come in more typical off-ball actions for a wing. Such as the play below, UPlay runs a ‘Peja’ action for Riley, where he sets a RIP screen before receiving a handoff intended to get him an open 3 which he hits.

Riley’s sense of how to leverage this shooting ability when he’s used in UPlay’s 5-out concepts separates him from other shooting slanted wings his age however, he recognizes the threat his shooting presents and its ability to dictate terms with the defender. Despite Riley’s lack of physical strength he has extremely impressive stamina, and weaponizes it off-ball by using a series of feints and cuts like th play below. Riley adjusts to his defender overplaying the hand-off and retreats into open space, after the catch the second his defender relaxes Riley re-drives to the basket and hits a floater over the smaller defender. The fact Riley, at 6’7, has a floater thoroughly integrated into his scoring arsenal shows how high his skill level is for the age group.

And when teams have attempted to take away Riley’s windows to score in hand-off actions he has been more than willing to move off the ball.

These nuances in Riley’s game will make him an easy fit next to other talented players at the next level, and as the physical element of his game progresses and he’s able to more consistently draw fouls, Riley may find himself playing the primary role even when stationed next to other high-level offensive players.

The post Starting 5: Early Standouts of the Grassroots Season appeared first on Swish Theory.

Player B.

If asked to pick between the two players without added context I’m sure many (myself included) would choose Player A. The gap in three-point shooting efficiency combined with the wide disparity in dunks paint Player B as a much more athletic, play-finishing wing. Considering the similarity in age, this may indicate more potential in Player A than Player B, despite Player B’s self-creation proxies (percentage of unassisted shots) being more impressive. For the reveal…Player A is Ben McLemore (the 7th pick in the 2013 draft), and Player B is Tyler Herro (the 13th pick in the 2019 draft).

Both 2013 and 2019 were considered relatively weaker draft classes at the time, and both Herro and McLemore had high draft capital invested in them mainly due to their shooting ability. So if shooting production is so easily forecasted why did these two players yield such wildly different results, and why are past drafts littered with highly touted shooters who either flamed out early into their NBA careers, or simply didn’t return anywhere near the value expected from their draft placement? What separates the Ben McLemores, Jimmer Fredettes, and Nik Stauskases of the world from the luminary shooters who came to define this era of basketball? Is there something that inherently makes shooting more inconsistently translatable than we’ve acknowledged or are aware of?

In an attempt to answer these questions I want to examine the shooting profiles of three 2024 draft prospects whose primary sell has been their shooting. The three players I’ve decided to dive into for this exercise are Ja’Kobe Walter, Melvin Ajinca, and Rob Dillingham.

Mechanic Specifically

In the past I have relied on my traditional understand of shooting mechanics to judge and grade shooting ability in different players. As the years pass and I see more and more players develop into anywhere from passable to potent shooters with unconventional shot mechanics, I realized while there is value in having some core shooting principles in your evaluations, flexibility is necessary. Confining the definition of a ‘good’ shot to an antiquated understanding of follow-throughs, foot placements and guide hand positioning will more than likely exclude high-level shooters from your rigid rubric. This realization drove me to developing a much more fluid grading system when it comes to differentiating shooters, based on these three tenets:

• Speed
• Versatility
• Volume

Shot Speed

Shooting speed is an essential component, and while it isn’t tracked in any widely available database, I am of the belief that shot speed is a great indicator of muscle memory which is closely tied to how immediately a player’s shot may translate and how far I feel comfortable projecting the potency of a player’s shot. This idea was brought about during the process of researching this piece. I had gone back to look into past prospects’ tape and see if there was a through-line in their shots which could have indicated they’d become the level of shooter they eventually developed into in the NBA. Take the clip below, for example:

The complete absence of load time physically or indecision in the process of shooting provides insight into the hardwiring of the shooter. For those who don’t recognize the shot mechanics due to the video quality (best I could find of 2012 WAC tape) the shooter here is Damian Lillard! While Dame’s shooting proficiency is an unrealistic bar to measure shooters by, there is value in recognizing how his ability to get into his shot, no matter how tight the window, was relevant to his development into a nuclear shooter.

Volume & Versatility

While all three of these core shooting principles are interrelated, it is necessary to discuss shooting volume and versatility in the same breath because one precipitates the other. It is impossible to attain sustainable shooting volume without an expansive shooting repertoire. Researching this piece I noticed a common theme amongst a lot of shooting prospect ‘misses’: an overreliance on shots from a specific play-type, whether it be shots off the dribble or catch-and-shoot attempts.

A player I had considered including in this piece was Zeke Mayo, a junior guard playing for South Dakota State. Initially enticed by his high shooting volume (11.5 3’s attempted per 100 possessions) on a diet of largely self created 3-point attempts (only 28% assisted threes), I dug into Mayo’s tape expecting to find a high-level shot creator forced into a lot of suboptimal attempts due to the lack of creation ability surrounding him. And while this was in large part the case, I also noticed an interesting trend. While Mayo was forced to take a significant amount of threes off the dribble because he was the only SDSU player capable of consistently creating their own shot, when he was provided opportunities to shoot open spot-ups they all too often looked like the plays below.

These plays, which individually may seem benign, standard cases of a player turning down a shot in search of a better look for himself or his teammates, is actually symptom of a larger issue in Mayo’s process as a shooter. After delving deeper into Mayo’s tape I eventually came to the conclusion that his low assist rate on threes was actually a function, not a bug, of his value system as a shooter. Mayo was undeniably more comfortable taking threes off the dribble, and almost always required a rhythm dribble to take an attempt. Any hard closeout which disrupted Mayo’s routine would cause him to pass up the shot attempt. This tendency not only represents a limitation in shot versatility, but also suppressed his volume. While this wart in Mayo’s shooting habits would be much easier to look over for most draft candidates, for a prospect whose shooting ability is central to their value, any minor flaw can be accounted for and exploited at the NBA level, hindering their viability as a spacer.

The best analogy I could use to describe the effect a player has when they possess all these qualities as a shooter is the Patellar-Reflex Test, or the Knee-Jerk Reflex Test as a layman like myself had known it as. This terminology probably sounds foreign but bear with me, we’ve all probably undergone this reflex test at some point over the course of a routine doctors visit. The doctor takes a rubber mallet to your kneecap, and as long as you deliver the expected reaction by kicking out your leg the physician carries on with the rest of the check-up. For anyone not following, the test is clipped below.

While any swing of the mallet will cause the knee to move, the more force applied the greater the reaction will be. In this analogy think of the shooter as being the doctor with the rubber mallet and the defense being the patient’s knee. The greater the volume, versatility, and speed of the shooter, the more pressure they will be able to apply to the defense and the more pronounced of a reaction they will be able to elicit from the defense.

For a demonstration of this idea playing out in a game lets compare two shooting specialists, Caleb Houstan and Buddy Hield. Both rank in the 78th and 74th percentile in three point shooting Points Per Possession (PPP), per Synergy. However, a closer look at the tape will show a drastic difference in the kind of reaction they elicit from the defenses they face. The two clips below for example, both plays feature Houstan and Hield running ghost screens intended to create seams for their ballhandlers to drive to the basket and create.

However, notice only Hield is able to get the on-ball defender, in this case Bam Adebayo, to open his stance and provide Tyrese Haliburton with a driving lane. Haliburton not only has a lane to drive to his strong hand, but enough space to take a pull-up 3.

Even the best shooting specialists in the league have seen their value fluctuate almost season by season depending on swings in efficiency. Duncan Robinson parlayed one hot shooting season into a substantial contract, was unable to maintain his efficiency as a shooter, and was almost immediately deemed ‘one of the worst contracts in the league’. Only after expanding his game off the dribble was he able to regain status as a valuable offensive weapon. Davis Bertans boasted one of the most stellar shooting resumes in the NBA before a prolonged shooting slump rendered his contract a massive albatross. These examples are crucial show why having a clear understanding of a player’s shooting is essential. By examining the three players central to this piece I hope to shed some light on A.) whether their shot possesses the factors necessary to remain effective as they transition to the NBA, and B.) what qualities in the rest of their offensive game separate them as shooters.

Ja’Kobe Walter vs Melvin Ajinca

At first glance Ja’Kobe Walter and Melvin Ajinca do not seem to have many similarities outside of being two 19-year-old prospects who will most likely be entering the 2024 draft. Walter is a sinewy 6’5 guard/wing, former 5-star recruit, who is currently playing for Baylor. Melvin Ajinca is a 6’7 lefty wing playing in the LNB ProA league (the highest division in France) for Saint-Quentin. Both players are touted for their shooting ability first and foremost and will be expected to serve as high-level floor-spacers for their respective NBA teams upon being drafted. However, their divergent routes to prospect-dom help shed light on how able they will be to able to meet this expectation.

Melvin Ajinca

Melvin Ajinca first came onto draft radars after an extremely impressive showing in the FIBA U19 World Cup this past summer, where he lead the French team to the championship game while shooting a blistering 71.6 (!!) true shooting percentage. While the majority of Ajinca’s scoring was of the play-finishing variety, consisting of hitting spot-up threes and getting out in transition, there were some flashes of high level self-creation. Take the play below, for example: France clears out the left side of the floor for what appears to be an empty-corner pick and roll for Ajinca. He quickly rejects the screen and counters the defender closing off the baseline by fluidly transitioning into a stepback three.

Displays of shooting off the bounce such as this, combined with Ajinca’s indifference towards contests and his willingness pulling from range well beyond that of his peers…

…quickly vaulted him into early draft conversations and captured my attention as a potentially outlier shooting prospect.

From here I attempted to gain a deeper perspective of Ajinca’s career prior to and since the U19 tournament, watching games from his time with Saint-Quentin in the French LNB Pro B league to now where they’ve earned promotion to the Pro A ranks. Ajinca, as with many young European prospects, has been confined to filling the specific role of an off-ball spacer, and actually his seven-game stint with the U19 team had been the most freedom he’d been afforded on-ball up to that point of his career. In 41 games logged in Synergy, Ajinca had been used in Isolation or as a P&R ballhandler 39 times; over the course of seven games in the U19 World Cup he’d seen 14 possessions in the same play-types.

Ajinca’s previous usage aligns with how we conventionally think of shooters being deployed. Ajinca saw the majority of his shots in the halfcourt come from deliberate set plays, such as the possession below where Saint-Quentin runs Horns Flare Spain, where Ajinca cuts from the right corner to serve as the second screener in the Spain action. Evident in this action is Ajinca’s lightning quick release, allowing him to catch and shoot in one motion.

If Ajinca wasn’t being used in Spain he was being run off double staggers…

Or a simple pindown with some window dressing, such as this Rip (backscreen) Screen-the-Screener action.

I would say these three actions are generally representative of how Ajinca has been utilized for Saint-Quentin, and, while I was initially captivated by how efficient Ajinca was in getting into his shot due to his quick mechanics and efficient energy transfer, as I watched more tape a trend started to become apparent. If you noticed a similarity in all of these clips, the plays are meticulously diagrammed, with Ajinca placed as a feature, not the focus of the action. While the speed component of Ajinca’s shot is certainly NBA caliber, to consistently place pressure on defenses these kind of plays are not best suited to answering the questions of volume and versatility essential to any high level NBA shooter.

Realizing this can sound kind of counterintuitive, if a player shoots with good efficiency and can get their shot off under duress, why would their be any uncertainty as to whether or not they can maintain their volume as they transition to the NBA? Wouldn’t it be in their team’s best interest to implement a steady diet of shooting opportunities into their offense for said player? The answer to this is complicated. In the NBA offenses typically subscribe to the philosophy of “path of least resistance”, meaning the bedrock of most team’s offenses comes down to “what is the most direct path which will yield the most consistent results.”

With shooting specialists, if they are schemed a shot it is with the understanding that the advantage typically begins and ends with the player receiving an open shot. And while this will work on occasion, frequently depending how well the play is diagrammed, there is a ceiling to how consistently these playtypes will bear fruit for an offense. The best phrasing I could think of to describe this difference is active versus passive spacing.

Compare these two clips below, for instance, of Desmond Bane and Simone Fontecchio stationed in the corner.

In the first clip, Kris Dunn drives from the middle of the floor, beats his man, and Fontecchio’s defender Fred VanVleet ‘helps the helper’ by rotating over from his initial assignment to prevent the dump-off passing angle to John Collins, all the while leaving Fontecchio open for the corner three. In the second clip, the Grizzlies run a spread pick-and-roll with Bane spaced in the corner. At first glance it seems Fontecchio’s three was the result of a defensive error by VanVleet. Whereas in the second clip Hardaway Jr doesn’t even briefly entertain the idea of leaving Bane to tag the roller in the second clip.

While it seems obvious the ideal execution in these similar positions is to remain closely attached to the shooter as Tim Hardaway Jr. does to Bane, VanVleet was doing what was asked of his defensive scheme as well. The main difference in these two clips isn’t so much the result of the play as the variety of shooter being covered in the play. While Simone Fontecchio is a respectable shooter (shooting 40% from three on the season on 305 attempts to date), what makes him a passive versus an active spacer is the understanding defenders have of how limited their responsibilities are when guarding Fontecchio.

As previously mentioned, usually when shooting specialists are schemed open, the advantage is confined to the three which was drawn up. As seen below, Simone Fontecchio is no exception to this. When the defense runs him off the line, the advantage is effectively ended.

Defenders knowing that a hard closeout, which gets Fontecchio to relocate, or even run off the three-point line, is effective in neutralizing his shooting threat, greatly reduces the strain Fontecchio can place on a defense. This simplified thought process for defenders manifests on the court in plays like the clip below. Michael Porter Jr. is Fontecchio’s initial defender, however he has no qualms helping off Fontecchio to stunt (provide help on a post-up) towards John Collins.

This play embodies the active versus passive spacing dichotomy, as while Fontecchio demands the respect of the closeout, the shooting threat isn’t so great that Fontecchio can carve out space for others outside of a very specific usage. Constant application of these kind of plays isn’t feasible for the simple fact that they introduce perhaps the hallmark of a bad NBA offense, predictability. And while implementing movement shooting elements into an offense is crucial, it is typically used as a feature, not the foundation of an offense.

Take the play below: the Cavaliers run a Ram Veer Exit play, where Georges Niang receives an off-ball screen from Max Strus en-route to setting an on-ball screen for Craig Porter Jr. (this is the Ram part of the action). After setting the screen for Porter Jr., Niang sets a pindown for Sam Merrill (Veer action), while Strus simultaneously receives an exit screen from Isaac Okoro. This play is beautifully designed, and all of these moving parts create a seam for Craig Porter Jr. to drive and score an easy layup. By expertly blending the shooting capabilities of these three players who individually demand respect, Cleveland is able to breakdown the defense without any conventional advantage creators on the floor.

However, if you were to remove all the scaffolding which comes with a well diagrammed play being combined with multiple potent shooters, what would it look like?

Take the play below, for example, a baseline out of bounds play in what is a much less shooting slanted lineup. Cleveland runs Ram Ghost, where Sam Merrill inbounds the ball receives a pindown from Niang and ghosts the on-ball screen. It is apparent from the play that this action doesn’t place nearly the same strain on the defense, with Boston switching 1-4 and not even momentarily hesitant on abandoning their scheme to pursue Merrill. Even with a heavier-footed big like Al Horford switching onto a perimeter player, the lacking off-the-bounce threat of Merrill makes this a simple rotation to execute.

I felt it necessary to reference these players not to undermine their abilities or paint them as devoid of value, but to provide a frame of reference for my concerns with Melvin Ajinca. As I went through his tape a persistent theme, similar to these shooting specialists cited above, was the absence of production when Ajinca was adequately covered out to the three-point line. There were numerous instances of Ajinca hamstringing the offense when he was forced to counter after meeting resistance on the initial action, such as this Spain PNR below…

Or when Ajinca was incapable of capitalizing on an opportunity to attack a short closeout when run off the line.

These clips may be seen as isolated instances, and Ajinca optimists may even interpret these plays as a natural byproduct of a younger player who has received limited on-ball reps. However, I remain skeptical of Ajinca’s potential to drastically improve this skill, as Saint-Quentin has actually attempted to integrate Ajinca more as a ballhandler into their offense. While he has almost exclusively seen these opportunities come in simple, two-man actions such as this empty corner pick-and-roll below, the results have left much to be desired with Ajinca scoring only .784 PPP as a PNR ballhandler this season.

As stated earlier, Ajinca still possesses the qualities of a viable off-ball spacer, but I see these limitations preventing him from ever seeing a usage higher than the current 16% usage he’s sporting for Saint Quentin. For Ajinca, as with most shooting specialists at the highest levels, their inability to adapt when forced to play out of structure curbs their volume, and as a result their impact on a possession to possession basis.

Ja’Kobe Walter

As stated earlier, both Ja’Kobe Walter and Melvin Ajinca’s primary appeal as prospects are their utility as shooters. However, both players have seen drastically different usages and the dichotomy between their respective shooting profiles would show as much. Below is a table of both Ajinca and Walter’s shooting splits over the past two seasons (2022-23 and the current season).

At first these splits seem to represent two players with somewhat similar shooting pedigrees, and in fact this table may stir some confusion as to why there’s such a great deal of separation between the two prospects in general draft media perception, judging by draft boards. Walter has shot a greater volume of 3s compared to Ajinca, however Ajinca’s been more efficient from a more standardized distance (all of Ajinca’s 3s are from the FIBA line of 22.15 feet, whereas a substantial portion of Walter’s long distance attempts are from the high school line of 19.75 feet). Initially I came into this process expecting to see similar calibre of shooters, with the gap in shooting ability between the two players to be equally represented on film; however in reality the effect these players had on defenses held stark contrasts.

To fully grasp the difference between Walter and Ajinca’s shooting ability, a holistic approach is necessary. While Ajinca has more or less seen identical usage in every team context he has been placed in, Walter’s role has varied greatly over the course of his young career. The different levels of usage are apparent in the difference between the number of non-threes Walter has taken compared to Ajinca. The scope of this article so far has mainly focused on these players ability to space the floor from three, but Walter’s shot diversity amplifies his effectiveness as a spacer.

Previously Melvin Ajinca’s processing and ability to adapt off the catch had been greatly scrutinized, and mentioned as a potential limiting factor to his utility to an offense. Ja’Kobe Walter, on the other hand, has a well-refined game off the catch and has melded other aspects of his scoring repertoire to fully exploit his shooting. The disparity between how reliable the two are at parlaying the shooting threat they present is evident in their respective free throw rates, as Walter has posted a robust 0.46 ratio of free throw to field goal attempts compared to a paltry 0.20 for Ajinca. The clips below are a prime examples of how Walter is able to convert these hard closeouts into quality offense.

In the first clip, Baylor runs a simple spread pick-and-roll, with Walter positioned in the weakside corner. Cincinnati’s big is in a high-drop coverage, and because of the angle he takes Walter’s defender (the low-man) has to over-help to prevent the wraparound pass. Once Walter receives the kickout in the corner, he fully capitalizes on the long closeout his man has to make by immediately getting downhill and drawing the foul

What is not visible in this clip, however, is Walter’s excellent footwork attacking these closeouts. Walter consistently is able to deploy ‘negative step’ footwork, where he uses his rear-foot to springboard his drives and mitigate some of his lackluster burst. The play below exemplifies this: the Baylor point-guard RayJ Dennis is able to break his man down off the dribble, triggering Walter’s man to help on the drive. As Walter receives the pass in the corner, his defender simultaneously recovers and is shading Walter towards the baseline. However, the defender’s top-foot is too high on the closeout, enabling Walter to attack and open up a driving lane to then draw the foul and finish for an and-one opportunity.

Why I initially thought it necessary to delve into the different developmental contexts between Walter and Ajinca, beyond their ability to attack closeouts, is how capable they are of adapting to the defense once run off the line. Walter isn’t just fixed to foul drawing when attacking closeouts. His previous time spent as a primary offensive option afford him a bevy of alternatives to place pressure on the defense.

Below is an example of exactly this, Baylor once again is running a spread PNR with RayJ Dennis as the ballhandler and Walter stationed in the corner. As Dennis’ defender loses contain, Walter’s man rotates over to help on the drive, creating a gap for Walter to attack when the ball is swung to him. Unlike the last closeout attack vs Cincinnati where Walter was provided a direct driving path towards the basket, this time Dennis’ defender rotates over from the topside. Despite the added variable Walter is able to quickly pro-hop to navigate the dig, and get to a balanced floater off two feet.

Take notice that as the screen is set Walter and his teammate on the wing, Jalen Bridges, exchange. While this may seem insignificant this is a microcosm of shooters having different levels of gravity. While on the surface Bridges may seem to be the better shooter than Walter, as he boasts a 40.6% 3-point shot compared to Walter’s 34.5%. But Walter is a much more reliable release valve for an offense because of plays just like this.

Synthesizing the information gathered from the tape and available databases like Synergy shows Walter to have a more impressive shot versatility than Ajinca. The table below displays three-point shooting efficiency over the past 2 seasons off handoffs and screens, showing how Walter has actually been more efficient in the most common playtypes for their presumed archetype.

Granted this a small sample, but this lends support to the theory of Ajinca’s shooting efficiency being drastically boosted by shots which don’t generate “gravity” as it is commonly understood.

Walter is not without his faults as a shooter, however, as while he surpasses Ajinca in versatility there is a limiting factor in his shot speed. If you notice in the clips above Walter is able to get downhill because he is operating off substantial advantages created by others and he has the respect to draw hard closeouts. Neither of these are factors can be relied on at the next level, where closeouts lie on more of a spectrum.

To demonstrate the relationship between shot speed and long versus short closeouts, I have pulled a few clips shown below. In the first clip, Moses Moody attacks a mismatch after Golden State gets an offensive rebound, and kicks the ball out to Brandin Podziemski after drawing Pascal Siakam as the help defender. Take notice of the depth of Siakam’s closeout; instead of closing out with reckless abandon or crowding Podziemski to prevent him getting a shot off, he stops a few feet short.

This short closeout is informed by Podziemski’s reputation as a shooter, where despite shooting 38% from 3 on the season and a blistering 44.7% as a collegian this past season, his discomfort shooting over contests and in tighter windows dissuades him from attempts with a high degree of difficulty. And when Podziemski does attempt shots over length, his lower release point makes contesting shots an easier task for defenders, as demonstrated in the clip below.

Podziemski runs off an Iverson cut to receive the entry pass and from here the Warriors attempt to flow into an empty corner PNR. However, the Raptor’s matchup zone clogs up any driving/passing lanes for this action, forcing Dario Saric to flash to the middle of the floor and find Podziemski sinking into a pocket of space left vacant by the zone. Notice again, despite the space a recovering Gary Trent Jr. is forced to cover, he stops a few feet short and is able to well contest the shot. Understandably this may seem like a harsh judgement of an ostensibly quality NBA shooter, however capitalizing on these margins is what separates shooters at the next level.

Contrast the treatment Podziemski receives as a spacer versus a player like Tim Hardaway Jr., for example. Hardaway’s high and quick release, paired with the bordering irrational confidence he has in his shot. When the shooting windows shrink, Walter will need to prove he can consistently get his shot off. Examining his previous tape shows how this will need to be an area of improvement for Walter.

Take the clip below. After Baylor runs some disjointed early offense they flow into a Spread PNR. Walter’s defender, Jameer Nelson Jr., is forced to tag the roller early due to TCU’s big hedging the ballscreen and RayJ Dennis swings the ball to Walter on the wing. Nelson Jr. closes-out on Walter with balanced footwork, and most importantly short. The short closeout allows Walter space to get up an attempt from 3 which Nelson Jr., listed at 6’2, is able to emphatically block.

This play does a great job of capturing the gradient which closeouts lie on. Walter is a dangerous enough shooter to demand some sort of closeout and is proficient driving against hard closeouts, meaning an option teams will exercise is the short closeout where Walter is forced to shoot over a moderate contest. While this block can be seen as an aberration, a single play not indicative of more than a bad decision from Walter, I’m of the belief this represents a wider trend and a weakness which Walter could struggle improving upon at the next level.

First of all, it is not just spot-up attempts Walter struggles getting up quickly, he also frequently had issues getting up shots off-the-dribble up against smaller defenders. Take the clip below, for example. Baylor runs a Get-77 action which is blown-up, and in response Walter lifts up from the corner and runs an empty corner PNR with Jordan Pope as his primary defender. Pope, listed at 6’2, blocks the shot AFTER going under the screen.

I’ve avoided discussing shot mechanics up until now because I don’t think there’s a platonic ideal to what a shot should look like, and often judgements in shot mechanics are more informed by aesthetics than functionality. In Walter’s case however, his struggles transitioning into his shot quickly run downstream from his mechanics. The clip below demonstrates two ways Walter compensates for this mechanical inefficiency.

Walter has a lower release point, to compensate for his struggles generating power from his lower body. This is evident from the valgus collapse in his knees shown more clearly below.

Another idiosyncrasy of Walter’s shot, potentially limiting his shot speed, is an inelastic set-point, also apparent in this clip. Notice how Walter gathers for this shot well outside his frame in order to position his shot so that it is set with his elbow pronated. This elbow pronation is more clearly displayed in the picture below.

Typically a shooter’s elbow is much tighter to his body, and more closely aligned with the shooter’s feet. The elbow pronation makes the set-point rigid, causing the shooter to take another split second to transition from their set-point to release. Both of these deficiencies are a result of Walter lacking general strength, which can be alleviated with time spent in an NBA strength program. However, when he doesn’t have the hair-trigger release speed to be consistently effective off horizontal shooting actions like ghost screens and flares, Walter’s defender can go under the flare screen and still credibly contest the shot, as in the clip below.

For a shooting prospect who cannot draw the hard closeouts necessary to create unambiguous driving opportunities, and who doesn’t necessary have the handle to capitalize on less pronounced advantages, the application of their shooting prowess can be significantly narrower than previously anticipated.

I found the parallels in these two plays and between these two players striking. Both Kevin Huerter and Walter are run off double staggers and neither is able to gain a significant amount of separation from the trailing defender. And when the decision is forced upon them by the defense, neither has the self organization skills to quickly transition into a shot off the dribble or drive to maintain the advantage, so in both cases the play results in a turnover.

This is not to say Walter is a one-to-one comp to Huerter, more so to illustrate the struggles a shooting specialist in his mold may encounter when his jumpshot is lacking in certain qualities. What we want to avoid is a shooting prospect whose draft slot warrants heavy investment of developmental resources, but who ultimately possesses a fungible skillset which I believe is the case with Walter.

Rob Dillingham

Up to this point the focus has been on parsing shooting aptitude based on which conditions prospects FAILED to meet, however, I wanted to delve into 6’2 Kentucky guard Rob Dillingham’s game as an example of what constitutes a high level shooting prospect on tape and by the numbers.

In order to understand what makes Dillingham’s potential as a shooter so appealing, it is necessary to look at his shooting profile over the past two seasons just as we had with Melvin Ajinca and Ja’Kobe Walter.

What immediately stands out about Dillingham’s shot profile is the difference in volume of off-the-dribble 3’s as well as catch-and-shoot 3’s compared to Walter and Ajinca. Dillingham over the exact same time frame and comparable total number of games played (Dillingham played 71 games over this stretch, compared to 75 and 80 for Ajinca and Walter respectively), managed to shoot more 3’s off the bounce than Walter and Ajinca COMBINED while shooting significantly less Catch-and-Shoot 3’s than both players (193 C&S 3’s versus 315 and 353). Some of the discrepancy in shot distribution can definitely be explained by their positional distinctions, but seeing how quickly Dillingham adapted to more of an off-ball role, when his responsibilities more closely aligned with Ajinca and Walter’s, was a revelation. When deployed as an off-ball player and asked to run off screens, Dillingham created space by utilizing the burst and understanding of tempo which made him such a potent scorer off the bounce.

Take the play below for example. Kentucky runs Floppy initially, with Dillingham being defended well on the catch. After Dillingham swings the ball back to Reed Sheppard at the top of the key, he runs towards Aaron Bradshaw on the left block, setting what seems to be the first screen of a baseline double stagger set. However, with Dillingham’s defender going over the top of Bradshaw’s screen, Dillingham recognizes this, reroutes and turns this into a ‘Ricky’ action, where the screener rescreens for the cutter but going in the opposite direction of the initial screen.

While Dillingham was used sparingly as a movement shooter (only 12 3’s off screens this season, on which he went 5/12), this play exemplifies how quickly Dillingham can self-organize and get into his shot off a variety of footwork patterns. Dillingham’s shooting numbers this season for Kentucky were obviously stellar, however a deeper look into the degree of difficulty on these shots quells any concerns I have on the translatability of Dillingham’s jumper. In the clip below for instance, Dillingham breaks convention not by taking a transition 3, but taking it as the primary ballhandler dribbling full speed down the court.

Willingness to shoot in these suboptimal situations, like the plays below where Dillingham comes off a pindown and takes a one dribble 3 with Tre Mitchell splayed at his feet..

…and over a tight contest from Armando Bacot, bodes well for maintaining his shot volume at the next level.

As I watched Dillingham over the course of the season I found there to be interesting parallels between him and a rookie from this past year’s class, Keyonte George. While there are drastic differences between the two in certain respects, there are/were similar concerns in their shot selection as prospects. During his tenure at Baylor, George had been much maligned for a perceived inability to operate within a team construct and even labeled a ‘chucker’ by some draft analysts. I would argue what was considered a weakness has actually been essential to George outperforming expectations in his rookie year.

Take this play from early in the season, for example, where Utah attempts to run Horns Out for Jordan Clarkson in early offense, but when the entry is denied George receives a Flare screen from Clarkson. Notice the apathy the defense displays towards a George three point attempt: if we are judging the value of George as a shooter by the aforementioned Knee-Jerk Reflex Test, it would be pretty low.

What I found so interesting about George’s rookie season was that despite how pedestrian his shooting splits were (38.6% from the field and 32.8% from 3), the coverages he saw over the course of the season transformed in large part because of how consistent he was with his volume. In fact, George saw his 3-point volume steadily increase over the course of the season. In the 2023 calendar year (games played from October-December) George averaged 5.1 attempts/game, and in 2024 George averaged 6.3 attempts/game. The Jazz were intentional in exploring the upper limits of George’s capabilities offensively and he consistently answered the bell. He now demonstrates his comfort shooting in simple flow actions like the DHO from John Collins below, where the sliver of space provided by Steph going under the screen is enough for George to pull the trigger.

George also displayed utility as an off-the-dribble shooter when provided more opportunities on-ball. In the play below Utah flows into a spread PNR as the secondary action and George, without a moment’s hesitation, pulls up for 3 when Bam Adebayo begins to backpedal into drop coverage.

George’s willingness to take these 3’s under duress resulted in him eventually receiving the kind of coverage which stands as the benchmark for offensive players, forcing the defense to place two on the ball.

Later in the same game as the play above, Utah runs Pistol Flare Zoom, a well schemed staple of their offense. Despite the fluid transitions from one action to the next, Miami stifles the offense and the ball finds Keyonte George in the corner. As with most NBA offenses, when Utah’s designed offensive options are taken away they resort to a simple spread PNR. However, because of the threat George presents as a shooter off the bounce, Miami’s big (Orlando Robinson) hard hedges the PNR, triggering the low-man (Haywood Highsmith) to tag the roller and leave Lauri Markannen open in the corner. When George diffuses the pressure of the hedge he quickly finds Markannen for 3.

This is an optimal shot for the Jazz, and Utah was able to create this in spite of Miami playing almost 20 seconds of good defense BECAUSE of George’s off-the-dribble shooting ability. While George isn’t seeing two to the ball with a high frequency yet, per Synergy all 8 of the times he’s been trapped as the PNR ballhandler have come since February 11th, which coincides with George’s rise in shooting volume.

Before revisiting Dillingham’s evaluation, I’d like to reiterate the comparison between George and Dillingham is not being drawn as a 1-to-1 comparison, rather as an example of how a seldom sought after archetype (smaller guards who are high volume shooters) can be extremely valuable if they meet certain criteria.

Dillingham showed himself more than capable of diagnosing coverages where he could utilize his off the dribble shooting prowess. Dillingham, like George in the previous clips, was decisive and consistent in punishing drop coverages which is integral to success for his archetype. In the clip below, Dillingham rejects the first screen in a 77 action (Double Drag) and finds the pocket of space left occupied by the trailing point-of-attack defender and the drop big man, and from there he decisively takes the pull-up 3 with a right-handed gather.

Even as scouting reports became more robust over the course of conference play, Dillingham was still able to get to his pull-up 3 against drop coverage. Like in the play below where Kentucky runs Horns, the POA defender is better able to stay attached to Dillingham and the drop defender is slightly closer to the level of the screen than Hunter Dickinson in the previous clip, however Dillingham is still able to get up an attempt, this time with a left-handed gather.

Even when defenders were playing at the level, like in this play against Oakland in the tournament, Dillingham was undeterred. Kentucky once again is running 77 and Dillingham seizes the space given to take a deep 3 early in the shot clock, despite Zvonimir Ivisic’s defender actually quickly showing at the level.

What makes Dillingham’s shooting ability so enticing is how rare it is to find a prospect who’s not only capable of drawing aggressive coverages with the ball in his hands, but also capitalizing on the attention they draw as shooters off the ball. As previously discussed in Ja’Kobe Walter’s evaluation, attacking closeouts as a shooting threat is of upmost importance. And while Walter’s shot mechanics could limit his effectiveness drawing and attacking closeouts, Dillingham has no such concerns mechanically, along with having an even better process attacking closeouts.

Dillingham was deployed off-ball this season more than any point in his career and shot an astounding 42/88 (47.7%) on Catch and Shoot 3’s. Even more impressive was Dillingham’s ability to parlay the hard closeouts his shooting efficiency attracted into high percentage shots for himself or teammates.

In this clipped play Florida switches the spread PNR placing the big, Thomas Haugh, on Dillingham. Eventually the ball is swung to Antonio Reeves, who drives, causing Haugh to provide gap help. On Haugh’s recovery Dillingham quickly ‘punches’ the gap, drives, and hits a runner. In this play Haugh executes scheme perfectly by funneling Dillingham towards help, but the nuance in Dillingham’s game off the catch renders this advantage.

Dillingham has a wonderful habit of running through the catch, or ‘stampeding’, on closeouts. This creates the finishing angle in the play above, and can be seen even more clearly in the play below. Kentucky flows into a double Zoom action for Antonio Reeves after they’re unable to create a quality look out of the empty corner PNR. When Reeves is stonewalled on his drive he kicks it back out to Dillingham at the top of the key, and Dillingham’s stampede allows him to create the quick separation to finish high off the glass.

Dillingham’s game off the catch can best be described as kinetic in my opinion, whether the possession ends in a Dillingham shot or not, he is able to keep the offense in motion and the defense shifting with his keen sense of court mapping.

In the following clip, Kentucky runs through two hapless spread PNRs with Reed Sheppard as the primary ballhandler. On the 2nd PNR Sheppard rejects the screen and dribbles to the right side of the floor where Dillingham is stationed. As Dillingham lifts from the wing, his defender pressures the ball, prompting a switch onto Dillingham. The switch demands urgency, and Dillingham is able to weaponize this brief advantage on a subpar closeout from an otherwise excellent defender in Cam Matthews.

Dillingham’s drive is an expert display of manipulating defenders with your eyes and tempo, as he waits for both Matthews and the primary rim protector here (Tolu Smith) to commit before eventually making the dumpoff pass to Aaron Bradshaw for a dunk. While some may see this as a combination of bad defense from Smith and solid passing vision from Dillingham, Dillingham’s arsenal of pullups, runners, and floaters, necessitates Smith lifting from his position closer to the basket.

Dillingham’s technical refinement operating off-ball, when paired with high volume off the dribble shooting, amounts to an offensive weapon which could potentially change the entire complexion of a team’s offense. Instead of having a shooter who can only force the defense to react when placed in a set of ideal conditions, a shooter with the depth of tools Dillingham possesses can activate defensive pressure points simply by participating in the play.

An example of this effect can be seen below. Miami runs Iverson 77 Shallow, where Nijel Pack receives the entry pass as he’s cutting across the opposite wing (the Iverson component of the action), and the two elbow screeners flip to initiate the 77 Shallow phase of the action. As previously discussed, 77 consists of double drag screens, however 77 Shallow is a variation where the screens are staggered so the 2nd screener can make a shallow cut to the 3 point line. As Pack takes the 1st screen, the Pitt big man quickly shows to disrupt the rhythm of Pack, a respected off the dribble 3-point shooter. Ideally this should place Blake Hinson in a situation where he’s forced to cover the roller and the shallow cutting shooter, but George is a tick late to lift which kills the window for the advantage to be created. Pack continues dribbling towards the right wing and the gap help from Jaland Lowe carves open a driving lane for AJ Casey who finishes on the drive.

This play encapsulates the interplay between actions designed to get shooters open on the East-West plane, to create North-South gaps for drivers to attack. And shooters who are prolific off the bounce and off the catch function as queens on the chessboard, in how they activate defensive pressure points in either manner.

These versatile shooters also serve as force multipliers for other shooters effectiveness. Take the play below for example, Dallas intends to run ‘Motion Strong Zoom’, where Tim Hardaway Jr. runs off double staggers from the corner (Motion Strong), swings the ball to Dereck Lively, and screens away to initiate the Zoom action for Kyrie Irving. However, as Irving approaches THJ to receive the first screen he is denied, or ‘top-locked’, by Jalen Suggs. This prompts Hardaway to take a handoff from Lively as his (Hardaway Jr’s) initial defender, Anthony Black, and Suggs simultaneously switch their assignments. Suggs switching onto Hardaway Jr. and Black switching onto Irving.

This sequence is so important because with Suggs and Black switching the Mavericks essentially have them dead to rights, as seen in the frame below.

Suggs has lost the battle of leverage, with the switch placing him on Hardaway Jr’s outside shoulder, and Hardaway Jr. being a respected shooter in his own right forces Goga Bitadze to lift slightly out of his drop coverage. This rotation creates the angle for Hardaway to make the short skip pass to Irving, effectively inverting the floor and creating a window for Irving to continue the advantage with a pass to the rolling Lively.

This sequence is a perfect distillation of the synergy between a dynamic off-the-dribble shooting threat and a dynamic, albeit more conventional, shooter. And plays like these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to manufacturing offense between these two archetypes. Utilizing shooters as screeners has come into vogue in a major way recently, and perhaps there’s no team better at combining these elements within their offense than the recent NCAA champion UConn Huskies.

In the following clip, UConn runs a wildly intricate action I could only term as ‘Pistol Motion Strong Ghost Flex Screen the Screener’. Despite the overly verbose terminology, this core concept of this action is quite simple, UConn taking their best and most versatile shooter in Cam Spencer and weaponizing him by involving him in as many phases of the offense as possible. As Spencer fakes the Cross Screen for the player in the weakside corner and receives the down screen (Ghost Flex), his defender tightly trails, attempts to deny the curl, and funnel Spencer into Alex Karaban’s defender so they can switch. Switching being the preferred defensive scheme because of Marquette’s similarly sized lineup and the lack of off the dribble scoring threat UConn’s players possess. UConn uses this perceived weakness against Marquette here by having Spencer set a down screen for Karaban as he’s curling towards the basket, springing Karaban open for 3.

I find these clips relevant to Rob Dillingham’s projection because these are the ways his offensive skillset can manifest not only in scoring opportunities for himself, but for others as well. The confluence of Dilling

Conclusion

In summation, I think all these players have viable skillsets as shooters, however my general philosophy when it comes to the draft is to pick for scarcity. Especially when it comes to a team using a high pick, players who provide unique skillsets allow teams to pivot stylistically and adapt to changes in the NBA meta. When it comes to the three prospects previously discussed, I chose them specifically because it was my belief these prospects main value proposition was their shooting talent. Each possess strengths and weaknesses compared to the others in the other facets of their game, but ultimately if a team is picking any of the three it should be for what their shooting ability unlocks within the team’s offense. And in my estimation Robert Dillingham is the only prospect of the three whose shooting and shooting adjacent skillset warrant a high, lottery level, pick because of the previously discussed attributes. Ja’Kobe Walter, who has an interesting profile as a shooter and scorer, doesn’t meet certain thresholds specifically as a shooter to warrant a higher pick, and Melvin Ajinca is too deficient in certain shooting adjacent qualities to be useful outside of the conventional shooting specialist role.

Prior to delving into these prospect’s games I hadn’t considered shooting ability holistically, I’d previously weighed shot mechanics as most essential to projecting shooting. Having worked through this evaluation I realized early on assessing shooting from a purely mechanical perspective naturally introduced aesthetic bias because there’s no idealized shooting form. Ultimately, recognizing this implicit bias lead to a clearer perspective of other flaws in my shooting criteria, flaws which didn’t lie in the characteristics being accounted for, but instead how rigid my philosophy had been overall.

As I dug deeper and deeper into these prospects I realized scouting shooting talent is as much about evaluating evidence which is absent from a player’s shot profile as evaluating the data currently available. The less variables I was able to see a player interact with, the less confident I was in how their shooting ability would translate to the next level. And finally, perhaps even more importantly with prospects who are shooters first and foremost, recognizing there may be no greater impediment to an offense than a player with an unwarranted reputation as a shooter. This is in reference to the ‘active’ vs ‘passive’ spacer dichotomy previously mentioned, as the narrower a player’s shooting can be applied, the less space they are providing an offense.

The days of conventional shooting specialists are long gone, and avoiding spending valuable draft capital on a player who may fall into this category is an imperative.

The post 2024 Draft Shooting Heuristic appeared first on Swish Theory.

So much of NBA team building is predicated on teams’ ability to forecast changes in the league and adapt accordingly. Whether it be an evolving meta game, alterations in the CBA which change team’s cap structure, or an ever-expanding pool of talent, the league is in a perpetual state of flux. And with the new CBA being enacted this summer, NBA teams incapable of determining the requirements necessary to succeed in this new era could be doomed to residing in the basement of league standings.

We’ve seen this equivalent to basketball Darwinism play out time and time again, most recently in 2016 when teams naively commit a disproportionate amount of their salary cap to players due to a temporary spike in the cap brought on by additional TV revenue. A quick examination of teams salary caps over the past few years will find their books littered with contracts from 2016 still being paid due to these rash spending decisions.

In my mind the most consequential addition to the new CBA are the new luxury cap rules, specifically article 7 sections D and E, which detail the restrictions both financially and transaction-wise placed on teams who exceed the cap. Without getting into specifics, these rules drastically increase the financial burden of teams who exceed the cap, with the tax burden compounding with every increment a team passes the tax level. In addition to this, other roster building mechanisms such as trade and mid-level salary exceptions will be removed from teams surpassing these cap thresholds. Ultimately, this will place teams in the difficult position in the short run, having already signed players to sizeable contracts under the old CBA; and in the long run because in my opinion, the assumption that relatively competent younger players on rookie contracts will be extended is going to become less prevalent.

The value of vacant cap space around the league will only increase as more punitive salary cap rules make teams reluctant to commit to players who may not fit their roster’s needs. In my opinion teams will become more tentative in trading for or signing veteran players as the financial risk which comes with these more lucrative contracts, paired with the potential these players don’t properly congeal with the roster, outweighs the perceived benefit. However, a tool to combat this roster building quagmire, in my eyes, is readily available in the draft. The tool in question being Pre-Drafting.

Pre-drafting, simply put, is the idea of teams drafting players a year (or two) before they are seen as capable of regularly contributing to an NBA team. Conventional wisdom of the draft has often been reduced to, “there are only around 15-20 players worth taking every year.” And while there are definitely years more scant in talent than others, I believe this circular reasoning persisted because teams have improperly framed the question of what constitutes a NBA caliber prospect.

Typically teams will opt for players who have met certain markers of statistical production which have historically been considered acceptable. These production markers, relative to a player’s age, are used to whittle down the player pool into a group of what teams consider ‘draft-able prospects’. Generally this a respectable framework to apply to the draft and has yielded good results over the year. However, as earlier mentioned, its necessary to adapt to the changing NBA landscape, and the current drafting approach for teams with substantial contractual obligations leaves much to be desired.

These high achieving teams with large contracts usually do not have the luxury of choice when it comes to drafting, the players with the highest production relative to age are long gone. In turn, these teams opt for the players who hit the most of their preferred statistical markers over the past season. This predictable line of reasoning leads to the idea of draft results, on the whole, being predictable. This parochial view of players only being deemed draft-able if they meet a certain statistical threshold (statistics which were more than likely accumulated in a basketball environment that is impossible to replicate in the professional ranks) has led many teams to squander what are becoming increasingly crucial, cost-controlled assets, in draft picks. Instead, if teams view prospects through a continuum, and consider each age-eligible prospect as part of the draft pool when they matriculate into college or one of the various professional leagues, they could drastically increase the probability of attaining positive return-on-investment from their draft picks.  

With the concept of pre-drafting having been explained, the question arises of which prospects should be sought after under this philosophy? In the past, pre-draft prospects have been conflated with whoever the youngest, highest-ranked high school prospects may have been. I can not stress enough how far this is from the truth. The heuristic I have applied when seeking pre-draft candidates are prospects who possess an intersection of outlier physical traits, at least one foundational skill I am confident will translate to the next level, and an unobtrusive game. Unobtrusive game being one which doesn’t require a high volume of on-ball reps for the player’s early development, as this reduces the number of variables which need to be accounted for when projecting pre-draft candidates.

Condensing this logic into a word, the ideal pre-draft candidate is one which allows for strategic multiplicity. As earlier stated, league rosters are constantly in a state of flux, incorporating a young player whose skillset can be integrated into numerous contexts, without stunting their individual development, is a player worth investing in as soon as they are made available. With the new CBA adding more financial guarantees to 2^nd round players, the league has never had more ammunition to entice young players to entering the draft pool. Professional teams in any sport sustain high level rosters by consistently winning at the margins, using draft capital to cultivate talent internally at a low cost with the pre-drafting methodology in mind, presents an option to do just this.

What makes the 2024 draft class especially interesting, in my mind, is many of the most compelling long-term prospects fall under the pre-draft candidate umbrella. These players more than likely will not experience immediate success at the college level, and in fact what would be the most conducive to their long term development is receiving reps at the professional level as soon as possible.

There is not a player in the 2024 draft class who better illustrates this point than 6’7” incoming freshman big man Joseph ‘JoJo’ Tugler.

The Intro

Joseph Tugler is a 6’7” 4/5 man from Houston, Texas, who exploded onto the national scene after an AAU season spent with the Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) team Houston Hoops. Tugler went into his final AAU season with only one college offer, from local low-major school Lamar University, and did not receive his first Power-5 offer (from Kansas State) until April of his junior year. Shortly after the Kansas State offer, Tugler received an offer from local school and national power Houston University, committing soon after. The reason for mentioning the timeline of Tugler’s recruitment is to clarify how a potential NBA prospect could exist in such anonymity. Such a condensed recruiting timeline is almost unheard of, much of the outside perception of an incoming freshman is decided by the intrigue which builds up over the course of their recruiting cycle. Tugler concluding his recruitment so decisively is an anomaly amongst high-major recruits.

As is the case with many recruits who rise from relative obscurity, Tugler experienced a substantial growth spurt over the course of his high school career, growing over 3 inches from his freshman season to the beginning of his senior season. However, what is abnormal about Tugler’s physical development however, is the WAY he grew. While Tugler sprouted to 6’7” (in shoes), modest size for a frontcourt player, he boasts a 7’6” wingspan with enormous hands. Both can be seen in the picture below, posted by Houston basketball’s Director of Sports Performance Alan Bishop. (Listed height is without shoes)

However, tools are only as effective as their application, and Tugler has a keen understanding of how to apply his outlier physical dimensions to create havoc whenever the opportunity presents itself.

The diversity in Tugler’s event creation is perhaps the most notable aspect of his defense. It is rare to find a big equally as capable of creating turnovers on the perimeter as he is altering and blocking shots at the rim. What separates Tugler from a more conventional under-sized big, besides his unique anthropometric stats, is his movement skills. Tugler’s flexibility in his lower body is truly remarkable, allowing him to mirror smaller players on the perimeter comfortably. What struck me about Tugler’s fluidity, specifically his lateral movement, and has me confident the flashes of perimeter defense weren’t largely due to weaker competition is his biomechanics.

To fully understand Tugler’s lateral movement I’ll need to explain ‘foot-ground interaction. First of all, the most important characteristic of the foot-ground interaction in a basketball context is lateral banking. Lateral banking is the idea that if the contact surface between the athlete and the ground is flat, then all lateral forces will produced by friction between the foot and the ground, thus creating the most power. Simply put, the more contact you are able to make with the surface, the more force you will be able to generate. And if you are able to ‘bank’ the surface, i.e alter the angle of your foot ground interaction with the surface, you are able to create more contact with the surface, and as a result, apply more force to change directions quicker. The concept of lateral banking is why we see Nascar tracks banked, so that vehicles can maintain highs speeds while turning! Below is a diagram depicting how lateral force is produced.

If an athlete has the requisite flexibility through their ankles to ‘bank’ their surface and create more of a substantial foot-ground interaction, they will be better lateral movers. And there are examples littered throughout Joseph Tugler’s tape where he exhibits this exact kind of flexibility.

While not the most clear, keep an eye on Tugler’s left foot, it maintaining almost 100% contact with the ground while changing direction and he’s simultaneously able to achieve full extension through his left lateral sling (lateral sling being the muscle grouping responsible for lateral movement).

This kind of biomechanical analysis can seem unnecessarily granular, however I find this information illuminating when it comes to assessing how certain movement skills may translate. And in Joseph Tugler’s case, understanding his unique movement patterns informs how he’s able to make plays like the one below, where he closes out on 5-star 2024 guard Tre Johnson on an attempted drive, is able to seamlessly funnel Johnson towards the help defenders, and force Johnson to travel when he tries to spin back.

Even when Tugler isn’t able to completely stonewall quicker perimeter players, he is able to resort to his gargantuan wingspan to stay attached and place offensive players in a position of discomfort. The clip below is an instance of this playing out, Tugler is switched onto Bronny James on the perimeter, and while Bronny manages to get a step, the presence Tugler presents as a shotblocker causes Bronny to drive directly into a dig.

The Defense

It is impossible to discuss Joseph Tugler’s defensive projection without first mentioning the responsibilities of the modern big on that side of the ball. Scheme versatile big men are at a premium in the NBA, as ideally teams want big men who are able to produce without precluding their team from using any one lineup. Multiplicity is the name of the game for power forwards on both ends of the court, and defensively Tugler not only has the potential to be deployed in multiple roles without needing to be catered to with other lineup adjustments, Tugler can actually provide you flexibility at other positions by masking other deficiencies in the lineup.

The majority of Tugler’s time in EYBL was spent playing center, where Houston Hoops tasked him with playing a variety of coverages to account for inconsistent player availability. Tugler was not only able to play these coverages competently, but often excelled, and was frequently able to end possessions as evidenced by his 1.6 steals and 4.1 blocks per-40 minutes (over the course of 27 games) as tracked by Cerebro.

Even in plays where Tugler isn’t able to create an event (block or steal) he is constantly disrupting offensive players’ rhythm, forcing them into points of conflicts where they have to make decisions earlier than they’d prefer. The possession below of Tugler playing drop coverage exemplifies this form of deterrence.

Whether it be in drop coverage, or hard hedging ball screens…

Or switching onto smaller players on the perimeter…

…Tugler is a defensive force who needs to be accounted for at all times by the offense. However, in the professional ranks, I see Tugler’s best usage being as a roamer. This would see Tugler being deployed in a role where he can either utilize his length to create havoc in the gaps via deflections like in the clips below…

…or rotating over from the weakside to block shots…

….Tugler effectively serves as the bedrock of a defensive infrastructure, capable of impacting virtually any play type with his unique skillset. Notice how in all of the previous three clips Tugler blocks these shots with his left hand, despite being right hand dominant. This level of ambidexterity as a shotblocker is exceedingly rare and adds to Tugler’s potency as a defensive difference maker. Being able to block shots with his left hand also shows Tugler’s keen understanding of angles and how taking these angles closes distance between himself and the ball quicker, while also limiting the contact he makes with the offensive player.

What gives me a level of confidence in Tugler’s defensive skillset translating to higher levels is how frequently he was able to stifle some of the most highly touted members of his class. The question of whether these players warrant their current high school ranking could be debated, however they all serve as potential proxies for NBA bodies.

Whether it be Garwey Dual…

…Omaha Biliew…

…Matas Buzelis…

…Xavier Booker…

…or 7’1 2024 big man John Bol.

The list of elite high school players Tugler was able to either prevent from scoring, or deter from shooting in the first place, is considerable.

Key to Tugler’s projection as a scheme diverse big, one who is capable of detonating possessions as a help-side defender, is his ability to cover ground in a way that warps the geometry of the court. Tugler does a great job of balancing his responsibilities of covering his man while remaining cognizant of the conflicts the offense is placing his teammates in. Tugler is a player who is not only able to cover the ground necessary to compensate for breakdowns in the defense, but one who also possesses high-level pattern recognition, and can address these breakdowns before they cause a complete collapse in the defensive structure. These skills, in tandem, constitute the profile of a player who can potentially be a load-bearing structure of a defense.

Take the clip below for example, where as the opposing team runs a variation of UCLA, Tugler attempts to call out the screen and when he realizes his teammate is unable to get over it, he then switches onto and bumps the point guard (Jeremy Fears) off his path, giving his teammate enough time to recover back to his initial assignment. After this, Tugler immediately recognizes the need to switch onto the secondary side pick-and-roll action, where he’s able to flatten out the drive angle of the ballhandler, force the swing pass to Fears, stunt onto Fears’ drive, and recover back to his man in time to contest a 3-point attempt! This is an amazing example of Tugler’s defensive bandwidth and how it, in concert with his physical tools, can be weaponized to alter entire possessions.

Another instance of Tugler’s ground coverage ability, and specifically how it can allow for a team to play more aggressive defensive coverages (much like his current college team, Houston, prefers to play) can be found in the play below. His teammates are trapping the ball on the sideline and Tugler, anticipating the pass to the top of the key, sprints out towards the 3-point line while remaining focused on the ballhandler’s eyes. Tugler reads the ballhandler, manages to recover back to the dunker spot, steal the pass, and instantly parlay the turnover into an easy transition bucket with the outlet pass.

Tugler’s relentless motor makes his ground coverage even more apparent on tape, I have seldom seen players who can play as a primary rim protector creating plays in transition like in the clip below.

This level of ground coverage, combined with Tugler’s outlier length and accurate hands, make it so he has outstanding range as a defender. Plays like the clip below display this, where Tugler initially loses contain on the ballhandler and cedes a driving lane, but uses his length to stay attached to the ballhandler and block his shot at the rim.

These kind of plays are common in Tugler’s tape, as he is great at playing this kind of cat and mouse game, providing the offensive player with a false sense of security to where they feel comfortable attempting a shot at the rim which Tugler is able to alter or block. Below are a few instances of this situation playing out.

So often in the NBA context defensive ‘range’ is tantamount to how capable a defender is of altering and affecting the number of threes attempted by the opposing team. Tugler is in no way bound to solely impacting shots inside the arc and proved himself capable of making long, prudent rotations to cover for missed assignments outside the arc.

Take the play below, where the opposing team begins the action with an Iverson cut where the player opts to go under the screens to counter the defender top-locking. To account for this the cutter’s defender calls to switch. Tugler, seeing this transpire, anticipates his teammate getting beat off the dribble (which isn’t a bad assessment considering the angle #1 takes on the closeout). Tugler overhelps as a result, but is able to recover to the 3-point line when the ball is kicked out, and block the 3-point attempt.

So far we have explored Tugler’s intersection of athletic ability and defensive awareness, however he is not without his flaws on this end of the court, the most glaring of which being how foul prone Tugler is. Per Cerebro, Tugler averaged 5 fouls/40 minutes over the course of 26 tracked games.

While watching Tugler’s tape and trying to make sense of the underlying cause of his extremely high foul rate, I was brought back to times I have watched combat sports, and specifically mixed martial arts (MMA) in the past. In MMA the specific language regarding fouls, such as illegal eye pokes or strikes below the belt, is that the fighter “should always be aware and in control of their weapons”, weapons of course being the limbs they use to deliver strikes. I reference this because the majority of Tugler’s fouls aren’t a result of a lacking understanding of where he should be positioned, but a result of over-aggressiveness. Tugler’s penchant for causing turnovers comes at a cost of believing he can force turnovers from any angle no matter how much he may be positionally compromised. These gambles which result in steals like the play below:

Also frequently result in fouls like this ill-advised steal attempt:

Tugler’s over-aggression is often amplified by his greatest athletic deficiency at the moment, his deceleration, and these two paired together materialize in head-scratching fouls such as this out of control 3-point contest:

One of my favorite aspects of Tugler’s game is the physicality he plays with despite not having an overwhelming amount of mass. However, this element needs to be better trained as he’ll have inexplicable lapses in judgment which make up a non-insignificant portion of his fouls. The play below where he hip checks a baseline cutter is a perfect example of this:

Ultimately, I believe in Tugler’s defensive processing and how, in combination with his motor and physical tools, he fits the profile of a player who can be a bulwark for defenses at higher levels. Tugler certainly has to make significant improvements in technical areas of defense, such as his hand placement in drop coverage and footwork on closeouts, but I consider this low-hanging fruit in comparison to the skillset he already has. As certain defensive archetypes come in and out of favor, in my estimation a player like Tugler who can be deployed in numerous roles has the potential to retain value no matter the current defensive meta. Tugler’s not only able to make the long rotations created by subpar team defense, but by the same token, shortens rotations his teammates need to make by virtue of his physical tools and defensive workrate.

Tugler’s ability to end possessions places a strain on offensive players’ decision making process and this, even momentary, indecisiveness can throw off the timing of an entire play. So often we call offensive player’s ability to force hasty decisions ‘gravity’, and while there isn’t a universally repellant force to counteract gravity, Tugler’s defensive acumen can greatly help a defense retain its shape by limiting the scrambling situations that elite offensive players’ gravity causes.

The Offense

Joseph Tugler’s offensive projection is a much murkier conversation, and first requires a more abstract discussion of what is demanded from a modern power forward. What is so interesting to me about the modern 4-man is how there is no concrete expectations or necessary conditions for the position versus other positions on the team. Even though the game has moved further and further away from traditional positions, there is still an implicit understanding that a shooting-guard for example will bring some amount of shooting versatility to the table.

In contrast, the power forward responsibilities seem largely dictated by the center they are paired with. For instance, in certain contexts a 4 may have to stretch the floor for a paint-bound big man, while in other situations a team may need a more athletically dynamic 4 whose gravity rolling to the rim or cutting pairs well with a playmaking big. These lineup considerations are ubiquitous in high level basketball now. As front-court synergy becomes not only desired, but required, for any high performing team, the PF will be viewed as a binding agent for the rest of the lineup.

Tugler is a perfect distillation of how incongruous the demands are and, as a result, the development of big-men in youth basketball are compared to modern professional big men. In all the tape I have watched of Tugler his usage was almost exclusively that of a traditional, back to the basket, big man. This aligns with the background knowledge of Tugler’s developmental context, where he did not play on any major shoe circuit, and the public school league which he played with he was far and away the most physically dominant force. Tugler is 6’7” in shoes, a modest height for a PF, and he towers over the rest of the players in this interscholastic game for Cypress Falls High School.

When Tugler began to play high-level competition on the EYBL circuit, he saw the same kind of usage he’d been used to receiving in high school. Now, with size more representative of what Tugler would face at the next level, the results were ugly more often than not.

Tugler’s ineffectiveness in the low-post is a byproduct of his over-reliance on previously held physical advantages. Playing at lower levels Tugler was able to physically outmatch virtually any player he was matched against. However, I do not believe the low level competition is the only cause of Tugler’s lack of refinement in the low-post. Taking a more macro view of Tugler’s developmental trajectory, taking into account that he is a player who grew a substantial amount over a relatively short period of time, is key to understanding the main deficiency in Tugler’s low post footwork which is his balance. Tugler routinely loses his balance even in situations where his path is not being obstructed by other players.

I think this is an important aspect of Tugler’s athletic profile to mention because his novice footwork in the post and hapless shot attempts can be easily misconstrued for a lack of coordination, when in reality I believe Tugler has a good baseline of dexterity/fine motor skills. However, he rarely has had the chance to display them due to his usage and developmental context.

In lineups where Tugler was paired with another big man and he was provided the opportunity to faceup more frequently to the basket, or he was able to catch further away from the basket (like in transition for example), the results where fascinating.

Take the play below: Tugler makes the catch slightly above the 3-point line, is able to maintain his dribble when an opposing guard applies pressure and delivers an accurate no-look pass to the corner shooter (with his off-hand) as soon as Kwame Evans Jr. commits to help. For a player with extremely limited reps handling the ball in this capacity, Tugler routinely uses his massive hands to make unique, precise, passing deliveries. The variety of deliveries, along with how infrequently Tugler telegraphs his reads, is a rare combination for a young big.

The fact Tugler seems almost as comfortable making passes on the move, as he’s driving from the perimeter…

…as he is making reads from the middle of the floor…

…despite Tugler having drastically more experience making reads out of the latter position, is an encouraging indicator that his passing isn’t limited to a narrow application, and that his playmaking can adapt to the context.

For example in the play below, Tugler immediately gets downhill after the catch and is walled off by the defense. However, he has the court-mapping skills to recognize how imbalanced the court is, and makes the skip pass to the wing to create the longest rotation possible for the the weakside defender at the nail. While some coaches/evaluators may disapprove of Tugler making a riskier jump pass, his long levers allow him to put more velocity on the pass while maintaining accuracy.

The key to fully optimizing Tugler’s passing will be improving his ball security and expanding his repertoire as a ballhandler. While his passing is far ahead of what would typically be expected of a young big, Tugler’s comfort as a ballhandler is in its nascent stages. Any attempt to string together multiple moves usually ends in disaster for Tugler as shown in the clip below.

While I do not think it is necessary to Tugler’s viability as a PF to develop an expansive handling repertoire, it does need to get to a level where it is at least functional. And at the moment, Tugler’s lack of confidence in is handle reduces his effectiveness as a finisher because he so often has to resort to early pickup points, and doesn’t have the extreme level of vertical explosiveness to compensate. Below are instances where this limitation forces Tugler to turn ideal layup opportunities into awkward, low percentage, attempts.

While this may sound overly optimistic judging off how dismal the previous examples are, I believe players with unique physical tools such as Tugler are presented with unique solutions in skills such as ballhandling. Tugler’s hand size give him a larger margin for error when it comes to developing a functional handle where he can manipulate ball speeds. The threshold Tugler has to clear to be deemed a functional ballhandler is much lower than a smaller player; the fact he is able to win the leverage battle versus his defenders so consistently leads me to believe his handle does not need to be deceptive as much as it needs give him the time to react to different inputs from the defense on drives. Any improvements in this area will lead to his drive paths being less predetermined and Tugler’s efficiency driving to the basket, both as a playmaker and scorer, will greatly improve as a result.

Scattered throughout Tugler’s tape are plays where his impressive dexterity are on display. Tugler habitually uses his left hand to make passes and finish plays around the basket, and in my opinion, it is reasonable to expect a player whose exhibited this degree of coordination to progress to an acceptable level of ballhandling. Take the play below, Tugler catches the ball in the low post out of the pick-and-roll and quickly makes an accurate, underhand, left-handed pass to the wing. While a relatively mundane play which doesn’t result in an assist, this is far from a standard passing delivery.

The blend of tools and movement skills allow Tugler to generate deep paint touches when faced up, despite his unrefined footwork and suboptimal balance. Tugler consistently wins the leverage battle against his defender, consistently keeping his shoulder level below that of the defender, as evidenced in the clips below.

However, though I believe there to be optimism in Tugler’s growth as a driver, he is very much in the embryonic stages of development in this skill, and the record scratch moments when he does faceup and drive to the basket are prevalent.

The Shooting

Power forwards’ versatility is typically viewed through their ability to space the floor. The ‘stretch 4’ has become a relatively oversaturated archetype, in my opinion, to accommodate players who aren’t capable of scoring effectively in the paint but have at some point shown at least a cursory ability to shoot and possess shooting indicators which can be construed as revealing latent shooting potential. I say this to say I truly believe shooting ability in draft prospects, when it comes to big-men (being 4s and 5s), is too often graded on a different rubric than wing and backcourt players. And I believe the players who have seen the sharpest development trajectories in their shooting were able to grow this skill because of the value they added in other phases of the game. Granted this isn’t a quantifiable observation, however relating back to my belief in the increased churn in the league, if a frontcourt player isn’t able to quickly return value as a floor-spacer, and are deficient in other areas on top of this, the likelihood of the player being provided with developmental resources such as playing time are unlikely. This philosophy is pertinent to Joseph Tugler because his shooting outlook and potential at the moment are bleak, to say the least.

Per Cerebro Sports, Tugler shot 7.2 free-throws per/40 mins, and was an alarming 46.8% from the line. For as consistently as I’ve praised Tugler’s tools and how conducive they are to basketball performance, a +12 inch wingspan with what I’d estimate to be at least 11.5 inch width hands are major detractors from his shooting efficiency. When shooting, the shooter wants to ensure that their elbow, wrist, and fingers are on the same plane to ensure the ball rests on as stable a platform as possible to the most linear force can be put through the ball, limiting the superfluous lateral forces which can cause the shot to be misdirected. With Tugler his hands, and especially his fingers, are so long that when paired with his condor-esque wingspan they introduce many more points of failure. Point of failure being an engineering term referencing any non-redundant part of a system that, if dysfunctional, would cause the entire system to fail.

An example of this can be seen below, Tugler has what can best be described as a delayed follow-through. It is apparent he is aware of the traditional teaching point of shooting to flick your wrist completely through the shot to get adequate rotation on the ball, but is unable to execute this principle because he’s subconsciously afraid of putting too much force into the shot. This phenomenon is especially evident in the second shot in the clip.

This hitch causes Tugler’s shots to have a flat arc towards the basket. Ironing out these mechanical issues and improving Tugler’s free throw percentage to an even passable level could catalyze a significant improvement in his efficiency. Over the course of the 26 games tracked by Cerebro Sports, Tugler posted a stellar 0.58 free-throw rate (free throws per shot attempts), and his inability to capitalize on opportunities at the line resulted in a relatively underwhelming 57.5 true shooting percentage.

As oxymoronic as it sounds to be relatively optimistic about a 47% free-throw shooter’s ability to stretch the floor, Tugler’s confidence in taking threes, despite the free-throw line struggles, is encouraging to me. Tugler only shot 30.7% on 1.8 attempts/40 minutes; however the confidence I have in the rest of Tugler’s skillset translating to a higher level, paired with his willingness to take 3s when the defense gives them to him, leads me to believe shooting is an element which can eventually be incorporated into his game even if it is in a limited capacity.

Considering Tugler’s shooting profile, an obvious concern would be how could a negative spacer who doesn’t project to exclusively play center contribute to an offense? In a league where the majority of teams’ ideal lineup consists of personnel who can play 4-out 1-in, and 5-out for stretches, where does a player with limited shooting potential factor in? This is where I believe Tugler’s passing acumen and latent slashing ability come into play.

In addition to these skills, Tugler is a player who already has a good sense of timing and positioning as a play-finisher. The spatial awareness and Tugler’s minimal load-time as a leaper make him compatible with frontcourt players who are more perimeter based and/or possess more ball-skills. While this kind of frontcourt partner hasn’t been present at any level Tugler has played so far, the clips below display his potency as a play-finisher from the dunker-spot.

The Role

Harkening back to this past season’s NBA playoffs, while many were finally made aware of Nikola Jokic’s transcendent skill, and rightfully so, I believe the larger takeaway should have been how devastating the pairing of two big-men with high-level processing and finishing ability can be. The interplay between Aaron Gordon and Jokic, and the strain they placed on defenses’ decision making, was consistently made apparent. In no way am I attempting to make out Tugler to be a 1-to-1 comparison to Gordon, and of course the expectation of any player to be paired with as special a talent as Jokic is unrealistic. However, I believe Tugler’s skillset at the 4 can replicate the conflict Gordon has placed teams in during his Nuggets tenure.

Take the play below for example, Jamal Murray runs a side pick-and-roll with Jokic, and the gravity he has as a roller presents Kevin Durant with an impossible choice, either help off Gordon in the dunker spot or allow a clean look to one of the best finishers in the league. This split second of indecisiveness allows Jokic to throw an easy short roll lob.

This next play from the 2023 Finals exemplifies how a non-shooting threat (by NBA standards), can counter defenses sagging off them by sharpening their instincts as a cutter.

Tugler’s current offensive limitations will most likely see him being deployed as a small-ball center as he adapts his ball-skills to handle more power forward duties. Tugler’s already a remarkably consistent short-roll passer. Take the clip below, Tugler sees the low-man overcommit on the tag and zips in an accurate left handed pass to the corner.

While not very layered reads, Tugler executes these passes well consistently.

An often overlooked skill in frontcourt players is their ability to rebound. And while Tugler would give up size to his opponent either playing the 4 or 5, his superb second jump, length, and workrate prior to the shot being hoisted, make him a force on the boards. Tugler averaged 13.6 rebounds per 40 minutes (5.9 offensive, 7.6 defensive), and routinely beat bigger, stronger players for rebounds on the offensive glass.

The Conclusion

As we’ve dissected virtually every aspect of Joseph Tugler’s game one may be wondering how prudent it may be to project a player who is obviously far away from being the final article. Even compared to most frontcourt prospects Tugler will take a significant amount of time and require heavy developmental resources to be fully actualized as a productive NBA level player. However, I believe too often NBA teams assign prospects the ‘raw’ label as a pejorative, when in reality they should see a player from the kind of developmental context Tugler is coming from, and equate the lack of NBA relevant reps as an opportunity to paint on a blank canvas.

The draft is about making calculated risks, and a player like Tugler who has a portable skillset, with his defensive aptitude, passing feel, and relentless rebounding, should be malleable to virtually any roster. Teams would be best served realizing how conducive to long-term roster construction investing in a player before they are considered ‘ready’ is. The flexibility this allows a team moving forward, to have a player in their program who is a cost controlled, consistently appreciating asset, which can be molded with your specific team needs in mind, is invaluable. At the risk of sounding pollyannish, I am confident Tugler will only appreciate in value in the immediate future and will have a shorter learning curve not only because of his physical ability, but also the high basketball character he seemingly always displayed.

Plays like the one below, where Tugler’s team is down 16 points in the waning moments of the 4th quarter, and despite the game being out of reach, Tugler is hounding the ballhandler fullcourt. When Tugler loses attachment to the point guard, he peels off and blocks the big man’s layup attempt. These kind of effort-based plays are routine in Tugler’s film.

To briefly revisit the earlier exemplification of the Denver Nuggets, my failing to mention the space Aaron Gordon and Nikola Jokic were afforded by the lethal shooting from perimeter players like Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Michael Porter Jr probably was considered a gross omission by many readers. However, this ties back to a central tenant of my draft philosophy: I believe NBA evaluators are relatively consistent in assessing scoring talent, however as 3-point shooting has become a ubiquitous feature of the NBA-meta, these players have become more widely available and as with any skill/product that becomes less scarce, shooting/scoring is more fungible (outliers aside of course).

Paradoxically though, perimeter scoring has seemingly become the predominant skill considered in talent acquisition, with teams willing to overlook other glaring deficiencies in a player’s game. This line of reasoning, in my opinion, has lead to a drastic underestimation in the value of players who are lower usage, but are proficient in what are usually categorized as ancillary skills. Addressing this market inefficiency, and determining which players possess unobtrusive skillsets, skillsets which are capable of impacting the game no matter where they fall in the offensive pecking order, is commendable teambuilding process.

Joseph Tugler, in my mind, is a prime example of a player who could serve as this kind of connective tissue for an NBA team. NBA personnel acknowledging the disparity in responsibilities, especially offensively, between college and professional frontcourt players should realize how beneficial professional reps would be in Tugler’s case. Utilizing professional game and practice minutes to train Tugler’s decision-making framework, on both ends of the court, could yield the best version of Joseph Tugler over time. And while the best version will almost certainly never be a conventional NBA star, it may very well be the quintessential modern frontcourt player.

The post Jojo Tugler & the Case for Pre-Drafting the Modern PF appeared first on Swish Theory.

The Basics

Garwey Dual stands 6’4.5 with a 6’10 wingspan and weighed in at a sinewy 175 pounds at the 2023 Nike Hoop Summit. Dual started his scholastic playing career in the Houston area for George Bush High School. There’s minimal information available on Dual’s early AAU career, with the next notable transition being his move to Indiana power Carmel High School. Dual saw limited playing time for a senior-laden team which boasted a 16-0 postseason record before falling in the state title game. Going into the summer of his senior year Dual only held offers from local IUPUI and UAB.

The summer of 2022 represented a major inflection point in Dual’s career, playing for George Hill All Indy, a locally based AAU team unaffiliated with the major shoe company circuits. Dual routinely impressed against the traditional grassroots powers. With a mounting buzz stemming from his AAU season and a standout performance at the Pangos All-American camp, Dual eluded the hype which would have came with blue blood offers by committing to Providence in June. Familiarizing oneself with Garwey’s path to Providence provides some clarity as to how such an intriguing NBA caliber prospect has gone unnoticed for so long.

Player Profile

Upon first viewing, what stood out to me about Dual was his build, specifically his proportions. Dual is a very ‘high hipped’ player, with extremely long arms and legs. Typically athletes with extremely long levers such as Dual are incapable of generating power quickly, whether that be vertically as a leaper or in a straight line driving to the basket. However Dual’s athleticism flies in the face of almost all convention. Instead of his physical dimensions serving as a limiting factor athletically, Duals long legs amplify his exceptional first step, as seen in the clips below.

Almost equally as impressive as Dual’s burst given his physical build is how flexible an athlete he is, and how he’s able to maintain his balance while contorting his body. As shown in the clip below, Dual can sink his hips to where his shoulder level is below that of his defender (even smaller defenders like in this clip), and gain the leverage necessary to get deep into the paint.

Throughout this article there will be mentions of Dual’s interaction with ‘points of conflict’ on drives to the basket. Points of conflict being instances where the player is able to penetrate the first line of defense, but is forced to make a quick decision based on the secondary defenders positioning. Dual’s pliability as an athletes allows him to completely deleverage the defender’s advantage at these points of conflict.

The clip above fully displays how Dual’s ability to maneuver through tight spaces and engage the backline of the defense. These unique movement patterns render Dual capable of carving open passing windows which would otherwise be unavailable. Below are a few examples from an assortment of games, where Dual’s ability to not only engage, but avert the help defender with his flexibility and variety of pick-up points.

Dual’s physical ability paired with his persistence in occupying the most valuable area of the court, the middle of the floor, makes him a tantalizing advantage creator. Now to delve deeper and explore how Dual’s skill as a primary ballhandler allows him to capitalize on these advantages.

At this point of his development, Dual is most effectively deployed as a point guard, seeing as he lacks the requisite shooting skills to draw closeouts and the off-ball instincts to function as an effective cutter. However, with the ball in his hands Dual consistently showed he could generate quality looks with or without a screen on offense. What makes this possible outside of his aforementioned physical gifts is Dual’s advanced reactive handle. As shown below, Dual is able to maintain his dribble in defender’s air space and comfortably handle the ball outside of his frame. These skills, in tandem with Dual’s stride length and initial burst out of his moves, allow him to dictate the terms of engagement with his defender.

The clip below is emblematic of the conflict Dual consistently puts his defender in. The threat his first step presents, along with the reliable hesitation dribble in his arsenal, forces Dual’s defender to yield space until they commit to forcing Dual left. Once the defender declares his intent, Dual decisively attacks his top foot and gets the finish. Much like a champion boxer, Dual is able to consistently beat his man by proactively applying pressure, getting his opponent on the backfoot, and winning the battle of positioning.

It is my theory that this is what constitutes an advanced handle, when the offensive player is consistently able to force the defender to reveal their intent and can react accordingly, hence the term ‘reactive handle’. Below are a few instances of Garwey Dual doing exactly this, using his handle to both flip his defenders hips and cut driving angles (taking the most direct path to the basket).

The Playmaking

No matter how highly you regard any player’s handle, as the level of competition increases, that player will only be granted the privilege of extended ballhandling duties if they prove capable of consistently creating for themselves and others. It is in this respect where I truly believe Garwey Dual shines the most. Per Cerebro Sports, Garwey Dual averaged 4.4 assists per-40 minutes with a pedestrian 1.3 assists-to-turnover ratio over the course of 31 tracked competitions. As valuable as data points can be, in this case I do not believe they tell the whole story. In fact, I believe these numbers belie Dual’s playmaking ability.

When it comes to facilitating, Dual possesses a keen understanding of timing. This understanding of timing is inextricably linked to his aptitude as a ballhandler. Dual uses his handle to access ‘pressure points’ of the defense, and capitalizes on this by making his passing reads as soon as the defender is forced to commit to a rotation. Dual’s patience on these reads is key, making the pass in the exact window of time where the defender commits to their decision to help amplifies the advantage provided to the recipient of the pass. This is apparent in the clips below, look how much space Dual’s teammates have after the catch.

Essential to any evaluation of a player who is projected to be a primary ballhandler is how they efficiently they are able to operate in the pick-and-roll and Dual, in a limited sample, has shown he can make consistent reads out of this action.

While the defensive acumen in these clips can definitely be questioned, knowing Dual can play with pace in the PNR and is willing to make the simple read is encouraging for a guard with such limited experience against high level competition.

An additional wrinkle of Dual’s passing ability, which leads me to be optimistic about how the skill will translate to the next level, is how manipulative of a passer he can be. Dual shows himself to be a layered thinker of the game often, who maximizes his advantages by playing to the defenders assumptions.

Take the clip below for example, Dual is operating as the ballhander in a side pick-and-roll, watch Dual and the tagger’s eyes in this situation. By looking off the roll man for a split second Dual is able to lengthen the rotation of the tagger and the roller gets a foul as a result.

While there are many instances of no-look passes taking place in situations where the offensive player already has an advantage, such as in transition, Garwey Dual’s persistence as a manipulative passer sheds light on his processing of the game.

Clips like the one above are instrumental in understanding how Dual perceives advantages. Specifically how Dual understands how misdirection as a passer can improve the degree of the advantage for his teammates. Dual not betraying any information to his defender can turn predictable actions, like the pick-and-pop clip below, into open looks.

As high as I am on Dual’s potential as a creator there are current limitations he has in this area. If there is one thing you may have noticed from these clips is all of the feeds have been with two hands. When discussing primary ballhandlers and their advantage creation ability, making one handed passes off a live-dribble can be a contributing factor to the degree of advantage being created. Another deficiency in Dual’s passing which consistently appeared on tape was his insistence on making lay-down interior feeds in traffic. These kind of ill advised passes made the bulk of Dual’s turnovers in the games I watched and I clipped a few examples below.

While this critique could be interpreted as nitpicking Dual’s creation ability, after all Dual is still generating deep paint touches on his own. However I believe these ill-advised passes to be symptomatic of a larger issue for Dual, namely his lack of strength and its relation to his finishing.

The Scoring

The discussion of Garwey Dual’s scoring is complex considering he profiles to be a player who spends a majority of the time with the ball in his hands. And in order to optimize his rim pressure and passing ability, it will be necessary for Dual to have consistent scoring counters he can rely on when he isn’t able to decisively beat his defender and get two feet inside the paint. Circling back to Dual’s reliance on high risk interior feeds on drives, I believe this is caused by his lack of strength, and indicates Dual’s lack of refinement as a scorer.

The clip below best encapsulates Dual’s current limitations as a finisher. Here Dual cleanly beats his defender off the dribble and gets inside the paint where he is pitted against 7’1 big man Dennis Evans, who in my mind is as good a proxy for NBA rim protection as you will find in high school basketball.

As shown here, Dual is a good, not great, leaper and currently incapable of absorbing contact at the rim without his shot being drastically altered. Below are a few more instances of Dual’s lack of contact balance and finishing craft preventing him from putting up credible attempts at the rim.

Strength development will obviously come with time as Dual is provided with better facilities and physically matures with age. However Dual will need to develop scoring counters inside the arc to add to his optionality on drives (notice how similar the drive plan was on each of the three previous clips). Improving his footwork in-between the three-point line and restricted area, to the point where Dual can incorporate a variety of pickup points and from there potentially build an arsenal of the touch shots necessary for any high usage NBA guard, will be key. Dual’s already shown flashes of this kind of adaptability, as shown by the clip below where he is once again pitted against Dennis Evans, but this time opts for a floater which he makes.

Dual’s floater is going to be a key counter he’ll need to rely on when facing greater rim protectors, and the comfort he has in the shot made consistent strides over the past season as shown below.

As Dual’s athletic advantage inevitably shrinks as he faces improved competition, expanding his repertoire to include these kinds of shots will be crucial to his development. So much of what separates good from great players is the self-awareness to implement moves specifically tailored to taking advantage of their unique athletic tools. Garwey Dual’s floater, paired with his 8’8 standing reach, would be an extremely useful tool to combat the formidable backlines he’ll face at the next level.

The Shooting

With every passing cycle the evaluation of guard prospects is seemingly reduced to how their jumpshot is projected to translate to the next level, and while this is probably Garwey Dual’s most glaring deficiency at the moment, examining his tape chronologically reveals much reason for optimism.

First of all, before diving into Dual’s shooting numbers and mechanics, I think it is worth mentioning how reluctant Dual is to take threes at all. As evidenced by the clips below Dual rarely seizes the opportunity to take even open threes and can kill advantages because of it.

Per Cerebro Sports, over the course of 31 games Garwey Dual shot 41% from three, however, this came on only 2.6 attempts per-40 minutes. While Dual did shoot an encouraging 80% from the free throw line on 4.7 attempts per-40, the mechanics and reticence towards shooting reveal a more complex shooting projection. In order to have a clearer view of Dual’s shooting development, and the trajectory it has been on over the past year, we will need first need to examine his mechanics beginning with his AAU tape.

The pull-up three above is the only instance of a Dual three I was able to slow down, and while it isn’t an ideal angle to judge mechanics we can gather a few basic insights from the clip. Working from the ground up, Dual’s shooting base consists of a dominant foot stagger and an extremely pronounced knee valgus. While there are a variety of opinions on foot positioning and its effects on jump shot accuracy, findings on this matter have largely been inconclusive (see http://thesportjournal.org/article/the-effect-of-foot-placement-on-the-jump-shot-accuracy-of-ncaa-division-i-basketball-players/). The greater detriment to Dual’s jumper in my opinion is definitely his exaggerated knee valgus on the takeoff. Knee “valgus” occurs when the knee moves inward, toward the midline of the body, no longer in a straight line between the hip and ankle. The image below portrays the difference between proper knee alignment and knee valgus.

I want to refrain from being dogmatic about shooting form, many of the best shooters in the NBA today shoot with some degree of knee valgus, however with Dual specifically I believe the extremity of his valgus is detrimental to his shot.

Knee Valgus, like most inefficient movements, are a result of the body overcorrecting for weakness in another area. My working theory is that Dual’s knee valgus is caused by tight and/or weak gluteus medius, the muscle running lateral to the gluteus maximus more commonly known as our butt. Dual is currently incapable of properly recruiting this muscle when he tries to generate power for his jumpshot, and as a result, overcompensates with an extreme knee valgus. What makes this movement pattern detrimental to Dual’s shot and not other players, is the disruption of energy transfer which occurs in Dual’s shot as a result of the knee valgus.

What I mean by ‘disruption of energy transfer’ is the inability to achieve triple-extension while shooting. Triple extension is the simultaneous extension of the hip, ankle, and knees to generate power. This concept in the context of shooting is best illustrated by the image of Steph Curry shooting below.

See how if you were to draw a line from the back of Steph Curry’s heels to the top of his head the line would be almost perfectly straight. Compare this to the images of Garwey Dual shooting below.

See how Dual’s torso is leaning forward, as if he is lurching towards the basket as he shoots. In my mind this is caused by an over-reliance in his upper body to generate power. Another tell that supports this claim is how negative Dual’s shooting elbow is as he transitions from his gather into the shot. Ideal upper body shooting mechanics require the player to provide as stable a platform for the ball to lie on before the shooter reaches their launch point, this concept is typically taught through the ‘triple-90’ principle meaning the player’s shooting wrist and elbow should be as close to 90 degrees as possible.

Even with a less clear camera angle it is apparent Dual’s elbow is at an angle significantly lower than 90 degrees. This drastic of a negative angle takes away from the straight line force generated through the ball and introduces unnecessary motion into the shot.

Another problem area of Dual’s shot from his AAU tape is his self organization after the catch. As previously stated, repeatability is integral to effective shooting mechanics and over the course of the grassroots season Dual’s form was erratic in large part because of inconsistent gathers into his shot. The following clip exemplifies this.

Breaking this down into a few still shots, Dual combines two traits least conducive to a consistent shot, a narrow unstable base as well as a low-dip gather from the opposite hip, away from his body.

These glaring inconsistencies in tandem with Dual’s reluctance to take threes in general paint the picture of a player who, to this point, has an extremely limited number of reps shooting in a game setting. This falls in line with what we know about Dual’s playing career so far. Not only did Dual miss out on essentially an entire year of interscholastic play his junior season at Carmel, but prior to his senior year there isn’t much evidence he had ever cut his teeth against high level competition on a regular basis.

Up to this point the Garwey Dual shooting projection has for the most part been bleak, however Dual’s final interscholastic season playing for Southern California Academy has provided much reason for optimism in my eyes. While Dual’s value system (value system being a players hierarchy of scoring preferences) as a scorer is definitely still geared towards attacking the basket, there has undoubtedly been a concerted effort to expand his game as a shooter and the newfound comfort is apparent. Take this spot-up three for example, Dual takes this in rhythm, with a much more compact release and cleaner energy transfer from his lower body.

Along with this pull-up three in semi-transition, I find Dual’s willingness to explore different scoring avenues very encouraging.

In an attempt to avoid reducing a players shooting profile to just their long range attempts, I want to briefly discuss the growth Dual’s exhibited as a pullup shooter in the midrange. Making strides as a scorer in these areas will be inextricably linked to Dual’s efficiency as a creator, and while the results are mixed at the moment, the process and ambition to pressure the defense as a midrange scorer has definitely improved.

Compare the two clips below, the first being an AAU game from the summer and an the latter from one of Dual’s games in the winter for SCA. Both plays are side pick-and-rolls to his right hand where Dual’s growth in getting to his pull-up is undeniable.

Dual still has a ways to go with regard to his consistency in these play types however, as shown below there are still ugly misses and it’ll undoubtedly take time to meet the increasingly high threshold of effective pullup shooting a primary ballhandler needs to meet in order to warrant high usage.

The Defense

The current NBA meta-game, especially in high leverage games such as the playoffs, is designed to find and repeatedly exploit the weakest link of the opposing teams defense. While this may seem like pedantic observation, and definitely has been an aspect of teams game planning in the past, the persistence teams have when it comes to putting defensively limited players in compromising positions has never been more prevalent. Typically these weak links have resided in teams’ backcourt, and the liability guards present on the defensive end has been reflected in recent draft history. Breaking down the past 10 drafts into two five-year increments, from 2014-2018 there were 16 players picked in the lottery under 6’5. Over the past five drafts from 2019-2023, there were only 9 players under 6’5 drafted in the same range. While there are obviously other contributing factors, there is always a degree of randomness to what kind of players compose each class, and I would not want to infer that the players who were picked in lieu of the sub 6’5 guards were all resounding successes, there’s been an obvious shift in what kind of players the NBA has prioritized. Relating this back to Garwey Dual, for as interesting as I find Dual’s offensive profile with his ability to frequent the paint and playmake for others, what was initially the most compelling part of his game was his defensive aptitude.

As previously discussed, Dual has an extremely unique intersection of length and movement skills. As effective as his stride length was in consistently creating space between himself and his defender, Dual is just as capable of using this length to quickly close space on defense. Take the example below, Dual aggressively helps at the elbow as the weakside defender, and is still able to recover all the way to the three-point line and block the opposing player’s shot.

Plays like these are littered throughout Dual’s tape. His combination of ground coverage ability, length, dexterity, and motor considering the offensive workload he carries, make him a consistent event creator on the defensive end (event creation being any blocks or steals).

At the point of attack Dual menaces ballhandlers with his length and extremely accurate hands. Over the course of 31 logged games by Cerebro Sports, Dual averaged 3.1 steals per-40 minutes. What is striking about Dual’s steals is the variety of methods he goes about forcing these turnovers. Dual can either rip ballhandlers as shown below…

Or Dual can pair his athletic ability with a keen sense of anticipation to disrupt passing lanes

Along with his impressive steal numbers, Dual also averaged 1.3 Blocks per-40. This number adds to the profile of a player who could potentially see a variety of assignments at the next level. A perimeter player who has displayed the ability to provide supplementary rim protection is exceedingly rare and keeping consistent with the theme of Dual’s steals, he is able to deter shots while being deployed in a variety of roles either as a low-man in the half-court.

Or guarding fellow guards on the perimeter…

Dual’s penchant for constantly creating havoc as a defender along with his physical profile lead me to believe he could be the caliber of defender who is able to produce independent of context, however a player with his range and dexterity would be a wonder in a gap-defense scheme where Dual’s aforementioned tools can be fully weaponized.

Despite all the praise I have heaped upon Dual’s defensive potential there are definitely areas of improvement which will be interesting to track during his stay as Providence. Dual’s typically uses a sub optimal defensive stance where his upper-body lies far forward of his center of gravity, hindering his lateral quickness and leaving him unable to contain his man on occasion.

The frequency of these ‘blowbys’ led me to circle back to an earlier discussed deficiency in Dual’s jumpshot, namely the weakness in his hips and glutes. I believe Dual’s inconsistencies in his lateral recovery, while partly due to his technique, are also caused by the limited power he is able to generate through his hips and glutes when sliding his feet. Strengthening these muscle groups could prevent instances like the clips below by bolstering his lateral acceleration, which at this point is the primary limiting factor to Dual’s defensive potency.

Final Thoughts and Role Projection

For as much time has been spent on Garwey Dual’s game at the moment and its development, I would be remiss to not mention the influence his future developmental context could play in his projection. Dual will be entering a veteran laden team and be paired in the backcourt with another potential draftee in Devin Carter. Carter and Dual’s chemistry will be interesting to watch develop as their playstyles are extremely different despite their strengths and weaknesses paralleling each other. Carter is a similarly talented defender to Dual, posting a tremendous 3.3% steal rate and 3.4% block rate for a 6-3 guard. However, Carter like Dual is a limited shooter at the moment having shot only 29% from three on a mediocre 117 attempts. Carter though does have experience playing off the ball and plays with an unobtrusive style which should allow Dual to play his preferred role of primary ballhandler. As far as forecasting Dual’s NBA role and his one-and-done potential, I do believe Dual is a prime candidate to spend only one season in college. The scarcity of perimeter players with his skillset should make Dual a notable draft candidate, however it is likely he will not have a ‘traditional’ statistical profile for a one-and-done candidate. What leads me to believe this is the state of flux Providence’s roster and team overall has been in, with the recent addition of Coach Kim English along with a bevy of former George Mason players, such as Josh Oduro, who will demand usage.

Ultimately what makes me so confident in Garwey Dual’s NBA future is his intersection of advantage creation, defensive playmaking, and willingness to develop his game by thorough experimentation. Watching his tape chronologically and getting insight into how steep the development curve has been for Dual leaves me optimistic that the interstitial aspects of his game such as off the dribble shooting will continue to progress at a consistent rate. His current lack of refinement in these areas may keep him from primary usage early on, but the bandwidth he plays with leads me to believe he can be an effective connective piece who punches gaps off the catch and continues advantages created by his teammates. As I’d touched on in the beginning of the article the 2024 draft class has been widely, and in my opinion, unfairly panned by the wider media for lacking compelling prospects and at a bare minimum I believe Garwey Dual proves this to be far from the truth.

The post Garwey Dual: The Most Intriguing Player in the 2024 Draft? appeared first on Swish Theory.