• Freshman for University of Washington (Big Ten)
• Listed at 6’11” and 220 pounds
• 20 years old as of May 1, 2026
• NCAA (2025-26): Averaged 18.5 points, 11.8 rebounds (4.2 offensive), 1.6 assists to 2.0 turnovers, 1.1 steals and 1.2 blocks per game, on 62% shooting from two, 34% from three, and 76% from the line
• FIBA U-19 (2025): Averaged 17.4 points, 13.0 rebounds (4.7 offensive), 1.9 assists to 2.4 turnovers, 0.6 steals and 1.3 blocks per game, on 72% shooting from two, 22% from three, and 78% from the line

The Good:

• His team, the Washington Huskies, has a +19.6 net rating with him on and -0.2 when he’s off. That is as good of a swing as you could hope for from a 19-year-old playing high-major ball. Despite his poor D-BPM, Washington’s defensive efficiency doesn’t drop when he’s on
• Leading the NCAA in rebounding as a freshman, with 14% oreb and 25% dreb rates, shows Steinbach is impossible to keep off the glass — much like he was in FIBA, too. Those figures approximate Joel Embiid’s rebounding figures as a freshman: the rebounding will stick. When Hannes is the lone big, Washington secures 36% of offensive rebounding opportunities, a 4% increase compared to when he’s off, while also boosting their 3pt rate by 12 points. This catches onto the new wave in the NBA

The tape shows Steinbach is great at using his size opportunistically. He is hyper-aware of when he is in an advantageous spot and is relentless fighting over the opponent’s back without fouling. He is also persistent following his own misses. He is far too good of a rebounder to be matched up against a PF.

• For any high-major freshman with these rebounding statistics, only Kevin Love had higher three point volume per possession. The 3.0 threes per 100 possessions rate exceeds that of Caleb Wilson or freshman Julius Randle (who had similar rebounding stats)
• 56 points as a pick-and-popper and 50 points as a roller: not many players can handle his volume for both, even if his roller finishing is still mediocre at 1.16ppp (another undersized big but with better vertical pop and likely a better wingspan, Flory Bidunga, was at 1.37ppp)

The tape shows Steinbach’s scoring versatility after setting a screen. He is coordinated enough to get into his 3pt form smoothly and quickly after a screen, where his man will have to honor his distance shooting. As a roller to the hoop, he is best getting the ball quickly after the screen where his driving can shine. He won’t be a good lob threat with mediocre vertical and wingspan, but will still be a scoring threat inside the arc with his elite midrange touch.

• 33 points in transition as first-middle (first down the court) and 13 as transition ball-handler suggest high motor and some handling skill. He had 2.8 transition ballhandler possessions per game (!) as a transition ballhandler his previous season, playing in German’s B League
• >1 drive possession finished per game, drawing a foul 28% of the time compared to an 18% turnover rate. For a college big, this is amazing to see for potential offensive “wingification”. In fact, I’d say it’s likely he’s an adept outside-in scorer

The tape shows, yet again, an opportunistic player who knows when to take what is given. While the decision-making isn’t perfect, and he often gathers too far from the basket, on average he is making the right play. Given he is too good of a rebounder to be contained by PFs, Hannes should have advantageous ballhandling opportunities against Cs.

• 12 for 30 from three on guarded catch and shoot. Steinbach taking more guarded C&S threes than unguarded is a great sign for trigger-happiness, suggesting he will receive heavy three-point volume for a player of his size
• 43 points off of hooks and runners. Midrange touch experimentation , especially with his great layup (124/191) and dunk (26/27) finishing; Hannes won’t be predictable as a 2pt scorer, even without pull-up jumpers

The tape shows he uses runners and floaters as bail-outs as he struggles to get all the way to the rim. Fortunately, Steinbach is good at slowing down into his release, not rushing, which will ensure decent percentages when combined with his soft touch.

• He had 21 tip-in points, too, ranking 7th in the nation. This shows a proclivity for crashing the glass and the coordination to successfully guide the ball to the hoop with a single touch
• The team assist rate jumps by 4 percentage points when Hannes is on, even as the team turnover rate declines by 2.5 percentage points. Despite not having stellar assist volume, he does seem to grease the wheels in some way (likely at least partially due to his constant screening). Especially impressive is how the percentage of team assists at the rim jumps from 36% to 45%
• Only had three negative BPM games on the season, finishing with 9 straight positive games
• When Hannes is the lone big, his defensive rebounding rate goes up to 28%
• His steal rate of 2% is good for a rebounder of his quality, not totally stilted as a mover, even if unlikely to be a strong perimeter defender

The Bad:

• 5% assist rate against top 50 teams (over a 13-game sample) is putrid for Hannes’ wingification odds, though would be a bigger concern if the team ATO didn’t improve with him on the court
• A 3.9% block rate at 6’11’’ is disappointing, casting doubt on his interior defensive value outside of the rebounding

The tape is a little more encouraging than the raw numbers. Steinbach guarded the perimeter often, a tall task for a player of his height, constantly switching onto quicker ballhandlers. However, his resistance to strength is disappointing, as true bigs can power their way through him to the hoop.

• While opponents take fewer rim attempts when Hannes is on, they shoot a high 63% at the rim when he’s on the court. When Washington’s other big, Kepnang, sits, that number rises to 65%, which would rank 352nd worst rim% allowed in the country
• No pull-up jumpers suggests he might lack the coordination to truly excel as a wing scorer, though the floater volume is an encouraging way to counteract that
• Washington’s free-throw rate when Hannes is the lone big plummets to 24.1, compared to 41% when he’s off the court, again casting some doubt on his interior dominance/strength
• Opponents took 1.2 FGA per game against Steinbach in iso (88th percentile), scoring at a strong 0.96ppp (71st percentile efficiency)

The tape shows wings are able to get favorable angles when driving against Steinbach, and, with his poor vert/WS, Hannes is forced to foul. He might be okay as a switcher against bench units, but this will be an issue as the margins tighten, especially in playoff settings.

Value Proposition:

It’s easy to get stuck trying to figure out what position Steinbach can play in the NBA. On offense, he looks like a reliable spacing PF, especially appealing if you buy his positive passing impact despite the low assist rate. I buy it being acceptable positionally, even if he’s nowhere close to any kind of hub, but the versatile scoring out of pick and roll should give him some favorable situations with the ball where the reads are easier. While he lacks the vertical explosiveness or length to be a true lob threat – his 29 dunks is about half of Asa Newell’s last season, by way of comparison – I think he has the ability to develop a valuable floater with his touch and coordination. The driving tape is great for size, matching the numbers, so Steinbach is far from a static scorer. The shooting confidence at his size, 77% free throw shooting, and 45% finishing in midrange present a compelling spacing profile. If he’s not spacing, he is crashing the glass, with his 14% offensive rebound rate first in the country among starting high major freshmen (Hines and Gurdak had higher rates but <50% minute share). Since 2008, his 14% oreb rate only trails Kevin Love and Jahlil Okafor among high major freshmen to play 70%+ of their team’s minutes. Steinbach is a special rebounder who can also space, with some intriguing passing and ballhandling potential for a near 7-footer.

On the defensive end, it is tougher to find an obvious source of value outside of the rebounding. His 25% dreb rate ranks 6th among high major freshmen to play 70%+ of their team’s minutes since 2008. The impact of that shouldn’t be ignored, even if he is a clear tweener between a 4 and a 5. In that case, I find it easier to imagine Steinbach as a “super sub” who can take easier bench assignments, where his offensive firepower will stand out even more. I think Steinbach could be a great early bench player who will find himself closing games increasingly over his first few seasons, tweener-ism be damned. Ultimately, Steinbach will probably be picked on against NBA starters, unlikely to be a positive switcher or shotblocker. Steinbach had nearly identical drebs/blocks/steals/fouls to Derik Queen last season at Maryland, and Queen just turned in an 8th percentile performance on defense as a rookie at -1.4 D-EPM. He won’t test as poorly as Queen, but may not have Derik’s great sense of angles in getting from point A to B.

Given these defensive limitations, I find it difficult to picture Steinbach as an ironclad future playoff starter, but he has a good chance of offensing his way to starter value, regardless. The swing skills are driving, passing, and floater development, and I lean on the optimistic side for all three. If he can add good strength, the center odds get a heavy increase, too, which would make him a convincing starter.

Steinbach could very well hit important shots as a tall offensive release valve. It is underrated how valuable a tall play-finisher is as far as bailing out an unsuccessful offensive set. In the extreme, we see how Wemby’s stature as tallest great play finisher ever suppresses turnover rates for San Antonio guards who have to take way fewer risks when playing next to him. Steinbach has about a foot less wingspan, but his ability to get off contested threes (12-30 on the season) at his height as a good distance shooter means that late-clock looks are less damaging for his offense. Steinbach doesn’t have offensive engine potential like Derik Queen, who was constantly showing off his passing creativity, but I can’t rule out similar offensive impact given Hannes is ahead as a three-point shooter.

I had skepticism around Hannes earlier in the season, wary of a player whose ceiling seems capped by defensive tweener-ism and a <10% assist rate, but the calculus isn’t so simple. It’s easier to imagine him coming off the bench, but the offensive firepower, combining spacing, driving, and glass-crashing, gives him starter-value potential even still. For this reason, Hannes is in my 5-12 high-confidence range, and currently my #7 prospect in the 2026 NBA draft.

The post Scouting Report: Hannes Steinbach appeared first on Swish Theory.

Impacting the game of basketball without the ball in your hands has always fascinated me. It’s easy to become enchanted by on-ball creators, but there are countless ways to generate value without the ball. But what does that actually look like in practice, what defines offensive impact away from the ball in a small role, and which macro-level traits contribute most to it?

My thesis is that the next competitive edge in basketball lies in valuing the intersection of three-point rate and offensive rebounding rate. Before diving into the 2026 NBA Draft prospects who embody this emerging trend, it’s necessary to examine the league’s recent stylistic evolution and provide evidence for my claim. 

The great teams of the past decade largely succeeded by creating an advantage in both shot selection and shot-making. During their legendary 73-9 season, the Warriors ranked near the bottom of the league in net possession value, yet completely separated themselves from the field by dominating the true shooting battle on both ends of the floor. The era of “Moreyball”, the Warriors’ Hampton Five, and the Cavaliers introduced a kind of Basketball 2.0: slow-footed big men were phased out, small-ball fives became essential, and offensive and defensive shot profiles were optimized at the expense of positional size, turnover aversion, and rebounding.

This graph shows the correlation between overall net rating and net possession rating (so the points per 100 that teams are over or below league average in the combined categories of Otov, Ddtov, Oreb, and Dreb) in 2016, proving that emphasizing the possession game wasn’t a hallmark of the good teams of that era.

Nearly a decade later, this correlation has risen to 0.783, and current market inefficiency appears to be the exact opposite. With a league-wide rise in analytics, the competitive advantage gained from an optimized shot diet is smaller than ever; separation from the field now has to come through winning the possession game. 

With this in mind, strong NBA offenses in recent years have focused on minimizing turnovers, with teams like Oklahoma City, Boston, and Indiana at the forefront of this trend. Interestingly, however, this season has revealed a divergence: the best teams in the league are crashing the glass at higher rates than we’ve seen in years. The correlation between O-Rating and Oreb% is the highest it`s ever been.

So rather than just O-TS and O-Tov, top-end offenses are trying to positively affect all 3 factors now. The question, then, is how this can be achieved consistently on a macro level.

The most effective approach appears to be maximizing both three-point rate and offensive rebound rate. These two elements are highly synergistic. Three-point shots typically produce a higher effective field goal percentage but a lower raw field goal percentage than average two-point attempts, which in turn creates more offensive rebounding opportunities. At the same time, a perimeter-oriented shot profile reduces turnover risk by limiting drives into traffic and the kind of high-risk passes that often lead to live-ball turnovers.

Additionally, long rebounds generated by missed three-pointers are easier to rebound out of five-out alignments, making it more valuable for perimeter players to crash the glass effectively. In theory, then, maximizing three-point rate and offensive rebounding should positively impact all three offensive pillars: efficiency, turnover avoidance, and possession generation. This is especially valuable in an environment where the marginal gains from shot diet optimization alone have diminished.

The clearest examples of this approach in action are the Boston Celtics and Charlotte Hornets. Both teams have significantly exceeded preseason expectations and their perceived talent levels, ranking among the top five in both three-point rate and offensive rebound rate, while also fielding the 2nd- and 6th-ranked offenses in the league, respectively. Their success stems from a combination of deliberate coaching emphasis and targeted roster construction, prioritizing players who fit this philosophy (e.g., Luka Garza, Hugo Gonzalez, Josh Green, Kon Knueppel).

From a team-building perspective, this trend is particularly intriguing because three-point rate and offensive rebounding are areas where complementary players can have an outsized impact. Traditionally, offensive value has been driven by high-usage players: pick-and-roll maestros, dominant post scorers, or heliocentric wings who control possessions. Even today, 14 of the top 15 players in five-year offensive RAPM rank well above average in offensive load.

This raises a key question: how can lower-usage perimeter players still drive positive offensive impact?

To explore this, I analyzed all non-big players with a substantial sample size who posted an offensive load below 30 (per Ben Taylor’s formula) while maintaining an offensive RAPM above +1 over a three-year sample. The goal was to identify the underlying traits and skills that sustain offensive value across thousands of possessions. I then examined their estimated influence across the three offensive factors—O-TS, O-TOV, and O-REB—and ran correlations to better understand which dimensions are most responsible for driving their impact.

(These are the r values of each of the factors compared to the player’s total O-RAPM.) 

As expected, O-TOV influence appears to be the most limited of the three factors, largely because sound decision-making has diminished value when it isn’t exercised at scale. That said, it remains possible to generate meaningful impact in this area, even in a lower-usage role.

O-TS, by contrast, emerges as the primary driver of offensive value for low-usage perimeter players. A clear pattern appears when examining the sample: players like Sam Hauser, Isaiah Joe, and Luke Kennard consistently stand out. High-volume, high-efficiency three-point shooters exert a strong positive influence on team-wide true shooting, both through their own shot-making and the spacing advantages they create.

As outlined earlier, there is also a subset of players who provide significant value through offensive rebounding above positional average, even from the wing, while maintaining a high three-point rate. A prime example is Saddiq Bey, who has posted a +1.8 three-year O-RAPM while sustaining a 47% three-point rate and a 7.2% offensive rebound rate over his last 4,000 minutes.

This leads to a clear framework for the “ideal” complementary player. A player who both takes and makes threes at a high rate, crashes the offensive glass effectively, and avoids turnovers—though the emphasis tilts more heavily toward the first two traits.

To provide proof of concept for this rather theoretical skill intersection so far, we need to look no further than 2011-12 Ryan Anderson, who embodied this intersection like no other player ever. He took and made lots of 3s (55 3pr, 11.6 3pa/100 at 39%), still crashed the offensive glass (13 Oreb%) and avoided turnovers (97th percentile ctov%) while having a usage rate of 21.2%. The result? An offensive footprint adjacent to that of an MVP candidate. 

Anderson ranked 11th in O-xRAPM and 5th in O-LEBRON while carrying an offensive load comparable to players like PJ Washington or Noah Clowney this season, exclusively through increasing his team’s three-point rate, crashing the offensive glass, and avoiding turnovers.

Many of the league’s most impactful role players today fit within this framework, as well. The beauty of basketball is that a player’s skillset isn’t just a collection of isolated abilities, but rather a chain of interconnected traits, where strengths in one area can influence multiple aspects of the game simultaneously. Players with the feel and athleticism to generate offensive rebounds despite operating farther from the basket often also produce stocks at an above-average rate, positively impacting the defensive turnover battle and adding another layer of value to this archetype. (e.g., Tari Eason, Josh Minott, etc. 

There is, of course, a cause versus effect debate to be had. One could argue that many players on this list are forced into these “garbage man” roles to stay on the floor offensively due to a lack of traditional on-ball skills, rather than these being true strengths. While there is definitely some truth to this, it can just as easily be framed as a positive. Oreb/3pr maxxing is the easiest way for this athletic,  “defensive specialist” mold to stay on the floor, especially if they have any semblance of shooting touch, and it minimizes the offensive issues you would encounter with them if utilized differently. 

Allen Graves

Draft Twitter darling Allen Graves is coming off the most impressive possession value season in the Barttorvik era. He combines the cognition of a point guard with the physicality of a big man to a degree we haven’t really seen before.

Allen`s ancillary production has been mindbending right from the jump, but the big question coming into conference play was: how can he score in the league? A 4/5 hybrid who isn’t athletic enough to dunk or get out in transition frequently and doesn’t finish efficiently at the rim, while not having the prerequisite driving or shooting indicators of a wing, doesn’t have the best offensive projection in the NBA. The drastic improvements Graves made in these areas then have turned him into one of the most unique and underranked prospects ever.

A 14 Oreb% on the season is a historic mark, and maintaining that while upping his three-point rate is particularly intriguing in the context of this article. It provides a clear pathway to offensive value for Graves, combined with a more wing-adjacent scoring profile. Despite recent improvements, it is still reasonable to be skeptical of Graves’ two-point scoring at the NBA level, as he boasts a questionable combination of length and verticality. However, this matters less if he can get up threes and crash the offensive glass at a high rate.

Graves has magnet hands on the offensive glass, crashing hard and displacing opponents with his strong base

This year, Santa Clara’s offensive rebound rate improved by 7% with Graves on, while they upped their 3par by 4% v t220 comp.

Furthermore, Graves’ turnover aversion as a passer is special as well, an 8 TOV% and 2.5 A:TO ratio is essentially uncharted territory for a freshman non-guard. Elite offensive rebounder and turnover suppressor? We’re starting to get uncomfortably close to the aforementioned ideal of the complementary player. Graves’ recent development in terms of shooting volume and accuracy makes this concept all the more intriguing.

The most accurate NBA proxy is likely Tari Eason, with whom Graves shares a number of statistical indicators. The fact that Eason has a 7’2″ wingspan compared to Graves’ 7’0″, while also dunking at roughly twice the rate, is significant in this comparison.

Conversely, Tari is also one of the lowest-feel wings in the league, whereas Graves projects as one of the highest.

Tari has already rattled off multiple top-70 RAPM seasons in the league while being one of the worst two-point scorers and passers, largely on the strength of his offensive rebounding and defensive brilliance. This pathway seems realistic for Graves as well: only with the added benefits of superior ball security and a more stable shooting projection.

Maximizing 3PAR and OREB rate while minimizing turnovers should allow Graves to stay on the floor and wreak havoc defensively in a way few players can. His anticipation and hand-eye coordination are truly generational: Graves consistently capitalizes on opponent mistakes and projects as a high-level off-ball defender.

Losing a bit of weight to improve his lateral quickness would likely help his long-term projection as a wing, but, even in his current form, he stocks and boards at historic rates for a freshman.

Allen Graves is young, has the 6th-highest BPM in the country, and fits perfectly with what the sharpest front offices currently value. He’s still nowhere to be found on many consensus mock drafts, but in reality, he shouldn’t slip out of the top seven, and a smart team will reap the benefits.

Motiejus Krivas

While we have exclusively focused on wings so far, there is still plenty to be said about the value of bigs who can get up threes while still crashing the glass. I am generally lower on “stretch bigs” than most. Having your biggest player operate farther away from the basket limits your team’s influence at the rim in terms of both frequency and efficiency and limits your team Oreb% all while removing a key release valve for your primary ball handler in the dunker spot.

If your center excels at traditional interior skills, you are actively hurting your team by pulling him away from the rim. Nonetheless, there is value in overcoming the typical inverse relationship between Oreb rate and three-point rate, especially if said big isn’t an effective finisher in the paint.

Motiejus Krivas provides a highly intriguing case study. The 7’2″ Lithuanian out of Arizona has long been a draft Twitter favorite and has finally put together a draft-worthy season, largely due to his defensive brilliance and outlier mobility. While he rebounds (14.4 Oreb% / 19.9 Dreb%) and protects the rim like a true five (7.5 Blk%), he presents a paradoxical disconnect between his size, touch, and physicality indicators and his actual rim finishing and scoring process:

(Drafted >7‘0 with <65 Rim fg%, >35 midrange freq, <10 3par)

Krivas’ combination of low rim FG% and rim aversion is a significant ceiling capper at the next level. Arizona’s rim FG% drops by 9% (!!!) with him on the floor, while rim frequency declines by 4% against top-220 competition.

His struggles as a finisher largely stem from subpar verticality and a mediocre wingspan, combined with a high center of gravity. This prevents him from accessing favorable finishing angles and often forces him into less efficient hook shots. Furthermore, he tends to struggle with ball security when going up, making him easier to disrupt around the rim.

Only finishing 62% of his rim attempts as a center would usually be disqualifying for serious lottery consideration, but Krivas offers a different pathway to NBA success. He has some of the best touch of any 7’0+ player in recent memory.

This season, he’s shooting 78% from the line while converting 54% of his non-rim twos. Historically, the only 6’11+ players with center-adjacent physicality to match these touch indicators have gone on to become some of the best three-point shooters in the world, despite often showing limited three-point volume in college.

(High Major >6`11 u22 with >18 dreb%, >40 FTR, > 77 FT%, >40 far 2%) 

Reaching a 40-50 three-point rate would help Krivas stay on the floor even as his finishing margins shrink further at the NBA level, and he should have the mechanics and touch to get there. 

As addressed earlier, there is an inverse relationship between 3par and Oreb%. It is a lot more difficult to grab boards when you are spending less time near the basket, especially for bigs who typically lack the straight-line speed and coordination to crash effectively out of spot-up situations. Conversely, we have proof of concept for a player with a similar build to Krivas maintaining this Oreb value this year in Donovan Clingan.

Standing at 7’2”, 270 pounds, he has faced similar issues as a finisher, leading Portland to deploy him more as a spot-up shooter. Even in that role, he has still managed to maintain a stellar offensive rebound rate despite the higher 3pr. And, unlike “career 64 FT%” Clingan, Krivas actually projects as a plus shooter.

Providing this value on the margins will allow Krivas to stay on the floor and become one of the league’s premier rim protectors. He is one of the most anomalous movers ever at his size. Motejeus’ technique, defensive awareness around the rim and processing are among the best in his class. So while he isn’t the most explosive vertical athlete or quickest leaper, his impact is still consistently felt at the rim.

Vs t220 comp, Arizona turns into the best 2pt defense in the country with him on the floor (25% opponent rim frequency, 22 FTR, 41 2p%). Meanwhile, they become mediocre once he’s off (33% opponent rim frequency, 37 FTR, 52 2p%).

Ultimately, Krivas’ unique combination of offensive rebounding, touch and defensive prowess should be enough to overcome his precarious finishing, especially if he is able to develop into a respectable shooter, thus boosting his team’s 3pr while leading neutral offensive rebounding lineups.

Kashie Natt

I can’t help but root for the underdogs of draft discourse, and there probably isn’t a bigger one than Kashie Natt from Sam Houston State.  A super senior who spent his only D1 season playing in the CUSA and who has a 30 3pr, 20 usg% while only converting 48% of his shots at the rim? What could possibly be the appeal? He draws comparisons to a recent “margin win” of the league: Jordan Goodwin.

Jordan Goodwin embodies the essence of this philosophical piece, a rather untalented offensive player who crashes glass and gets up 3s just enough to stay on the court and unleash his enormous defensive value.

 Employing players who provide guard-level cognition with big-man physicality can be an extreme value add and significantly ease lineup construction, provided the rest of their skill set is adequate.

Natt’s ability to rack up steals (4.2 stl%) and rebounds (near 10 Oreb% / 24 Dreb% at that size is anomalous), alongside impressive verticality and physicality (13 dunks and a 2 blk% at 6’3”), are strong indicators. These are all shared strengths with the aforementioned  Goodwin, who has since become an NBA contributor despite his poor two-point scoring.

However, a much smaller sample, weaker competition, and a significant gap in both scoring and playmaking volume could completely hinder Natt’s ability to reach an NBA floor. Fortunately, he has two factors working in his favor: free throw percentage and the positional necessity of maintaining a high three-point rate as a pseudo-guard. Similar to Goodwin, Natt’s precarious two-point scoring and ball handling relative to position will force him into a 50+ 3par if an NBA team takes a chance on him. Unlike Goodwin, however, he has posted near 80% from the free throw line this season, something Jordan never approached as a prospect, suggesting a stronger baseline indicator for future shooting translation.

Natt’s path to the league hinges on his anthropometrics. Standing at 6’3”, 215 pounds with a 6’10” wingspan, Goodwin had the physical profile that allows him to play his style at the NBA level. If Natt can approximate that, he becomes a compelling UDFA flyer and a franchise can stress test how reliable his shooting truly is, all while providing guard-level turnover influence and big rebounding.

We don’t settle for mediocrity around here; we chase outliers, and it doesn’t get more outlier than Kashie Natt.

Paul McNeil

After a rather disappointing freshman season at NC State, McNeil has finally carved out a major role this year. Funnily enough, Paul McNeil is possibly the closest match to my earlier definition of the “perfect role player” in the Bart Torvik era:

A profile of 14.3 3PA/100 at 41.7%, alongside a 4.5 OREB% and 5 TOV%, is exactly what we are looking for, and McNeil has shown this same intersection in previous samples as well. In AAU, he posted a 2 A:TO ratio, a 71% three-point rate, and 1.1 offensive rebounds per game.

McNeil’s “off-screen” frequency and efficiency both rank in the 99th and 95th percentile, respectively. This is one of the most confident and best pure shooters in this class.

McNeil is also a good vertical athlete for his mold, posting a 1.7 BLK% and a 0.14 dunk rate over his career. For a movement shooter, that is a rare trait that helps him crash class at a high rate. 

Unfortunately, the rest of his profile raises concerns. At 6’5”, 180 pounds, he is effectively position-locked as a shooting guard while boasting the assisted rate (around 60% of his twos are assisted) and passing volume of a wing. There is at least some theoretical upside as a ball handler, as he has been highly efficient as a pick-and-roll operator, producing 1.3 points per possession across 30 total possessions, but the sample is extremely small.

His thin frame and mediocre handle significantly limit his ability to create off closeouts. As it stands, he is shooting just 20% on two-pointers off drives, further emphasizing these issues. 

Furthermore, while McNeil does block shots, his overall defensive production, combined with a low BMI, is subpar and puts him in precarious company.

(Paul McNeil is currently sitting at a -0.1 d-bpm and 19.2 usg) 

It would be in McNeil’s best interest to go back to college, put on some weight, and improve his ball skills so he can be more of a guard at the next level, but even in his current form, there is a certain appeal to his game. Outlier ball security and shot making, alongside a moderately high O-reb rate, is a frictionless skillset that scales extremely well next to other ball handlers. A more refined McNeil could be similar to Max Strus, one of the finest offensive role players in basketball.

(Strus’ superior BMI+ creation volume matters in this comp, but McNeil being the better shooter and way more turnover averse could make this comparison work) 

I am curious if and to what degree these players will stick in the league, but they serve as case studies for a much larger trend amongst NBA Teams. The true value of “3par/oreb maxxing” lies within its duality.  It can help conceal rather problematic offensive skillsets and singular weaknesses (like Krivas’ rim finishing or Natt`s 2pt scoring) and provides a pathway to acceptable offensive value, which then allows these players to put in work on the other side of the court. On the other hand, I can’t stress the potential ceiling of this approach enough if they hit certain athletic and touch thresholds. A frictionless playstyle that perfectly fits next to ball-dominant creators to max out possessions while taking the most efficient perimeter shot on the court at a high rate. 

 Smart front offices will continue targeting such players, building upon the modern principles of Morey ball with traditional size. 

The post The Budding Basketball Revolution, and Why You Should Draft Allen Graves and Motiejus Krivas appeared first on Swish Theory.

But what if he didn’t get any better? What if he just had the ball more? Let’s dig into the numbers to see what’s really going on.

Let’s start with his box score numbers. 28.8 Points per game, 5.3 assists, and 7.0 rebounds per game. Those seem like pretty monstrous box score numbers on their surface, and they are career highs for Brown. However, if we look at his efficiency, we can see it’s below league average. He’s posted a 98 True Shooting+ this season. (Two percent worse than league average) That’s not great for a primary option.

You might say, “Well, he’s taking more difficult shots with Tatum out.” We can look at his Shot Quality, and it is lower this season. But if we look at his Shot Making, we can see he’s basically performing at the same level he’s always been as a shot maker. (Shot making looks at actual vs expected Effective FG% based on shot quality)

What about his passing?

He is averaging a career high in assists. This is another case of just having the ball more. We can see that he’s always been a below-average passer relative to how often he gets to run the offense. The graph shows that he hasn’t improved as a passer, he just has more opportunities. 

“Well, he’s asked to do so much. He’s one of the top two-way players in the league, and an elite defender.” He did make that claim. If only we had a way to look into it with analytics. Oh, wait, we do.

Matchup Difficulty looks at how good the players are that you’re being asked to guard, and Guarded On-Ball% looks at how often you are guarding the player with the ball. We can see that Brown is guarding average players at a below-average rate.

His overall defensive impact metrics have been fine over his career, but nothing special. Here are his career D-LEBRON numbers.

By everything I can measure, Jaylen Brown has not improved this year. He just has the ball more. That he is in the MVP race is absurd. That is the power of the Boston Media machine. The same machine that convinced the public that Marcus Smart should win DPOY a few years ago. LEBRON and EPM WAR are metrics that estimate a player’s overall value over a season. They work by combining their impact per 100 possessions and their total minutes played. This produces their WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. I averaged the two stats together and compared Brown’s average WAR to the other MVP candidates.

SGA – 17.7 (1st)

Jokic – 15.73 (2nd)
Luka – 15.2 (3rd)

Wemby – 13.6 (4th)

Brown – 7.0 (26th)

Brown is not in the same stratosphere as the other MVP candidates. The point of the article isn’t to tell you Jaylen Brown is secretly a bad player, he’s not. But when we look into advanced analytics, he has not improved in a meaningful way. He’s the same player he’s been for years. A low-end All-Star who is very good, just not great. 

The post Did Jaylen Brown get better this year? appeared first on Swish Theory.

Cameron Boozer is simply one of the most versatile offensive hubs to ever play the sport of basketball.

Players Boozer’s size aren’t supposed to be this skilled – between his reliable handle, high-level playmaking vision, sublime shooting touch, and all-around scoring versatility, this 6’9″ 250lb bull gracefully drives through china shops without breaking a plate, consistently creating good looks for his team with quick-processing decision making, on-ball advantage creation, and off-ball play-finishing gravity stretching from downtown to the rim.

Fresh off an All-Time great one-and-done Duke season, Boozer has proven elite traits since his development path from Columbus High School that could add up to a sum-of-its-parts offensive engine at the NBA level:

• Outlier Outlet Passing
• Efficient Scoring Versatility
• Connective Hub Playmaking
• Special Rebounding Instincts
• Knockdown Perimeter Shooting
• Quick Processing Two-Way Feel

Now that March Madness ended in an exciting-before-disappointing run, there’s finally a crack in the Boozer Twins’ perfect armor.

Evaluators can still write a Christmas Carole with the list of accolades that the Boozer twins (Cameron, Cayden) have accomplished on their run to this point, two of the biggest winners to ever play the sport:

4 Florida State Titles
3 Nike EYBL Peach Jam Championships
2 Team USA Gold Medals
1 High School Natty

and the ACC champion regular season + tournament trophies.

After finishing the season, Cameron Boozer adds AP Player of the Year to that resume while becoming the first player in NCAA history to win NABC Freshman of the Year, Big Man of the Year, and Player of the Year.

Cameron Boozer is the clear best bet #1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft class

Boozer is the clear top prospect in an all-time draft class not due to some immeasurable talent or high-flying bounce, but due to his consistent team-first feel and efficient scoring versatility in every basketball situation he finds himself in on the court.

Carlos Boozer calls his son, Cameron Boozer, a “modern-day version” of Tim Duncan, via Marc Spears:

“You look at what Tim Duncan did. I’m not comparing Cameron to Tim Duncan, but he was another guy that wasn’t [athletically] a Kevin Garnett or a Tracy McGrady or a Kobe Bryant or Shaquille O’Neal. But you know what he did? He won five championships in that era [against] those players — the Kobes and the Shaqs, because of his IQ, because of his skill set, and because his team would follow him… That is who Cameron is. He’s a modern-day version of that… So. if you want to win, you pick Cameron.” – Carlos Boozer

One popular comp for Boozer has been Kevin Love, and for good reason; while the mobility of these two players and play-styles on the ball are quite different, there are a handful of outlier elite attributes in outlet passing, rebounding, three-point shooting, post-up prowess and an impressively high BPM impact rating that make the stretch-four prospect comparisons easy to make. Love was an even better rebounder in college than Cam, but was slightly less efficient as a scorer and was 4 percentage points worse as a 3pt shooter. One big difference, though, is Boozer’s playmaking talent being on another level (25% AST/14% TOV%) compared to Love’s score-first style (14% AST%/15% TOV%)

Love was a big time prospect in his own right as a next-level scorer, shooter, rebounder, play-finisher and all-time outlet passer. Boozer’s ability to do those things similarly well while combining that scoring gravity with his handle, vision, and two-way feel takes his game to another level, allowing him to make quick decisions, create advantages for teammates and generate good shots for his team consistently, is what takes his potential superstardom to an even higher level of a scoring creator than Love.
One huge skill separating these two prospects here is Boozer’s handle, refined enough to help him self-create so many of these opportunities without needing a teammate to create the advantage first, which is uncommon for a big man. That handle, with the added team-focused playmaking, creates a floor-stretching downhill scoring creator with offensive engine gravity.

Another popular comparison brings up aesthetic similarities to the Magic’s Paolo Banchero and peak Pistons Blake Griffin in things like role malleability, scoring versatility, short-roll and postup playmaking, downhill play-finishing, and free-throw drawing as a powerful dunking 6’9”+ 250lb tank who can operate both ends of a pick-and-roll. As far as the hype machine bringing up names like Tim Duncan and Nikola Jokic, it’s for glimpses of similarities in fundamental footwork, strong screening, team-first connective play, and general understanding of the game as old-school offensive hubs, like Duncan sleepwalking to 20-10-3-3 statlines and Jokic splashing otherworldly tough shots and diming unthinkable passes from nearly any spot on the floor.

None of these are one-to-one comps; just all-time great prospects and players with comparable roles, playstyles, and archetypes who Boozer can build off to impact the game in similar ways to the stars who walked before him, like an artist mastering their craft by studying the classic works of old before mixing up what they learned into something new.

Any franchise painting on an empty canvas should give Boozer the paintbrush and get out of the way.


The Film

Just to highlight Boozer’s position and role malleability, let’s look at some Duke tape to see how an NBA team can utilize him in a variety of Pick-and-Roll situations, without even getting to the one-on-one creation card he can pull out of his sleeve.

Boozer running pick-and-rolls on the ball shows his ability to attack mismatches with drives and find teammates for good looks.

Boozer spaces the floor from deep in Pick-and-Pops, utilizing his shooting gravity to knock down C&S threes and attack closeouts with pump-fakes and driving touch finishes, creating a lethal shooting threat compared to the average screening roll-man.

Boozer’s finesse in the paint from a variety of angles and force at the rim when rolling hard offers a versatile play-finisher compared to the average screening roll-man, not to mention his ability to playmake out of the short-roll.

The Data
(as of 03.19.26)

Averaging 23 PPG – 10 REB – 4 AST / 2 TOV – 1.5 STL, Boozer seems to fill up the box score consistently whether you think he’s having a good game or not. In his time at Duke, he racked up 68 Stocks (BLK + STL) to 57 fouls, a good indicator for defensive instincts forcing turnovers without fouling.

Recorded 2 games with 15 REB, 2 games with 14 REB, 5 games with 13 REB, another 5 games with 12 REB; Boozer knows a thing or two about crashing the glass in case of emergency.

His best scoring outings were as follows: vs. Arkansas scoring 35 PTS on 1.4 PPP, vs. Indiana State with 35 PTS on 1.6 PPP, vs. Wake Forest with 32 PTS on 1.4 PPP, vs. Stanford with 30 PTS on 1.4 PPP, and vs. Florida with 29 PTS on 1.1 PPP.

Seemingly endless stat indicators hint at Boozers’ scoring versatility, shooting touch, rebounding instincts, and two-way feel being positives that will translate to winning at any level.

Synergy Playtypes:

Excellent or very good all-around scorer in most situations:

Excellent, Versatile Scoring Profile:

Boozer quite literally scored 1.0-1.5 PPP in every playtype other than off screens and handoffs, thriving in Post Ups (1.1 PPP), Spot Ups (1.3), Transition (1.4), ISO (1.0), Put Backs (1.4), and Cuts (1.5).

For comparison, AJ Dybantsa scored 0.88 PPP in ISO, in the 58th percentile, and 1.0 on Spot Ups, the 64th percentile, and 0.77 PPP as P&R Roll-Man, 14th percentile. Dybantsa thrived as P&R Ball-Handler, Transition, Post Ups, and Put Backs, but still scored less efficiently than Boozer in all those playtypes, except for his Put Back Rate.

Just to further highlight his scoring versatility, Boozer scored 1.3 PPP as the Roll-Man in P&R on 60 poss, and scored over 1.0 PPP on 63 poss as the P&R Ball-Handler. Breaking that up into pops vs rolls: 31 times he pick-and-popped for 1.3 PPP; 25 times he pick-and-rolled for 1.4 PPP; 4 times he slipped the pick for 1.5 PPP.

Are you picking up on the absurdly efficient scoring in nearly every playtype in nearly every situation on and off the ball?

Other than handoffs, off screen, and less scripted plays that don’t involve his patented putbacks, he’s rated in Top-20 percentile in all 8 other playtypes recorded by Synergy.

Offensive Engine Indicators – Team Shot Creation via Boozer’s Scoring + Playmaking in ISO, Postup, P&R Ball-Handler

Efficient shot creation including passes shows the decision making and execution ability of a primary ball-handler, which could be one of the sports’ few measures reflecting a player’s feel for the game.

Boozer scored 1.0 PPP on Drives for Duke; he preferred to drive left, averaging 1.1 PPP on 67 left-side drives compared to 0.9 PPP on right-side drives.

When including passes as a pick-and-roll ball-handler, Boozer’s shot creation for his team becomes even more efficient at 1.08 PPP on 128 possessions, staying at 1.1 PPP on another 72 possessions where the defense “commits” to him as a P&R ball-handler.

Compared to Dybantsa, AJ created 0.93 PPP on 356 possessions as P&R Ball-Handler including passes, a roughly 0.15 PPP worse than Boozer’s 1.08 PPP.

Cam’s ISO PPP, including passes to teammates, rises slightly above 1.0 in efficiency; Dybantsa’s rises to 0.9 PPP.

Boozer encourages defenses to double him in the post; when including passes on postups, Boozer creates 1.1 PPP on 241 poss (84th percentile); he creates just under 1.0 PPP on 121 postups where defense “commits”, and he creates 1.1 PPP on 91 postups where defense sends a hard “double” (85th).

Dybantsa does well out of the post, creating 1.2 PPP on 128 possessions for his team, a slightly better mark than Boozer on half the volume.

Boozer’s scoring creation indicators are so promising, he could take being a versatile efficient offensive hub to a full blown ‘offensive engine’ level for a franchise if his skillset is maximized for its quick processing efficient shot creation.

All in all, these efficiencies across every play type as both a scorer and team-first shot creator show how malleable Boozer’s game can be at any level, thanks to his efficient shooting versatility and high-feel decision-making.

Here’s one look at Boozer’s processing from Swish Theory’s Ben Pfeifer, who calls Boozer, “the best post skip passing prospect he’s ever scouted”:

Shooting Touch Indicators

42% C&S 3P% on 91 3PA
41% Pull-Up 3P% on 34 3PA
65% eFG% on 296 Shots At The Rim
61% eFG% on 255 Layups
94% eFG% on 35 Dunks
(9/12 on Hooks)

Overall Scoring & Creation

1.18 PPP
67% TS%
62% eFG%
1.7 AST/TO (133 AST)
26% AST% / 12% TOV%
62% 2P% on 338 2PA
42% 3P% on 125 3PA
78% FT% on 244 FTA

All-Time NCAA & ACC Ranks

1st in NCAA in BPM, Offensive BPM, Win Shares, Win Shares Per 40, Def Win Shares, Off Win Shares, and PER
1st in ACC in PTS | 2nd in NCAA in PTS
2nd in ACC in PPG | 9th in NCAA in PPG
1st in ACC in REB | 7th in NCAA in REB
1st in ACC in RPG | 13th in NCAA in RPG
2nd in ACC in Offensive RPG | 19th in NCAA in Offensive RPG
1st in ACC in Defensive RPG | 8th in NCAA in Defensive RPG
8th in ACC in AST
11th in ACC in AST
9th in ACC in STL
13th in ACC in STL / GM
4th in ACC in FG%
18th in ACC in FT%
12th in ACC in 2P%
3rd in ACC in eFG%
3rd in ACC in TS%
9th in ACC in AST%

BPM History

2nd-highest BPM ever (+20), up there with fellow Duke Blue Devil Zion Williamson for the most impactful collegiate season by impact rating.

Boozer joins Zach Edey and Steph Curry (2x) as the only members of the 30 USG% / 15+ BPM Club, via Chip Williams.

Cerebro Ratings & NCAA Data Viz

Cerebro Stat Glossary:
C-RAM (Overall Impact) | PSP (Scoring) | 3PE (3PT Shooting) | FGS (Playmaking) | ATR (Rebounding/Blocks) | DSI (Steals/Fouls)

What stands out most about Boozer compared to his peers in the conversation for the #1 pick is that Boozer combines the sum of his parts to project as a reliable half-court hub for an offense to consistently create good looks every night out for the next decade. Boozer’s ball skills, footwork, and mix of efficient scoring versatility, efficient team shot creation, playmaking execution, and team-first decision-making create a walking advantage creator who bends defenses and generates efficient points at will.

Freshman Boozer rated higher that Dybantsa and Peterson overall and in almost every aspect of the game that Cerebro tracks, other than Peterson’s lights-out 3pt shooting metric.

Boozer’s cumulative career ratings this far in all games recorded by Cerebro are elite as a scorer, rebounder, and defender, while ranking highest in every category except for being one point shy of Peterson’s defense and ranking a close 3rd in 3pt shooting. This highlights Cam’s elite traits and scoring efficiency, making winning plays like rebounding and playmaking, the ability to spread the floor from deep, and a special feel for touch passes and turnover-forcing defense, and shows how incredible his now-elite 3pt shooting development has come from his days at the grassroots level.

Individual perimeter defense and lack of quick first step burst could limit Boozer exploding past anyone or shutting down anyone on the perimeter, like most power forwards he’s more of an ultimate connective hub, but his instincts will help him force steals, his versatility will help him switch 3-5 to some degree, and he is effective in one-on-one offense in other ways by using his footwork, awareness, and skill to score and create advantages.

Efficient Shooting Line, High Usage, Low Turnovers

There is only one freshman since 2008 to hit Boozer’s marks in shooting percentages and shooting volume on twos, threes, and free throws at his usage.

According to barttorvik, Boozer is the only NCAA Freshman in their database with over 30% USG% who shot 61-39-78 on 10 2PA — 3 3PA — 7 FTA. For comparison, Dybantsa shot 57-33-77 on 13 2PA –– 4 3PA –– 9 FTA.

The chart below visualizes NCAA freshmen who meet a handful of stats attempting to show scoring efficiency and high-feel decision making, with the x-axis showing volume of shots at the rim horizontally, and turnover percentage vertically on y-axis.

Boozer has the most shots at the rim of all these prospects as a freshmen, and the 2nd-best turnover percentage while doing it, lagging behind one of the draft class’s other best decision-makers, Stanford Ebuka Okorie.

← Rewind to 2023: Scouting The Montverde Sunshine Classic


#12 Cam Boozer, 6’10” Forward, Columbus

A strong-shouldered forward with feathery shooting touch like his NBA All-Star dad, the 6’9″ Cam Boozer quickly become a household name in draft circles as a Top-3 2026 prospect, with this Montverde-Columbus marquee matchup featuring another potential Top-3 prospect (in 2025), Cooper Flagg, just to name two of many exciting prospects in this contest.

Cam Boozer and Donavan Freeman rate strongly here as both scorers and creators, in a similar range of output this weekend as Cooper Flagg and guards Rob Wright and Darius Acuff.

vs. Montverde
20 PTS
8 REB
5 AST / 8 TO
4 STL + 1 BLK
6/13 FG & 7/10 FT
(30 MIN)

A powerful yet graceful dancing bear 6’9″ forward who rocks rims on rolls through the paint, shows soft touch on the jump shot, looks ahead for outlet passes, and glides through defenses on off-ball cuts, Cam sure plays like a Boozer.

In the Montverde matchup, Boozer came out with more intensity in the second half, focusing on powering through people, showing sound handles on the ball, lookahead vision as a playmaker, and leaving huge impact as a rim-finishing play-finisher, even blocking a Flagg driving layup in help defense before finding his brother Cayden on the break off the turnover.

His outlet passes to jumpstart fast breaks were plentiful, even featuring a highlight coast-to-coast live-dribble behind-the-back dribble corner kick 3pt assist!

Boozer flashed all the developable dribble-pass-shoot ball-skills with strong finishing power and good off ball movement timing. This powerful 6’10” hammer who nails deep range jumpers projects to be an offensive force at the highest levels, excelling in similar areas to his NBA All-Star dad, while showing natural scoring creator tendencies for team-first shot creation.

Cam posted the 6th-highest overall impact rating in the event with 8.9 C-RAM, practically tying Cooper’s overall rating. Boozer was more effective as a scorer with a 79/100 PSP rating in the matchup, slightly more impactful defensively with an 87/100 DSI, while mostly matching Flagg in Floor General Skills and At The Rim effectiveness (75 FGS and 70 ATR)

Cam Boozer and Cooper Flagg sit atop future NBA Draft big boards for a reason; big wing/forward plus-defenders who can be relied on as halfcourt offensive creators, connectors, and play-finishers tend to be impactful winning basketball players.

The Good
Scoring at all three levels on and off the ball
Pick-and-pop, catch-and-shoot, relocation threes
Vertical gravity rim-running and well-timed paint-cutting
Drawing fouls with brute strength, sound footwork, solid handle
Clear vision, passing ability, grab-and-go playmaking chops looking ahead on fast breaks
Filling out the box score on both ends like a Shawn Marion or Aaron Gordon multi-faceted turnover-forcing play-finisher

The Bad
Losing control. Whether it be his own strength, the dribble, body and ball control at times – focused effort on spatial awareness, gaining the proprioception feeling of understanding one’s own body movements in space, could work wonders
First half lacked energy and focus compared to second half, but played opponent even from that point in a tough matchup

In football, a dancing bear tends to be a nickname for powerful defensive ends wh are surprisingly agile; large in their frame, yet quick on their feet.

Boozer is the strong, yet graceful dancing bear that any franchise dreams of building around.

A true modern day do-it-all power forward bending the floor on and off the ball, pummeling his way through defenders throwing elbows and shoulder swings, moving skinny through gaps with fundamental footwork fundamentals, finishing below the rim with an endless array of moves, rebounding everything in sight, forcing steals and processing team-first decisions from high to low.

Cameron Boozer remains the clear #1 2026 NBA Draft Pick for me through years of scouting due to him being one of the most impactful, efficient, effective, versatile shot-creating prospects to ever play the sport.

If anyone can be the tentpole that holds up an entire city in the circus that is the NBA, it’s the guy who always plays, always plays hard, always plays smart, always makes team-first decisions, and always generates good shots for his team.

While the basketball world eats up dunks, middy pull-ups, and fadeaways, one lucky team might just wind up landing one of the biggest winners the sport has ever seen, if only they buy low on the Dancing Bear Market.

The post Cameron Boozer, Duke’s Generational Dancing Bear appeared first on Swish Theory.

“Anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.”

Stubbornly insisting on a single approach can lead to blind alleys. Sometimes, looking at things from a different angle and changing perspectives can reveal unexpected details and help untangle contorted situations.

While I do not have a background in the more technical aspects of basketball, I compensate by putting to good use my expertise in other fields to better understand what I am watching. The pinnacle of interdisciplinary approaches, in my mind, is Evan Zaucha’s article, “The Art and Science of ‘Feel’ in Basketball”. Evan brings his neuroscience background to the forefront of his analysis to describe what the term ‘feel’ actually means in basketball terms.

Similarly, I intend to go beyond the traditional borders of basketball analysis, mapping my knowledge of ecology onto the basketball court.

Introducing the concept of density-dependent factors

A density-dependent factor is defined as “any force that affects the size of a population of living things in response to the density of the population.”

In nature, there are positive density-dependent processes, like diseases that would spread faster among individuals who live in close proximity, and there are negative density-dependent processes. In our case, we’ll take into account mostly the latter processes.

For example, the growth rate of mammal populations is generally influenced (negatively) by the density of the individuals.

Let’s take a look at how a deer population evolves. As population density increases, the amount of available food in the sample area will decline. As food declines, the body condition of individuals worsens. The birth rate is directly proportional to the animals’ body condition: when body condition is poor, the birth rate is low.

Ultimately, high density leads to scarce food supply and poor body condition, which in turn leads to a declining growth rate of the population. You can see already where this is headed.

Another variable that affects the process is the quality of the habitat, which can influence the rate at which growth declines. Habitats rich in resources can sustain higher individual densities for longer and slow the decline in growth rate; poor habitats will have declining growth rates.

(Credits @www.msudeer.msstate.edu)

This kind of process works for plants as well: just think about a very dense group of seedlings competing for the solar light.

NBA Ecosystem

An ecosystem can be broadly defined as a community of living organisms that interact with each other and their non-living environment. While I understand it doesn’t reflect what we commonly consider an ecosystem, the NBA itself can fall within this (broad, as I said) definition.

I’ve been meditating for years on the concept of the “NBA Ecosystem”: an interconnected set of biotic and abiotic components where we can identify rules and processes that we find every day in a coral reef or a boreal forest, for example. A reality that can be studied and analyzed through an ecological lens, alongside the traditional ways we analyze sports.

If we consider the entire National Basketball Association as a complex ecosystem, every team can represent a distinct habitat with its resources, population, and relative interactions. In this context of team-habitats within the NBA ecosystem, we can adopt an ecological approach to roster building, not focusing on the pieces themselves, but analyzing them in their connections with other biotic and abiotic components.

Density-dependent Growth and roster building

NBA teams can be assessed as peculiar habitats, and players as their populations, so we can try to apply the same models we generally use in ecological studies. I often think about similar ecological concepts when looking up this or that NBA roster or reading about a certain signing. And although they were modeled for a completely different field, I do think keeping in mind how these mechanisms work can help us understand certain NBA situations and players’ outcomes.

Density-dependent processes can be a useful tool for seeing rosters from a different angle, while adapting the notions we already have. First of all, rosters can have a max of 15 regular players plus three two-way contracts; the sheer number can’t be higher or lower, besides some rare exceptions. Then, what can be considered the “density”? It depends on the number of players occupying the same niche within the team dynamics. A 10-year vet and a rookie clearly don’t occupy the same niche nor have the same role with the team. In these years of rumination on the topic, I found density-dependent growth particularly fitting for the “population” of rookies and younger players who still need to develop their game.

While in the ecological studies, “growth” represents how the number of individuals in the sample area changes (generally expressed with a rate) in a roster where the number of individuals is pretty much fixed It takes on a more abstract meaning, representing the improvements of a player’s basketball ability.

The richness of resources in the context of a team/habitat is more labile from our point of view. It would take into account the number of minutes available, the quality and quantity of the staff. Three young players competing for minutes in a rebuilding team is a starkly different situation than three players competing for a similar share of minutes on a contending team with a set rotation consistently aiming for the best possible result.

This is an interesting excerpt of an article written by Tom Orsborn for the San Antonio Express-News about Spurs’ increased attention for film studies. The case was unusual, but it gives us a nice hint about something that otherwise would usually be inaccessible: even the potential hours available to study the tape can become resources young players are “competing” for.

In summary, if we consider it a functional parallel, an NBA team represents the habitat of the young players’ population, whose basketball skills’ evolutionary trajectory depends on the number of its individuals and the richness of opportunities, staff, and facilities. A fruitful habitat for maximizing these kinds of developmental resources is not guaranteed.

Brooklyn Nets, a concerning habitat?

The opening quote of this article could also replace “an economist” with “a Brooklyn Nets fan” (except for Lucas Kaplan and other rational Nets fans). The Nets represent a great example of what I’m trying to convey, and their moves during the last offseason were the spark that made me feel the urge to write about this topic.

The Nets’ roster at the beginning of the season (via spotrac.com)

With five rookies and a handful of other players who still need development competing for the same resources, the Brooklyn Nets could soon find themselves with a “declining growth rate” caused by the density within their habitat.

Looking up the Brooklyn Nets’ current per-game assists leaders represents a mystical experience: an apparent balance that hides a reality of shortcomings. All of them occupy a similar niche; all of them compete for playtime and reps; all of them will consume coaching staff resources. Considering also the fact that this season’s rookies are looking like players who need a consistent development path to impact, it is safe to assume not all of them will succeed and probably won’t have an ideal trajectory.

To me, the bigger issue is accumulating five first-round picks in a single draft: it implicitly punts the value of these picks as they are all competing for the same scant playing time/resources. Even more concerning is that all five of the selected players are fairly low-floor. A few of them will likely bust pretty hard. – The Case for Egor Demin by Avinash Chauhan

As Avi demonstrates, the concept of “overpopulation” that can limit the development of young players is something that already stuck in the back of our heads through empirical research and observations. The parallel with the density-dependent factors offers a more standardized explanation of the dynamic.

The byproduct of this messy ecological situation is evident. The team tried to find a balance, assigning players like Ben Saraf and Nolan Traore to the Long Island Nets, where they had to sail the insidious waters of the G League. Meanwhile, Egor Dëmin has his minutes and chances, but his season has been characterized by highs and lows (although it looks like he’s figuring out some things lately).

The release of Cam Thomas at the last trade deadline can be considered a symptom of the process. In a vacuum, it represents a potential waste of assets for the team, but on the other hand, it frees up resources.

Historic examples

The past offers us plenty of examples of the processes we’re examining if we look closely enough. Most rebuilding teams go through phases of overpopulation that are probably a natural consequence of trying to have and take as many draft chances as possible. The San Antonio Spurs during their 2022-2025 rebuild represent a great example I particularly care about.

The 2023-24 Spurs roster

Players like Dominick Barlow, Sidy Cissoko, Sandro Mamukelaishvili and even Blake Wesley or Jamaree Bouyea (who, to be fair, bounced around quite a bit before finally finding his niche this season) didn’t shine or had the chance to shine in this extremely young, extremely dense roster. And all of them are finding more success elsewhere.

Cissoko had some clearly likeable qualities as a prospect, but didn’t improve much from rookie to sophomore season, and the Spurs couldn’t find space in 2024-25 when they were already trying to put together wins. In this particular situation, the process was probably sped up by how quickly the team found their cornerstone (and it likely also applies for the Thunder at the time). When a team just drafted a young phenomenon and owns several future draft picks, the clock starts ticking early for those who are on the margins of the roster.

In a similar quickly developing, hyper-competitive environment, it becomes less likely for two-way players like Barlow and Bouyea to break into the rotation. Although there were probably some signs of Dom Barlow’s trajectory, especially considering how good he was at the G League level at a young age.

In the grand scheme of things, most of this stuff becomes irrelevant when your team gets the 7’4 lottery prize, but winning on the margins gives longer windows of opportunity. Look at it the other way around: how irrelevant was it for the Philadelphia 76ers finding their current starting power forward as a result of this process (Sixers? Process? Unintended pun)?

Acknowledging this process, it becomes easier to recognize buy-low, low-risk/high-reward occasions for teams disposing of plenty of resources. Besides the aforementioned Dom Barlow opportunity, Moussa Diabate going from an end-of-the-bench piece for a competitive team to growing into a high-level rotation piece for the Hornets is a notable example. In these cases, pre-draft evaluations and the G League sample are particularly relevant to identify the ideal candidates.

Another player that could become the most recent, valid argument in favor of this thesis is Ousmane Dieng. Since he left Oklahoma City, the French forward is showing things he didn’t have the chance to display consistently in the depth of the best team in the league.

The Houston Rockets from a few seasons ago are a slightly different but no less interesting case-study: players like Usman Garuba and Josh Christopher got devoured by the rebuild meat-grinder. Cam Whitmore is enduring a similar fate, though there seems to be some more attitudinal stuff going on with him. Could his issues be fixed by devoting more off-the-court attention to these issues in a less developmentally-dense environment?

It is obviously hard for us, as outside observers, to distinguish between those who simply weren’t good enough and who didn’t get enough chances to improve and have a better developmental trajectory in this case. However, those constitute interesting data points anyway.

Natural selection and density dependence

If you endured the reading of this piece to this point and followed NBA basketball in the last few years, you probably realize one of the weaknesses of this theory (or ramblings?).

Recent NBA history shows us that relying on sheer “natural selection” putting prospects in a highly competitive environment represents a functional strategy of long-term team building. Stockpiling as many prospects as possible and just find who is able to figure things out in the league seems to work decently enough.

Just think about the reigning NBA champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Aleksej Pokusevski, Theo Maledon, Darius Bazley, and many others. Many players indeed busted, and many of their assets ended up in the meat grinder, but the selective pressure also allowed them to identify many pieces that are currently part of the clear-cut best team in the league.

However, the density-dependent processes remain important because not every team starts from the same foundations, with the same number of draft opportunities or resources. “Natural selection” operates within the density-dependent processes, and acknowledging them and how they work can help maximize the outcomes.

Wrapping it up

In high school, I studied Latin for 5 years, even though I attended a scientific high school. Many criticize its teaching because it’s a dead language and doesn’t have much value outside the academic world. However, Latin isn’t taught for its utility; it’s taught as a mental exercise to stimulate the identification of connections and instill a certain “forma mentis” in students.

I realized this article represents something similar. It doesn’t presume to solve team-building issues by adopting just a couple of ecological models. But this article humbly wanted to be a useful mental exercise, something that can stimulate the research of patterns and a transverse, interdisciplinary approach in a field that sometimes is a bit too vertical, fossilized in its knowledge.

The post Density-dependent Growth – an interdisciplinary look at roster building appeared first on Swish Theory.

If this issue were yet another symptom of our decaying online discourse, then there’d be no use in me writing this article or you reading this article. However, this same uncertainty around determining and quantifying player impact still persists at the highest levels of our sport, and it’s the reason why institutions, armed with premium datasets and hordes of full-time scouts, still get it wrong. Every year, draft boards fracture, bad contracts are given out like candy, and team-building philosophies collapse under any sort of playoff inspection.

Take the years-long debate over who should be the number one pick in this year’s upcoming NBA Draft out of Cameron Boozer, AJ Dybantsa, and Darryn Peterson. For some, Cameron Boozer is the drop-dead choice. A player who represents the Platonic ideal of prospect productivity, currently in the midst of one of the greatest freshman seasons of all time. At the same time, however, you have anonymous NBA scouts questioning whether he’s even a franchise cornerstone at the levels of his contemporaries.

What these issues and debates reveal is not confusion of talent or disagreement over players, but a deeper and more intrinsic struggle over what exactly player impact is, and how it should be determined. To me, at least, the issue stems from how we treat player impact. As if it were a single, unified concept that can be ranked from good to bad. So, before we ask the question of ‘who’s better than who’ or ‘who deserves what contract’, we need to first define: what exactly is player impact?

The Two Degrees of Impact

The framework I will try to explain in this article stems from a simple but too often overlooked truth about basketball, which is that not every action carries the same value. And over the course of a 48-minute game, hundreds and hundreds of actions will occur with varying levels of influence.

This is because basketball (and many other team sports) is, at its core, a stochastic sport. This means outcomes emerge from a web of probabilistic events rather than deterministic sequences, and small variations compound across possessions. As a result, actions cannot be treated as equal simply because they occur within the same possession or box score.

Every action that takes place on a basketball court is a probabilistic bet that seeks to tilt the game-state towards one direction; however, most mainstream analysis seeks to collapse all of these actions into narrow sets of outputs: points, rebounds, assists, etc. And in doing so we end up over/under valuing certain player archetypes that better suit our own personal biases.

Cumulative Impact

Following on from that jargon, we can now get into the weeds of the framework, and the first idea I need to introduce is that there are two levels of impact that a player can exert on a game, with the first being what I currently refer to as cumulative impact. Cumulative impact is the influence a player exerts on a game through actions whose value emerges from repetition and continuity. Cumulative players generate and preserve extra possessions, and while these actions do not produce high-value outcomes in isolation, they shape the conditions in which future possessions occur. Rather than deciding outcomes outright, these actions reduce the team’s reliance on low-probability solutions.

Basketball behaviours that indicate a player is cumulative, and some statistical indicators:

ability to extend and complete advantages

• assist rate 
• potential assists
• secondary assists 

ability to generate extra possessions

• offensive rebound rate
• steal rate
• offensive fouls drawn
• deflections

ability to preserve possession integrity

• turnovers per game 
• turnover percentage
• assist to turnover ratio

ability to impact possessions without direct ball involvement

• gravity rate
• opponent rim attempt frequency
• opponent fg% at rim
• defensive on/off

However, while cumulative impact explains how teams build and sustain momentum, it doesn’t explain how they convert that control into outcomes. You can control the chessboard for hours, accumulate pieces, dictate the pace of play, but at the end of the day, the game is still decided by checkmate.

Decisive Impact

This brings us to the second level of player impact, which is what I’m calling decisive impact. Decisive impact is the influence a player exerts on a game through high-difficulty and high-leverage actions that directly resolve possessions and sharply alter the game state. Where cumulative impact shapes the flow of a game, decisive impact collapses that flow into results. These moments disproportionately affect win probability and rely more on individual execution under pressure.

Here are some behaviours that indicate a player is decisive, and some usual statistical indicators:

ability to independently create/prevent advantages:

• pts/75
• ts added per 100
• shot usage
• FTA per 100
• block rate

ability to execute when time, space or structure is constrained:

• grenade percent
• grenade efg
• isolation efficiency
• clutch efficiency
• contested shot efficiency
• STOP%
• rSTOP%

The Four Quadrants of Player Impact

I’ve always been uncomfortable with binary thinking, and it’s probably why, growing up in school, I was always drawn more towards the humanities than STEM subjects. To me, very few meaningful things in life fit neatly into two categories, and player impact is no different.

In reality, we know that players vary in just how much cumulative or decisive impact they exert on games and that these dimensions are independent of each other. It’s why a player can be highly cumulative without being highly decisive, and why a player can be highly decisive without being highly cumulative.

Conceptually, I think this framework is best visualised as a fluid, four-quadrant model:

Low-Impact Players

These are the players whose presence does little to meaningfully alter either the structure or outcome of games. They neither accumulate influence through their repeated activity on the court, nor do they have the capability to resolve high-leverage possessions. This does not mean they lack basketball skill, but rather that their actions do not scale in either volume or difficulty. YOU SHOULD AVOID DEDICATING EXTERNAL RESOURCES TO THESE PLAYERS AT ALL COSTS.

Structural Players

Players in this quadrant are your textbook floor-raisers. The RAPM darlings. Rather than decide games outright, they shape how games are played through influencing a large volume of possessions. Their impact is rarely spectacular in isolation, but compounds over time as they increase the frequency of point-scoring opportunities. YOU SHOULD DEDICATE RESOURCES TO THESE PLAYERS PROVIDED YOU HAVE THE REQUIRED EVENT PLAYERS TO CAPITALISE ON THEIR IMPACT.

Event Players

Players in this quadrant are your archetypal ceiling raisers. They are those players whose value lies in their proficiency in high-difficulty situations. The Ball Don’t Stop alumni, if you will. And while their impact might not be felt continuously over a game, it will no doubt manifest itself in those high-leverage moments where only the strong survive. YOU SHOULD DEDICATE RESOURCES TO THESE PLAYERS PROVIDED YOU HAVE THE REQUIRED STRUCTURAL PLAYERS TO PROVIDE THEM AMPLE CHANCES FOR IMPACT.

Dual-Impact Players

This is the quadrant occupied by the true outliers of the sport, and those special hoopers who had/have the ability to both: increase the amount of and resolve their team’s scoring possessions. There is rarely a moment in a game where they are not either directly or indirectly involved in a possession. YOU SHOULD DEDICATE THE MAJORITY OF YOUR RESOURCES TOWARDS TRYING TO ATTAIN THESE PLAYERS.

Why the Most Valuable Players Tend to be Dual-Impact

An important, and perhaps the most important clarification that needs to be made before going further, is that within the same quadrant/archetype, players can vary enormously in quality. Not all structural players are equally valuable, nor are all event players, and this framework, when applied lazily, can flatten those distinctions. To me, what explains these gaps in quality are not the archetype itself, but the constraints under which players operate. Inherent physical and biomechanical limitations, as well as the external team environment, shape the range of total actions a player can perceive as viable. And while you can adapt your game around these constraints to become an effective player, these constraints will always exist and limit your ceiling.

A useful way of conceptualising this is through Plato’s Theory of the Forms. In Plato’s theory, the physical world contains imperfect instantiations of ideal Forms, abstract, complete expressions of concepts like justice or beauty. A drawn circle may resemble the Form of a circle, but it will never fully realise its perfection. Dual-Impact players represent the ideal Form of player impact: the fullest and most complete expression of game influence, where the physical capacity, technical skills, and cognitive processing all align. Structural and event players are merely imperfect (but still valuable) instantiations of that form, approximating along one or two of those dimensions, but not all. And it is this incompleteness that introduces fragility into their impact when conditions change.

Beyond any specific technical or physical traits, what truly separates dual-impact players from the rest of the field begins in the mind. At the highest levels of the sport, where technical skill-sets overlap and physical margins narrow, what separates players is not simply what actions they can execute or how they execute, but when and why they execute. Dual-impact players show a heightened sensitivity to the spatiotemporal structure of the game and understand that possessions are not isolated events, but linked sequences whose value compounds across time. This cognitive elasticity is what allows them to constantly shift their thinking from an individual to a team level, and the emergent result of this advantage is that their individual impact is less sensitive to their external environment.

Event and structural players, by contrast, are constrained by the cognitive tax of over-specialisation. Event players are forced to operate in high-leverage moments repeatedly, becoming over-reliant on situations that cannot be sustainably generated, and structural players become over-reliant on teammate continuity and control. In both cases, impact becomes brittle and increasingly sensitive to the external environment.

Basketball, ultimately, is a team sport, and any individual player’s impact only exists in relation to the environment it shapes. This is where the value of dual-impact players becomes overwhelming. Because they influence both the conditions under which possessions occur and the outcomes those possessions produce, they reduce the sensitivity of a team’s success to lineup construction. This is because it allows their GMs and coaches to allocate resources more efficiently, to surround them with lineups that lean towards offense or defense without sacrificing anything. This is why historically great teams like the OKC Thunder now or the Golden State Warriors in the past could field such defensively slanted teams around Stephen Curry or Shai Gilgeous Alexander, as the multiplicity of their skill-sets means they could make up for any gaps in offense or defense.

So…Why Do We Keep Getting It Wrong?

If dual-impact players represent the fullest expression of influence within a basketball game, then it raises an uncomfortable question: why are they so often misidentified and misunderstood? At a fundamental level, we do not evaluate impact directly, we evaluate signals of impact. Basketball, as both a sport and spectacle, privileges actions that are visible and narratively decisive. Event impact fits nicely into this perception, and a tough iso bucket or a chasedown block are immediately legible to both audiences and decision makers. As a result, event players are intuitively perceived as controlling games even when their impact is episodic rather than systemic. This perceptual bias is reinforced by the inherent structure of basketball discourse itself. Highlight clips, box score, scoring averages, and usage rates all reward possession-ending actions, and even most advanced metrics remain possession-local in nature. The consequence of this is that players who exert influence by shaping the conditions of future possessions (through indirect actions) struggle to announce their own value with the same clarity.

Due to this, event players are often easily mistaken for dual-impact players. Their ability to generate high-leverage outcomes under pressure is rightly valued, but when this capacity isn’t paired with the ability to frequently improve the frequency and quality of possessions, then its overall influence is too limited. Crucially, the inverse error also exists, just in fewer cases. Structural players are often overvalued in environments that reward stability and scale, where their ability to raise baseline efficiency can be mistaken for universal sufficiency. In this sense, both event and structural players are epistemically misleading, just in inverse ways. Event players are often overvalued due to the visibility of their impact, which makes it easy to narrativise, and structural players can be overvalued for those same opposite reasons.

There is also a further distortion that emerges online in spaces where we debate basketball, once this perceptual imbalance is recognised. Because event impact is more immediately legible and thus accessible to casual fans and mainstream media discourse, more analytically literate observers can start to define their analysis in opposition to it. Structural impact, requiring specialised language and a trained eye to identify, becomes not just a category of value but a signal of understanding itself. In this way, otherwise intelligent analysts can reproduce the same error as a casual observer, converging on a form of groupthink where what is hardest to narrate is assumed to be most important.

Implications for the Draft and Free Agency

Once player impact is understood as context-dependent rather than absolute, the implications for roster construction begin to clarify themselves a little more, especially when it comes to the draft and free agency. This is due to the fact that both of these mechanisms operate under different constraints and risk profiles, which change how different impact archetypes are valued.

Let’s start with the NBA Draft, which is by definition an exercise in projection under uncertainty. Teams that are rewarded with a lottery pick are generally weaker teams that lack organisational coherence and are years away from playing meaningful playoff basketball. In these developmental contexts, event impact is inherently fragile. High-leverage, possession-deciding actions only accrue value when a team is already capable of consistently generating competitive possessions. Without that foundation, event-oriented prospects are forced into roles that exaggerate their weaknesses and develop bad habits despite gaudy box score numbers or Twitter mixtapes. We also must acknowledge historical trends and how raw scoring output has lost a lot of its relative value due to the skyrocketing of league-wide offensive efficiency. Kobe Bryant’s 35.4 points per game in 2005-06 came in a league environment where the league average ORTG was 106.2, and teams averaged roughly 94-96 possessions per game. Luka Doncic’s 33 points per game this season, however, is occurring in an environment where league ORTG exceeds 115 with roughly 101 possessions per game. This means that as the entire league has become more efficient, the marginal value of raw volume scoring has declined. This makes structurally-inclined prospects, those who generate extra possessions and stabilise lineups, the more robust draft investments, even if their high-end outcomes don’t appear as high as the next prospect.

Free agency, however, operates under some slightly different logic. Established teams, those built around one or more dual-impact players, already possess the structural capacity to survive the regular season and get to the high-leverage environments of the playoffs. In those contexts, the marginal value of additional cumulative impact diminishes, while the value of decisive impact increases. It’s in these arenas where event-oriented players who struggle to justify primary roles can truly shine, as their ability to resolve possessions can meaningfully swing playoff games. When used in shorter stints or in tilted matchups, they can buoy the defects that come with their profiles over large sample sizes.

This asymmetry helps explain why certain player profiles appear to be ‘overdrafted’ or ‘underpaid’ early, only to resurface as valuable contributors later in their careers. (I’m looking at you, Aaron Gordon and Andrew Wiggins). The most shrewd organisations understand this distinction and resist the temptation to evaluate players as static entities.

However, there is a human element to these decisions that prevents teams from disavowing the historical mistakes of the past. Draft choices must be justified immediately, and event-heavy profiles must provide a form of narrative insurance. Their impact is legible, and their upside can be sold easily to owners and fans. “The talent was undeniable” is an excuse that allows front offices to skirt public scrutiny and keep their cushy, million-dollar jobs in NBA executive roles.

Taking a Wider Look

A framework is only as useful as its ability to scale, and the distinction between cumulative and decisive impact does not stop at the individual level. In basketball, where five players share the floor and possessions are both numerous and interconnected, team performance is best understood as the aggregation of individual impact profiles. For all the Xs and Os and schemes a coach wants to run, you can’t coach out a player’s built-in tendencies they’ve developed over years and years of reps.

At this point in the article, I think it’s clear that what makes dual-impact players so valuable is the fact that they don’t grow on trees. And so, a lot of what team-building becomes is being elite at aggregation and figuring out how to maximise interactions between incomplete skill-sets. Procure too many event players on one team, and you become over-reliant on situations you can’t sustainably generate. Your success as a team hinges on shot-making and individual brilliance, which causes you to become a high-variance team. However, if you acquire too many structural players and you become over-reliant on possession and territorial control, which causes you to become a low-variance team. We can observe that in both of these cases, stacking too many of one impact type on your team causes you to increase your margin of error, which matters all too much in a large sample size sport like basketball, where outcomes are decided across multiple games across a season.

This tension helps to explain why regular season and playoff basketball often reward different team profiles. This balance between cumulative and decisive impact begins to explain why certain teams consistently out/under perform expectations in specific competition formats. In large sample size formats such as the regular season, teams built with strong cumulative foundations tend to be rewarded for their efforts. Their advantages lie in reducing variance in possession quality. Over an 82-game season, those small, repeated gains compound, insulating them from the inevitable shooting slumps that derail more volatile teams. However, as formats compress, be it a playoff series or a single elimination cup game, the equilibrium begins to shift. Smaller samples magnify variance and reduce the value of pure accumulation. In those environments, teams with a greater share of decisive impact are better equipped to survive volatility, as they possess players capable of converting limited opportunities and swinging games on only a handful of possessions.

Ultimately, the same distinction that separates players at a micro level re-emerges at the macro level of teams, which is the cognitive difference. Teams built around event-heavy profiles demand a high level of mental bandwidth to constantly pull a rabbit out of the hat to win games, and, conversely, teams built around structural players demand a level of constant concentration and collective synchronisation over long stretches, to a point that isn’t humanly possible. What separates the best teams, much like the best players, is their elasticity and adaptability, and there is an equal cost of leaning too far into one identity, just in a different currency.

The post Structure and Event appeared first on Swish Theory.

Stanford Freshman Guard blends incredible skill, speed, and feel for the game

“I’m just playing to win and just help my team however I can to just get the win.” – Ebuka Okorie on his mindset

When you combine Ebuka Okorie’s quick first-step burst, stop-and-pop pull-up shooting, masterful ball control, effective flare handles, and one-of-a-kind finesse finishing at the rim, a lethal self-creating multi-level scoring threat is born.

Okorie speeds past any defender standing in front of him, threatening to pull up for a jumper at any time from anywhere on the court or get to the rim for a high degree-of-difficulty finish that he makes look routine.

Since I’ve started scouting potential NBA draft prospects in person, no player’s finishing at the rim has stood out as much as Okorie’s in-person, between his craftiness, creativity, and soft touch finishing. If Kyrie is the mountain top of masterful, crafty handle, creative small guard finishing around the rim, Okorie has started his climb, hoping to etch his own name, plant his own flag as one of the all-time finesse finishers.

In my 2024 Interview with Ebuka, I commended him for his feel for the game, asking him about his influences:

“I really like your decision-making out there, your patience, your jump shot. Are there any players you steal moves from or model your game after?” – RK

Ebuka says he studies two of the best guard finishers to ever play:

“Yeah, I just like watching top guards like Kyrie Irving and Steph Curry, obviously. I also like watching just any All-Star guards.”

There were two other point guards who came to mind when watching Okorie play two years ago for Brewster Academy, sharing aspects of Rajon Rondo’s and Dennis Schroder’s respective games – Schroder’s blend of first step burst, point guard instincts, and heavy shooting diet of pull-up shooting and finishing at the rim; Rondo’s next-level understanding of the game, his defensive instincts to force turnovers with the heads up awareness and then to make team-first passes up the floor pushing pace off them, and that special touch, spin, placement, and timing he’d put on passes to hit his teammates right where they wanted the ball in their shooting pockets to set them up best as play-finishers.

A high-volume pick-and-roll maestro self-creating ISO killer who threatens the pull-up shot, the finesse finish, and the clean dime every time down?

Ebuka Okorie is the most underrated Lottery Pick hiding in plain sight of the 2026 NBA Draft.

Quotes

Learning Basketball, a Swish Theory Podcast:


“Unbelievable handle, exceptional burst, can shoot… high-variance upside bet… absurd scorer.” – Ben Pfeifer, Swish Theory


“He can finish any shot you can think of at the rim.” – Ryan Kaminski, Swish Theory


Stanford HC Kyle Smith on Okorie’s draft status:

“My pitch has been – if you want to be in the place where you are leading a team and getting the most minutes to develop what you want to be as a pro, and essentially, we’re pros now, they’re getting paid. So I think Stanford’s the best option.

But… Look, you’re leading a team, you’re 19. But now, if someone in the NBA says, hey, we’re gonna take you at 12 and you’re our starting point guard, well, that’s something to consider.”

NCAA Moments, Impact & Efficiency

(all data as of 3.11.26)

Okorie walked onto Stanford’s campus as a four-star as the 12th-rated point guard in the country. (On3, 247)

Ebuka’s +10.3 C-RAM ranks in the Top-10 among top 2026 Draft Prospects, via Cerebro Sports.

Okorie’s all-around game at Stanford is rated highly by Cerebro – as a defender (86 DSI, 1.6 STL/gm), floor general (69 FGS, 3.6 AST / 1.8 TOV), 3pt shooter (80 3PE, 2 3PM on 36% 3P%), and scorer. (87 DSI, 23 PPG on 46% FG%)

Combining his high school stats with his freshman college stats for a total of 81 college+high school level games tracked by Cerebro, Okorie shot 53% 2P% on 534 2PA, 35.6% 3P% on 396 3PA, 83.5% FT% on 315 FTA, scoring 58.6% TS% overall.

Ranking 5th in the country in scoring and 2nd among freshmen (23.1 PPG), even ahead of Cameron Boozer, Ebuka Okorie is more than just a crafty point guard; he’s a certified walking bucket. Okorie’s seven 30-point games are tied for the most by any freshman in ACC history (Marvin Bagley) and fourth among any player all-time in the conference’s history. On top of being selected to the All-ACC 1st Team & All-ACC Rookie Team, Okorie’s scoring average is on pace to pass RJ Barrett for the top mark in ACC history by any freshman ever, while being the nation’s co-leader in games with 25+ PTS scored. (14g)

Okorie’s handle is simply electric, with few able to accelerate, stop on a dime, change directions, and throw in dribble combo moves along the way as smoothly as Ebuka makes it look.

The scoring has been incredible, and what’s even more impressive is his rapid development, consistently improving as the season goes on. Starting the season with 4 20pt games, dropping 3 30pt games soon after, then dropping the hammer with a 36 PT – 9 AST statement game vs UNC to put this Stanford team on the national radar.

Cracking the 40pt mark in a blowout over Georgia Tech, Ebuka reached that total with only 3 3PM, showing his scoring abilities within the arc (9/15 2P) and ability to maneuver his body smartly to draw the foul. (13/13 FTA). Squeezing in another 30pt game against Pitt, once again Ebuka showed off his smooth scoring abilities inside the arc (8/13 2P) and at the free throw line (9/9 FT); the game before, against California, the 6’2″ guard pulled down 13 rebounds.

Dropping 33 PTS on 71% eFG% vs NC State, Okorie showed off the double-edged sword of floor-bending gravity as a pull-up three pick-and-roll artist – rising and firing for off the dribble jumpers as he navigates picks and gets to his spots, splashing three dagger off-the-dribble threes, countering off the threat of the shot with the explosive drive by splitting the defenders in a quick Horns set attacking the gap and driving through the paint for an open lay-in.

Okorie’s ability to operate a multitude of pick-and-rolls at a high level, stretching the floor on ball to open driving lanes to attack, draw fouls, or kick is one foundation of how he can be relied on likely quickly at the NBA level to create advantages for himself and teammates in the most popular action in the league.

Ebuka Okorie’s 2025-26 Stanford Cardinal Synergy Efficiency Stats

In every overall basketball situation, Synergy rates Ebuka Okorie as “very good” or “excellent”; Okorie rates especially high overall (1.09 PPP), half court (1.05 PPP), Sidelines Out Of Bounds Sets (1.24 PPP), After Time Out sets (1.2 PPP), against a Press (1.15 PPP). Okorie can give you buckets in practically any situation, however you want to get scored on, whether you guard him man-to-man (1.03 PPP) or with zone. (1.35 PPP). Okorie’s half-court play types are highly efficient, especially in his highest volume play of running pick-and-rolls (1.05 PPP, 90th percentile), along with his third-highest volume play of running ISOs (1.11 PPP, 87th percentile). He also scores a very good rate in transition (1.24 PPP) and on Spot Ups (1.07 PPP).

Ebuka’s offensive repertoire is vast: he can initiate offense with and without ball-screens, score off picks and off the dribble, and threaten the defense off the ball from deep with closeout-attack drives to counter. This all makes him a versatile scoring guard off the bat.

When including passes, Okorie’s volume of pick-and-rolls increases by twice the volume (415 poss) while dipping in overall efficiency, but still efficient overall offense at 0.97 PPP. Okorie is a trap-killer in pick-and-roll, averaging 1.38 PPP in such situations, making defenses pay huge in the 16 times they’ve tried this season, rating 92nd percentile; when the ‘defense commits’, however, that drops to 0.83 PPP. (229 poss).

Including passes on ISOs, Okorie’s efficiency stays equally as impressive at 1.11 PPP, with about thirty extra possessions; so, whether Okorie passed or shot out of ISO, the advantages he created in 1-on-1 led to an extremely efficient look for his team.

What stands out overall is Okorie’s range of good-to-great efficiency in such a variety of playtypes and situations. That much versatile scoring efficiency is one example of good feel decision-making, reading and reacting to defenses to make the best play for your team, and the individual advantage-creation and scoring ability to execute consistently.

Okorie’s Shooting Touch & Athleticism Indicators are all promising to translate to the next level:

50% FG% on 30 Runners (FLOATA)
35% 3P% on 101 Pull-Up 3PA
36% 3P% on 67 C&S 3PA
51% FG% on 221 Layups
100% FG% on 9 Dunks
84% FT% on 214 FTA

Measuring Two-Way Feel and understanding of how to play the game is not fully quantifable.

Two stats that show the results of Okorie’s decisions: 1) as a safe decision-making passer with a 102 AST/50 TO Assist-to-Turnover ratio, and 2) as a sound defender racking up 45 STL + 9 BLK / 38 PF Stocks-per-Foul ratio. Creating advantages and creating scoring opportunities that lead to good looks for yourself and your teammates, and doing so without turning the ball over, shows good decision-making process as a primary on-ball decision-making creator. Forcing turnovers without fouling via well-timed digs, jumping passing lanes, timing up help-side blocks, and deterring drives with active hands are examples of a high-feel defender.

In the highest-rated class in NCAA Freshman BPM history, Ebuka Okorie ranks 9th in BPM among freshmen. Change those barttorvik filters to the entire NCAA in 2026, and Okorie ranks 36th. Change them again to Only Freshman from Any NCAA Season back to 2008, and Okorie rates T-45th with Kon Knueppel, Derrick Rose, DeMarcus Cousins, Zhaire Smith, and Collin Murray-Boyles. For reference on the magnitude of this draft class, the average draft features ~2 players with a >10 BPM, via Jeremias Engelmann; the 2026 draft is on course to feature 6 players with BPMs over +12 BPM, and by my count, roughly 25+ potential draft prospects with over a +9.0 BPM; the depth of talent in this class is utterly insane.

Here is some statistical company for three marks Okorie reached:

As of March 11, 2026, 31 freshman since 2008 have scored at a 54.5% TS% rate, assisted 19.5% of their team’s passes when on the floor, and forced 1.95% of their team’s steals while on the floor, with an over 7.0 BPM rating, visualized below. Only top prospects and star offensive players rank higher than Okorie in overall BPM impact in this group: Cameron Boozer, Cooper Flagg, Kingston Flemings, James Harden, Lonzo Ball, Reed Sheppard, D’Angelo Russell, Trae Young, Ben Simmons. These minimums attempt to show all-around scoring efficiency and decision-making among high-impact two-way college freshmen since 2008, when Bartorvik’s available data begins* (*close 2PA, shots at the rim, are not recorded until 2010).

Ebuka Okorie’s Historical Stats via Barttorvik

To highlight Ebuka Okorie’s incredible advantage creation, efficient team scoring, and sound decision making, the chart below shows how Okorie is record-low in TOV% among high volume creators and has created as many shots at the rim for himself as any big name prospect besides Boozer since 2008.

How is a 6’2″ Guard not only getting past his defender, penetrating the paint, and getting to the rim, but also finishing this efficiently while doing so?

Ebuka Okorie’s Historical Stats via Barttorvik

Another interesting query highlights Okorie’s ability to get to the rim by limiting this list to filter for freshmen who have taken 200+ close shots at the rim, shrinking the group to five-star downhill prospects:

Cameron Boozer, Cooper Flagg, Trae Young, De’Aaron Fox, Ben Simmons…and Ebuka Okorie.

Not only do I see Okorie as a special finisher at the rim based on his crafty layup skills in person, but he’s also next-level elite at creating the advantages necessary to get to the rim. at a high rate as a small guard on insanely high usage, touches, and shot volume while maintaining scoring and shooting efficiency, and posting the lowest turnover percentage of any of the players on any of these lists.

When you combine his quick processing and quick movements with his total control of the ball, his body, and the situation, plus his scoring touch from every level, Okorie flashes real potential as a primary decision-making offensive engine scoring creator – a scoring point guard a team can put the ball in the hands of and rely on to create a good look for the team every time down the floor, because he can score and create efficiently out of nearly any situation and playtype.

Good things happen with the ball in Ebuka Okorie’s hands. Statistically, he has the best turnover rate for a high-volume scorer and passer of any freshman since 2010. Okorie is the only freshman since 2008 to post 20+% AST% with below 13% TOV%, let alone rate 3% better than the next closest assist rate at 2nd (Cam Boozer), via Barttorvik.

Among the 460 freshman since 2008 with 20% Assist and 2% Steal rates, Okorie’s 10.2% TOV% ranks 1st and his +9.5 BPM rank 12th all time. Expanding to every college player since 2008, Okorie ranks 7th in TOV% among the 382 who met these minimums of TS% ≥ 54.5; Assist % ≥ 19.5; Steal % ≥ 1.95; Box +/- ≥ 7.1. Okorie handling his insane on-ball usage and shot volume, maintaining scoring efficiency across the board, and ranking all-time great in the turnover ranks for high-volume creators is an incredible feat showing his primary decision-maker capabilities.

Excerpt from my 2024 Sunshine Classic Scouting Report on Swish Theory

Ebuka Okorie popped out with decision-making, passing chops, and tough shotmaking at the rim and on pull-up jumpers, with decisive feel and defensive instincts leading to routine winning plays.

Ebuka Okorie’s crafty finishing at the rim, decision making feel running the show, splashy pull-up 3pt range, anticipation jumping passing lanes for steals and timing up blocks for turnovers deserves to be highlighted.

Dante Allen, Ebuka Okorie, CJ Ingram stood out the most in the tournament statistically by their overall impact and defense, with the Montverde duo also rating highly in rebounding/rim-protecting measures; all three were the standout prospects in overall impact (C-RAM), each registering over 10+ C-RAM respectively.

Ebuka Okorie rated 2nd in overall impact (over 10+ C-RAM) and very highly on the defensive end, rating 4th of all players. (97 DSI).

Ebuka was just as impressive on the offensive end, rating 2nd as a scorer (88 PSP) and 2nd at passer (79 FGS) at the 2024 Sunshine Classic, via Cerebro Sports.

Okorie slotted in as the 12th best 3pt shooter (72 3PE)

Okorie (and Dante Allen) again stand out on this chart as offensive engines, rating among the best as scorers, playmakers, and 3pt shooters, showing they could be the most reliable scoring creators from the 2024 Sunshine Classic.

#2 Ebuka Okorie (Stanford)
6’2″ Guard 2025

Incredible decision-making feel
Crafty finisher around the rim
Real two-way impact forcing turnovers
Clean Pull-Up and C&S 3pt jumper rhythm shooter
Great vision executing half-court offense, finding open teammates
Willing passer giving up good shots for better shots
Defensive instincts timing up steals and blocks

19 PTS – 3 AST – 1 REB – 2 BLK – 8/11 FG (26 MIN)
vs. LuHi

Crafty finish up-and-under hanging in the air at the rim
Soft touch finger roll high off the glass
Good body control, deceleration
Tough contested finish at the rim with soft touch
Nice block timing
Crafty finishes all around the rim all game long
Up-and-under reverse
Beats buzzer through contact for tough finish at the rim with defender draped all over him and no foul called

15 PTS – 6 AST – 3 REB – 4 STL – 3/7 3P – 5/10 FG (29 MIN)
vs. Orangeville

Good anticipation on Steal
Smooth stroke pull-up triple
Patient decision making, good feel and decision to shoot of the handoff
Unselfish pass from good to shot to great shot in open corner shooter
Smooth C&S 3 off screen, playcall seems to be named “leg”
Nice decision dumpoff pass

2024 Interview with Ebuka Okorie

For one last peek in Okorie’s mindset as a player, person, and teammate, here’s the remainder of our interview:


RK – I really liked the patient decision-making, your ability to read the floor. How would you describe your mindset when you’re in the game?

Ebuka – ”I’m just playing to win and just help my team however I can to just get the win.”


RK – You’re off to Stanford. What led to that decision?

Ebuka – “It’s a really good school in terms of academics and obviously basketball, so I just felt like it was the best fit for me.”


RK – What kind of skills are you trying to develop and add to your game over the coming years?

Ebuka – “I’m just trying to develop all parts of my game. Getting stronger, quicker, just like all parts of my game, just still working hard.”

Q. How would you all describe yourselves as teammates off the floor?

Ebuka – “Yeah, I’d say like we’re just around each other all the time, and our chemistry just keeps going up every single time, every day.”

RK – One last question. Your teammate, Dwayne Aristode, wasn’t able to make this trip; he’s dealing with an injury. How would you describe him as a teammate and a person?

Ebuka – “Yeah, obviously he’s a great player. He’s also a great teammate, like he’ll pick us up like if we’re having a bad practice or something, he’s always here for us.”

What ultimately stands out most about Okorie’s game is not just his outlier super power ability to get to the rim or any spot he wants, its his complete game – his crafty handle, sound anticipation, defensive instincts, dangerously quick first step burst, masterful start-stop body control, efficient scoring versatility, clear playmaking vision, sublime shooting, smooth finishing touch, and earned confidence – combined with one other super power – his impressive decision making on the basketball court, putting all these pieces of the puzzle together.

A team-first decision-maker with the ability to get to any spot and make any shot at any time, with or without the help of a screen, who can beat you with speed and touch to stretch the floor in both directions at once, is one versatile offensive weapon.

A 6’2″ high-volume shot creator with record-high impact, record-high rim attempts, and record-low turnovers who creates advantage at wills and shots consistently for his team, Okorie’s overall scoring versatility, pick-and-roll mastery, mean pull-up jumper, and knack for attacking the rack makes him one of the most efficient shot creators of any draft prospect.

A truly masterful point guard who can force turnovers on defense and do it all on offense; not just dribble, pass, shoot as a base skill-set, but massive potential on the ball with his ability to penetrate the paint and create good looks for his team consistently with ease off his lightning-quick first step burst, total start stop body control, flashy handle ball control, mean pull-up jumper and cerebral feel for the game.

Ebuka Okorie is the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery Pick hiding in plain sight.

The post Ebuka Okorie: A Lottery Pick Hiding in Plain Sight appeared first on Swish Theory.

As I go through this intense process, I normally have one or two players who stand out to me. Not because I like or dislike them, but because I find them to be particularly testing for my process. This year, it is fair to say that Amari Allen from Alabama fits the bill.

Allen has some serious fans within the Draft-sphere. Per Jon Chepkevich who just released his annual ‘consensus board‘, Allen ranks 24th. That may not seem overly high, but there are some high placements in there. In the model of our very own Wafe, Allen comes in in 6th place. One of my favourite Twitter follows, JPR from The Center Hub, has him ranked 8th. Any player will have fans at well above consensus, but I believe it’s fair to call Allen polarising.

The high-end sell of Amari Allen is that he is an ambidextrous player who can pass, drive, and shoot, and processes well. While watching his film, I found myself sitting somewhere in the middle. I see a player with tools, but who needs to sharpen some of them to make an impact in the NBA. I wouldn’t call the value theoretical, as he is objectively a good player, but I ran into some issues on the film despite the statistical profile seeming well-rounded.

I will go much deeper throughout the piece, but I want to give a basic outline up front. I largely believe he has capabilities as a pass, drive, and shoot player, but the driving is underdeveloped right now. I also believe the defense is solid positionally, which explains why he has solid numbers for both blocks and steals, but I don’t see him as a major disruptor on that end, even if I believe his physical tools are quite enticing. Largely, the driving is where I hope to see development and why I ultimately want him to return.

Amari Allen’s Role

There’s a good argument to be made that Nate Oats is the best offensive mind in the entirety of basketball. Others may have more exotic schemes, but in terms of putting things into practice and getting the best out of his players, Oats is probably the best I’ve seen. It sometimes means we deem Bama players as having more of a ceiling than they show, largely because he puts them in such an optimised role.

Allen’s role is largely what I’d call a perimeter attacker. He isn’t the lead creator, and there aren’t necessarily pet sets for him, but his job is to drive off the catch, attack closeouts, and be a rim finisher. It’s a good use of his shooting ability and his above-average court mapping. Below is a good visual of his role from the excellent Hoop Explorer site.

As you can see, he’s attacking, kicking the ball out, and working in transition. Oats rarely asks him to take dribble jumpers and he almost never gets to showcase any kind of in-between game, because a Nate Oats offense drastically cuts down on those shots and disincentivises them.

Part of his role is also being a secondary Pick-And-Roll ball handler, which I deem to be an area for improvement. Per Synergy, he is in the 62nd percentile for frequency of all PNR plays (including passes), but in the 44th percentile for efficiency. This number drops to 15th percentile when the ‘defense commits’, which essentially just means when they play man to man defense and commit to guarding both the roller and the ball-handler, with traps and hedges being calculated separately.

So, Allen is being asked to drive quite often, with Oats asking him to do it from a lot of different scenarios that involve both with and without ball screens. This is good for a film student because it means we get to see the full picture, which isn’t a luxury with other players who can often play for coaches or in situations that suppress certain things we need to see. The question is, what does the film tell me?

Amari Allen’s Driving and Finishing

Let’s start with the raw driving before we get into the nitty-gritty of Pick-And-Roll play.

Allen’s driving is largely a bit of a rollercoaster. He’s strong and has flashed some incredibly impressive moves when he gets inside the arc. Where it can be adventurous is before we reach that point, as he can sometimes struggle to generate separation.

Just to give a note for the reader, I do not start clipping stuff until I have formed my overall take. I watch everything, form an opinion, then pick clips that back up my opinions. Watching film to anchor biases or to look for the truth you want is bad process.

Below is a play from the game against Auburn.

Allen pump-fakes to get Pettiford in the air, but struggles to gain any kind of separation while driving left, and ends up throwing up a pass that was never on. He doesn’t seem to be comfortable going to any kind of decel move, which is a problem as he doesn’t often separate at the top of the drive.

Generally speaking, he struggled against physicality at the point of attack, but was better against it around the basket. Here’s another example from a game against Clemson.

Allen drives from the slot, first trying to go left but going right after getting nowhere. He seems to generally prefer going to the right on film. He gets decent territory inside the paint, but never really compromises the defender at any point, and after trying a move, he ends up throwing up a wild shot that gets blocked.

Allen is strong, which means he can sometimes generate position as a driver. It’s just quite often not the most convincing endeavour. The play below against Kentucky illustrates this further.

Allen attempts to drive, but generates little separation, which means Jaland Lowe can just poke the ball out from behind him because he’s able to both stop the drive and not be overly worried about Allen going to a second move in the half-court.

A notable part of Amari Allen’s profile compared to others I’ve watched is that he attempts to be ambidextrous. This is likely good for his long-term development, even if it nukes his efficiency in the short-term. The reason I’m bringing this up is that, while a lot of the struggles come from driving left, I feel they are notable when going right, and I would not say he’s a standstill separator or anything like that.

Here’s an example of another problem when driving left that relates to a few things.

Allen gets a good (possibly illegal) flat ball screen and powers past his man, but, even though there is almost no rim protection, takes his attempt very wide to the left and ends up completely missing. While he struggles separating at the top of the drive, it feels as if the handle when he gets into these areas can be quite inconsistent, though it does show up more when he drives to the left.

On the topic of his ambidextrous nature, I hand-tracked all of his layups on the year. He is shooting 61 percent on right-handed layups (33/54), and 45 percent on left-handed layups (11/24). There are occasions when he’s able to get the ball to his right-hand even while driving to the left, but if it’s a left-handed attempt, he is much less comfortable on the whole.

Where it gets more murky is that a lot of his best finishes are in transition. Per CBB Analytics, Allen is shooting just 44 percent on two-pointers in the Half-Court which is 23rd percentile across D1 Basketball.

Though he isn’t much of a separator with his dribble moves or with a first step, I do believe it’s notable and important that he’s able to be strong against other wings. He can, however, struggle more against big guys such as on this rep against Thomas Haugh.

Where the driving becomes interesting is that there are some seriously impressive flashes. Flashes are a buzzword that can definitely rile some draft scouts, particularly on the spreadsheet side of Twitter. I largely agree with these critiques, however, I’m not going to completely ignore some very good stuff with his drives due to his age and his room for improvement. Below is my favourite drive from his tape so far.

Allen sizes up his cross-match in transition and completely shreds him. He gets low (which is something I look for when I’m analysing handle), then shows agility to get back into the lane. Compare that to the lefty layup against Mississippi State, and it’s night and day.

This one against Clemson is also impressive. He gets the switch on a PNR, and his screener largely doesn’t give him much to work with. He then power steps and crosses back into a Eurostep and finishes off the glass. If he gets into the paint with some kind of force behind him, he does have some very capable east-west moves. The question I keep circling back to is how often will he reach these areas.

This one against Arkansas is also great. He really seems to get a lot of force when driving into the paint, so it gives him more power whenever he goes to his East-West moves.

Let’s, however, compare what this looks like when going to his left.

Bama throws him the ball at the elbow on the out-of-bounds play, essentially giving him an Isolation. He sends his man darting backwards, but he doesn’t quite have the same comfort when he is on his left. One factor I may want to consider here is that Nate Oats doesn’t like his players taking any kind of mid-range shot. When watching this play, I wonder if Allen would have felt more comfortable with a turnaround jumper after sending Tyler Nickel flying. Instead, we get a tough left-handed miss.

The driving is largely an area where Allen needs work, but there are some tools there that make me think he may put it together. It’s probably the main reason I hope he returns. He’s strong, I’d just like to see more efficiency on the drives and possibly some way of separating that isn’t just pure strength.

On the topic of driving, it makes sense to dive into his finishing. I noted earlier that his desire to be ambidextrous slightly nerfs his overall percentages. But it would be fair to say that his finishing profile is quite average overall. It’s above average at a push, but the main reason for it is that he doesn’t possess the handle to make things easier on himself at the rim. As mentioned previously, he’s shooting 45 percent on 2s in the Half-Court.

One thing I do appreciate about Allen is that he gets good hangtime on his layup attempts. There appears to be more difficulty with self-created ones, but I feel this is a notable factor in projecting future improvement. Here’s a good play below.

Alabama runs the Noah LaRoche ‘Wheel’ Pattern in early offense. Allen sinks to the corner, attacks the closeout, and finishes strong through the rim protector. In these tilted or short-manned floor situations, I feel the finishing shows up a little better. While we should expect this, I still believe it to be notable. Below is another example.

This one comes in early offense, but Allen drives past his man with a crossover and gets good hang time before finishing off the glass. He’s athletic and capable of finishing through contact. Something I will note is that I’m often not a fan of indexing on ‘flashes’. An experienced scout once told me, to my shock, that ‘Jonathan Isaac Movement Shooting Flashes exist’. However, there are enough of these from Allen for me not to be completely out on him as a finisher, though the first level of driving needs work. Here are a few more.

They run Elbow Chicago, and he dives to the rim after screening and finishes through contact. Again, a play did the early legwork for him, but he still managed to finish the play for Alabama.

Here is a play against one of the very best.

After some early offense broke down, Bama swung the ball back to Allen at the top of the key. He gets a clear lane, and, even though that’s a relevant factor, I still find it impressive that he goes right through Ruben Chinyelu for the easy finish.

Something I will also add to this is that Amari Allen was seriously drawing fouls at the start of the year, which makes sense when you consider his hang time and the physicality he sometimes shows. This has declined in recent games. Amari Allen missed the final 2 games of February with an injury. Since then, per BartTorvik, his FTR is down to 29.1, which is a drastic drop off from the 45.2 he was rocking previously. You could argue that the off-ball strength-based finishing and foul drawing are the best part of his scoring profile, so this is something to monitor. He’s only attempted one free throw in his last three games.

Something I do see as a pattern is that his better flashes seem to come when Bama are spaced out in five-out. Being in five-out does not automatically equate to spacing, but it does appear he is more comfortable as a driver and finisher when things are already tilted for him.

Allen isn’t a guy I project to be a high-volume driver as of now; there isn’t enough evidence of separation on the film. I, however, see enough to believe he could be a decent play finisher on offense. It’s just a question of how good the numbers get.

The reason I bring this up is that I believe Amari Allen’s best half-court reps came as a PNR Roll man. It wasn’t something they leaned into all that often, but when they do, it is very effective and showcases some of his talents. Firstly, he just shows good feel for when to dive or roll, which matters. Not all screeners are equal no matter their dimensions.

Here’s a simple look at it. Bama goes to a guard screening action, and Allen makes the simple read to the corner.

They went to it in a game against Texas, as well.

They run ‘Ram’ action, and Allen hangs in the air before making the dump off pass to the big man for an easy finish.

While this action often led to Allen getting potential assists, there were times when he was strong finishing through contact on these play-types, too, such as below.

Bama runs ‘Ram Exit’ with a smallball lineup. Allen gets the ball on the roll, gets met with size, but steps through him and scores the layup.

Allen has also hit threes out of these play types too, showing good feel for when to move, and he has decent shooting numbers and good shooting mechanics on the whole.

Ultimately, where I find myself gravitating towards with Amari Allen is envisioning him as a diverse play finisher. The NBA is changing a lot. The days of standstill high PNR are over. Will Hardy and Quin Snyder popularised ‘5 slot’, which involves putting your center on the wing, something Duke has now made their core half-court offense. What this effectively means is that bigs are doing perimeter stuff, and there is more room for wings and even guards to be play finishers.

Teams would not specifically run plays for Allen unless he was picked very high, but I feel that a team who has guard or wing screens as part of their Half-Court offense, such as Charlotte, Boston, or Indiana, might benefit from such a player. I try and see a path for any player I scout, and I feel this is the best possible path I currently see for him. If he returns, this may change. The idea of Allen joining a guard-screening heavy team and working inside off-the-ball is the best path I see on offense as of now. Effectively, for a team running a modern 5-out offense, can he be a shooter and screener who finishes inside?

Where that sell gets more complex is that his current numbers, while not bad, are not truly elite. There are logical reasons to talk yourself into them improving, but to what extent is the great question you must answer if you’re going to buy into my idea of him being a play finisher.

Amari Allen’s Processing

My biggest hesitancy with regards to projecting Allen into a larger offensive role is that his processing on offense is quite inconsistent. I take Synergy percentiles with a pinch of salt largely because they can be mistracked and only include actions where the player ended up shooting or turning the ball over, when there are realistically more than those outcomes.

However, one that really stood out to me was that Amari Allen is in the 14th percentile as a PNR Ball Handler when the ‘defense commits’. From watching every one of these clips, I concluded that it means when the handler and the roller are both accounted for by one defender. This particular playlist does include plays where he passes, so it’s not entirely on him, and Alabama doesn’t really have the most athletic center room.

He can often make very scripted reads that lead to turnovers.

Alabama runs Ram 77 Empty Exit, a nasty play that is almost guaranteed to lead to a good shot.

Allen doesn’t show much comfort despite basically having every option available to him. He has the opportunity to shoot himself, hit the roll man, or even make a quick dump-off pass to the three-point shooter. He instead stares down the roll man, and Krivas gets the steal. This admittedly is a very good Arizona team, but it was incredibly obvious where Allen wanted to go with the ball.

Here’s a similar example below against Mississippi State.

They run a PNR with a wide ball screen on the weak side, admittedly one that isn’t perfectly set, but it’s enough to occupy everyone. Allen gets into the lane but misses his window to Taylor Bol Bowen, which allows the defense time to recover. He also goes for a jump pass, but there wasn’t anything on the weak side to sell, so it just telegraphed where he wanted to go.

Let’s watch below:

For anyone who read my Javon Small piece last year, you’ll note that I quoted Jake Rosen, who said that a good way to spot a faulty processor is to watch how often they stare down the first reads as opposed to reacting to what they’re seeing. Here’s a good example. Bama runs a simple high PNR. The corner man tags aggressively, which gives Allen a clear window to skip to the corner. Instead, he missed it, and ended up picking up his dribble and turning it over. Sometimes you only get one window. Elite creators can open more windows, but most can’t.

Allen’s handle isn’t outright bad, but there are times it can slow his processing a little. Think of it like sometimes you think of things before your body can actually execute them. This play is a good example.

Allen misses Bol Bowen on the roll, then misses him again when he tries to go left. He ends up getting stuck in no man’s land and tries to hit a backdoor cut to a player who is out of bounds. Sure, the off-ball Bama players don’t cover themselves in glory, but he also can dribble himself into these spots sometimes where it becomes a lot more difficult. If you miss windows, it’s sometimes hard to get them re-opened.

Sometimes the problems are caused by the fact that because Allen doesn’t consistently separate at the top of his drives, the reads are murkier, as defenders will play closer to their off-ball assignments if they know their teammate has it. But he does also just miss reads and sometimes struggles to move through possessions in PNR. I do not project him to be much of a PNR threat as of now, he’s better in more ancillary play-types.

I am not meaning to hold Amari Allen to the standard of a primary. I more just want to challenge the notion of someone being a ‘pass, drive and shoot’ player as I feel it’s an overused description of players. He’s capable of driving, I just don’t quite know how good the processing is, and it’s notably at its worst in PNR situations. This largely matters if someone is going to be a drive-heavy player, which many project Allen as.

Defense

To say Alabama has struggled defensively would be quite the understatement. They lack rim deterrence and have taken some big scorelines this season. Despite this, Amari Allen has been relatively solid. He’s above 2 percent for block and steal rates, which is a good summary about how I feel about him as a defender currently. I don’t believe he’s elite, but he is very positionally solid. I would feel comfortable saying I’ve barely seen him get beaten off-ball. On a team with the defensive lows Alabama can have, this is notable.

Allen is positionally sound, and his best plays have come as a nail helper or as a low-man, such as below:

Clemson runs Delay Chicago: a staple yet very effective play. Allen keeps his eye on the driving guard despite his man clearing for 3, and when he crosses over, Allen instantly shifts to come up with an incredible block. He gets good verticality generally and doesn’t seem to have much trouble with his timing. Below is possibly my favourite defensive play of the cycle.

Amari Allen is initially the low man and flies out to contest Meleek Thomas. Thomas sidesteps him, but in basically the same motion, Allen jumps from a standstill and blocks Thomas’ shot with his right hand. The verticality is genuinely very impressive. He strikes me as the type of defender who would really thrive in a Tom Thibodeau-style defensive scheme where he’s being aggressive at the nail and then jumping out to shooters on the weak side.

As a scheme-driven defender, I think he can be a really good player for an NBA team. He’s strong and genuinely did well in quite a tough defensive context. The steal and block numbers being decent rather than elite kind of match up to what I’ve watched on film. He’s positionally sound and doesn’t chase stuff, and gets his actions by doing his job.

The only real issue I found with him defensively is that he’s a little bit worse at the point of action than you’d want. He can be caught off guard by screens quite often; it’s a definite pattern.

Auburn runs an angled Spain PNR to an empty side. It’s a difficult play to stop, but just focus on Allen here. He’s completely blindsided by the screen because he’s not playing with his head on a swivel. The reason I can be lenient on defense is that I do believe it’s a team sport, and that’s often misunderstood in individual analysis. But Allen did have plenty of plays like this where he was so hyper-focused on his man that a screen completely blindsided him. Most modern NBA Defenses don’t want to give up any kind of middle penetration, so it’s an issue to iron out, even if it is really the only issue I have with his defense.

Here’s a similar example against Auburn.

Auburn runs a pick-and-roll from the slot. Allen is guarding Pettiford, which isn’t an easy task for anyone, but particularly wings, as Pettiford is so crafty at the top of his drives. Allen again doesn’t have much awareness of the fact that he is about to be screened, which gives Pettiford an easy route downhill. Once you have a 4-on-3 with someone of Pettiford’s craft on the ball, it is largely over. Bama does well to delay him, but eventually the player guarded by the nail helper scores an easy one at the rim.

Overall, don’t take this as nitpicking. I just want to create a full picture. Allen is a good defender. I don’t know if I see an All-NBA type ceiling, but I’d expect him to be comfortably above average. He’s strong, has good instincts, and has good timing, which meshes well with his ability to get vertical very quickly. The point-of-action defense is a concern I have, but it might not be something that’s tested all that often. As a helper, he will be NBA-level from day one.

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, Amari Allen is probably the most interesting player I’ve watched so far. When you browse Draft Twitter or even places like Reddit and Discord, you’ll find a lot of takes and quick-fire slogans about players. I mentioned some, such as ‘pass drive and shoot wing’ and ‘ambidextrous slasher’, which I saw. There is some truth in these, but I always aspire to go deeper with my analysis where I can.

My ultimate take is that I have concerns about what the offensive role looks like at the next level, from an upside perspective. As of now, the top of his drives are quite underdeveloped, even if there are some nice east-west flashes. I will, however, note that NBA offense isn’t 4 people taking turns to drive from standstill positions. But it’s fair to question the offensive role when the shooting and rim numbers are only ‘good,’ and he’s yet to show a tonne in the half-court outside of ‘flashes’. Being a top-end creator, even as a third option, does require some form of standout skill, and I don’t know what Allen’s is yet.

He will likely be good at the ancillary stuff as he can rebound, hit spot-up threes, and has good feel as a screener. Guard screening is definitely becoming more viable and important with the rise of 5-slot and inverted offenses in the modern NBA, but it’s also fair to say the floor for being good offensively seems to get higher every year.

What I keep coming back to long-term is that his profile is well-rounded, and that seems to matter. I’m nowhere near the Bart Querier of someone such as Avi or Finn, but I will post this one that I checked was ethical.

He can do a lot of things quite well. It’s not unreasonable to believe that he may sharpen one of these tools. Nate Oats believes he has another level to show as an offensive player. But as of now I don’t quite know what the standout trait or standout skill is. If he declares, the day-one uses to a team would be his defense and his rebounding with a bit of spot-up shooting mixed in. I just worry about him as a ‘pre-draft’ candidate, given the driving has quite a way to go.

When scouting, I often come up with a few hypotheticals for the player I’m scouting, ones I deem to be important to the overall process. Revisiting my earlier point about him possibly being a play finisher, this is the hypothetical I keep coming back to.

• Is any of the shooting profile good enough to really be a play finisher at the next level?

The shooting is solid, the layup percentage is alright, and he may have an in-between game when not playing for Nate Oats. But none are truly elite right now. I’d say the banker for serious improvement comes down to his driving game developing quite significantly, which is why I’m hoping he returns to Alabama. I just don’t know how much hope I’d put on this. I also think it’s fair to say that even if the first steps become more crisp, the handle might limit him, as he does need to pick up his dribble quite often. He is powerful, but the 2-point scoring issues go all the way back to his AAU Days. I’m likely of the opinion that the efficiency isn’t there right now for me to draft him at consensus if he declares this year.

Overall, I’d say Allen is a high-floor player who, if he declares, I’d rank somewhere between 22 and 28. I don’t have a board yet, but I think the defense could be quite impactful, and he does have room to grow. But the thing I keep coming back to is, where do you get with the offense. I can’t be out on him as the metrics are good, and his good games are also impressive. If he returns, he’s someone I’m watching for next season.

The post Understanding Amari Allen appeared first on Swish Theory.

I love it when a trade comes out of nowhere and rocks our socks off. Two days before the deadline, the Utah Jazz stunned the world by swinging a trade for Memphis Grizzlies forward Jaren Jackson Jr. Hey, NBA insiders, what is the point of you existing if we got no wind of this?

The Jazz are a fascinating case in small-market team building as it relates to my own team-building philosophies. Allow me to explain why I think this trade was very short-sighted and potentially disastrous for the Jazz.

Addressing the Talent Deficit

The NBA has always been a league of the haves and the have-nots. If you have the superstar talent, you are in the mix. If you don’t have it, you spend your time searching for that talent. The Jazz learned the hard way that having stars, but not superstars, does not win you titles. Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert were a great tandem that led to a lot of regular-season success, but always came up wanting against teams with better top-end talent. That’s how we got here in the first place.

Utah has taken up a different tack since Danny Ainge came into town. Soon after his arrival in December 2021, Ainge shipped Mitchell and Gobert out of town for 11 combined picks and pick swaps. It was an admission of failure for that era of the team, and the acceptance of a stark reality: a huge volume of draft picks and a lengthy tank is the only way to get blue-chip talent in Salt Lake City.

Luxuries afforded to other teams are not afforded to the Jazz. Teams like the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, and Warriors can fall back-asswards into star talent. Free agency is largely dead anyway, and no franchise-altering star is forcing their way to Utah via trade. So you can either pay a king’s ransom in a trade to get that talent, or you can hope the lottery balls bounce your way.

Last year was their best shot. Utah’s tank was successful, bottoming out with a 17-65 record that landed them the top odds for the No. 1 pick. Still, there was only a 14% chance of landing Cooper Flagg, a slam-dunk franchise-altering talent. Instead, they were bumped down to five, taking Ace Bailey. Womp womp. So it goes with the tank.

This year was another prime opportunity to tank into that blue-chip talent. Darryn Peterson, Cam Boozer, and AJ Dybantsa all have the look of franchise players. Odds are good that if you secure a spot in the top four, you’re coming away with a top-tier prospect, something the Jazz have not had in a decade. Until Tuesday, things were on track; Utah was sixth in lottery odds before the Jackson Jr. deal, with a 37.2% chance of a top four pick and 9% chance of the top selection. Not bad odds of changing your franchise forever.

Then the trade happened. And the evaluation changed completely.

The Sin of Gambling

Here’s why the Jazz are in such a precarious position after the trade. Utah is at the back end of the real tankers behind Sacramento, New Orleans, Indiana, Brooklyn, and Washington. All six of these teams will be racing to the bottom. But there are more contestants in this tank battle, and Utah just gave one of them an admission ticket. Here’s what the tank race looked like at the time of the trade:

At best, the five teams in front of the Jazz are standing pat, if not selling off more pieces. That makes it difficult to pass them in the standings, even if you lock JJJ in a closet for the rest of the season alongside Lauri Markkanen. You also have to look at the teams behind them.

The Bucks are actively shopping Giannis, and even if he doesn’t move, he’s going to be out injured and not motivated to return anytime soon. The Mavericks are in the same boat with AD and have other pieces to sell off. Then you have the Grizzlies, who just shed their most valuable player and seem likely to move more, possibly Ja Morant. All three of these teams got the memo: it’s over for us. Let’s hope the lottery gods bless us as we look to the future.

But the Jazz apparently missed the memo. Their chances of tanking into top-level talent worsened because of the players they acquired, and they also helped a team behind them tank. To me, that is a disastrous risk; making it 1% less likely that you get Darryn Peterson is catastrophic, even if your current chance of getting him is only 9%.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Jazz have protections on this year’s pick. If it falls outside the top eight, it goes to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Sam Presti, you dirty dog. Sitting at sixth in the odds means the Jazz only have a 3.8% chance of losing the pick. Seventh, that rises to 14.2%. Eighth, and you’re up to 39.2%. Tumble to ninth, and there’s a 79.7% chance it’s gone. The margins sure are thin.

There is an argument to be made that a boom-bust approach to this pick has merit. But look at this Jazz roster and the draft picks that have been worth keeping. Keyonte George and Walker Kessler, arguably their two best rookie-scale building blocks, were taken outside of the lottery. Kyle Filipowski was a high second-rounder. Isaiah Collier was late first. Jury is still out on Ace Bailey, but without question, the majority of the talent they’ve had worth keeping is outside of the top eight picks. Losing this pick to the Thunder would be a huge blow to the rebuild.

That is a smaller concern because the math still favors Utah, though less so than before the trade. The bigger draft concern for me is the 2027 first-round pick. The most favorable of Utah, Minnesota, and Cleveland’s first-round picks are going to Memphis. Now the Jazz have 1.5 seasons to turn it around, or else a primo draft pick is going out the door. And that’s assuming that they are worse than Minnesota and Cleveland. Jaren certainly improves their outlook (more on that soon), but it’s a big gamble that they can ascend after two straight abysmal seasons.

This is the gamble that Danny Ainge is making. He’s willing to harm his chances in this current lottery while punting on his best 2027 draft pick; those are two significant opportunities to get a blue-chip player that changes the franchise. And he did it all for a player I’m not convinced is all that transformative.

Where Is The Ceiling?

As discussed at the beginning, the Jazz got here by moving on from a core that was good, but not good enough. I’m willing to bet that this new core they’re working on is more of the same.

On paper, I like their emphasis on size. Walker Kessler, when healthy, is a tremendous interior defender and rebounder. JJJ and Lauri both provide floor spacing, secondary rim protection, and good rotational defense. Kessler and Markkanen, being plus positional rebounders, cover up for Jackson Jr.’s well-documented weakness on the glass. When on the floor together, I like that trio.

It also fits well with Keyonte George, who has been the breakout star for the Jazz at a time when they desperately need one. He’s shown himself to be an electric perimeter scorer who can shoulder a heavy usage burden. Keyonte can stir the drink enough for Jaren and Lauri, while that massive frontcourt trio covers for him defensively.

Theoretically, that big frontcourt trio, plus Keyonte and Ace Bailey, can work together on the floor. Hell, maybe it’s good enough to get them out from the bottom of the West. But where is the upside here?

If the Jazz luck into Darryn Peterson, all is forgiven. He’s got superstar perimeter creator written all over him, and would fit well at the two guard with that lineup. But that’s not something you can rely on. Assuming the Jazz don’t get one of the top picks (or lose the pick outright), the path to climbing out of the cellar is tough.

Utah has to fix a defense that has ranked in the bottom two in defensive rating for the last three seasons. JJJ and Kessler are a great step towards fixing that, but with so many perimeter players that cannot defend, it’s a tall task just to become average. You also need to take further offensive steps, which should be easier with Keyonte’s breakout and the great offensive mind of head coach Will Hardy.

There is an avenue for this team to become passable at both ends of the floor. JJJ does make a lot of their pieces click on both ends in theory. But passable doesn’t win playoff series, let alone get you to the mountaintop. That’s why the Jazz still need to be chasing superstars. And that gets awfully difficult when you look at the timeline here.

Utah will lock up Walker Kessler (RFA) and Keyonte George (rookie extension eligible) this offseason, locking in their core players for at least three seasons. That is a huge plus. After you take care of that, it’s time to win. Ask the New Orleans Pelicans about the dangers of shortening your rebuild. I’m not sure if you have looked at the Western Conference recently, but things are awfully tough out there.

A lot of the teams in the mix this year aren’t going anywhere. The Thunder, Spurs, and Nuggets will contend as long as they have their respective superstars. Both the Timberwolves and Lakers have flaws, but they have the superstars who deliver when it’s winning time. Houston has an aging superstar flanked by excellent young talent and a hoard of picks to trade. From there, things get murkier; the Clippers and Warriors are fading, but not dead yet. Phoenix and Portland have star talent and a rising cast of role players. Realistically, how far can the Jazz climb into this picture? My money is on a play-in ceiling for next year’s team, at best.

Chances are good that they’re forking over a lottery pick next year. That’s another chance at blue-chip talent gone through the draft. They will have other picks down the road, but that’s another tricky proposition.

If you’re good enough to make the playoffs in 2028, then the window for a high draft pick is gone. Then you’re reliant on later draft hits, which they have managed before, but it’s a low percentage gamble. Adding superstar talent through the draft is all but eliminated. That leaves only one other realistic avenue.

War Chest: Emptied

So many of the draft picks the Jazz had are gone now. They had four surplus first-round picks remaining before the JJJ trade; now they only have one. That pick falls in 2029 and is either a Minnesota or Cleveland pick. Ainge consolidated three lesser firsts to get a 2031 Phoenix unprotected first, then shipped it to Memphis in this deal. That was arguably their most prized asset remaining.

Let’s say a superstar that fits Utah’s timeline becomes available. As we’ve seen recently, nothing is off the table. The Jazz could have hoarded their picks and attempted to blow the doors off someone this offseason by being able to trade up to eight first-round picks, plus swaps. That’s a war chest few can match. After the JJJ trade, that dangling carrot is gone. They’re down to five picks, most of which are their own.

Don’t get me wrong, this Jazz team is vastly better now than it was yesterday. But to make serious noise, they need the guy. The draft avenues to getting that guy have decreased, and the trade avenues have decreased as well. It feels like the Jazz have painted themselves into a corner.

Time Is A Flat Circle

Jazz fans certainly have fond memories of the Mitchell-Gobert days. They cleaned up in the regular season, made the playoffs for six straight years, and brought a level of consistent excitement that was desperately needed in Utah. At the same time, they only won three playoff series in those six years and failed to get through to the Conference Finals. The West was as it always is: a murderer’s row of superstars and contending teams.

It seems that the Jazz yearn for that once again. The lottery balls haven’t fallen their way so far, and they’re tired of this intentional losing. So it’s time to assemble a handful of second-rate stars and become competitive with contention out of reach.

That’s not the worst thing ever. There’s no shame in staying competitive, but it does place a hard ceiling on your team. I’ve written before about why the Jazz are not going about their teardown in the right way; now I see them giving up on the rebuild early and settling for mediocrity. If that’s your thing, cool. But it’s not how I would go about turning a small-market team into a contender.

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1. Cameron Boozer, Duke

2. Darryn Peterson, Kansas

3. AJ Dybantsa, BYU

4. Caleb Wilson, North Carolina

5. Kingston Flemings, Houston

6. Patrick Ngongba II, Duke

7. Tyler Tanner, Vanderbilt

When Swish Theory’s Big Board 1.0 dropped on December 2nd, we ranked Tyler Tanner 33rd when no other major outlet had him ranked in the top 60. Naturally, with his meteoric rise over the past month and a half that now has him in some outlets’ top 40, he’s similarly skyrocketed up our board as well.

The first criticism of a Tanner at 7 ranking would be his measly 6-foot height… but how much does that mean when he’s dunking, finishing, rebounding, and blocking shots against SEC competition at the rate of a 6-foot-4 guard? Once you go beyond his height, you find a lead guard prospect with a blend of feel and physicality on par with the greatest guard prospects in NCAA history, who’s applied this blend towards outlier scoring development without sacrificing ancillary production. With this newfound scoring prowess further opening passing windows that he’s capitalized on, the young-for-class sophomore is now the engine of a 7th-best Vanderbilt offense while also maintaining strong defense. Boasting an incredibly well-rounded profile, the question should not be “why Tyler Tanner top 10,” but “why not Tyler Tanner top 10.”

Maurya Kumpatla

8. Yaxel Lendeborg, Michigan

Yaxel Lendeborg continues to fly up draft boards as he dominates college basketball. His BPM is off the charts, and what makes his game special is the dynamic, all-around feel he brings on both ends of the floor. How many potential defensive anchors can dribble, pass, shoot, and attack as well as Lendeborg? With good-to-great attributes as a scorer, shooter, passer, rebounder, shot-swatter, and ball-stealer via Cerebro, that all-around skillset laid on top of a potentially elite and versatile defensive foundation provides a realistic path to a super high two-way potential ceiling and offers a very high floor as a high-end NBA rotation player.

Ryan Kaminski

9. Jayden Quaintance, Kentucky

10. Joshua Jefferson, Iowa State

After some unusual (for him) struggles mid-January, Joshua Jefferson returned to form with one of the most productive prospect games of the cycle: 17 points, 12 assists (0 turnovers), 10 rebounds (4 offensive), 4 steals, 1 block. How many prospects this class could do that, or in any class? Jefferson is listed at 6’9” and is highly skilled for a 240-pound player. While outside shooting is a weakness, he has still managed an acceptable 36% on 53 threes attempted this season. But you’re drafting Jefferson for his unique intersection of passing (5.3 assists per game, 2.1 ATO), rebounding (7.0 per game), and defensive playmaking (1.6 steals, 1.0 blocks per game). All signs point towards Jefferson being one of the highest feel players in class, which, when mixed with productivity and good NBA size, has a high hit rate of working out. With a major, versatile two-way burden on a top 20 NCAA offense and defense, Jefferson can take on all kinds of roles at the next level.

Matt Powers

11. Dailyn Swain, Texas

12. Bennett Stirtz, Iowa

13. Labaron Philon, Alabama

14. Koa Peat, Arizona

15. Hannes Steinbach, Washington

16. Aday Mara, Michigan

17. Malachi Moreno, Kentucky

18. Mikel Brown Jr., Louisville

19. Christian Anderson, Texas Tech

20. Darius Acuff, Arkansas

6’2 Arkansas guard Darius Acuff has quickly become one of the more polarizing draft prospects in this year’s draft. In a class featuring impressive depth at the guard spot, Acuff has managed to stand out by shouldering one of the highest offensive burdens of any high major freshman in recent memory. Currently, Darius Acuff is sporting a 45.3 Offensive Load, which is in the 80th percentile of all draft prospects since 2008. Acuff’s prioritization of the Arkansas offense has not been unwarranted, with Arkansas’ offense sitting 7th in the country in adjusted offensive rating, per Bart Torvik. Despite Acuff having a suboptimal scoring process (38% three point attempt rate would be in the 25th percentile for all guards since 2008), he’s managed to lead a prolific offense by avoiding mistakes (2.9 assist-to-turnover ratio) and pushing the pace to allow Arkansas’ supporting cast to capitalize on their open-court athleticism. Acuff is not without his flaws, though: his lack of defensive contributions has been a major limiting factor for Arkansas’ title aspirations. Versus teams ranked in the top 150, Arkansas’ defense is 13.1 points per 100 possessions BETTER without Acuff on the floor (101 possessions). Acuff’s effort and cognizance on the defensive side of the floor leave much to be desired at the moment. However, with Acuff possessing a strong 195-pound frame and a reported 6’7 wingspan, he has the physical tools to be a potential positive and transcend the roster limitations his archetype typically imposes. Ultimately, while I am skeptical Acuff will return value commensurate with his presumed draft position, there are indicators that he may be the exception to the rule when it comes to small, ball-dominant guards.

Ahmed Jama

21. Keaton Wagler, Illinois

Keaton Wagler has been the revelation of the freshman class. The 150th-ranked high school recruit quickly established himself as the best player on an Illinois team ranked seventh in the country by KenPom and is building a case as one of the top guards in the draft. At 6’6”, Wagler has the ideal size and offensive skillset for a two guard as an efficient, high-volume sniper with passing chops. The 18-year-old also pulls down an impressive 7 rebounds per 40 minutes, an underrated statistical indicator for guard prospects. I understand being skeptical due to weak or non-existent priors, but nearly 500 minutes into his freshman season, I think it can be safely said that Keaton Wagler is a baller.

Big Wafe

22. Karim Lopez, New Zealand

23. Daniel Jacobsen, Purdue

Daniel Jacobsen is a productive sophomore center for Purdue, listed at 7’4 and 250 pounds. This all but assures that he will play in the NBA at some point, as just two NBA players this season were listed above 7’3: Zach Edey and Victor Wembanyama. 

While he appears skinny and doesn’t play a high proportion of minutes, the argument to draft Jacobsen this year simply stems from his uniquely high likelihood of playing NBA minutes. It can be construed as an argument of scarcity: without major flaws with his touch, rebounding, or shotblocking, Jacobsen immediately has plug-and-play value in the NBA. Sure, he’s clearly raw, but most drafted underclassmen are. The difficulty in correctly identifying long-term professional players with any non-premium draft pick must be considered.

Avinash Chauhan

24. Álvaro Folgueiras, Iowa

25. Tounde Yessoufou, Baylor

26. Thomas Haugh, Florida

27. Motiejus Krivas, Arizona

28. Nate Ament, Tennessee

29. Meleek Thomas, Arkansas

30. Brayden Burries, Arizona

31. Cameron Carr, Baylor

32. Braylon Mullins, UConn

33. Paul McNeil, NC State

34. Bruce Thornton, Ohio State

35. JoJo Tugler, Houston

36. Kayden Mingo, Penn State

37. Elyjah Freeman, Auburn

38. Anthony Robinson II, Missouri

39. Amari Allen, Alabama

40. Henri Veesaar, North Carolina

41. Tamin Lipsey, Iowa State

Tamin Lipsey is a strange prospect by most measures – he’s old-ish, not a great scorer, nor does he have a phenomenal free-throw rate. Still, an early second-round grade seems like great value for a player who has a monstrous 5.6 A/TO ratio and a high steal percentage. Both are great signals of cognition, and both indicate that he creates/maintains new possessions, which is an increasingly valuable trait in a game where players and teams win on the margins. Of course, the low 3P/100 rate is scary, but he’s a good finisher at the rim (even if he’s down from last season). In combination with his physicality and cognition, he seems like a great value bet to be at least a rotation guard one day.

Joseph George

42. Morez Johnson Jr., Michigan

Johnson came in at 23 on my personal board, and he’s been steadily rising throughout the season. The thesis for Morez being high on my board is the simple paradigm of age-adjusted production and impact. 

The eye test reveals archetype problems that Morez needs to solve. At 6’9, he’s undersized for a big, and his perimeter skill set doesn’t appear up to snuff for a wing or forward in the NBA right now. The good news is this: Morez’s interior dominance is NBA caliber, as he’s shooting 76.4% at the rim. His rebounding numbers are down from last year. But, he put up a whopping 17.3 ORB% and 22.5 DRB% as a true center at Illinois. He’s shown enough to suggest he can hang physically in the pros. Additionally, he’s taken a jump in assist rate, steal rate, and free-throw shooting. Morez wouldn’t have an NBA-caliber perimeter skill set upon entering the league. But this rate of improvement in his touch and cognition suggests some upside for him to get there.

It would be easy to dismiss him as a Michigan merchant, given the number of great players around him. But Morez’s impact seems to outshine that of his frontcourt teammate Aday Mara. BartTorvik has Morez at a 12.6 BPM compared to Mara’s 10.1, while Hoop-Explorer has Morez with a +11.2 RAPM compared to Mara’s +7.7. I thought I preferred Mara to Morez when I formed my board, but all evidence points to more good things happening on the court as a result of Morez Johnson. He’s not a mere passenger on the Michigan train this year; he’s a co-conductor along with Yaxel Lendeborg. This is a fascinating player and prospect that deserves top 20 consideration in the 2026 draft.

Michael Neff

43. Ebuka Okorie, Stanford

44. Neoklis Avdalas, Virginia Tech

45. Killyan Toure, Iowa State

46. Zvonimir Ivisic, Arkansas

47. Isaiah Evans, Duke

48. Flory Bidunga, Kansas

49. Braden Smith, Purdue

50. Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Tennessee

51. JT Toppin, Texas Tech

52. Nolan Winter, Wisconsin

53. Nate Bittle, Oregon

54. Jalen Washington, Vanderbilt

55. Matt Able, NC State

56. Chris Cenac Jr., Houston

57. Darrion Williams, NC State

58. Acaden Lewis, Villanova

59. Richie Saunders, BYU

60. Mario Saint-Supery, Gonzaga

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