While many consensus boards have ranked Joan Beringer consistently high throughout the cycle, Draft Twitter has been far more conservative with its placement. Two weeks ago, you’d be hard-pressed to find many DT boards with Beringer in the first round.

Then, his measurements were released. Beringer measured 6’11 barefoot with a 7’4.5 wingspan and a 9’3 standing reach. He weighed in at 235 pounds.

Immediately, the hype train started. There’s a segment of Draft Twitter that is fairly anti-measurements, with the belief that raw measurements are not nearly as important as the application of those measurements. One should be able to decipher the functionality of these measurements (and perhaps even be able to approximate said measurements) from the tape. 

While I generally disagree with this frame of evaluation, I do find myself hesitant of the Beringer hype train. He has some impressive traits, but he’s a fairly boring mold with limited true upside. How much do these measurements meaningfully change his upside proposition?

For over a year, I had assumed Beringer to be 6’10 + 7’3 WS, as his NBADraft.net profile stated, so hitting 7 feet in shoes and getting over the 7’4 threshold (see my study on WS threshold for centers) was definitely compelling. I first came across Beringer prior to the season during a deep dive on 2024 LNB Espoirs stats. For context, Espoirs is the youth French league, and the average age is probably 19 or 20 years old. Most draftniks consider Espoirs to be an extremely weak league, and if a prospect is not dominating the league at 17/18, it’s probably over for them NBA-wise.

While this method may be highly conducive to false positives (it’s not actually clear if any former Espoirs alumni are actually productive currently), Beringer certainly dominated Espoirs as a 17 year old. He was 4th in block rate (6.8%), 9th in PER (23.8), 11th in TS% (65%), and 2nd in total rebound rate (17.5% OREB + 26.5% DREB!!). The downside is that he was solely a low usage playfinisher, with just a 17% usage rate, no 3P volume whatsoever, and a horrid 44% on FTs.

While Beringer’s dominance is notable, I’m wary of that low usage. Considering you really need to be blowing up Espoirs as a 17 year old playing similarly aged competition, I would think that Beringer’s low usage is unfavorable to his chances of eventually scaling up in the league.

Indeed, Beringer followed up last season’s Espoir’s low usage play-finishing dominance with another dominant season, this time for Cedevita Olimpija of Liga ABA (former league of Nikola Jokic/Jovic/Djurisic/Topic). His stocks and TS% remained high, while his rebounding slightly dropped. Notably, he rose from 0.5 A:TO and 44% FT to 0.7 A:TO and 56% FT. 

Here’s the dilemma: Beringer wasn’t quite as dominant as previous successful iterations of this mold, but he’s far younger. Let’s do some analysis:

Overly reductive analysis alert: I took the scoring, stocks, passing, rebounding, and PER of some notable international bigs, and I counted up the stats that ranked top 3 amongst this group. The final column denotes the number of “top 3” edges for each player. For instance, Beringer has one of the 3 highest block rates, so that counts as an edge. On the contrary, warts are values that are one of the three lowest in a given column. Beringer had one of the three lowest usages here, so that counts as a wart.

Jusuf Nurkic, Clint Capela, Goga Bitadze, and Bismack Biyombo had so many unique edges, particularly Nurkic. Gortat, Rocco, and Gobert had a number of major warts. In particular, Gortat, Nnaji, and Rocco all had the 3 lowest marks in blocks, steals, and rebounding. They are easily the 3 weakest prospects here. 

I am impressed with Beringer. He does not stick out too much (although third-lowest PER is somewhat problematic), nor does he have outlier warts. He has just as many edges as warts, and he has the highest number of median traits (lowest edge+wart aggregate). In other words, Beringer has some high-value edges (youngest, best block rate, best A:TO) while also staying in line with the group for many other traits. In terms of prospect value, he is not as far off from Capela as I expected, and he’s similar to Bismack. Gobert doesn’t do super well by this analysis, but his combination of length and 2P% is such a ceiling raiser. Rocco, on the other hand, is likely a solidly worse prospect than Beringer, as he put up these numbers in the far worse NBL.

The most notable aspect of Beringer’s game is how fluidly he moves for his size. Despite being listed as similar dimensions to Capela, Beringer is agile and is able to leap off either foot on contests. It appears that he will be able to play a number of coverages, as he’s already playing all over the floor. A common defensive play looks like this: Beringer is around the nail, he stunts at the BH, and he can seamlessly recover back to the roller and pin the shot attempt on the glass. He’s able to contest with either hand, which is interesting because he solely finishes with his right hand. He’s not entirely disciplined however: he averages nearly 5 fouls per 40, and sometimes he’s overzealous that he abandons his man in pursuit of the block, leaving the putback completely open.

Beringer’s coverage-versatile defense and gaudy block/reasonably good steal numbers indicate a pretty high defensive floor. I like using passing as a proxy for potential feel improvements (see the legion of elite passing wings who dominate on D), and while Beringer is a non-passer with limited usage, his rising A:TO with steals is compelling. I cannot emphasize enough that he really needs to be more disciplined (6 blocks per 10 fouls).

Ultimately, the pitch with Beringer is truly just a reliable lob threat with All-Defense potential. I do not see much room for offensive development beyond elite finishing/lobs, considering he was a low-usage/low pass volume big in a league of teenagers. He is the third youngest prospect in the class, so perhaps it’s more possible. Stretch potential seems very very far away, as he does not take 3s and has a career FT% mark around 50%. If you’re drafting this guy to be the next Giannis, you will probably be disappointed.

Still, Beringer is super young, does not have any real red flags, and has good size, feel, and athleticism compared to the playfinishing/non-shooter 5 niche. He’s of a boring mold with few red flags, but oftentimes I tend to prefer that type of prospect versus a risk-maxed home run swing.

Avinash Chauhan