The pitch with Rasheer Fleming is simple: he is a wing with center-length, switchability, and legit three-point volume. The list of NBA prospects who took 7 threes per 100 possessions with a 7’5 WS is exactly two: Jaren Jackson Jr. and Rasheer Fleming. 

Rasheer’s measurements are important, with a shoeless height of 6’8.25 and massive 7’5.25 WS, good for a 9’1 SR. These are massive numbers for a non-center. For context, above is a list of every single non-center (removed all Cs or PF-C’s) with a wingspan over 7’2. Rasheer has the second highest WS, behind Lee Scruggs (undrafted, did not play an NBA minute) and half an inch ahead of Kevin Durant. Effectively, Rasheer is the longest non-center (and thus the longest SF) we have ever seen. Of these NBA players, only KD and Eddie Griffin put up more career 3PA/40 in their college season.

Rasheer’s shot diet is Daryl Morey’s dream. Rasheer is basically center sized and takes 92% of his shots at the rim or from 3. From my numbers, there has never been a prospect with this extreme of a shot diet; his diet of 40 rim:nonrim2 versus t75 comp is by FAR the most extreme rim-heavy diet of any prospect.

Rasheer is also a legit defender. He was impactful forcing defensive turnovers, as St. Joseph’s forced 4% fewer dTOVs with Rasheer off (I would estimate this would be at least an 80th percentile+ differential amongst all players). He was a career 6% block + 2% steal on a St. Joseph’s team that suppressed steals. 

Rasheer’s overall impact was strongly positive. By Hoop-Explorer’s real-OnOff, Rasheer was +9.3, by far the best on his team, and much of that was from offensive on/off. St. Joseph’s was far better with Rasheer playing, with +13.7 offensive rating swing, far better shooting (+ 5% eFG%), fewer TOs (-2.4% TO), and way more rim attempts (+5.7 rim freq) when Rasheer was on the floor vs off.

Furthermore, Rasheer is pretty young for his class. Born on July 10, 2004, Rasheer won’t even be 21 on draft day- he is fairly close to the average age of a sophomore. He’s improved rapidly each year- he was an unranked prospect who played for the EYBL circuit’s NJ Scholars team alongside a bevy of 5 stars: DJ Wagner, Mackenzie Mgbako, Aaron Bradshaw. His final year of AAU, he shot 14% from 3 on just 11 3PR and 30% TS overall. Statistically, he was by far the worst player on that team. Now, just a few years later, Rasheer will be the first and potentially the highest drafted player from that star-studded team. Youth, size, and positive developmental momentum are important indicators of continued outlier development.

So to be clear, this is basically a center-sized forward with strong 3P volume, immense offensive impact, and positive effect on forcing defensive TOs with a healthy block rate. He’s made rapid improvements over the last 3 years. He appears to be Darryl Morey’s dream player. What’s not to like? This seems like an easy wing bet with legit upside. But Rasheer’s positionality appears to be in flux for a number of reasons, and I’m unsure about his legit upside.

At first glance, these all seem to be heavy positives. This seems like an easy wing bet with legit upside. But Rasheer’s positionality appears to be in flux for a number of reasons, and I’m unsure about his legit upside.

While Rasheer has been hyped as an uber-long wing prospect, I believe that he should primarily play the 5 in the NBA. Go back to the first table, where I sorted the 7’2+ WS players by assist+steals. Rasheer’s assist and steal rates are not consistent with NBA caliber wings, specifically that assist rate. His career 6.8% assist rate is quite center-like.

Furthermore, Rasheer’s Moreyball shot diet is amusing but it’s indicative of limited offensive upside. We have barely seen any center prospect with this extent of an aggressive rim-heavy diet, let alone wings. The reality is that Rasheer has absolutely no mid-range counter. He took ~ 0.6 long 2s/game across 3 years, shooting just 30% on these non-rim 2s. But a closer look at these “long 2s” indicates that nearly all of them were hooks. Rasheer took 4 total dribble jumper 2s this year, and he made none of them. He took just 16 hooks, making 6 of them (4.5% frequency). 4.5% hook frequency is pretty low for true bigs, as it’s a common counter out of postups. Bigs who don’t take that many hooks aren’t as comfortable with their touch; scoring out of that short-intermediate area is just as important as finishing at the rim, and it’s unclear whether Rasheer will even come close to progressing a viable face-up game.

Zero midrange counter is consistent with Rasheer’s lack of general ball skills and lack of passing. Rasheer had a reasonable drive frequency (13%) for his size, but he could not score – he shot 37% on 2s out of drives, with an even worse 25% TO rate. He had just 5 total possessions in iso or as PnR BH; coupled with his driving inefficiencies, complete lack of passing, and highly unassisted, low volume midrange diet, Rasheer appears to be unable to play on-ball in even a micro-capacity in the league.

Moreover, it’s unclear how good a shooter Rasheer actually is. On one hand, his poor AAU priors can be viewed as evidence of impressive developmental momentum; alternatively, his lack of priors coupled with his generally poor touch indicators could mean that his gaudy shooting percentages are an overestimate of his shooting ability. 

Fleming shot 35% from 3P on 349 attempts across his career, but shot just 68% FT, a low percentage for any high-level shooter. A third of his threes were of the open C&S variety, and the other two-thirds were guarded C&S threes – he took no OTD threes. This was the first year with far more guarded than unguarded 3s. Many of his 3s look like this:

While I’ve seen Fleming skeptics point to his lack of midrange counter and middling FT indicators as evidence that he won’t shoot, I have a bit more trust in the 350 shot sample. It’s not as useful to rely on proxies when we have a reasonable 3PA sample. But there is certainly more variability in Fleming’s shot projection, and he appears to be a standstill C&S specialist at best. 

Fleming could probably guard smaller guys in spurts on defense, but he relies on his length to make up for vert and, to a lesser extent, his mediocre processing. While this clip showcases Fleming’s strong recovery tools, but it happened because Rasheer couldn’t get skinny with the screen and stick with the BH. This may be nitpicking, but there’s a high bar to consistently guard quick BHs in the NBA.

For these reasons, I view Fleming less as a wing and more as a small ball 5. The issue is that he has awkward dimensions for a 5; while his 7’5.25 WS is above average for the position, he is quite a bit shorter than your average center. Not that it matters too much, but there have only been 19 players with height under 6’9 and WS over 7’4, and none were high end impact players. It’s a list littered with power forwards, like Montrezl Harrell and Noah Vonleh, as well as some listed centers (Wendell Carter Jr and Zay Stewart).

Rasheer does not finish or draw fouls well enough to play the 5 either. 

He drew just 0.31 fouls per FGA, which is way on the lower end for a wing, let alone a center. Anything under 45 FTR is generally problematic for a center.  Part of this could be blamed on his 40 3PR, but as we recall, he takes no midrange shots, so his rim frequency is basically 60 percent. And, Rasheer was at 11 FTR in AAU, so it’s clear his contact aversion has been a persistent. 

Rasheer is a career 68.9% finisher at the rim, with 90 career dunks in 101 games. While < 1 dunk/game is somewhat low, it is not disqualifyingly low and can be explained away by usage. The real issue is Rasheer’s poor finishing rate for a center. While this is a great wing finishing rate, anything under 70% finishing is a historic red flag for centers. Sure, he’s not that far off, but career samples are fairly extensive, and 70% finishing is still way on the lower end for centers. While I recognize many of the thresholds I have stated here are seemingly arbitrary, the reality is that the history of centers who succeeded with 30 FTR or sub 70% finishing is pretty poor; in conjunction, it is exclusively populated by well-regarded busts.

Even if we raise the bar to 75% at the rim + 38 FTR (with the block rate/height to get real centers), the hit rate is pretty silly. Many of the “hits” (Santi/Vuc) were high volume long2 scorers (> 40%).

Rasheer should defend well. He can force dTOVs, he has a huge wingspan, and gets tons of stocks. He is also very quick for his size, and his combine speed testing was phenomenally good. 10.95 lane agility and 2.72 shuttle run, which ranked 8th and 2nd, respectively, amongst the non-guards at the Combine. The issue is that his vertical was pretty poor, with just a 32.5 max vert. This was surprisingly low; there are some clips (as the one before) that show him getting quite high off a standstill. But just as many clips exist depicting Rasheer’s poor vertical barring no load time, so his poor vertical explosion is likely a pertinent weakness nonetheless. I do not see Rasheer being a viable lob threat/cutter in the HC on volume, but perhaps a change of scenery could prove me wrong.

I don’t see much upside with Rasheer on offense if he doesn’t become a high-end shooter. This is possible, but 35% on 350 C&S attempts with unspectacular touch indicators makes this less likely.  He is a potentially special defender, but he doesn’t offer the rim protection, foul drawing, finishing, or height to be a high-end 5. His lack of midrange counter and passing is severely below average for a forward, let alone a junior (albeit a young junior). The glaring issue with Rasheer’s profile is that he does many things at a decent level, but there’s nothing notable; he shows up in bust queries like this because none of his feel/rate stats that is particularly above average for the position, besides rebounding.

It’s hard to ignore Rasheer’s immense length and 3PR, and there’s a reasonable chance he becomes a high-level defender. I’m disillusioned with his offensive outlook, particularly his inability to take midrange/drive/pass, but he could be permitted to push up the 3PR and sit in the corner/feed on the occasional assisted at-the-basket makes if his defense is good enough. 

It’s typically hard for me to bet on non-centers that don’t pass or draw fouls, but Rasheer could reasonably 3&D his way out of purgatory. Expecting high-end offensive value would be ridiculous, but this is the sort of player that could stick around for a while just by making 3s and playing hard. If I squint and ignore age-adjusted production differences, I can vaguely see an argument for an archetype analogous to a smaller, quicker Jaren Jackson Jr, or perhaps a better rim-protecting PJ Tucker.

Avinash Chauhan