They’re not entirely wrong. It’s impossible to be a complete developmental determinist given the confluence of factors related to both the drafting team and the mental makeup of the player. These are intuitively important but difficult to decipher without being involved in the draft process with a team.

But what’s frustrating is that “crapshoot” canonically implies utter randomness, as if the entire evaluative and developmental process is entirely unpredictable. It ignores that certain loci of traits are associated with differing rates of development, a principle that forms the basis of my current draft research.

Moreover, even if we know that college production does not exactly scale to pro production, there’s a mountain-load of evidence that suggests stronger age-adjusted production yields better professional results.

This makes the Egor case seemingly open and shut.

At first glance, this is an unmitigated disaster. Egor had a sorta defensible 4.7 BPM… but he was infamously stat-padding against inferior competition. 26 of his 33 games came against top-100 opponents, and in these games, he had a disastrous 1.8 BPM. Against these opponents, he could not score (46.6% TS), he could not rebound (0.7% OREB), and he could not secure the ball (25.2% TO). Re-read those stats. 46% TS and 25% TO is just preposterous. His role is listed here as “scoring PG”, yet it seems that he cannot efficiently score or prevent turnovers?

It’s fair to ask what Egor can reliably do on offense when he isn’t playing shitty teams. Nothing indicates that he can be productive in the NBA.

My initial view on Egor

Full transparency: I ranked Egor 31st on my board. Many analytically-inclined individuals had him far lower. 1.8 BPM vs t100 without scoring upside or outlier athleticism should be a death knell.

Many have lambasted the Nets’ draft, calling it the worst of all time. 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.

Still, it’s nice that there was a coherent vision of accumulating smart, tall guys with reasonable feel. Even if it seemed like they just multiplied height and assist rate, and then took the first 4 guys they saw. While the players they selected were not particularly inspiring, Sam Presti has consistently demonstrated that this size x passing formula has high reward (and also high risk).

Based on some recent conversations and philosophical changes spurred by my year-round historical research, I believe that the incongruence between Egor’s draft capital and my estimated draft capital projection was too large. To be clear, this belief has little to do with his tepid Summer League production, though there were some reasons for cautious optimism. While I still believe the Nets reached to some degree on Egor, and that he has many red flags, I now view him as a strong mid-first option, pumping him up a dozen or so spots on my board.

Here’s why.

The Problem with BPM

Beyond his TO issues, Egor has a terrible BPM, terrible TS%, and terrible 3P%. Altogether, it led to atrocities like the following:

Are these three separate issues? Not quite.

The most underrated part of his profile: Egor’s 3P misery collapsed the rest of his statistical profile.

Egor took tons of 3s. Half his shots came from 3. And yes, he shot an absurdly bad 27.3% from 3. But he was completely fine inside the arc.

This is a legitimately great scoring profile inside the arc. Not only was Egor doing it with over 80% of his two point scoring being un-assisted (anything over 60% un-assisted is notable to me), but he shot 55% on twos. While Egor has picked up a label as a “comp dropper”, his inside-the-arc percentages vs top 100 teams (52.5%) and top 50 teams (55.0%) were perfectly reasonable. Egor was self-creating a huge proportion of his two point makes and converted them at a fairly good rate.

Sure, the vast majority of this scoring came in the PnR with the help of a screen, 150 total 2P attempts is on the lower side, and he has less than optimal burst off the dribble. These are all important considerations, and it would be unwise to treat Egor as a future inside-the-arc scoring maestro. But the fact of the matter is that he was highly efficient without a strong assisted shooting profile, and considering his transition woes, this production almost entirely came in the half-court. There comes a point where efficient HC shotmaking on a strongly unassisted shooting profile must be respected.

And yet, despite his strong inside-the-arc efficiency… Egor shot 46.6% true shooting versus top 100 teams. This is what happens when you shoot 27% from three and those shots make up half your shooting profile. 3P bricklaying should not be excused completely, but we cannot simultaneously champion a high 3PR shot profile and demonize high 3PR shooting profiles with less success.

Egor is a great inside-the-arc scorer, and while he takes many 3s, he fails to convert them at a high rate. This should be the Egor scoring evaluation, rather than taking on overlapping metrics at face value.

Egor shot 22% from 3 and took over half his shots from three vs top 100 comp; it’s immensely obvious that his TS% and BPM were going to tank. BPM is famously prone to react strongly to small sample three point shotmaking. The high volume three point misses strongly diluted his 3P%, TS%, and BPM.

This dilution even applies to offensive rebounding, though to a lesser degree. There is a known and strongly intuitive negative relationship between offensive rebounding and 3PR. When you are hanging out on the perimeter, you will be less likely to be in the proper position to secure offensive rebounds. See: known super-athlete Anthony Edwards and his preposterously low 2% OREB.

So while it’s fair to point out Egor’s relative “softness” via OREB and FTR, it must be done with the contextualization of highly perimeter-oriented scoring style. When 63% of your halfcourt twos come from the PnR and half of your shots are threes, you are not in a position to offensively rebound, nor are you in optimal position to draw fouls. It should also be noted that 15% DREB is far more compelling.

Still, as I will note a multitude of times in this piece, Egor’s softness is concerning. His putrid offensive rebounding may be the single biggest road block to his reaching higher outcomes. 0.7% OREB vs top 100 teams is awful, and even 3PR-maxxed PGs like LaMelo and Kasparas were o-rebounding far better. Decent rebounding priors, elite size, and reasonable blocks/defensive rebounding give Egor some outs to neutralizing his functional timidness.

So will Egor’s shooting improve?

This is the million-dollar question. Sure, Egor’s high volume three point inaccuracy tanked his 3P%, BPM, and TS% to a significant extent, but my point is asymmetry: that strong three point accuracy is going to skyrocket these metrics. How likely is this?

Well, three point volume is a helluva indicator, and Egor had a massive 50 3PR. I don’t find it instructive to call Egor a non-shooter when he is legit taking half his shots from beyond the arc.

Unfortunately, the rest of his shooting indicators aren’t particularly encouraging.

Egor shot 69.5% from the line this year, which is okay. Coupling all his shooting samples together, he’s at 74% FT (260 attempts). Egor shot 27% 3P on 154 3PA at BYU. This is quite bad, but it’s notable that Egor took nearly as many C&S 3s as dribble jumper 3s, and he shot 24% on dribble jumper 3s, which are more prone to variance. This would typically be more encouraging had Egor not shot 30% on C&S 3s.

What’s more concerning is that Egor shot 31.5% 3P on 615 3PA across all samples.

This is a meaningful, multi-year sample of 3P badness. In theory, it’s more than enough attempts for Egor’s 3P% to have stabillized, which makes that 31% 3P look even more damning. If Egor shoots 31% from 3 across his NBA career, I cannot stress enough that his career will be replacement level at best.

The most intuitive refutation, however, is that 3P% cannot reasonably stabilize with a teenage sample. The sole utility of this giant sample is proving that Egor is a bad shooter right now. Shooting development is fickle and hard to understand, and some even view 3PR as the pre-emptive indicator of shooting upside. Contrary to my pre-draft estimation, Egor’s youth, size, and huge 3P tendency gives him a coinflip chance at worst to become a reasonably good shooter. This may seem low, but as I will outline later, this outcome would drastically change his NBA outlook.

The other two indicators of touch are FTs and runners. Egor’s 74% FT is uninteresting at first glance, but 74% FT in conjunction with his age/size/3PR strengthens his shooting outlook even more.

Runners were harder to come by. Egor rarely took runners (3.9% frequency), though he made them at a reasonable clip (0.83 points per shot is ~60th percentile). Prior to BYU, in 17 games with Real Madrid’s U18 team across two seasons, he made just one total runner. Egor’s runner infrequency is especially interesting for two reasons:

1. A gargantuan 44% of Egor’s scoring possessions came as PnR BH (98th percentile frequency). This playtype is especially conducive to runners (fairly intuitive).
2. BYU was one of the best teams in the country at taking (86th percentile) and making (92nd percentile) runners.

A low runner frequency is usually of slight concern for any ball-handler, but this was an offensive context plump for runner liberality. It is a serious red flag that he was unable to get to that runner, and even watching his few runners, it’s clear he’s not comfortable transitioning mid-dribble into the shot.

This lack of dynamic comfort is also seen in his lack of functional pullup two fluidity. Sure, he has a fairly fluid shot when OTD from 3. But he shot 6/22 on pullup 2s, and it’s clear that he favors pausing his dribble near the highpost and doing a turnaround into the pullup rather than fluidly pulling up.

Egor’s ineptitude in fluidly taking pullup twos with his lack of runner volume in a runner-conducive context is reasonable evidence for his touch discomfort in dynamic environments.

The last piece of data is secondary, but I’ve heard from quite a few sources that Egor shot pretty well during workouts. Again, this is anything but a dynamic ecosystem, but it’s a positive datapoint.

Overall, there’s reason to be cautiously optimistic, but there are many warts that diminish Egor’s shooting projection. It’s hard to tell how his shooting development will progress, but I am cautiously optimistic that legitimate strides will be made given his age and volume.

A Brief Note on Turnovers

This is more of a stylistic concern, but not all turnover-prone players should be billed as the same. Consider the following:

There is a clear discrepancy between the badness of Egor’s TO rate and the goodness of his A:TO. Egor was converting passes far more than he was committing TOs, while Kasparas Jakucionis had a slightly lower TO rate but far lower A:TO.

So while Kasparas, Fears, and Demin were all very turnover-prone, Demin was by far the most functionally turnover-avoidant.

We should also understand the issues with TO rate, which is estimated with the following formula:

TO%: 100 * TO / (FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV)

It’s basically estimating the share of a player’s scoring possessions that end in a TO.

By virtue of his three-point heavy shooting profile, Egor wasn’t getting to the line particularly much, nor was he scoring with volume inside the arc. This underestimates the value of the denominator here, as there are fewer than expected total possessions. At the same time, Egor’s relative timidness inside the arc is both a product of his pass-heavy nature and his lack of physicality and comfort getting downhill, especially without a screen. Ultimately, his shot diet likely inflated his TO rate to some degree.

While I understand the logic of the formula, Egor’s softness leaking into adjacent parts of his profile demonstrates the issue with taking metrics at face-value. We know that he rarely gets to the line, but his softness has artifically inflated his TO rate. This fits into my larger point that the downstream effects of Egor’s 3P heavy shooting profile are far-ranging and need to be more thoroughly considered.

So is it fair to call Egor “turnover-prone”? Perhaps, but the turnovers are largely a product of his super-high passing volume. His decision-making is fine, and there aren’t nearly as many head-scratching turnovers (or more generally, bad pass turnovers) in comparison to someone like his new teammate, Danny Wolf.

The number I care most about is 1.9 A:TO. As a raw ratio, A:TO is the strongest indication of scalability, and converting nearly two assists for every turnover bodes very well historically, particularly for size. The TO rate is not nearly as important. I am far more worried about Kasp or Wolf’s turnover issues, considering they convert far fewer assists per turnover.

Egor is an insane passer

This is probably the single most underrated and most publicized aspect of Egor’s game. He can really pass. The list of guys who can run PnRs and pass as proficiently as Egor historically is very, very low. The only 6’8+ player in Bart with even career 30% AST% and reasonable PnR BH scoring frequency is Scottie Barnes.

In my database of draft measurements, there has never been a prospect listed as a point guard that comes even close to Egor’s dimensions. Forget point guards, there has never been even a shooting guard that has matched Egor’s height in the history of the NBA Combine. This is the type of historical context that makes me uneasy fading Egor.

Another comparison I’ve seen is Josh Giddey. This one isn’t that bad. Let’s take some time to flesh it out.

Per RealGM, Giddey was at 36.3% AST, and Egor was at 35.3% AST. Giddey was 23.7% TO rate, and Egor was 21.9% TO rate. I’m not sure why RealGM has a lower TO rate than Barttorvik for Egor, but probably dissimilar formulas.

Giddey had a strong edge in rebounding, but Egor clears him in steals. Coincidentally, Egor (84/152, 55% 2P) and Giddey (84/165, 51% 2P) made the same number of twos in the same number of games, but Egor was more efficient.

The parallels don’t stop there. Giddey shot 29% from 3P, 69% FT, and 25.6 FTR. Egor was 27% 3P, 70% FT, and 26.8 FTR. It’s notable that Giddey had such a poor FTR considering his two-point scoring rate was far higher.

I’m not sure if the NBL is even better than the Big 12, and if so, it’s probably not worth sweating. Egor and Giddey both played ~900 minutes, so this is a fairly ethical comparison altogether (see: dunk volume).

Giddey’s rebounding is a large edge, and he was a more efficient passer. But Demin’s combination of wingspan and steal rate is a massive ceiling-raising edge, and he scores far more efficiently inside the arc with better 3PR. Demin offers a much higher ceiling, but Giddey’s floor is probably safer with his elite positional rebounding. These are at least similar caliber of prospects to me. I would prefer Demin, as Giddey’s 3PR+FTR strongly dampens his ceiling.

Giddey ranks 6th in the 2021 class in BPM at 1.3, but much of this is spurred by his career 7.5 rebounds/game. Demin doesn’t have this strength to fall back on, so he really needs to shoot to tap into his upside.

So many good names here. My absolute favorite integration is size x feel, and we approximate this with height/block/2P% to filter out the unphysical players, while A:TO / steal takes care of feel. If we raise the height filter to 6’8, we get:

Some may immediately point out BPM, but I urge them to use their brains: the box-score stats that are fed into BPM can be evaluated by our own eyes, and Demin is generally in the same ballpark as these guys. Still, Demin is the worst prospect here, given that he has by far the worst block and rebounding rates, but he grades fairly well outside of his softness.

The bottom-line is that Egor has legitimate ceiling-raising traits, which is important considering his age-adjusted production according to general impact metrics are poor on the surface.

Underrated Trait #1: Foul Avoidance

Egor’s reaction speed is pretty fire. I assume all readers are familiar with his spectacular passing, but even on defense, Egor has some impressive blocks.

This is a cool clip. Egor’s huge size forced the long initial inbounds pass, and his quick reaction speed helped him get the perimeter block. Despite not being in position to farm blocks, Egor racked up a solid 1.7% block rate.

What’s especially notable is his micro-foul rate.

As always, Egor comfortably cleared these thresholds. 1.7% block, 2.5% steal, 1.8 FC/40, and 6’9. No one has come close to Egor’s combination of stocks+foul avoidance at wing size.

This guy is 6’9 with a 6’10 WS and he can match up against guards. His stocks are solid. He’s at a very reasonable 0.3 blocks/foul. He has the height and instincts to guard up, and he did average ~ 3% BLK/20% DREB in ANGT. There’s enough evidence that if he ever gains enough mass to consistently guard NBA-caliber forwards, he could be a real demon defender. This defensive upside needs to be noted!

Even if we drop the height filter on this query, and throw on an A:TO filter to grab “guards”, it’s a fairly limited group of guys:

By integrating A:TO, steals, and foul rate, this is pretty much the ultimate “high feel” list. It’s just unfathomable that Egor is a whole 3 inches taller than the next closest player. Shai/Haliburton are two of the next three tallest players here. Funny how they find their way into a query yet again.

Remember at the beginning when I noted that “certain loci of traits are associated with differing rates of development”? I think I’ve formed an admissible case that Egor encompasses a particular loci of traits associated with strong feel, reaction time, and potentially, continued strong development.

A better way to explain this is by introducing my new evaluatory framework: outlier cognition per mass. I’ve really grown to value dudes with huge height, length, or weight that can react quickly and process the floor. I will likely write something about this in the future, but something like “cognition-mass index”. BMI, but for cognition. Unsurprisingly, Egor’s immensely feel and huge frame scores quite well within this paradigm.

Overall, beyond this philosophical commentary, my point is that Egor avoids fouls like a guard despite being wing-sized. While this indicates underrated switchable upside, I consider this more importantly a proxy for strong cognition. All signs point to Egor’s cognition-mass index being especially high. We should take note.

Underrated Trait #2: Luck-Adjusted Impact

This is short, but Egor’s offensive impact was strong despite being turnover prone with low true shooting. Here, we luck-adjust for 3P%, but 1.6% TO swing against baseline is notable. For reference, this is versus t200 opponents:

4.0 net rating against baseline is huge. Again, A-B is useful for comparing Egor versus his backups, but A – Baseline shows how much better the team was with Egor. He had a legit positive effect on offense, and if he trims the turnovers/makes 3s at a higher rate, his offensive impact will only increase.

Real On/Off and RAPM tell a similar story. It’s clear that Egor’s TO tendencies are mitigated on a team-wide level, given his strong assist volume, and he had a strong effect on an already good BYU offense.

It’s also interesting how Egor coincided with a drop in 2P rim%, even with real on-off (which adjusts for teammates), but I didn’t pick up on anything when watching. This is something to sorta keep an eye on in the league.

Overall, this is to say that Egor had an inflationary effect on BYU’s offense even with his current warts. This is a good sign indeed, as he has much room to grow as a ball-handler.

A Cause for Concern

To me, the biggest cause for concern is Egor’s athletic profile. He’s not particularly quick (11.31 lane agility + 3.33 sprint), and he is a straight up bad vertical athlete (awful 26.5 inch standing vert + 32.5 max vert). Coupled with his skinny frame, he has the quintessential bust athletic profile: the low BMI bad athlete.

The low BMI, bad athlete is a devastating, ceiling dropping archetype. See for yourself:

Egor falls comfortably within these thresholds. We can see this softness reflected in his oreb, FTR, and perhaps even in his lack of runner volume. This is concerning, and he will need significant mass gains.

Two reasons why this isn’t as much cause for concern:

1. This anthropometric sample is pretty incomplete and is skewed towards less heralded prospects. For many years prior to 2024, prospects who accrued significant draft capital did not participate in combine testing.
   • For instance, we don’t have Giddey’s testing but he’d probably be somewhere here (BMI probably hits a tad above 23 but still).
2. If Egor can accumulate minutes at the 1 or 2, his large size advantage will be more than enough to overcome BMI issues. In other words, positional size will deter disadvantages conferred by his BMI.

He’s also clearly cognizant of all this:

The Elephant in the Room: Positionality

What position does Egor play in the league?

Obviously, Egor could play as a guard. It’s probably not worth discussing too much since he primarily played the 1 at BYU. Egor would need to cut down on TOs and shoot, but it’s a fairly straightforward outcome.

I have seen concern about Egor’s guard viability, on the premise that Egor cannot get downhill without a screen. He’s definitely not the most imposing athlete, but:

1. I question the independent value of getting downhill without a screen in such a PnR centric league.
2. Damn near most of his offense either came out of the PnR or spotting up from 3. Are we sure that scoring out of PnR on a PnR-heavy team means that he is reliant on a screen? Causation seems strong.

However, Egor does not need to play the 1/2 to provide meaningful value. He could be a really good wing.

It goes without saying that Egor needs to make 3s at a far higher clip than he did this season. If Egor cannot make open C&S threes at a reasonable frequency, it is likely over. He needs legit shooting development, and we’re betting a lot on 50 3PR to clutch up as a shooting indicator.

If Egor can make 3s at a reasonable frequency, then he offers real positional versatility. The second coin toss is physicality: Egor needs to bulk up a bit and guard wings with consistency.

And, if Egor can make 3s AND guard wings, he offers basically no lineup friction. You can fit him into so many lineups.

My working theory is that cognitive load per position is rising league-wide, so having someone like Egor may end up more of a necessity in a decade. Even with the current league in mind, Egor would have a huge cognitive advantage at the 3 (the 3 probably has the lowest cognitive load by position), a large size and cognitive advantage at the 2, and an overwhelming size advantage at the 1; this would give him pretty strong staying power.

To be clear, this sort of frictionless upside would only come if he’s able to make 3s AND guard wings.

Conclusion

So, how likely is Frictionless Egor?

Based off the evidence I’ve provided, I would equate the probabilities of making 3s and guarding wings (at reasonable frequency) to ~ 60% each. So, by my shoddy odds, there’s a ~ 36% chance at this frictionless utopia, which is easy for me to swallow and rank top 20 at the absolute worst.

The odds of either 3s or guarding wings coming around is 84%, which is nice. That being said, there’s 40% chance that shooting does not come around, which would be pretty disastrous.

There’s also the point that the shooting thresholds for guards are much higher than for wings, as there is legit off-the-dribble necessity. So the odds of him playing as a guard are probably somewhere near 50%, if not closer to 36%.

Here’s the takeaway: Egor is a pretty high variance player. I’ve called other players in this class high variance but I honestly think that title should go to Egor. He could reasonably be out of the league by the end of his rookie contract. Egor needs to shoot, and he needs to shoot at high volume. And he needs to rely on skill and weight gain to overcome the poor BMI x athlete tag.

Previously, I was over-indexing on Egor’s strong downside. There are quite a few ways this could go badly. But I didn’t fully consider the uniqueness of Egor’s game. He has some (dare I say) generational strengths that I’ve demonstrated with some pretty generous Bart query thresholds. The league is built on outliers, and I do not feel comfortable ranking a fairly well-rounded freshman with huge strengths outside the top 20.

That being said, I sympathize with Nets fans and their front office, as they have invested significant draft capital into a guy who could be pretty bad. I would personally have been more risk-averse with this selection, but the upside is high enough for it to be reasonable. This is not a particularly popular take on Draft Twitter, but Egor’s positional versatility is that compelling.

Also, this is a half-serious point but if a conglomerate like Draft Twitter is so opposed to a single player/concept, then it is probably a good idea to zag a bit to account for the effects of overconfidence bias and consensus bias.

Moreover, one should be wary of a massive delta between perception and draft capital barring a catastrophic pick by “unwell”-intentioned front offices (i.e., anything the Raiders did in the last quarter century, or Nico selecting OMP). I do not believe the Nets to be in this tier of franchise ineptitude. That’s not to say that we should become mock draft warriors, but it’s a sensible sanity check for select prospects. The draft is a tad bit more of a crapshoot than we’d like to believe.

Ultimately, so many of the warts Draft Twitter has ascribed to Egor are by virtue of his 3P bricklaying. He has real red flags, and his floor is far lower than I’d usually be comfortable selecting in the top 10. But Egor is tall and smart, he can accumulate 3s and stocks without fouling, and he can efficiently self-create inside the arc. He passes like very few we’ve seen with his size. He managed to raise the offensive ceiling for a dominant BYU offense. The upside is hard to ignore with Egor, and his unorthodoxy is riveting.

He just needs to make those damn threes.

The post The Case for Egor Demin appeared first on Swish Theory.

In the previous article I wrote analyzing Tre Johnson, I alluded to the changing perspective of front offices and fans alike regarding the draft. The 2024 cycle was an emphatic indication of the sea change in teams’ approach to the event. With players from Reed Sheppard to Zach Edey being selected with high picks, it became apparent that teams were prioritizing cerebral players with analytically sound profiles over those with traits more traditionally associated with high upside.

What drove me to write about Kon was how representative his journey was of this shifting dynamic. Widely recognized as a subpar athlete by NBA standards, due to the optics of Knueppel’s game, I doubt he would have ever been considered worthy of a top-5 pick even as recently as a decade ago. However, because of his stellar efficiency and deserved reputation as an intelligent player, the Hornets’ selection of Knueppel was seen as a no-brainer.

My intent with writing this piece was to figure out one thing: has the pendulum swung too far? At what point is it acceptable to go against conventional draft logic and select a player whose deficiencies would have been considered disqualifying in previous eras? By investigating both contextual and individual statistics, in tandem with tape dating back 2 years, I found myself in firm disagreement with the direction the Hornets ultimately went in.

The Beginning

Standing slightly over 6’6 in shoes with a 6’6.25″ wingspan, Kon Knueppel may have left this draft with the highest approval rating of any non-Cooper Flagg prospect. Knueppel’s playstyle eschewed norms typically associated with star level production, he relied on technique and guile in lieu of dynamic physical traits. His fundamentally sound game, paired with an inscrutable demeanor, and an overwhelming amount of team success quickly earned Knueppel fans. And Kon would finish with one of the most impressive underclassman seasons from a perimeter player in recent memory, inserting himself into the group below along with fellow one-and-done Jase Richardson.

What makes Kon such a compelling case study isn’t just his ascension from fringe top-40 recruit at the beginning of his final AAU campaign, to top-5 draft pick 2 years later, but the rapid and tangible development he made in that span.

To gain a complete understanding of Kon’s game we must begin with his time spent on the grassroots circuit. Knueppel’s scoring and scoring efficiency have remained constants over the course of his career, having led his EYBL age group in scoring for 3 consecutive years and never once dipped under 60% True Shooting. However, outside of the high-volume flamethrowing from deep, Knueppel’s utilization at Duke held a faint resemblance to his time playing AAU.

During Kon’s time playing his AAU team, Phenom University, he served as the focal point of a motion offense. PhenomU would run concepts broadly similar to Duke, but with drastically different objectives. PhenomU frequently schemed looks for Knueppel to post-up in the middle of the floor, where his combination of size, strength, and touch were enough to overwhelm opponents at the high-school level. Actions like ‘Cross Punch’..

Outside of these schemed looks Knueppel was the frequent recipient of opportunistic buckets made possible by the Motion Offense and the miscommunication it brought about in opposing defenses.

And although these principles aren’t incompatible with quality offense at the collegiate or professional level, they did leave Knueppel unrefined in certain areas which became significantly more relevant during his time at Duke. One example would be Kon’s relative inefficiency attacking closeouts, where he was comfortable settling for short range jumpers and would seldom applied pressure on the rim.

Starting at Duke

Kon’s shift in usage once arriving at Duke was abrupt and apparent, the aforementioned post-ups and cuts were largely replaced with PNR ballhandling reps, as evinced below.

And for someone who came into the season a vocal proponent of Kon, frankly, the beginning of his Duke career was largely underwhelming. Duke almost exclusively schemed two plays for Knueppel, the first of which being ‘Zipper Stagger PNR‘, which exposed his inexperience operating out of ballscreens,

and the second play which comprised the majority of Knueppel’s organized offense was ‘Pin Ricky Flare‘, where again Knueppel struggled to generate quality looks if he wasn’t provided the requisite space to attempt a 3.

There definitely wasn’t a singular culprit behind Knueppel’s ineffectiveness as a driver, but the most obvious contributing factor was the misalignment between Duke’s offensive approach and Knueppel’s habits inside the arc. As previously mentioned, when Kon was ran off the 3-point line in highschool he expressed no urgency in getting to the rim, and was perfectly content with taking longer 2PA. Duke was the first setting where this characteristic of Knueppel’s game was met with resistance. In Jon Scheyer’s short time at the helm, an early emphasis he has made known is his desire for his teams to maintain a modern shot profile. In every subsequent year of Scheyer’s tenure, Duke has reduced their volume of midrange attempts.

The clash between the playstyle Scheyer had implemented within his team, and Knueppel’s personal style of play lead to ugly moments early on. With Knueppel’s ballhandling skills being fairly underdeveloped for his new, more perimeter oriented role, Kon attempted to rely on his physicality on create space and find finishing windows on drives. Knueppel’s forays towards the rim often lacked pace, and oftentimes Kon would over-penetrate and place himself in compromising positions inside the paint.

At roughly the halfway mark of the season, Knueppel’s statistical profile was far from the stellar marks he would finish the season with.

The Transformation

The defining change in Kon’s game this past season was undoubtedly his ability and effectiveness getting to the rim. Not only did his rim-rate increase by 8% from his final season of AAU to this past season, the complexion of these rim attempts also radically changed. Hand-tracking Knueppel’s rim-finishes reveals a player progressing from a forward to an out and out guard.

Knueppel having his playtype distribution significantly altered, while being forced to largely abandon his most reliable interior counters, AND STILL maintaining the efficiency he’d displayed at previous levels is borderline miraculous. And the catalyst for this improvement were the gains Knueppel made as a ballhandler.

While I still wouldn’t view Knueppel as an elite ballhandler by any means, the strides he made in this area, in conjunction with his physicality, made him a potent driver by season’s end.

For large swaths of the season, Knueppel’s inability to handle ball pressure or digs on his drives consistently prevented him from creating quality paint touches.

And I have a theory as to what was behind Knueppel’s leap as a ballhandler and driver. Kon seems to have married the technical gains he made, specifically developing better ball-control and an improvement altering ball-speeds, with the strong footwork foundation he already possessed from all the years spent playing out of the post. Post footwork translating to other facets of the game is an axiom espoused by coaches everywhere, and Knueppel seems to be the most recent testament to this. As the season progressed Knueppel was more capable of keeping his dribble alive inside the arc, making him a more potent scorer and playmaker.

Towards the end of the season, Knueppel started to thrive in the same actions that he’d previously been out of his depth in. Below is a succession of ‘Zipper Stagger PNR‘ plays conducted sublimely by Kon. Even when he isn’t able to finish the play with a basket it is abundantly clear the process is better.

When faced with slightly more exotic coverages Knueppel showed to be up to the task. Compare the clips compiled below, in the initial play versus Kansas. Knueppel is hedged as he runs the ballscreen and immeditely swings the ball at the first sign of ball pressure. The subsequent plays Knueppel keeps his dribble alive, turns the corner, and either draws a foul at the rim or finds an open teammate.

Knueppel’s enhanced foul-drawing compared to previous seasons was evident,

but what I found most impressive about this was how the in-season free-throw rate progression was equally significant.

What this shows is Knueppel recognized the respect he had as a shooter and parlayed the hard closeouts he was receiving into rim-attacks.

As delved further and further into Kon’s career, his self-awareness and work ethic became increasingly apparent. To acclimate this quickly when confronted with change is impressive from any player, never mind a freshman being thrust into the greatest pressure cooker program in college basketball.

A point raised by the always insightful Mike Gribanov (@mikegrib8 on X) was how notable it was for a team to achieve the level of success 2024-25 Duke did while primarily featuring underclassmen. Especially considering how veteran-laden the current college basketball landscape is, I wanted to establish a frame of reference for exactly how rare it was for a player to produce at the level Kon did this past season without the benefit of having experienced teammates. Using KenPom’s ‘Experience Rankings’, which weighs the age of their roster by minutes played, along with some other offensive efficiency and self creation metrics yielded the list below.

Unsurprisingly these thresholds produced a list of offensively slanted perimeter players, but at first glance what caught my eye was how size seemed to have a polarizing effect on this group’s NBA translation. The majority of players who returned overly positive EV from the query seemed to be clustered on the shorter end of the height distribution. However, height having a negative correlation with an all-in-one metric like Estimated Wins goes against all I know about these catch all stats, so I looked elsewhere. And what emerged as the obvious contributing factor to this relationship was the share of a player’s shots which were assisted.

Here lie my Koncerns

To see the strength of the relationship between this group of players’ NBA impact and their pre-NBA self-creation burdens I ran a simple linear regression.

While the  r² here is moderately strong, again there are only so many conclusions to be drawn from what was already a small and fairly curated sample. Where the value lies in this cursory analysis is in illuminating how misleading scoring efficiency can be. The list above is littered with players who couldn’t shoulder a higher creation burden and were too deficient in other areas to warrant serious consideration for playing time. Herein lies the challenge in projecting Kon Knueppel, will he be able to become a load-bearing player for an elite offense and/or round out his game enough defensively to avoid being placed in basketball purgatory?

The Case for Helio-Kon

A case frequently made in support of Kon’s primary upside was his potential to develop into a high volume foul-drawer. We’ve already addressed the strides he’s made in this department, so could this trend continue in the league? In short, I am skeptical Knueppel is next in line of the Morey-ball disciples. Of course the absence of dunks in Kon’s resume has been discussed ad-nauseam (this past season Knueppel actually doubled the number of dunks he’d made over the course of his entire AAU career, with 2), its how often Kon has his shot-blocked at the rim that is my greatest cause for concern. Knueppel had 7% of his FGA blocked at Duke, per Synergy, which isn’t a particularly disqualifying number on its own, but puts him in a precarious position when compared to his now peers in the NBA.

Again, this is not an exhaustive sample we’re drawing from, but there’s no recent precedent for a player with Knueppel’s lack of vertical explosion becoming a formidable rim-pressure guard. In fact I think Knueppel, and the majority of the Duke players this past season, saw their driving efficacy greatly augmented by the presence of Khaman Maluach. Individually, Duke did not roster any players known for their prowess getting downhill, and Maluach was chiefly responsible for providing rim-pressure for the team. Clips like the ones below are examples of the attention Maluach demanded on the interior. In each clipped possession there’s a freeze frame on Maluach’s defender showing the defense’s approach, they were almost never willing to send help on Knueppel’s drives should they risk giving up an easy putback or dumpoff to Maluach.

Duke lead the nation this past season in Wide Open threes, and while their connective passing and willingness to forgo good shots for great ones definitely deserves credit, the attention Maluach demanded as a roller greatly simplified reads for Duke ballhandlers.

Again my friend and tan incredible draft mind in his own right @NileHoops beat me to the presses in writing about the inflation in perception many Duke prospects were granted due to Maluach’s gravity, and I would strongly recommend reading his draft notes here on the matter: https://medium.com/@Nile/nile-presents-2025-nba-draft-master-notes-part-2-of-3-626ef75aefbb.

Knueppel’s statistical fluctuations corroborate this relationship. Per Hoop -Explorer Knueppel’s AST% and rim-rate declined substantially in minutes without Maluach versus the minutes he shared with the superstar big.

This effect reverberated throughout the Duke squad, with the team’s mid-range frequency skyrocketing while their PNR frequency plummeted. Recall earlier when Jon Scheyer’s mid-range aversion was mentioned, without Maluach on the court Duke was forced into taking shots they were explicitly advised against.

Debunking the notion that Knueppel will develop into a prolific driver and free-throw grifter at the next level doesn’t necessarily preclude offensive primacy. After all, many of the players presented early as potential analogues found their way by becoming elite pull-up shooters. Knueppel’s shooting profile definitely makes this the likeliest outcome, but there’s still evidence his stellar touch indicators may belie how long a process it will be for Knueppel to reach these heights.

While Knueppel shot 12/30 on pull-up 3s in his final year of AAU, 10 of these makes came in transition or semi-transition, where he had a cleaner platform to self-organize for these attempts.

In the half-court Knueppel’s issues regaining balance on the move and creating space in close quarters were more evident. Even at lower levels Knueppel struggled getting his shot off cleanly under duress, the aforementioned 7% blocked FGA rate at Duke was identical in AAU.

And of course this isn’t to say Knueppel will be easily neutralized as a shooter at the next level, these are somewhat granular issues I fully believe will be addressed and ameliorated in the long run. But my thinking is the tandem of weaker change-of-direction ability and a drastically slower pace (Duke was 266th in Adjusted Tempo) was behind Knueppel’s precipitous fall from a 42% (30/72) off-the-dribble 3P shooter during AAU, to only making 1/18 3PA off the bounce in college. And the acclimatization period Knueppel would need to round his shooting into form could muddle his long-term offensive projection.

The Defense

As limiting as Knueppel’s change-of-direction is offensively, I think it could be truly debilitating on defense. For as much as Duke’s offensive scheme placed Knueppel in an uncomfortable situation early, the defensive scheme greatly compensated for his flaws. Duke’s conservative switching scheme paired with their ++ positional size (1st in the country in average height and 10th in effective height) masked Knueppel’s deficiencies. The team’s penchant for dragging out possessions with their constant switching, along with the deterrence afforded by their backline size, left a minimal amount of ground for Knueppel to cover in any given possession. I think plays like the clips below are responsible for some overstating Knueppel’s defensive ability, in these possessions Kon is guarding under circumstances where Duke’s already effectively ‘won’ the possession by merit of these players either attacking Knueppel in isolation or driving into a congested paint.

The areas where Knueppel’s difficulties changing speed and direction manifested most consistently were guarding capable pull-up shooters. Knueppel’s inability to mirror these smaller players forced him to give them a cushion, without the length to compensate for the distance he provided Knueppel was prone to ceding acres of space on these attempts.

Maybe even more glaring than Knueppel’s issues guarding pull-up shooters was his total inability to navigate screens. Kon almost never remained attached when tasked with working over screens, and when a teammate wasn’t in position to immediately switch onto Knueppel’s assignment an immense pressure was placed on help defenders to correct for the breakdown. Screen navigation for Kon is another struggle which has persisted since high school.

Predictably Knueppel’s issues changing direction were reflected in his agility testing. Although Kon’s jumps impressed relative to expectations, his 3/4 court sprint and lane agility only added to what was already a bleak defensive projection.

Final Takeaways

My intention with writing this piece is not to pan the Hornets for selecting Kon, but in the wake of Summer League I think now is an appropriate time to adjust expectations before a few inconsequential games dilute any evaluation. As it stands currently, there’s an overwhelming amount of data suggesting that even projecting Kon as a neutral defender may be unrealistic. The most likely outcome seems to be that Kon will be left in limbo defensively, he’ll unable to guard backcourt players because of his poor footspeed, and with no supplementary rim-protection or rebounding skills to speak of Kon will bleed possessions as a frontcourt defender. In search of players at Kon’s size who were also lacking in athletic traits yielded a mixed bag. There’s a handful of positive defenders here, even amongst the highlighted players who hit these thresholds in their pre-draft season. But outside of Cameron Johnson and Khris Middleton, who only hit this threshold in their freshman year (and Middleton was 0.3 DRBD% away from falling out entirely), there’s no other players who would be considered top 5 in their respective draft.

The list of players with Kon’s offensive resume to justify such high draft capital is even slimmer.

While it may seem encouraging that Desmond Bane is included in this group because Kon was frequently compared to him throughout the cycle, Bane’s dunks only bottomed out when he was thrust into a primary role. Bane saw his PNR volume almost quadruple from his Junior to Senior year, and this shit in usage coincided with the lowest number of dunks in his college career.

As heavily as I rely on these statistical queries to inform my opinion, I think its necessary to include all players’ seasons as a reminder of the developmental dichotomy. It seems as often as players undergo these outlier developmental arcs there are as many, if not more, players whose weaknesses crystallize much quicker than we’re willing to acknowledge. In Kon’s case, there’s little reason to believe an athletic transformation is on the horizon. And if he’s going to be a defender who needs specific lineup configurations to stay on the floor will his offense warrant those accommodations? The in-season improvement previously outlined gives me more confidence in Kon eventually ‘guard-ifying’ his shot profile and becoming a more capable creator off the bounce. But the idea that the self-sustainability of Kon’s offense can be reasonably doubted is enough to preclude from being a top 5 pick.

The post Summer League Primer: A Comprehensive Kon Knueppel Scouting Report appeared first on Swish Theory.

What role will Leonard Miller play in the league? I have no idea. What I do know is that role projection analysis is capped, the issue with historical analysis is overgeneralization, and Leonard Miller should most definitely not be mocked in the 20s for the 2023 NBA Draft.

I can say with strong confidence that there really has never been a prospect like Leonard Miller. And quite frankly, there’s no reason why his integration of skills should be demonized (see: Refutation). His combination of physical tools, tangible skill, and sheer productivity is ridiculous, and it’s best epitomized through the following Skill-Paradigm framework.

Skill: Youth + Productivity

Paradigm: Exceptional productivity at a young age is indicative of untapped upside.

Leonard is freshman aged (Nov 2003, born in same month as Taylor Hendricks and Keyonte George). He is averaging a whopping 18 ppg with grown men on spectacular efficiency. 

63% TS, 66% at the rim, and a whopping 38 dunks. 24 points per 40 minutes, which would place him 5th across prospects in ESPN’s latest mock draft. He is genuinely a high volume scorer with simply tremendous efficiency and interior dominance. 

Since Leonard is at 63% TS, 38 dunks, and 18 ppg, let’s look at all freshman prospects who have ever hit 60% TS, 30 dunks, and 17 ppg:

1. Zion
2. Marvin Bagley
3. DeAndre Ayton
4. Vernon Carey
5. Jahlil Okafor

Four Duke bigs and Ayton is crazy. Lowering it to 16 ppg adds the following: 

6. Evan Mobley
7. Onyeka Okongwu
8. TJ Leaf
9. Zeke Nnaji

Again, pretty limited company. (Note that no one here had a FT% above 73% and none of them were really operating from the perimeter. That will be important soon.)

I understand that the G League has a different pace, but it’s almost certainly harder to score in the G vs college. You can waffle about rim protection but these numbers should at least contextualize Leonard’s scoring dominance. He was putting up numbers in the G League that only five other freshmen have even come close to in college.

But why does this matter? Why is the combination of youth and productivity so important?

Suppose I gave a group of college students an algebra test. Their scores would generally not be very useful or predictive, for obvious reasons. However, if I gave the algebra test to a group of 6th graders, it’s more likely to hold insights regarding their foundational skills. Obviously it’s not perfect, since access to resources/rate of development can vary dramatically, but it’s at least better at differentiating between performance. 

In the same way, a 19 year old dominating in a league full of grown men is an incredibly important statistical point. The age curve is real, and Leonard was not only the most statistically dominant teenager in the history of the G League, but he did it despite limited high-level experience – he was playing in Canadian youth circuits a year ago. High volume scoring at high efficiency is impressive and very rare among 19 year olds within the NCAA, let alone the G-League, which is littered with former college stars.

In other words:

(Historic Examples: Walker Kessler, Franz Wagner, Tyrese Haliburton, Mikal Bridges, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The relative heterogeneity of the group is a testament to the power of precocious productivity)

Skill: Size + Touch + Youth

Adjust usage of touch indicators based on size and youth.

Leonard is not a good shooter at the moment. He’s a very strongly below average shooter at the moment. This is a player who was below average or worse on jump shots, catch and shoot (both guarded and unguarded), dribble jumpers, early jumpers, runners, and hooks- literally every shot category not at the rim, Leonard was solidly below average. At the combine, Leonard finished dead last in the shooting drill, tied with Oscar Tshiebwe. 

Now that we have that out of the way, I say with as much confidence as I can for a player with such a negative shooting profile: Leonard is a relatively good bet to shoot. Let’s break this skill integration down:

1. Skill: Size + Touch

Leonard’s exceptional touch is most obvious to anyone who has watched even a modicum of Leonard film. I’m assuming readers are somewhat familiar with Leonard’s incredible bevy of floaters, off the glass ambidextrous pushes, and off-foot, off-hand finishes. If not: basically, Leonard Miller has incredible touch, but less in the traditional sense of strictly being a good shooter and more so in the sensuous control and finesse of his release in the short-intermediate area.

Leonard also shoots 80% from the line on strong volume. This is especially impressive considering the G League foul rules generating only one free throw per shooting foul, rather than two FTs/foul as in NCAA. The second free throw is anecdotally easier to make than the first free throw, with some armchair statisticians citing 4-5% increase in accuracy on the second FT vs the first FT. Given the robust sample size and the one FT rule, Leonard’s 80% FT is probably a slight underestimate. That is wild.

There’s obviously touch in terms of shooting, but how does touch operate in regards to ball handling fluidity? 

Well, Leonard has a wildly functional handle at 6’11.  He can genuinely dribble in small spaces extraordinarily well, and can maintain his dribble despite pretty significant pressure. The underlying fluidity of Leonard’s handling (he inadvertently throws  passes with one hand off a live dribble?) indicates another layer of the insanely high threshold of fine motor skills that Leonard possesses. We often tend to abridge dribbling as a learned skill, but it’s just as much of a function of biomechanical/motor underpinnings. Does this mean that he has a higher likelihood of hitting fadeaways and maybe even legitimate pull-ups off an improvised dribble cadence? Is he even going to be able to hit inside the arc fadeaways off hostage dribbles? I think these are legitimate potential outcomes. Nonetheless, Leonard’s fluidity and touch extends beyond just his free throw mastery to his BH craft, and I think his BH upside is significant enough to consider.

2. Skill: (Size + Touch) + Youth

The “coordination curve” is real. Tall players tend to undergo much more drastic skill improvements than shorter players. This is but another generality, but this is either because 1) the wings have been dominating by virtue of physicality for a while and are thereby at a skill disadvantage or 2) said player has grown immensely over a short period of time and is reaping the benefits of activating newfound avenues of scoring by virtue of increased frame and mass. Leonard may be the rare case that fits in both categories.

This might be intuitive, but young, wing sized players need to be graded on a much less harsh shooting curve- they are most prone to making massive in-season shooting leaps. Just look at Brandon Miller 3P volume/%  leap this year, or even Tari Eason’s FT% jump from freshman to sophomore year in 2022. Touch indicators are probably more robust for wings than guards, since the shooting curve is longer for wings. Speaking as someone who had Devon Dotson insanely high, Devon Dotson shooting 80% from the line but only 30% from 3 is not as strong of a shooting bet as someone 6 inches taller than him. Leonard has great touch indicators, he’s 6’10”, and he’s 19 years old. His already strong touch indicators are even more impressive in context of his size and age. He is certainly not destined to be a “bad” shooter.

3. Skill Gap: Shooting woes are a function of mechanics not touch

Leonard’s jumper issues are mechanically a function of energy leakage. The load mechanism is inconsistent from jumper to jumper, leading to a mistimed synchronization between the lower body to the core/upper body. This breakdown of the kinetic chain limits the push-off from the legs. 

The subsequent force generated from the lower body is meant to transfer throughout the hips and core, thereby enabling rotational torque about his center of gravity that thrusts the ball into trajectory. However, Leonard has a low arching push shot that is visibly segmented from the workflow of the kinetic linking, leading to a disparately visible discrimination between the set and push of the shot.

The hitch seems to cause variations in the release point of the ball. The pause disrupts the natural fluidity of the shooting motion, making it challenging to replicate a consistent release point from shot to shot. Leonard appears to over-rely on his upper extremity strength to generate power, bypassing the opportunity to maximize force production from the larger leg and core muscles.

Here’s the bottom line: Leonard is generating virtually no energy transfer between the kinetic linking of the upper and lower body. Part of that is the limited core stability symptomatic of the landing leg kicks and even poor one-legged landing mechanics after dunks. 

Touch + Energy Transfer = Shooting

Touch, which is succinctly the nexus of sensory feedback and coordination, operates synergistically with energy transfer to manifest in shooting goodness. Shots such as free throws and intermediate area shots are somewhat standardized to an extent- neither rely on a consistently dynamic change of energy transfer up the kinetic chain, and they are much more effective in indicating underlying touch.

Essentially, Leonard excels at these kinds of shots, since he has such good touch but not so great control over a homogeneous synchronization of energy transfer. Since his specialty – free throws and intermediate area shots – are more touch based and less dependent on efficient energy transfer, he excels at them.

However, when extending range to long 2’s/threes, there’s a necessity for more fluidity from upper body to release by virtue of the increasing distance. Leonard seems to be over reliant on his touch on the longer range jumpers/threes, which is probably why he seems to be pushing the ball so vigorously; the lack of effective energy transfer necessitates this vigor. The lack of core stability is either a symptom or root cause of the limited kinetic control- its the underlying bridge between the lower and upper extremities. I cannot emphasize how his one leg landings are really really bad, which is further evidence of his limited core stability.

Leonard has good touch and bad energy transfer/rotational torque. I’m no Chip England, but this is a far brighter picture than what the numbers portray. Core stability seems like an issue that can be fixed, and he also has insane touch- not just good touch, but borderline ridiculous touch. Fixing a shot mechanically is tough, but having the underlying elite touch makes it much lower hanging fruit than for a true “non shooter.” 

Skill: Physicality + Dawg

Unorthodox athleticism and motor at a young age is a strong indicator of outlier development.

Leonard is such a strong athlete. He fights hard for every single rebound and loose ball, which is impressive considering how often the Ignite were losing this year. He was ranked sixth in the entire G-League in rebounds a game, averaging 12 per 36 minutes. That is insane. A 19 year old who is quite visibly not even close to filling out physically, is inexplicably out rebounding grown men. For context, he’s averaging as many rebounds as Kenneth Faried. 

His per-game rebound rate is easily the highest among draft-eligible underclassmen, he’s fourth overall among draft eligible players… and he’s doing this against grown men, not against college players.

The intrinsic dawg of Leonard enables his rebounding goodness in the face of his lack of tangible strength and youth. He has an incredibly high motor, and he’s physically gifted (6’11” with a 7’2” wingspan and functionally very very strong, clearly) with seemingly much more room to grow and gain strength. The intersection of Leonard’s insane physicality, potential for even more physicality, and sheer dawg is not only rare, but seemingly ripe for outlier development. 

The most egregious part is that this 6’11” teenager legitimately moves like a guard. With long legs, flexible hips, and an incredible vestibular sense, Leonard can maintain stability while stringing out spins and stepbacks. In every sense of the term, Leonard is an advantage creator. His low shin angles, rapidly veering lower body rotations, and the sheer variance in his weight distribution allow him to lower his center of gravity and generate paint touches off a perimeter standstill. Again, how many 6’10 guys in the league can get a paint touch in the halfcourt?

Refutation: Role Projection is Imprecise

I fundamentally disagree with lowering a player’s projected outcome because of uncertainty regarding their projected role.

When we see a prospect that has an entirely unique set of flaws and weaknesses, role projection becomes much more difficult. There is no one to cross-check with, no one to even remotely compare the prospect and get a sense of what kind of outcomes they can achieve.  An intuitive byproduct of this is that when an unfamiliar, newer type of archetypal prospect emerges, they are mistakenly demonized for not being easily projectable. Here’s the issue though: precise role projection is hard as hell. Besides using general terms such as “future PnR BH”, “cutter”, “connector”, it is extremely difficult to project future roles for players. This is why I find it a bit ridiculous to be low on a player because you can’t project them well: Since when can we effectively project roles to begin with?

Of course, I am speaking in generalities to an extent. But if the biggest question for Leonard is not his productivity, ability to hold up against NBA defenses, or scoring touch, then uncertainty about role is quite a weak reason to limit his outcome projection. And this role uncertainty does seem to be the primary question regarding Leonard.

Closing Pitch: Leonard Miller is Good

Leonard Miller is projected to be picked outside the top 20, which, regardless of evaluatory paradigm of choice, is borderline ridiculous. I believe he has a legitimate top 10 case, and should at least be considered with a lottery selection. 

The issue with historical analysis is overgeneralization: history doesn’t repeat itself. It may follow incredibly similar patterns, making the process of prediction easier to elucidate. But there are far too many confounding variables to project variability by virtue of precedent alone. 

Again, anyone who pretends that precise role projection is somewhat feasible is lying to you. Most people base role projection almost entirely off precedent, which means that when an unfamiliar, newer type of archetypal prospect emerges, they demonize them for not being familiar. We often conflate projecting outcomes with projecting roles. Most role projections are outright wrong, so quite frankly I don’t see too much of an issue with not knowing how Leonard will project.

Who is Leonard Miller at his peak? I honestly have no idea. He’s such an unprecedented player with such wide discrepancies between his strengths and weaknesses; his role is impossible to project. 

What position does he guard? To be honest, I’m not losing sleep at night regarding the primary position that Leonard Miller, a 6’11 teenage wing with a 7’2 wingspan and insatiable motor, will guard. Again, I don’t know what role he will play, but isn’t the most dominant teenager in G-League history a good bet to be a role player at least?

Hollingerian draft analysis is predicated around the idea of stability of floor, wherein there are 20 players who will evolve into feasible contributors, and searching for those 20 players in any given draft should be a primary consideration of any big board. While this approach has its flaws, including overfitting without effectively capturing changing league context, it’s a floor-centric approach that should theoretically favor Leonard. 

This is the beauty of the Leonard Miller draft evaluation. You can be a tools-centric truther, a pure hooper, a calculator boy with a distaste for ahistorical analysis, a Hollinger disciple, or from the Zwickerian tree of making a  series of objective extrapolations off every minutiae of tangible skill. Leonard Miller combines all sectors of evaluatory paradigms with his unprecedented integration of skills.

The post Leonard Miller: Evaluatory Paradigms, Energy Transfer, and the Fallacy of Role Projection appeared first on Swish Theory.

The sample for NBA draft prospects is tiny. Even if we have perfect data for a player’s prep and pro careers, the top draft prospects are typically aged 18-22, undergoing massive changes to their games and lives over the span of mere months, over and over in evolving environments and around new personnel.

Combing through that limited data, we search for narratives, precedents, guys that “just have it,” from a scout’s perspective.

In search for a method to the madness this cycle, I’m splitting my draft analysis pieces into three:

• “Whiteboard” Prospects: those whose stats improve as they play worse competition, declining, then, against the top teams
• “Green Flags Only” Prospects: those whose stats exceed certain thresholds regardless of level of competition
• Everyone Else

This, first of two pieces, looks at what I’m calling Whiteboard prospects. Their top-end traits are obvious, but for that reason can be prepared for by the better opponents. As I watch this group, I seek to answer two questions:

• Do they struggle against increasing competition in a way that would be a problem in the NBA?
• Do they simply dominate lower-ranked competition that much?

Definition

I defined Whiteboard Prospects as having a certain set of traits decline against good competition, increase against bad competition:

• Box Plus-Minus
• Percentage of teammates’ FGM assisted
• True shooting percentage
• Steal rate.

As long as these decline from all competition to games against top-100 teams, then again against top-50 teams, and are also on Swish Theory’s Big Board 1.0, they’re a Whiteboard Prospect.

Let’s get to it.

Brandin Podziemski, Santa Clara

• vs. all competition: 10.0 BPM
• vs. top 100 teams: 6.5 BPM
• vs. top 50 teams: 3.9 BPM

Podziemski I thought was going to be an easy read, especially given the severity of decline, the single largest from overall comp to top-50 in our sample. But it was far from that.

Against bad competition, “Podz” did everything. Shooting at a 66% effective field goal percentage and 28% usage, he also maintained a 25% assist rate, 21% defensive rebound rate and 3% steal rate. His stats were heavily buoyed by, simply, never missing from three, where he took over half his shots and made over half of those attempts. That is basically impossible to stop, especially if you are a team ranked in the 200-400 range.

Against better competition, the athletic limitations showed, as expected. He struggles to create much distance on his dribble moves, leading to forced tough angle floaters, but those still go in at decent rates. Truly, Podz put up a historically efficient scoring season.

Projecting that at the next level is tricky. 80-179 (45%) from three, 62-146 (42%) from midrange, 75-121 (62%) at the rim is tough to argue with, but 8-17 (47%) from three, 7-25 (28%) from midrange and 7-19 (37%) from close range is what he tallied against top-50 teams. Another reminder of the inherent uncertainty in percentages.

However, Podziemski is armed with a mighty weapon to limit this downgrade against better competition: he plays really hard, and processes the game very quickly. There is one type of game processing that is Chris Paul-like, setting up one play to set up the next, and then there is Podz’s sharklike approach, always advantage-seeking from all angles. He goes for the kill with his hit-ahead passes or finding cutters, which leads to some sloppy turnovers, but, when coupled with his nose for the ball, means Podziemski will pick up change wherever it comes loose.

Finally, his pull-up three is legit. The release is low, but he needs little room to get it off and has enough 1-2 release patterns to get there.

Results: Primary odds fade, but secondary and especially tertiary shine. He’ll find a way to contribute, I’m sure

Brandon Miller, Alabama

• vs. all competition: 11.0 BPM
• vs. top 100 teams: 9.9 BPM
• vs. top 50 teams: 6.5 BPM

We move from Brandin to Brandon, first to second largest decline in overall production as NCAA competition increases. This exercise was less kind to Alabama’s Miller, placed in a cushier position and, given he is a 6’9’’ ballhandler projected to go in the top 5, the light is naturally a bit harsher.

The obvious knock on Miller this season was his rim finishing. He shot 74% at the rim against teams ranked 50-400, an elite figure that fits a top scorer prospect. But only 44% at the rim against teams in the top 50, representing about half of his possessions. Considering Brandon is also old for a freshman, this is a bit concerning for a player with his level of touch and fluidity with the ball.

Miller’s drives tend to develop slowly. His handle is strong, as are his ball custodian instincts, making him a decent point forward option to kick off an offense with a pull-up threat. But, while he can create initial separation, he lacks the flexibility to lower his shoulder to turn angles to the rim or burst to hit those openings, and his vertical takes long to load. Both of these factors combine to mean forced difficult finishes, which he figured out to some extent but will remain a problem in the NBA.

Perhaps more concerning, however, was the defensive tape as competition increased. Alabama is full of rangy, athletic wings who can handle tough matchups. This allowed them to let Miller, with his team-leading usage, take easier assignments. One of the main consequences of going up in competition is stronger worst option, and this showed with Miller’s defense. The same lack of flexibility and burst that limits his finishing also make Miller a worse chaser from interior to perimeter. His help was often too conservative into the paint, with not enough burst to then close out effectively.

His long wingspan and overall solid instincts mediate this, but I would not be surprised if Miller would be targeted significantly in a playoff series in his prime. That may be an aggressive take, again considering his feel for the game is strong overall, but I think it is more representative of his ability than the current top 3 talk.

Miller has a lot to like, especially how good he is at locating shooters off the dribble while he probes for his shot, or how he gets set off the move into his three. But the overall state of his game reads more like a #10 pick than top 5.

Results: some rust to the star shine

Judah Mintz, Syracuse

• vs. all competition: 1.5
• vs. top 100 teams: -0.2
• vs. top 50 teams: -2.5

Judah Mintz has a space creation and space maintenance problem. His touch is legit, but opponents know it, and with limited volume from three point range for a guard, he can be predictable in how he gets into it.

Mintz is young and has time to build counters for this, as there are plenty, but I would not feel comfortable rolling him out on an NBA court next season until there is much more evidence of that. He shot 43% on 67 runners, a figure I’d be comfortable penciling in as Mintz’ floor for the shot type. The average degree of difficulty, particularly as competition ramped up, was sky high.

He has built his game around a shot that will always be available to him – tough floaters – but that is still unlikely to be very efficient offense on its own, particularly with a lack of strong acceleration. But, Mintz is also blessed with an advantage-seeking type of passing creativity. Not necessarily the best at setting up an offense, Mintz has a keen eye for brief moments of openings, and also how his shotmaking creates them.

That is a potent combination for a scorer, but the scoring needs more supports. The easiest solution, by far, is to up the three point volume. Judah took more midrange attempts (189) than any freshman with so few three point attempts (66). When factoring in his strong FTA and rim attempt counts, that puts him in the company of De’Aaron Fox and Tony Wroten as far as previous draft picks, Elfrid Payton when including sophomore seasons. Mintz’s burst is certainly closer to that of Payton than Fox or Wroten, and we saw what happened to Elfrid without credible three point volume.

Mintz shot 6 of 24 (25%) from catch and shoot and 11 of 35 (31%) from pull-up threes. Not great. He seems hamstrung by a lack of strength, a lanky build but time to add on. Adding core strength should be Judah’s priority #1, helping both with his burst and ability to launch when opponents go under on pick and roll.

Suffice it to say, Mintz has a strength issue on defense as well. He has good passing lane instincts, once again making up for his lack of consistent presence with timely high-value plays.

Mintz has a route to being a very potent scorer, but I think it would benefit him to spend either another year in college or significant time in NBA weight rooms to get there.

Results: Potential end of shotclock star, with a 1-2 year path to get there

Terrence Shannon Jr., Illinois

• vs. all competition: 6.1 BPM
• vs. top 100 teams: 5.1 BPM
• vs. top 50 teams: 2.1 BPM

I was a bit shocked the degree to which Shannon’s stats declined as competition increased, given his athletic profile and semblance of shotmaking, playmaking on both ends. But the tape revealed clear limitations to TSJ’s handle in particular that make me concerned for his ability to fit into an NBA team quickly.

Terrence Shannon Jr. is fast, perhaps the burstiest player in all of college basketball. That is an extremely, often underrated quality for an NBA player to have, one I just complained about lacking in Judah Mintz’ game currently. If you give the ball to TSJ as he gets downhill, he’s gonna get downhill. He can hit any straight line gap and keep the space with his strength. He will get open court NBA steals this way.

However, the cupboard is a bit bare when it comes to options for maximizing this advantage. In particular, Shannon is extremely left-handed, and with few handle counters beyond his pull-up if opponents sit on it. Another fortunate trait of Shannon’s, though, is his touch is indeed good. I’d bet he shoots among the best in the class for those with shortest load time into pull-up threes: a hand-tracked stopwatch estimate places him often around 0.4 seconds from plant to release, about a tenth of a second quicker than Mintz.

On defense as well, I hope for more from TSJ. I’ve long been a fan of his versatility as a big guard, but on this watch found myself having doubts on his ability to handle difficult matchups in the NBA. He knows how to be physical when engaged, but often floats near his mark and gives up space he shouldn’t. Perhaps with NBA-level training this can improve, but still disappointing for an upperclassman who could have been more of a stalwart for the Illini.

TSJ is a Whiteboard prospect, but likely shouldn’t be at this point in his career. He has had success with his pull-up (88th percentile) but at the cost of refining his catch and shoot mechanics (29th percentile), the latter of which will be more important for his life as an NBA role player. Without the star equity that a developed driving game (0.8ppp) would enable, his inconsistent presence on defense becomes a greater concern as well.

Results: NBA athlete, but the skills development has to continue

Maxwell Lewis, Pepperdine

• vs. all competition: 1.2
• vs. top 100: -2.2
• vs. top 50: -2.4

First of all, we have to address the baseline of production. That degree of negative box plus-minus – a box score measure meant to estimate plus-minus – is extremely concerning for a prospect mocked in the first round. I have wanted to believe in Max as even a lottery level prospect, as his tools are that enticing, particularly his stride length, length for position and shotmaking abilities. The combination of qualities he has is rare. Extremely rare. And a good star predictor too. But having 13 games against top 100 competition and only shooting an effective field goal percentage of 46% and turning the ball over at a 23% clip to 14% assist rate, only 1.3% steal rate despite those tools is a major red flag.

To my dismay, this showed up in the tape. To be fair to Lewis, he has not been in organized basketball for as long as many he faced and Pepperdine had many flaws in the roster. He often faced completely stacked defenses, so that when the shot clock dwindled, he would face endless help. But that is the archetype he will be expected to succeed in, and the numbers when under pressure (0 shooting fouls to 8 turnovers in late shot clock situations) showed up in the tape as he often stepped out of bounds when rushed.

But, man, he has such creativity in finding his shots I almost don’t want to care. When we write about Whiteboard prospects, this is exactly the prototype. I believe Lewis has as good of instincts as any his age at finding a gap to attack automatically as he drives, it’s just cleaning up the rough edges around that which need a lot of work.

The reward here is high, and tangible: Max can hit difficult shots with the best of them. But a team needs to be keenly aware of what to expect as far as his year one usage. He will be targeted on screens. He will turn the ball over if help takes him by surprise. But he’ll teleport across the floor with the ball before gracefully dropping it in, too.

Results: Whiteboard prospect embodied, elite shotmaker potential but little faith in being a consistent foundation piece without major improvements

Adem Bona, UCLA

• vs. all competition: 5.0 BPM
• vs. top 100 teams: 4.6 BPM
• vs. top 50 teams: 2.8 BPM

Bona is a bit surprising to be found on this list, by all accounts a solid rim protector who does his dirty work and doesn’t overextend elsewhere. That remained the case during my tape watch, but I see why his stats changed so much, as well.

A big factor is his role in UCLA’s system. They have elite wing defenders in Jamie Jacquez Jr. and Jaylen Clark to rack up stocks, and Tyger Campbell, while not imposing in size, is a ball demon to create transition offense. Against bad teams, adding Bona into the mix is simply not fair. UCLA rarely lets up clean paint touches against sub-100, even opponents in the 50-100 range. And when they do, Bona is ready to pounce.

Against the top 50 squads, where UCLA faces more of a challenge, Bona was used in many different ways. This is his genius: you can throw Bona in a full blitz, in a hedge, drop, man on the perimeter, helpside rotator, whatever, and he’ll be useful. Bona understands how to use his length, strength and speed as instruments in whatever task, an ability that will benefit playoff teams in particular with his defensive versatility.

There are cracks that form, however, particularly in his often overzealous rotations, throwing off the timing in sync with the team defense a bit, and I think his timing on blocks is more very good than top 1% among shotblockers. This can mean having to recover from distances longer than he needs, and not being quite able to pull it off. That can be developed, but does mean I could see him struggling a bit to kick off his NBA career even if playing even harder.

Then, there’s the offense. I struggle to see him ever been a true positive offensive player, but can make it work with constant screens and vigilance to look for lobs. His box outs are spectacular, as well, using his body to create space as well as anyone I’ve seen this draft cycle. However if he gets the ball and doesn’t know immediately what to do with it, things can get ugly, as he is simply not comfortable doing things beyond catch and finish.

With his special defensive versatility, he’ll find his way to NBA relevance at some point. Keeping things simple would help him fit neatly into a very valuable type of rim protector.

Result: NBA-ready rim protector, just needs to slow things down

Taylor Hendricks, UCF

• vs. all competition: 7.1 BPM
• vs. top 100 teams: 6.4 BPM
• vs. top 50 teams: 5.1 BPM

Being further down this list means “less dynamic,” or, most consistent across components, and that is exactly what I discovered in watching Hendricks’ tape. The primary trend being picked up, I believe, is that as a member of a #63-ranked team by barttorvik.com, UCF was a cuspy NCAA team that could take out lower ranks with ease but struggle against the top 20s.

An interesting phenomenon took me by surprise, though: as his teammates struggled increasingly against future professional basketball players, Hendricks’ uniqueness popped. After all, his 5.1 BPM against top 50 teams is still second best on this list so far.

Hendricks has two traits that will serve him very well early in his career. First, his shot has an automatically stabilizing quality to it, as if a string goes directly through his shot pocket. It is light into the loading and skies maximizing Hendricks’ seemingly over seven-foot wingspan. Second, he has unbelievable lateral movements combined with elite hand-eye placement on blocks or steals. Physically, I feel like he is one of the more underrated athleltes, even as he is considered universally a very good athlete. Behind Wemby, Scoot, Amen and Ausar, Hendricks provides instantaneous movements and blankets entire sections of the court.

His help rotations need some work, too often pinching in too far or struggling with the complexity of multiple screens, but seemed to do increasingly well as his responsibilities increased. He always plays hard and is ready to be challenged. He does not let up easy layups, as he has the tools to make plays at the rim from distance.

The biggest issue with Hendricks is his lack of any real craft inside on offense, defaulting to a quick jumper instead of trying to solve those problems. But mitigating that is that fact that, well, his quick jumpers are really good. He has displayed some passing creativity, if not consistent advantage creation, but also hunts drive angles and is able to get his body lower to the ground than you’d think to maximize angles.

I came into this watch considering Taylor Hendricks an easy top 20 but probably not top 10, certainly not top 8 prospect. Now I think he could finish top 5 in the class eventually, and his warts are maybe not as bad as those talked around him, given the flashes of sky-high upside.

Results: a top 10-worthy pick

Keyonte George, Baylor

• vs. all competition: 4.7
• vs. top 100 competition: 3.9
• vs. top 50 competition: 2.9

Keyonte George’s projection is complicated by unusual usage, often the third guard on Baylor parked in the slot. At IMG Academy he had more clearcut combo guard duties, where he had more priority in the offense to take advantage of above-the-break spacing. George, as well as upperclassmen Adam Flagler and LJ Cryer, took turns initiating, and with little interior threat, often had to do so within single possessions.

A more fluid offense will benefit George mightily at the next level, where his combination of skills is compelling. In particular, Keyonte has lightning quick processing off the catch, able to whip the ball to open teammates in a flash or rise into his smooth, technically sound release. That optionality, in addition to proficiency out of the pick and roll, where Synergy ranks him in the 81^st percentile on possessions that ended in his shots or passes, give him a valued skillset at the NBA level.

Where the tape turns against George, however, is placing his athleticism against NBA athletes, a major part of the story when his production drops against better competition. First, it’s simply easy to get Keyonte out of frame by targeting him on defense. At 6’4’’ and more SG than PG, Keyonte does not have the lateral quickness or length to contest after being screen or on distance close-outs.

On offense, again we see the combination of short for position and slow-footed for position reflect poorly on his ability to create much distance off the dribble. His side step into a three is very good, an important sign of developing counters to otherwise lackluster space creation. In particular, if he can develop a stampede step or heavy crossover into a Harden-style double-stepback (first onto one foot, then two), those types of menu items could launch him into stardom.

Right now, however, I see an extremely useful offensive player who could grease the wheels regardless of landing spot.

Results: The elite is elite and obstacles are obvious; what level of starter could he be remains a major question mark

GG Jackson, South Carolina

• vs. all competition: -0.5 BPM
• vs. top 100 teams: -1.6 BPM
• vs. top 50 teams:  -1.9 BPM

GG’s numbers were ugly no matter how you sliced the competition, but saw his assist and steal rates deteriorate the most as the opponents improved. Jackson was in a rare spot for a freshmen, with only Collin Sexton, Markelle Fultz, Jabari Parker, RJ Barrett, Jaylen Brown and D’Angelo Russell taking on greater usage all over the court as high major freshmen. That entire crew had over 100 attempts from the rim, midrange, three and free throw line in their sole NCAA season with usage at 30% or higher, an astronomical task for a freshman-aged player. Factor in how GG was not just young, but the youngest player in all of college basketball, and you get an even more unusual burden. Then, put on top of that the context of South Carolina being not just bad, but not even a top 200 team, and I understand if you’re throwing up your hands in confusion.

GG has earned a reputation as a chucker with low feel for the game, descriptions that may be correct at cursory glance but I believe to not hold up to further inspection. First of all, the context around him really is that bad. Factoring into how tight he was covered, his efficiency for both guarded and unguarded catch and shoot is both exactly league average.

Jackson’s efficiency was worst in isolation possessions, as, on a team with no other advantage creators outside of him, opponents could send as much help as they wanted. Lack of entry passing ability meant early seals or hard cuts would go unrewarded, though Jackson still kept making them. So he not just leaned on isolation possessions, but ended up #15 in the NCAA in iso possessions at 103.

When South Carolina’s lone traditional big sat, Jackson’s efficiency improved a significant degree (). It is true his passing creativity and vision is poor, but he is still able to zip establishing passes to keep an offense in rhythm (when he’s not in iso). An off-ball role would benefit him tremendously, as his turnover rate dropped significantly and efficiency was average to excellent in all of off-screen, roll man, putback, cut and spot up opportunities.

I believe in Jackson as a lottery bet on his ability to even take up this amount of offense on his shoulders, built with broad shoulders and a lightning quick second leap to make his presence consistently felt. His shooting form looks great to me, and ability to execute complex footwork at his size is often shocking. Those traits are what are valuable in isolation, with an inevitably better team context giving him upside we likely cannot yet discern.

Results: the most unusual context, but I see a future NBA scorer

The post The 2023 NBA Draft’s “Whiteboard” Prospects appeared first on Swish Theory.