That’s what this annual column is for (see 2022, 2023 and 2024 versions): How did I evaluate this NBA draft cycle, how does it compare to years’ past and how will I adjust for 2025-26? Where does my process fit into the greater universe of basketball understanding, and how can it get better? These are questions I believe more should ask.

I published the below graphic at the end of my last piece with The Stepien before it shut down. It is easy to get bogged down with the evaluatory framework I outline on the far right. You read consensus views from major outlets, then either take them at face value or come up with a shortcut reason why this is not the case. Many use the middle approach, relative scouting, ordering by category / archetype (i.e. primaries first) and then comparing within that group. I have aimed for something I like to call absolute scouting, that is, looking at a player’s current ability while assessing with an eye to what they may become. This process can be amplified by the other two, but is ultimately the “truest” evaluatory framework, giving the player himself center stage.

But even within absolute scouting there are endless approaches. This column tracks the evolution of my evaluatory framework to better project NBA careers at the time of the draft.

Forbidden Knowledge

My thesis last year went something like this: if a player is productive on the court, making things happen almost by accident, exhibits high feel, and also demonstrates a high level of athleticism, that is the type of prospect I would want to invest in. The draft is about chasing outliers, and outliers tend to show themselves in those three arenas.

This strategy led to some major out-of-consensus calls. The highest profile call was placing Zach Edey #1 atop my 2025 NBA draft board. Edey was productive in a way I expected to translate at the next level, particularly his rim volume, offensive rebounding and screen-setting. He has made significant improvements to both his feel and athleticism over his college career, items you could notice even evolving over the course of his rookie season, and despite a nagging foot injury. Finding a way to be useful for an above-average Grizzlies team while drastically shifting from his college role, I still have high hopes for the big.

I also had Jonathan Mogbo as a clear-cut lottery talent, finishing as my #5 prospect, then drafted by the Toronto Raptors to kick off the second round. Mogbo finished #18 in the class in minutes played, able to get rotation and occasional starter playing time. While only 22nd in the class in points scored, Mogbo is #8 in the class in rebounds, #7 in assists, #5 in steals and #12 in blocks after his rookie season. While still a bad player overall – he was one of the worst finishers in the league, exchanging his lob finishes in college for off-the-dribble lays too far from the hoop – Mogbo has quickly proven he can do as many non-scoring things on the court as anyone in the class. In some ways, he’s adapted from mid major to NBA competition better than I expected. I’d still bet on him, particularly given his immediately above-average defense and the weakness of the 2025 class otherwise. Should the passing continue to click and his teammates become more comfortable finding him on lobs, the path to offensive value is there. He came out of the gate as one of the NBA’s most bothersome defenders.

My other two big swings near the top were Oso Ighodaro and Terrence Shannon Jr. as late lottery bets, consistent rotation players. While minutes for both were up and down, both showed enough for me to remain encouraged.

The Ten Dimensions

This year, however, I wanted to become more literal in assessing player value. This led me to inspecting the game by “dimensions of impact,” where I categorize each type of contribution into ten groupings. I based these on how one interacts with the ball and court in literal manners, inspecting each realm in close detail, creating clear as possible delineations among categories.

The ten categories within three skill groupings:

• On-Ball Interactions: Three point shooting, midrange shooting, rim finishing, handle, passing
• Off-Ball Interactions: Grabbing/deflecting the ball, ground coverage, positioning
• Physical Force: Pace-force, strength-force

However, no two traits have the same impact of the game; I would have to weight each area of impact. I constructed these weights and inputted values for each player on my board with endless tinkering, informed by tape watch, statistical assessment, philosophical inquiries into how the game is won. The heaviest weights went to three point shooting and positioning, two areas of impact I only added more and more weight to as I back-tested to current and historical NBA players.

But this has limits, too. Namely, skills on the court interact with each other in varied and unusual ways. Even though both combinations provide additional value, a player’s ability to finish at the rim is more advantageous when mixed with a strong handle than if it were mixed with great rebounding. While rim touch + rebounding equals putback potential, handle + rim touch means an extremely deadly drive threat. A team is able to scale that up and gain secondary benefits off of that more than the other combo. There are synergies and frictions across skillsets that make performance better or worse. You can’t just add up skills.

How Good Are You?

My solution? To throw away the ladder, yet again, to construct a new one. Having advanced my ability to inspect skillsets by interaction type, how each player impacts the game became much clearer. But basketball evaluation is even more mystical than that, especially in the absence of a well-constructed statistical model.

So, my answer was simple: ask myself, “how good is this player, on offense and defense?”

I decided to use Estimated Plus-Minus projection as my peg, not taken too literally but a useful impact curve where one can ascertain, as long as with context on role, a rough approximation of how good a player is. Not perfect, but more dynamic than skillset grading.

I’ve said it before, but draft projection is primarily an exercise in imagination. Even if I graded each player’s current skillset perfectly, there are more complex interactions between qualities shown today as it relates to future skill development. For example, a high feel, coordinated player may be more likely to develop a shot than one who doesn’t have those underlying foundations.

It is also extremely difficult to anticipate where development may arise, to the point of it being easier to rather say, here are the way this player might improve, and here are the odds of each happening. I back into this assessment by projecting into multiple scenarios: the future has not been set.

A New Dynamic

My philosophy has generally been extremely pro-risk, for two simple salary arbitrages, in addition to the fact that I can’t get fired: 1.) a team gets its most value out of paying only a max contract amount to a player worth far more, and 2.) if a player doesn’t work out, his minutes go to zero, limiting the downside impact. These are two HUGE incentives, as it is very difficult to compete if you aren’t getting plus-max value out of one player, making even multiple busts less damaging.

However, my strategy did evolve somewhat towards the end of this cycle. I changed my board to become dynamic, first ranking the top of my board by 80th percentile outcomes only – still keeping it high risk for the players whose talent makes it worthwhile. Then, towards the end of the lotto, the assessment becomes 50/50 between a player’s 80th percentile outcome and 50th percentile outcome. By pick 30, my calculation will only be considering median outcome, omitting the ceiling factor at all.

I made this change for an obvious reason I had been ignoring: it is simply impossible to develop an entire roster of projects at the same time. If a player isn’t deemed as high ceiling, he simply will not get the developmental reps to push through to those higher percentile outcomes. In this way, it is more worthwhile to take the bird-in-hand once you get past the obvious star bets. My changed formula accounts for this.

In addition, I should not be ranking my board, as an outsider not working for a team, based on salary arbitrage opportunities, rather than by how I expect the long-term results to shake out.

The Winners and Losers

My outlier calls this year included four bigs or big wings with shooting questions: South Carolina’s Collin Murray-Boyles, Georgetown’s Thomas Sorber, Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner and Arkansas’ Adou Thiero. They went #9 to Toronto, #15 to Oklahoma City, #34 to Charlotte and #36 to Los Angeles Lakers, respectively, but I would have taken all four much higher.

Collin Murray-Boyles is perhaps my boldest take, finishing #2 on my Big Board. “CMB” is a tank at Draymond Green dimensions, and has shown a non-shooting skillset, defensive acumen and physicality that indeed do remind one of the Hall of Famer. Draymond is one-of-one as a processor, but Murray-Boyles has lightning quick reaction time and excellent understanding of the floor, too. He does not have the vertical pop of Charles Barkley, but CMB does mimic him in carving out space around the basket, constantly. The most important commonality is the physicality and processing speed, and CMB is far ahead of his age for both.

For a glimpse into the degree of impact CMB had on South Carolina’s woeful squad, I calculated the number of points at the rim SC would score or allow when Murray-Boyles was on or off. South Carolina scored THIRTEEN more points at the rim when he was on than off, and allowed SEVEN fewer points at the rim in the same scenarios. That offensive figure is more than double the second most among his 2025 comps, and defensive figure third to stalwarts Thomas Sorber and Amari Williams.

CMB has perhaps the best hands in the class, and they synergize nicely with not just his defensive but also his offensive game. Murray-Boyles learned how to better manipulate the ball when driving to the basket over the season, using his intelligence for when to attack to find seams just large enough to let his stellar touch take over. CMB was in the 85th percentile for layup efficiency, and top ten in the country in rim finishing among anyone with 150+ makes. Only Derik Queen was close among underclassmen, and CMB is six months younger despite being the higher grade.

Murray-Boyles is able to conduct traffic, palming the ball in the high post, one spin away from the hoop. He will operate more out of the short roll in the NBA, and thankfully with better shooters (even with the Raptors’ subpar personnel, they exceed his 31.6% three-point shooting college team). He is better than a connective passer, able to hit small windows and create advantages with his sense of timing, leading his teammate into space.

CMB provides rim protection, elite rebounding, on-ball disruption (he is particularly strong blitzing and recovering) and leads the defense when guarding away from the ball. He is the best defensive prospect in a class full of very strong bets in Cooper Flagg, Thomas Sorber, Noah Penda, or perhaps second to Joan Beringer. He does that while being one of the best driving big men in the country, putting up a very strong 0.92ppp on over 100 drives. He thrived out of isos as the season went on, scoring nearly five points per game out of the play type over South Carolina’s final six games. Check out the versatility in the clips below.

It is rare to find obvious defensive disruptors of this level who also have this kind of offensive potential. He almost certainly won’t be a very useful three point shooter, but he has nearly everything else (I’m even hopeful about the midrange).

On the downside, I thought players like Ace Bailey, Egor Demin, Nolan Traore, Hansen Yang and Will Riley went over-drafted. A common theme for these players is being young and high-risk while needing a good amount of touches to approach their ceiling. With my new system, their upside outcomes do not quite drag them up the list high enough to use the 80th percentile calculation, rather being graded on their less thrilling median outcomes.

Four of the five are skinny for NBA players at their heights, with the exception of the slow-footed Hansen Yang. Returning again to our synergies, a weaker frame mixes extremely poorly with on-ball potential, unless you’re a Haliburton-esque conductor, or Shai-esque scorer, both nearly perfect at capitalizing on space creation specificity. This does not mean the path is closed – I’m especially still high on Ace Bailey as a late lottery option – but not the bets I would make with the group compared to where they were drafted unless you can spot the magic. All five have magical moments, no doubt, but lack consistency and are likely to face struggles as they adjust to NBA physicality.

CMB is, on the other hand, extremely difficult to tilt off his spot, making those on-ball reps more consistent and allowing him to explore the studio space in a safer manner. I was also high on Javon Small, Max Shulga and Joan Beringer, all with BMIs higher than all but Yang from the group of players I was lower on. Small’s physicality allows him to drive and dunk through traffic, set up offense without being knocked off his spot. Shulga is broad-shouldered, allowing him to wall off drives and switch up. Joan Beringer, despite being one of the youngest in the class, has been able to bulk up some, on his way to becoming one of the NBA’s best rim protectors. If I have one regret so early, it would be not ranking Beringer in my top ten. The defensive instincts and physical tools give him an extremely lofty ceiling, even with mediocre offense, and he already seems good enough to say his defensive floor is safe, too.

An Eye to 2026

2025 was a fantastic class to evaluate, extremely deep in starter bets. I ended up ranking Jase Richardson around 20, and even so would not be surprised at all if he carved out a starter spot, overcoming his 178-pound frame by being so effective and technical playing off the ball. He was a painful player to rank even that low, given how high his feel for the game is and proven technique, though I remain concerned about his lack of a right and limited defensive ceiling.

2026 promises to be thrilling at the top, as Cameron Boozer, Darryn Peterson and AJ Dybantsa all vie for the top spot. My early leanings rank them in that order, with Boozer vs. Darryn vs. Flagg being very tough to discern.

My biggest adjustment will be getting more accustomed to projecting peak impact, but I want to tweak my ratings system to become even more risk-averse as you go down. I will do so by implementing a 20th percentile outcome which becomes the ranking priority starting at pick 30. With each round of new tape or statistical analysis, making those projections gets a little easier.

As usual, I expect that evaluation criteria to evolve over time.

The post Lessons from the 2025 NBA Draft Cycle appeared first on Swish Theory.

Any sort of useful basketball analysis thereby requires layers of abstraction to simplify its dynamism. In particular, the draft scouting process necessitates that the fluid biopsychosocial complexities of a player are abstracted to foresee potential rather than celebrate dynamicism.

At its core, scouting is intellectual reductionism, an inherent projection of the future rather than the dynamic present.

Abstraction does not, and it should not, have a negative connotation. Reductionism is inevitable, as thoroughly understanding every single minutiae of every interaction under the hood of our bodily mechanisms is absolutely impossible. This is highly theoretical, but it should be. On first watch, 99% of the happenings in a single possession are impossible to be perceived by any human. Some occurrences are objective while others require a sort of epistemological contextualization: the timing of a pass, the angle of a screen, the defensive rotations —all these elements combine in ways that are both tangible and abstract. We innately rely on our abstractions to make sense of the complexity of the game, extracting the essence of each moment without being overwhelmed by its intricacies.

This recourse to abstraction intertwines intricately with linguistic relativism—the notion that our language molds our perception of reality. Consider ballet: to an uninitiated observer like myself, I cannot appreciate a ballet performance, as it would appear as a mundane sequence of seemingly indistinguishable movements. Everything would appear the same. Yet, to an expert, the intricacies of each motion are distinct—a pirouette, a pointe, a pique. Without understanding the associated schema, it is virtually impossible to understand these subtle distinctions and the technical precision.

Language builds perception, and thus perception is restricted by language. This is the essence of linguistic relativism.

When I first learned about linguistic relativism, my mind was blown. Everything that we perceive is simply a product of our language. There’s even some languages with names for more colors, and its native speakers have been shown to literally perceive more colors. Every thought, every idea, every concept that you may deem original and objective has been filtered through these linguistic structures we’ve internalized.

Why does this matter? What does Demon Edey have to do with abstraction and linguistic relativism?

Well, assuming you’re on Twitter, you’ve witnessed the development of two distinct factions of scouting, factions that often clash in the comments of any given draft-related tweet. It’s the statheads vs the eye testers, bart boys vs the tape tribe, BPM nation vs the film truthers.

Of course, neither side is explicitly correct, as it’s typically never useful to over index on a specific approach to scouting. A more holistic contextualization would apply principles from both sides. 

On one end, you have the film truthers, who believe that absorbing information from film and strengthening one’s eye test is the surest way of ascertaining a prospect’s goodness. The more games you watch of a prospect, the more credible your opinion on a prospect’s projection. Some believe that the eye test is partially intrinsic: that certain people are born with an eye for scouting, and that this second nature underlies truly elite scouts.

On the other end, you have the production truthers. From cherry picked bart queries to a proclivity for spreadsheets, this is the side of Draft Twitter that is most frequently maligned. While some spreadsheet scouts’ boards may seem too strongly correlated with box score stats, this is oft by intention to qualify all prospects with a sort of quantifiable precedent.

Zach Edey is the epitome of this divide between the production test and the eye test. 

Edey’s production is undeniable. Edey leads every single college basketball impact metric available. Edey obviously has the greatest box score metrics in decades, but he also has the greatest impact metrics in decades: his adjusted plus/minus, on/offs, etc. have all sharply risen every year of his college career. His effect on Purdue has strongly improved every year, despite rising usage. But for such a promising production profile, Edey faces some of the strongest backlash of any prospect that I can remember.

And to some degree, I do understand it. Every play seems so similar: Edey backs someone down, and either takes a feathery hook shot or dunks it home over the help.  If the only real skill Edey has on offense is posting up, and postups aren’t en vogue in the NBA, how is he going to survive? Sure, there’s been hundreds of 7 footers playing D1 basketball, but coaches just aren’t able to figure out how to stop this specific postup and dunk height merchant.

See, something has to give. If Edey is so utterly skill-less, then how has his impact increased each year so dramatically? You tell me what’s more likely: that the single most impactful player in college basketball was simply a height merchant, or that there’s more to Edey than just postups and size? 

I tend to lean towards the latter, that the true complexity of Edey’s gameplay is absolutely convoluted by the simplicity of his moves. This brings us back to the principle of linguistic relativism – as we abstract the dynamism of each possession into aggregated play types, we must also question whether our evaluative language has constrained the eye test and collective perception of a player’s true ability.

I recognize that this is a long introduction to a long article about a seemingly boring player. But I do think it’s important to be cognizant of our most pervasive implicit biases by virtue of linguistic relativism and abstraction.

I’ve been a strong proponent of selecting Zach Edey with a high pick for a long time. And during this time, I’ve encountered many of the same, invariable talking points against Edey’s NBA future. These critiques often lack creativity, focusing on outdated stereotypes and simplistic heuristics rather than meaningfully considering the applications of such a unique value proposition.

This piece is meant to be a compendium, my attempt of going through the 10 most common arguments against Edey and providing my take. I’ve listed each of the arguments below, and while each section varies in length and approach, I’ve done my best to mix a bit of philosophy, statistical analysis, and projection conjecture. Through this argument-counterargument framework, I hope to also juxtapose the often-overlooked aspects of Edey’s profile with my own philosophies about player development.

Let’s dive into the most productive, most impactful, most physically gifted prospect in decades.

Argument: Edey is a prototypical four year college big, another iteration of Garza, Tshiebwe, and Hansborough.

Zach Edey is not Luka Garza. He is not Oscar Tshiebwe. He is not Kofi Cockburn. He is not Frank Kaminsky. He is not Ethan Happ. He is not Jahlil Okafor. He is not Tacko Fall. He is not Drew Timme. 

Over the last three years, I’ve seen a bevy of shameless Edey comparisons. People basically compare him to slow, post-up oriented bigs who dominated college and failed in the NBA, and use this availability heuristic to prove that Edey is destined to fail too.

Edey is genuinely not in the same stratosphere as these players. Besides being generationally large (seven foot FIVE!!) with generational production, Edey clears these players in yet another very unique way: interior dominance.

To me, interior dominance is the single most important offensive trait for a big. You need to be able to score inside at a consistent level, against a variety of different coverages. From Sengun (50 dunks in his pre-draft year) to Bam (100 dunks in his pre-draft year), strong interior performance is both sticky and highly undervalued by draftniks. 

For instance, perhaps the most ubiquitous Edey negative comparison is Luka Garza. Let me put that comp to rest real quick: Edey had 86 halfcourt dunks in his senior season, and Garza had 8 halfcourt dunks in his senior season. Just a vastly different level of athlete and interior force.

Edey just had the most dominant interior season of the modern era. 109 dunks, 80 FTR, most FTs in a season, 80% at the rim; these are video game numbers. Trust me when I say that no one in at least a few decades comes close to those kinds of numbers. Don’t ignore that ridiculous free throw rate; Edey made the most FTs of the modern era by virtue of his one-of-a-kind controlled physicality. Tshiebwe, Garza, Hansborough, Kaminsky all had some slight issues with their offensive interior dominance, and yet this is Edey’s biggest strength. How quickly we forget, the game is about a bucket.

I could stop here. You can skip ahead to the next refutation if you’d like. I think I’ve done a sufficient job of demonstrating that Edey is nothing like his infamous comparators.

But observers of the game aren’t this dumb. Everything that I just mentioned seems fairly obvious with a cursory film watch: Edey is bigger, stronger, more dominant on both ends, and just far better than any of those names. The impetus for these terrible comps has to be more profound than just similarity bias.

To me, there’s a sort of ad hominem at play, one that stems from contemporary basketball viewers holding a view of modern basketball that is seemingly antithetical to the essence of college basketball. Modern viewers have now grown up on an era of Steph Curry pullups and Rudy Gobert playoff lowlights. The epistemology of the modern college basketball viewer is fundamentally top-down: it starts with these abstracted NBA concepts and then eventually builds down to an abstracted ground truth. We’ve learned to see the world from a POV of pace-and-space, to speak in absolutes of PnR versatility, to internalize its goodness and embrace its principles. This results in the villainization of players that don’t match the physical embodiment of this epistemology. Players like Zach Edey.

I have never, ever seen such extreme levels of vitriol aimed at a player simply for existing.  Some players are natural villains; their antics and post-game pressers are meticulous and designed to receive acknowledgement, and the resulting derision is simply compensation. But there is a genuine hatred for Edey, in a way that is truly baffling; and while some of it can be chalked up to sports fans indulging in their need for a villain, this goes beyond mere fun. 

It’s more than just a bit; Edey is hated by the consensus despite being a pretty unproblematic, high character guy. And this animosity no doubt colors their assessment of Edey as a prospect. This pervasive bias detracts from the ability of many scouts to provide an objective projection of Edey’s skills, reducing a nuanced evaluation to a series of superficial judgments.

The lack of humanization in the draft space is often alarming – how quickly we forget that these prospects are just barely adults. Unfortunately, it’s not too surprising that the same people that despise Edey are now questioning his NBA upside. Ad hominem for the win, again.

Argument: Edey won’t be very good if he’s entering the league as a 22 year old.

Let’s clarify the observations and assumptions intrinsic to this argument.

Observations: 

1. Edey has stayed in college for 4 years
2. Players in recent memory who stayed in college for 4 years have not been very successful, particularly centers. Think Garza, Tshiebwe, Tyler Hansborough.

Assumption: 

Edey seems like he’s going to be next in line amongst these underperforming 4 year players. Seems like a logical relation: age at entry is the demonstrated cause of underperformance.

Unfortunately, this is a classic example of post hoc fallacy. Let’s refute each of the faults in this causality.

The first issue is the timeline. Entering the draft as a 22 year old should not inherently limit any players’ upside, because superstars used to stay in college for four years all the time. Think David Robinson, Tim Duncan, or most HOFers back in the day). So what changed? Why do prospects declare earlier, and why is age now considered an inhibitor of upside?

The reason is simple, but the logic is more complex and not well-articulated. In this modern age of “one and done”, future NBA stars tend to declare early (at age 19/20) because they produce early. There’s an undeniable production aspect of upside that’s so much more profound than an amalgamation of skills. After all, most All-Stars were BPM demons as teenagers. Being really good at age 19/20 is THE indicator of upside; let’s call this phenomenon precocious productivity.

A lack of precocious productivity is why prospects who “break out” at ages 21/22 should face some degree of skepticism: if they were unable to break out until their NBA-caliber peers were in the NBA, then their production holds less merit. Pretty much all NBA-level players should be dominating college basketball by the time they hit their junior and senior seasons.

But it’s important not to conflate all productive age 21/22 seasons as late breakouts. Age is just a proxy for precocious productivity.

Imagine a player who dominates as a 19 year old, 20 year old, and 21 year old. Intuitively, it would not make much sense to demean this player for their age, as they exhibited precocious productivity unlike many of their similar aged NCAA peers. This is the key similarity between the “one and done” modern era and the former era. Sure, a guy like Tim Duncan or David Robinson stayed in college for 4 years, but they were also immediately impactful from day 1: they exhibited impressive precocious productivity.

A great example of this is Trayce Jackson Davis, who was one of the best freshmen in the country, one of the best sophomores in the country, one of the best juniors in the country, and then the best senior in the country (all by box plus-minus). And yet, he ended up dropping in the draft due to age concerns. Say it with me: age is a good proxy for upside, but precocious productivity is an undeniably stronger proxy of upside.

Yes, Zach Edey is 22 years old. But he has some of the strongest precocious productivity that we have ever seen.

By the numbers, Edey has been insanely dominant every season of his college career. He has not one, not two, but three seasons of above 12 BPM (the only player with even two seasons is Steph Curry). Let’s focus on his production during his sophomore season, where he put up a 12.3 BPM, good for 10th amongst every sophomore since 2008. All but one of the names above him were first rounders.

What’s especially impressive is that Edey spent his entire sophomore season as a 19 year old. He was born in May 2002, meaning that he is very young for his class. For context, UConn’s Alex Karaban is only 7 months younger than senior-aged Edey despite being a sophomore. 

This is all very compelling, but I haven’t touched on the most fascinating aspect of Edey’s profile: his absolutely meteoric rate of improvement.

Edey started playing basketball in his sophomore year of high school. 

Usually, I don’t take these “late to basketball” rumors very seriously: not only are they often embellished, but there’s no definitive proof that a late start to basketball implies a more rapid development, barring perhaps a remarkably small window between the late start and entry into the draft.

But within a year of playing organized basketball, Edey was recruited to IMG Academy, mainly by virtue of his height. At IMG, Edey played on the IMG blue team (basically the B team) during his junior year. He played on the Under Armor AAU circuit, and then in his senior year, Edey was promoted to the A team. I struggled to find any meaningful statistics for Edey given his sparse playing time. These are the only stats I could find:

The summer before his senior year of high school, Edey averaged 3.8 points and 3.3 rebounds in 8 games for the Northern Kings, a Canadian 17U team on the Under Armour AAU circuit.

In his senior year, Edey averaged 2.2 points in 11 games for IMG’s A Team.

That’s right: Edey averaged a whopping 4 ppg in AAU and 2 ppg in high school. He was ranked 436th in his class by 247, but his recruiting was definitely driven by the potential of his size rather than his paltry production.

Edey went from a guy averaging 2.2 points per game as a senior in HS to… this:

I don’t know what Edey did in that summer after his senior year of high school, but he had a very strong freshman year. Which player is putting up 63% TS, 5 bpm, and 9 points per game in the Big Ten the year after averaging 2 points per game in high school?

Immediately after Edey’s solid freshman season, he headed to Latvia for the 2021 FIBA U19 International Tournament. He absolutely crushed the competition, leading the tournament in rebounds, double doubles, and efficiency rating, while ranking 2nd in FTs/game and 4th in blocks/game. This tournament was Edey’s coming out party, a definitive benchmark at an age-standardized simulacrum that underscored the robustness of his production. He was named to the All-Tournament First Team alongside four future first rounders: Jaden Ivey, Chet Holmgren, Nikola Jovic, and Wembanyama. 

Over just two years, Edey went from averaging 4 ppg on a middling AAU team to being named one of the top five teenagers in the world

Again, Edey is not your typical four year player. He played against prospects his own age at FIBAs and dominated. He didn’t simply put up gaudy stats for three years straight – he put up one of the most dominant careers in NCAA history. All while being on the younger side for his class and starting at a ridiculously low pre-college production baseline.

Before labeling Edey as a perennial bench big, please think about Edey’s precocious productivity and his monstrous rate of improvement.

Argument: Edey’s offense is too postup-reliant to work in the NBA. 

Before we start here, it’s important to underscore that the strategic and technical skills intrinsic to Edey’s offensive repertoire are indubitably understated by virtue of our friend linguistic relativism. It’s hard to differentiate the intricacies of Edey’s paint domination, and so everything just seems like just another postup or a dunk over future accountants and litigation attorneys.

Yes, Edey is a highly efficient postup player on elite volume. His combination of efficiency and volume on postups probably places him in some elite company, if there was historic postup data. That does not mean that posting up is all that Edey is capable of doing. This is an interesting argument, as it’s the first time I’ve seen a legitimate strength contrived as a weakness.

There’s a couple reasons why Edey’s pure efficiency on post-ups still understates his postup skill. Obviously, Edey’s maintained strong efficiency despite remarkably high postup volume. Purdue’s offense is also fundamentally based on getting Edey a post touch and leveraging his gravity down low. Edey’s postups are defended more aggressively than anyone else; not a single coach in the nation (save Dan Hurley with Donovan Clingan) dares to guard Edey in single coverage. We’ve somehow normalized Edey receiving double and triple teams; he would undoubtedly boost his already strong efficiency numbers if he was guarded more traditionally (he put up 37 points on 60% shooting against future top 5 pick Clingan). 

Furthermore, Edey gets some very shallow post touches. Edey’s post-up radius is much larger than virtually any post-up big I can recall, as he’s able to receive the ball several feet away from the basket and still convert. He has a surprisingly low center of gravity, able to create space with bumps and explode off a drop step. He’s obviously quite strong and coordinated, but he has so many counters within postups, by virtue of his feathery touch and comfort off either shoulder and either hand. This should not be taken lightly: Edey’s ambidexterity development is so impressive given his baseline just two years ago. Add another exhibit in the gallery of Edey’s rapid skill acquisition.

Edey’s combination of sheer size, post gravity, postup volume, postup distance, diversity of counters and efficiency makes him one of the most dominant low post prospects in decades. 

There’s also a sort of hand waving that occurs with Edey’s postup usage. There is (an often correct) assumption that the modern NBA is postup-agnostic, largely because postups tend to be highly inefficient possessions that obstruct the paint. Well, postups are not entirely dead: guys like Bobby Portis and Jonas Valanciunas average ~ 5 postup possessions a game. An especially interesting thought exercise is the exact value proposition of an Edey postup. An Edey postup possession should theoretically continue to be a highly efficient shot attempt given his hyper efficiency and development of counters on a remarkably tough postup diet. It really comes down to the efficacy of his post gravity in the league, which I’m fairly confident about: if teams start throwing aggressive coverages against Edey, he has the awareness to capitalize on advantages. If Edey has legit gravity in the post AND can efficiently sink postups, then there isn’t a particularly intuitive reason why he can’t rely on his postups for SOME offense.

But please, do not conflate Edey being elite on postups with Edey ONLY being good at postups. Again, postups are perhaps the most functional proxy for strength, and Edey’s goodness on postups checks out: he’ll walk into the NBA as the heaviest player on day 1.

The name of the game is deep post positioning. The deeper Edey gets in the post, the harder it is to stop him. But based on his coverage, it’s a deceptively difficult bet to get the ball to Edey deep in the post when he’s getting swarmed. So what Painter sometimes does is roll Edey into the paint. This isn’t officially counted as a PnR for obvious reasons, but the trademark screen and roll allows Edey to get a head of steam into the post, thereby scattering the defense and allowing him to receive and get into the postup.

This is the first of many times where i’m going to highlight Edey’s strong awareness. Edey has been double-teamed in every college matchup and knows that anything short of optimal positioning by the coverage leads to holes that he can exploit. Consequently, he’s developed an exceptional mastery of positioning in the post. Edey skillfully uses his body to create space, bumping the coverage just enough to establish a clear trajectory for a pass from his not-so-great guards. He fundamentally understands the chess match of these matchups, recognizing mismatches like when a guard tags the roll, and pouncing on these advantages. 

It’s hard to emphasize how efficient Edey is at nearly every action. He may seem like a primarily postup player at the NCAA level, but make no mistake: Edey is a legitimately elite roll man. It’s obviously kinda hard to be a consistent roller when teams are pre-emptively packing the paint, which is why so many of Edey’s rolls intentionally lead to a postup instead. But seriously, if coverages aren’t perfectly in position, Edey has no issue rolling and dunking over someone with ease. His catch radius is absolutely ridiculous, with Braden Smith often just throwing it high and trusting that Edey will throw down the lob. It’s a real life “Edey out there somewhere” moment.

I find it interesting how people suddenly lose all semblance of creativity when discussing Edey’s offense. Some players are seen as infinitely malleable balls of clay, capable of incredible skill development simply due to their athleticism. But when it comes to Edey, conversations rarely consider his potential for skill acquisition, despite demonstrated outlier, deliberate growth in critical areas.

Is it not reasonable to expect that the preeminent postup god with counters galore and ridiculously good touch won’t be able to command a healthy number of post touches? When teams aren’t sending triple teams and preemptively blocking Edey’s roll to the paint, do you really think he won’t excel against single coverage? And most importantly, why isn’t the rapidly improving 7’5 center with a 7’10 wingspan, who is already a dominant rim threat and an hyperefficient roll man, given the slightest benefit of the doubt? The name of the scouting game is projection, yet there’s a baffling lack of imagination and recognition of Edey’s potential to simply parlay his size and touch into a more NBA-esque playtype distribution.

Argument: Sure, but what does Edey do without the ball in his hands?

This is probably the most common question that draftniks have for Edey. How does a guy with a 34% usage, the guy with the most 2s made in a single season since at least the early 90s, the guy who can’t space the floor, how does this guy play off-ball?

Before we even get into this, I want to acknowledge that this on-ball/off-ball offensive bifurcation isn’t particularly useful for prospect evaluations. “Affecting the game without the ball” is an overrated concept, particularly for centers, and with the phrase “not being able to play off-ball” typically just a euphemism for not being able to shoot and generate “gravity”. In this case, Edey’s ability to efficiently operate on high usage (an undeniable strength) is being contrived as a legitimate weakness; high usage is being conflated as an inability to operate at low usage.

But it’s important to note that most centers in the NBA are not generating closeouts to the perimeter. Here’s a simple answer: whatever Jonas Valaciunas does “without the ball”, Edey can do without the ball. Setting screens, drawing coverage with deep post position, offensive rebounding, passing out of doubles: Edey is not just feasibly capable but has actively demonstrated how he can “affect the game without the ball”. Let me explain.

First off, Edey is one of the most physically imposing screeners to enter the league in a long, long time. Edey’s arguably the best screen setter in the class, and it’s because he understands the nuances of position exceptionally well. If I was trying to design a player to set impossibly difficult screens to navigate, I would undoubtedly end up describing Zach Edey. Contrary to public opinion, Edey is deliberately swift and adept in dribble handoffs; when he sets screens, they are wide and hard to maneuver.  In particular, Edey is a master of the Zoom action, where a simple handoff near the top of the key gives the BH a full head of steam while also himself providing the threat of Edey on a potential roll.

Why’s this important? Edey is going to be a huge screen assist producer in the league. Not only does he set difficult screens to navigate, but Edey’s awareness in setting screens especially stands out, as he’s a master of positioning. When setting screens, he really understands how to shift the angle of the screen to best inhibit the reaction time of the defense to the ball handler. We’ve seen how useful guys like Gobert and Sabonis have been in generating screen assists; Edey seems likely to be next in line.

He’s even exceptional at disguising his movements in screening actions. One of Purdue’s most frequent actions to get Edey a dunk early in his collegiate career was a screen reject lob action that was based on the aforementioned zoom action. Edey would set up for a standard handoff in but then he would unexpectedly dive towards the basket for an easy finish of the lob, catching the defense off guard. You could really see Edey develop optimal awareness in these situation, as he became more cognizant of his own gravity and how to leverage it to make impactful, winning plays.

This leads me to my second point: Edey is a legit good passer for a big. Edey peaked at 3.7 assists per 100 possessions this year, with a 15% assist percentage to boot. For context: since 2008, Roy Hibbert is the only drafted player taller than 7 feet with an assist rate even above 11%. Edey is at 16%, 13% and 15% in the last 3 years. 

While a common anti-Edey talking point is his 0.9 assist to turnover rate, this understates how well Edey protected the basketball. In reality, Edey is coming off a strong 12.7 TO%, which is pretty damn good for a guy with 32% usage. Turnover percentage measures the proportion of turnovers for a player relative to their total possessions used. So, relative to his usage, he’s actually remarkably good at avoiding turnovers.

I watched all of Edey’s turnovers, and by far the most common cause was aggressive coverage on postups. Such a high proportion of the turnovers were either: 1) Edey getting swarmed as he tries to postup, allowing a guard to poke the ball out of his hands 2) Edey getting intercepted as he tries to pass out of a double team. Look man, if we agree that Edey isn’t going to be posting up as much in the NBA, then 1) is largely a moot point. Interceptions out of double teams is an undeniable issue, but it’s again largely a function of coverage. Still, I’m moved by the fact that he’s able to recognize and capitalize on openings on the perimeter. I’m also not as worried considering that so many of his turnovers are again a function of swarming coverage.

It’s these little things that make me so confident about Edey’s translation. Of course, he’s a generational mover at size, generational size, etc etc. But Edey seems uniquely fit to cognitively fit into NBA game speed. His passing out of doubles, low TO% relative to usage, his counters in the post to garner advantageous positioning, his granular screening tactics: Edey has undeniably good feel. He will be ready for counters in the NBA.

And now, we come to Edey’s most projectable skill: offensive rebounding. Edey enters the league as perhaps its best offensive rebounder from Day 1. How many prospects can you say that about anything? He has two of the best offensive rebounding seasons of all time, and need I remind you that he has a 7’10 WS? 

I hear the term “advantage creation” a lot. I think the discourse around advantage creation is certainly an exodus from its true essence; it’s now applied most commonly to slinky wings with strong movement aesthetic. But in every sense of its literal essence, Edey’s offensive rebounding is the ultimate form of advantage creation. Hell, everything about Edey’s functional strength is a means of advantage creation. Having such a powerful offensive rebounder is also an undeniable way of extending possessions and implicitly leading to more potential advantages. Having the most physically imposing, best offensive rebounder on your team means something, and if Edey is matched against a smaller big, as is common in this era of pace-and-space: it’s over. I know I’m not emphasizing this enough, but being such a force on the boards is a lost art, and it certainly raises Edey’s expected value. 

Purdue went 1/7 on 3s against UConn in the championship. I promise you, NBA teams aren’t doing that shit. The advantages that Edey generates are going to be more momentous, and any sort of double coverage or overcompensation to prevent Edey exerting his wrath on the roll is going to lead to open shots and clear advantages that Edey can extend.

Oh, and the foul drawing? It’s pretty generational too. Edey just put up the most FTs in a season since Armstrong landed on the moon. Blaming refs in college, who are actually pretty lenient towards fouls, is just not accurate, especially since Edey isn’t even remotely grifting for fouls. Edey is a monster foul drawer for objective reasons: he’s extremely physical and an expert at positioning. His strong awareness and physicality will translate, and it is ridiculous to expect anything other than Edey becoming a strong foul drawer in the NBA as he was in college. Unlike lumbering bigs of the past, Edey is also a good ass FT shooter, so hack a Edey isn’t gonna go particularly well.

Again, I find it baffling why the same margins of creativity aren’t being provided to Edey. The criticisms levied against Edey are fairly ubiquitous and can be applied towards any other player. How will Edey score against Embiid? How will Edey adjust to the pace of the NBA? Well, how is a team without a good ass seven footer supposed to guard Edey without conceding advantages elsewhere? The 7’5 center with a 7’10 WS who just led the NCAA in dunks, FT attempts, and offensive rebounding while also demonstrating strong feel on passes and deliberate positioning has the potential to legitimately break our understanding of offense. Walk with me, and dream a little.

It’s not only reductive, but straight up incorrect to imply that Edey’s sole goodness on offense is as a postup threat.

Argument: Edey will not survive on defense. 

This is where things get interesting. The primary issue with impact metrics is that they are most unable to ascertain defensive mobility. Perhaps the best proxy is steal%, but even that has its issues. Unfortunately, while Edey has a solid 7% block rate, he has a career 0.5% steal rate. This is the biggest flag in his profile to me, but he’s not entirely cooked.

Garza, Hansborough, Okafor, Tshiebwe etc were all terrible defensive prospects because they weren’t good rim protectors. They lacked size and rim protection production. This is a trait shared by most four-year college bigs to whom Edey is oft compared. Edey not only has demonstrated efficacy as a primary rim protector for 3 years running, but he also has a 7’10 WS. It’s a terrible comparison.

Let’s take a look at Edey on/off swings this year. When Edey is on the floor, teams shoot 9.2% worse at the rim, and they take 7% less shots at the rim. Teams shoot 7% worse on 2s when Edey is on the court, and opposing team free throw rates drop 9 points. Opponents offensive rebounding rates drop 5.8%, and opponents shoot 4.3 eFG% worse. Overall, Purdue’s defense allows 8.6 fewer points per 100 possessions with Edey on the court. Just look at the colors- These strong swings are indicative of a highly productive drop big. The swings in rim frequency is indicative of Edey’s legitimate rim deterrence.

Edey on/off swings, garbage adjusted, 20234season 

If you’re worried about on/off samples being too noisy in small size, here’s Edey’s on/offs from 2023. It’s the exact same story, demonstrating a two year sample of Edey being a highly productive drop defender.

Edey on/off swings, garbage adjusted, 2023 season 

Just for context, Iowa’s 2021 team had virtually no change in defensive productivity with Garza on and off the floor. 3.1 fewer points per 100 possessions with Garza off the court, with no change in rim %, 2P%, or eFG%. Just an absolutely abhorrent defender, with no evidence of drop goodness.

Argument: Maybe he can play drop, but he’s too immobile to stay on the floor otherwise.

There needs to be a level of nuance to the Edey mobility debates. There’s a faction of Draft Twitter that ignores anything combine-related at all: scrimmages, anthropometrics, shooting drills, agility tests are all non-functional and should be ignored in favor of good ole in-game tape. There’s another faction that takes all the data points of the combine at face value, using them to make macro projections about prospects. The first faction ridicules the second faction for applying Edey’s strong lane agility and shuttle run performances, especially relative to Sarr, Missi, and Clingan, as an antidote for Edey’s mobility concerns.

I don’t find myself in the middle, but rather chasing a new standard, nuance. It’s typically a mistake to ignore any data points, and the combine provides a set of highly standardized data points that can be benchmarked against decades worth of prospects. However, a quick look at the historic applicability of the tests puts some of the Edey pro-mobility discourse to rest. 

First off, there are 3 total agility drills. The three-quarter sprint drill was the one drill that Edey performed poorly in, and unfortunately, that’s the drill that is most correlated with mobility in a traditional NBA context. The most direct application of the three-quarter sprint can be understood as leaking out in transition and in closeout quickness. Furthermore, Edey’s vertical was amongst the bottom of testers. Some of these issues can be masked by Edey’s sheer size, but it inevitably dampens Edey’s ability to self-organize or make longer rotations. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been much discourse about Edey guarding bigger lob threats in the NBA, as I’m a bit worried about scenarios where he’s not quick enough to backpedal and not functionally fast off the ground to contest. There is a slight bit of poster potential on Edey, and this seems like a bigger issue than large space mobility to me.

However, watching Edey compared to last year, it’s clear that he’s made legitimate athletic improvements. His athletic testing improved from last year to this year (especially on max vert and lane agility tests), but so did his ambidexterity. On offense, we’ve seen Edey become more comfortable posting up on either side of the block and not hesitating to use his left hand hook if need be. On defense, it’s the same story, able to contest with either hand. Edey’s development on defense over the last 3 years has been remarkable to watch, with dramatic improvements in his technique and converting awareness to reaction. Further functional vertical improvements will only make his value proposition as a legit good drop big even more robust. 

I’d say some of Edey’s biggest weaknesses right now are slow backpedals and a lack of aggression on contests (often post-backpedal/as he rotates). There are certainly times when Edey’s hands are down as he rotates. But generally, I think there’s some conflation of lacking aggression with staying out of foul trouble. Edey is coming off two straight years of guard-like foul rates (2.4 fouls called per 40 this year), and much of that appears to be by design. It makes sense; the fulcrum of Purdue’s offense needs to be on the court as much as possible, and his length and size alone provide a strong enough baseline of deterrence as it is. It is far too risky for Edey to be in foul trouble, giving rise to his somewhat aggression-averse nature on defense. Especially in the tournament, I think Painter estimated that the opportunity cost of Edey fouling out was far too high; I’d wager that he instructed Edey not to chase as many blocks, consequently deflating his block volume during those last few games.

While Edey’s large space mobility is somewhat questionable, his small space mobility is quite good, and it’s a large part of why he tested so well in the shuttle run and lane agility drills. I also believe that there’s definitely a sort of visual bias at play: since bigger players have longer limbs, their movements appear slower compared to smaller players with quicker, shorter movements. Slower movements do not mean that taller players cover less ground or are slower in terms of timed speed or agility. I think a lot of the criticisms of Edey stem from either unrealistic expectations, or an overemphasis on his lack of large space mobility. 

What’s interesting is that Edey’s strong shuttle run and lane agility performances would intuit that he is a strong backpedaller, but he actually seems to struggle in this regard. Perhaps there is some low hanging fruit, or maybe this is just an intrinsic physical limitation. Regardless, Edey is a very aware defender, especially when flipping his hips in tight spaces. He’s made leaps and bounds in converting from awareness to functional reaction as of late.

So what does this all mean for Edey’s defensive projection? Well, he’s going to be somewhat limited to drop for the start of his career, which he is quite good at. Edey being such a good rebounder should mitigate some concerns with drop; even if he switches onto the ball handler, he’s long and physical enough to fight for the board and avoid an offensive rebound. There’s lots of great drop defenders in the league, so this isn’t a death sentence at all. However, I do think Edey’s rapid improvement curve and innate body control should allow him to eventually play more aggressive coverages. He’s such a smart player, and he has much larger margins to err based on his dimensions. I think he’s able to eventually guard closer to the level and recover without getting brutally beat off the dribble. 

Argument: Edey is a system player and is only good because he is a stat padding height merchant.

“Edey is only good because he’s tall” might be the most ridiculous criticism I’ve ever heard. Was Shaq a height merchant too? Yao? Giannis, Embiid, and Jokic are height merchants? Basketball is centralized on controlling vertical space, and it’s absolutely a benefit to be taller in this game. And while the NBA does have better athletes than college, Edey will still be at a far and away size advantage, especially since Edey has the best measurables in the history of the combine. This guy is 7’4 without shoes with a +6 wingspan and a 9’8 standing reach. It’s absolutely insane to me that Edey’s measurables are somehow being cast in a negative light. 

Let’s look at it from another point of view: Edey’s combination of structural anthropometrics/measurables and functional physical dominance on the court makes him one of the most menacing interior players of all time. The most productive and efficient player in college basketball also happens to be its tallest/longest. Sure, there’s the chance he could have a harder time asserting his physicality against NBA athletes. When Edey plays against the Embiid’s and Gobert’s of the world, he’s going to have a “welcome to the NBA” moment. This is inevitable. It applies to literally every single prospect in the history of the draft- everyone in the history of the NBA has faced an uphill battle adjusting to their contemporaneous physically dominant bigs.

Now, onto the slightly more relevant issue: Edey does get a lot of “system player” allegations. And there’s probably a bit of merit to this: Matt Painter has a history of building offenses around lumbering seven footers, and those players’ translation in the league has been shaky to say the least. However, there’s a great, strongly established means of sniffing out system players: on/off stats. 

The essence of on/off stats is pretty straightforward: if a team’s net rating drops with the player off the floor, that player is likely important. If a team’s net rating rises without a player, that player is likely somewhat of a detriment. It’s obviously a bit reductive, but modern tools allow us to filter out garbage time and games against mickey mouse opponents. There might be some collinearity, but Purdue guard play is just so terrible that it’s probably not an issue. It’s also useful to use a two season sample, as these samples tend to be a bit noisy if not robustly sized.

So, let’s take a look at Purdue’s on/off stats for its last 3 bigs: Matt Haarms, Trevion Williams, and Zach Edey. And let’s use two year on/off samples. We’ll filter out garbage time and only focus on production vs t200 teams:

• Trevion Williams: -4.9 net rating in 2021 (jr), -10.9 net rating in 2022 (sr)
• Matt Haarms: 13.6 net rating in 2019 (soph), -8.8 net rating in 2020 (jr)
• Zach Edey: 13.1 net rating in 2022(soph) , 24.6 net rating in 2023 (jr) , 32.4 net rating in 2024 (senior)

FYI: Haarms was older as a sophomore than Edey was as a senior.

Aggregate two-year net rating of +57 is NUTS. Unsurprisingly, Edey has the best on/off splits in the NCAA since 2018 (this is the farthest that the database goes). We can use RAPM, or regularized plus minus: Edey has the highest RAPM score since at least 2010.

Just for fun, let’s compare this to Garza. Garza had an aggregate +35 net rating in 2020 and 2021 combined vs t200 opponents, garbage adjusted. Good player, good numbers! But Edey’s on/off swings this year (+32) were nearly as good as Garza in two years combined (+35). Again, Garza was not even remotely as impactful as Edey is.

Let this linger for a bit. If Edey’s on/off swings are so damn violent, what does that say about him as a “system player”, and what does that say about the personnel around Edey?

These plus-minus stats aren’t just your typical box score sourced numbers, and you can’t just grab a bunch of rebounds and dunk a ton to boost your RAPM or on/off score. It’s much harder to fake these numbers, as they’re a regularized look at impact; they are meant to sniff out statpadders. Edey just happens to have the legit best impact by the numbers for the last 15 years at minimum.

Let it be known that these include defense as well! Edey is the anchor of a legit good Purdue team, and even bifurcating into offensive and defensive ratings, the on/off swings on defense are just as violent. But you know that now.

Edey isn’t a system player. He is the system. He is the single most impactful college player that we have seen for a long time. 

Argument: Edey will be played off the floor because he cannot space the floor

The biggest misconception about the modern NBA is that centers need to space the floor. That literally couldn’t be further from the truth.

Sure, some of the best centers in the league shoot, kind of. At ~ 5 3s per game, JJJ and KAT pace all centers in 3P volume. Vuc, Brook Lopez, and Jokic are around three 3P/game. AD and Giannis take two 3P/game. But this assumption that all centers need to shoot is generally pushed by casual fans who keep up more with the highlights from the league’s best players. When you go down to even the upper middle tier of centers, you see the three point volume decline precipitously. 

In terms of career 3s made: Jarrett Allen has made 19 career 3s, Ayton has 18 career 3s, Drummond has 15 career 3s, Bam has 8 career 3s, Plumlee and Poeltl have 2 career 3s, Steven Adams and Zubac have made one total three in their entire career, and Mitchell Robinson and Clint Capela have never made a 3 in the NBA. 

Lack of shooting isn’t a death sentence at all. In fact, you can be a quite good offensive center without ever shooting. The corollary is that you have to make up for a lack of shooting elsewhere, namely via inside-the-arc hyper efficiency. All of these nonshooters demonstrate subtleties to their game that makes them consistently dominant interior forces to be reckoned with. Good thing Edey is the most dominant interior scoring prospect that we’ve seen for decades.

We’ve established how good Edey can be without the ball in his bands, and in this section, we’ve so far demonstrated how ubiquitous non-shooting centers are in the NBA. But the million dollar question remains: can Edey actually shoot in the NBA? Let’s do some analysis.

There’s been very very few bigs who come into the NBA as even decent shooters. JJJ, Chet, Wemby, and Kristaps are probably the only notable names. There’s a handful of guys who shot a small volume of 3s pre-NBA, but most were middling FT shooters: Jokic took 2.85 3s/game on 32% 3P with 67% FT, Myles Turner/Vuc/Kevin Love all took around 4 3s/100 on ~70% FT. 

But those tend to be the exception, not the norm. Interestingly, many of the “stretch bigs” we know today were complete non-shooters in college. AD, KAT, Embiid, Al Horford, Sabonis did not shoot at all pre-NBA. Neither did DeMarcus Cousins, Brook Lopez, Paul Millsap, Julius Randle, or Blake Griffin. Even many of the low tier stretch bigs were absolutely non-shooters pre-NBA: Meyers Leonard, John Collins, Robin Lopez, Mareese Speights, Gorgui Dieng, Aron Baynes. If you’re wondering where I’m getting these names, I found this list of stretch 5s. At least half of them were absolute non-shooters pre-NBA, and most of the rest were very low volume shooters.

I can anticipate two criticisms. First, a few of the non-shooters who turned shooters were only non-shooters in their freshman year. As the logic would go, Edey is a senior aged player and is already behind the eight ball in reaching his innate capacity for shooting. That is true, but we have to remember that Edey is a relatively young basketball player. Not only is he young for his class, but he only started playing basketball as a sophomore year in high school! He’s clearly followed an exceptional developmental trajectory thus far, so it’s fair to use these younger players as a point of reference. Also, most of the names I provided were multi-year college guys, so there’s clearly some precedent of non shooting 21 year old → decent shooting NBA big.

There’s pretty much only two ways to ascertain “touch” for non-shooting centers: FTs and non-rim 2s. As a sanity check, JJJ was at 47% on non-rim 2s and 80% on FTs, while Kristaps was at 43% on non-rim 2s and 75% on FTs. Edey is at 45.7% on non-rim 2s and 70.6% on FTs over his 4 years in college. This isn’t too surprising either; Edey’s touch is incredibly good. His coordination and silky touch on hooks and touch shots out of postups is especially impressive, with a remarkably quick release. The speed of release is so quick that it may underlie strong processing skills, a concept derived from embodied decision making.

But obviously Edey’s touch doesn’t mean too much in regards to projecting 3P shooting, as it could conceivably yield false positives. This begs the question: how many non-shooting centers have matched Edey’s touch indicators, and how many of them ended up shooting in the NBA?

Here’s one particularly compelling example: John Collins. Collins made no threes in two years of college, yet he’s transformed into one of the premier pick and pop threats in this league. Despite his lack of three point volume, Collins certainly exhibited touch. In his final season at Wake Forest, Collins shot 74% on FTs and a whopping 44% on non-rim 2s. 

John Collins, 2016-17 scoring stats

Guess who else also happens to be pretty decent at shooting long 2s and FTs. 

Zach Edey, career scoring stats

Upon first glance, it’s evident just how good Edey’s touch is. Even at the rim, his efficiency is astounding. 

Not convinced? Let’s drop these thresholds a bit and see if there’s any historical comparisons. Let’s find drafted players who shot 72% on FTs and 40% on non-rim 2s. We’ll set the volume thresholds at minimum 50 made far 2s and maximum 2.0 3pa/100.

Yes, there are some big misses. Obviously the Zellers never got around to shooting, neither did Nick Richards or Sacre or Brice Johnson, and Bairstow/Hamilton/Osby fell out of the league fairly quickly. But there’s some real success stories here. Thomas Welsh never stuck in the league, but he shot 36% on 132 3P attempts over 2 G-League seasons. Rui and Stewart have really transformed into quite good shooters. Metu, Collins, and Meyers Leonard appear to be the most similar profiles to Edey, and they all ended up shooting decently.  Overall, most of this list ended up pretty solid shooters by center standards.

I won’t get too in the weeds though: I recognize that there’s definitely an element of analytical dissonance in deeming a complete non-shooter as a potential shooter in the NBA simply off some touch numbers. There’s a good chance Edey just ends up a non-shooter like Zeller and Sacre.

But honestly, it would be a disservice to not try to develop Edey as a shooter. Obviously a 7’5 guy shooting threes is not a complete novelty anymore, but it’s still a pretty ridiculous mismatch – his length would make him pretty much impossible to contest. I really don’t think it’s too crazy to think that Edey could end up shooting 1 to 2 threes per game on like 35% unguarded C&S. And if he ends up with a real shot, that raises his ceiling even more. 

Yes, it’s hard to project shooting for bigs. Yes, this is a slightly aged list, and yes, many recently drafted bigs are showcasing perimeter skill in pre-NBA. Yes, this exercise is largely hypothetical, and yes, you may take this with a grain of salt. But for all the shooting projection that is applied to prospects with far worse circumstances, this isn’t too crazy to estimate real shooting development with Edey.

Ultimately, Edey has only been playing basketball since he was 16, he has innately good touch, and bigger players have consistently demonstrated a much longer developmental curve. I’d assume there’s minimal issues with core stability based on his functional strength, and the kinetic control between upper and lower extremities is somewhat mitigated by his inevitably two-motion shot. It’s quite plausible that Edey could shoot on solid volume, and there’s a good chance he doesn’t shoot at all. I trust NBA teams to eventually develop Edey as a shooter.

Argument: Edey would have been an elite pick in the 1980s, but he was born in the wrong era.

This is probably the most ubiquitous comment on any post I see about Edey. Something along the lines of Edey traditionally being a good pick a few decades ago but not worth a good draft pick in the “modern” NBA.

I totally get why we are taxing Edey for era. The line of thinking goes, if Edey was coming out before this fast paced, three-point heavy era, then his weaknesses (not shooting and not mobile) would be diminished and we must just adjust our expectations. But to me, you have to be realistic about the extent of those overadjustments.

1. If you think Edey would have been a top pick during the 80s/90s (back in the good ole days when players played all four years and bigs used to post-up and guards used to handcheck and shoot midrangers), then that tells me that you think Edey would have been an All-NBA/HOF level talent in his prime back in the day. That should be a pretty reasonable expectation for a top pick.
2. If you think this is true, then you would essentially be arguing that there exist certain All-NBA/HOF talents from the 1980s/1990s who would not stick in today’s NBA.
   1. If so, name them. Tell me HOF-level 1980s-1990s guys who you wouldn’t draft. 

This is where I disagree: I think that EVERY All-NBA and HOF level talents from the 80s and 90s, even those with unvalued archetypes by the status quo, would still be quite good in today’s NBA. If you genuinely think that those players would fall out of the league, then that’s fine, but it’s not a natural equilibrium, and now the burden of proof is on you to provide examples of such players. 

So, by this logic, Edey should be able to stick around in the league for a bit. And by the Hollingerian adage that there’s ~20 players that “stick” in the draft each year, maybe taking Edey so high wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Argument: Edey projects as a sixth man type, and that’s not worth a high pick.

This is such a ridiculous concern that I considered omitting this section completely. But I’ve seen it said enough that I need to address it. They revolve around Edey supposedly not being “fit” to play more than a bench role in the NBA, usually because of some worry about durability and health in the pace-and-space NBA.

Edey is one of the most well-conditioned, durable prospects above seven feet in the history of basketball. Out of the hundreds of players above seven feet that have played in D1 college basketball in the last 15 years, Edey played the most total minutes in a single season.

Edey is not just durable relative to centers – he’s remarkably consistent for any star player. He averaged 32 minutes a game over his junior and senior seasons without missing a single game. With a monstrous career 32% usage, the Purdue offense is built around Edey, and opposing coaches primarily scheme against Edey. He lives in the paint, dealing with swarming double and triple teams night in and out, leading the nation in points and rebounds. All while also being the anchor of the team on defense. The brand of basketball that Zach Edey plays is severely physically taxing, and yet his consistency on both ends is absolutely historic. 

Take Edey’s March Madness run. In four consecutive games, Edey never left the floor: he played an average of 40 minutes while averaging well above 30 points and 13 rebounds without ever dipping under 62% TS single game.This is a pretty insane intersection of production and robustness for anyone, and it’s exponentially more impressive given his size.

The bar is so low that Edey is genuinely the first prospect that I can remember who is well over 7 feet tall and doesn’t have durability concerns. This is only more impressive considering that Zach Edey shoulders the most substantial per-game burden of any player in quite some time, regardless of size. Make no mistake; this is indicative of generational durability and potentially generational longevity for his size.

There’s so many possible applications of his generational durability. Perhaps his mobility and defense improves as his usage approaches the level of mere mortals. Maybe the conditioning advantage serves as a schematic advantage, forcing teams to devise multiple solutions to stop him if their primary center is worn out. 

Given the accepted inverse relationship between usage and efficiency, the physical burden that Edey consistently endured over 4 years at Purdue is an important asterisk that may disguise a fascinating upside tail.

Closing Statements:

There are so many independent schools of thought when it comes to projecting upside.

One school of thought includes the skill purists, often maligned for over indexing on the “ball don’t stop” theory: the belief that putting the ball in the basket is the ultimate objective and that prospects who can get a bucket should be valued most.

There’s the calculator boys, who look for strong box score stats and impact metrics. They argue that consistent statistical dominance in key areas often translates well to the NBA

There’s the developmentalists, who believe that a strong track record in formative years is the most reliable indicator of a player’s potential to thrive in the NBA. This school of thought often looks for prospects who have continually dominated despite rising competition levels.

There’s the intangibles enthusiasts, who often pore over hours of draftexpress player interviews to find the prospects that stand out in mental attributes like work ethic and leadership qualities

There’s even the tools truthers, who believe that athleticism is critical to opening up upside avenues. The greatest players of all time were all uber athletes, so chase physical behemoths with monster wingspan, length, speed, agility, and verticality. 

Edey is the rare prospect that crushes every single possible assessment of potential upside. He’s by far the most dominant scorer in college basketball. He’s easily the most statistically impressive college player in decades, putting up historic productivity in every single year as a starter, while crushing the age-standardized FIBA U19 tourney to boot. He’s not a foul grifter, has no personality or character deficits, and of course, this guy is 7’5 with a 7’10 WS with strong mobility testing and outlier strength. 

It’s ridiculous that Edey is being talked about like a perennial bench big. It doesn’t matter how you slice it: Edey’s ceiling is incomprehensible. The fact that Edey has to face Luka Garza allegations is a case study in how innate and learned biases can implicitly lead us to develop heuristics that lack any sort of objectivity. 

There’s also simply a remarkable lack of creativity when projecting Edey. The man 5 inches taller and straight up far better at this beautiful sport than his most frequent comparators, Steven Adams and Ivica Zubac. Why are we hyperfocusing on correctable, reparable, bad-faith analysis of a player with as many generational strengths as Edey? Spare me the lecture on the overuse of the term generational: how many guys in this class have a single, remotely generational trait?

Our engagement with Edey’s capabilities illustrates a broader cultural and cognitive phenomenon: the imposition of narrative structures on the fluid chaos of this beautiful sport. We categorize, simplify, and unfortunately distort the raw dynamism of the  game into abstracted, comprehensible parts. These Boban/Zubac/Garza comparisons, the “matchup dependent, bench big” discourse, the “low-ceiling” narrative; these are all manifestations of how language affects the abstraction of evaluative paradigms, which restrict our perception. Edey’s dominant production is viewed through the prism of systematic accommodation that fundamentally fails to capture the essence of what makes him so remarkable. Exceptional attributes cannot challenge conventional frameworks without a consciously unmasking of linguistically determined evaluative paradigms and their downstream effects. And Edey has some exceptional, dare I say generational, attributes that make him such a fascinating, potentially game-breaking prospect.

Generational height. Generational wingspan. Generational weight. General box-score productivity. Generational impact metrics. Generational efficiency to usage. Generational offensive rebounding. Generational foul drawing. Generational rim scoring. Generational low post scoring. Generational screen-setter. Generational durability.

Not too bad for a guy who averaged 2 ppg in high school just 4 years ago.

The post The Edey Enigma: A Systematic Defense of a Generational Talent appeared first on Swish Theory.

The board below contains archetype tags, sourced from my articles for the Stepien discussing rim protectors, shotmakers, connectors and offensive engines. Also included are four custom metrics, gauged subjectively rather than statistically. Scalability is one’s ability to scale up or down in usage on either end of the court. Readiness is where on the contribution timeline a player lands. Specialness is the collective rarity of skills (or, on the flipside, commonness of other traits). Versatility is what it sounds like.

Big Board Spots 1 through 20:

Big Board Spots 21 through 40:

The post Matt Powers’ 2024 NBA Draft Big Board appeared first on Swish Theory.

When I evaluate a prospect’s offense, I ask myself these two questions first:

1. Will this prospect ever be a primary initiator/decision-maker?
2. If the answer to question one is no, how does he impact winning next to other primaries?

Aside from nabbing stars, locating players who contribute to winning, especially in the postseason, is what teams should seek in the draft. The vast majority of elite teams roster one (or two) players who command high usage, either as the offensive orchestrator or deadly scorer. The best players in the NBA are both.

From there, we can understand the value of drafting players with additive skills – shooting, passing and defending being the three most notable. Scouts traditionally discuss scalability, or the ability to move up and down the offensive hierarchy as needed, through the lens of three-and-D wings. 

Now more than ever, centers with expansive offensive skill sets are ubiquitous among great offenses. Going beyond the Joel Embiids and Nikola Jokics of the world, the decision-making ‘hub’ big sill feels like an undervalued archetype. The value of ones like Wendell Carter Jr, Chet Holmgren, Draymond Green and Jusuf Nurkic are clear.

Centers also must add value playing next to other ball-dominant stars, no matter the position. So how can bigs, especially non-shooting bigs, add value without the basketball? 

In the two years since I first discussed modern, scalable NBA bigs, the archetype is as crucial as ever. Big men orchestrate more and more NBA offense, burning defenses with dribble handoffs, short rolls, above-the-break threes and inside-out passing. We can evaluate and project frontcourt prospects through this lens. Centers aren’t exempt from joining the off-ball revolution. 

As I wrote before: 

“Conversations about scalability must extend beyond sharp, spacing wings. They must include these traditional-sized big men who may not be spot-up artists, but who maximize offensive harmony with flowing offense from the mid and high post.”

Maintaining a scoring threat is paramount to commanding defensive attention even for connective bigs, even more so than I realized when I wrote the first part in 2022. Many of the bigs in this archetype who do not become long-term NBA rotation staples (Trevion Williams, Jaylin Williams, etc) can’t punish defenses as a shooter or a play finisher.

Still, I see five main areas modern off-ball bigs should excel:

Advantage extender

I previously titled this category ‘short roll,’ though I think advantage extender better captures this skill. Can you punish a defense at a numbers disadvantage? Bigs who amplify their teammates’ pull-up shooting gravity and playmaking while thriving in the scramble drill match perfectly with stars. Rather than commanding possessions, they increase the odds of their advantage creation leading to points.

A key for this skill: can you command defensive attention as a scoring threat? If a playoff defense doesn’t respect a player’s scoring, they can neutralize their playmaking skill.

DHO Keep/Flow

Potent offenses seek to attain north-south movement, hoping to end as many possessions possible at the bucket, East-west flow opens up creases to run through, commandeered by bigs screening, handing off and creating with their handles. Can you compromise a fooled defense? Can coaches rely on you to initiate offense?

Close quarters finishing

Converting advantages created by stars is the easiest, most classic path to scaling down. In the case of centers, that often means finishing high-value shots at the cup and drawing fouls. Can you finish from a variety of angles with either hand? Do you have the catch radius to snare bad passes?

Force that closeout!

Shooting is a cherry on top for off-ball bigs, assuming they are true center-sized (shooting needed and height are inversely related). Bigs can compensate with their height and size, but threatening a defense from the outside and forcing them to pay attention is a plus.

Can you hit shots from different spots and different platforms? Can you force and attack a bad closeout? What about a good one?

Transition

Pushing the break after a block or rebound eliminates the need to pass to the PG, speeding up transition opportunities. Can you threaten the defense with speed as a transition attacker? Maybe more importantly, can you flow into actions and make decisions to set up teammates? 

With that out of the way, let’s discuss how the bigs of the 2024 draft class fare.

Alex Sarr: Advantage extender, DHO Keep/Flow, Force that closeout!*, Transition

From his single NBL season, Sarr grew as a functional dribbler and playmaker out of the short roll. He’s a far more confident decision-maker on the catch, punishing defenses at a numbers disadvantage with quick kicks and laydowns. Sarr doesn’t need to shoot the lights out to excel on offense, though his low volume especially is troubling.

Freakish coordination and movement skill turn Sarr’s ceiling into an endless staircase. At the moment, Sarr already burns defenders down the court after a defensive stop and wins in isolation against pro bigs. Sarr is building modern NBA offense habits, dribbling into dribble handoffs and screens as a reverse initiator.

Dribbling centers unlock offensive options and Sarr’s mobility plus the counters and creativity he already has are auspicious signs. He might not finish with strong efficiency due to his limited vertical pop, but his potential to initiate modern NBA-style actions only adds to his best-in-class upside. 

Donovan Clingan: Close-quarters finishing

Donovan Clingan’s main ways to pressure defense without the ball include screening and rolling. But without the ball, Clingan fades into the background on offense. He’s unfortunately not a great post scorer as his stiffness limits his angle carving ability. There’s no semblance of a jumper there either.

Thankfully for Clingan, his defense is phenomenal. That’s a topic for another day. We’ve seen plenty of defensive anchors succeed with limited offensive games like Gobert, Capela, Kessler etc. Clingan’s play finishing and height should always keep him somewhat afloat offensively.

Yves Missi: DHO Keep/Flow, Close-quarters finishing, Transition*

Though Yves Missi likely is closer to his 6’10 high school measurement, he plays well above his height with vertical pop and length. Catch radius is critical for lob targets and rim runners, which will be Missi’s main path to offensive value. 

Missi skies above the rim, catching passes well outside his frame for lobs and soft finishes. He’s efficient around the rim — Missi is one of 21 college basketball players this year with 50 or more dunks shooting over 70% at the rim and the only freshman to do it.

Processing speed will be a major swing skill for Missi, especially given his advanced ball-handling flashes, whipping out counters to beat bigs to the bucket and set into post position. If the feel progresses, the sky is the limit for Missi.

Daron Holmes: DHO Keep/Flow, Close-quarters finishing, Force that closeout!, Transition

The case of Daron Holmes’ draft stock is mysterious. According to the Rookie Scale consensus board, Holmes sits at 31 in the eyes of the mainstream with his spot on many prominent mocks even lower. I can’t figure out why for the life of me, especially given his snug fit in the modern game.

Offenses operate through big men more than ever, planting them as hubs for off-ball motion and simple advantage creation. And Holmes, a spacing big with a unique handle, should pique the interest of offensive coordinators. Unlike most lean perimeter-oriented bigs, Holmes possesses traditional big skills — screening, sealing, pick-and-roll defense, finishing — developing those before his metamorphosis.

Aside from spacing the floor and finishing at the rim, Holmes’ varied handle should allow him to function as a genuine hub. How many bigs in college run invert pick and roll as the ball-handler and move downhill to finish, shoot or pass?

Holmes isn’t the smoothest processor which could limit his ceiling as a playmaker. Regardless of any high-end feel limitations, the dribbling, strength and shooting could beget Naz Reid-esque offensive impact.

Kyle Filipowski: Advantage extender, DHO Keep/Flow, Close-quarters finishing, Force that closeout!*, Transition

In theory, Filipowski could easily hit all five tools of scalability. It will depend on the degree of his shooting and finishing — can Filipowski reliably force closeouts and finish through traffic? His volume and efficiency improved from deep this past season though the percentages across his career aren’t stellar. Filpowski is a good, not great finisher among centers (58.6% HC at the rim) and his limited vertical pop and stiffness could trouble him against NBA length.

If he draws defenses as a scoring threat, his passing and ball-handling are among the best in the class. He’s a passing virtuoso, firing assists from the post, on the short roll, in transition and as a primary ballhandler. Few players with Flip’s physicality and strength handle and pass how he can. His potential offensive versatility is massive.

Kel’el Ware: Close-quarters finishing, Force that closeout!

Shooting is the key to unlocking Ware’s scalability. Like a few other bigs on this list, he’s best with the ball in his hands, facing up and swiveling into shots from the post. He’s a springy vertical athlete, rendering him a seamless pairing with great passer (something he hasn’t had in college).

Ware’s three-point volume dipped, though he has a history of deep-range shooting going back to his days at Oregon and in high school. Threatening defenses as a spacer will be all the off-ball value he needs if Ware hits a high defensive outcome.

Zach Edey: Close-quarters finishing

I’m concerned about Zach Edey’s ability to scale down and impact winning without the ball in his hands. Edey’s touch is undeniable and paired with his gargantuan status, he should be a good finisher at the next level. But when passes don’t feed Edey post touches, how does he contribute in a meaningful way?

Historically, high-usage college players who aren’t great passers tend to fail. Take this Barttorvik query of college players with +30% usage and -15% assist rate:

It’s a mixed group, with one mega-star and a few busts. Aside from the Boogie outlier, the ones who stuck in the league shot the ball and spaced the floor (McDermott, Warren). How will Zach Edey share the floor with ball-dominant players? If he improves his processing speed, Edey could connect teammates and extend plays rather than finish them. If not, he feels like a microwave scorer sixth man at his ceiling.

Oso Ighodaro: Advantage extender, DHO Keep/Flow

Does unathletic Brandon Clarke pique your interest? That’s the question we’re pondering about Oso Ighodaro, In theory, his connective skills are abundant — Oso’s floater game is advanced (54.5% on runners) and he’s a capable passer to cutters from a handoff. There’s a recipe for a useful release valve, especially with a pull-up shooting threat.

Ighodaro struggles to elevate through contact and his finishing in the restricted area. He doesn’t space the floor. If Ighodaro can’t threaten defenses as a scorer, he likely won’t stick. But if the floater hints at shooting development, Ighodaro could find a role as a valuable rotation player, lubricating his team’s offensive flow.

Jonathan Mogbo: DHO Keep/Flow, Close-quarters finishing, Transition

Jonathan Mogbo is a dunk machine. Only two players in the country dunked more than Mogbo, whose NBA intrigue comes largely from his bounce and explosion. With a capable handle, Mogbo flashed pro vision and some high-post chops. Gen-Z Kenneth Faried juices up offenses with great passers.

Watching Mogbo in person further illuminated his stature. Despite being fairly short at 6’7, Mogbo is a brick wall with springs in his shoes. Mogbo snags balls out of the air like a wide receiver. He operated primarily from the post, so working to extend advantages will help him find a home in an NBA rotation. There’s some wacko creator upside if Mogbo truly harnesses his handle to maximize his athletic gifts, expanding his possible utility to on and off the ball.

The post Defining Scalable Bigs appeared first on Swish Theory.

That’s the first question I ask myself as I begin the process for my 2024 NBA draft board. By separating production, feel and athletic premiums, I will try to show my notes as I sort out my analysis of 2024 prospects.

Starting with production makes sense given it is the most observable, and by far. Players produce by getting stats, and we have plenty of stats. However, it is not as simple as a 1:1 translation, as many highly productive college players struggle to reach close to that production in the pros. The reverse – little production leading to great production – is rarer, but still occurs.

For our analysis, the definition of production will be something like: “able to make things happen almost by accident through presence and skill.” The “by accident” part works to strip away feel from the equation, which will be the next article. “Through presence and skill” aims to remove the athletic component, the third prong.

While grading prospects based on expectations of future production is impossible with 100% accuracy, the hope is we can land close enough to separate our views from consensus. Rather than spend a long article describing how production can play out on a basketball court, I illustrate how production occurs through five examples.

Tier 1: Dominance

Primary Example: Zach Edey

How does he produce on the court?

Zach Edey is the pinnacle of production, as shown by his NCAA-leading Box Plus-Minus of 14.3. This is the 12th highest mark in the barttorvik.com database, after posting the 13th highest mark the season prior. Edey is a beast.

His production is far from hidden, either. At 7’4”, 300 pounds with a 7’10.5” wingspan, Edey is gargantuan. His movement ability has improved every year, too. With his combined size and movement abiliy, Edey creates events on the floor almost on accident. Add in nimble footwork and elite spatial awareness and you have a player not just lumbering around but dodging and flipping hips as well at his size.

It would be miserable to be screened by Edey or have to box him out. That physical dominance earns Edey a 10 out of 10 for production, but not just for current rather than expectations in the pros.

How easily does he produce?

The margins Edey wins by are astronomical. It is tough to scratch the ceiling above rebounding 26% of defensive opportunities or 17% of offensive ones. When he posts up, he is capable of holding that position for many seconds awaiting an entry pass, and then is able to convert that into a hook, drop step, or just straight dunking right over his opponent. There is more scoring versatility than meets the eye with Edey, simply through the variety of angles he has access to at his size.

In addition, Edey is a vigilant screener and passer. It is easy to imagine him as an NBA-level screener at his size and movement ability, and likely a very good one. He has figured out how to double-hand kick-out pass above all opponents’ heads, more difficult in the NBA with swarming long-wingspanned defenders, but Edey’s size to find better angles won’t go away.

How will this get harder in the NBA and how can he adapt?

My counter-intuitive take is it might, in fact, get easier in the NBA. At the college level Edey has to deal with a double or triple team every single time he touches the ball. This has likely boosted his assist rate (again, the biggest area of production concern), but raised the degree of difficulty on his finishes (not that it mattered). The ease with which Edey can navigate multiple surrounding defenders swiping at the ball to still turn and finish should not go unnoticed, and might indeed lead to continued easy buckets in the pros.

Edey’s weakness is defending away from the basket, but as a likely drop defender that should have little impact on his overall production. His steals will be low but blocks high (he has swatted 8% of opponent attempts) and rebounding should continue to be above average for a big, if not flat out excellent.

Edey has improved his movement ability and fitness quality every year with Purdue. This provides a lot of encouragement to his ability to adapt to the pros. However, it is possible (if not likely) that his opponent will have to do more of the adapting, to Edey’s size and skill. Edey has put up historic usage and rebounding rates while shooting a spectacular 67% true shooting (84% at the rim, 41% midrange, 72% from the line) to the point that even a standard deviation drop would still be excellent. He makes things happen on the court constantly and will at the next level, too.

The question of whether the speed of the game is too much for Edey ignores the major strides he’s made in his fitness and also his dominance per minute. He might need to make additional improvements to physique to play over 30 minutes per game but he has shown the ability to do that the past two seasons at Purdue. Advanced training in the NBA (Zach has not yet turned 22) can help that along. However, Edey’s talent is worth slowing down for, and that would only likely be a little.

Examples of others in this tier?

None

Tier 2: Conditional Dominance

Primary Example: Reed Sheppard

How does he produce on the court?

Reed is on the opposite end compared to Edey’s stature: at 6’3” and 187 pounds, Sheppard faces an uphill battle for his production. He compensates with everything else.

To be a productive player you have to make unlikely events possible, and that’s exactly what Reed does. His greatest strength is his positioning and hand placement, as one thinks themselves open to only be surprised by a last second Sheppard. Sheppard’s production is difficult to separate from his feel, as he moves across the court almost automatically in optimal position. The production is real and significant all over the court, as Sheppard’s 12.4 Box Plus-Minus is the highest for all freshmen by a long shot. Indeed, he only trails Zion Williamson, Anthony Davis, Chet Holmgren, Michael Beasley, Evan Mobley, Karl-Anthony Towns and Kevin Love in the all-in-one box score statistic. The height hasn’t mattered to reach historic production already compared to his age group.

This means Sheppard’s production is all-encompassing, from stocks to rebounds to assists and points. By being in the right position and having the skill to capitalize, Sheppard looks like one of the most productive college players of all time.

How easily does he produce?

What prevents Sheppard from landing in the first tier is his stature at only 6’3” (and that might be generous). Simply by that fact the margins for him to overcome are more significant than for someone like Zach Edey who will always be a foot taller than Sheppard. His handle is also more functional than masterful, limiting his roaming with the ball and thus blocking off an area of potential production. Neither has mattered in the least for Sheppard, but he may find himself struggling to have an impact inside the arc against a trying matchup here and there in the pros.

The production on defense, however, is undeniable. Sheppard feels omnipresent on the court, rotating faster than one can process watching him. He is very strong, capable of banging in the post and stonewalling drives, but more importantly knows how to leverage that strength. This will give him a lynchpin on defense, not being attacked physically, to then make things happen with his rapid, accurate hand movements or by popping out of nowhere.

The distance shooting is bankable, too. He has taken 8 threes per 100 possessions and made over half of them. His release is lightning fast with little load time and good release point. That volume shooting will help space the court at any level, making closeouts easier to reduce the burden on his handle, and also open up passing lanes. Reed is not the most manipulative passer but, similar to his handle, is excellent at making it functional nonetheless.

How will this get harder in the NBA and how can he adapt?

Sheppard is so masterful in what he does well and versatile across the court it is highly likely he will produce at a high level in the NBA. The biggest challenge is the longer wingspans blocking off his passing lanes on offense and making his contests more difficult on defense. But Reed has already found ways to compensate for both. He gets off the floor very quickly with good ‘instant vertical.’ His hand placement often shows awareness to exactly where an opponent’s release point will be, or where they will gather before the attempt.

Sheppard’s feel for the game hints at future improvements, but that is for the next article. Sheppard is capable of producing (and likely very well) at an NBA level today with his activity, physicality and versatility of skillset. He creates events almost automatically as he gets into an opponent’s body or lets it fly in a split second from deep. Despite his stature, he is imposing physically in his own way.

While there can be knits to pick for his athletic tools, getting blown by or shot over here and there, he has used those opportunistically to reposition and make something happen even so.

Examples of others in this tier?

Jonathan Mogbo, Ron Holland

Tier 3: Omnipresence

Primary Example: PJ Hall

How does he produce on the court?

Post ups, spot ups, rolling to the basket. Cuts, transition looks, putbacks. PJ Hall does all of those things at least once per game. He also does that while vacuuming up rebounds, blocking shots and getting some assists and steals. His 30% usage for Clemson is top 10 in the country.

PJ Hall is active. Although not the quickest laterally (steals his weakest stat), Hall is a bruising big, listed at 6’10” and 238 pounds, who is physical all over the court. His front line speed and explosion is better than the mobility otherwise would suggest.

And yes, he scores from all over. While not the most difficult of looks – he only has five made shots off the dribble – it points to his variety of usage. By being strong and physical and constantly in place, Hall is ready.

How easily does he produce?

Hall is only in the third tier for this reason: the margins are often thin, especially for his scoring. His rebounding is likely the most ironclad contribution: Hall has a decent wingspan and can get off his feet quickly. Contested boards become clean ones often, with PJ claiming his with fervor.

The blocks come next, again benefitting from his interior strength and above average leaping. While far from a primary rim protector, an opponent would at least not be able to lose track of Hall’s location.

Hall has plenty of scoring versatility in college, which works for him in some ways but against in others. To start with the bad news, there is no obvious easy day one offensive specialty. His outside shot is okay (33% from deep, 79% from the line) with better luck inside the arc (57% from two). His primary scoring output comes from post ups, at 7.4 per game.

The good news is the breadth of skill means you don’t have to choose any single way to use him. Hall can fill in admirably in many spots. His post ups are not slow and plodding but decisive and featuring many drop step dunks. Posting up might not be his sweet spot but rather a means to an end.

How will this get harder in the NBA and how can he adapt?

The biggest difficulty for Hall on an NBA floor will be sticking to his man. While likely quick enough to guard your average big, he would often be faced with an athletic gap when defending in space. His fitness and physicality will counter that, a locked in facet of his game regardless of competition.

The biggest question is his willingness to let it fly, a major source of production in itself. Should he continue to let it fly with little hesitation, perhaps bolstered by a little more improvement in his percentages, Hall being in Tier 3 means he has more than enough stuff to stick around.

Examples of others in this tier?

Cody Williams, Matas Buzelis

Tier 4: Consistent Presence

Primary Example: KJ Simpson

How does he produce on the court?

Playing against KJ Simpson must feel like whack-a-mole: wherever you snuff out his movement, a moment later he’s popping up elsewhere. At just 6’2”, Simpson overcomes his stature a few ways: his strength, his instincts, his vertical pop, his quickness. These all make Simpson difficult to screen and difficult to keep out of the paint.

Let’s return to our definition of production, “how many things does he make happen by accident?” As he’s #13 in the NCAA for Box Plus-Minus, it seems a lot. He rebounds (16% rate), assists (26%) and gets plenty of steals (3.4%). He leads his team in usage at 27%. The statistical case for Simpson is very strong.

Simpson is capable of no-load threes as well as skying in for the occasional dunk (9 so far this season). He gets into his pull-up smoothly with four self-created perimeter points per game. He may not be a traditional tank knocking people around to cause chaos, but he can do it surgically while powerfully.

How easily does he produce?

The visual evidence is murkier than the stellar statistical resume. KJ Simpson wins often by small margins, but is intentional enough in his application that he gives just enough effort to win. This hints at Simpson being able to scale up or down at the NBA level as he can deliberately focus his efforts onto different roles. Need an on-ball initiator? An off-ball catch and shooter? A closeout attacker? A ball-moving connector? Simpson can effectively do any of these.

On defense, the steals come by activity and physicality. Simpson can bully weaker NCAA guards, even at only 189 pounds. He hits screeners when he is screened and boxes out hard. These might not all create events but it does carve out space on the court, and more than all but a few NCAA guards.

How will this get harder in the NBA and how will he adapt?

The NBA is not kind to small guards. But how small does Simpson play, really? There will be many plays that simply sail over his head which would not at the NCAA level, with the NBA full of big and wing creators. But Simpson’s role and athletic versatility will ease the adjustment.

While small guards still survive in the league, the margins are very thin. Simpson needs to continue refining his toolset to ensure an NBA impact. Already built and quick and a good leaper, Simpson is not far off from the median point guard’s athleticism, and may be greater than. But the easy victories will stop, only tough ones from here. This is why I ultimately knocked him down to an 8.5, in spite of a stellar of a statistical resume as nearly anyone in the NCAA.

Simpson is a good bet to find a way to contribute, but the degree is highly uncertain. Regardless, that’s a bet I’d be comfortable making in the first round.

Examples of others in this tier?

Tyler Kolek, Baylor Scheierman

Tier 5: Selective Presence

Primary Example: Milan Momcilovic

How does he produce on the court?

Milan Momcilovic is not convincing as an NBA-level athlete, but has the tools and skill to succeed regardless. His production is the most siloed of any we’ve described so far: he takes (and makes) a ton of threes. Despite this narrow avenue of contribution, Momcilovic still ranks in the top 10 for high major freshman by Box Plus-Minus. This is because Milan is 6’8” and has a quick, high release. Sometimes the analysis doesn’t need a second question: Momcilovic produces by hitting unblockable shots.

The rest of his game is middling, dragged down by his poor foot speed, limited burst and stiffness. A 12% defensive rebound rate and 2.1% block rate are closer to the stats of a 6’5” prospect than a 6’8” one, but there is a baseline of production nonetheless. And while Milan is not very mobile, he is still enough to be a consistent presence guarding fours.

How easily does he produce?

Momcilovic’s production is tilted towards three point volume, and that’s where he’s winning by large margins. The effective release height on his shot is more like a 6’10” player than a 6’8” one, releasing above his head with great arc. When we’re talking about projectable production, it is difficult to get more bankable than a release point that high going in at a 40% rate on very good volume. But that’s what we have with Milan.

His size comes in handy, even if not snagging down rebounds or skying for blocks. At his size he can set effective screens and generally be a big body on the court. Even when he’s not adding to his stat total, he’s taking up more space than the average NBA player.

How will this get harder in the NBA and how will he adapt?

He will be attacked on defense. Finding the right player to park Milan on will be essential for his early career success. Milan has little chance of hanging in with either 3s or 5s, relegated to the non-explosive 4s. That makes the margins tighter on offense where he has to be successful with his strengths. This is why Momcilovic is in Tier 5, as there is little guarantee he can hang in enough to capitalize on his strengths.

But the bedrock of high volume, high accuracy three point shooting is a function needed by every team, and Momcilovic is convincing as almost anyone in the class for that role.

Examples of others at this grade?

Wooga Poplar, Tre Mitchell

The post How Prospects Make Things Happen appeared first on Swish Theory.