The most challenging aspect of the draft for me is evaluating the international crop. NCAA players are easy for me to work with since I’m intimately familiar with all of the players, coaches, and systems. On the other hand, I am lacking in expertise in overseas leagues so solving the internationals involves quite a bit of thin slicing and guesswork. But as I have tried to piece together the value of the respective internationals in this class, I have become increasingly high on the crop being especially strong. This was reinforced when Kevin Pelton released his WARP ranking with 4 of his top 5 prospects being internationals. Further, Dario Saric, Damien Inglis, and Walter Tavares rank as late 1st rounders and Vasilije Micic is an early 2nd according to WARP. This not only aligns with my suspicion that the class is strong, but suggests that it is historically good. That said his WARP formula also ranks Jordan Adams ahead of Joel Embiid, which is a friendly reminder that stats do not tell the entire story. So let’s dive in to each player and discuss how scouting narratives may affect their value implied by statistical performances.
Dante Exum
I have already raved about Exum’s FIBA performance, where his statistics ranked him 4th according to WARP. This seems correct to me, and WARP may even underrate his performance. Most of the players used for translation analysis played in USA’s pressing defense, where they posted high steal rates which weighs heavily into the WARP formula. Aaron Gordon looks significantly better according to his FIBA stats than he did playing in Arizona’s non-gambly shot prevention defense. He had significantly better steal rate in the press (and suggests that he is underrated by his NCAA stats). On the other hand, Tyler Ennis’s statistical performance was much weaker than his at Syracuse. This is the most apples to apples comparison as he had to carry team Canada the same way Exum was forced to carry Australia.
On the other hand, Dario Saric was forced to carry team Croatia and performed on Exum’s level whereas he is ranked far lower according to his translated Adriatic stats. This is a reminder that FIBA stats are only a 9 game sample, which is far too small to take at face value. But Exum nevertheless posted a significantly better assist:turnover ratio (34:21 vs 44:43) in spite of having a bad game vs team USA, who Saric never faced. His ability to carry the offense while protecting the ball so well at such a young age is both highly impressive and less prone to sample size variance than shooting percentages, for instance. If nothing else, his vision and ability to protect the ball while creating loads of offense offer enough promise in tandem with his physical profile to justify the top 4 hype.
What the stats don’t show is that Exum hardly moves off the ball. I don’t know if this is because he lacks stamina, competitiveness, or simply hasn’t been pushed to develop this aspect of his game yet. It’s not a fatal flaw since he clearly has enough offensive upside to become an all-star even if he subscribes to the James Harden school of defense. And with his tools and personality, it wouldn’t be shocking to see him eventually develop into a good defender anyway. But this does give me enough pause to not instantly elevate him to #1 now that Joel Embiid’s injury concern has been heightened, and it does open the door for an argument that Marcus Smart is a superior prospect since Smart is such a safe commodity on defense. I still have Exum locked in as a top 3 prospect and am considering him as the #1 prospect in the draft, but if there is a subtle reason to be skeptical of him this would be it.
Jusuf Nurkic
I wrote about Nurkic’s impressive Adriatic stats earlier in the season, and now that is supported by Pelton ranking him #3 in terms of WARP. Nate Duncan (who seems to have a good eye test) recently shared a great scouting report on Nurkic, which I find encouraging for his prospect value beyond the stats for 2 reasons:
1) Duncan claims that Nurkic passes well out of double teams. This bodes well for his ability to score efficiently against higher levels of competitions and not be a black hole of turnovers.
2) His quick feet allowed him to stop Dario Saric in their 1 on 1 matchups on multiple occasions. The concern with Nurkic is that he doesn’t have the length or athleticism to be a traditional shot blocking rim protector. But given his quick feet, strength, and size, it sounds like he can certainly be a defensive presence in his own rite.
Between his stats, physical profile, and scouting reports, I feel comfortable locking Nurkic in as a top 5 prospect. There aren’t any scouting narratives that cast doubt on his potential outside of his poor leaping ability, which doesn’t seem particularly debilitating given his strengths.
Clint Capela
Capela ranks as the top international in the class according to WARP, ranking #2 behind only Marcus Smart. Every statistical model I have seen ranks Capela exceptionally high, and he often appears ahead of Nurkic. Further, he has good tools to translate his abilities to the NBA as he offers good length, athleticism, and quicks. His weak tool physically is strength as he only weighs 222, but that shouldn’t preclude him from being a top end defensive center. How his pre-draft measurements compare to those of other players who have recently served as good defensive centers:
| Player | Height | Length | Weight |
| Chris Bosh | 6’11.5″ | 7’3.5″ | 225 |
| Tyson Chandler | 7’0.5″ | 7’3″ | 224 |
| Joakim Noah | 7’0″ | 7’1.25″ | 223 |
| Clint Capela | 6’11” | 7’4.5″ | 222 |
| Kevin Garnett | 6’11 | ? | 217 |
The fact of the matter is that once you have great height, length, athleticism, and mobility, you don’t need a world of strength to make a big impact defensively. After all, there aren’t any Shaq level bullies at center that must be stopped in order to win a title these days. DX and ESPN list him as a PF, and I vehemently disagree: Capela is a center all the way.
Capela thrives as a shot blocker, rebounder, and finisher, as his skill set seems similar to that of Tyson Chandler. Further, he posted 2.2 assists vs 2.6 turnovers pace adjusted per 40 this past season in French play (it was only 0.6 vs 2.9 in the smaller Eurocup sample where he had an excuse to not pass w/ his whopping 71.8% FG%), which is excellent for a center of his age and implies that he may be able to develop into a Joakim Noah level playmaker. If nothing else he should be able to move the ball within the offense as opposed to being a Bismack Biyombo who never touches it. Assist to turnover also correlates with feel for the game, and in tandem with his finishing ability it seems like he offers enough offensively to make it worth getting his defense and rebounding on the floor.
Based on his stats and tools Capela seems to offer a world of upside. If scouts loved him and ESPN/DX were clamoring for him to go #1 overall, I don’t think I’d take a strong stance against that sentiment. But in reality the sentiment is quite the opposite, DX ranks him 17th, ESPN 27th, and Nate Duncan thinks he belongs in round 2 after watching him at the Nike Hoop Summit (I like Duncan’s scouting reports but he is drastically underselling Capela’s strengths with that conclusion).
The common scouting narratives are that Capela has poor basketball IQ, poor feel for the game, and is lazy. It is hard for me to reconcile how these narratives may be completely true in spite of the stats he posted, but they likely aren’t completely made up either. So let’s start by examining Duncan’s critiques. He starts by mentioning Capela’s poor jump shot (which is a viable flaw) and goes on to note:
He looks like his skill level is always going to be more center than power forward, and that is a problem given how thin he is.
I agree that his skill set mandates that he plays center. Do not agree it’s a significant problem given his weight with so many thin players succeeding as defensive centers.
Most concerning is Capela’s lack of feel overall. He was the most likely World player to make mental errors, although there may have been a bit of a language barrier involved there as well. During the game, he picked up four fouls in the first half with some silly over the backs. Throughout the week he did not prove particularly adept at finding creases for guards to give him dumpoffs, and his few postups invariably resulted in wild misses or turnovers.
I would have found this disconcerting if his lack of feel resulted in a number of defensive lapses. Let’s tackle each critique point by point:
-A few over the back fouls for a young big hardly sound indicting.
-DX noted in their situational stats that Capela finished an amazing 73.8% of his shot attempts off of cuts. Perhaps this is a minor indictment for his feel, but a larger indictment on the lack of structure of a hastily whipped together all-star team.
-He’s bad at posting up: who cares? It’s not part of his repertoire and he likely should never be used as a post-up player in the NBA.
Duncan then mentions that his strength is lacking and he struggled to even post up guards in 2 on 2 drills. It is unclear whether this is a greater indictment on his lack of strength or post up skill, but I assume it’s a bit of both.
And that’s all Duncan has to offer. There’s nothing there that strongly pokes holes in my hypothesis that he may be Tyson Chandler 2.0. I believe the worst than can be concluded is that Capela is a deeply dependent scorer, and he will suffer if he plays in a poorly coached offense with poor ball movement. French teams typically have good ball movement (which is why the Spurs always draft French players) so it is likely that playing in France accentuated his offensive production. His 2 point scoring stats are not that different from those of Joel Embiid. But in terms of footwork, shooting touch, and offensive upside Embiid completely blows him away. Stat models cannot fully detect the disparity in footwork and overall skill level, so this is one reason to take his stats at less than face value.
DX shares similar critiques with his feel for the game and also notes that he has questionable intangibles and defensive fundamentals. I’d say there are enough red flag narratives from people who are competent at scouting to throw some cold water on his upside implied by tools and stats.
Overall, scouting narratives strike me as less discouraging than his positives are encouraging. If there is one position where skill and intelligence flaws can be overcome to produce at an elite level, it’s center. Nobody ever accused Dwight Howard of having good basketball IQ or feel for the game, but he was the 2nd most valuable player in the league when he had Stan Van Gundy coaching him. Everybody questioned Andre Drummond’s passion and basketball IQ and he slid too far and instantly smashed expectations as a rookie. I have no idea how DeAndre Jordan slid to the 2nd round with his physical tools, but he didn’t even have good stats in college and he’s become a useful NBA player anyway. Even Javale McGee convinced Masai Ujiri to gamble on him at 4/44, and he is responsible for some of the most inexplicably dumb plays in NBA history. Athletic bigs are capable of such a significant defensive impact that they have quite a bit of margin for error in their skill and basketball IQ in order to still be productive.
My closing caveat is that I have compared Capela to two groups of athletic bigs: skinny and smart (KG, Bosh, Noah, Chandler) and strong and not smart/skilled (DAJ, Dwight, Drummond, Javale). There are not many examples of skinny and not smart/skilled, so it’s possible that he simply does not become good at all. But his French stats suggest that he has some “je ne sais quoi” that gives him his own form of unique upside (it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s smarter than scouts think he is), and I believe that’s worth gambling on in the 6-10 range.
Capela is a truly fascinating prospect given his polarizing features, and it makes me a bit sad that I’m closing by citing his “je ne sais quoi,” because that was a really long writeup to conclude with “I don’t know” in French.
That’s all for part 1. I’m going to split this up into 2 or 3 pieces in order to address the international class in its entirety.
Great review. I like Capela ahead of Nurkic.
I think that’s a reasonable disposition. Nurkic seems like a bit of a safer bet to me, but Capela seems like he has potential to be sexier if he does pan out.
I like how that “scout” docks Capela for picking up 4 fouls in the 1H then neglects to note how he played great defense in the 2H without picking up a fifth.
Great post. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Jokic, Inglis, Bogdanovic and Micic as well.
Good stuff! I hope that you’ll include Mirotic in part two.
Sorry, I’m keeping this constrained to the actual draft class since the draft is rapidly approaching. Mirotic may not be a bad side project to analyze if he ever gets traded or decides to come over. I haven’t invested a ton of thought in him, but at a glance he seems like he’s somewhere in a similar range of goodness with Nurkic and Capela.
Good stuff Dean. My model is really high on Capela too. Has him first among internationals too, second over all. Also agree that he’s a center.
On Embiid, both my model and Pelton’s regress stats for players that don’t play much. He’s also old for a freshman, closer to a sophomore’s age. If one considered his ‘effective basketball age’ to be lower because of a lack of experience, he would also rank higher.
Even as an analytics guy, I don’t take the model results at face value. They have to be combined with good scouting. Stats models also really helpful preventing an overreaction to a sub par performance in something like the hoop summit, where the sample size is small and external validity is somewhat questionable.
Cool, good stuff to know. I’m still learning the ins and outs of each model in order to make them a bit more useful to me. I share your approach which is to start with stats and then adjust for scouting. I believe it’s likely the most efficient way to evaluate prospects.
I agree that it’s a bit ridiculous how bad of a rap Capela’s getting for his Hoop Summit performance when he’s shining in a professional league over a non-trivial sample. I don’t think it suggests anything worse than him being heavily dependent on coaching + structure. Maybe he’s not great at figuring things out on his own but is great at following instructions. If he was drafted to a team like the Spurs, I would imagine you see him perform much more in line with his France effort than his all-star practices.
Tyson Chandler 2.0? Looks more likely to be Bismack Biyombo 2.0
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Put out another Big Board before the draft lol!
It’s going to happen. My idea is to comb over the prospects that I have yet to hash out because being forced to type out my thoughts in an organized manner makes the ranking process easier. Once I’m done posting material I’ll post my final rankings.
I’m puzzled that Capela’s getting knocked for having a low basketball IQ. Admittedly, I haven’t been able to find any full games of his online. I’ve only been able to find game highlights, his personal highlight clips and some sideline angle videos of his games. He may very well have a low basketball IQ but there are reasons I find this doubtful. One, the Hoops Summit. I didn’t see the first half but I wouldn’t weigh fouls in that setting too meaningfully. I did like that he got the ball under the hoop once in the second half and instead of rushing it up to the rim, he pump faked, got defenders off the ground and then laid it up. That alone showed an awareness that some bigs never learn or never learn to incorporate in the speed of a game. It at least told me that Capela’s high field percentage isn’t because he’s only getting open dunks but maybe because he has good feel and touch to go with great athleticism and length.
He also had a great defensive stop when he went straight up and engulfed the offensive player.
Further, as much as Capela’s improved this season, it’s hard to see him being lazy or not having aptitude. When draftexpress released a scouting video of him early in the season, they had lack of passing as a sign of low basketball IQ. It was fair because his assists were non-existent up to that point. But afterwards, he started racking up assists consistently everygame. Some were thrown with either hand. Show me a big who can create for a teammate with either hand who is basketball dumb or has low aptitude.
His free throw shooting improved during the season. At one point he was in the low 40s and he finished in the high 50s. He showed a good stroke at the Hoops Summit.
This was his first season of real game experience. Prior to this season, he had barely played. I doubt he was on the draft radar at all. All he did was put up fine numbers and improve as the season went on. He is so intriguing.
I think he’s getting too much attention for all-star scrimmages (Eurocamp, Hoop Summit) and not enough for his play for an actual team in France. For whatever reason he has struggled to translate to the camps, but the explanation may be as simple as he relies heavily on coaching and structure. But France is the large sample where he played serious competition, so his success there means more to me than his struggles at all-star camps. If he lands for a good NBA coach I’d say he has serious potential. I also really like how he improved his passing, I think that’s a great sign.
I like Nurkic quite a bit more than Capela. Seems skilled and smooth and high-IQ, plus Bosnian Boogie is such an elite nn.
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While I like Exum as a top 5 talent too, I just can’t help but feel like you’re putting A LOT of faith in his 9 game sample against competition that you acknowledge isn’t quite up to snuff with college level competition. I know he translated well in Pelton’s system, but again it’s NINE GAMES. If you just took Jabari’s first nine games (which included Kansas, Zona and Michigan, all of whom I would say were at worst as good as the USA U-19 team that dominated the tournament) he put up per 40 28.3-10-2.3 with 3.4 blocks + steal and a TS% over 60. Is it really fair to assume that Exum wouldn’t have struggled to some degree against older competition that had time to scout him?
I guess what I’m getting at is, aren’t the numbers Exum put up in the U-19 (and is a 17 year old against 19 year olds that different than an 18 year old against 20-23 year olds like a freshman in college is likely to see?) more indicative of what 9 of his best games in the NCAA would look like as opposed to a median sample just like how Jabari’s first 9 games – which if taken in isolation like Exum would have had people declaring him Durant 2.0 – represented his best work too?
You’re right that we cannot fully trust the 9 game sample. I think Jabari is a great example of somebody who looked way better in his first 9 games than he did after 35. But sometimes you need to focus less on what you don’t know and more on what you do know.
1) Exum’s physical profile is stellar for a PG. He has uniquely good height, length, speed, and quicks. Having 4 ++ tools for his position is a big deal. He needs to add strength and he is only an average leaper, but that’s of little consequence given the good stuff he has going on.
2) Forget his stats: by just watching him play he blew me away with his vision, passing, and feel for the game. These are not things that vary heavily from game to game like outside shooting (which largely carried Jabari in his early sample). These skills are also somewhat independent of competition level– nobody has great vision vs bad D’s and horrible vision vs good D’.
Based on these details alone, he’s worth a top 5 pick. These are a rare combination of strongly positive traits that can so easily result in an offensive superstar. There is plenty of mystery to his game– will he ever learn to play defense? how well will his shot develop? does he have the strength to finish vs. NBA athletes? But it’s worth gambling on it given his awesome baseline of skills, tools, and smarts.
The translated stats are only icing on the cake that support how un-crazy it is to take him top 5. They price in the age levels of competition, so it’s not like you need to de-value them as if it’s a cherry picked sample of goodness. Australia played one of the toughest schedules at the u19 games and Exum thrived vs. everybody but Marcus Smart.
His turnover rate over the 9 game sample may be a fluke or it may not be. In the condition that it’s not, whoever drafts Exum is likely in for a treat bc his turnover rate is downright CP3-esque when he pretty much has Derrick Rose level physical tools (plus height minus leaping). In tande, I want.
Ultimately yes it is a gamble given how limited the information on him is. But it’s not like the NCAA guys are bereft of risk themselves. The draft is all about finding guys who are possibly superstars as opposed to unlikely to bust. I feel that there is enough information to proclaim that Exum is more likely to become a top 10 player than Parker or Wiggins. And they have plenty of bust risk themselves (arguably more than Exum) so if he’s not quite as good as limited info suggests, I wouldn’t feel badly about gambling on him.
I don’t know what exactly “one of the toughest schedules at the u19 games” is compared to an NCAA schedule but I’ll note that it seems inconsistent that you would dock Parker so much for his splits between good and bad competition and argue that Exum’s “vision, passing and feel for the game” makes it ok that he struggled against the only team at the U19 that i think most people would say has a chance to compare to a decent quality NCAA defense (because again, I just don’t believe the best under-19 Serbian kids could hang with a ranked NCAA team composed of 18-23 year olds. I could be wrong on this). Given that I would still probably take Exum top 5 for the reasons you described (and don’t think at all that it’s a mistake to take him ahead of Jabari and especially Wiggins), I think it’s fair to say I’m more an apologist for Jabari (I’ll cop as well to being a Duke grad. I think you may be going a bit too Jay Bilas here) than I am anti-Exum.
Different traits raise different concerns…there is nothing about court vision that carries translation risk. Slashing through higher levels of defense does bring translation concern, but I think smarts + feel are the keys to succeeding and Exum seems good in those regards.
On the other hand, Jabari Parker accrued many of his lofty scoring totals dunking all over big men who are far too small to compete in the NBA. He is a college 4/5 who is being projected as a perimeter scorer in the NBA– there is much greater sensitivity toward his splits and ast:tov when you are completely taking away his ability to rack up points like he did vs. Boston College.
I remember trying to figure it out and thinking the Serbian team would be something like the 50th best NCAA team. Huge error bars on that estimation, but I don’t think the top non-US teams would be complete doormats. At least they’d be solid mid-major teams.