Tag Archives: Andrew Wiggins

This Draft Feels Like 2014 All Over Again

15 Thursday Jul 2021

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2014 was the first draft I blogged about, and I started this blog largely because it was so much fun to analyze that crop. Now 2021 is loaded with parallels with makes it similarly exciting to analyze.

It started with Andrew Wiggins being hyped as the next LeBron, and then massively disappointing as a college freshman while his teammate Joel Embiid looked like a mega stud out of nowhere as an exceptionally coordinated 7 footer.

But in spite of his disappointment, Wiggins still went #1 overall as his freshman performance was good enough to not wash away the shiny hype he entered the season with, and the prospect of improvement based on his elite athleticism.

Now this year, Cade Cunningham was hyped as a Luka Doncic type generational prospect, but has performed more on Wiggins’ level while Evan Mobley has been the elite, athletic 7 footer who stuffs the stat sheet. Yet Cade’s preseason hype has helped him maintain the consensus #1 overall status.

In fact, Cade’s hype has held up even stronger than than Wiggins, as at least there were genuine discussions as to whether Embiid should go #1 before his medical red flags caused him to drop to #3. In this case, Cade is still holding strong as the consensus #1 overall in spite of Mobley being completely healthy.

The Cade/Wiggins comparison has been commonly dismissed as Wiggins being an athlete who has no idea how to play, and that Cade’s passing and shooting means that he won’t fail. But that ignores the fact that Wiggins was not any worse of an NCAA player than Cade, while also being 5 months younger. Let’s look at a quick and dirty spot check of NCAA goodness with Box Score Plus/Minus

AgeBPM
Mobley19.613.7
Embiid19.811.9
Wiggins18.98.3
Cade19.38.3

In retrospect is is easy to reduce Wiggins to an athlete who has no clue how to play, but it just was not that apparent at the time. He had decent scoring ability offensively, averaged 17 points on solid shooting %’s, drew a ton of free throws, and was a good defensive player due to his excellent athleticism.

Now people may lament that Cade’s teammates were the worst thing since sliced bread, while Wiggins played on a perennially great Kansas team. But then when we look at their on/off splits, Wiggins is the one who made a clearly positive impact on his team. From hooplens.com:

Wiggins not only had a major impact on the defense as a long, athletic player who could defend multiple positions, but he also had a more clearly positive impact on the offense where he could at least use his athleticism to get some easy shots, crash the offensive glass, and draw a high volume of free throws. Whereas in spite of his passing, Cade’s team seemed to get more easy 2 pointers with him off the floor.

Of course this doesn’t prove that Cade will be as bad as Wiggins, as college on/off stats are very noisy and plenty of players with lower freshman BPMs have gone on to be all-stars. On average, Cade should be better than Wiggins. But it is enough information to at least start questioning what makes Cade’s floor necessarily higher than Wiggins.

The common answer would be that athleticism is overrated, and Cade’s shooting and passing is what is actually the more valuable trait. But that isn’t necessarily the case– athleticism is and always has been an incredibly valuable NBA trait. Further, OJ Mayo could shoot and pass as well as Cade and had a pedestrian NBA career. The real lesson from Wiggins should be that being well rounded with limited flaws is predictive of NBA stardom– not checking a few magical boxes regardless of the flaws that come with it.

One funny commonality is that both were arguably better as role players. Wiggins had a narrative that worst case he would be a great role player as he could make an open 3 and be a defensive stopper. But Minnesota had different plans for him to relentlessly chuck stepback jumpers from mid-range instead, and it did not amount to a good player.

There seems to be a similar notion with Cade, that worst case he can be a more athletic Joe Ingles who provides excellent 3 + D support. But Joe Ingles wouldn’t be Joe Ingles if he was drafted #1 and expected to carry the offense like Luka Doncic, because he would do very poorly in that role.

Cade may do a better job of it than Joe Ingles would, but that doesn’t mean he will necessarily be an adequate primary creator in the NBA. And if he always has the ball in his hands– how much value does his shooting *really* carry? Being able to make pullup 3’s is a helpful skill, but if he is still collectively inefficient and his shooting is not often being used to provide spacing gravity to his other teammates, it diminishes the value of it.

Maybe Cade Turns Out Better than Wiggins

But does it really matter? This kid from USC is an obvious stud and everything about him is wired for efficiency. You would think that with the advent of statistics that qualities like elite efficiency, passing, defense, in a player who is also taller, longer, and more athletic than Cade would be valued higher. But the level of analysis has gotten so basic that all that matters are checking the magical boxes of being a wing creator (doesn’t matter if you are good or bad at it as long as you tried!) and being able to shoot. Conversely being tall makes you automatically bad, even if you are capable of doing perimeter things like handle, pass, shoot, and switch onto smaller players.

It is such a basic level of analysis, it is like watching everything go backwards. At least in 2014 teams were open enough to bigs for Embiid over Wiggins to be a realistic discussion before Embiid’s injury flags mucked everything up. Now we have a stud in Mobley who isn’t even in the conversation with a clean bill of health.

It makes sense to place an additional emphasis on speed and skill over taking whatever big stiff is available to fill the middle. But this has gone overboard. Being tall always has been and always will be an incredibly useful trait for basketball. And momentum can always shift back toward bigs– for instance the coming rule changes to reduce cheap fouls on shooters adds just a bit more value back toward bigs and away from guards and wings.

And regardless, a tall guy like Mobley who can protect the rim and do perimeter things like handle, pass, and shoot are going to give you a ton of lineup flexibility.

And the #2 pick is even worse than #1

As flawed and overhyped as Wiggins was, he still fit a quality NBA mold and had enough strengths such that in his mid 20’s, he has finally become a useful NBA player. And he still has room to grow into a solidly + player, much like Rudy Gay who was his negative comp, but ended up having a better than expected second act for the Spurs.

On the other hand, Jabari Parker was the ultimate empty calories scorer, and he is so one dimensional with such bad defense that he is nothing more than a cheap flier for his 6th team in Boston as he enters his prime age.

Granted, there is no reason to believe Jalen Green will necessarily be that bad. His athletic scoring off the dribble looks quite a bit more aesthetically pleasing and should have better NBA translation than Parker’s bully ball. Perhaps he can have a career closer to his physical doppelganger Zach LaVine, who was chosen later in the 2014 lottery.

But Green is much smaller than Parker and there are so many scenarios where he is just dreadful on defense without offering much more than scoring offensively, he has a nasty downside tail and his upside is capped at the Zach LaVine/Devin Booker tier, which is not good enough to win a championship as your best player.

Booker needed MVP candidate Chris Paul, a quality big in former #1 overall pick DeAndre Ayton, and a strong cast of quality role players just to be a 2nd tier contender who was able to make the finals when every star player in their path got injured. He is a good player and contributed to the run to be sure, but you want to aim higher than a Booker best case at #2 overall, especially when it comes attached to a fair amount of bust risk.

The Rest of the Draft May Be Even Better

It would really be something to see a top 3 of 1. Cade 2. Green 3. Mobley perfectly mirror the Wiggins, Parker, Embiid top 3 of 2014. And even after that, there are some similarities.

Scottie Barnes, like Aaron Gordon is the big, toolsy wing with questionable shooting. Gordon is the more explosive athlete, but Barnes is longer with better PG skills. I would rate Barnes as the better prospect between the two based on pre-draft.

Jalen Suggs is the high IQ combo guard, similar to Marcus Smart. But he has a better first step with more offensive potential, which makes him the better pre-draft prospect than Smart.

We even have a young, tall point guard from Australia in Josh Giddey, who hopefully has a better NBA career than Dante Exum. Giddey is stylistically closer to Lonzo Ball than Exum, but is smoother with his movement as well as being the more skillful passer. He has a certain wizardry to his passing, as he not only is exceptionally high IQ with great vision, but is also highly accurate and passes like he has the ball on the string. He has limited tools and scoring which give him a wide range of future outcomes, but his passing is so outlier good for his height and youth he clearly has a nice upside tail.

Later in the lottery, we have a one dimensional mid-major shooter Corey Kispert playing the role of Doug McDermott being slotted far above where his talent level merits.

International Man of Mystery

The 2014 draft was also loaded with awesome international bigs. I ranked Jusuf Nurkic and Clint Capela 5th and 6th ahead of Parker and Wiggins, and Nikola Jokic 16th. This year there is only one elite big but he is better than all of them: Alperen Sengun.

But the trouble is that they were all true centers, whereas Sengun is more of an old school PF. Is he more of a Julius Randle, who in spite of quality box score production, does not fit the modern NBA and will turn into a pumpkin in the playoffs?

In some ways Sengun is similar to Randle, but he also offers more than 2x the steal and block rates (2.6/5.9 vs 1.0/2.6) almost 2x the assist:TOV ratio (1.11 vs 0.57), a wetter jump shot (79.4% FT vs 70.6%), and much better interior scoring (67.4% 2P vs 51.7%) on higher usage (26.7 vs 25.5). All while playing in a better league at 8 months younger.

At the time I argued that Randle is just not an interesting mold, and even if he posts good stats he may not be that useful in the NBA. And it is an interesting debate where he should rank in a re-draft. I ranked him #22, which feels too low based on his recent season in NYK. But that was after his initial team let him walk for nothing when New Orleans signed him for the mid level exception. So perhaps it was a reasonable place to rate him, as there is no clear answer.

Regardless, it’s fascinating how much the market has adjusted since then. Randle went 7th overall and was considered a reasonable or even good pick by most at the time. Now Sengun is a massively suped up version with much more perimeter qualities and hope on defense, yet he isn’t even projected to go in the lottery.

At this point it doesn’t seem that most people are critically thinking about the ways in which Sengun can provide value to a team, and are just blindly fading him based on his perceived mold.

It is completely reasonable to dock his value for having questions about how he fits into the modern NBA, but based on just the #’s he is the clear #1 pick in this draft. You are heavily shorting his mold just by dropping him out of the top 5. Dropping him out of the top 10 seems like a clear overreaction to the recent trends in the modern NBA.

Trends Don’t Last Forever

It is crazy how much has changed in the past 7 years after the Warriors built the death lineup around Steph Curry and Draymond Green, and the rest of the league started adapting to combat them. Now that the Warriors are no longer a contender, the small ball trend has continued, and may continue indefinitely.

But that doesn’t mean that the momentum cannot slightly swing back toward bigs whether it be with small rule changes such as reducing fouls on non-basketball moves. Or perhaps a new super team emerges, which causes a shift back the other way.

Imagine if Mobley and Sengun were paired together. They would be a perfect duo on defense– Sengun cleans up the glass and puts a body on stronger bigs in the post, while Mobley handles the rim protection. Offensively, you have two bigs who can handle, pass, shoot, and score inside. Sengun should be an especially good floor spacer, while Mobley can at least make an open shot.

When you have that level of creation, passing, finishing, and shooting from your two bigs, it is ridiculously easy to build a good offense. It will be especially difficult for small lineups to match up with them, even though Sengun is short for a 5 and Mobley is skinny, their passing and interior scoring could collectively provide nightmares for a team that needs to put a big wing on either one of them. As of now almost every starting lineup in the NBA would need to do this.

It may be hard to believe that a great offense can come from somewhere other than wing or guard with a great first step, but let’s bear in mind that the Nuggets won a playoff series against Portland with a monster 123.4 ORtg in spite of having a guard rotation of Austin Rivers, Facundo Campazzo, Monte Morris, and Markus Howard. Michael Porter Jr. is a great shooter but nothing close to a point forward, and Aaron Gordon is not a volume creator.

Jokic is the MVP and one of the best offensive bigs of all time, but based on pre-draft Sengun clearly has more offensive talent and Mobley arguably does too. Even without either peaking nearly as high as Jokic, you can still build a really awesome offense around those two. Sengun may give a decent bit back on defense, but if he proves adept at guarding the perimeter, it would be over for the rest of the NBA.

And if teams are forced to match up with two bigs who provide those sort of matchup issues offensively, playing two bigs may start to become more commonplace once again. And if it does not, they can destroy the rest of the league with any decent supporting guards and wings.

Summary

By far the two drafts that I have been most motivated to scout film and generate content for have been 2014 and 2021, and there is a good reason for that– because they had the biggest inefficiencies at the top.

And the source of current inefficiencies is this obsession with mold. Which matters to some extent, as I noted in my 2014 writeups on Julius Randle. But at this point it has gotten so extreme that a significant portion of the basketball world is lazily grouping players into buckets without any further analysis for what they actually do on the floor.

Even though consensus should be getting sharper 7 years later, in certain ways it may be getting duller.

This is especially the case since at least Wiggins in 2014 had a clear argument for #1 with Embiid’s injury. He was actually better than Jabari Parker. Aaron Gordon and Marcus Smart proved to be better, but they are still mere role players.

Now this year, Mobley is healthier than Embiid, Suggs has more potential than Smart, Barnes has more potential than Gordon, Giddey may be better than Exum, Sengun is drastically better than Randle, and there isn’t even a Franz Wagner super role player in the mix. So the prizes at the top all offer possibly much richer payoffs, yet Cade is even more firmly entrenched in #1 than Wiggins was. This is not an efficient market.

At this point you cannot get ahead of the curve by going all in on wing creators and all out on anybody over 6’9. The recent trends toward small ball have been so fast and furious, at this point lineups cannot plausibly trend any smaller. And even if they tread water at current levels, elite bigs are still elite and mediocre wings are still mediocre.

The NBA has been a big centered game for 60+ years. There has been a vicious correction over the past 7 years, which should stay to a significant extent. But at this point it is safe to say that the correction is over, and even after all of that elite bigs are still elite and mediocre wings are still mediocre. At this point you cannot get ahead of the curve by overvaluing wings and disregarding bigs, but you can create elite opportunities for other teams who are interested in elite basketball players.

Summer League Scouting Report: Andrew Wiggins

19 Saturday Jul 2014

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Wiggins’ strength is the same as it was before: he has super athleticism. He has used this to develop an effective step back jumpshot, as his athleticism makes it so easy for him to create separation with the defender that he can get this whenever he wants. He showcased this move a bit in college, but it appears to be notably improved with the help of P3. And while his handles aren’t reliable enough to get to the hoop at will, his first step is so explosive that he can still get there sometimes. Against the Rockets he had two attacks that stood out: he crossed up Nick Johnson and he put a ball fake on Robert Covington, both times he went straight to the rim and got fouled for free throws. He still didn’t show much ability to finish off the dribble other than his vicious dunk against Philly, but he seems to be fine finishing at the rim when he isn’t dribbling. This is a good sign for him playing in an offense that stresses ball movement and cutting with LeBron James as the primary handler. He didn’t score a ton of buckets off of cuts, but he was moving off the ball and he did get at least a few assisted rim FG’s.

It’s clear that he is uniquely talented at getting where he wants to go on the court. This is especially true on defense where he doesn’t need to dribble a basketball in the process. He finished summer league with 5 steals and 6 blocks in 4 games, and his ability to get places combined with being 6’8″ and a 7’0″ wingspan makes it easy for him to make plays on that end. He’s in a similar boat to Marcus Smart and Aaron Gordon in that his offense is a work in progress, but he has an easy ticket to usefulness on the defensive end.

In spite of his tantalizing athleticism, I always felt Wiggins had underachiever written all over him and the warning signs were apparent in summer league. If I was coaching him, I would forget the idea of using him as a ball handler and tell him to focus on moving off the ball, passing to his teammates, launching 3’s, rebounding, and defense. I’d make him watch endless film Kawhi Leonard and channel him on the floor. But because everybody loves scoring so very much, the folks at P3 just HAD to find a way to leverage his athleticism into scoring ability. So they equipped him with a step back jumper which Wiggins can make and seems to love taking. There is value to getting off a 38% shot whenever you want, but it is dangerous to rely on heavily. This is especially true when Wiggins literally never tries to create for his teammates off the dribble, which isn’t good for somebody who dribbles often.

His decision tree once he catches the ball appears to be 1) try to get to the rim and flail for free throws 2) if he can’t get to the rim launch a step back jumper 3) if he’s not feeling the step back, swing it back out to the nearest player on the perimeter. None of it flows within the team concept, and it’s highly Rudy Gay-ish. Rudy Gay is one of the all-time NBA cancers since he pounds the ball into the ground, doesn’t see his teammates, and launches too many step back jumpers. Wiggins has been compared to him in terms of temperament, and it is not a good sign that he appears to enjoy Rudy’s style of play in summer league. It doesn’t mean that he necessarily will be as bad as Rudy Gay, since he is more athletic and they are not the precisely same person. But more athleticism and a few extra free throw attempts still don’t make Rudy Gay a useful basketball player since he plays a losing style. The Cavaliers offense looked notably better and more efficient with awesome ball movement in the game Wiggins missed. He simply needs to be directed away from the Rudy Gay style and toward the Kawhi Leonard path. A good start would be developing an interest in creating for his teammates, since every great offensive wing ever has learned to do this. The good news is that if he stays in Cleveland with LeBron and Blatt, he probably isn’t going to launch endless stepbacks and he might develop in the good areas. But the warning signs are there and of course I am going to make note of them.

I get that people want to mold Wiggins into T-Mac due to the athletic similarities, but T-Mac had a much more natural feel for the game and it’s wrong to force Wiggins down that path. T-Mac was younger as an NBA rookie than Wiggins was as an NCAA freshman and posted a better ORB%, DRB%, stl%, blk%, and greater than a 2x better assist:TOV rate playing against vastly tougher competition. My personal opinion: the vision, feel, and willingness to create for others plays a large role in the difference between T-Mac and Rudy Gay, which is why it feels icky to move Wiggins down this path. He can still be a tremendously useful NBA player without offering much isolation scoring.

The other issue for Wiggins is that his defense was not good in the game I scouted vs. the Rockets. He had a nice chase down block of Nick Johnson after a turnover, but other than that here are the plays on which he was tested:

-He cuts off Nick Johnson in transition. Johnson instead circles back and goes around a screen which Wiggins gets caught on trying to go over, and Johnson gets off uncontested floater from mid-range that he makes.
-He is isolated vs. 6’0″ Isaiah Canaan in transition. Canaan goes straight at Wiggins, pump fakes in mid-air, and puts the ball in over him.-Wiggins tries to stop Geron Johnson in transition, but runs into his own teammate in the process and watches Johnson get uncontested layup
-Geron Johnson blows by Wiggins on perimeter, dishes it to teammate underneath the hoop who kicks it out to open 3 point shooter who hits.
-Luke Hancock gets ball underneath the rim. Wiggins rotates as sole help defender but doesn’t contest. Just stands behind him and lets him get shot off. The layup badly missed, but that’s an area where Wiggins could have gotten a block with more aggressiveness.
-Isaiah Canaan isolates onto Wiggins in half-court near the end of the game. Goes right at him, gets all the way to the rim and finishes over Wiggins.

When I watched him in college it wasn’t that he didn’t try on defense. He executed his assignments and he was woefully difficult to get past off the dribble since he moves so well laterally. But I feel like he kind of floated and didn’t bring a playmaking fervor that indicated that he wants to get a stop at any cost. I felt it reflected in his steal and block rates, it reflected in his team success, and the narratives that he is a lock ++++++ defender were completely silly. He is so athletic that he didn’t get exposed a whole bunch, but now that he’s facing better athletes his lack of intensity on that end is starting to show a bit.

This is not to say that he will necessarily be a bad defensive player as a pro. With his athletic ability he doesn’t need perfect effort and instincts to make a positive impact, and he has plenty of time to improve. Also I may have happened to catch his worst defensive game, as everybody who watched his prior game gave him rave reviews and he obviously made more good plays with 3 steals and 2 blocks. This is just a friendly reminder that there isn’t a 100% correlation between athleticism and defense, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves locking him in as a super elite wing stopper. And the expectations that he will be a stud defensive player as a rookie are completely unrealistic. Isaiah Canaan is a 6’0″ 2nd round pick who thrives on shooting and is 13/32 inside the arc in his NBA career– if he can beat Wiggins off the dribble (which is what he thrived at preventing in college) then a whole bunch of other NBA players probably can too. Wiggins is only 19 and has plenty of room to learn and catch up to speed, but rookies are generally bad defensively and it doesn’t appear that Wiggins will be an exception.

Another defensive note is that Wiggins struggled to corral defensive rebounds, accruing just 6 in 120 minutes. He wasn’t a great defensive rebounder in college, but I felt that had something to do with Kansas being heavy on bigs who stole rebounds from him. He was a pretty good offensive rebounder in college, so I still think he should be fine defensively in the pros. I did notice him trying to leak out in transition too soon, watching the rebounding action from 8 feet away, and getting a defensive rebound knocked away due to his lack of strength. But Kevin Durant also struggled to rebound during summer league, so I’d rather wait to see him rebound over a larger NBA sample before reading into it. It may just be bad variance.

Overall I feel like Wiggins’ summer league perfectly displayed why his is so polarizing as a prospect. He showed what he can do athletically, as he racked up steals, blocks, and effortlessly created space to get off his jump shots. He also was able to use his athleticism to draw a high volume of fouls as well as have an explosive finish on a drive to the hoop. But he also showed signs of disappointment, with the complete disinterest in creating for others and the lack of domination defensively and rebounding. And while I loved him attempting 8 threes in his first game, I hated that he only tried 5 and operated more heavily in the mid-range in the following 3. It’s pretty obvious why there is such a wide range of opinions on him, and who knows what will win out between his super tools and his Rudy Gay like tendencies.

I don’t have any new predictions to add, he’s roughly treading water in my mind. I will add that Cleveland seems like an exceptionally favorable environment for him to develop in, since I doubt he will be allowed to chuck endless step-backs with LeBron and Kyrie in place as superior ball handlers. Blatt seems like a possibly good coach, and I’m interested to see how well he develops playing off the ball in an offense that stresses ball movement and cutting with two good shot creators. It seems that should force him to develop his Kawhi skills, and even if he never becomes a true go to star he could still land in the clouds as an awesome role player. On the other hand, if he gets traded to Minnesota and plays for Flip Saunders on a lottery team I do not like his odds of succeeding. He will almost certainly be pushed down the T-Mac path, which isn’t right for him.

I still have Wiggins as my #5 prospect behind Embiid, Smart, Gordon, and Exum. I feel I witnessed both the ways in which he can exceed my expectations and the ways in which my initial hypotheses may be proven correct. To me the interesting bits to track are 1) how high does he peak defensively 2) does he ever develop into a quality passer and 3) how much do LeBron and Blatt aid his development? I’d also like to see how much his free throw drawing translates to the NBA and whether he can learn to consistently get to the rim and finish off the dribble. But those are less interesting than his ability to become a super role player, which is where I believe the real value lies within him.

Marcus Smart vs. Andrew Wiggins: Who Was The Best Big 12 Perimeter Defender?

01 Sunday Jun 2014

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Draft consensus is that Andrew Wiggins is likely to be an elite defensive wing in the NBA, as in theory his stellar physical tools ensure lock down D. But there is more to defense than running fast and jumping high, so I am going to use available NCAA data to measure him against my favorite defensive guard prospect in the draft: Marcus Smart.  Let’s starting by assessing the inventory around them.

Coaching: Bill Self vs. Travis Ford

Coaching has a huge impact on team defense, so let’s get a feel for which coaches historically built the best defenses prior to landing their respective stars.  The table notes each team’s NCAA rank (out of ~350) in adjusted defensive rating as per kenpom.com:

Season Ford Team Ford D Rank Self Team Self D Rank
2013 Ok State Smart Kansas 5
2012 Ok State 111 Kansas 3
2011 Ok State 47 Kansas 11
2010 Ok State 60 Kansas 9
2009 Ok State 74 Kansas 9
2008 UMass 58 Kansas 1
2007 UMass 47 Kansas 1
2006 UMass 40 Kansas 3
2005 E Kentucky 126 Kansas 25
2004 E Kentucky 230 Kansas 16
2003 E Kentucky 301 Illinois 8
2002 E Kentucky 274 Illinois 19

In a nutshell: Self always builds elite defenses whereas Travis Ford doesn’t.  Self’s worst defense pre-Wiggins was 15 slots higher than Ford’s best pre-Smart.  Of course, this doesn’t prove that Self is a smarter defensive coach than Ford, it only suggests it at a loud volume.  But Kansas is a name brand school and it stands to reason that Self should have some advantage given his access to superior talent.  Fortunately, Dan Hanner shared his process for making NCAA projections (which he does well) and included coaching as a significant portion of defense projection.

In Step 15 of his article, Hanner notes that he makes projections for defensive statistics (block rate, steal rate, D-Reb rate), prices in recruiting rankings, and gives a boost for players that mysteriously play high minute totals with poor stats (since these types are often are defensive specialists).  He also notes that these factors alone do a poor job.  Using a 10 year sample from 2003-2012, he measured the greatest impact coaches after adjusting for the aforementioned factors and shared his top 15 defensive coaches.  Bill Self rated #1 on his list.  Travis Ford didn’t crack the top 15 because he offers no value beyond the ability to attract enough talent to make himself seem competent to athletic directors.

It is common for people to blame Bill Self for Wiggins’ shortcomings, but this is misguided.  Self consistently gets stellar regular seasons from players who do not go on to NBA stardom, as his teams tend to outperform their talent before disappointing in the tournament.  It is safe to declare that Bill Self completely waffle crushes Travis Ford at building NCAA defenses.

The Bigs

After coaching, the highest impact players on defense are the tall ones.  They provide rebounding and rim protection, so it should be no surprise that height correlates with defensive success.  Good college defenses are often anchored by good rim protection, so let’s compare the two sets of bigs.  Note that total includes each stat’s minute-weighted average for the collection of bigs.

Kansas:

Player Minutes Height D-Reb% Stl% Blk%
Joel Embiid 647 7’0″ 27.3 2.3 11.7
Tarik Black 446 6’9″ 21.3 1.3 4
Jamari Traylor 549 6’8″ 18.5 1.5 5.3
Perry Ellis 973 6’8″ 18.2 1.7 2.2
Total 2615 6’9.2″ 21.0 1.7 5.5

Oklahoma State:

Player Minutes Height D-Reb% Stl% Blk%
Kamari Murphy 855 6’8″ 18.3 1.1 5.1
Mike Cobbins 256 6’8″ 15.3 1.8 7.9
Le’Bryan Nash 1017 6’7″ 14.6 1 2.8
Leyton Hammonds 230 6’7″ 12.3 1.8 0.5
Total 2358 6’7.5″ 15.8 1.2 4.0

Oklahoma State’s bigs were undersized and unfit to do good things on defense. The Cowboys were rated as the #5 kenpom team with a 12-1 record when Mike Cobbins went down for the year due to injury. Without him they were forced to play small, as Hammonds was largely worthless and when Murphy was on the bench 6’7″ Le’Bryan Nash played C and Marcus Smart was often forced to defend opposing PFs. I’d wager that Smart spent more time as a defensive PF than Wiggins in spite of being a PG who is 5.5 inches shorter.  Not only did the small lineup make it exceptionally difficult to protect the rim, but Smart was forced to be used as an undersized post defender instead of putting pressure on the ball on the perimeter.  Consequently, Oklahoma State went 9-12 without him and dropped from #5 to #26 in kenpom’s overall rankings.

Meanwhile, Kansas had the defensive player of the year in Joel Embiid whose his size and mobility made him an interior force.  He only played 23 minutes a game and missed a handful due to injury, but Tarik Black and Jamari Traylor offered more value as defensive replacements than OKC’s small bigs without Cobbins.  This is another clear advantage for Kansas.

Guards

Let’s see how each team compares in terms of guard and wing impact on defense outside of Smart and Wiggins.

Kansas:

Player Minutes Height D-Reb% Stl% Blk%
Wayne Selden 1023 6’5″ 6.4 1.4 1.1
Naadir Tharpe 1001 5’11” 7.4 1.4 0
Frank Mason 565 5’11” 7.3 1.9 0.2
Total 2589 6’1.4″ 7.0 1.5 0.5

Oklahoma State:

Player Minutes Height D-Reb% Stl% Blk%
Markel Brown 1201 6’3″ 12.9 1.6 3.1
Phil Forte 976 5’11” 5.6 1.7 0.1
Brian Williams 793 6’5″ 11.5 2.6 1.5
Stevie Clark 256 5’11” 7.2 3.4 0.4
Total 3226 6’2″ 9.9 2.0 1.6

Finally, an area where the Cowboys have an advantage. Non-Smart Oklahoma State guards did not offer a ton of value on D, but at least Brian Williams and Markel Brown had the athleticism to occasionally make a play and Stevie Clark generated some steals in limited minutes before getting kicked off the team. Meanwhile, Kansas trotted out two small PG’s and Wayne Selden, who has an elite body but has yet to figure out how to use it for good on the basketball court.  Kansas’s guards were certainly weak links on defense.

This advantage for Oklahoma State is less significant than each of Kansas’s advantages in big men and coaching.  Forte was an undersized and unathletic, and Brown and Williams aren’t defensive stoppers, just athletes who sometimes make athletic plays.  Kansas’s guards were bad, but guard defense isn’t high enough leverage to weigh this discrepancy more than others given that Oklahoma State didn’t have a second perimeter stopper.

Overall

Kansas has a much better coach and better bigs, whereas Oklahoma State has less leaky guards alongside their star.  If the two players made similar impacts, Kansas should have a much better overall defensive rating.  Yet they barely finished with a higher defensive rating, as Kansas finished with the 31st adjusted D-Rtg (out of 351) at 96.3 and Oklahoma State finished 37th at 96.6.  The two defenses were roughly dead even, and once you remove the 3 games missed by Smart (Oklahoma State went 0-3), Oklahoma State was a shade better than Kansas.

If we look at Big 12 games only (noting that Smart missed 3 games, Cobbins missed all 20, and Embiid missed 5), Oklahoma State had an adjusted defensive rating of 95.9 vs Kansas’s 96.2.  If we throw out the 3 games that Smart missed, the Cowboy D-Rtg drops to 94.9 to widen the gap by a point.  By all measures these two defenses were similarly effective over the course of the season, and if anything it appears that Oklahoma State had the edge when Marcus Smart was in the lineup.  Given the advantages that Wiggins had with respect to coach and cast, this strongly suggests that Marcus Smart was the better and more impactful defensive player.  Let’s look at individual stats to check to see how it aligns with the longwinded route.  Note that adjusted D-Rtg is individual D-Rtg (as per sports-reference.com) adjusted for team SOS:

Player Minutes DRB% STL% BLK% Adj DRtg
Andrew Wiggins 1148 12.3 2.1 3.1 96.6
Marcus Smart 1014 14.9 5 1.9 88.9

In spite of all of Wiggins physical advantages, Smart accumulated more than twice the steal rate.  Instincts and aggressiveness are key traits on defense, and this is where Smart shines the most.

Individual D-Rtg takes team D-Rtg and adjusts for individual steal rate, block rate, and defensive rebounding rate.  Because Kansas gets so much production out of their bigs and Oklahoma State gets so little out of everybody other than Smart, Smart destroys Wiggins.  This is the short hand version of my analysis, except it doesn’t account for coaching disparity as there is more team level credit to distribute for well coached teams.  Bearing this in mind, there is an argument to be made that individual D-Rtg actually understates the difference between Smart and Wiggins.

What About Age?

It is fair to point out that Smart is a year older than Wiggins and perhaps should make a greater impact given his additional year of experience.  But if we look at Smart’s freshman year, the defense was even better as Cobbins was healthier only missing 5 games and contributing 728 minutes total.  Many of Brian Williams minutes went to 6’10” Philip Jurick, and Le’Bryan Nash was able to swing between the 3 and 4 instead of being asked to be a full time 4/5.  Smart was able to spend all of his time hawking the ball on the perimeter, and the Cowboys finished with the #15 defense in the country.

Smart’s freshman individual adjusted D-Rtg was 85.6, showing that the gap between him and Wiggins widened once he actually played with serious big men.  The Cowboy defense should have been a joke this year, and it’s quite the feather in Smart’s cap that they were able to keep pace with Kansas with such little size.

The Coaches’ Perspective

Big 12 coaches vote on the best defensive players in the conference after each season.  As both a freshman and sophomore, Marcus Smart was a unanimous selection to the 6 person team.  He was the only non-Kansas big to be chosen unanimously (Jeff Withey and Joel Embiid each shared the honor) over these 2 years.  Wiggins was left off the team altogether, which surprised me given the level of hype and attention he received.  I suppose the Big 12 coaches weren’t as impressed with his defense as draft narratives would suggest, even though he was a unanimous selection to the All-Big 12 first team for his overall play.

Conclusions

Based on every piece of information available and every angle from which it may be analyzed, Marcus Smart was a vastly superior NCAA defensive player to Andrew Wiggins.  He was a one man wrecking crew on defense, whereas Wiggins was merely a solidly good defensive player.  Given the predictive power of steal rate and the fact that Smart has the tools to become an impact defensive player in the NBA, this should weigh heavily into Smart’s NBA defensive projection.

On the other hand, this should dispel the myth that Wiggins is a guaranteed defensive stud.  Hype does not equate to truth, but people seem to treat it as such.  It is common for people to seek narratives to justify Wiggins’ hype instead of looking for the actual truth in data that is free of bias.  I believe the hype was justified: a 16 year old kid with his size, mobility, and explosiveness is a rare commodity, and it’s worth getting excited over him.  But when at age 19 he has shown zero signs of development or impact that were projected, it’s time to scrap the hype and brace for the likely scenario that the person inside the body doesn’t have what it takes to convert the potential into reality.

If Wiggins was truly a high impact defensive player, there would likely be data supporting it.  There is data supporting Smart’s impact and there is data supporting Aaron Gordon’s impact, which is why I have them as the top two perimeter defensive prospects in the draft.  Wiggins believers can have their 44″ vertical snapshots, I’d rather get Smart and take the guy who produces results.

Who Is The Andre Drummond Of This Draft Class?

04 Friday Apr 2014

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Andre Drummond is quickly becoming a classic example of a player whose RSCI rating seems to be more indicative of his pro value than his freshman performance.  Whenever a highly touted freshman underwhelms and his draft stock drops, it’s fair to posit whether that player might experience a career arc similar to that of Drummond.  Drummond is an outlier in that his circumstances that caused him to become so undervalued will likely not be replicated, but it is worth trying to learn from his situation to look for signs in 5 star recruits before souring on them too quickly.  So first I’ll walk through the qualities of Drummond that caused him to slide and how that changed in the NBA.

1) Unfavorable Circumstances
Drummond joined his UConn team late, and then coach Jim Calhoun was suspended for the first 3 games of the Big East season and later had to take a leave of absence for health reasons.  It is difficult to estimate the level of impact these circumstances had on Drummond’s performance, but it is easy to see how they may have been harmful.  Perhaps he would have gotten off to a hotter start if he had more time to prepare with his team in the offseason, perhaps he would have had a stronger finish if Calhoun was healthy and present to offer feedback on Drummond’s non-conference performance.

2) Trimming The Fat
One of Drummond’s greatest warts was his 50.9% TS, which is appallingly low for a man with his size and athleticism.  Yet as an NBA rookie he was able to skyrocket his TS to 57.8% without seeing a drastic drop off in his usage rate (21.7 > 17.2).  How is such a thing possible in a single season after the huge increase of level of competition?  Drummond simply stopped trying to score away from the hoop.  As a college freshman he shot 130/185 at the rim and 27/107 away from the rim.  As an NBA rookie he shot 204/318 at the rim and 4/24 away from the hoop.  This simple tweak had a huge impact as it increased Drummond’s eFG from 53.8% to 61.0%.

3) College Defense
UConn entered the season ranked #4 in the polls and 6th by kenpom.com, then losing in the first round of the tournament as an 9 seed.  They finished as just the #41 kenpom team with the #65 defense.  So it is easy to blame some of the disappointment on Drummond and assume that he did not make the expected defensive impact.  But at a closer look, he seemed to do quite well.  He had more than twice as many blocks as any of his teammates, and UConn finished the season with the lowest opponent FG% at the rim in the country.  They finished with the 3rd lowest 2p%, and the 5th lowest FT:FGA rate, all of which are excellent and largely attributable to Drummond who finished with more blocks than fouls.  UConn did have plenty of other size and athleticism, but their weaknesses came from poor perimeter defense, as they finished with the 319th defensive TOV% and opponents hit 34.4% of 3’s on above average volume.  Of course sacrificing in these areas makes it much easier to dominate paint defense, but the fact remains that the team succeeded in the areas where Drummond was expected to make an impact barring one:

4) Defensive Rebounding
Defensive rebounding is much more difficult to predict than offensive rebounding since it is largely context dependent, but Drummond’s turnaround is astonishing.  UConn had the 276th best defensive rebound% in the country and Drummond corralled just 15.5% of d-rebs, and then went on to rip down 27.2% of defensive rebounds as a pro.  Given his 14.2% o-reb rate in college, we shouldn’t be surprised that he upticked defensively as a pro but I am not sure that there was any signal that he would start pulling them down at nearly double the rate.  Perhaps this can be attributed to good scouting by the Pistons, perhaps it can be attributed to bad luck or bad assistant coaching at UConn.  But it is nevertheless an outlier event that gave Drummond a nice value spike as a pro.

5) Passion Questions
After Drummond’s somewhat underwhelming freshman year, scouts started to question his passion for basketball.  His explanation was that he simply was not the type to go out and beat his chest, but he nevertheless loved the game of basketball.  Whether it was a poor inference from observers or NBA money ignited his passion, it seems to not be a problem as a pro.

Now let’s look at some of the top freshman and see whether any similar circumstances may apply.

Andrew Harrison: Do any of these conditions apply to Harrison?  No, they do not – he is merely horrendous at the game of basketball.  We can safely move along.

Jabari Parker: He was likely in the best scenario of all freshman as he was able to play the 4/5 for Duke.  This was healthy for him in almost every regard since he was constantly surrounded by ball handlers and shooters and finished with more blocks and rebounds that he would have surrounded with more size.  That said he exceeded expectations so it is difficult to gripe.

Julius Randle: His coach normally sets up players for the pros quite well, his defense was horrendous, his defensive rebounding was top notch, and his passion seems to be present.  The one area where he may gain is from (literally) trimming his fat and slimming down physically.  Also he has trimmed a bit of turnover fat down the stretch which is encouraging.

Zach LaVine: None of these conditions apply to him, although his circumstances were unfavorable in a different way since he was buried behind superior players and seemed to have a poor relationship with his coach.  Perhaps he has more to flaunt than he was permitted to show at UCLA, so he may exceed expectations in a different way than Drummond.

Andrew Wiggins: People want to blame Wiggins’ lack of dominance on Bill Self, which is silly.  What is most important for Wiggins is that Kansas played an up tempo style and capitalized on his sole offensive strength: transition scoring.  The only unfavorable aspect for Wiggins is that he was surrounded by mediocre guards and spacing, which was certainly sub-optimal.  But I do not believe that this had a high leverage impact on his performance given his lack of offensive skills in the half-court.  And it is worth noting that Self has made past players such as Ben McLemore, Thomas Robinson, and Cole Aldrich look like college studs and consequently over-inflated their draft stock.

Kansas had their worst defensive season under Bill Self’s tenure, and that seems to be everybody’s fault but Wiggins.  Embiid was inexperienced and played a lower minute total than prior rim protectors Jeff Withey and Cole Aldrich.  The defense suffered with Embiid out and Wiggins appeared to be the only good defensive guard/wing on the roster.  I believe his NBA defensive projection is often overstated but he did perform well on this end in college.  And since all of his competent teammates were bigs, he was rarely used as a small 4 and may be slightly underrated by his d-reb% among other stats.

Wiggins does have questions with respect to his passion.  According to DraftExpress, from age 17 to 18 he grew an inch without gaining a single pound.  This would not be a big deal if he had instead focused on developing his skills, but they too are less developed than scouts had hoped they would be by now.  In tandem these are red flags that call his work ethic into question.  But the flip side is that perhaps he will put passion questions to rest by significantly improving his work ethic given the allure of NBA money.  This is the area in which he has the most potential to mirror Drummond.

Overall I do not believe that Wiggins has a boatload of Drummond equity, but he isn’t completely bereft of it either.

Aaron Gordon/Rondae Hollis-Jefferson: I am grouping these two together because all conditions apply identically to them.  These two players likely have the most fat to trim offensively because they threw up so many bricks from midrange.  Gordon shot 129/177 at the rim and 44/160 on non-rim 2’s.  RHJ shot 83/113 at the rim and 36/124 on non-rim 2’s.  I am fond of Sean Miller and think he is one of the best college coaches in the country, but he has an curious willingness to permit his players to fire away from midrange.  Their top 6 rotation players all took at least 40% of their FGA from midrange, well above the NCAA average of 29.3%.  I have questioned Gordon’s BBIQ for his shot selection, but at a closer look it may simply be a byproduct of coaching.  Granted, this doesn’t entirely parallel to Drummond as it is much easier to operate strictly around the rim as a center than it is as a forward, but both players can see nice efficiency upticks by passing up long 2’s more frequently.

Gordon and Hollis-Jefferson also deserve a ton of credit for Arizona’s leap defensively.  After swapping Mark Lyons, Solomon Hill, and Kevin Parrom for them and TJ McConnell, Arizona spiked from the #47 kenpom defense to #2.  And while the departed players were better offensively than defensively, Arizona only dropped from the #10 offense to #20.  It helps that players such as Nick Johnson and Kaleb Tarczewski had an additional year of seasoning, but Gordon and Hollis-Jefferson played large roles in Arizona having one of the more dominant defenses in recent memory.  They simply did not allow easy shots, boasting the best defensive eFG% in the country.

I would rate Gordon as superior to Wiggins in terms of NBA defensive potential, as he anchored a truly dominant defense.  Give Sean Miller credit for maximizing his talent, but this was by far his best defensive team ever.  Gordon appears to play defense with more intensity than Wiggins does, and while he may not be as fast or quick, he is much stronger.  It is simply much easier to feel great about the player(s) who led a coach’s all-time best defense over one who led a coach’s all-time worst defense.

Overall I’d say Gordon (and on a slightly smaller scale, Hollis-Jefferson) clearly has the most Drummond equity of any freshman in the class.  It isn’t a perfect parallel as shooting is more important for wings and defense is more important for centers.  Even if he mirrors Drummond’s arc, the impact will be lower leverage.  Again, this goes to show that Drummond is a unique case, so optimism for 5-star freshmen making huge rookie rebounds should always be tempered.  But considering both his strong finish to the season and his potential for further upticks, I am quickly reversing my stance on Gordon and once again believe he merits a top 10 pick.

NCAA Tourney First Weekend: Risers and Fallers

24 Monday Mar 2014

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Now that it’s March and the tourney is full swing, many people get their first look at prospects.  There will be plenty of overreactions to players who happen to have good or bad days.  That said, the tournament still should carry an extra degree of weight due to the increased relevance of games and quality of competition.  Coaches will pay extra attention toward exploiting the weaknesses of opposing stars, and some bad performances will show a glimpse of struggles to come in the NBA.  It is worth taking every game in context and deciding whether there is any particular meaning to be gleaned.  Since I haven’t updated my big board in over a month, I figure I should clue everybody in on my thoughts regarding recent play:

Hypotheses Confirmed
Andrew Wiggins: Wiggins likely hurt his stock more than anybody else in the tourney.  He simply had the worst stat line of any expected 1st rounder en route to his team getting upset.  4 pts 1-6 FG 4 rebs 2 assists 4 TOV’s is not what people want to see out of a top 3 pick.  Stanford did a great job of getting back in transition and showing a variety of defensive looks to take away Wiggins’ driving ability, and Wiggins predictably disappeared.  If anybody has wondered why I have been harping on his half-court splits and poor skill level so loudly this is why.  Wiggins leans heavily on transition opportunities and free throws to get his points, and those both translate poorly to higher level of defenses.  Once Stanford took those away, Wiggins was relegated to an OK but not great jump shooter, and Kansas finished with just 57 points on 67 possessions in the loss.

Aside from his deficiencies being on full display, this also dispels the notion that he suddenly discovered how to fulfill his potential around the West Virginia game.  Further, Kansas struggled mightily without Joel Embiid.  They blew out hapless TCU and mediocre Texas Tech at home, but those were their only good performances without their starting center.  They lost @ West Virginia by 6 as 5.5 pt faves, they needed OT beat a banged up + tired Oklahoma State team as 3 pt faves, they lost by 11 to Iowa State as 5 point faves, they struggled a large portion of the Eastern Kentucky game and only won by 11 as 13 pt faves, and they lost to Stanford by 3 as 6.5 pt faves.  Overall they went 1-3 against KenPom top 70 teams in spite of being clear faves in all 4 games, with the sole win coming in overtime.  Joel Embiid was comfortably the best player on that team, and his team’s performance without him helps cement that notion.

Doug McDermott: Truthfully, his box score vs. Baylor wasn’t that bad.  He shot 7/11 on 2 pointers and only turned it over once.  But when you factor in that he only finished with 15 points due to 0/3 3 point shooting and 1/2 FT shooting and contributed in no other areas as per usual, it’s easy to see how Creighton was blown out.  A large part of this is that Baylor made every shot imaginable and Creighton only shot 5/24 from 3, but this nevertheless illuminates concerns about Ougie’s NBA future.  This is the 3rd year in a row in which McDermott has failed to exceed tourney expectations, losing by 16 to Duke last year and 14 to UNC as a sophomore (both after winning in round 1).  The fact of the matter is that in spite of his gaudy scoring numbers, it did not translate to winning high leverage games vs teams with NBA prospects.  This is because defense matters, and it’s much easier to have your dad draw up play after play for you effectively against mid-major competition than it is against future NBA talent.

Rodney Hood: Does anybody still think he’s a good prospect?  I gave consideration to the idea that he may justify a late 1st round pick, and now I am quite confident that he is not.  He flat out does not bring enough to the table other than shooting to make his horrible defense worth keeping on the floor, and I don’t see how he’s better than a mid-late 2nd round value.

Late Risers
Jarnell Stokes: He is a 6’9 PF who is a bully in the paint, and while I am not particularly fond of the mold his current level of play cannot be ignored.  He has played exceptionally well as of late as Tennessee is destroying every team that crosses its path.  He is not much of a shot blocker, but he does have solid length and an exceptional combination of speed and strength.  Between his rebounding, passing, finishing, ball handling, and improved FT%, he is showing enough skill to merit late 1st round consideration.

Jordan Adams: The statistical beast of the draft that is sure to translate poorly keeps making a case that he just may bring enough to the table to be worth something as a pro.  He lacks athleticism, he gets a ton of his points in transition, his steals are padded by UCLA’s zone, and he is a questionable defensive prospect, so inevitably it’s best to not get too carried away with his numbers.  But at a certain point you need to start wondering whether his skill level and feel for the game are good enough to become a good pro nevertheless.  He had an excellent Pac-12 championship game vs Arizona and followed it up with 2 strong showings vs Tulsa and Stephen F. Austin.  Now Adams and his teammate Anderson get another big test vs Florida to further boost their stock.  Even if he doesn’t have a good game Adams has likely done enough to establish that he’s worth a 1st round selection.

Frank Kaminsky: He keeps failing the face test and passing the basketball playing test.  After a big game vs Oregon’s soft defense, he gets to match up with Baylor’s beasts Isaiah Austin and Cory Jefferson.  If Wisconsin can get past them, he gets another big test as Arizona or San Diego State lies next and they both have elite defenses.

Rock Solid Performance
Nik Stauskas: Pop quiz for Rick Barnes: how do you slow down an elite shooter and passer with questionable speed and quickness when you have a roster full of athletes?  If you answered “zone defense” (spoiler alert: you did!) it’s no wonder why you are regarded as a horrible coach and your team got sent home early.  Stauskas’s big day vs. Texas comes as no surprise, as he finished with 17 points, 8 assists, and 0 turnovers in Michigan’s 14 point win.   On one hand he didn’t hit a single 2 point shot, but on the other hand he didn’t need to because he was so dominant with his shooting and passing, as he was making exceptional deliveries to his teammates all game long.  This game was definitely good for his draft stock, but I don’t believe it proves anything about him that wasn’t already known.  A big game vs Tennessee would be more meaningful, as their defense is tailored to take away Michigan’s strengths.

Question Marks
Jabari Parker: His game vs. Mercer certainly doesn’t help his standing, but I do not believe that it is necessarily anything more than a bad game.  Mercer is not a particularly strong defense, and he had plenty of good games vs better competition so I do not believe Mercer exposed any new flaws.  Also it’s worth noting that Duke hit 15/37 3 pointers against Mercer’s zone, which was the hefty price paid by Mercer to slow down Jabari in the paint.  But it does illuminate some translation concerns that I have been monitoring, as his rim finishing has been lackluster against good competition.  He isn’t particularly athletic but is aggressive nevertheless, and often runs into trouble trying to finish against players who can physically match up.  While I greatly enjoyed watching him dunk all over Boston College’s woefully soft defense, that performance is less predictive toward his NBA success than other games and need be given limited weight.  It looked like he may have been ready to turn a corner with a big performance vs North Carolina in Duke’s regular season finale.  But then he struggled in the ACC tourney against Clemson and UVA’s stout defenses followed by the Mercer game, which largely dispels that theory.  He still has the skills and attitude to become a great NBA scorer, but he is a bit more reliant on bullying smaller players in the post than people realize.  I am going to keep him as the #3 prospect for now, but this is why I had him below Exum to begin with, and I now feel particularly good about ranking Exum higher.

Montrezl Harrell: He is an exceptionally fun college player, but what does he bring to the table other than dunking?  He hasn’t shown much in the first two rounds of the tourney, as Manhattan and Saint Louis both limited his dunking opportunities and he struggled to produce in both games.  To his credit he finished the weekend with 24 rebounds and 5 blocks so he wasn’t completely taken out of the games, but it would be nice to see him do some damage in the half-court this tourney.

Aaron Gordon: His shot is still a major, major wart, but he is trending in the positive direction nevertheless.  His steal and block rates have seen big upticks lately, with 11 and 10 respectively in the past 5 games.  This makes it a bit easier to feel good about him as a defensive stopper, as they were surprisingly low entering the Pac-12 tournament.  He’s so young and brings so many positive qualities to the table, I really don’t feel comfortable writing him off entirely due to his poor shooting.  He will still be a pain to fit into NBA lineups, and he badly needs to ditch the long 2’s, but he still makes for an interesting project nevertheless.

Greatest Failure to Solidify himself as a Prospect
Taylor Braun: He had two chances to show the world that he can do more than style on inferior Summit league competition, and he failed twice.  Taylor Braun finished the weekend with 18 points on 5/25 FG with 4 assists and 5 turnovers against Oklahoma and San Diego State.  It is possible that he just happened to have bad games, but he turns 23 in July and his upside did not appear to be exceptionally high to begin with.  He still does have 21 points vs Ohio State earlier in the season to hang his hat on, but this clearly hurts his odds of getting drafted.

Bittersweet Weekend
Julius Randle: I have to give Randle credit- he has cut down on his grotesque turnover rate big time down the stretch, and it has vastly improved his team’s play as Kentucky is finally starting to play as well as everybody hoped that they would.  But he cut his turnover rate by drastically cutting down on his post-up attempts, when that was intended to be his main appeal as a prospect.  If he is at his best not posting up, then what purpose does he serve to an NBA team?  He still does have an interesting blend of passing, handling, and shot making ability to work with, but he is also still prone to defensive lapses.  He needs to make a significant impact on the offensive end to make his defense worth stomaching, and it is difficult to envision him achieving that goal if he is only going to be a medium usage player for his college team.  I still have him as a 1st rounder and perceive his adaptation as a positive development, but I won’t be skyrocketing him too far up my board because of it.

High School Scouts Say The Darndest Things

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Miscellaneous, NCAA

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When discussing draft prospects, it seems that people are often afraid to confidently assert that the scouts who drive the consensus are flat out wrong.  This surprises me, since they have been wrong to hilarious degrees in the past, and will continue to be wrong going forward.  They were able to recognize that LeBron James was a fairly awesome prospect, so that establishes that at least they have operative eyesight.  But they also thought that Darko Milicic was half a notch below LeBron as a prospect, even though he never possessed any basketball playing ability of note.  VJL recently made an excellent post on the irrelevance of hype, and I’d like to highlight some qualitative examples to show where high school scouts badly missed the mark.

Many scouts are woefully bad at assessing prospect skill level, especially in watching them go against high school competition. A recent example is UCLA’s Zach LaVine, when Chad Ford noted that a few scouts called him “Russell Westbrook with a jump shot.” Of course the only things LaVine has in common with Russell are his leaping ability and his decision to attend UCLA. Granted, he doesn’t get to show off much of his PG skill with Kyle Anderson and his virtuoso passing ability running the offense. But he also isn’t trusted enough as the backup PG, as those duties fall to Bryce Alford. And his assist rate (13.8%) doesn’t stand out from UCLA’s other wings as Jordan Adams (14.0%) and Norman Powell (12.7%) who are definitely not PG’s have similar assist rates. Ford notes that LaVine has a propensity to look for his shot instead of passing, but the fact of the matter is that he hardly has any dribble penetration skills whatsoever. On the season he is 11/28 on rim FG’s in the half-court offense, only 6’3 non-leaper Bryce Alford has fewer attempts at 10/25. Adams (44/67) Anderson (24/44) and Powell (44/73) all show vastly superior penetration ability. It is possible that his low attempts are due to lack of confidence in finishing in traffic given his thin build, but his handles look awfully pedestrian to me. He appears to be a SG through and through.

To bring back the Westbrook comparison, he led his UCLA team in assists as a sophomore in spite of playing a fair amount of SG with Darren Collison running the show. Like LaVine he didn’t get the chance to fully flaunt his PG skills, but at least he flaunted something, as the Thunder drafted him in large part to his strong performance as primary ball handler when Collison was out. LaVine has not begun to display flashes of PG skill, yet Chad Ford writes:

While he isn’t really running the point for UCLA, most scouts who have seen him in high school think he has all the tools to be a NBA point guard down the road

Why do they believe this? I don’t know, maybe they saw him dribble down the open court and finish spectacularly in transition and wrote down “POINT GOD” in their scrapbooks. If he develops his handles and passing at an inordinate rate then maybe he could be a PG, but to weigh that as a significant possibility at this stage is wishful thinking. Comparing him to Westbrook is silly so long as they have such an inordinate gap in PG skills, but many scouts are bad at deducing these sort of gaping differences so they wouldn’t know any better.

Now you may be thinking that while scouts may not be experts on deducing basketball playing ability, you gotta give credit to their ability to eye test tools. This is also wrong. Let’s take Noah Vonleh, in November of 2011 DraftExpress writes:

Standing a legit 6-8, with a 7-3 wingspan, huge hands, a terrific frame and excellent athleticism, Vonleh does not look like your typical 16-year old.

I imagine that the “excellent athleticism” was simply a commonly held belief in HS scoutings circles, as his ESPN recruiting profile notes that his “physical intangibles” include “extraordinarily long arms and bounce.” While he has done well as a freshman for Indiana, it is not due to leaping ability, as Vonleh has struggled to finish at the rim in spite of his size and length due to lackluster athleticism. To DX’s credit, they noticed that the initial assertion was incorrect and in their recent scouting video note that Vonleh is “not a leaper” and list lack of explosiveness as a weakness. But the bottom line is that HS scouts are not specially trained to deduce physical tools, and when they see a super long player like Vonleh dunking or blocking a shot, they conflate his impressive use of length with athleticism.  Consequently, it is not safe to take their tool assessments entirely at face value.

Now let’s see what ESPN’s recruiting service said about Julius Randle’s future:

His reputation as a good person and hard worker will aid him as he hopes to improve and stave off competitian for his slot

This is part of a short writeup on the #2 prospect in America, and they couldn’t even spell “competition” correctly.  I know this strays from basketball analysis, but most of their writeups do appear to have been translated from English to Estonian and back to English using Google translation.  Here’s their bottom line on Andrew Harrison:

Bottom Line:
He raises the level of play on his team because he leads by example with a competitive nature, focus and battle tested toughness. At his size he has blossoming lead guard skills and is terrific at making plays. What separates him from the rest is in his pace of play. His game is like a stop light he can go from green to yellow to red all in a moments notice.

Maybe I’m being harsh, but when a scout’s writing is barely literate, it makes it that much harder to trust their “expertise.” That isn’t valid basketball analysis– it more closely resembles a child’s attempt at writing poetry.

For all intents and purposes, high school scouts are casual fans who try their best to offer their best NBA projections of high school prospects.  Aside from the fact that extrapolating a player from high school to the pros is exceptionally difficult, it’s not a particularly prestigious position and does not attract the sharpest basketball minds. They are smart enough to know that LeBron James is great when they see him play, but they also have a number of baffling false positives.  If any of us actually met a collection of high school scouts and had the opportunity to pick their brains, I doubt we would come away with the sensation that they possess any sort of expert wisdom that we lack.

In order to maximize efficiency in prospect analysis, stuff like pedigree and hype should be almost entirely disregarded.  There may be exceptions for a player like Bradley Beal who was reputed as an elite shooter but ran cold from outside as a college freshman.  But when top prospects such as Andrew Wiggins or Julius Randle show troubling signs for their future, people seem slow to accept the relevance of these signs, as they feel that obvious warning signs are superseded by high school hype.  The bottom line is scouts don’t have any advantage over an intelligent basketball fan in information (at least not once we get a sizable college sample), analytical ability, or even expertise in assessing tools.  Personally I try to glean why they felt the way they did, take the perceived strengths for what they are worth, and then discard all bottom line conclusions as it is only noise that will dilute my own analysis.  Giving any more credence than that only leads to skewed perceptions and wrong conclusions.

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Andrew Wiggins: An Ordinary Player In An Extraordinary Body

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in NCAA

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A common critique of Andrew Wiggins’ game is that he plays passively, but passive is a slippery word that is often misconstrued. Wiggins’ passiveness comes in a different flavor than the traditional narrative of not looking for his shot.  He seems to be carrying the correct level of usage based on his offensive skill set, so it would not be advantageous for him to shoot more frequently.  The problem is rather that he has been unable to convert his spectacular tools into dominant play. In spite of his tremendous first step, he hasn’t regularly blown by his opponents in the half-court. In spite of his explosive athleticism, he hasn’t finished strong at the rim in traffic.  In spite of his quick feet, he has often gone under screens when he has the tools to go over and still keep pace with his matchup. In spite of all of his explosiveness, mobility, and length he hasn’t generated a particularly impressive steal rate (although his steal rate isn’t bad). I recently wrote about the importance of synergy between tools and skills, and Wiggins seems to lack the skills to capitalize on his tools and produce at a superstar level as advertised.

He has managed to be a good college player nevertheless, as he has been an effective transition scorer and wing defender. But I have not seen signs of him using his tools in a way that screams future NBA superstar, so I checked the stats to see how he compares to past toolsy wing prospects. I used Paul George’s sophomore season, everybody else’s freshman year. Note that Opp D-Rtg is as per kenpom.com, and adjusted O-Rtg adjusts each player’s usage (1.25 pts of O-Rtg = 1 pt of usage) and strength of schedule to match that of Wiggins:

Usage O-Rtg Opp D-Rtg Adj O-Rtg Steal%
Kevin Durant 31.5 116.9 99.8 125.4 3.0
Carmelo Anthony 27.8 113.6 96.4 121.6 2.3
Jabari Parker 31.5 113.5 100.5 121.2 2.1
Marvin Williams 20.4 119.9 96.6 118.3 2.5
Luol Deng 23.7 110.6 95.9 113.8 2.4
Thaddeus Young 23.2 112.9 99.5 111.4 2.4
Andrew Wiggins 24.5 110.6 99.6 110.6 1.8
Harrison Barnes 24.9 106.5 98.2 108.5 1.3
Quincy Miller 23.0 107.5 98.1 107.2 1.6
Paul George 27.6 105.1 101.8 106.6 3.9
Rudy Gay 19.7 107.4 99.2 101.8 1.5

Kevin Durant is miles ahead of everybody. Not only was he an elite freshman player, but he has improved by leaps and bounds every season in the league.  At this point it is safe to say that Wiggins is completely drawing dead to be Durant level good.  Melo and Jabari are also well ahead of him statistically, as Jabari continues to look Melo-esque.

It seems that many people have yet to open their minds to the possibility that Wiggins will be as underwhelming as Marvin Williams, which is silly. Williams was straight up better as a freshman, and sometimes good toolsy players just don’t develop the way people would hope. Wiggins finds himself sandwiched between fellow 5 star freshmen Luol Deng, Thaddeus Young, Harrison Barnes, and Quincy Miller. While his tools are superior to those players, it is a solid group to estimate his baseline value. I especially like the Thaddeus Young comparison since he shares Wiggins’ 3 + D + transition skill set. (Rudy Gay is also there, to provide a baseline.)

Sophomore Paul George is behind all of the freshmen, and it is stunning that he was able to become a top 5 player in the league in just his 4th NBA season.  But George’s accelerated development is incredibly rare, and if there was any statistical signal that this was forthcoming it was his steal rate. Perhaps his steal rate not only is indicative of the synergy between his tools and his defensive acumen, but also the aggressive mentality that has enabled him to become a star on both ends of the court.  Even if not, George is an outlier in every regard, exemplified by the fact that he grew 2 inches at age 21.  Wiggins will also become a franchise changing star if he grows an additional 2 inches and improves his game at an extraordinary rate, but it is not wise to base his draft stock on this as a likely occurrence.

More important than the stats is how they are accrued.  Wiggins receives acclaim for excelling in transition, but half-court scoring is far more important to NBA translation. This intuitively makes sense, as teams that are overly reliant on transition scoring often underperform in end game situations (see: 2013-14 Timberwolves) or in the playoffs (see: George Karl’s Nuggets). So let’s see the individual stats on Kansas players when the defense has time to set itself. Note that eFG/40 is FG’s made per 40 minutes with 3 pointers counting as 1.5 FGM:

eFG eFG/40
Joel Embiid 60.8% 6.3
Perry Ellis 51.0% 5.7
Brannen Greene 58.1% 5.5
Tarik Black 59.2% 4.7
Andrew Wiggins 43.5% 4.5
Wayne Selden 52.8% 4.3
Naadir Tharpe 59.6% 3.9
Jamari Traylor 67.5% 3.2
Frank Mason 43.2% 3.0

Not only does Wiggins have middling volume, but he is horribly inefficient as a half-court scorer. Only Frank Mason has an eFG as poor as Wiggins, everybody else on the roster is miles more efficient.  Some people blame Bill Self for Wiggins’ underachieving, but his less talented teammates do not seem to be plagued with his half-court woes.  Even Wayne Selden and his 12.3 PER scores with similar volume + significantly better eFG.  This also illuminates one reason why I am so infatuated with Joel Embiid, as he has shown potential to be a monster half-court scorer. Sure he’ll have a tougher time against bigger and stronger NBA competition, but he has the tools and skills to translate and has plenty of room to develop.

The biggest wart preventing Wiggins from being a useful half-court scorer is his poor finishing ability.  I compiled all of his rim attempts and a few short jumpers from 6 conference games (Iowa St x2, Baylor x2, @Texas, vs Oklahoma State).  In sum he shot 41.4% from 2 in these games and averaged 14.5 pts, and he is averaging 42.4% from 2 and 16.4 ppg in conference play, so I think it’s a fair selection even if not the most flattering:

There’s no way around it: Andrew Wiggins has horrific touch around the rim and is completely inept at finishing in traffic.  In 10 games against teams that are top 130 in both defense and block %, Wiggins is shooting just 22/72 (30.6%) from inside the arc.  There’s likely bad variance on long 2’s in that sample, but the fact remains that it’s hard to find footage of him finishing over trees.

These are not pace adjusted, but seeing that Kansas plays at an above average tempo, adjusting for pace would only paint Wiggins in a less flattering light:

Yr. HC FG/40 HC eFG% Trans FG/40 Trans eFG%
Jabari Parker Fresh 8.1 52.0% 1.9 53.9%
PJ Hairston Soph 7.7 55.1% 2.4 55.2%
Harrison Barnes Soph 6.1 45.9% 3.0 55.0%
KJ McDaniels Junior 5.9 47.4% 1.6 66.7%
Austin Rivers Fresh 5.7 50.8% 1.5 50.0%
Marcus Smart Soph 5.5 46.5% 2.0 53.8%
Gary Harris Soph 5.4 45.1% 3.2 59.5%
James Young Fresh 5.3 52.3% 1.7 46.4%
Quincy Miller Fresh 5.3 47.4% 1.4 53.5%
Aaron Gordon Fresh 5.0 47.4% 1.4 54.5%
Glenn Robinson Soph 4.9 51.4% 1.8 61.5%
Nik Stauskas Soph 4.6 54.3% 2.0 83.3%
Andrew Wiggins Fresh 4.5 43.5% 2.4 62.7%

Again his half-court scoring splits look poor in comparison to those of his peers.  This highlights why PJ Hairston is absolutely a lottery talent, as he is an elite weapon in the half-court with his endless barrage of high % 3’s.  Again Jabari completely outclasses Wiggins on both volume and efficiency.  Even Aaron Gordon scores with greater volume and efficiency in the half-court in spite of having a completely broken shot.  Gary Harris is nearly as inefficient at 45.1%, but that seems in part due to fluke as he had a 53% half-court eFG as a freshman.

I also included transition stats to show that while I am weeding out a strength of Wiggins’ game, he isn’t a uniquely good transition scorer.  He is among the best in this sample, but he doesn’t blow everybody away because he still struggles to finish when he doesn’t beat the entire defense down the court.

It is hard to say whether there have been any past examples of such poor half-court scorers who developed into stars, because nobody tracks these splits prior to 2011-2012.  But this all stems from Wiggins’ inability to get to the rim and finish.  He has converted a grand total of 30/58 (51.8%) half-court rim FG’s in 24 games.  He has done a solid job of drawing free throws, but until he adds weight and becomes a respectable finisher, he will likely have a tough time fully translating this to the NBA.

Currently he has several problems, and none of them can be addressed independently of the others:

1) He does not have advanced ball handling skills to get to the hoop at will
2) He does not have the touch to finish contested shots in traffic
3) He doesn’t atone for his lack of touch by using his athleticism to dunk over everybody

He has issues with both creating and finishing, and he will need to address them simultaneously.  If does make a stellar improvement skill-wise and add bulk to his frame, his tools will enable him to be a weapon in the half-court.  Skills can be learned, tools cannot.  But when he is starting so incredibly far behind his peers, is it realistic to project such drastic growth such that he is able to become a good attacker in the half-court against NBA defenses?  It would be swell if it did happen, but it seems like a long shot to me.  The best argument for his upside is that a sharp coach finds a way to unlock some hidden upside unseen by this analysis, but again this is not safe to bank on.

Realistically, I would expect Wiggins to continue to provide value in the areas where he currently does.  The Thaddeus Young mold of 3’s, defense, and transition suits him well.  Also he could contribute in other ways playing off the ball, such as finishing lobs and scoring on cuts and putbacks.  A slightly toolsier Thad Young is a happy return on a pick in the middle of the lottery.  But in the top 3, it is insane to take him on the outside shot that he mimics Paul George’s otherworldly development curve and becomes a two way superstar. It’s more likely that he becomes Marvin Williams (or worse) than Paul George (or better).  Wiggins still has time to improve his stock, but at this stage I believe he belongs in the 4-9 range and I suspect that he will not be in the top 5 of my final big board.  It is time to update the narrative that he is a rare prospect.  Andrew Wiggins has rare tools but his skill level and employment of his tools are alarmingly worse than advertised.

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The Exum Factor: How High is Dante’s Peak?

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in International

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Now that Dante Exum has officially declared for the draft, I figured it’s time to put him under the microscope to see whether his hype is justified.  I analyzed his performance vs Spain in the FIBA u19 games this summer to try to get a feel for what he brings to the table as a prospective NBA player.  Note that this game occurred the week before he turned 18:

This was Exum’s best scoring game, so perhaps not all of his weaknesses were fully exposed.  I looked at DraftExpress’s scouting report to see if they listed any weaknesses that may not have been on display.  Their list:

-Perimeter shooting- this is the one that everybody acknowledges
-TO Prone/PG Skills- this took my by surprise- I’ll touch on this below
-Shot selection- easy to see why, although I don’t think it is a significant weakness.
-Strength- this is the other obvious one on top of shooting.

With respect to turnovers, they claimed that he sometimes plays out of control which is true to an extent- one or two of his turnovers this game could have been qualified as such.  Also against the US he was benched due to playing out of control after committing 4 turnovers in 11 minutes, as Australia went on to lose 94-51.  But he still only had 21 total turnovers in 9 games over the tournament, which is excellent.

Let’s compare his FIBA stats to those of Tyler Ennis.  Ennis played for Canada which was a similar caliber team (Canada finished 6th, Australia finished 4th, the teams shared a 4-5 record, and Australia had a slightly better PD +1.8 vs +0.6).  Differences of note are that Australia played a tougher schedule (both teams played the US once, but Australia played the second best team in Serbia twice while Canada didn’t play them at all), and Ennis had Trey Lyles on his team as a second big time scorer to draw defensive attention.  Ennis led the u19 games scoring 20.9 points per game, Lyles was third with 20.3.  Australia’s second leading scorer was Dane Pineau who averaged 11.8 pts/game.  Also Australia was slightly better defensively (97.2 D-Rating vs 98.2) so it’s not like Exum had the benefit of a hugely pro-offense team construction that Ennis did not:

Mins FG FGA FT FTA Ast TOVs Pts
Ennis 279 74 159 36 51 25 24 188
Exum 266 54 121 39 64 34 21 164

As a freshman at Syracuse, Ennis is averaging 34.4 mpg 12.1 ppg 5.6 apg 1.5 topg playing as more of a distributor than scorer.  That is an excellent turnover rate for any point guard, let alone a college freshman and it will be a large reason why he is likely a lottery pick.  Yet at the FIBAs, Exum had more assists and fewer turnovers against a tougher schedule with just a slightly larger scoring load, and DraftExpress gleaned that turnovers and PG skills is a weakness!

On one hand they are doing their due diligence to list everything that can be perceived as inadequate for an unproven player vying for such a high draft slot.  And it’s possible that he got lucky to have a low number, as 9 games is a small sample and I noted in the video that the scorekeeper miscredited one of his turnovers vs Spain.  But even after you add up the out of control possessions and the lazy low leverage passes that went awry, his bottom line result was excellent.  He clearly is doing something correct to avoid them, and I believe it is a testament to his ball handling, passing, and basketball IQ.  Against Spain he repeatedly got into the lane and made beautiful passes to his teammates, but of his pile of turnovers only one of them came on a drive and kick when his pass was deflected.

DX’s qualm with his PG skills is that sometimes he misses teammates and forces shots, which is a perspective I understand after seeing some of his forced shots in the paint vs Spain.  But in that game, he did much more finding teammates than he did missing them.  I’m not sure if it was an above average distribution game where his teammates did a below average job of converting.  But he was credited with 4 assists and averaged 3.8 for the tournament, and it’s inevitable that his teammates failed to convert some significant amount of quality looks created by Exum in other games.

With respect to shot selection, I again do not think he was particularly bad.  He should inevitably attempt some bad shots with such a great disparity between his talent and that of his teammates, and his intelligence inspires confidence that he will learn to improve his shot selection with better NBA teammates.  Also DX takes exception to his volume of 3 point attempts, but he shot 33.3% for the tournament so again the bottom line does not look bad.  It would be more upsetting if he instead insisted on launching long 2 pointers.

Taken altogether, I’d qualify all things efficiency and basketball IQ related (turnovers, PG skills, shot selection) to be a distinct positive.  The fact that DraftExpress listed this as a weakness is a testament to the fact that there’s so little to dislike about Exum.   His actual weaknesses are his shot and strength, and he is reportedly investing significant effort to improve both.  My next biggest qualm is that while he is a fluid athlete, he is not particularly explosive.

Even without great strength or explosiveness, his tools are decidedly positive as he brings elite speed, quicks, height, and length to the PG position.  Even without a great shot, his combination of ball handling, passing, and touch around the rim offer promise as a future offensive centerpiece, especially if surround by good shooting.  He projects to be a positive defensively as well.  The only thing that could prevent him from becoming good is poor development, but he reputedly has an excellent work ethic.

Exum idolizes Derrick Rose, which is sensible as the players offer similar value.  They both have a great combination of size and speed for the PG position.  Rose is stronger and more explosive, but Exum is taller and longer as he is 6’6 with a 6’9 wingspan vs Rose’s 6’2.5 with a 6’8 wingspan.  They share questionable shooting as their weakness, as Rose’s shooting improvement played a large role in his winning MVP in his 3rd season in the league.  While Rose’s freshman season was good, his ability to grow was what made him such an appealing prospect and successful NBA player until derailed by injury.  While Exum’s future growth rate is a mystery, his work ethic and intelligence are two strong points in favor of it being good.  Even his college stats parallel closely to Exum’s FIBA stats:

MPG PPG APG TOPG SPG 2p% 3p% FT%
Rose 29.2 14.9 4.7 2.7 1.2 52.1% 33.7% 71.2%
Exum 29.6 18.2 3.8 2.3 1.7 52.9% 33.3% 60.9%

This is not an apples to apples comparison by any stretch, but you can see the similarities in their mold.  It’s possible that Exum would have been worse than Rose with a season in college, but he also may have been better and I don’t think he would be at risk of being as bad as Andrew Harrison.  Also Exum will be a year younger on draft night than Rose was.  It’s fair to give Rose the edge as an overall prospect due to his edge in athleticism and his excellent performance in the NCAA tournament, but I do not believe Exum is particularly far behind.

Exum’s value largely hinges on his performance in workouts. If he is as working as hard on his shot and body as people around him indicate, he will likely boost his stock and vault into the top 3.  Exum is perceived as the mystery box of the draft, but with Andrew Wiggins’ underwhelming freshman performance he is no longer a can’t miss star.  Even if you assign a Marvin Williams level floor to Wiggins, that’s hardly much consolation for a top 3 pick.  I doubt that Williams becoming a semi-useful pro makes Billy Knight feel particularly better about selecting him over Chris Paul.  Especially at the top of the lottery, a player’s value is almost entirely driven by his upside and his odds of achieving it.  While Wiggins has shown better outside touch and more potential as a complementary piece on offense, Exum’s upside as an offensive centerpiece is more attractive.  I don’t think Wiggins has a significant enough (if any) defensive edge to offset this.  As of right now, I rate Exum as the 2nd best prospect overall in this draft, with Jabari Parker having the best shot of supplanting him with a strong finish to his season.

The worst thing that can be said about Exum is that he is young and needs to spend time developing before making a large impact as a pro.  But I believe in his upside, and I believe that he is unlikely to flop completely.  Indications are that this mystery box just might contain a boat after all, and you know how much we wanted one of those.

Is Andrew Wiggins Really Passive? Let’s Check The Dunk Stats.

31 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in NCAA

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A large part of a player’s development is naturally his personality.  Derrick Coleman has admitted after retirement that he never liked playing basketball, whereas successful players such as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant give off the impression that succeeding as an NBA superstar is as important to them as breathing air.

A common critique of Andrew Wiggins has been that he is plays too passively, as he is not dominating nearly as much as projected.  It could be counter argued that he playing within himself and merely needs more time to develop before taking the world by storm with his basketball abilities.  My impression from watching him play has been that the former is the case.  But there’s a limit to which Wiggins or any prospect can be assessed from afar, as they only offer brief glimpses into their personalities.  While I enjoy attempting to thin slice such things, it is not nearly as reliable as a statistical analysis or breakdown of on court performance.  So in this case I sought a quantitative means of analyzing Wiggins’s personality: dunk stats!

A large part of Wiggins’s prospect appeal is his physical tools, as he stands 6’8″ with a 7’0″ wingspan and elite explosiveness.  There are few (if any) prospects in this year’s class who are better equipped to dunk with extreme frequency than Wiggins.  The only thing that may hold him back from unleashing a fury of slams is his personality, so I compiled dunk rates as a percentage of rim attempts that culminate in made dunks.  I included a total of 25 prospects of varying sizes and athleticism to offer frames of reference:

Player Height Dunks Attempts Dunk%
Glenn Robinson 6’6″ 23 53 43.4%
Montrezl Harrell 6’8″ 48 118 40.7%
KJ McDaniels 6’6″ 30 83 36.1%
Aaron Gordon 6’9″ 33 92 35.9%
Zach LaVine 6’5″ 22 64 34.4%
Michael Qualls 6’5″ 22 75 29.3%
Joel Embiid 7’0″ 23 89 25.8%
Julius Randle 6’9″ 23 97 23.7%
Jabari Parker 6’8″ 26 114 22.8%
Nik Stauskas 6’6″ 9 40 22.5%
Jerami Grant 6’8″ 17 79 21.5%
Andrew Wiggins 6’8″ 16 83 19.3%
Rodney Hood 6’8″ 11 58 19.0%
Noah Vonleh 6’8″ 17 98 17.3%
Sam Dekker 6’7″ 17 102 16.7%
Keifer Sykes 5’11” 21 130 16.2%
Marcus Smart 6’4″ 13 92 14.1%
TJ Warren 6’8″ 16 150 10.7%
Gary Harris 6’4″ 7 70 10.0%
Spencer Dinwiddie 6’6″ 4 49 8.2%
Semaj Christon 6’3″ 9 176 5.1%
Kyle Anderson 6’8″ 3 58 5.2%
Doug McDermott 6’8″ 4 131 3.1%
Tyler Ennis 6’2″ 1 81 1.2%
Jordan Adams 6’5″ 0 80 0.0%

Glenn Robinson is shooting an astounding 92.5% at the rim, which is made possible by his high % of attempts dunked.  Montrezl Harrell is a funky prospect whose offensive game is largely built around offensive rebounding and dunking, but his volume and frequency show the freakish athleticism that he possesses and make me question having him as low as #24 on my big board.  KJ McDaniels re-asserts my feeling that he has NBA level tools by appearing in the same range as known leapers Aaron Gordon and Zach LaVine.

The players that are lower than expected are Jerami Grant, Andrew Wiggins, and Noah Vonleh, as they all appear in the same range as Rodney Hood, Nik Stauskas, and 5’11” Keifer Sykes (who is rapidly rising up my big board) in spite of reputations as toolsy prospects.

Jordan Adams offers insight as to why his stats are so disparate from his draft stock, as he has 0 dunks on the season.  His lack of athleticism causes him to struggle at the rim against good defenses, and his ability to translate is in question.

The problem with these stats as a whole is that not all dunk opportunities are created equally.  It is far easier to dunk on a wide open fast break than it is against a set defense.  So using ESPN play by play (which is not perfect, but not so poor so as to be wrong enough to possibly alter the narrative), I split up dunk rates into transition and halfcourt splits.  Let’s look at the transition splits first:

Player Height Dunks Attempts Dunk%
Montrezl Harrell 6’8″ 14 20 70.0%
Aaron Gordon 6’9″ 10 18 55.6%
KJ McDaniels 6’6″ 10 19 52.6%
Michael Qualls 6’5″ 12 26 46.2%
Glenn Robinson 6’6″ 9 21 42.9%
Zach LaVine 6’5″ 18 44 40.9%
Noah Vonleh 6’8″ 7 18 38.9%
Nik Stauskas 6’6″ 3 8 37.5%
Rodney Hood 6’8″ 4 11 36.4%
Julius Randle 6’9″ 8 23 34.8%
Marcus Smart 6’4″ 8 23 34.8%
Joel Embiid 7’0″ 2 6 33.3%
Andrew Wiggins 6’8″ 13 39 33.3%
Sam Dekker 6’7″ 6 24 25.0%
Jabari Parker 6’8″ 7 30 23.3%
TJ Warren 6’8″ 10 52 19.2%
Gary Harris 6’4″ 7 37 18.9%
Jerami Grant 6’8″ 2 11 18.2%
Keifer Sykes 5’11” 12 68 17.6%
Spencer Dinwiddie 6’6″ 4 24 16.7%
Semaj Christon 6’3″ 7 75 9.3%
Tyler Ennis 6’2″ 1 24 4.2%
Kyle Anderson 6’8″ 1 27 3.7%
Doug McDermott 6’8″ 1 30 3.3%
Jordan Adams 6’5″ 0 29 0.0%

Once again Harrell shines, as he dunks roughly everything in transition.  LaVine has the most volume, where he has shown off some impressive dunks for UCLA.  Even though Wiggins is reputed to be a transition beast and has a good volume of dunks in this scenario, he still isn’t throwing down with the frequency of his fellow athletic freaks.  He is also behind the smaller Marcus Smart and far less athletic players such as Stauskas, Hood, and Randle.

Jabari Parker has had some impressive coast to coast plays, but his dunk rate in transition is a mildly troubling sign for his athleticism, especially in tandem with his poor rim finishing percentage.

Now onto halfcourt splits:

Player Height Dunks Attempts Dunk%
Glenn Robinson 6’6″ 14 32 43.75%
Montrezl Harrell 6’8″ 30 92 32.61%
KJ McDaniels 6’6″ 20 64 31.25%
Aaron Gordon 6’9″ 23 74 31.08%
Joel Embiid 7’0″ 21 83 25.30%
Jabari Parker 6’8″ 19 84 22.62%
Jerami Grant 6’8″ 15 68 22.06%
Zach LaVine 6’5″ 4 19 21.05%
Michael Qualls 6’5″ 10 49 20.41%
Julius Randle 6’9″ 15 74 20.27%
Nik Stauskas 6’6″ 6 30 20.00%
Rodney Hood 6’8″ 7 47 14.89%
Keifer Sykes 5’11” 9 62 14.52%
Sam Dekker 6’7″ 11 78 14.10%
Noah Vonleh 6’8″ 10 80 12.50%
Marcus Smart 6’4″ 5 70 7.14%
Andrew Wiggins 6’8″ 3 44 6.82%
Kyle Anderson 6’8″ 2 30 6.67%
TJ Warren 6’8″ 6 98 6.12%
Semaj Christon 6’3″ 2 67 2.99%
Doug McDermott 6’8″ 3 101 2.97%
Gary Harris 6’4″ 0 33 0.00%
Jordan Adams 6’5″ 0 49 0.00%
Tyler Ennis 6’2″ 0 57 0.00%
Spencer Dinwiddie 6’6″ 0 25 0.00%

This is where Wiggins is failing to shine to the point of concern.  He has precisely as many dunks in halfcourt sets as the hopelessly earthbound Doug McDermott!   A small amount of blame may be placed on Kansas’s mediocre spacing, but with his tools it cannot be the sole explanation.  And it’s not like he has excellent touch around the rim- he has only converted 54.5% of his rim attempts in half-court sets and 61.4% total.  He is flat out not using his physical blessings to dominate, and this proves that he is playing passively.

As an aside, Jerami Grant assuages concerns about his low total rate as Syracuse’s slow down offense gives him limited transition opportunities.  He does quite alright dunking in the half court, often impressively slamming home putbacks.

These stats comport with my overall perception of Wiggins’ game, which is that he refuses to dominate.  He has awesome tools, solid skills, and does not seem to be lacking in instincts or effort.  He is having a good freshman season, but his bottom line results are less than the sum of his parts.  His common upside comparison is Paul George, but Paul George showed extreme confidence in himself entering the draft.  Here are some pre-draft quotes from him as per DraftExpress:

“I haven’t been exposed to this game as much as a lot of other players and I think I’m already a great prospect with good potential,” he says. “Once I get that chance to really get that experience and learn about the game, I think my ceiling is pretty high.”

“At that point I was just starting to learn what playing against real athletes was like,” he says. “It helped me understand how much work I needed to do. I’m just a student of the game. I love to watch it and learn about it. I think that’s really what has gotten me to where I’m at now.”

“I think that’s probably the most important part of my game,” he says. “I’m only 19 and I have a lot of room to keep growing. I know with the people around me and with my work ethic I’ll get to that next level. I won’t stop until I’m one of the elite players in the NBA.”

After reading those quotes, it should be the least surprising turn of events ever that George developed into an NBA star.  That is elite self-esteem for a 19 year old.  He is down to earth with no delusions of grandeur regarding his level of play at the time, but is also in touch with his potential and the path that it will take to get there.

Does Andrew Wiggins feel similarly about himself?  I don’t know, I have never even met the guy.  But in observing his play on the court and analyzing his reticence to dunk, it’s hard to find any sign that he does.  He could still be a good NBA player without a deep-seated desire to dominate, especially with the aid of a good coach.  He remains a valuable prospect, as I have him #2 overall on my big board.  But his lack of confident edge that his teammate Joel Embiid shows on the court contributes to why he is a clearly inferior college player and prospect.  He is still only 18 years old and has plenty of time to grow, but any team that drafts him needs to ask themselves: on a scale of Marvin Williams to Paul George, what evidence is there that Andrew Wiggins is closer to the latter?  There may be a correct answer, but if so it certainly doesn’t lie in his propensity to dunk all over physically inferior competition.