Tag Archives: Jabari Parker

This Draft Feels Like 2014 All Over Again

15 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by in NCAA

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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.

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Summer League Scouting Report: Jabari Parker

19 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in NCAA

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I have been tweeting negative statements about Jabari all week, and after his 20 point, 15 rebound finale Bucks fans may be hoping I have some positive takeaway from the performance that he can build on. Unfortunately I do not. After watching him play against competition on his level of size and athleticism for 5 games, I have nothing but disdain for his summer league play. If you’re a Bucks fan who prefers to think happy thoughts, it may not be the best idea to read on.

Statistically, Jabari did alright. He only shot 2/11 from 3, but he made 47% of 2 point attempts and attempted 34 FT’s in 5 games. He finished averaging 15.6 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.4 assists, and 1.2 steals in 28.6 mpg which are all good numbers for a 19 year old. But I’m less interested in the stats themselves than I am how they were accrued, so let’s tabulate. He converted 24 FG’s inside the arc:

8 were in transition. 4 of them were breakaway dunks. 1 was a dunk after he blew by his man before the help defense was set. 2 of them were coast to coast finishes against Cleveland and he was fouled on one of them. The other was when he caught Phoenix napping on free throws by hanging by his basket and getting a layup with 1 second left in the quarter.

5 of them were halfcourt attempts at the rim. 1 was a dunk following an offensive rebound. 1 was him bullying Andrew Wiggins when they were isolated in the post w/ no help. 3 were nice attacks from the perimeter where he finished at the rim.

The other 11 were all mid-range shots. Most of them were ugly, off balance attempts preceded by too much dribbling. I believe he was fortunate to make as many as he did. Two of them were goaltended. This is also where most of his misses came from, although he missed some decent shots at the rim that were contested as well.

Let’s assess what talent went into creating these shots. The breakaway dunks are mostly because he is mindful to leak out when he sees the opportunity, and he also has the defensive instincts to pick off some passes and take it the other way and finish. The coast to coast attacks I feel exemplify his talent: he isn’t that athletic, but for a fat man he is fairly explosive and is comfortable handling the ball in the open court. These are baskets that somebody like Doug McDermott could never dream of creating.

This is further exemplified by his rim finishes. He didn’t excel at getting to the rim, but given enough attempts he got there a few times and was able to finish. Again, he has enough handling, athleticism, and scoring instincts to be a competent at creating and finishing quality shots on occasion. This isn’t exactly a foundation for offensive dominance, but it’s something to build on.

Bullying the 6’8″ 200 pound Wiggins was Jabari’s bread and butter in college, as some weaker opponents featured centers of that size and he beat them up and dunked all over them. Given that Wiggins is a SG/SF in the NBA, these opportunities dried up in summer league and Parker was only able to generate one bucket of this ilk. On most occasions when he gets matched up vs. a Wiggins type, help defense will be there to prevent it from being so easy.

His mid-range performance was particularly putrid. Parker would often catch the ball, attack, and when he could only get within 8-12 feet from the basket he’d launch off balance jumpers that normally brick. A number of them actually went in, but that was largely luck. He’s not creating 38-40% shots, these are at best low 30’s and sometimes even in the 20’s. Not to mention that he stops the ball and kills any flow of the offense to create these. He is big and athletic enough to get a number of these off, but they are such a horrible use of any possession that it’s a big drag on the offense if he insists on taking 5 per game. And it’s not like he can just cut these out and everything is peachy– these shot attempts are the opportunity cost of his attacks that actually made it all the way to the rim as well as his FT attempts. These shots aren’t only indicative of his willingness to submarine the offense by stopping the ball and taking poor shots, they are also indicative of his inability to create quality shots with any regularity.

Also a number of his FTA came from poor offense. Against the Cavaliers he was fouled on a couple of horrible mid-range shot attempts. Against the Warriors he had one foul where his opponent played perfect defense standing upright with his hands up while Jabari triple clutched and threw up a shot against the underside of the backboard and fell down. The official couldn’t believe that the #2 overall pick missed a shot that badly without getting fouled and blew the whistle. On another occasion Parker ripped down a defensive rebound, dribbled around for a while, and then attacked the rim where 3 defenders converged on him and one of them hacked him for FT’s with 11 seconds on the shot clock. While the outcome was good, he wasn’t getting anywhere without the fortunate foul and he took 13 seconds of dribbling in the process.

Further it’s a misnomer to call him a stretch 4. He takes 3’s sometimes, but he currently doesn’t take or make enough 3’s to be a spacer compared to how much time he spends inside or pounding the air out of the ball on the perimeter. He ran bad to only make 2 out of 11, but he needs to attempt more than two 3’s a game to truly space the floor. (EDIT: apparently this is wrong, since 1 3PA/100 possessions is all that is needed for bigs to space the floor. But his high ratio of poor mid-range shots to 3PA is currently looking like it will make it difficult for him to score with efficiency.)

Parker did show some willingness to pass. My perception is that he sees the floor fairly well and can tell when his teammates are in a favorable position to receive the ball, and he does enjoy occasionally setting up a teammate for an easy bucket. But his passing is also a work in progress, as a number of his passes ended up nowhere near his intended target for turnovers. And he still doesn’t pass nearly as much as he should, since he has a laser focused passion on getting buckets. He often decides to attack and shows no sign of reconsideration once he puts the ball on the floor. Consequently he finished with 7 assists and 25 turnovers.

I didn’t pay particularly close attention to his defense but when I did notice him on that end it was normally not good. He looks slow to rotate and his quicks caused him to struggle to stay in front of his man. Perhaps if I reviewed the tape diligently he wouldn’t look that bad. But given all of the energy he invests into his offensive game as well as his physical limitations, it’s hard to see him becoming a good pro defensive player and easy to see him becoming a sieve.

Ultimately it’s easy to see why Jabari was able to achieve such high RSCI and draft ratings: he is highly competitive with a superstar personality, a knack for scoring, and he’s capable of getting buckets from anywhere. But it’s also the same reason why he’s going to disappoint as a pro. I love competitive players, and it’s great when players like Marcus Smart channel their competitiveness to dominate defensively. But when Jabari gets mad and wants to win, he channels it by black holing it up and chucking awful shots, so his competitiveness works against him. While he is capable of scoring from anywhere he doesn’t have a single hot spot. And he creates cold spots by willfully launching the most difficult shots imaginable. Sometimes these go in, which make him seem all the more impressive when scouting him in HS/college when he has access to transition + bullyball buckets that make his overall stat line look good. So he gets 5 dunks, a 3 pointer, and an off balance Dirk shot from midrange as well as a handful of FT attempts, and he deceives observers into thinking that he’s a future NBA star. In reality he doesn’t really have a go to creation move. He doesn’t have Durant’s go go gadget arms, he doesn’t have Melo’s quick release, he doesn’t even have Wiggins’ super athleticism to create loads of space with step backs. He merely has the size, strength, and athleticism to get off a high volume of contested, off balance shots from mid-range that aren’t likely to go in. He still wasn’t the most efficient scorer in college, so as his volume of poor shots increases and his dunk volume decreases, it stands to reason that his NBA efficiency might get ugly.

Parker does have enough going on to become something, but I don’t think he’s a top 5 talent. While he’s decently explosive, his athleticism isn’t great and it’s largely offset by his lack of quicks that inhibit his perimeter defense and half-court creation. While his size and strength is good, he’s just barely big enough to play PF and this probably contributed to his deception. Much of his low level dominance can be chalked up to him physically developing sooner than his peers. His ability to score efficiently in the NBA largely hinges on the development of his shot making ability. But even if he becomes adept at making outside shots, he still plays an abhorrent style of offense that is not conducive to winning. He doesn’t seem to grasp that ball movement is a thing that matters on offense, and he also doesn’t seem to grasp that it hurts his team when he misses an awful shot or turns it over. As badly as he wants to win, he’s not going to succeed at it so long as he continues to go about it the wrong way. His style is the antithesis of what the Spurs do, which is a strong sign that it’s suboptimal. It’s nice that he’s a great rebounder for his size, but overall his non-scoring game isn’t too great considering his current lack of defense, passing, and floor spacing.

There is a case to be made that it’s just summer league, his teammates aren’t all that good, and teams are willing to let players play inefficiently to see what they have to offer. It’s just not a case that strikes me as likely to be true based on his college play. He started off by looking great in non-conference play: he was making his shots from everywhere, he was sharing the ball with his teammates, and none of his weaknesses were evident yet. But then he started to get exposed when conference play began, defenses became tougher, and games became tighter. Aside from the fact that his outside shots stopped falling, he started passing less and taking bad shots more. At first I thought maybe he was just adjusting to more athletic competition, or maybe he was just pressing due to being in a slump. Based on all of the reviews of his intelligence and feel for the game, I kept waiting for him to adjust to the tougher competition and adjust his game. It never happened, and by the end of the season I was done expecting good things from him. As a Duke fan, the toughest part of the Mercer loss was that I couldn’t place the biggest bet of my life on Jarnell Stokes and the Tennessee defense forcing Jabari into endless difficult shots and winning as a likely underdog. But instead Jabari turned on the cancer a game early when his teammates were creating an endless supply of 40% 3 point shots since he simply he had to get his 30% 2 point attempts off from mid-range. I was actually nervous that he was going to stay in college and ruin the 2014-15 team just like he did this past year’s team, so I decided to follow my strongly negative subconscious feelings and drop him on my draft board. Now that it appears that he’s taking the same hero ball approach to his NBA career that he did in college, I am done squinting for signs of change. Wake me up when it actually happens.

He still has some shot of becoming a useful fantasy player, but the combination of limited talent and horribly inefficient style of play is brutal for an actual NBA team that is trying to win. At this point I’d handicap his future to be something like this:

10% Carmelo Anthony
45% Glenn Robinson
45% Evan Turner/Derrick Williams hybrid

I would not take that player in the lottery. Aside from the fact that I feel I am stretching my optimism to its boundary by giving him 10% Melo equity, I believe it’s a crappy upside since I don’t think Melo is nearly as valuable to winning as his box score stats suggest. The other outcomes are completely worthless. Even though Glenn Robinson posted a 17.5 career PER, I don’t perceive him as a useful player since you need to be much more efficient than he was to black hole it up on offense, not play defense, and still make a positive impact. And if Jabari hits his downside, he’s contending for worst player in the NBA.

The only way Parker actually becomes a winning player is if he somehow sees the light and massively improves his defense, passing, and shot selection (which would give him value that the aforementioned comparisons lack), but he showed no signs of this at Duke and doesn’t seem that interested in it based on summer league. Perhaps he can be the one to prove me wrong, but I think this is just who he naturally is and I am not one to bet on a person changing his nature, especially not when his nature has earned him such positive feedback up to now. And even if that miraculously happens, I still don’t think he has crazy high upside like Andrew Wiggins would if he suddenly “gets it.” As of right now I feel that Jabari Parker was comfortably the worst pick in the draft, and he very well may be the most harmful player in the NBA in 2014-2015.

A few notes before Bucks fans hate and unfollow me

I assume I’ll get some comments like “cool out man, it’s just summer league.” My negativity regarding Jabari may not be fully warranted, he had elite recruiting pedigree, elite draft pedigree, and posted good stats at both Duke and during summer league. These signs generally point toward a player being good, and even the sideline reporter Alie LaForce was gloating about how big of a mistake it was for the Cavs to take Wiggins over Parker when Jabari went off yesterday (I’m a huge Wiggins critic but at this point I take Wiggins over Jabari in a heartbeat). But considering all of the macro information suggesting good potential for him, I just don’t feel it when I watch him play. I’m publishing this as a test of my scouting aptitude. I never watched Evan Turner or Derrick Williams much in college, but based on their stats they seemed like totally reasonable selections at #2 overall. But stats never tell the full story so I’d like to see if I can pick out these disappointments before they are obvious to the untrained eye.  And if Jabari actually becomes good, at least I will know in the future that these signs aren’t a full fledged death knell. But I’m a gambler and I like going out on limbs, and this is the one limb that I really feel like going overboard on from summer league. So let’s see how it all works out. In the meantime I wouldn’t mind hearing devil’s advocate cases in the comments regarding what lack of negatives or presence of positives set Jabari apart from the Williams/Turner types.

Blinders: The Hidden Prospect Death Knell

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in NCAA

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I mentioned yesterday that blinders needs to become a widespread scouting term. Having “blinders” means that a player will miss open teammates in favor of creating their own low quality shot. I have repeatedly accused Jabari Parker of being a selfish player, and I believe it may be his undoing as an NBA player. But Kobe Bryant is also considered a selfish player and is one of the all-time NBA greats. Personally I believe he is vastly overrated and am not his biggest fan, but he has been a top 2 player for 5 championship teams so it is not a hopeless cause to build around him. With that in mind, I’d like to analyze the possible impact of Jabari Parker’s selfishness on his NBA career.

Derrick Williams is the best recent example of blinders. As a sophomore for Arizona he posted a whopping 69% TS on 28.9 usage to earn the #2 overall draft slot, as his offensive upside seemed immense. But in the NBA he has failed to score efficiently, and since he doesn’t bring any other strengths to the table he is not a useful player and almost certainly will never become one.

His failure may have been unpredictable to some, but there was a strong sign forecasting NBA struggles in his college stats: he had a paltry 43 assists vs. 100 turnovers in college. This did not badly hurt his efficiency because he was big, strong, and athletic enough to overpower most college defenders. But in the NBA he was just an undersized PF, which meant that most defenses carried two players bigger than him whereas many college defenses carried zero.

To me his failure was exemplified with a single play. Earlier this season the Kings were playing the Pacers in a tightly contested game in overtime (if anybody knows how to find clips from random NBA games this past season, please let me know so I can share the moment). Derrick Williams stole the ball and in transition he had teammate Isaiah Thomas wide open in the corner and opponents Roy Hibbert and Paul George standing underneath the hoop. His options were to kick it out for a wide open, catch and shoot corner 3 that Thomas likely nails about 50% of the time, or to attack two of the top defensive players in the NBA. Naturally Williams didn’t see Thomas, tried to attack, turned it over, and the Kings lost. Let’s take a moment to consider the expected value of either option.

1) The expected value of a 50% 3 pointer is 1.5 points plus the re-draw for the offensive rebound in the 50% that the shot missed. But the Pacers were in a better position to rebound and Williams had a small chance of throwing the pass away, so I can round down and stick with 1.5 points for the decision to pass.

2) Roy Hibbert is a 7’2″ mountain who is a stellar rim protector and Paul George was there too. I can’t fathom that it ends well for Williams to attack them 1 on 2 often. I imagine that if he tried it 100 times, he’d get lucky and draw a handful of fouls, maybe convert 2 or 3 miracle finishes, but mostly get stuffed or turn it over. If I’m being excessively generous I’d say that possession is worth 0.5 points, but in reality it’s probably more like 0.25.

So that single poor decision cost the Kings somewhere in the range of 1 to 1.25 points, which is quite the EV punt for a single play. If each player on the floor makes one decision this poor per game, that is enough to render an average team to a Lakers/Celtics/Magic level of tanking as each team had an SRS in the range of -5 to -6 this past season. Incidentally, this also likely explains Williams’s big drop off in efficiency from NCAA to NBA, as he rarely had players nearly the size of Roy Hibbert awaiting him at the hoop in college.

Kobe may err on the side of shooting when the pass is healthier for the team from time to time, but he doesn’t attempt kamikaze missions like Williams does. He has always had a good assist rate, which explains why he was able to succeed in spite of being a somewhat selfish player. If he sometimes declines a pass that would yield a 0.9 point possession for a shot that is worth 0.8, that’s not a huge deal since he needs to make 10-12 errors of that magnitude to match the EV punt in my Williams example.

Note that some players can suffer from blinders and succeed anyway. Dwight Howard has always had poor vision and a poor assist to turnover ratio, but he has such stellar physical tools that he enable him to make his mark with defense, rebounding, and as a garbage man offensively. He loses value by demanding post touches in spite of his limited skill level and vision, but because he brings so much baseline value with his strengths he is nevertheless able to be a highly valuable player.

On the other hand, Jabari Parker has at best average physical tools, and it will be a happy outcome for the Bucks if he is average defensively. I do think he’s more talented than Williams with superior vision and feel, but he posted a putrid NCAA assist:turnover ratio and seemed determined to score every big bucket in big games. This was exemplified by him shooting 4/14 with 0 assists and 4 turnovers in Duke’s tournament exit vs. underdog Mercer, as he insisted on forcing the issue inside vs. their zone while his team shot 15/37 from 3 off of consistently wide open attempts.

To provide a happy return on the #2 overall slot, Jabari Parker needs to become a highly positive offensive player. At his current rate, he could become a Glenn Robinson or slightly better who posts empty bulk stats and doesn’t help his team win. But I do not believe it’s possible that he becomes an positively impactful player without changing his nature and becoming a more willing passer. If he refuses to pass in obvious passing situations in the NBA as he did in college, he’s going to make too many costly decisions in same vein as Derrick Williams. This will offset the good things he does on offense enough to preclude him from making a great impact on that end. In other words: he needs to become Kobe’s brand of selfish instead of that of Williams. I do believe this is possible as he showed solid vision in feel in blowouts early in the season and reportedly was unselfish in high school. I would be nervous about the prospect of gambling on somebody necessarily changing their nature to succeed at #2 overall, but that’s a different argument for a different day.

There are more condemning brands of blinders, as Andrew Harrison is the gold standard for incorrigible tunnel vision that precludes him from ever becoming a useful NBA player. Julius Randle is a less severe example, as he is a willing passer but seems incapable of changing his decision to pass vs. shoot once he puts the ball on the floor.

Blinders do come in varying degrees and flavors, and I’m not certain that it always spells certain death. But I do believe poor vision is a flaw that is not fixable, and my hypothesis is that this is an unseen wart that is severely harmful for translating to higher levels. It gets underplayed by popular draft sites, so this is my primer as it is a concept that I will cite regularly going forward. For any player who is projected to make a big time offensive impact, I believe blinders is the worst red flag that can appear on his scouting report.

Parsing through the NCAA Prospects: Part 1

23 Monday Jun 2014

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I spent the weekend combing through the international draft class.  Now I may as well get my final thoughts on the NCAA prospects in the draft.  I believe I have said all I need to regarding Marcus Smart, Aaron Gordon, Andrew Wiggins, and Julius Randle.  But there are other players I have written about who I would like to make follow up commentary, and other prospects who have been nothing more than a blip on my big board.

Joel Embiid
I am a huge fan of Embiid’s talent and upside, so I was disappointed to hear that he injured his foot.  Further, this makes pinpointing his draft value a painful experience, as I have no medical expertise and do not believe I have any edge whatsoever when it comes to predicting health.  But I will share my thoughts nevertheless.

From the sound of it, this particular injury is a worse than his back injury but not condemning on its own.  Zydrunas Ilgauskas made a strong recovery from the condition early in his career in spite of being 2 inches taller than Embiid.  Yao Ming didn’t recover, but the Rockets’ doctor came out and noted that Yao was a 7’6 monster with uniquely high arches on his foot, and the injury is unlikely to affect Embiid as badly as it did Yao.  Further, it seems that the early prognosis is a favorable point for Embiid as past cases have been exacerbating by going undiagnosed in their early stages.  While the injury on its own seems like it could derail Embiid, it sounds like he has a good enough chance of full recovery to not have his draft stock torpedoed by it.

What sits less well than me is that in 647 minutes, Embiid managed to hurt his knee and back and then he somehow managed to injure his foot in the offseason.  As much as I’d like to believe that he simply has the worst injury luck ever, it’s hard to shake the notion that he’s simply bad at staying healthy.  I have no idea how predictive a myriad of injuries at a young age are regarding future ability to stay healthy, but it feels a bit scary.

Embiid now has to fade his foot injury, general durability issues, and the fact that he’s going to miss out on sorely needed competitive reps to make up for lost time with respect to playing experience.  This definitely deflates his draft stock, but I have no idea how much.  For all I know he’s doomed and we should be slashing his draft stock by like 75%.  Or maybe we are all over-reactive to injuries and this only depresses his stock by 15%.

What I do know is this: once health is assumed, Embiid is miles more valuable than any other prospect in the draft.  He was in a tier of his own before the injury concerns popped up, and super upside should be valued on an exponential curve.  If I was given the choice of healthy Embiid at #1 or the #2 and #3 picks, I would have chosen healthy Embiid rather confidently.  It’s fair to say that healthy Embiid has approximately twice the draft value of healthy Exum (my #2 prospect), so instantly dropping him below #1 is not necessarily correct.  It is well within the realm of possibility that his stock should not be slashed by 50%+, in which case he is still worth the #1 pick injury risk and all.  There’s also a chance that it should be slashed by more than 50%, which would slide him down multiple slots.

So the short answer is I have no idea what to think about his injury, but I can say that his talent is so awesome he is going to remain at or at least near the top of my big board.

Jabari Parker
I covered most of the reasons why I believe he is comfortably inferior to Melo as a prospect, and now I can’t stop feeling sour toward him.  It keeps nagging at me that he was a world beater vs. bad defenses and cancerous vs good defenses, and Layne Vashro pointing out that he had less than half the assist:TOV ratio of Melo is a smoking gun to me.

Given that his tools are at best average and he projects to be a liability defensively, this is a sign that he may not be nearly what he’s cracked up to be.  The problem is that bulk scoring is vastly overrated and ball movement is vastly underrated.  Jabari might me the least Spurs-like prospect in the draft, which can’t bode well for his future.

Jabari’s glimmer of hope is that he did display good feel for the game in non-conference blowouts, when he was a willing and competent passer.  I imagine his issue is that he lives in a world where he is expected to score every high leverage bucket, and this caused him to play sub-optimally once the conference schedule began.  He still has hope to become a good player if he can be re-wired to always play as if it’s a blowout and he needs to get his teammates involved.  But his conference and tournament performance is still possibly indicative of some fundamental flaw (i.e. he doesn’t strike me as particularly perceptive), and at his current rate he has some risk of becoming the next Derrick Williams.  Frankly I wouldn’t use a top 5 pick on somebody with an upper bound of the next Carmelo anyway since he’s such a ball stopper and defensive liability.  Jabari’s ticket to success is definitely going to be developing in the Paul Pierce direction of a more balanced player who doesn’t stop the ball and chuck away.

I have dropped Jabari out of my top 5, but I still have him ahead of Wiggins on my big board.  He has enough red flags for me to disagree with the narrative that he’s a top 2 pick, but none of his flaws are necessarily fatal and he still has enough skill to be molded into something nifty.  And I have to admit I’m a bit frightened to fade him too aggressively him since he’s such an intense competitor.  He has a wide range of possible outcomes and I am fascinated to see how he develops as a pro.

Noah Vonleh
I don’t think I have written anything about Vonleh yet in spite of him perpetually being on the top 10 of my big board.  He has good stats, solid tools, enough skills, and is super young so this earns him a top 10 slot.  But he’s overall a fairly bland prospect.  He’s not a rim protector, he’s a weak finisher, he has bad hands, and he has a horrible assist to turnover ratio.  His main appeal lies in his small sample 3 point shooting where he made 16/33 attempts.  It’s nice to get a stretch 4 who can rebound and possibly play solid defense, but I struggle to see how he becomes a top 15 player and he has plenty of bust risk.  In my eyes his upside is David West with 3 point range.  That’s not a bad upside, and I like Vonleh considerably more than Julius Randle. But I think it would be a big mistake to take Vonleh over Marcus Smart or Aaron Gordon, and I also favor international bigs Jusuf Nurkic and Clint Capela.

Tyler Ennis
Earlier in the season, I wrote about Ennis’s amazing statistical splits where he is at his best against good defenses, in the halfcourt, and in close and late situations.  These are situations that provide the best tests for NBA translation, and he aced all of them.  This along with his fantastic assist:TOV rate define Ennis to me– the man simply knows how to navigate through a set defense.  It is especially impressive coming from a freshman, as I believe PG’s have the toughest transition from high school to college.  They are constantly navigating through bigger and more athletic opposing players than they are accustomed to as the smallest player on the floor, and it is common for players to struggle at first.  I am attracted to prospects who display some level of outlier positive quality, and Ennis seems to possibly have unique feel for the game.

The downside of Ennis is that his great steal rate is completely fraudulent playing in Syracuse’s zone.  He posted a mediocre steal rate in the FIBA u19 games playing for team Canada, and given his mediocre athletic package he projects to be a liability as a man to man defender in the NBA.  He is not certain to be below average defensively, but it is the most likely outcome.

Overall I rather like Ennis, as his unique feel for the game merits a sliver of John Stockton or Steve Nash equity.  His value is somewhat depressed by the current PG depth in the NBA, so my final ranking may not reflect exactly the extent to which I like him.  But after typing this up I feel inclined to at least move him ahead of Noah Vonleh.

Elfrid Payton
I have had Payton as a mid-1st round pick all season long and now everybody is finally catching up ranking him as a fringe lotto pick.  Chad Ford even has him ahead of Ennis, and I think the two players are in a close race for 3rd best point guard in the draft.

Payton’s big advantage over Ennis is his defense.  The two have similar steal rates, except Payton’s was accrued by being a genuinely good ball hawk as opposed to playing in a gimmicky zone and is far more meaningful.  He has good height (6’3.75″) and length (6’8″) for a PG and moves well laterally.  I believe he’s a clear favorite to be an above average defensive PG which is his big selling point over Ennis.  That said it is excessive to try to compare him to Marcus Smart, as he does not have the outlier level of defensive performance that Smart does.  Smart has a higher steal rate against tougher competition, an obviously huge impact on his team’s defense, and has better tools as he is much stronger than Payton.  Payton is a good defensive prospect but he is not on Smart’s level of elite.

Offensively is where Payton is a bit of a mystery.  Layne Vashro’s EWP model ranks him as the 9th best NCAA prospect with John Wall and Derrick Rose included among his top comparisons.  But Kevin Pelton’s WARP model ranks him as just an early 2nd rounder, as he has less faith in his ability to translate offensively.  Suffice it to say that his future on the offensive end is polarizing.

I do not believe the Wall or Rose comparisons are entirely fair.  Those guys all had some level of freakish speed and/or athleticism to accentuate their offensive upside.  Payton is a solid athlete but his physical tools are not enough to carry a guard who cannot shoot to offensive stardom.  They are good enough to dominate Sun Belt defenses in transition, but much of that production will be lost in translation as he moves on to the NBA.  So his 54.1% 2p% on high volume likely overstates his upside, as he was horrible from mid-range and there are questions about his ability to finish against NBA help defense given his sub-par strength and non-elite athleticism.

That said, I’m not completely sour on his offensive package.  In my sample of watching him, his ball handling ability stood out as particularly impressive.  He got to the rim unassisted in the half-court more than any other PG prospect. Even if it was in a weak conference, his combination of handling and quicks give him solid upside as an NBA slasher.  He also fared well as a dependent scorer, tallying 31 assisted half-court FG’s made at the rim as per hoop-math.com.  Among point guards in the class he only trailed Semaj Christon (with 35) who only played PG part-time as he shared duties with Dee Davis.  This offers a bit of hope for his ability to play off the ball in case he doesn’t develop his shot. He also has solid potential as a playmaker and is a good offensive rebounder for a point guard.  And who knows, maybe he improves his shot to an outlier extent and becomes a better than break even 3 point shooter.

Overall he may struggle to translate offensively, but he does have enough positives to have hope of becoming solid on that end.  Ultimately I favor Ennis because he brings more outlier appeal to the table that may result in stardom, as Payton doesn’t have a clear calling card to become great offensively.  But there’s nothing wrong with a point guard who is decent on offense and good on defense, and like other prospects he can always surprise with an outlier rate of development.

I like Payton and have him as a late lottery value right behind Vonleh and Ennis.  Since so few teams need PG’s, one of him or Ennis will inevitably slide and provide fantastic value to the team that pulls the trigger.

Anyway, those are lots of words on Elfrid so now is a good time to cut off part 1.  I’m going to try to squeeze in as much last minute analysis as I can get pre-draft and then I’ll post my updated big board.

Jabari Parker: Is He The Next Melo Fellow?

11 Friday Apr 2014

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As a Duke alum, I watched nearly every Duke game this year and have a number of thoughts on Jabari Parker, yet have refrained from writing about him.  This is largely because I see an interesting blend of positives and negative and had been reticent to commit to a strong opinion either way.  Now that the season is over, I’d like to lay out some troubling trends I have noticed as well as why they may not be fatal flaws.

First I would like to initiate a narrative that has gone largely unnoticed this year: Jabari Parker was a straight up chucker as a freshman.  It’s not that people failed to notice that he took a ton of shots; after all his most common comparison is Carmelo Anthony.  The fact of the matter is that when you launch a high volume of shots with the efficiency of a player like Carmelo, people are not going to complain about your chucking ways.  But I do believe that Jabari’s inefficiency flew a bit under the radar for a number of reasons.  First, let’s see how his usage and efficiency stats compare to those of his teammates as per sports-reference.com.

Usage% O-Rtg TS% AST%
Amile Jefferson 13.4 134.9 61.8% 8.3
Tyler Thornton 7.5 133.1 64.1% 18
Andre Dawkins 25.6 126 63.4% 5.6
Rodney Hood 23.8 122.5 59.0% 13.2
Quinn Cook 20.4 122.1 57.1% 27.7
Rasheed Sulaimon 20.3 120.7 55.2% 17
Jabari Parker 32.7 115 55.8% 8.6

On one hand, a 115 offensive rating on a 32.7% usage is impressive vs. the caliber of opponent Duke played.  On the other hand, it is not as if he was surrounded by garbage and Duke needed him to take every shot he could possibly get off.  Duke’s other top rotation players all had a significant advantage in offensive rating, and it would be nice if Jabari had a better assist rate considering all of the shooting surrounding him.  Other than Jefferson who did not attempt a 3, his other most common teammates all shot 37%+ from 3 with 4 of them hitting 41%+.

It’s easy to see why Parker took so many shots: he is the perceived best player on the team and carries with him a strong alpha male mentality.  It is clear he believes that it is his role to carry the scoring load, so it stands to reason that he should be taking the lion’s share of shots for his team.  But he took this to an extreme level.  Nobody ever accused Carmelo Anthony of being unselfish, yet he took on a less gargantuan role as a freshman for Syracuse (note that I am now taking usage/o-rtg from statsheet.com, which is why Jabari’s figures are different from the prior table):

Player Usage O-Rtg Ast% Opp D-Rtg
Carmelo 27.8 113.6 11.8 96.5
Jabari 31.7 111.5 8.6 100.7

Carmelo played on a much more defensive oriented team where taking a high volume of medium efficiency shots carries more value.  For reference, Duke’s team schedule adjusted O-Rtg was 123.5 vs. Syracuse’s 113.5, but their defense was much worse (102.3 vs. 91.3).  Further, Carmelo was surrounded by significantly less 3 point shooting as he only had two regular teammates who made 3’s, shooting collectively 35% behind the arc.  Yet he nevertheless posted a comfortably lower usage rate and higher assist rate.  Once you consider context, Jabari almost makes Carmelo Anthony look like Steve Nash.

The other disconcerting trend is that Jabari Parker was significantly more efficient against bad defenses.  While he is a good shooter for a freshman and has solid perimeter skills, he also operated quite a bit in the low post as he often played center for Duke.  His best performance of the season came against Boston College’s swiss cheese defense, as they start bigs listed at 6’8 219 and 6’7 207.  They have the #298 defense and are 238th in opponent 2p%.  Naturally Jabari bullied them to kingdom come, as he finished with 29 points, 16 rebounds, and 12/17 FG in a performance that included 6 dunks.  It was an entertaining show to be sure, but at the same time it was not against competition that remotely simulates NBA defense.  If you break up his performance to teams that are top 100 in opposing 2p% and played a top 150 schedule (essentially weeding out Vermont who was impenetrable by pitiful America East offenses), here are how his per 40 minutes stats look:

opponent Pts FGA eFG 2PA 2p% FTA AST TOV
top 100 22.5 19.4 42.4% 14.8 41.1% 7.6 1.1 3.2
not top 100 27.1 17.8 59.4% 14.5 58.7% 8.3 1.9 2.9

Note that the sample includes 500 minutes vs. good defenses and 574 vs. bad ones.  Granted, we are taking a small sample and breaking it up into two smaller samples, and one of his best performances barely misses the cutoff as UNC only has the #102 2p% defense in the country.  But even if you move his two UNC games in the tough sample, he still only musters a 44.2% eFG as compared to 59.6% in the weak sample.  And the fact that the performance drop off is largely driven by a drop off 2 point efficiency makes it less likely to be largely due to fluke.

The bottom line is that Jabari bullied bad teams and he bullied them hard.  This inflates his stats in a way that is not necessarily predictive of NBA performance.  He will still be an issue for smaller matchups in the pros, but they will become less common and there will almost always be a bigger help defender on the floor.  He still needs to develop his decision making and perimeter skills significantly to become an efficient scorer against NBA defenses, because his bullying did not work so well against tougher NCAA opposition.

For reference, here are Carmelo Anthony’s per 40 splits given the same criteria:

opponent Pts FGA eFG 2PA 2p% FTA AST TOV
top 100 24 19.5 48.0% 14.5 47.9% 7.5 2.1 2.8
not top 100 25.3 18.7 53.5% 13.1 53.2% 7.5 3 1.7

Note that Carmelo also faced a higher % of good defenses, with 842 minutes in the tough sample vs. 432 in the weak sample.  Naturally Melo’s performance fell off vs. serious defenses, but he padded his stats less vs. weaker teams and did not have a massive eFG% or 2p% chasm between the two splits.  Also while his assists and turnovers both suffered against tougher teams, his ratio in the tough sample is still much better than that of Jabari which implies that he may have a superior feel for the game.

Again, take these splits with a grain of salt due to sample size issues, but it aligns with my perception. Jabari relied moreso on rim scoring against undersized competition whereas Melo’s midrange dominance translates to higher levels of competition with ease.

While they appear to be similar prospects at a glance, freshman Melo is comfortably superior to freshman Jabari.  There is the possibility that Jabari merely needs time to adjust to being stoppable at the rim and adapt his game accordingly, but I would have felt better about this hypothesis if he had displayed some level of improvement down the stretch.  Instead he shot 6/16 on 2’s vs Clemson, 7/20 vs Virginia, and 4/11 vs. Mercer as Duke was upset in round 1.

Mercer is hardly a challenge in the paint, as they posted the 112th best 2p% defense playing the 197th toughest offensive schedule.  Yet they unwisely insisted on playing zone defense vs. Duke to stop Jabari, and it sort of worked.  I say sort of because Duke shot 15/37 on 3’s and rebounded 16/40 of their own misses, and they should be unbeatable by Atlantic Sun competition when this happens.  But Duke also punted defense this year in favor of a super offense, and allowed a 122 O-Rtg to Mercer.  So when Jabari shot 4/11 on 2’s with 0 assists and 4 turnovers (the rest of the team attempted just 14 2’s and committed 8 turnovers), I think it’s fair to pin a significant amount of blame on him for the loss.  Duke was given an all-you-can-eat buffet of quality 3 point looks for their 40% shooters, and Jabari diluted this by insisting on [not] getting his inside vs. the zone instead of trusting shooters to make shots.  I understand that it’s part of the alpha dog mentality, but it would have been nice if he had displayed a bit more macro level perception instead of going full cancer and playing his team out of the tourney against a vastly inferior foe.

So why am I not screaming at the top of my lungs that Jabari will be a bust?  There are a myriad of slippery aspects to any Jabari analysis, and I am not certain that these issues are indicative of any fundamental flaw that will invariably undermine him throughout his career.  He still has an intriguing blend of size and skills, and he will be forced to improve his decision making when he learns that trying to repeatedly dunk on players such as Roy Hibbert is difficult.  He’s such a fiery competitor that it’s not difficult to envision him finding a way to make his offense work in the pros, especially if he lands with a good coach.  And while his defense was not great, he did post excellent rebound numbers and solid steals and blocks.  So I am reticent to sour too heavily on Jabari, as there is much to like.  But I also think he has a wider range of outcomes than common narratives dictate, since he does need to overhaul his offensive approach to succeed as a pro.  It’s possible that he doesn’t peak any higher than a Jeff Green level combo forward who is a solid scorer but does not bring enough else to the table to be particularly valuable.

If he does elect to stay at Duke, I believe his sophomore season will be illuminating for his NBA future, as he will be forced to share the paint with possible 2015 #1 pick Jahlil Okafor.  He should spend more time on the perimeter, and he will no longer have the excuse of limited experience vs. defense that can physically match up with him.

Throughout the season I had Jabari in a close battle for the #2 slot on my big board with Dante Exum, but after a disappointing postseason I rate Exum comfortably ahead of him.  Now the question becomes whether I prefer Parker over a prospect such as Marcus Smart, and I am leaning in the direction of Smart for now.  There is enough to like such that Jabari will eventually settle into my 3-5 range, but his selfish ways and issues vs. stingy defenses remove some of his luster as a tanking prize.

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.

The Meaning Of Tweener

21 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in International, NCAA

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The word “tweener” has become a common draft lexicon to describe players who are stuck between positions.  It normally carries a negative connotation, but is not always fleshed out.  And not all tweeners are created equally, in some cases it can be a strength.  It largely depends on how each player’s offensive fit meshes with his defensive fit.  I’ll run through some examples from this draft to demonstrate my interpretation of a few players’ tweener relevance:

Good Tweener: Jabari Parker

Parker’s concern is that he is too small to play PF and too slow to play SF.  This is valid to an extent, but nobody is projecting him to be a positive defensively.  He only needs to not be a sieve so teams can get his offense in the lineup, and I believe he certainly has the tools for that.  I quite like him as a PF, he’s 6’8 235 lbs with a 7’0 wingspan.  He plays like he weighs 300 lbs, as he doesn’t mind getting physical in the post and rebounds well for his size.  Further, his length enables him to average 1.7 blocks per 40 minutes.  Playing at PF mitigates the impact of his lack of quickness, as he will spend less time defending wings on the perimeter.  He is listed as having an 8’8 standing reach at DraftExpress, which is lower than you’d expect for a player with his height + length and is a mild concern.  But I’d like to see how he measures at the combine before harping on this too loudly, as reach measurements are not always done with precision.  For reference Carmelo Anthony is half an inch shorter with the same wingspan and measured with a 8’9.5 reach, and he has performed extremely well as a small PF paired with Tyson Chandler at C.  Parker shows similar potential to be an elite stretch 4, as if you surround him with a strong defensive center and three shooters, you have a synergistic NBA lineup.

While I would err on the side of giving Jabari PF minutes, he also does have the capacity to play SF.  He has the perimeter skills to play on the wing offensively, and his size and length may atone to prevent his quickness issues from holding him back too much.  Further, it is possible that he proves to be more adept at defending the perimeter than the post, so this gives an alternative means of success if his lack of reach causes him to struggle to defend bigger PF’s.

Although he’s not a perfect fit at either position, the fact that Parker can fit in well enough at either position to get his offense into the lineup is a bit of a bonus.  And even if he doesn’t find a niche where he can play solid defense, his offense still may outweigh his defensive shortcomings as is the case for his upside comparison Carmelo Anthony.

Bad Tweener: Aaron Gordon.

Earlier I wrote about Aaron Gordon’s shooting woes.  He almost certainly will not be able to play the wing offensively in the pros, and needs to focus on adding strength and developing a post game.  PF is clearly going to be his niche offensively, but his main appeal is the defensive upside that his tools offer.  And as far as I can tell, he has much better tools to be a perimeter stopper than a post presence.  He is listed at 6’9 with a  6’11.5 wingspan and an 8’10.5 reach, which is adequate to play PF, especially with his athleticism.  But he only weighs 212 pounds, and being below average in all of length, reach, or strength it makes it a bit more daunting of a proposition.  Further, using him at SF does not capitalize on his lateral quickness that offer promise for his potential as a perimeter defender.  His ideal situation would be to pair him with a perimeter shooting PF such as Ryan Anderson, and play him in the post offensively and on the perimeter defensively.  But that makes it a pain to build around him as an integral part of your core, as it disqualifies the majority of starting PF’s as plausible pairings and precludes an offense from ever being perfectly spaced with 4 shooters.  His synergy between his offensive and defensive skill sets are quite messy, and frankly he doesn’t offer enough upside promise to be worth the hassle as a top 20 pick.

Tweener comparison: Kyle Anderson vs Dario Saric

I have mentioned that these players strike me as similar, as they are both tall ball handlers who lack burst.  They also both have questionable outside shots, and offer much more appeal playing as primary ball handlers than complementary pieces on offense.  They are both best served to play PF, since it is easier to pair them with a SF who can shoot than it is to find a floor spacing PF.  It also is ideal to mitigate the defensive issues caused by their lack of quickness.  There is quite a bit of value to these two players fitting into NBA lineups at PF.  Saric is 1.5 inches taller (6’10 vs 6’8.5) and DX lists him as a possible SF/PF whereas Anderson is listed as a possible SF, so one may initially be inclined to give the edge to Saric.  But Anderson has a much longer wingspan at 7’2.25 vs 6’10, and his 9’0 standing reach is likely greater than that of Saric as well.  Further he is listed at 233 vs 223 and is possibly slightly stronger.  It’s not by an enormous margin, but if Anderson does indeed have the edge in all of length, strength, and reach it is a significant advantage over Saric.  Ability to defend bigger positions is always a bonus, but it is especially helpful for players in their offensive mold.

Bad Tweener That Isn’t Too Bad: Nick Johnson

Johnson is the classic SG in a PG’s body.  He has good tools and defensive acumen defending the perimeter for the best defense in the nation, but he is just a bit small to regularly defend SG’s.  DraftExpress lists his height at 6’2.5″ with a 6.5.5″ wingspan, which makes him big enough to only situationally defend SG’s.  But since he doesn’t have the PG skills to run an offense, he will likely be available in the 2nd round.  But that doesn’t make him necessarily difficult to fit into NBA lineups.  If his outside shot develops well he can be a 3 + D PG in a lineup where a taller player runs the offense.  A team with a big PG such as John Wall, Deron Williams, Michael Carter-Williams, Marcus Smart, or Dante Exum could pair him with their bigger point guard and cross match accordingly.  He also fits well alongside ball dominant stars such as Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, as he could fill the Mario Chalmers role in Miami.  There is a common perception that the smaller player on the court should necessarily run the offense, and this isn’t true.  He’d be a significantly more appealing prospect if he was 2-3 inches taller + longer, but he remains an appealing 2nd round flier for a team that has a bigger ball-handler to pair him with.