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Tag Archives: Joel Embiid

Parsing through the NCAA Prospects: Part 1

23 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Elfrid Payton, Jabari Parker, Joel Embiid, Noah Vonleh, Tyler Ennis

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.

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The Joel Embiid Experience: Does Starting Late Help or Hurt His Future?

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Hakeem Olajuwon, Hasheem Thabeet, Joel Embiid

This weekend I tweeted that Joel Embiid is the 6th best prospect of the past 20 years (behind LeBron, Duncan, Durant, A Davis, Oden), and a number of reasonable minds disagreed with me.  There is an argument to be made that Yao and Dwight were superior, although the problem with prospects lacking info is that sometimes you get Darko.  Other suggestions included Blake Griffin, Allen Iverson, Elton Brand, Andrew Bogut, and Michael Beasley.  Many of these suggestions came from Layne Vashro (@VJL_bball on twitter) who does an excellent job statistically modeling the draft, and were echoed by others.  This suggests that it is time to explore the facets of Embiid’s game that make him so much more enticing than the raw numbers would suggest.

Embiid has excellent statistics for a soon to be 20 year old freshman, but not historically great numbers.  He has strong shooting percentages as he is both efficient from the floor with a 62.9% eFG and has a strong FT% for a young 7 footer at 68.5%.  His rebounding and block totals are excellent, and his steal and assist totals are strong.  This is all somewhat mitigated by his exorbitant turnover rate, and he also does not score with exceptionally high volume (his usage rate is 24.4 but that’s largely padded by his turnover rate).  Further, while his defensive stats are excellent, he is not a pristine defensive player, as he is still mastering fundamentals such as defending the pick and roll (covered in my post on his defense vs Ok St.)

This leaves two conflicting schools of thought to assess the merit of Embiid’s performance.  One is that he stuffs the stat sheet far better than expected for a player lacking experience, and he will grow at a faster rate than normal going forward as he catches up to speed with his peers.  The other is that lack of experience is not necessarily an advantage, since he missed key developmental years that have caused warts not seen in the statistics (i.e. pick and roll defense).

The latter case does have merit.  Based on the numbers alone he appears to be a Greg Oden level defensive prospect, but it simply cannot be taken for granted that he develops a masterful basketball IQ and eliminates a large portion of his mistakes on that end.  This also can be applied to his offensive game, as it is much easier to make an impact on sheer size as a 7 footer in college than it is in the NBA.  An example of this would be Hasheem Thabeet, whose stats as a college junior don’t look woefully different from those of Embiid.  He shares good FG% on only slightly lower volume, as well as an excellent block and rebound rate.  Embiid does have a much better assist rate, but Thabeet’s turnover rate is lower as well.  All of Thabeet’s stats came after two years of college experience to merely become comparable to Embiid, but that’s not particularly re-assuring when he has completely flopped as a pro.

So before lack of experience can be construed as a positive, it is worth addressing what makes Embiid more than a slightly more advanced Thabeet.  First, Thabeet was almost exclusively a finisher.  Before the 2009 draft, DraftExpress had an excellent writeup about Thabeet’s lack of offensive creation based on situational stats.  Further, he grew leaps and bounds from his freshman season where he had a 14.9% usage rate and 96.1 O-Rtg to a 19.5% usage rate and 118.0 O-Rtg.  For reference, Embiid has a 24.4% usage and 112.2 O-Rtg thus far this year.  Even the average giant needs a bit of time before discovering how to dominate a bunch of comparative midgets, which is why limited production was expected from Embiid this year as he started the season as a bench player.  If he were to stay in school for 3 years and progress at Thabeet’s rate, he would likely post mindblowing statistics that insist that he is a historically elite prospect.

The fact of the matter is that Embiid is an outlier by virtue of going from inexperienced player to college star instantaneously.  The only other player to be this good this early is Hakeem Olajuwon.  As a freshman, Hakeem was 10 months younger, but he had the advantage of practicing with the team in his prior redshirt season.  Also Hakeem played fewer minutes per game. (18.2 vs 23.1).  These stats are pace adjusted per 40, as Hakeem’s Phi Slamma Jamma Cougars played at a faster pace than Kansas (~75 possessions/game vs 68).

Player PTS FGA eFG% FTA FT%
Hakeem 16.4 10.2 0.607 7.1 0.563
Embiid 19.4 10.6 0.629 8.8 0.685
Player TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF
Hakeem 12.2 0.7 1.8 4.9 2.8 5.8
Embiid 14 2.3 1.5 4.5 4.1 5.8

Embiid stacks up fairly well, and this is with Kansas playing the toughest schedule in the nation (according to cbb-ref, Kansas’s average opponent is 11.9 pts above average, Houston’s was 7.5).  Hakeem’s steal advantage is for all intents and purposes negligible, given the SOS difference, the fact that steals are down this year due to handcheck rules, and the fact that Bill Self preaches an anti-gambling style defensively.  Hakeem does also have a small advantage in blocks, but Embiid has been better on the boards.  Also for those concerned about Embiid’s foul rate, it is identical to that of Hakeem.  I have no idea how Hakeem’s defensive fundamentals were as a freshman, but if nothing else the numbers portray the two as extremely close on that end.

Offensively is where the two begin to differ.  Embiid gets more points and assists with better shooting percentages, but also turns it over much more.  This seems to suggest that Hakeem was used as more of a finisher whereas Kansas frequently runs their offense through Embiid.  Embiid scores the vast majority of his points in the half-court (he is just 9/12 on transition FG’s), where he is double teamed nearly every time he touches the ball.  Unlike Julius Randle, he rarely turns it over attacking double teams, as he is quick to dribble away and kick it back out to the perimeter.  Other times he waits for the double to go away before attacking.  Suffice it to say that defenses invest quite a bit of effort in preventing Embiid from getting in a position to finish easily, which explains why his shooting volume isn’t higher.  But in spite of being often used in difficult circumstances, he is surprisingly effective as he uses he elite skill level to create and finish.  He has excellent coordination, footwork, touch around the rim, and instincts that cumulatively creates a highly intriguing upside.

Embiid’s turnovers are a bit worrisome, but many of them can be easily cut down.  3 of his 68 turnovers have come from technical fouls, and a healthy portion have come from offensive fouls.  Some of these are not especially concerning since it is only a matter of time before he learns how to establish position in the paint without fouling, for instance.  He also turns it over on his passing attempts, as sometimes when he is doubled he makes risky cross court passes to the perimeter that go awry.  Other times he may throw away simple entry passes from the top of the key.  Without having charted anything, he seems to turn it over on bad passes more often than he does in trying to create his own shot.

While the turnover gap between Embiid and Hakeem may appear to be slightly unsettling, I do not believe it necessarily means that Embiid was worse offensively as a freshman.  The fast pace of Houston implies that Hakeem likely had more easy buckets in transition than Embiid, and he would likely have quite a few more turnovers if he was used as a passer/creator more.  While Hakeem was the more explosive athlete, it is a reasonable hypothesis that Embiid had a higher skill level as a freshman, as crazy as that sounds.  At least he has played a slightly more demanding role in Kansas’s offense than Hakeem did for Houston.

Does this mean that Embiid is as good of a prospect as Hakeem?  Absolutely not.  Hakeem improved quite a bit over the next 2 years and then continued to develop exceptionally well as a pro.  But when the only frame of reference to start playing at a young age and post similar numbers as a freshman became an all time great player, it is a strong check mark in favor of lack of experience being a positive for Joel Embiid specifically.  On a scale of Hasheem to Hakeem, Embiid’s start closely aligns with the latter while the former is completely left in the dust.  Perhaps on average starting late is not advantageous for future growth rate of 7 footers, but Embiid is clearly not an average prospect.  I do not believe that prospects such as Hasheem Thabeet or Fab Melo are valid frames of reference when they have nowhere near the skill level of Embiid, and could never come close to doing this:

The problem for unskilled bigs is that when they face competition that can physically match up, they lose a ton of their production.  When Embiid moves on to facing NBA bigs, he will maintain the advantage of his unique skill level which bodes well for his ability to translate.  And not only do we need to bear in mind that he is starting at a much higher skill level than the average African giant, but if he is able to figure out how to perform so well so early it is worth wondering whether he is also a uniquely fast learner.  While there is plenty of easy improvements to his game in cutting turnover fat and mastering defensive fundamentals, it cannot be taken for granted that he will do so as well as one would hope.  But when he has smashed expectations as a freshman, there is reason for at least slight optimism regarding his future growth ability.  This is especially true when he has also displayed a basic competence in learning on the court.

Overall my intuition is that Joel Embiid’s freshman stats comfortably underrate his NBA upside when taken in a vacuum.  They are all accrued in the half-court receiving a ton of defensive attention, when he was expected to be nowhere near ready to perform at this level.  Further, a well built NBA team will be able to offer him better spacing.  If he can master defense enough to become a solid rim protector and develop into a more reliable passer, he can be an overwhelmingly powerful piece to build around.  Surround him with four shooters and teams are forced to either double him and likely cede an open 3, or single cover him and let him cause damage in the post.  This is why he stands out over other past #1/2 picks.  Andrew Bogut had solid offensive numbers in college, but didn’t have the skill level to project as a great scorer in the pros.  Blake Griffin projected to be a poor defensive PF with a somewhat limited half-court offensive repertoire.  Allen Iverson is a 5’11 guard that neither excels as a shooter nor distributor.  Michael Beasley was able to get some steals and blocks in college, but was never anywhere close to competent defensively.  None of these players ever had much of a prayer of becoming top 10 players of all time.  Embiid certainly has a long way to go and is a clear longshot to get there, but there is also nothing obviously holding him back.  Questions about his defense linger, but if Hakeem was able to become an all-time great defensive player then why is it impossible for Embiid to do likewise?  Embiid is less of an explosive athlete, but he has good tools overall, and his ability to master the mental aspect of defense is what will make or break him on that end.

The draft is sort of like video poker, in that a huge portion of upside value lies in the upside tail.  In video poker a large percentage of expected value comes from the outside shot of binking a straight flush, and NBA prospects are not all that different.  If we assign Embiid just a 2% shot of becoming the next Hakeem or better, that carries massive value as a player of that magnitude completely changes the value of a franchise.  And the good news is that he can peak well short of Hakeem and still provide an excellent return on a #1 overall pick.  So if we are willing to buy that he has an inkling of hidden super upside that the average #1 pick such as Blake Griffin, Allen Iverson, or Andrew Bogut lacks, it is worth enough value to set him apart from the pack.

Some may be inclined to devalue Embiid for his proneness to minor injuries, as he already had to sit out a game vs TCU with some minor knee and back issues.  And in a recent game against Oklahoma State he appeared to aggravate his back injury, which bears monitoring going forward.  It is reasonable to devalue his draft stock slightly, but even if we price in a 10%-20% chance that his career gets completely derailed by injuries (I would say the latter is an aggressive projection given such minor injuries), that is significantly less impactful than the aforementioned 2% super upside.  Simply put, Embiid is a unique prospect with no obvious cap on his upside, and even treating the experience factor as neutral he has a higher floor than most.  He is a rare prospect that is drawing live for the metaphorical royal flush, and GM’s are justified in losing on purpose for a shot of playing his hand.

Richard Sherman Is Awesome And We Can Learn From Him

02 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by deanondraft in Personalities and Intangibles

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Chris Paul, Dante Exum, Joel Embiid, Marcus Smart, Nik Stauskas, Richard Sherman, Spencer Dinwiddie, Tyler Ennis

Recently Richard Sherman has garnered much attention, as he frightened Erin Andrews when he angrily declared himsef the best corner in the game and called Michael Crabtree a “sorry receiver” after Sherman’s Seahawks defeated Crabtree’s 49ers in the NFC championship game.

As a casual NFL fan, this was my first exposure to Sherman.  While people had varying reactions to his postgame mini-rant, I had an inkling that he was one of the more awesome human beings on this planet and did some digging.  Last year he went on ESPN’s First Take and told Skip Bayless “I’m better at life than you,” which is painfully true.  He also demonstrated commendable word choice when he called Bayless an “ignorant, pompous, egotistical cretin.”

But Richard Sherman is more than just an elite troll.  After his 2nd NFL season, he was voted by the AP to the NFL All-Pro 1st team.  Now in his 3rd NFL season, he is widely considered a top 2 NFL cornerback.  He’s on the fast track to become an all-time great, yet in the 2011 NFL Draft he was chosen in the 5th round, 154th overall.  His draft stock was deflated because he started off his college career as a wide receiver, and only had two years experience as a cornerback entering the draft.  He was considered raw, which was something that Sherman himself acknowledged.  But he has good tools and is insanely smart and driven to succeed, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he achieved the heights that he did.  Check out how cerebral his approach to the game is:

And much like Paul George, he had his sights set on extreme goals.  Per an SB Nation interview:

“Doesn’t matter where I play I just want to be a great player.  I don’t want to be a guy that’s in the league a few years, makes a ton of money and has nothing else.  I want to go down as one of the best.I want to prove other NFL Draft websites wrong that say I am the 52nd ranked CB prospect in their eyes.”

The fact that there was a player with the tools to be great and had such an intelligent and dedicated approach to the game yet was passing up multiple times by every team is amazing to me.  Richard Sherman is the archetype of player that both NFL and NBA GM’s should be pursuing, and the fact that he slipped to the 154th overall shows the inefficiencies of the NFL Draft that I believe remain present in the NBA Draft as well.

The NBA player who stands out as the most Richard Sherman like personality is Chris Paul.  He went 4th overall, as he was a polished NCAA superstar, but he neverthless made the GM’s who drafted Andrew Bogut, Marvin Williams, and Deron Williams ahead of him look foolish.  He thrives off of his otherworldly basketball IQ, and there was concern that he was too competitive as he punched Julius Hodge in the crotch during an ACC game.  I feel that he was one of the all-time underrated draft prospects in spite of going at a high slot, as his lack of an extra inch of height got too much attention and his intelligence received far too little.

Players like Richard Sherman and Chris Paul are one of a kind, and most draft classes will not have anybody who compares.  But these personality types are so underrated, part of the prospect evaluation process should be to identify players who show similar characteristics.  It is built from thin slices from afar, but here’s my early list of players to monitor who have shown signs of possible elite drive, confidence, and intelligence.

6) Joel Embiid-  His personality is slippery to assess, as he is still learning the English language and the game of basketball which makes it difficult to fully convey his intelligence.  On the other hand it also makes it difficult to grasp for his mental limitations since there’s an excuse for most of his mistakes. But his massive overperformance when he wasn’t expected to make an impact, and also his demonstration of a basic ability to learn are positive signs early.   Also noteworthy with Embiid is that he seems to have a fiery passion to his game as he already has 3 technical fouls on the season. Some may view this as a negative, but prefer it to his teammate Andrew Wiggins’s passive approach by a comfortable margin.

5) Tyler Ennis- He has an insanely low turnover rate for a freshman PG, and he has been at his best against good competition as some of his worst games have come against the dregs of Syracuse’s schedule.  Further, his stats in the final 5 minutes of games are better than sooner.

4) Dante Exum- he’s outwardly quiet but reputed to be confident and an extremely hard worker.  Derrick Rose is his role model and they seem to have similar deameanors.  He won me over a little bit with an incredibly sharp assessment regarding the pressure of being a high draft pick:

“Being told that you’re going to be a franchise player doesn’t mean anything, honestly they can say what they’d like and it’s just an opinion and it doesn’t mean it’s going to come true…Dealing with I guess that pressure, it doesn’t really matter to me because I know I’m just going to do what I can to get to that.”

That’s an impressive perception for an 18 year old kid, and it should inch NBA teams toward taking the mystery box over the boat.

3) Spencer Dinwiddie- He may not declare for the draft after his ACL tear, but he is an obviously intelligent person in interviews.  In a DX interivew, he cited that he wanted to improve his efficiency last offseason, and demonstrated a solid vocabulary when touched on his capacity to be an “auxiliary scorer.”  He also expressed an inclination to be a franchise point guard but accepted the possibility of a supporting role.  To me, he reminisces of Shane Battier with PG skills.

2) Marcus Smart- he occasionally makes a bad decision on the floor as he is prone to force bad shots, which may be a sign that he does not have elite intelligence.  But overall he demonstrates good feel for the game, especially defensively.  And from watching interviews he seems to back up his name with above average intelligence.  Moreover he demonstrates uniquely good intangibles and leadership skills as I noted in my Embiid breakdown.  He recently had a mini-meltdown where he outwardly demonstrated frustration during a poor game, and had a good apology afterward where he expressed desire to avoid similar behavior in the future. Willingness to accept feedback and learn from mistakes is how people grow, so it’s encouraging to see the reaction from him even though the meltdown wasn’t particularly bad.

1) Nik Stauskas- He strikes me as the complete package in terms of intangibles.  He is a highly intelligent player, and his work ethic must be incredible given the offseason work he put in on both his body and his skills.  He has a confident demeanor as he does things like blow kisses to the Michigan State crowd after a crucial road win.  His coach also acknowledged that Stauskas showed leadership by holding him back from the refs after a missed call.  His physical limitations place a ceiling on his upside, but that ceiling might be higher than common wisdom would suggest.

Note that the list is not comprehensive, and I hope to identify other attractive personalities as the season progresses.  My analysis of on court performance and statistics certainly carries more weight, but personalities can’t be excluded from prospect assessment altogether so this is a subject I will touch on sporadically.  Consider the assessment of the personality underlying each player to be a skill that I am developing as a side project.  In the interim, I will be rooting for Richard Sherman and the Seattle Seahawks to win that football game that is apparently happening tonight.

Video

Joel Embiid’s Peaks and Valleys vs Oklahoma State

22 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

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Tags

Joel Embiid, Kansas, Oklahoma State

Joel Embiid is rapidly cementing himself as the #1 pick in the eyes of the public, as nearly every game he puts on a show with his surprising coordination, offensive skill, and defensive rim presence.  I compiled this video to focus on the latter, along with the mistakes that he is prone to on defense that demonstrate how he remains somewhat raw in spite of his high level of skill and production:

Note that I give audio commentary to describe each play as opposed to having a table of contents this time.

Key points
1) Embiid is better at contesting shots without fouling than people realize. People see his exorbitant foul rate and assume that it largely stems from contesting shots, but he racks up fouls in a variety of ways, including battling for position in the post, going over the back on rebounds, committing technicals (which count as personal fouls in college), and in this game a perimeter handcheck. He also does foul on contests, but 8 blocks and several other solid contests without fouling against a top team is extremely impressive, even if it is an outlier performance.

2) In spite of his errors on offense, Embiid still made a huge positive impact on defense. Oklahoma State shot 14/38 on 2 pointers, attempted just 16 FT’s, and had to resort to bombing 3’s and hitting 12/28 to stay in the game and eventually lose by 2.

3) As an NBA rookie he won’t be able to dominate as much on natural ability, but if he even shows an average ability to learn and grow he has favorable odds of being good on both ends. Based on signs thus far that he was able to be better than expected and was able to quickly pick up on the simple detail that Oklahoma State was using Murphy as a passer to keep him away from the rim, he has shown enough to set himself apart from the Javale McGee/DeAndre Jordan low IQ types.  And if he proves to be a fast learner and hard worker, he will inevitably become one of the all time greats.

This is just one game where he did set a career high in blocks, but overall his stats measure up favorably to the historically elite defensive big man prospects in their final season of college. This is with Kansas having played the 2nd toughest schedule in the nation thus far:

Player Season Dreb% Steal% Block%
Anthony Davis Fr 23.7 2.5 13.7
Joel Embiid Fr 23.7 2.2 12.7
Greg Oden Fr 23.6 1.1 12.6
Hasheem Thabeet Jr 22.0 1.1 11.9
Emeka Okafor Jr 22.2 1.8 11.0
Roy Hibbert Sr 17.0 1.3 9.8
Tim Duncan Sr 29.7 1.2 8.7
Andrew Bogut So 30.9 1.8 6.2

These players were all drafted 1st or 2nd overall with the exclusion of Hibbert who went 18th.  Defensive stats are not the ultimate indicator of NBA success (see: Thabeet), but Embiid is making plays against tough competition as much as anybody else has, and he has the physical tools to translate as he stands 7′ 250 pounds with a 7’5 wingspan and nimble feet.

His offensive game merits similar analysis that I will offer in the future, but for now suffice it to say that it mirrors his current defensive disposition.  He offers great skill, college production, and a world of upside, but he also has plenty of fat to be trimmed with his exorbitant turnover rate.

Overall he has elite two way player upside, and it’s easy to see why he is rapidly emerging as the obvious #1 pick in the draft.  There is plenty of uncertainty with respect to his learning ability, but this uncertainty doesn’t necessarily mean that he is a significant bust risk.  Given that he is already this good this soon, it is difficult to envision him not becoming a competent NBA player.  He may not be a lock to become a superstar, but I do not believe he carries the same downside risk of players such as Thabeet or Darko who were merely NBA bodies that never demonstrated much basketball skill or acumen.  Embiid does carry the same injury risk that everybody else does, and it is possible his fiery personality will cause issues along the way.  But there is far too much working in his favor for him to be a complete flop, and I believe he has the highest floor in the draft on top of the highest ceiling.  As far as I am concerned he should be locked into the #1 pick, even if he tears his ACL or is revealed to be 22 years old.

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