This Draft Feels Like 2014 All Over Again

15 Thursday Jul 2021

Tags

alperen sengun, Andrew Wiggins, cade cunningham, evan mobley, Jabari Parker, Julius Randle

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

	Age	BPM
Mobley	19.6	13.7
Embiid	19.8	11.9
Wiggins	18.9	8.3
Cade	19.3	8.3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe Cade Turns Out Better than Wiggins

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

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

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

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

And the #2 pick is even worse than #1

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

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

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

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

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

The Rest of the Draft May Be Even Better

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

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

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

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

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

International Man of Mystery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trends Don’t Last Forever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summer League Scouting: The Rest

20 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bruno Caboclo, Dante Exum, Julius Randle, Kyle Anderson, Rodney Hood, Tyler Ennis, Zach LaVine

I already wrote my detailed scouting reports on Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, Doug McDermott, and TJ Warren as those were the players I felt I got to know the most intimately in Las Vegas. But I watched enough of other players to have observations I’d like to share.

Zach LaVine

Of all the players I was bearish on, Zach LaVine appears to be the strongest bet to prove me wrong. He was a mystery box that I assumed contained nothing substantial, but now that we got to see him run an offense and play man to man defense, he demonstrated much more ability than I anticipated.

In the first game, it stood out that Gal Mekel tried to drive past LaVine on 3 occasions and couldn’t get by once. I wasn’t sure whether to be sad for Mekel or happy for LaVine, but then Mekel blew by Glenn Robinson and got to the rim 3 times in a row. Even though Robinson is a SF, he’s not athletically challenged. Then Mekel tried to go at LaVine one last time, put a nice crossover on him and tried to shift directions a couple of times, but LaVine diligently shuffled his feet and forced him into a tough fadeaway jumper that badly missed.

I expected LaVine to be clueless on defense due to bad high school and college steal rates. He finished with 4 steals in 5 games, and 2 of them showed quick hands to strip the ball that you never see from McDermott or Randle types. I don’t think his defensive instincts are that bad, he just didn’t get many steals because he doesn’t have long arms and he is rail thin (I am starting to believe strength plays a significant role in steals). He still can’t fight through a screen to save his life and doesn’t always seem certain of where he’s supposed to be on defense, but he definitely showed enough potential to make me believe he can possibly become a positive on this end.

Offensively, we finally got to see LaVine run an offense and it wasn’t too bad. He doesn’t seem like a natural PG, and in the first game he appeared uncomfortable whenever Dee Bost applied pressure. He also isn’t the best passer, as he doesn’t see the floor all that well and he didn’t appear to be particularly accurate with his passes. But once he settled in his handle didn’t look too shabby, as it was good enough to get him wherever he wanted to go with his elite explosiveness and quicks. The issue was that it’s difficult for him to get off passes in the post because of his short arms, and he struggles to finish due to his lack of strength, so he was fairly reliant on his jumper and free throws. But he did a couple of shots to go at the rim when he found daylight, including some highlight dunks. His feel for the game didn’t look great, but at the same time it was much better than expected for a guy who hasn’t run an offense above the high school level. It will be interesting to see how much he can improve with hard work and repetitions. His final counting stats weren’t too shabby for such a raw prospect: 15.7 pts 2.8 asts 3.3 tovs in 6 games– his turnover rate is especially mild given all of the slashing, passing, and scoring LaVine was asked to do given his age and experience.

LaVine is pretty much Nik Stauskas if you traded a healthy portion of skill and feel for elite quickness and explosiveness. Stauskas was a lower RSCI recruit than LaVine who rose due to working diligently on his skills and body. I now understand why LaVine wasn’t top 50 RSCI: there’s a bias toward players who dominate high school due to physically developing sooner such as Jabari Parker, Shabazz Muhammad, and Julius Randle. LaVine’s rail thin frame is still a concern, as he is uniquely underweight and may never add enough muscle to accomplish much inside. But I get the impression that he is taking his NBA career seriously and is going to work hard and listen to his coach (if only his coach wasn’t Flip Saunders). I don’t know how high he’ll peak or if he’ll even necessarily become good, but he inspired a ton of hope in Las Vegas and he shot up my rankings. I feel he justified his lottery selection.

Dante Exum

Exum looked awesome the first game, as he was getting to his spots offensively, dishing beautiful passes to his teammates, and protecting the ball with just one turnover. I don’t know if he was feeding off of the crazy pro-Utah energy (the crowd was going crazy over every tiny pro-Jazz event) or if he faced a horrible defense, because he completely disappointed in the following games.

He still showed good quickness, good vision and passing ability, and playmaking instincts defensively to suggest that he has plenty of upside. He is young and toolsy enough such that he didn’t need to have a great summer league. Frankly he looked uncomfortable adjusting to the higher level of competition after not playing above Australian HS level for the past year. It would have been nice to see him show some progress toward the end, but maybe he just needs to get repetitions and work on dribbling with his left hand. Also it appears his conditioning may be a bigger issue than expected, which explains why he conserved so much energy on defense in high school.

His defense looked as bad as anticipated and he couldn’t buy a bucket in the paint over length. He had some sexy finishes in FIBA, but it’s possible that he can’t consistently finish at the rim off the dribble in the NBA.

Altogether there is nothing about his summer league that suggests irreparable flaw or makes his upside unattainable. But he could have shown more and we do need to brace for the possibility that this mystery box does not contain a boat. I don’t drop him heavily though, he’s still top 5 to me.

Julius Randle

I like the way the Lakers were using Randle. He often slashed from the perimeter, where I felt he was at his best in college. And unlike Jabari and Wiggins, he doesn’t attack exclusively for himself, as he makes a conscious effort to create to teammates. I don’t think he sees the floor all that well, but he is mindful of where his teammates are hanging out and he tries to dish to them when he can. He had one excellent pass where he threaded the needle inside and created FT’s.

And even though he’s bad on defense, it’s not because he doesn’t care. He shows competitiveness on this end, he just is naturally bad at it due to short arms, lack of burst, and slow reactions. I think this is just a killer triumvirate of weaknesses, but he works hard and he can at least become good man to man with his quick feet and great strength.

Randle is definitely less talented than Wiggins and Parker but it feels like he’s on a better developmental path than either of them. I’ve always had the impression that he really does want to be good at as many things as possible to win, and he will sacrifice touches and shots for the good of the team. He still doesn’t naturally play efficiently, and he struggled to finish some of his postups which involved a bit too much dribbling. But he still is so good at finishing circus shots that his shooting percentages didn’t look horrible at the end of the day.

I think he has an uphill climb to become great and I will always perceive him as an underdog in spite of his recruiting ranking and draft slot. I could see him overachieving my expectations for him through hard work and adaptability. It will be interesting to monitor Randle vs. Parker– I feel that Parker has naturally sharper instincts, but Randle is more in tune with the overall health of the team, but they are otherwise largely similar players.

Tyler Ennis

Ennis was a disappointment for me. I didn’t watch a ton but from what I can tell he’s too slow to get to the rim and could only get close enough to get off floaters. He made some sharp passes and showed quick hands that suggest he might have had a good steal rate even without the zone. Also he might be much better in the NBA since he was awful against bad teams his first few college games before everything clicked. But I might just have been too much of a sucker for cerebral PG’s and need to upgrade the value of athleticism + quicks for the position. I can still see him as a Mark Jackson type.

Rodney Hood

I didn’t like Hood as a prospect at all, but he had a solid showing in Vegas. His offensive package isn’t shabby: he makes 3’s, he sees the floor, he passes well, he can exploit mismatches to get to the rim with his decent athleticism and handle, and he doesn’t force the issue and make mistakes. That’s a solid supporting role player, and 11 assists vs 5 turnovers is nice. If he could even be neutral defensively I’d say that’s a solid pick in the late 1st. Unfortunately given his poor strength, short arms, and bad instincts defensively I still think he’ll offset the good but not great offensive skill set. But who knows, maybe he’ll overachieve enough on both ends to become an alright role player.

Kyle Anderson

I am big time disappointed in Kyle. He couldn’t get to the rim and finish, he couldn’t get to the line, he didn’t rebound, and he didn’t get many assists because he couldn’t get to his spots offensively. Further when he played Utah, Rodney Hood absolutely abused him and was able to blow by him at will. Against New Orleans there were 2 occasions on which Kyle was near the rim but didn’t rotate to help, although on one occasion he reached in to commit a weak foul and got pulled. I have heard that he did well defensively against some of the other top players, but whenever I happened to notice he was not getting to the rim and not doing anything of value on defense.

The slomo nickname is all fun and games until Kyle actually needs to match up against NBA athletes. He’s the smartest player in the draft, but smarts won’t be enough when he’s weak and slow and going up against elite athletes. He was drafted to the best possible situation to succeed, but I’m starting to fear he’s just a bit too slow and lazy.

Bruno Caboclo

Caboclo’s rawness was on fully display with his 2 assists and 18 turnovers. He didn’t seem to be that sure of where he was supposed to be defensively when I watched either. His rawness is a thing, his feel for the game is a work in progress. But it’s still easy to see why he was such a tantalizing prospect: just look at those arms and his shooting touch. He had one possession where he splashed a stepback 3 and it looked especially nice. Near the end of a half he was standing covered in the corner and caught the ball, fired, and hit at the buzzer. It’s such a broken weapon if he can get off corner 3’s whenever he wants– there was no off ball movement necessary to create that shot. He might not be good at all, but his upside is obvious so I can’t hate on the selection.

Visibility Bias And Julius Randle’s Defense

25 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

Defense, Julius Randle, Marcus Smart

One of my favorite players to analytically pick apart this season has been Julius Randle. It seemed that most people were in accordance that he was largely overrated, but then Kentucky made a tournament run that confounded everything and inspired hope for his future. Personally, I am not feeling too badly about my earlier synopsis and feel that all of my central hypotheses still hold. I would absolutely not consider him in the lottery, so I may as well follow up on why I refuse to budge on my anti-Randle stance.

A common trend among people who take exception to my ranking of Julius Randle as a non-lottery pick is that they are not convinced that his defense will invariably plague him throughout his NBA career. And it makes sense that some people would be skeptical, as defense is exceptionally difficult to pinpoint either statistically or by casually watching. And even if they acknowledge that he may have been sub-par as a freshman, that is not enough to convince most that he will necessarily be bad in his NBA prime. So how likely is he to mitigate this wart such that it is no longer debilitating?

His easiest out is simply that his defense is an overstated issue. But all signs point in the direction of it not being so. His steal and block rates are exceptionally weak for a lottery PF prospect. Also his team was not great defensively considering the size and athleticism they boasted, and they were not better with Randle on the floor (or so I have heard and instantly believed. Anybody know where to find UK on/off splits?). And, you can watch for yourself as Randle makes a gigantic pile of mistakes in a single game. He often has no clue what is going on and stands there confused as his assignment waltzes right past him. That lack of mental acuity doesn’t strike me as something that is likely to go away, nor will it be mitigated with marginal improvement. On some plays he was so slow to react that it seems Tennessee could have scored twice before he figured out what was going on. While not every game is as rife with mistakes as this one, similar errors did persist throughout the season and tournament. When the eye test, individual stats, and team level performance all strongly suggest that he is bad at defense, the most Bayesian conclusion is that he is almost certainly bad at defense.

So now that we all agree he is bad defensively, how likely is he to elevate his instincts to a more competent level? His main concern is that he is too slow to discern the offensive play unfolding before his eyes and sometimes fails to react until the ball is going through the net. I believe this deficiency heavily prices into his low steal rate, as players often generate steals by anticipating what will happen in advance. Layne Vashro made an excellent post about evaluating potential, and his statistical analysis on the growth of steal, block, and rebound rates is grim:

These traits are something a player either has or does not have. Do not expect a prospect who cannot block, steal, or board to figure out how once he enters the NBA (not that this never happens of course). Instead, these traits should be viewed as a part of the baseline a player has to work from, much as height and leaping ability are popularly understood.

If we roll with the narrative that steals correlate with defensive awareness and instincts, Randle will almost certainly always have bad instincts. After all, it doesn’t make sense that a player may drastically improve his anticipation and awareness without seeing a bump in steal rate. If increases in steal rate are outlier events, it logically follows that big increases in anticipation and instincts should be as well. This would doom Randle defensively– if defensive instincts are barely more improvable than height or athleticism, then he is a stone cold lock to be a liability as an NBA player.

But to leave some margin for error: let’s be open minded and say that defensive instincts are as easily improved as the most readily improved skill: shooting (at least I assume this is the case, if there is evidence to the contrary I would appreciate hearing about it). Everybody makes a big deal about Marcus Smart’s shooting ability being a damper on his draft stock, but he isn’t even the worst shooter among guards in the draft. He made 30% of his 3’s and 75% of his FT’s in college. Imagine instead that he made 25% of 3’s and 50% of FT’s– would anybody still want to draft him in the lottery? It would likely be perceived as an insurmountable wart that distracts from every good aspect Smart brings to the table. While it is impossible to equate Randle’s defensive badness to shooting percentages, he is the worst defensive player among big man prospects in the draft. Even in the most impossibly optimistic scenario that defensive instincts can improve as much as shooting, Randle’s defense should still be perceived as an exceptionally costly wart. This perception only fails to be widespread because of visibility bias. When casual fans watch a game, they notice every missed or made shot and normally none of the defensive lapses. Further, this enables season by season tracking of shooting percentages that are not available for defensive acumen.

Consider:
1) Julius Randle’s defense is worse relative to his peers than Marcus Smart’s shooting
2) Shooting is likely more readily improvable than defense, and possibly by a large margin
3) In the instance that neither player drastically improves their wart, Smart has a much rosier upside comparison among a player who shares the wart with similar strengths (Dwyane Wade) than Randle (Luis Scola, David Lee).

All of the concern for Smart’s shot should apply tenfold to Randle’s defense.

As an interesting aside, concern for Randle’s shot should also be great than the concern for Smart’s shot. Floor spacing is quickly being recognizing as valuable. And with analytics becoming increasingly widespread in the NBA, it is worth pondering whether the league is moving in a direction such that players who cannot either hit 3’s or play defense will be coveted at all in the future. Randle’s shot is perceived as a positive as he hit 70.6% of his FT’s, and he has some potential to develop a 3 point shot in spite of only making 3/18 as a freshman. While the bar is lower for acceptable big man shooting, Smart has his defense and PG skills to fall back on and does have superior shooting splits to Randle. If Randle neither steps up his defense in a big way nor becomes a reliable 3 point shooter, it’s difficult to see him ever becoming an impact player in the NBA.

As I mentioned earlier, I could envision Randle becoming David Lee level good. This may sound alright to some people, but to me it is a horrific upside scenario that does not merit 1st round consideration. I do not think David Lee is a particularly useful NBA player because he doesn’t space the floor, and his offensive and rebounding value is consequently outweighed by his poor defense. If Lee is a prospect’s best case scenario, that prospect should be worth little.

There are undeniably a number of positive traits that Randle brings to the table. He is strong, mobile, great at rebounding, and talented at converting difficult shots in the paint. His strength enables him to get to the line where he is solid at making his free throws, and he also has some semblance of handling and passing to work with. Further he appears to be competitive, hard working, and coachable. But because he spectacularly fails at the most high leverage aspect of his performance (defense), this puts a massive damper on his upside. He also has uncertainty regarding the second highest leverage aspect of his value (3 point shooting) that further inhibits his value. These warts are going to be often overlooked because one is not readily visible, and the other is not yet accepted as common NBA wisdom. But they drown out all of the positive qualities he brings to the table simply because none of his good traits are nearly as valuable as defense or spacing.

Hopefully this sheds some clarity on why I remain bearish on Randle in spite of his late season improvement and solid tourney showing. I do believe he carries his fair share of bust risk, but I do not necessarily believe he is a lock bust. The greater concern is that when his successful outcomes still are not that appealing, as he may post good stats as an NBA player without aiding his team too much in the W column. If he ever averages something like 18 points and 10 rebounds with an 18 PER, I’d hope that nobody trolls me over my ranking of him. So long as he keeps missing rotations on defense, I would never regret passing on him in the draft.

Kentucky’s Luck Runs Out vs. UConn

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

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Aaron Harrison, Alex Poythress, Andrew Harrison, Dakari Johnson, James Young, Julius Randle, Marcus Lee, Willie Cauley-Stein

After eking out four close wins against quality competition, UK finally fell into a first half deficit that they couldn’t entirely overcome, as they lost to UConn 60-54. It was an interesting tourney run for the Wildcats, and I would now like to comb through the details to point out what changed from the regular season to the postseason that propelled them this far. They started playing well in the SEC tournament, so I will split each player’s stats per 40 minutes into the 9 SEC/NCAA tourney games vs their regular season performance. Note that they tended to both run into better defenses and play at a slower pace down the stretch, so naturally everybody will have rosier regular season per 40 minute stats.

Willie Cauley-Stein

Season	PTS	eFG%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV
Regular	12.0	60.1%	10.2	1.2	1.8	4.6	1.6
Post	8.0	55.0%	10.3	0.7	3.0	6.0	0.3

Cauley-Stein’s postseason sample is too small to be particularly meaningful, but he did rack up a boatload of steals and blocks and only turned it over once in 120 minutes of play. More notable is how the UK defense struggled without him. They did not perform at a high level vs. any of Louisville, Michigan, Wisconsin, or UConn, and their adjusted defensive rating dropped to 41st in the country as per kenpom.com. Last year’s UK team bottomed out after the Noel injury and finished with the 129th defense, but among Calipari’s successful teams this is his worst defense that he has assembled. From 2006-2012 all of his defenses finished top 15, and the 2010-11 UK team was the only iteration that was not top 9. Cal’s last defense to perform this poorly was the 2004-2005 Memphis team that missed the tournament and finished with the 43rd defense.

For all of Kentucky’s size and athleticism, they are not particularly effective at preventing opponents from scoring. This is largely why I am not exceptionally high on this year’s crop of Kentucky prospects. Their success down the stretch did not stem from suddenly pulling things together and playing great defense: it was almost entirely derived from decreased turnover rates and timely shot making.

Julius Randle

Season	PTS	eFG%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV
Regular	20.1	52.2%	13.6	1.8	0.6	1.1	3.6
Post	17.1	43.6%	13.1	2.0	0.8	0.8	2.2

Randle’s big progression down the stretch was cutting down on his turnover rate. I have not charted statistics for this, but my suspicion is that this largely stems from fewer post up attempts, as he often coughed the ball up in traffic. Regardless of the precise reason, this was a significant development for UK as their offense is difficult to stop when they aren’t turning it over. They rebounded 41.9% of their own misses, so turnovers are especially costly in comparison to missed shots. This is a positive sign for Randle, as he needs to find a way to score without being a turnover machine to succeed as a pro.

On the other hand, Randle’s warts persist and I still struggle to get excited about the prospect of drafting him in the lottery. He drew 3 favorable defensive matchups in the tournament, as Kansas State, Michigan, and Wisconsin are all undersized, lack shot blocking, and are vulnerable inside. Naturally Randle posted his three highest scoring totals of the tournament vs. these three defenses. He had his lowest scoring output vs. the long and athletic UConn defense, finishing with just 10 points on 3/7 FG. And his lower turnover rate is somewhat diminished by the fact that it came in tandem with poor shooting from the field. He is still prone to defensive lapses, and there are still questions about his ability to translate offensively. While I appreciate his competitiveness and growth throughout the season, he did not make a convincing case that he will be able to score effectively enough vs. NBA defenses to justify a lotto pick. He has enough strengths for a freshman to be worth a flier in the 15-20 range, but I have a hard time envisioning him becoming a true impact player.

James Young

Season	PTS	eFG%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV
Regular	17.7	49.3%	5.1	2.3	1.0	0.2	2.4
Post	17.6	51.6%	6.0	1.4	0.6	0.3	2.1

James Young had a solid two games in the Final Four, and his performance reinforced my perception that he is the Kentucky player who should most seamlessly translate to the NBA. He doesn’t bully smaller competition to the extent his teammates do, and he is able to get his shots off vs. defenses of UConn’s caliber with his combination of size, length, a quick trigger, and a knack for hitting contested shots. His increase in eFG% down the stretch was largely driven by his 3’s finally starting to fall, as he shot 33.7% from 3 in the regular season vs. 41.7% in tournament play. His 2p% only fell off from 47.8% to 44.8% in spite of higher volume (8.0 2PA/40 vs 6.2) and tougher opposing defenses, and he finally started to make his free throws hitting 83.3% after a 67.4% regular season.

The shooting upticks are a welcome sign for Young. His regular season shooting stats were surprisingly mediocre considering how nice his form looks, and his NBA success hinges largely on him becoming an effective shooter. He is still only going to be 18 on draft night, and between his age, form, and ability to get shots off vs. good defenses, he has quite a bit of room to grow offensively and could become a good offensive player in the NBA.

That said, there are reasons to temper expectations. Like his teammates, his defense is not particularly good. He has the tools to be good on this end, but seems to lack acumen. And in spite of his ability to translate and room to grow offensively, he did not have a particularly effective season for a one way scorer. If his shot doesn’t develop well, he might be an Austin Rivers level flop. Even if his shot does develop well, he may not become significantly better than Nick Young. He is likely worth a late 1st round pick for the scoring upside, but he has plenty of bust equity as well.

Aaron Harrison

Season	PTS	eFG%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV
Regular	17.1	47.5%	4.1	2.6	1.4	0.4	2.2
Post	16.0	57.9%	2.1	1.2	1.0	0.2	1.3

Season	2PA	2P%	3PA	3p%	FTA	FT%
Regular	7.9	48.4%	5.1	30.6%	5.9	81.4%
Post	5.5	42.2%	6.1	48.0%	3.8	67.7%

I’m including Aaron Harrison’s shooting splits to show that there was exactly one thing he did well this postseason: make 3’s. His increase in eFG% and decrease in assists and turnovers is rooted in the fact that he attacked less and was used as a spot up shooter more, hitting 48% of his 3’s including a plethora of clutch shots. He earned casual fan acclaim for his timely shot making, but overall I was not impressed by his tournament showing.

I was somewhat hopeful for Harrison earlier in the year because I felt his 3P% was suffering from bad luck, and that his overall game might look quite good once his 3’s started falling. So while it is nice for his 3’s to violently progress to the mean, it isn’t encouraging when his production otherwise fell off a cliff. And I do not believe that his clutch shooting is indicative of any innate ability to score against tight defenses – he simply spotted up for 3’s and happened to make them. If anything I have cooled on him after his tourney play and do not feel that he is worth a 1st round selection. He’s a 2nd round pick in my estimation.

Andrew Harrison

Season	PTS	eFG%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV
Regular	14.1	42.0%	3.9	4.6	0.6	0.3	3.2
Post	12.4	40.6%	4.3	6.1	0.8	0.4	4.1

With his brother taking on more of a spot up role, Andrew Harrison took on a greater portion of the PG duties and it shows with significant upticks in both assists and turnovers. I strongly dislike almost everything about his game, as his sole strength appears to be bulldozing to the rim and drawing FT’s. He is a horrible decision maker, as evidenced by his turnover rate and eFG. There is plenty of room for him to improve as a college player if he elects to stay, but I simply don’t see his feel for the game ever becoming good enough for him to be a useful pro. Somebody will try to salvage him with a 2nd round flier, but I wouldn’t bother with him.

Alex Poythress

Season	PTS	eFG%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV
Regular	12.8	48.6%	10.5	1.1	0.6	1.7	2.1
Post	12.5	69.0%	7.4	0.3	0.8	1.1	2.1

Poythress was UK’s unsung hero of the tournament, as he hardly missed down the stretch. He shot 14/15 inside the arc in UK’s final 5 games, providing significant unacknowledged value. It does not appear he will be entering this year’s draft, as his stock has eroded with his regression this year. I am not particularly high on him but he may become worth drafting before all is said and done.

Dakari Johnson

Season	PTS	eFG%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV
Regular	16.0	57.6%	11.7	0.8	0.5	1.9	1.7
Post	12.2	55.6%	10.2	0.9	0.9	1.3	2.0

UK’s offensive rebound expert finished the season with a staggering 17.0% ORB rate. This exceeds his 15.0% DRB rate. His tournament was up and down, as he had some efficient games and other quiet ones. He is draftable but I suspect he will stay in school for his sophomore season.

Marcus Lee

It’s not even worth posting his stat lines with just 156 minutes on the season. He had a great 24 minutes vs. the soft interior defenses of Wisconsin and Michigan, and then posted goose eggs in 6 minutes vs. UConn’s significantly tougher defense. There’s not enough information to have much of an opinion on him at this point.

S16/E8 Recap: Arizona Upset By Frank Kaminsky’s Face

31 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

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Aaron Gordon, Frank Kaminsky, Julius Randle, Sam Dekker, Shabazz Napier

This past weekend a number of players improved their draft stock, but nobody skyrocketed their value like Frank Kaminsky did. After scoring 19 points against Oregon’s mediocre defense to help Wisconsin advance to the sweet 16, he faced off with Baylor’s twin towers: 6’9 Cory Jefferson and 7’1 Isaiah Austin. Baylor plays a zone defense that is not particularly effective as a whole considering their talent (77th best defense in the country according to kenpom.com). But they do have the 20th highest block rate which posed a prospective challenge for a player like Frank Kaminsky who has questionable tools and is most effective in the paint. After all, Baylor did limit Doug McDermott to just 15 points in a 85-55 shellacking of his Creighton team. Kaminsky had a nearly mistake-free game with 19 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists, 6 blocks, and 0 turnovers on 8/11 shooting en route to a 69-52 Wisconsin victory. All 8 of his FG’s were made at the rim, and 4 of them came with the 7’1 shot blocker Austin guarding him.

The amusing part is that I had mentioned in my podcast with Brew Hoop that Kaminsky was a player I valued above Doug McDermott, and then their results vs. Baylor emphatically supported that claim. Baylor beat Creighton by 30 and lost to Wisconsin by 17. While there is a fair bit of variance involved (for instance: Baylor shot 11/18 from 3 vs Creighton and 2/15 vs Wisky), the different results are indicative of the disparity between Kaminsky and McDermott’s NBA values. Baylor shot just 16/42 from 2 vs Wisconsin and 19/29 vs Creighton. Kaminsky made a clear impact on this end by blocking 6 shots. That exceeds McDermott’s season total of 5 blocks, which is also his career high. Height matters, and Kaminsky being 7’0 to McDermott’s 6’8 makes an enormous difference on both ends.

After disposing of Baylor, Kaminsky faced a tougher test vs. Arizona. I had picked Arizona to win it all in my bracket because I am in love with their defense. They simply do not allow easy baskets – they play elite transition defense, they close out on 3 point shooters, and they use their quickness and athleticism to cut off drives to the rim and funnel everything to the mid-range. According to hoop-math.com, 48.8% of their opponents’ shots are non-rim 2 pointers, the best mark in the NCAA. Putting this in perspective, the NCAA average is 29.3% and the second best team, UNC, is forcing teams to take 46.8% of their shots from mid-range. But what is truly amazing about Arizona is that they do not cede high quality looks, as opponents shoot just 32% on these non-rim 2 point attempts whereas UNC opponents hit 40.9% (NCAA average: 35.7%). They are custom built to expose any players who pad their stats vs inferior competition, and provide a matchup nightmare for most good college offenses.

In the end, though, the only person who is going to have nightmares from this matchup is Wildcats’ coach Sean Miller. In spite of his facial deficiencies, Frank Kaminsky could not be stopped in Anaheim. 7’0 center Kaleb Tarczewski struggled to guard him out to the perimeter due to Kaminsky’s quickness, and 6’9 Aaron Gordon struggled to bother his interior shot attempts due to Kaminsky’s height. Arizona’s defensive goal of forcing difficult shots could not be achieved against Kaminsky because he can score from anywhere and is tall enough to shoot over all of their players. He finished with 28 points, 11 rebounds, and 1 turnover on 11-20 FG while his teammates were limited to just 34 points on 13-41 FG and 8 turnovers. He singlehandedly put the Badgers in a position to upset Arizona, and in my opinion this was the most impressive individual performance of anybody this NCAA season.

His offensive game is reminiscent of Dirk Nowitzki – they are both 7’0 players who can score efficiently from 3, the mid-range, and the low post and are nearly indefensible once they catch the ball. Which is not to say that he will ever be nearly as good as Dirk, but his performance vs. Arizona speaks strongly in favor of his ability to translate to the pros.

The primary concerns for Kaminsky’s pro prospects lie on the defensive end, where he does not project to be good. That said, he is not necessarily going to be a sieve either. Much like Michigan, Creighton and Duke, Wisconsin values floor spacing and prefers to play with at least 4 shooters. Incidentally, these are also the top 4 offenses in the country. Wisconsin starts 6’7 Sam Dekker as a small ball PF, and Kaminsky is their only true starting big man with 6’7 Nigel Hayes backing him up. Yet Wisconsin’s defense (97.1 adjusted d-rtg as per kenpom.com) is much more effective than that of Michigan (102.1), Duke (102.3) and Creighton (104.1). They do have the weakest offense of the quartet by 2.5 to 3.8 points, but Kaminsky nevertheless deserves some credit for keeping their defense respectable as the sole rim protector. The Badgers are barely worse defensively than Kentucky (96.6) in spite of Kentucky’s elite size and athleticism.

Kaminsky’s monstrous tourney performance has enabled him to finally crack ESPN and DX’s top 100, but they still only rate him 52nd and 48th respectively. It seems certain that their rankings reflect a general bias against his physical appearance. While he may look like an uncoordinated accountant, he is an exceptionally smooth and skilled basketball player. I have him locked in as a 1st round value and believe he may merit late lottery consideration, even in the face of this loaded draft.

Other Risers
Aaron Gordon
I have written about his warts as both a horrific shooter and a tweener in the past, but his performance down the stretch and in the tourney has caused me to warm up to him. While his warts remain present and enigmatic, his strengths are so appealing that they may be nevertheless worth stomaching in the top 10. Gordon’s tournament included two excellent performances against top 15 defenses, shooting 8/10 vs Gonzaga and 7/9 vs San Diego State. He struggled vs. Wisconsin shooting just 3/11, but he still managed to tally 18 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, and 2 blocks all while competing hard on defense. He may not have epic steal and block rates, but he deserves a healthy portion of credit for helping Arizona rise from the #47 to #2 kenpom defense. And he even offered a glimmer of hope for his shooting ability, finishing the season 35.6% (16/45) from 3. I will be writing about him in more detail going forward – he is one of the more fascinating prospects in this draft.

Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
For all intents and purposes, Hollis-Jefferson is a slightly older and shorter doppelganger of Aaron Gordon. He shares Gordon’s shooting woes on non-rim 2’s (29.0% vs 27.5%), is much better on FT’s (68.2% vs 42.2%), and made fewer 3’s (2/10 vs 16/45). Otherwise their stats are frighteningly similar, and Hollis-Jefferson also deserves some credit for Arizona’s defensive leap. He had a solid tourney showing, playing well in all 4 games and boosting his FT% by shooting 20/23 at the line.

Nik Stauskas
This shouldn’t be a surprise since Stauskas played well against solid defenses throughout the regular season, but he continued to do so against three solid, athletic defenses in the tournament. Against Texas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, he cumulatively racked up 55 points and 13 assists while turning it over just 4 times. He also showed off his intelligence and creativity by making this pass vs. Tennessee:

Shabazz Napier
Napier turns 23 in July, and a player of his age should dominate 18-21 year old competition if they are going to become a quality pro. In the tournament Napier has done precisely that, racking up 93 points on 63.9% TS vs. four top 75 defenses. UConn’s strength has been in their half-court defense, as on offense they do not seem exceptionally well coached. They have plenty of shooting surrounding Napier, but their half-court offense seems to entail standing around and hoping Napier figures something out. Thus far it has worked for them. I am still not sure that Napier merits 1st round consideration, but if nothing else he is piecing together a reasonable argument in his favor.

Fallers
Gary Harris
Harris largely vanished vs. Virginia’s exceptional transition defense, finishing with just 6 points and 3 assists on 2/5 FG in 29 minutes. He redeemed himself vs UConn with 22 points on 8/14 shooting, but he scored largely off of jumpshots which mostly came in transition. While I still have him as a mid-1st round pick, his tourney performance casts doubt on his potential as a half-court slasher in the NBA.

Adreian Payne
Payne is a 23 year old 6’11 man, and while he dealt with injuries throughout the season he was finally healthy for the tournament. This was his opportunity to crush the younger competition he faced in the same way that Napier did, and he came up underwhelming. He had his best performance vs 15 point underdog Delaware, scoring 41 points highlighted by his 17/17 FT shooting. But then in the real matchups, he never shined. Against Harvard, Virginia, and UConn he finished with just 41 total points on 13/36 shooting. While he offers some prospective value as a role-playing stretch 4, it’s hard to get excited about a player of his age that isn’t flat out dominating the opposition. I do not believe he belongs in round 1.

Sam Dekker
Dekker has been rated as the consensus top prospect on Wisconsin all season long, but this acclaim now appears to be unjustified since he has been badly outshined by his teammate Frank Kaminsky. He scored just 7 points in each of his games vs. Arizona and Baylor, and that includes a banked in 3 pointer vs. Arizona. Perhaps he merely happened to go cold at the wrong time, but it would be encouraging if he could step it up with a strong Final 4 performance or two.

What about Kentucky?
Now that the Wildcats have finally pulled themselves together and vanquished 3 top 10 teams that all made last year’s Final 4, it seems inevitable that somebody must have improved their stock. Their most consistent performer has been Aaron Harrison, who has averaged 16.6 points in his past 7 games scoring at least 12 in every game. This largely stems from him hitting 22/44 3 point shots, including the game winners vs. both Louisville and Michigan. His 3p% has jumped from 30.6% to 35.7% during this stretch, but the other aspects of his game have not followed suit. He is averaging just 1.4 rebounds, 1.1 assists, and shooting 14/35 inside the arc in those same 7 games. His taking and making more 3’s has helped the team immensely, but I had already assumed he was suffering from bad variance on 3’s so this does not significantly alter my perception of him as a prospect.

Julius Randle has been steadily inching back up my board, as he seems to have cut down on his turnover issues by posting up less frequently. He has posted a double-double in every tournament game averaging 15.8 points, 12.0 rebounds, and just 2.0 turnovers. This sample includes solid games vs top 11 defenses Louisville and Wichita State, but he also drew favorable matchups in Michigan and Kansas State as their lack of size and shotblocking is directly in his wheelhouse. He has made the greatest genuine improvement of all Kentucky players, and has boosted his draft stock in my eyes more than any of his teammates. I stand by my central critiques of his game, but he will likely end up in the top 20 of my final big board.

Marcus Lee might be the player who helps his stock more than anybody if he turns in a strong Final 4 showing with Willie Cauley-Stein doubtful to play. He made a huge impact vs. Michigan, finishing with 10 points, 8 rebounds, and 2 blocks in 15 minutes largely stemming from his 4 putback dunks. This should be taken with a grain of salt against Michigan’s undersized defense, but Kentucky would not have won without Lee’s effort. If he builds on this opportunity, he could bolt for the NBA instead of staying another season at Kentucky battling for minutes in a crowded frontcourt.

Dakari Johnson had a big game vs. Louisville but has otherwise been quiet. James Young has been alternating between good and bad games. While Andrew Harrison had a decent game vs. Louisville, his 20 point game vs. Wichita State included 6 turnovers and he was nothing short of atrocious vs. Kansas State and Michigan. He has improved, but I still do not believe he is going to become a useful NBA player and would not draft him.

High School Scouts Say The Darndest Things

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by deanondraft in Miscellaneous, NCAA

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Andrew Harrison, Andrew Wiggins, Julius Randle, LeBron James, Noah Vonleh, Russell Westbrook, Zach LaVine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Searching For Bobby Portis: The Invisible 5 Star Freshman

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

≈ 8 Comments

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Arkansas, Bobby Portis, Julius Randle, Wayne Selden

It seems that being a 5 star freshman can buy prospects indefinite hype as a possible 1st round pick. After all, Wayne Selden is still ranked 24th at ESPN and 26th at DraftExpress after showing little indication that he has any clue how to play basketball over a 22 game sample. Selden was only the #13 RSCI freshman, so it would logically follow that #14 RSCI freshman Bobby Portis should be entering the 1st round discussion after demonstrating far more basketball playing ability with over twice the PER thus far (25.8 vs 12.8). But neither DraftExpress nor ESPN even have Portis in their top 100.

This is incredible to me. He had a higher RSCI rank than Joel Embiid, he has almost as good of a PER (25.8 vs 26.8), yet he’s not on anybody’s radar. This could imply that he has some irreparable malfunction to preclude him from being a successful pro, but his tools seem fine. He’s listed at 6’10” with a 7’1.5″ wingspan and 242 pounds, so he has pretty good size for an NBA PF. His athleticism and mobility don’t stand out, but they aren’t bad either. His tools appear to be average for an NBA PF across the board- nothing stands out and makes scouts drool, nor does anything significantly inhibits his odds of NBA success.

As a freshman he is only averaging 13.3 points and 6.6 rebounds per game, so perhaps scouts are not wowed by his bulk stats. But that comes in just 26.7 minutes per game with solid efficiency and low turnovers, which is strong production. In fairness Arkansas played a high volume of doormat opponents in non-conference, and Portis did get off to a slow start in SEC play. But he had been good enough to hover on my radar as I had him 34th on my inaugural big board, and recently he has started to find his stride.

After averaging just 8.2 points per game on poor shooting in his first 5 conference games, it may have appeared that he is nothing more than a big guy who owns doormats. But then he went on a 3 game stretch vs Auburn, vs Missouri, and @LSU where he averaged 16.3 pts 7.0 rebs on 18/31 FG 13/16 FT and committed just 5 turnovers. So when it looked like he may be starting to turn the corner, he dropped this monster game on Alabama:

	FG	FGA	FT	FTA	ORB	TOV	BLKS	PTS
Portis	14	17	6	6	3	0	6	35
Not Portis	8	30	14	17	7	10	3	30

Portis won this game for Arkansas singlehandedly. Alabama isn’t a world beater, they are the 112th kenpom team with the 100th ranked defense. But they aren’t a doormat and were good enough to cause a heap of trouble for his teammates. Portis scored in a variety of ways: jump shots, transition, cuts, putbacks. There wasn’t much isolation at all- I believe he scored on one drive to the hoop and didn’t post up at all. He appears to be a natural at scoring within the flow of the offense. And contributing 6 blocks on the other end isn’t too bad either.

It appears that Portis’s malfunction is that he doesn’t have a single trait that scouts can latch onto and drool over. He projects to score well in a complementary role, but is not a go to scorer who will average 20 points per game in the NBA. He also shows decent potential defensively, but isn’t a stopper on this end. He is a good shooter for such a young big as he hits 77.6% of his free throws, but his 3 point range may not be developed as he is just 4 for 21 on 3’s thus far. But he also doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses that will preclude him from success. He is skilled, plays hard, has good feel for the game, shows potential to be solid on both ends, and he has plenty of room to grow as he turns 19 in 2 days.

I am possibly the only person on the planet who believes Portis makes for an interesting comparison with Julius Randle. They are both skilled 5 star freshman PF’s who play in the SEC. Their tools are not far apart, as Portis has more length (7’1.5″ vs 6’11” wingspan), Randle has more strength, and their athleticism and mobility appear to be similar (although perhaps Randle’s spryness would stand out if he trimmed down). Their offensive ratings adjusted for SOS and usage is close with Randle having a slim 1.8 point advantage. In a world that interprets draft related information with reasonable efficiency, a Portis vs. Randle debate would be raging right now. Yet ESPN and DraftExpress have Randle in the top 5 and Portis not top 100.

Note that SOS is average opponent adjusted defensive rating as per kenpom.com. FTR is FTA/FGA:

	Usage	O-Rtg	eFG	FTR	FT%	SOS
Portis	21.2	122.2	55.9%	0.363	77.6%	103.8
Randle	28.0	113.5	53.0%	0.798	73.5%	102.1

	ORB%	DRB%	STL%	BLK%	AST%	TOV%
Portis	10.2	16.1	2.1	5.9	10.6	11.0
Randle	14.9	21.7	1.0	2.6	11.6	20.9

Portis has superior defensive awareness and his length enables him to make more plays. I believe he clearly projects to be better on this end in spite of inferior rebounding. Offensively, Randle is a superior offensive rebounder and gets to the line far more, but Portis has a considerably lower turnover rate. Also Randle creates for himself far more, with a higher usage and a lower dependency on assists (Randle assisted on 32.7% of 2’s, Portis assisted on 57.7%). Randle’s ability to be the go to guy likely plays a large role in his luster to scouts, but his offensive workload is already taking a hit in SEC play and he may never be good enough to be a go to scorer in the NBA. Portis’s lack of isolation scoring puts a cap on his upside, but the flipside is that he will be an easier fit into NBA lineups as he can make a positive impact playing off the ball. And since he has longer arms and doesn’t operate in traffic quite as often, he’s less of a translation risk. In my estimation they offer similar net value offensively, and Portis gets the overall edge due to not being such a defensive liability.

I could be wrong to prefer Portis, but I am not wrong that it is a subject worthy of debate. Randle simply doesn’t have an obvious advantage once the prospects are placed side by side. This goes to show exactly how inefficient the expert rankings are at this juncture of the season. It is insane that Randle is being discussed as a creme de la creme prospect while Portis is entirely off the radar. This is why the RSCI rankings and early mock drafts should be taken with an enormous grain of salt. The same people who anointed players such as Wiggins and Randle as the next big things are the same folks who thought that Darko, Shabazz Muhammad, Austin Rivers, etc were going to be great. Give them credit for being right a decent portion of the time, but the fact remains that they are laughably wrong quite a bit as well. Any intelligent prospect analysis should necessarily assume that this is a perpetual possibility. Otherwise we are nothing more than lemmings following louder, wronger lemmings to unfortunate conclusions. Fortunately it isn’t a matter of life or death, but then again I doubt that death is all that much worse than rooting for the next Darko after your team lost on purpose for a season in order to acquire him.

Video

A Randle Walk Down Fraud Street

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

bust, John Calipari, Julius Randle, Kentucky

Julius Randle is the #2 RSCI freshman and is ranked as a top 5 draft pick (#5 ESPN #4 DX). All of those are far too high and any team that expends a pick in that range on him will be sorely disappointed. He is at best a shaky defensive prospect with questionable offensive translation. His performance and playing style are both rife with red flags that I highlight in this video.

Some may say I’m being too harsh, as he has good pedigree and good statistics and I’m looking for the negative in every play he makes. This is true, but it’s also rare for a lottery prospect to have such extreme red flags. First let’s try to back trace the source of his pedigree. According to Kenpom.com, Kentucky has played 5 woefully bad defenses (ranked 229th or worse) and 15 defenses ranging from respectable to good (ranked 136th or better). This gives us a conveniently large rift to draw the line between cupcakes and not cupcakes to see how Randle fares against each grade of defense:

opposing D	Pts/30	Rbs/30	Ast/30	TOV/30	eFG	FTA:FGA
average +	14.5	9.4	1.6	3.6	50.0%	0.68
pathetic	22.7	13.7	2.1	2.1	64.0%	1.16

He absolutely demolishes bad teams and his bulk stats, efficiency, and turnover rates all fall off a cliff against respectable opponents. It is natural that there should be some gap, but his discrepancy is massively troubling. It should shed some light on how he became rated so highly. He relies heavily on his strength to completely dominate smaller competition. So if he put that level of hurting on doormat college defenses, imagine what he did to even smaller and weaker high school defenses. Since no high school defense is in a position to expose his weaknesses, it is easy to see why he garnered so much acclaim as a recruit.

On the other hand, given the slope of respectable college defenses to bad ones, imagine what the output would be if there was another data point of NBA defenses that completely crush the good college defenses he has been facing. It would be ugly, and this alone causes serious concern for his NBA translation.

His overall stats should not be taken at face value, since the tough portion is only tangentially related to his NBA projection and his performance against dregs is completely worthless. But for the sake of argument let’s pretend that he happened to have good days against the bad teams and see how his overall stats measure up to similar players. Let’s start with basic offense: usage, O-Rtg, and defensive strength of schedule as per kenpom.com. Final column is a catchall that adjusts each player’s O-Rtg to Randle once they are normalized to the level of defenses he has faced and his usage rate at the standard 1.25 points of O-Rtg per 1 pct of usage:

Player	Season	Usage	O-Rtg	Opp D-Rtg	Adj O-Rtg
Kevin Love	Freshman	27.4	126.9	98.9	129.1
Kelly Olynyk	RS Junior	30.2	123.1	99.6	127.9
Derrick Williams	Soph	28.6	123	99.2	126.2
Jared Sullinger	Freshman	26.9	120.9	99.1	122.0
T Hansbrough	Freshman	26.5	119	98.3	120.5
Zach Randolph	Freshman	26	116.9	97	119.3
Anthony Bennett	Freshman	26	113.9	99	113.8
Julius Randle	Freshman	28.5	112	101.7	112.0
Troy Murphy	Freshman	26.3	109.2	99.5	108.8
JJ Hickson	Freshman	26.6	107.4	99	107.9

Kevin Love is the one example of a player with Randle’s size and poor athleticism who has become an NBA star. But he completely outclassed Randle as an NCAA freshman with vastly superior basketball IQ, outside shooting, and pretty much everything else. Randle’s offensive upside is not in the same stratosphere, which rules him out as a reasonable top 5 selection given his defensive woes. Even when you include his dominance over the dregs, he finds himself at the bottom of the list in not particularly flattering company.

	Steal %	Block %	Height	Wing
Jared Sullinger	2.2	4.0	6’9″	7’1.25″
T Hansbrough	2.2	2.3	6’9.5″	6’11.5″
Zach Randolph	2.1	3.7	6’9″	7’5″
Troy Murphy	2.0	4.1	6’11”	6’11”
Derrick Williams	1.9	2.3	6’9″	7’1.5″
Kelly Olynyk	1.5	5.0	7’0″	6’9.75″
JJ Hickson	1.4	4.8	6’9″	7’3″
Anthony Bennett	1.4	4.5	6’7″	7’1″
Kevin Love	1.4	5.0	6’9.5″	6’11.25″
Julius Randle	0.7	2.5	6’9″	6’11”

Even with 3 steals vs LSU, Randle finds himself at the bottom of the steal list by a comfortable margin, and only slightly ahead of Hansbrough and Williams in block rate. Anthony Bennett is the only taller player and Kelly Olynyk is the only player with shorter arms, but they each have advantages in the other category to help offset.

Zach Randolph is a common comparison for Randle. But on top of being better as a freshman, he also has significantly longer arms which shows how misguided it is to expect similar production from Julius.

Randle is a good example of why steals are a strong predictor of NBA success. In the Stauskas video, I showed an example of him using smarts + instincts to read the offense and make a steal. Randle is so woefully slow at reading offenses that he can’t do this, and most of his steals are the byproduct of a teammate stripping a ball that falls into his lap, including the completely undeserved one in the video that he fails to corral (also one of his steals against Vanderbilt was a blatant error). And these woes are also correlated to offensive issues. Steals are more than a proxy for athleticism – they also can shed insight into a player’s basketball IQ. Randle has mediocre NBA tools, but for the college level they are pretty good and he should make far more plays than he does.

	O-Reb%	D-Reb%	Assist%	TOV%
Julius Randle	14.9	22.2	11.9	22.0
JJ Hickson	11.8	21.8	9.2	21.1
Zach Randolph	18.7	20.0	10.1	18.5
Kelly Olynyk	11.8	20.5	15.0	18.4
Derrick Williams	11.8	21.9	8.7	18.3
Troy Murphy	11.1	22.0	9.6	18.2
T Hansbrough	14.0	14.6	8.7	17.1
Anthony Bennett	10.2	21.8	8.7	15.2
Kevin Love	15.4	28.5	14.0	15.0
Jared Sullinger	12.4	23.8	8.6	13.7

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the two lowest turnover rates are also the two highest IQ players in this sample in Love and Sullinger. Basketball IQ is a good way to overcome questionable tools, but Randle likely grades out worse than anybody else in the sample in this regard as supported by his exorbitant turnover rate. He does have a good assist rate as he is a willing passer, but nevertheless turns it over a ton because he is not sharp enough to make good decisions on the fly and often attacks doubles and triples when he clearly should not.

It is worth noting that his stats do not stand out from that of JJ Hickson, except Hickson has obviously superior length and athleticism. Hickson has not been an especially rewarding return on the 19th overall pick (his stats are OK, but Portland improved significantly by replacing him with Robin Lopez), so what would make Randle worth so much more?

	FTA:FGA	FT%	3PA	3P%	eFG
Derrick Williams	0.871	74.6%	74	56.8%	65.0%
Kelly Olynyk	0.497	77.6%	30	30.0%	64.1%
Kevin Love	0.635	76.7%	82	35.4%	59.4%
JJ Hickson	0.706	67.7%	1	0.0%	59.0%
Zach Randolph	0.536	63.5%	1	0.0%	58.7%
Anthony Bennett	0.467	70.1%	96	37.5%	58.0%
T Hansbrough	0.724	73.9%	4	50.0%	57.3%
Troy Murphy	0.591	74.1%	13	30.8%	54.4%
Jared Sullinger	0.519	76.8%	40	40.0%	53.7%
Julius Randle	0.798	72.9%	11	18.2%	53.6%

Randle also grades out with the worst eFG in the sample, which is troubling since he does not currently have 3 point range and he will see much higher % of shots rejected in the pros. He largely relies on bullying his opponent for free throws, but that trick did not translate favorably for Derrick Williams who shares a poor feel for the game, and appears to be a bust in spite of superior tools and stats.

Troy Murphy offers an inkling of hope, as he shares a similar tools and freshman shooting stats and became a prolific NBA 3 point shooter. It is not worth gambling on Randle on the chance that he can develop Murphy’s shooting touch, but it is a possible out for him.

Defensively Randle has decent man to man potential and competes hard, but lacks rim protection ability and has horrific instincts and awareness. He will be bad on this end and needs to be great offensively to atone and become a useful starter. Yet he projects as a post-up scorer with mediocre length, mediocre athleticism, poor basketball IQ, and a loose grip that causes him to get stripped frequently. His strength only gets him so far as his bully ball is already failing against respectable college defenses. I am not sure how his offense can be projected to be good enough to make him a solid starter in spite of his defensive woes, let alone give him a shot of becoming a top 30 player to justify a lottery pick. Perhaps he can improve his skills and instincts and find a coach who can put him in a position to succeed, but I simply don’t see the upside that he is purported to have.

I had rated Randle 12th on my big board, but after compiling this video and post I realized that was far too high and intended to drop him. And then he had a horrible game against LSU’s long, athletic defense to re-affirm my suspicions. He is likely the Shabazz Muhammad of this year’s class and a fringe 1st rounder. He can improve his standing by showing some semblance of competence against good defenses, but I wouldn’t wait underwater for it to happen.

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Tag Archives: Julius Randle

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Searching For Bobby Portis: The Invisible 5 Star Freshman

A Randle Walk Down Fraud Street