Parsing through the NCAA Prospects: Part 1

23 Monday Jun 2014

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.

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.