Tag Archives: Russell Westbrook

Diet Russ: The Lottery Freshman Nobody Is Talking About

25 Sunday Dec 2016

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This year’s draft class is the gift that keeps giving. There are ten possibly elite freshman in the class, and a handful of other good ones that deserve lottery consideration. And recently an 11th possibly elite one has begun to emerge, and nobody is talking about him yet.

Diet Russ

One of the most badly overused draft comparisons is Russell Westbrook. People want to believe that every big PG with a hint of athleticism has potential to develop at an outlier rate from a pretty good NCAA player into an NBA star like Westbrook. But Westbrook is an outlier of outliers, as he is likely the most explosive player in NBA history and he complements that with an elite motor, vision, and work ethic to develop into the beast he is today.

So when you compare a player to Westbrook, the first problem is that he is definitely less athletic. The other problems are that his basketball instincts may be broken in some way, and that most player do not progress at the same outlier rate. Thus there is only one Russ, and we are left grasping at straws to try to find Diet Russ.

But Westbrook is nevertheless an important outlier to show the upside of athleticism. He is currently posting the highest single season BPM in NBA history, yet players such as Michael Beasley and OJ Mayo were drafted ahead of him. His NCAA performance offered no clear indication that he was on track to becoming an NBA star. It was merely enough to demonstrate that his basketball instincts were not broken for a young, athletic freak. Let’s compare our future Diet Russ to the real version’s sophomore season via per 40 minute pace adjusted stats:

TRB AST STL BLK TOV PTS
Diet Russ 7.0 5.0 2.1 0.5 3.5 18.8
Actual Russ 4.7 5.2 2.0 0.2 3.0 15.5

Diet Russ is a month younger than sophomore Westbrook, and he does not look diluted at all in terms of production. He has more rebounds and blocks than the triple double machine, and scores at a higher rate. Shooting splits:

2PA 2P% 3PA 3P% FTA FT%
Diet Russ 6.6 60.5% 5.6 34.4% 6.4 78.4%
Actual Russ 9.8 49.7% 2.4 33.8% 4.7 71.3%

The only flag is the lower 2PA rate, but I believe it largely stems from better shooting range and shot selection. As per synergy only 1 of his 38 2PA have come from mid-range and 4 have come on short range jumpers. When he attacks he tends to get all the way to the rim, and he appears to have more 3 point potential than Westbrook at the same age.

Who is this Mystery Freshman?

It is 5* Texas guard Andrew Jones.

As always, there are caveats. He is an explosive leaper, but he does not match Westbrook’s power and explosion. Also his statistics are a small 230 minute sample that includes a fair share of weaker opposition. In spite of his good 2P%, Jones still struggles to make layups off the dribble, as his handle is still limited and his PG ability is a major work in progress. And while his early rebound rate is impressive, he gets dwarfed by Russ’s ORB% (1.0 vs 5.8) which is a more significant signal than DRB%.

But it is hard to not be intrigued. Unlike other super athletes such as Andrew Wiggins and Jaylen Brown, his basketball instincts do not seem to be broken. Like Westbrook, he merely requires significant development of his point guard skills. This is far from guaranteed, and it is possible that he never progresses enough to become a good NBA player. But in the instance that it does, there is nothing preventing him from becoming a top 10 NBA star.

Compare him to a prospect such as Kentucky’s De’Aaron Fox. Fox is quicker with drastically more polished PG skills. But Jones is an inch taller with more explosiveness and better strength, and if he closes the gap in PG skills he has more potential to finish in traffic against NBA defenses as well as defend NBA shooting guards. Further, his superior shot gives him much more potential to play off the ball as well as make pull-up jumpers when he can not get all the way to the rim. Fox’s upside is tantalizing in the scenario that he learns to shoot, but Jones has an even more appealing upside if he can learn to play point guard.

Of course this is not to say that Jones necessarily will develop into a point guard. Right now his interior buckets are limited to beating the defense down the court, attacking before the defense is set, or attacking mismatches off the dribble. Jones rarely attacks when there is not a clear seam, which is indicative both of good feel for the game as well as the current limitations in his ball skills.

More Than Just a Potential Slasher

The offensive selectivity should prove to be a nice feature if he never develops into a great scorer. He still would have some potential as a 3 and D player who can attack closeouts and move the ball as a super role player. Granted, neither his 3 or D are guaranteed to be elite. Defensively his rebounds, steals, blocks, and athleticism show promise, and he can move well laterally. But he is also undersized for a SG and does not appear to be a lockdown defender at this stage of his career. His early shooting statistics show enough promise, and he appears to have NBA 3 point range. But shooting is difficult to predict, and in AAU play he only shot 31% on 3’s and 69% on FT’s.

Ultimately there is no guarantee that any of his passing, shooting, defense, or offensive creation ability to prove to be above average at the NBA level. Jones is largely a mystery box, and he may never fulfill his potential. But there is also nothing broken or sorely limited about any of his abilities. For a great athlete with good feel and instincts, that offers a gargantuan upside tail that makes him an excellent gamble in the lottery.

Jones is a mystery box, and early in his freshman career it is difficult to rank him with any certitude. But he looks like he is probably worth a top 10 pick in the draft and possibly top 5, as his upside tail is as elite as most of the other stud freshman in the class. He will not develop into a do it all monster like Russell Westbrook because nobody will, but if he becomes a the diet version plus a better 3P shot and more efficient shot selection, that is an awesomely valuable player.

Andrew Jones has slid under the radar via being outside of the top 20 in recruiting rankings as well as Texas’s disappointing start to the season, but it is time to start giving him attention as he is yet another gem in a loaded freshman class.

High School Scouts Say The Darndest Things

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Miscellaneous, NCAA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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