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Dean On Draft

~ NBA Draft Analysis

Dean On Draft

Tag Archives: Trae Young

Draft Takeaways

22 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

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Collin Sexton, deanthony melton, Jaren Jackson Jr, jarred vanderbilt, Josh Okogie, keita bates-diop, lonnie walker, Luka Doncic, Mikal Bridges, Trae Young, travis schlenk, Vince Edwards, Zhaire Smith

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1) Dallas Steals Luka from Atlanta in the most lopsided trade in NBA Draft History

Doncic is the best prospect since Anthony Davis and Trae Young has no business going in the top 5. This will be known as an infamous robbery before long.

Not only did Dallas steal a rare prospect from the #5 overall slot, but they did so at a reasonable cost of a top 5 protected pick. It’s less valuable than the pick that Boston received to swap Fultz for Tatum, and even less valuable than the pick that Philly received to move down from just #10 to #16 in this draft.

With a fairly pedestrian price to move up, this is BY FAR worst draft day trade in NBA history for Atlanta. It crushes Ty Thomas for LaMarcus Aldridge, as Thomas was the better talent who developed much worse. Trae is worse than Luka in every regard.

2) Travis Schlenk is a Terrible GM

travis_schlenk_fb

It’s obvious Schlenk’s strategy is to copy the Warriors in Atlanta, and it shows with his draft night strategy taking Trae Young (Steph), Kevin Huerter (Klay), and Omari Spellman (Draymond).

The Spellman and Huerter picks were fine, but that’s sheer luck that the players who vaguely reminded him of Warrior starters happened to be decent.

The more important decision was at #3 when there were two possible franchise changing stars in Luka and Jaren, and instead he traded down for a fairly low price to reach for a guy who had no business being in the top 5. This is the type of stuff that makes or breaks franchise, and Schlenk destroyed the Hawks’ future upside with this decision.

There will never be another Steph or another Draymond, and it’s senseless to try to build a team around finding one. Travis Schlenk is going to learn this the hard way, as this trade horribly sets the franchise back.

3) Philly Gets More In Return For Mikal Bridges Than Atlanta For Luka Doncic

Zhaire Smith is a better prospect than Trae Young, and the 2021 unprotected Miami pick is MUCH better than the top 5 protected Dallas pick.

The one and done rule is going to be eliminated in 2021, which means there will be twice as many lotto prizes as normal. Picking #19 in that draft will be like picking #10 in a normal draft, picking #13 will be like a normal #7, and so on.

Not to mention that Miami does not have the best longterm current roster, and has sneaky downside to be a lotto team.

That pick is worth more than Mikal Bridges, and so is Zhaire Smith. Not to mention that Zhaire is an excellent fit in Philadelphia, this trade was an incredible coup for the 76ers.

4) What is Phoenix Even Doing?

I have no idea. I like Ayton, but it is definitely a mistake to take him over Luka and Jaren who every smart person agrees are the top 2 in this draft. And other than that, they seem to be willing to mortgage the farm on Mikal Bridges who they see as the final role player piece to their core of Booker, Jackson, and Ayton.

As it is they have 3 talented but badly flawed “stars” and invested some serious assets in a pure role playing wing. If Ayton pans out this could be a perennial 45-50 win roster, but there isn’t really championship upside here and there is downside for things to go quite a bit worse.

And not that it really matters at #59 overall, but George King is a hilarious waste of a draft pick.

5) Denver Gambles On Injured Players

gettyimages-913988290-e1519187037641

If Michael Porter Jr. and Jarred Vanderbilt never got hurt this year, they could have been the #1 and #10 picks in the draft. Getting talents like that at #14 and #40 can only be a good thing.

I am unsure what to expect of Porter, and gun to my head I would have rather taken Zhaire Smith with the pick. But it’s hard to knock the gamble– players with Porter’s talent are never available at #14.

But the pick I absolutely LOVE Is getting that sweet, sweet Vandy Candy in round 2. Vanderbilt is an absolute steal, as he is a 5* recruit who was star of the Hoop Summit, is a monster rebounder who can pass off the dribble, and if he stays healthy is the favorite to be the best player who wasn’t drafted in the top 20.

6) Pop Has Lost His Edge

It’s been a rough year for Gregg Popovich, as he lost his wife and he will likely lose his star player in Kawhi as well. He is getting old at age 69, and is near retirement, and he just doesn’t have the edge he used to.

Lonnie Walker was a fine pick at #18, but Kevin Huerter or Josh Okogie who went at 19 and 20 would have been more exciting + traditional Spurs-y type picks. Chimezie Metu at 49 overall is a waste of a draft slot.

It’s sad to see such a prolonged era of excellence come to an end, but nothing lasts forever. Pop will retire soon, and the Spurs will have a long climb back to relevance. He was the best coach in the NBA for almost 20 years, but now his time is coming to an end and the Spurs are just another mediocre team.

7) Minnesota with a pair of value picks

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Josh Okogie and Keita Bates-Diop were two of the better value picks in the draft. They both have solid role player potential that can solidly upgrade Andrew Wiggins and Jamal Crawford longterm.

I’m also a buyer of Tyus Jones, and if Thibs can refrain from investing in too many flawed talents and gets rid of Wiggins, the Wolves could end up with a solid cast around Karl-Anthony Towns and Jimmy Butler.

8) Cleveland is awful

LeBron is going to leave, Collin Sexton is going to be awful as a rookie, and the Cavs are going to be mind numbingly bad once again. They will contend for #1 overall pick in 2019.

9) Daryl Morey Stays Amazing

The Rockets entered the draft with one pick at #46 overall, and they came away with a top 20 prospect in Melton, one of best under the radar sleepers in Vince Edwards, and everybody’s favorite sleeper in Gary Clark.

It’s possible that these prospects all amount to nothing. I similarly lauded Morey in 2016 when he nabbed Chinanu Onuaku and Zhou Qi. But these are such low cost acquisitions it hardly matters. When they work they will work better than most other 2nd rounders or late 1sts.

10) Jaren Jackson Jr. will forever be underappreciated

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Jaren is a really amazing prospect who deserves a good team, and he ended up in a terrible situation.

Most distressing is he will play for a terrible coach in JB Bickerstaff who likely fails to maximize his elite defensive prowess. And to make it worse, the Grizzlies have zero young talent, owe a future 1st to Boston, and Conley and Gasol will both be well past their primes by the time Jaren can legally buy alcohol.

This badly reminisces of KG’s team situation in Minnesota, where he had an MVP level season in 04-05 and only finished 11th in MVP voting because his team was so bad they missed the playoffs.

Jaren is an elite prospect but his goodness will likely never be fully appreciated in Memphis.

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Is Trae Young Getting Overhyped?

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA, Scouting Reports

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Trae Young

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Everybody loves Trae Young, as he is a skill wizard that reminisces of Steph Curry.

But he is not Steph, and I have expressed this sentiment in a data driven analysis of his team’s performance. But since not everybody is into data, let’s key in on qualitative factors that are being overlooked:

1) He is really, really small

Trae measured just 6’1.75″ in shoes with a 6’3″ wingspan at the combine. This is shorter than Steve Nash, Steph Curry, and Chauncey Billups who are all listed at 6’3″.

The vast majority of good players listed at 6’2″ or less have had elite athleticism on their side. Chris Paul, Kemba Walker, Mike Conley, Kyle Lowry, Tony Parker, and Ty Lawson were all described as elite athletes in pre-draft scouting reports at DraftExpress.

Trae may have underrated quickness and speed, but nobody believes it is top shelf. He is in a physical tier where nobody has been elite.

The only player who *maybe* had similar physical limitations and excelled was John Stockton. He is before my time, and I do not have a strong grasp on his athleticism. But for the sake of argument we will say he is physically similar to Trae. Except there is one key difference

2) Trae’s Defense Is Awful

John Stockton was a 5 time NBA all-defense selection. If you are 6’1″ without freakish athleticism, you need to make a positive impact in every possible way to sum to elite production. And Trae is downright abysmal on defense, where it is not clear that he even cares to get stops.

Oklahoma’s defense declined from 39th best to 85th best returning almost everybody after adding Trae. He rates as by far the worst defensive guard in the class via Jacob Goldstein’s PIPM metric, and his defense is visibly terrible in this scouting video created by @GuillaumeBInfos.

He is probably going to be the worst defensive player in the NBA as a rookie, and there is not a ton of room for improvement. His physical profile makes his defense risky enough even with good effort, and he has such a low starting point it is hard to see him ever becoming decent on this end.

If Trae is 3 or 4 points worse than Stockton or Curry on D, that puts a ton of pressure on his offense to merely achieve goodness, let alone greatness.

3) Will he perform better in a smaller role with less of an offensive burden?

He played AAU with the Porter bros Michael and Jontay, and did not show clearly better efficiency in a more limited offensive role. He also shot poorly playing for Team USA in FIBA u18 championship in 2016, as well as the Nike Global Challenge in 2015.

There is some possibility that he lacks the basketball IQ to be an efficient scorer in a medium usage role. He appears to be an extremely skilled chucker who was able to succeed early in his Oklahoma career when he was hot against soft defenses.

Maybe he can learn to be more efficient over time, but based on current information there is limited reason for optimism.

4) Trae fell off a cliff vs better defenses

Most of statistical goodness came against soft defenses. When he faced good defenses his production fell off a cliff. Compare Trae’s per 40 stats vs. top 60 defenses to Steph Curry’s 5 career NCAA tournament games:

Pts eFG% AST TOV Opp DRtg
Steph 33.6 56.3% 3.6 1.9 89.5
Trae 27.7 47.7% 7.9 6.3 95.8

People commonly lament the attention Trae drew from defenses, but Steph got the same attention vs much tougher defenses in the tournament and he shined.

These splits were a signal that Steph had some cerebral advantage to translate his goodness to higher levels while Trae did the opposite. It would be a good idea to stop making this comp forever.

5) Is Trae a High IQ Passer?

Trae has excellent vision, and Chris Stone made a reasonable case that he made a positive effect on his teammates. But the vast majority on his effect came on Brady Manek– a 3* recruit who was much better than expected and happened to specialize in offense. Once you give most of the credit for Manek’s performance to Manek, Trae’s effect on his teammates is only slightly positive.

When you factor in his high turnover rate, and his inability to punish defenses for the insane attention he saw, it’s hard to argue that Trae is an elite passing prospect.

Trae’s passing was good this year, and he could eventually blossom into great. But there is no clear signal that he is a historically elite passer (as I argued for Lonzo Ball last year).

If Trae merely becomes an 85th percentile passing point guard in the NBA, he will likely stick in the league. But it will not be enough to be great in spite of his disadvantages. He needs to be a crazy outlier in this regard, and the early signals say that he is probably not.

6) Is He Actually An Elite Shooter?

Trae has never shot above 36% from 3 at any level. Just in case you needed another reason to know why it is a bad idea to compare him to a player who makes 44% of his NBA 3’s at a high volume.

Part of this is due to awful shot selection and poor size, and he has some non-zero chance of becoming the 2nd best shooter in NBA history. But he has a long way to go, and his shooting may always be undermined by his inability to get clean looks.

7) Does Trae deserve excuses?

It’s amazing how commonly people excuse Trae’s flaws by explaining how bad his teammates were and how many triple teams he saw.

These type of excuses should be reserved for an elite talent like DeAndre Ayton who is so physically gifted that he has significant margin of error for his NBA success.

Trae Young is in a physical tier where almost nobody succeeds in the NBA and he needs to be essentially *perfect* to be great. Yet he has the following flaws:

–Doesn’t play defense
–Awful shot selection
–No history of efficient play
–Struggles to get shot off against tough opponents
–No clear positive effect on his teammates’ performance

His skill and vision is rare enough such that he can nevertheless find an NBA niche. But does he actually sound like a player that is an intelligent gamble in the high lottery?

Bottom Line

I don’t see a path to him sniffing Steph Curry’s level of goodness. Maybe he can become a low end all-star like the Dallas version of Steve Nash, but he needs a ton to go right for that to happen. If he falls short of Nash, he is going to be a difficult fit into a good starting lineup. He can be a bench microwave, but as lead guard his team will have limited playoff upside.

The realistic upside comp for him is Isaiah Thomas. IT drew some MVP chatter for his box score stats in Boston, but ultimately did not help the offense drastically more than he hurt the defense, translated poorly to the playoffs, and the Celtics became a better team after parting ways with him. That is not a player worth targeting in the lottery– Thomas slid to last pick in the draft for good reason.

In reality, Trae will likely be worse than Thomas. As special as his vision and skill are, he has even more qualities that are especially bad to drag them down.

He has such a weird and polarized profile, it is difficult to say exactly where he should rate. He has some non-trivial value. But there is currently too much wishful thinking that he may be Steph, and I would bet that anybody who drafts him in the top 10 will be disappointed with the result.

Is Trae Young the Next Stephen Curry?

13 Sunday May 2018

Posted by deanondraft in NCAA

≈ 4 Comments

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Trae Young

carltoncol_1231spo 11.JPG

Trae Young has gained immense hype as an outlier PG, as he posted monster freshman stats for Oklahoma averaging 27 points and 9 assists. He thrives on his excellent shooting, as he made 3.7 three pointers per game and backed it up with 86% FT.

His main weakness is poor physical tools, as he is just 6’2″ with a 6’4″ wingspan and limited athleticism. But Stephen Curry has overcome similar physical limitations, so it’s worth considering whether Trae has similar upside before writing him off.

What If He’s Not Steph?

There isn’t a strong middle ground for small and unathletic players to succeed as decent starters when they fall short of being an elite outlier. After Steph the next best diminutive non-athletes currently are bench players such as Tyus Jones, Shabazz Napier, and Trey Burke.

Steve Nash provides another example of an elite past PG, but him and Steph are rare breeds. They establish that a small non-athlete can be an MVP candidate if he is either

1) The best shooter of all time with elite passing and IQ or
2) The best passer of all time with elite shooting and IQ

Anything less than that, and you are probably a bench player. It’s a steep curve with little margin for error.

Golden State Warriors v Phoenix Suns

Trae and the Sooners

This past season Oklahoma returned all top 9 rotation players but PG’s Jordan Woodard and Darrion Strong-Moore. Overall they returned 79% of their minutes that rated comparatively well statistically, as 81% of their win shares and 80% of their minute weighted BPM came back.

The only significant additions were Trae Young and Brady Manek. You would expect that replacing mediocre PG minutes with elite ones while everybody else gained experience would catapult the Sooners forward. But they only gently crept up the standings.

The Sooners improved by 7.2 pts/100 on defense, but gave most of it back by regressing 4.6 pts/100 on defense. Overall they took a small step forward as they progressed from the #65 kenpom team to #48.

In spite of Trae crushing individual expectations, the Sooners underachieved pre-season expectations with every stat model and poll projecting them top 40.

When individual and team success misalign like this, it’s a flag to take the individual stats with a major grain of salt. Especially for a player with his monster assist rate, it is alarming that he may not have helped the team with his passing as much as he hurt it with his defense.

Big 12 Swooners

Everything was peachy for Trae entering January. He was on fire and so were the Sooners at 12-1 with the #13 kenpom rank. But they had yet to face a single top 80 defense, and unfortunately 16 of their 19 remaining games came against top 60 defenses.

Over the second half of the season, Trae came crashing to earth and so did Oklahoma. His per 40 minute splits tell the story:

Pts Ast TOV
vs non-Top 80 D 35.1 12.3 5.3
vs Top 60 D 27.7 7.9 6.3

This is ugly. Notably his assist rate fell off a cliff against better defenses. Trae has complained about seeing frequent double teams, but he could have done a better job of punishing them with his passing.

eFG% 3PA 3P%
vs non-Top 80 D 56.6% 12.6 39.7%
vs Top 60 D 47.7% 10.7 32.7%

Further, his shotmaking took a major hit against better opponents. He faced bigger defensive players, struggled to get his shot off, and forced low quality attempts that often missed. This is a major concern in the NBA, as most 6’5″ pros can easily stay in front him and tightly contest his shot.

Everybody wants to throw Trae’s teammates under the bus, but Oklahoma was 2.3 pts per 100 better in conference play in ’16-17 when the same players were less experienced than they were in ’17-18 with Trae.

Maybe we should focus less on Trae’s teammates being bad, and instead consider the possibility that Trae is the bad Sooner who will be bad in the NBA later.

Bottom Line

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In spite of his many flags, there is some hope for Trae. His individual stats cannot be completely ignored, as he has a rare combination of shotmaking ability and vision. He could become a very good pro if his decision making rapidly improves over time and he isn’t too bad on D.

But this is a long-shot gamble. He will likely be bad defensively, he will have trouble getting past most NBA defensive players, he will have trouble getting his shot off, and even though he sees the floor well he is not currently a high IQ passer.

He is such an outlier that it is fair to give him non-zero all-star equity. But this is a low % outcome, and there aren’t many cases where he falls short and is still useful.

Realistic Comps

The next tier of little guy after Nash and Curry includes Isaiah Thomas who a two time all-star. But he was a huge liability on defense, it’s hard to build an elite offense around him, and his performance fell off a cliff in the playoffs. After the Celtics traded him, he went from a likely max contract to a bench player who may never start again. This is why he slid to #60 in the draft– it only requires a small decline for his type to go from all-star to backup.

Trae has decent odds of being similar to IT. This outcome is better than nothing, but it’s such a difficult piece to fit into an elite contender, I would aim higher in the lottery.

And most of the time Trae will fall short of IT and be a Trey Burke or JJ Barea bench PG, which makes him far too risky to justify a top 5 selection. He is an underdog to be as good as Tyus Jones.

It’s fine to gamble on Young’s super-powered skill level working out in the back end of the lottery. But I prefer Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the best PG in the class, as he has a higher IQ, higher ceiling, and higher floor.

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