Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
I think that one of the skills or attributes which has historically been the least appreciated as a draft metric is functional strength. More recently, it's gained some prominence and that's good to see, but even just a few years ago it was something people didn't discuss often in the mainstream of the draft; when it did come up, it was usually in reference to people's 'in-gym strength', like their bench press or something.
When you think about top tier NBA players, there aren't many who are notably weak for their position. Of course there are some, but guys like Lebron, Harden, Kawhi, Embiid, Giannis, Lillard, etc, are all notably strong in ways that can be directly leveraged in-game. Even a bunch of high tier roleplayers and secondary stars, like Jrue, Lowry, Iguodala, Draymond, Van Vleet, Tony Allen, and Marcus Smart show that strength as well. Someone like Giannis added it as they gained muscle, but many of the others had it already coming in. Even some players like Curry who aren't outliers in their strength saw significant improvement in their game as they moved from negative to average: in Curry's case, he saw his finishing at the rim and his FTr improve around 2013-14 to career high levels and has held that new baseline consistently since.
So that's another thing I would recommend looking for when trying to diagnose who might actually work out well in the league: who has a high degree of functional strength that can actually be leveraged in-game?