Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
It might be because there are other things in basketball than 40 second highlight clips.
I'll give you a breakdown from my perspective of his overall game, of why I wouldn't take him top 40.
Pros:
- Good C&S shooter with NBA range.
- Fairly strong, although not outlier strong, and seems to know how to use the strength reasonably well.
- Handle is adequate for his position.
- Reasonably solid team defender, with decent footwork. Closes out well on the perimeter, tends to know where to be, stunts and digs consistently.
- Defends the post pretty well, using his strength to ground himself and prevents himself from being bowled over.
- Is able to execute basic passes within an offense.
Cons:
- Mediocre lateral quickness.
- Lack of vertical pop: he's got a decent max vert, it seems, but he's a slow-load jumper most of the time.
- Pretty sub-par finisher around the rim over several years in college, struggles mightily in traffic (52% at the rim last year, 44% this year in the halfcourt)
- Very little burst
- Isn't a great relocater after giving the ball up which is a shame because that's huge for maximising shooting
- Pretty much no ability to create his own shot off the dribble. Not very efficient in his motions, and isn't decisive with movements. Dribbles slowly, and doesn't handle pressure very well (TOV% almost doubles his AST% all three years of college)
- Very little passing upside. Almost all of his passing is done from pre-determined situations: he doesn't read defenses actively, and his vision is poor. This is a problem someone like Jalen Smith also has, but at least Smith has more of a handle to make more out of non-passing situations.
- Not a rim protector at all. Slow leap-building hinders it, and he doesn't really cover ground extremely well either, which makes his ability to come out of the paint and then recover pretty problematic.
- Defense isn't very switchable. His feet aren't particularly fast and whenever he's put in a situation that requires hip-switching his footwork is really bad, he's prone to getting them tangled. There would be a lot of work needed just to fix that issue, and that doesn't even address the speed and fluidity issues, or the lateral quickness problems.
So you see, while there's definitely some upside for him, there's a lot to find issues with as well. If he gets picked in the mid-to-late 2nd round that's probably fine, but he's not a first rounder.
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