FanPost

The Duck's Draft Observations Part 1

This is the first part in a series of fanposts about the draft. The general rule I am using with each one of these is "write about the draft until you don't feel like writing anymore". I have no clue how many "parts" it will have, or what each "part" will entail, but hopefully in conjunction it should all articulate my philosophy on the draft pretty well.

1. Try to conceptually map out all of the traits that your hypothetically perfect, well rounded star would have. They would be good finishers, have the ability to finish around or power through multiple defenders, on the move, in a variety of different situations. They would have a good handle which would enable them to get anywhere on court at will. They would either have high level length, athleticism, or both, to enable them to consistently create mismatches on-ball against opposing defenders. They would be an elite midrange and three-point shooter: a player who could create valuable looks even on possessions where they could not get to the rim. They would be an instinctual player: the type of player who anticipates what is coming before it happens, the type of player that intuitively understands where players are supposed to be, where they are going. They would have elite vision/passing with the ability to make high-level reads on the move at a moment's notice. They would be very good to great defenders both on-ball and off-ball.

Obviously "the perfect star" is never going to exist. Even the best players in the NBA are going to have flaws of some kind. But by looking for general competence to goodness among young players in those areas, we can make decent bets as to who is and is not likely to develop into those type of game-changing stars in the future. The aim of this piece is not to translate any of these qualitative observations into statistical approaches (yet), but at a very base level, when scouting young prospects for star equity, you should look for guys who have most of these traits: handle or some other way of being volume o players, finishing ability, midrange shooting, three-point shooting, passing, defense, game processing ability, and length or athleticism advantages for position. Because those are the traits that actual stars use to leverage into bringing star-level impact.

2. Contextualizing for age is extremely, incredibly difficult. Cameron Payne went from being kind of a low usage inefficient nothing at 19 to an efficient, high volume stud who was drafted in the lottery at 20. Doug McDermott averaged nearly 29 points per 40 on a 68 TS% at age 20. Draft Twitter does tend to be good at contextualizing age at a macro-level (nobody was mistaking Cam Johnson for being young, for instance) but I think that it vastly underestimates the difference between 18, 19, and 20 year olds. There are massive physical/experience related differences from each age. 18 year olds almost always suck against college competition, even ones that become stars sometimes (Lillard, Russ, Lowry, etc..), so the rare case where one looks legitimately good (I'm looking at you Jaren!) is an incredibly positive sign. Versus age 20, where dominance is almost a prerequisite to NBA goodness, where the main scouting value is filtering out guys who are not obviously dominant versus scouting for positive traits/star equity among guys who are all vastly better than their opposition. Which leads me to a good rule of thumb: with the exception of shooting mechanics/numbers, always project and scout a player's 19 year old season if you can. And if a player was significantly underwhelming or even mediocre as a 19 year old, they probably do not project to be good pros.

3. When watching Giannis in the playoffs, the first trait that becomes immediately apparent is how massively strong, athletic, and physical he is for his size: this dude has wing skill and movement ability but also does things like dunking on Boban and pushing Andre Drummond out of the way on a regular basis. Kawhi Leonard pulverized Ben Simmons and the Sixers repeatedly in their playoff matchup against each other in large part because of the elite functional strength he has for height/skill-level. Pascal Siakam leveraged high-level physicality for position into significant growth as an on-ball player, and before developing any degree of significant on-ball skill the main thing Jimmy Butler was known for was being an athletic, physical motherfucker for size (over 4 offensive rebounds per 40 and a greater than 1:1 free-throw/two-point ratio as a freshman in Marquette speaks to this). The point here is simple: many of the best players in the NBA tend to be extremely strong, physical, and aggressive for size. The "for size" part here is important, in that a 200 pound player putting up big man level block and rebounding averages speaks much more to said player's level of functional physicality/aggressiveness than a 250 pound player doing the same. Game-impacting physicality for size is a positive indicator for tolerance to absorb and create contact, a positive indicator for the extent to which a player is able to process the game and functionally apply physical abilities to impact, and in the rare (but important) cases of potential significant frame development indicate which guys might become game-breaking functional strength guys (Giannis and Kawhi are premium example of this, if you are able to bring big-man finishing/shot-blocking/free-throw-drawing at 200 or 220 lbs imagine what you can do with 20-40 lbs of weight gain without loss in movement skills).

4. Guards and wings naturally increase their role in college offenses over time for reasons that should be obvious and intuitive. The same is very much not true for bigs, who are not expected to become the sort of college offensive fulcrums that college coaches expect NBA pedigree-type guards and wings to become over time. In this sense, bigs who do grow as passers and volume scorers consistently throughout college over time tend to be good NBA bets, as the ability to increase scoring and facilitating burden over time as someone who can't create your shot off-the-perimeter on drives indicates a strong baseline of skill. This rule does exist with a few caveats. First, as a set rule you can't assess year-to-year offensive growth for bigs unless they weren't one-and-dones. Bigs who dominate on offense because they have the physical tools to get to the rim and score at will tend to be obvious future star prospects that are pretty much always one-and-dones, which means that the bigs we end up talking about are *not* those guys. If you want to be a star as an offensive big that isn't one of those "overwhelm the opponents with strength and physicality" types, you need to shoot at some level, whether it be in the midrange out of post looks or it be from three. A solid shooting baseline needs to exist, otherwise the amount of offensive scoring types you can put pressure on defenses with gets strongly limited (lack of shooting baseline is also more generally a negative heuristic for both skill level and touch around the rim). Second, they need to have a baseline of defensive/game-processing ability: even offense-oriented centers like Vucevic and Brook Lopez are very strong rebounders that understand positioning well and use it to leverage defensive impact above their height.

5. If you are considering drafting a non-passing/non-defending wing or guard who isn't dominant to the point where they are actually fucking terrifying when you watch them, don't draft them. Don't use this rule an an excuse to denigrate players who chuck a lot, or turn the ball over a lot, the issue here is more scorers who just don't pass.

6. A well-rounded mix between scoring volume and passing is important when it comes to guards. Players who feel comfortable with their abilities as scorers and their abilities as passers tend to do both frequently as ways of capitalizing on mismatches that they create against opposing defenses. This isn't a super hard and fast rule, and obviously exceptions exist for guys who are either rarely elite passers or pull-up shooters, but if you are creating 6 potential assists per unassisted field goal attempt or vice versa, that's a sign that your offensive skill package might not be well rounded enough to translate to the pros.

7. Scouting player tape involves intuitively processing large amounts of data and contextualizing it with all the traits that are qualitatively necessary for guys to bring star level impact in the NBA, along with an innate understanding of the ways and rates that various independent skills translate to the pros, along with knowing enough about the given game you are watching to understand the competition level the player is playing against, and playing with, and how the ways both of those variables influence how well the player is playing. It is extremely, extremely difficult, and assuming that you are going to have no blind-spots when doing it is an extremely bad assumption to make. The only way to correct blind-spots is to find them, and the only way to find scouting blind-spots is to either a) wait for your scouting takes to age to the point where you can assess their accuracy (can take forever, see how long it took Oladipo to break out) or b) watch historic tape, and evaluate your eye-test against old prospects who you know the outcomes of while attempting to remain unbiased. The second approach is deeply imperfect, but if you are serious about relying on that as a primary method to evaluate draft prospects, you need some sort of way of assessing and improving flaws of your approach to it.

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