Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Michigan State
At RealGM, a look at why this could be the year Tom Izzo gets his 2nd national title.
Kansas
1) The Kansas big men are decidedly average and that's a problem for a Bill Self team
If you look at the best teams that Bill Self has had in his 13 years in Lawrence, they have all been built around multiple NBA-caliber big men who control the paint on both sides of the ball. Self likes to play a very traditional offense built around throwing the ball inside to two big men and playing high-low and inside-out basketball. His system has been very good at developing big men and the result is that he has sent an incredibly long line of 6'9+ players to the NBA - Wayne Simien, Darrell Arthur, Darnell Jackson, Cole Aldrich, Marcus and Markieff Morris, Thomas Robinson, Jeff Withey, Sasha Kaun and Cliff Alexander.
The problem with this year's team is they don't really have any players like that. Their best NBA prospects upfront are two freshman (Cheikh Diallo and Carlton Bragg) who barely get to play. The Jayhawks have a bunch of decent NCAA big men in their rotation, none of whom have much of a chance to play at the next level. They don't have anyone who protects the rim at a high level or stretches the floor or cleans the glass or creates shots for himself and his teammates. They have a bunch of guys and they don't strike fear in other teams. That's an issue when the identity of your program is built around the two guys at the PF and the C positions.
Their best frontcourt player is Perry Ellis, he of the million memes about his hair-line and the length of his career at Kansas. Ellis is a really good NCAA combo forward whose put up huge numbers in his time in Lawrence, but there's a reason why such an accomplished senior is barely on NBA draft boards. He's a classic tweener forward - he has average size (6'8 225) and average athleticism and he doesn't have a go to move when he's asked to create against bigger and more athletic defenders. He's good at a lot of things but he's not great at any one thing. He's a jack of all trades and that works when he's going up against less talented NCAA big men, but when he's asked to go up against NBA-caliber combo forwards and big men there isn't a ton he can do about it. Just remember what happened when he had to go up against Kentucky last season.
2) Cheick Diallo has no business declaring for the draft
Coming into the season, Diallo was widely seen as the best NBA prospect on the Kansas roster following a strong showing on the high school All-Star circuit. His ability to play above the rim on both sides of the ball would be the missing piece for a frontline that had been lacking in high-level players ever since Joel Embiid went down with a back injury two years ago. Instead, he got caught up in an NCAA eligibility hullabaloo, fell behind the 8-ball, never garnered any trust from Self and has found himself glued to the end of the bench in the Big 12 season. He barely plays and when he does play he doesn't make a huge impact on the game.
In and of itself, none of that means he couldn't be a relatively high first-round draft pick, which is kind of crazy. The problem is that while he has shown flashes of inspired play, Diallo doesn't have the foundation to be a big-time prospect, at least not if he's not going to show more than this. Teams that draft an NCAA bench player in the lottery usually do so because they fall in love with his skill-set and what he could potentially do if given more playing time ala the nuclear athleticism that Zach LaVine showed at UCLA. Diallo could be a decent small-ball 5 but his floor isn't much higher than a lot of other similar prospects in this year's draft and he hasn't shown enough to have much confidence that his ceiling is super high.
There's still plenty to like about his long-term potential. At 6'9 220 with a 7'4 wingspan, he has a well put together big man with a great combination of size and athleticism. He can protect the rim and he could conceivably slide his feet on the perimeter and switch pick-and-rolls from time to time. He's more than capable of catching and finishing when playing in space and he's shown flashes of a face-up game and the ability to shoot out to 15+ feet. The concern is that he doesn't really know what he's doing on either side of the ball and he hasn't shown much ability to create his own shot. He's the definition of a raw young big men who probably needs several seasons at the NCAA level to play through his mistakes and learn the game.
There's a ton of guys who fit his profile in this year's draft - big men who don't have the bulk to bang with giants like DeMarcus Cousins, Brook Lopez and Andre Drummond and who don't have the perimeter game to be 4's in the modern NBA.
- Devonta Davis (Michigan State)
- Skal Labissiere (Kansas)
- Ivan Rabb (Cal)
- Domantas Sabonis (Gonzaga)
- Brice Johnson (UNC)
Diallo's floor isn't higher than any of those guys and all of them (except for Skal) are much further along than him on offense. So why would an NBA team draft him all that high? He's nowhere near ready to play right away, he's going to end up spending a lot of time in the D-League and it's really easy for raw big men drafted in the 25-40+ range to slip out of the league entirely. There's some Clint Capela in his game but all he has to do is look at Cliff Alexander sitting at the end of the bench in Portland to see that there should be no rush for him to declare. Lucas, Ellis and Traylor are all gone after this season so there will be plenty of minutes for him if he returns to school, which is exactly what he needs.
3) Selden, Svi and what could have been
In terms of NBA potential, the most intriguing part about the Jayhawks this season was what they could do on the wings, where they featured two 6'6+ prospects - Wayne Selden and Sviatoslav Myhailiuk. However, with the stretch run of the season well underway, it's pretty clear that Selden is who he is at the NCAA level while Svi is still way more promise than reality at this point in his career. They are OK and they aren't going to kill you out there but they aren't going to carry you very far in the Tourney either.
Selden has turned himself into a great 3-point shooter (42.1% on 5.2 3PA's) and he has a good combination of size and athleticism at 6'5 230. At the same time, he's not a great shot creator or playmaker and he can easily disappear for stretches of the game. I'm also not sure he has the lateral quickness to be a great perimeter defender at the next level - there's a reason that Frank Mason tends to get the toughest defensive assignments on the perimeter. If Selden's going to play in the NBA, it's probably by leveraging his size (he has the broad shoulders and physique of an NFL LB) to guard bigger 3's and 4's and stretch the floor the other way.
Svi is kind of like Diallo in that it's hard to get a great feel for his NBA potential because he doesn't have elite physical tools, he barely plays and he doesn't make much of an impact when he is in the game. He's a really tall shooter (6'8 195) with some ball skills so the potential is there but it's mostly unrealized at this point. It's hard to see why he would declare for the draft either though crazier things have happened, especially in a year where there aren't a lot of guys that NBA teams are in love with.
4) The strength of their team is in the backcourt
"You can make the case that Wayne [Selden] is our best player or Perry [Ellis] is our best player but there's no question that no one is more valuable than Frank [Mason]." - Bill Self
Frank Mason (5'11 185) and Devonte Graham (6'2 175) are two undersized PG's who play with the ball in their hands for most of the game and who create offense for themselves and everyone else on the team. They are fast and quick and they are smart basketball players who do a good job of pressuring the opposing team's guards and getting them out of their rhythm. They suffocated Baylor's guards in the second half of Kansas 66-60 win on Tuesday, a win that may have all but clinched a Big 12 championship for the upteenth consecutive time.
5) If Kansas is the best team in the Big 12, the conference may not be that good
Here's a hot take for you. I'm a Texas guy and I have gone to a lot of the Baylor and TCU games this season and I can't say I'm terribly impressed by the strength of this conference. It reminds me a lot of last season's bunch, a group which went into the NCAA Tournament behind a ton of hype and than face-planted in the first few rounds. Maybe they will do better because the level of play around the country is weaker but I wouldn't be all that surprised if they didn't.
Just look at this Kansas team from a personnel perspective. Their best two players are a pair of underiszed guards, their wings don't really create much offense and their big men are undersized and can't dominate the game on either side of the ball. That's not the profile of a team that's going to dominate teams from smaller conferences in the first weekend of the Tourney or match up with the best teams in the country in the second.
If you look around the conference as a whole, there just aren't a lot of teams who can expose the Jayhawks weaknesses because there's not a lot of high-level talent in the Big 12. OU has Buddy Hield and Isaiah Cousins but their big men are pretty average. Baylor has Johnathan Motley and Taurean Prince but their guards are pretty average. Iowa State still doesn't play any defense. Texas is probably a year away. West Virginia presses constantly and ups the number of possessions even though they are going to be at a talent disadvantage in comparison to the top teams in the country.
Long story short, I'm not going to have a lot of Big 12 teams going far in my bracket and I'm not convinced that winning this conference is any type of guarantee that you have the type of team that is definitely going to play deep into March. It's entirely possible that I'm too close to them to be objective because I tend to become a pessimist the more I watch a team unless they are really good. I might just be focusing too much on the flaws of the NCAA teams that I have seen the most and not enough on the ones that I don't watch as much. We'll see.
If you look at the best teams that Bill Self has had in his 13 years in Lawrence, they have all been built around multiple NBA-caliber big men who control the paint on both sides of the ball. Self likes to play a very traditional offense built around throwing the ball inside to two big men and playing high-low and inside-out basketball. His system has been very good at developing big men and the result is that he has sent an incredibly long line of 6'9+ players to the NBA - Wayne Simien, Darrell Arthur, Darnell Jackson, Cole Aldrich, Marcus and Markieff Morris, Thomas Robinson, Jeff Withey, Sasha Kaun and Cliff Alexander.
The problem with this year's team is they don't really have any players like that. Their best NBA prospects upfront are two freshman (Cheikh Diallo and Carlton Bragg) who barely get to play. The Jayhawks have a bunch of decent NCAA big men in their rotation, none of whom have much of a chance to play at the next level. They don't have anyone who protects the rim at a high level or stretches the floor or cleans the glass or creates shots for himself and his teammates. They have a bunch of guys and they don't strike fear in other teams. That's an issue when the identity of your program is built around the two guys at the PF and the C positions.
Their best frontcourt player is Perry Ellis, he of the million memes about his hair-line and the length of his career at Kansas. Ellis is a really good NCAA combo forward whose put up huge numbers in his time in Lawrence, but there's a reason why such an accomplished senior is barely on NBA draft boards. He's a classic tweener forward - he has average size (6'8 225) and average athleticism and he doesn't have a go to move when he's asked to create against bigger and more athletic defenders. He's good at a lot of things but he's not great at any one thing. He's a jack of all trades and that works when he's going up against less talented NCAA big men, but when he's asked to go up against NBA-caliber combo forwards and big men there isn't a ton he can do about it. Just remember what happened when he had to go up against Kentucky last season.
The options aren't much more appealing from there. Landen Lucas can't score to save his life - he airballed two wide open 8+ foot jumpers against Baylor. Jamari Traylor is both undersized and not all that skilled. Diallo looks like he barely knows what's going on out there half the time. Carlton Bragg might be the most well-rounded of their big men but he's a freshman whom Self clearly doesn't trust. Put it all together and you can attack Kansas right at the front of the rim, which is what Baylor did all night on Tuesday. Achilles heel doesn't really do justice to their problems upfront. It is a glaring flaw that is waiting to be exploited by the right team in the NCAA Tournament.@tyoung_01 @APBaylor247 i hear perry ellis once played for the great dr. naismith himself pic.twitter.com/jVWxco3ilr— nick pants (@nick_pants) February 24, 2016
2) Cheick Diallo has no business declaring for the draft
Coming into the season, Diallo was widely seen as the best NBA prospect on the Kansas roster following a strong showing on the high school All-Star circuit. His ability to play above the rim on both sides of the ball would be the missing piece for a frontline that had been lacking in high-level players ever since Joel Embiid went down with a back injury two years ago. Instead, he got caught up in an NCAA eligibility hullabaloo, fell behind the 8-ball, never garnered any trust from Self and has found himself glued to the end of the bench in the Big 12 season. He barely plays and when he does play he doesn't make a huge impact on the game.
In and of itself, none of that means he couldn't be a relatively high first-round draft pick, which is kind of crazy. The problem is that while he has shown flashes of inspired play, Diallo doesn't have the foundation to be a big-time prospect, at least not if he's not going to show more than this. Teams that draft an NCAA bench player in the lottery usually do so because they fall in love with his skill-set and what he could potentially do if given more playing time ala the nuclear athleticism that Zach LaVine showed at UCLA. Diallo could be a decent small-ball 5 but his floor isn't much higher than a lot of other similar prospects in this year's draft and he hasn't shown enough to have much confidence that his ceiling is super high.
There's still plenty to like about his long-term potential. At 6'9 220 with a 7'4 wingspan, he has a well put together big man with a great combination of size and athleticism. He can protect the rim and he could conceivably slide his feet on the perimeter and switch pick-and-rolls from time to time. He's more than capable of catching and finishing when playing in space and he's shown flashes of a face-up game and the ability to shoot out to 15+ feet. The concern is that he doesn't really know what he's doing on either side of the ball and he hasn't shown much ability to create his own shot. He's the definition of a raw young big men who probably needs several seasons at the NCAA level to play through his mistakes and learn the game.
There's a ton of guys who fit his profile in this year's draft - big men who don't have the bulk to bang with giants like DeMarcus Cousins, Brook Lopez and Andre Drummond and who don't have the perimeter game to be 4's in the modern NBA.
- Devonta Davis (Michigan State)
- Skal Labissiere (Kansas)
- Ivan Rabb (Cal)
- Domantas Sabonis (Gonzaga)
- Brice Johnson (UNC)
Diallo's floor isn't higher than any of those guys and all of them (except for Skal) are much further along than him on offense. So why would an NBA team draft him all that high? He's nowhere near ready to play right away, he's going to end up spending a lot of time in the D-League and it's really easy for raw big men drafted in the 25-40+ range to slip out of the league entirely. There's some Clint Capela in his game but all he has to do is look at Cliff Alexander sitting at the end of the bench in Portland to see that there should be no rush for him to declare. Lucas, Ellis and Traylor are all gone after this season so there will be plenty of minutes for him if he returns to school, which is exactly what he needs.
3) Selden, Svi and what could have been
In terms of NBA potential, the most intriguing part about the Jayhawks this season was what they could do on the wings, where they featured two 6'6+ prospects - Wayne Selden and Sviatoslav Myhailiuk. However, with the stretch run of the season well underway, it's pretty clear that Selden is who he is at the NCAA level while Svi is still way more promise than reality at this point in his career. They are OK and they aren't going to kill you out there but they aren't going to carry you very far in the Tourney either.
Selden has turned himself into a great 3-point shooter (42.1% on 5.2 3PA's) and he has a good combination of size and athleticism at 6'5 230. At the same time, he's not a great shot creator or playmaker and he can easily disappear for stretches of the game. I'm also not sure he has the lateral quickness to be a great perimeter defender at the next level - there's a reason that Frank Mason tends to get the toughest defensive assignments on the perimeter. If Selden's going to play in the NBA, it's probably by leveraging his size (he has the broad shoulders and physique of an NFL LB) to guard bigger 3's and 4's and stretch the floor the other way.
Svi is kind of like Diallo in that it's hard to get a great feel for his NBA potential because he doesn't have elite physical tools, he barely plays and he doesn't make much of an impact when he is in the game. He's a really tall shooter (6'8 195) with some ball skills so the potential is there but it's mostly unrealized at this point. It's hard to see why he would declare for the draft either though crazier things have happened, especially in a year where there aren't a lot of guys that NBA teams are in love with.
4) The strength of their team is in the backcourt
"You can make the case that Wayne [Selden] is our best player or Perry [Ellis] is our best player but there's no question that no one is more valuable than Frank [Mason]." - Bill Self
Frank Mason (5'11 185) and Devonte Graham (6'2 175) are two undersized PG's who play with the ball in their hands for most of the game and who create offense for themselves and everyone else on the team. They are fast and quick and they are smart basketball players who do a good job of pressuring the opposing team's guards and getting them out of their rhythm. They suffocated Baylor's guards in the second half of Kansas 66-60 win on Tuesday, a win that may have all but clinched a Big 12 championship for the upteenth consecutive time.
5) If Kansas is the best team in the Big 12, the conference may not be that good
Here's a hot take for you. I'm a Texas guy and I have gone to a lot of the Baylor and TCU games this season and I can't say I'm terribly impressed by the strength of this conference. It reminds me a lot of last season's bunch, a group which went into the NCAA Tournament behind a ton of hype and than face-planted in the first few rounds. Maybe they will do better because the level of play around the country is weaker but I wouldn't be all that surprised if they didn't.
Just look at this Kansas team from a personnel perspective. Their best two players are a pair of underiszed guards, their wings don't really create much offense and their big men are undersized and can't dominate the game on either side of the ball. That's not the profile of a team that's going to dominate teams from smaller conferences in the first weekend of the Tourney or match up with the best teams in the country in the second.
If you look around the conference as a whole, there just aren't a lot of teams who can expose the Jayhawks weaknesses because there's not a lot of high-level talent in the Big 12. OU has Buddy Hield and Isaiah Cousins but their big men are pretty average. Baylor has Johnathan Motley and Taurean Prince but their guards are pretty average. Iowa State still doesn't play any defense. Texas is probably a year away. West Virginia presses constantly and ups the number of possessions even though they are going to be at a talent disadvantage in comparison to the top teams in the country.
Long story short, I'm not going to have a lot of Big 12 teams going far in my bracket and I'm not convinced that winning this conference is any type of guarantee that you have the type of team that is definitely going to play deep into March. It's entirely possible that I'm too close to them to be objective because I tend to become a pessimist the more I watch a team unless they are really good. I might just be focusing too much on the flaws of the NCAA teams that I have seen the most and not enough on the ones that I don't watch as much. We'll see.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Monday, February 22, 2016
Jalen Jones
Coming into the season, Danuel House was getting most of the draft buzz out of Texas A&M. While House is a good player and I think he has a chance to play at the next level, I'm starting to think that his fellow fifth-year senior transfer Jalen Jones is really the key to their team and the guy with the best chance to be an impact NBA player.
At 6'7 225, Jones is a prototype combo forward and his versatility on both sides of the ball is what has allowed A&M to take a big step forward this season. A&M plays him as a small-ball 4 and he presents a huge mismatch for most traditional 4's who can't punish him inside on defense and who can't stick with him on the perimeter on offense. The key for Jones is that he has improved as a 3-point shooter, which has opened up the floor for freshman big man Tyler Davis and made Jones almost impossible for bigger players to guard.
Jones has improved as a shooter
The biggest positive for Jones when projecting him to the next level is how his shooting percentages have steadily increased in his four seasons in college:
Freshman: 27.5% on 1.3 3PA, 59.9% on 4.5 FTA
Sophomore: 34.8% on 0.7 3PA, 74% on 4.8 FTA
*Transferred from SMU to A&M*
Junior: 30% on 1.8 3PA, 72.8% on 5.2 FTA
Senior: 37% on 3.2 3PA, 74.4% on 5.5 FTA
There's still not a huge sample size of him being a good long-range shooter but the way that his free-throw shot has improved is a pretty good sign that his shooting mechanics are getting better and he's becoming more reliable from deep as he has gotten older. The way the game is going, there's really no point in any non 5's to declare for the draft until they have become consistent 3-point shooters at the NCAA level. That's become a must to play professional basketball at its highest level and that's exactly why you should be in college - to work on your game and develop your skills.
He's not afraid to let it fly from really deep too:
Traditional big men have a very hard time guarding Jones
Kentucky really missed Alex Poythress in their loss to A&M because none of the rest of their big men could deal with Jones on defense and they couldn't punish him on the other end of the floor either. There's just not much a shot-blocker like Skal is going to be able to do to stop a 6'7 wing taking a pull-up J:
And there's no way a stretch 4 like Derek Willis has any chance of staying in front of Jones when he faces him up in the mid-post:
Jones plays bigger than his size:
The key to being a wing who guards a big man is having a strong and sturdy frame and the toughness and athleticism to bang with bigger players in the paint. Watch how high he gets up to snatch this defensive rebound out of the air:
Jones can jump with bigger players and win balls in traffic. It does you no good to go small upfront, make a stop and then be unable to clear the defensive glass:
Jones can stay in front of smaller guards on the switch
This is where the rubber meets the road when you are evaluating small-ball 4's. Kentucky has been absolutely roasting teams over the last month by moving a stretch 4 in Derek Willis into the starting line-up, opening up the floor and repeatedly putting Jamal Murray and Tyler Ulis in ball screens. A&M was able to keep them relatively in check because they just switched every screen with Jones in them. He's long and fast enough to at least stay with NBA guards like that and that's a super big deal.
Tyler Ulis is one of the fastest and most skilled guards in the country and Jones can still stay in front of him in 1-on-1 situations:
The future is wings who can guard 4's, switch on 1's and shoot 3's
The Golden State Warriors have a lot of guys like that and if you are going to defeat the Warriors you have to have guys like that. Given how much space they play in the NBA and how skilled guards have become, I don't see any real way to guard modern offenses unless you have multiple guys with the versatility to switch pick-and-rolls on defense. It's more important that your 4's can move their feet on the perimeter than it is that they bang in the post - in the modern NBA, 3's are the new 4's. That's the type of player Jalen Jones can be.
I keep coming back to this quote from Ron Adams in SI's profile of Harrison Barnes from last season's playoffs:
At 6'7 225, Jones is a prototype combo forward and his versatility on both sides of the ball is what has allowed A&M to take a big step forward this season. A&M plays him as a small-ball 4 and he presents a huge mismatch for most traditional 4's who can't punish him inside on defense and who can't stick with him on the perimeter on offense. The key for Jones is that he has improved as a 3-point shooter, which has opened up the floor for freshman big man Tyler Davis and made Jones almost impossible for bigger players to guard.
Jones has improved as a shooter
The biggest positive for Jones when projecting him to the next level is how his shooting percentages have steadily increased in his four seasons in college:
Freshman: 27.5% on 1.3 3PA, 59.9% on 4.5 FTA
Sophomore: 34.8% on 0.7 3PA, 74% on 4.8 FTA
*Transferred from SMU to A&M*
Junior: 30% on 1.8 3PA, 72.8% on 5.2 FTA
Senior: 37% on 3.2 3PA, 74.4% on 5.5 FTA
There's still not a huge sample size of him being a good long-range shooter but the way that his free-throw shot has improved is a pretty good sign that his shooting mechanics are getting better and he's becoming more reliable from deep as he has gotten older. The way the game is going, there's really no point in any non 5's to declare for the draft until they have become consistent 3-point shooters at the NCAA level. That's become a must to play professional basketball at its highest level and that's exactly why you should be in college - to work on your game and develop your skills.
He's not afraid to let it fly from really deep too:
Traditional big men have a very hard time guarding Jones
Kentucky really missed Alex Poythress in their loss to A&M because none of the rest of their big men could deal with Jones on defense and they couldn't punish him on the other end of the floor either. There's just not much a shot-blocker like Skal is going to be able to do to stop a 6'7 wing taking a pull-up J:
And there's no way a stretch 4 like Derek Willis has any chance of staying in front of Jones when he faces him up in the mid-post:
Jones plays bigger than his size:
The key to being a wing who guards a big man is having a strong and sturdy frame and the toughness and athleticism to bang with bigger players in the paint. Watch how high he gets up to snatch this defensive rebound out of the air:
Jones can jump with bigger players and win balls in traffic. It does you no good to go small upfront, make a stop and then be unable to clear the defensive glass:
Jones can stay in front of smaller guards on the switch
This is where the rubber meets the road when you are evaluating small-ball 4's. Kentucky has been absolutely roasting teams over the last month by moving a stretch 4 in Derek Willis into the starting line-up, opening up the floor and repeatedly putting Jamal Murray and Tyler Ulis in ball screens. A&M was able to keep them relatively in check because they just switched every screen with Jones in them. He's long and fast enough to at least stay with NBA guards like that and that's a super big deal.
Tyler Ulis is one of the fastest and most skilled guards in the country and Jones can still stay in front of him in 1-on-1 situations:
The future is wings who can guard 4's, switch on 1's and shoot 3's
The Golden State Warriors have a lot of guys like that and if you are going to defeat the Warriors you have to have guys like that. Given how much space they play in the NBA and how skilled guards have become, I don't see any real way to guard modern offenses unless you have multiple guys with the versatility to switch pick-and-rolls on defense. It's more important that your 4's can move their feet on the perimeter than it is that they bang in the post - in the modern NBA, 3's are the new 4's. That's the type of player Jalen Jones can be.
I keep coming back to this quote from Ron Adams in SI's profile of Harrison Barnes from last season's playoffs:
“He likes guarding people in the post,” says Adams, who foresees a league full of Harrison Barnes' in the future. [Emphasis mine] “I think the way our game is progressing it’s going to be demanded of a lot of people,” he says.Jones isn't super skilled and he's never going to be a primary option on the next level. If he was playing primarily as a 3, he would just be a guy and he would have a tough road to make the league considering that he's a fifth-year senior who has been pretty far off draft boards for most of his career. His ability to guard bigger players, though, gives him a chance. Every team in the NBA needs a guy with his skill-set and there aren't many guys with his skill-set in this year's draft.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
76ers
1) The ups and downs of the Jahlil Okafor Experience
Everything people loved and hated about Jahlil Okafor coming out of Duke and all of his strengths and his weaknesses were on full display on Sunday. On one side of the ledger, he had 31 points and 8 rebounds on 19 shots. On the other side, he had the worst plus/minus (-28) of anyone on the team. When Jahlil is holding the ball in the mid to high post, he's not looking to pass and there's no room for anyone else to cut to the rim. The odd thing is that he was a pretty good passer at Duke - has he decided to go full YOLO and just put up as many numbers as possible? As far as his defense goes, the less said about it the better. The basic problem is that he's slow and he's checked out on that side of the ball. You can be one or the other and survive in the NBA. You can't be both.
None of this is to say that he can't be a good defensive player eventually. He's not completely immobile and I don't think he's any slower than someone like Marc Gasol. The problem is that playing good interior defense is one of the hardest skills to pick up at the NBA level and that's when a guy is totally bought in and is trying his hardest to call out the opposing team's sets and anticipate what they are going to do before they do it. Jahlil still has to decide he wants to play defense before he can even worry about that learning curve.
It's not a real surprise and it's not really a knock on him that he hasn't bought in on that side of the ball. Not a lot of elite scorers come into the league trying to play defense - the problem is that you can somewhat hide a poor defender at any of the other positions on the floor. There's nowhere you can hide a 5 who can't defend. The whole point of playing a 5 in the modern NBA is because of the value they bring as a rim protector and a second line of defense. It's a defensive position before it's an offensive position.
A good way to look at it is that the center in basketball is like the catcher in baseball - the position has so many defensive requirements that it almost doesn't matter how good they are on offense as long as they can stay out of the way. The temptation to play an offensive-minded player at that position is super high because it's such a value add in comparison to the rest of the league, but the problem is that sacrificing defense at that position for a big bat can really hamstring a team in a lot of subtle ways.
That's the problem with building a team around an offensive-minded 5 - you are going to be waiting a long time for their defense to catch up. The Sacramento Kings have this problem with DeMarcus Cousins and the Orlando Magic have this problem with Nik Vucevic. DeMarcus has only begun to figure it out on defense in the last 2 years and that's still pretty hit or miss. Vucevic hasn't figured it out at all and my suspicion is that his presence at the 5 is one of the reasons why all the talent in Orlando hasn't coalesced into a winning basketball team. There's just a ceiling on how good your team can be when you are playing a sieve at the front of the rim - especially when there are a lot of young players in front of him who are making mental mistakes and giving up penetration - and it doesn't matter how many points he's scoring on offense if he's giving up just as many on defense.
In terms of his overall skill-set, Jahlil is basically a 6'11 Carmelo Anthony. He's as good a pure scorer as has come in the league in a long time and he can roll out of bed and get you 20-10 without breaking a sweat. He's going to score a ton of points over his career - the question is whether they are going to be meaningful numbers or empty stats on a bad team. Like Carmelo, how good Jahlil's team is going to be is going to depend on how good he is as a passer and a defender. The better he is, the better his team is going to be. If Jahlil becomes a plus passer and a plus defender, he'll be on one of the best teams in the league because he'll be making everyone better on both sides of the ball. If he's a minus passer and minus defender, he'll be on one of the worst because he'll be making everyone worse. There's a good chance that he puts it all together and is on one of the best teams in the league when he's 28. The problem is that he's 20.
2) Nerlens Noel aka The Human Eraser
There's no better example of the effect that Jahlil has on his teammates than Nerlens. When Jahlil is in, Nerlens is floating around the perimeter on offense, not doing anything all that useful and trying to take guys off the dribble and aimlessly firing bullet passes through traffic. On defense, he's chasing perimeter 4's around the 3-point line and he's way out of position to grab rebounds. When Jahlil is out, Nerlens is a rim-rolling menace on offense and a high-level rim protector on defense. Just take a look at the stats:
Nerlens w/o Jahlil:
PPS - 1.16
Usage rating - 20.5
True shooting - 58.0
Nerlens w/Jahlil
PPS - 1.03
Usage rating - 17.5
True shooting - 51.4
The numbers re-inforce what common sense tells you about playing two non-shooting big man together in the modern NBA - it's not going to work and they need to break up this pairing sooner rather than later. The real concern with Jahlil is that it's not just Nerlens either. Pretty much every player on their roster plays worse with Jahlil. You can't blame him for how bad they are but he's making a bad situation much worse than it has to be. One thing I like to do with basketball-reference is go to their line-up section and look at the net ratings of their top 2 man combinations in terms of minutes played. When you go to the 76ers page, what jumps out is that pretty much all of their worst 2 man combinations have Jahlil in them. He's in 6 of their bottom 7.
Jahlil + Jerami Grant: -20.4
Jahlil + Nerlens Noel: -19.1
Jahlil + TJ McConnell: -19.0
Jahlil + Nik Stauskas: -18.6
Jahlil + Robert Covington: -14.9
Jahlil + Isaiah Canaan: -13.3
It's not just that the 76ers are terrible because the average net rating of their top 20 most used two-man combinations is -10.6. Jahlil is a weight whose literally dragging the rest of his team down. The closest to a positive with Jahlil is Ish Smith (-9.8). There are four guys - Ish, Grant, McConnell and Covington - who have better net ratings with Nerlens.
The thing people don't get about the draft is that it's not just about finding the best players and maximizing the WARP you can select from your draft position. You have to draft players with an idea of what they are good at and what type of role they can have on a good team and then put them in a position to succeed. Nerlens could be a starter on an elite team if he's the roll man in a spread pick-and-roll outfit surrounded by shooters and playing with a high-level PG. Asking him to be the 4-man in a two-post offense that wants to play in the half-court is a recipe for disaster. I'm not sure he fits with Joel Embiid and I know for a fact that he's not going to fit with Okafor. Philly's going to have to do something and there's not exactly a huge market out there to make a big for wings trade.
Also he should be called The Human Eraser because he blocks shots and his haircut and thin frame make him look like a No. 2 pencil.
3) Team building vs. asset acquisition
Coincidentally enough, I watched the 76ers play on Sunday right after reading this article from red94 on the Rockets in the wake of the Motiejunas trade and the similarities between Daryl Morey and his protege Sam Hinkie really jumped off the page. Going all-in on acquiring superstars is great but even superstars need to be put in positions to succeed and not looking at how a player is going to fit holistically into a system means you are going to build a team that's less than the sum of its parts. It's hustling backwards basically.
In a vacuum, it makes sense to flip Motiejunas for a late lottery pick when he's set to be an RFA in a few months and it makes sense to not pay Chandler Parsons $15 million a year. In terms of ROI, the Rockets got the best value that anyone is ever going to get on Motiejunas and Parsons. The problem is that they ended up developing Motiejunas and Parsons for someone else and they missed out on the prime of their careers because they were more concerned with saving cap space to chase a superstar who probably isn't going to want to come to Houston anyway. Even when they do, there's no real plan to build a team around them except gather as many assets as possible and there's no way to develop continuity when so much of the supporting cast is changing every season.
It's the same thing to a more limited extent in Philly. They've had Nerlens for 3 years and they are no closer to fitting him into a role that makes sense for his skill-set. They are just trying to draft the player with the most upside at every spot in the draft and hoping they will be able to figure it out later. The problem is they aren't figuring anything out and the guys they are drafting are making each other worse and not better. You can't draft players in a vacuum - if they have 4 first-round picks in this year's draft, who they draft with their first pick should have a huge impact on who they draft with their 2nd and their 3rd and their 4rth. That's also why there's a diminishing return for having too many draft picks because you can only commit to building around so many young players at a time. Whose their core and who are they trying to build around right now? Who knows?
4) Nik Stauskas and the Tools Problem
If you want to know why most scouts value physical tools over college numbers, take a look at these numbers:
Player A: 17.5 points, 2.9 rebounds, 3.3 assists on 47/44/84 shooting
Player B: 16.1 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists on 46/42/81 shooting
Player A was Nik Stauskas. Player B was Rodney Hood. Stauskas was the No. 8 overall pick and Hood fell all the way to No. 23. Two years later, Hood is drawing comparisons to James Harden and Stauskas is barely hanging onto a spot in the league. There's nothing in the NCAA stats that's going to tell you that Player B is going to be a vastly better NBA player than Player A. You have to look beyond the numbers and see that Hood is a smooth athlete at 6'8 215 while Stauskas was going to struggle with size and physicality at the next level at 6'6 205. No matter what sport it is, there's nothing people love bringing up more than college players who outperform their physical measurements at the next level. The reason those are interesting stories, though, is because they are the exception that proves the rule.
More often than not it ends up with guys like Stauskas getting drafted way too high because they put up inflated stats in an NCAA system designed to maximize their numbers. It's a lot like what happened with Trey Burke - Nik Stauskas is a Texas Tech QB. He'll stick in the league because he's a shooter with size, some ball skills and a quick release but he's not big like Klay and he can't shoot like Steph. That was an illusion and that's the reason you have scouts because they are paid to see through stuff like that. Imagine where the Kings would be right now if they had Rodney Hood penciled in as their starting SG.
5) Lightning round asset evaluation
As someone who follows the college game and the draft so closely, the 76ers are one of the most interesting teams in the league for me because they have so many guys I've been tracking for years and am trying to figure out what they are going to be in the NBA.
TJ McConnell - The big difference between him at Arizona and in the NBA is that he's shooting 3's. He has to be a plus shooter because he's not big or athletic enough to be anything more than a guy at the next level. His ceiling is as a pretty average backup PG and I'm not sure a player with such a limited skill-set is going to survive all the purges that the 76ers are going to have to do over the next few years to get all their picks on their roster.
Jerami Grant - Grant is a prototype small-ball 4 defensively - he can guard in the post, switch on the pick-and-roll and protect the rim. The problem is that he can't shoot and I'm almost at the point where I'm like who cares with guys like that. If he can't shoot, you might could slot him as a small-ball 5 but there's going to be a ton of competition for the non-shooting slot in the line-up in the modern NBA.
Richaun Holmes - Case in point. Like Grant, he's a super athlete. The difference is that he has more meat on his bones so it's easier for him to play at the 5 despite giving up height. I'm a little behind on him because I can't front like I watched much Bowling Green when he was in college but I'm definitely intrigued.
Robert Covington - The crown jewel of their developmental model. He's bigger, more athletic and more fluid with the ball than Thompson. He might be a starting small-ball 4 on a good team but he's probably going to be best as a bench shooter. That's a problem when the crown jewel is a 7th or an 8th man on a good team.
Isaiah Canaan - He can shoot 3's off the dribble but he's undersized, he's not a playmaker and he isn't even shooting all that well in Philly. The competition to be a combo guard off the bench is even more fierce than to be a small-ball 5 and I'm not sure Canaan has enough to beat all those guys out. Just to pick a name out of a hat, I'd probably rather have Joe Young than him.
Everything people loved and hated about Jahlil Okafor coming out of Duke and all of his strengths and his weaknesses were on full display on Sunday. On one side of the ledger, he had 31 points and 8 rebounds on 19 shots. On the other side, he had the worst plus/minus (-28) of anyone on the team. When Jahlil is holding the ball in the mid to high post, he's not looking to pass and there's no room for anyone else to cut to the rim. The odd thing is that he was a pretty good passer at Duke - has he decided to go full YOLO and just put up as many numbers as possible? As far as his defense goes, the less said about it the better. The basic problem is that he's slow and he's checked out on that side of the ball. You can be one or the other and survive in the NBA. You can't be both.
jahlil chamberlain imo— Austin (@garooya) February 22, 2016
Okafor plays defense like he's watching the game on tape delay— Ben Detrick (@bdetrick) February 22, 2016
None of this is to say that he can't be a good defensive player eventually. He's not completely immobile and I don't think he's any slower than someone like Marc Gasol. The problem is that playing good interior defense is one of the hardest skills to pick up at the NBA level and that's when a guy is totally bought in and is trying his hardest to call out the opposing team's sets and anticipate what they are going to do before they do it. Jahlil still has to decide he wants to play defense before he can even worry about that learning curve.
It's not a real surprise and it's not really a knock on him that he hasn't bought in on that side of the ball. Not a lot of elite scorers come into the league trying to play defense - the problem is that you can somewhat hide a poor defender at any of the other positions on the floor. There's nowhere you can hide a 5 who can't defend. The whole point of playing a 5 in the modern NBA is because of the value they bring as a rim protector and a second line of defense. It's a defensive position before it's an offensive position.
A good way to look at it is that the center in basketball is like the catcher in baseball - the position has so many defensive requirements that it almost doesn't matter how good they are on offense as long as they can stay out of the way. The temptation to play an offensive-minded player at that position is super high because it's such a value add in comparison to the rest of the league, but the problem is that sacrificing defense at that position for a big bat can really hamstring a team in a lot of subtle ways.
That's the problem with building a team around an offensive-minded 5 - you are going to be waiting a long time for their defense to catch up. The Sacramento Kings have this problem with DeMarcus Cousins and the Orlando Magic have this problem with Nik Vucevic. DeMarcus has only begun to figure it out on defense in the last 2 years and that's still pretty hit or miss. Vucevic hasn't figured it out at all and my suspicion is that his presence at the 5 is one of the reasons why all the talent in Orlando hasn't coalesced into a winning basketball team. There's just a ceiling on how good your team can be when you are playing a sieve at the front of the rim - especially when there are a lot of young players in front of him who are making mental mistakes and giving up penetration - and it doesn't matter how many points he's scoring on offense if he's giving up just as many on defense.
In terms of his overall skill-set, Jahlil is basically a 6'11 Carmelo Anthony. He's as good a pure scorer as has come in the league in a long time and he can roll out of bed and get you 20-10 without breaking a sweat. He's going to score a ton of points over his career - the question is whether they are going to be meaningful numbers or empty stats on a bad team. Like Carmelo, how good Jahlil's team is going to be is going to depend on how good he is as a passer and a defender. The better he is, the better his team is going to be. If Jahlil becomes a plus passer and a plus defender, he'll be on one of the best teams in the league because he'll be making everyone better on both sides of the ball. If he's a minus passer and minus defender, he'll be on one of the worst because he'll be making everyone worse. There's a good chance that he puts it all together and is on one of the best teams in the league when he's 28. The problem is that he's 20.
2) Nerlens Noel aka The Human Eraser
There's no better example of the effect that Jahlil has on his teammates than Nerlens. When Jahlil is in, Nerlens is floating around the perimeter on offense, not doing anything all that useful and trying to take guys off the dribble and aimlessly firing bullet passes through traffic. On defense, he's chasing perimeter 4's around the 3-point line and he's way out of position to grab rebounds. When Jahlil is out, Nerlens is a rim-rolling menace on offense and a high-level rim protector on defense. Just take a look at the stats:
Nerlens w/o Jahlil:
PPS - 1.16
Usage rating - 20.5
True shooting - 58.0
Nerlens w/Jahlil
PPS - 1.03
Usage rating - 17.5
True shooting - 51.4
The numbers re-inforce what common sense tells you about playing two non-shooting big man together in the modern NBA - it's not going to work and they need to break up this pairing sooner rather than later. The real concern with Jahlil is that it's not just Nerlens either. Pretty much every player on their roster plays worse with Jahlil. You can't blame him for how bad they are but he's making a bad situation much worse than it has to be. One thing I like to do with basketball-reference is go to their line-up section and look at the net ratings of their top 2 man combinations in terms of minutes played. When you go to the 76ers page, what jumps out is that pretty much all of their worst 2 man combinations have Jahlil in them. He's in 6 of their bottom 7.
Jahlil + Jerami Grant: -20.4
Jahlil + Nerlens Noel: -19.1
Jahlil + TJ McConnell: -19.0
Jahlil + Nik Stauskas: -18.6
Jahlil + Robert Covington: -14.9
Jahlil + Isaiah Canaan: -13.3
It's not just that the 76ers are terrible because the average net rating of their top 20 most used two-man combinations is -10.6. Jahlil is a weight whose literally dragging the rest of his team down. The closest to a positive with Jahlil is Ish Smith (-9.8). There are four guys - Ish, Grant, McConnell and Covington - who have better net ratings with Nerlens.
The thing people don't get about the draft is that it's not just about finding the best players and maximizing the WARP you can select from your draft position. You have to draft players with an idea of what they are good at and what type of role they can have on a good team and then put them in a position to succeed. Nerlens could be a starter on an elite team if he's the roll man in a spread pick-and-roll outfit surrounded by shooters and playing with a high-level PG. Asking him to be the 4-man in a two-post offense that wants to play in the half-court is a recipe for disaster. I'm not sure he fits with Joel Embiid and I know for a fact that he's not going to fit with Okafor. Philly's going to have to do something and there's not exactly a huge market out there to make a big for wings trade.
Also he should be called The Human Eraser because he blocks shots and his haircut and thin frame make him look like a No. 2 pencil.
3) Team building vs. asset acquisition
Coincidentally enough, I watched the 76ers play on Sunday right after reading this article from red94 on the Rockets in the wake of the Motiejunas trade and the similarities between Daryl Morey and his protege Sam Hinkie really jumped off the page. Going all-in on acquiring superstars is great but even superstars need to be put in positions to succeed and not looking at how a player is going to fit holistically into a system means you are going to build a team that's less than the sum of its parts. It's hustling backwards basically.
In a vacuum, it makes sense to flip Motiejunas for a late lottery pick when he's set to be an RFA in a few months and it makes sense to not pay Chandler Parsons $15 million a year. In terms of ROI, the Rockets got the best value that anyone is ever going to get on Motiejunas and Parsons. The problem is that they ended up developing Motiejunas and Parsons for someone else and they missed out on the prime of their careers because they were more concerned with saving cap space to chase a superstar who probably isn't going to want to come to Houston anyway. Even when they do, there's no real plan to build a team around them except gather as many assets as possible and there's no way to develop continuity when so much of the supporting cast is changing every season.
It's the same thing to a more limited extent in Philly. They've had Nerlens for 3 years and they are no closer to fitting him into a role that makes sense for his skill-set. They are just trying to draft the player with the most upside at every spot in the draft and hoping they will be able to figure it out later. The problem is they aren't figuring anything out and the guys they are drafting are making each other worse and not better. You can't draft players in a vacuum - if they have 4 first-round picks in this year's draft, who they draft with their first pick should have a huge impact on who they draft with their 2nd and their 3rd and their 4rth. That's also why there's a diminishing return for having too many draft picks because you can only commit to building around so many young players at a time. Whose their core and who are they trying to build around right now? Who knows?
4) Nik Stauskas and the Tools Problem
If you want to know why most scouts value physical tools over college numbers, take a look at these numbers:
Player A: 17.5 points, 2.9 rebounds, 3.3 assists on 47/44/84 shooting
Player B: 16.1 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists on 46/42/81 shooting
Player A was Nik Stauskas. Player B was Rodney Hood. Stauskas was the No. 8 overall pick and Hood fell all the way to No. 23. Two years later, Hood is drawing comparisons to James Harden and Stauskas is barely hanging onto a spot in the league. There's nothing in the NCAA stats that's going to tell you that Player B is going to be a vastly better NBA player than Player A. You have to look beyond the numbers and see that Hood is a smooth athlete at 6'8 215 while Stauskas was going to struggle with size and physicality at the next level at 6'6 205. No matter what sport it is, there's nothing people love bringing up more than college players who outperform their physical measurements at the next level. The reason those are interesting stories, though, is because they are the exception that proves the rule.
More often than not it ends up with guys like Stauskas getting drafted way too high because they put up inflated stats in an NCAA system designed to maximize their numbers. It's a lot like what happened with Trey Burke - Nik Stauskas is a Texas Tech QB. He'll stick in the league because he's a shooter with size, some ball skills and a quick release but he's not big like Klay and he can't shoot like Steph. That was an illusion and that's the reason you have scouts because they are paid to see through stuff like that. Imagine where the Kings would be right now if they had Rodney Hood penciled in as their starting SG.
5) Lightning round asset evaluation
As someone who follows the college game and the draft so closely, the 76ers are one of the most interesting teams in the league for me because they have so many guys I've been tracking for years and am trying to figure out what they are going to be in the NBA.
TJ McConnell - The big difference between him at Arizona and in the NBA is that he's shooting 3's. He has to be a plus shooter because he's not big or athletic enough to be anything more than a guy at the next level. His ceiling is as a pretty average backup PG and I'm not sure a player with such a limited skill-set is going to survive all the purges that the 76ers are going to have to do over the next few years to get all their picks on their roster.
Hollis Thompson - He's tall (6'8 205) and he shoots 3 so that should be enough for him to stick in the league for awhile. He doesn't really do anything else too well but he's functional enough to not kill you on either side of the ball. The 76ers should probably be bringing in more guys like Thompson who can shoot instead of athletes with no range.TJ McConnell just hit the Mavs bench with an MJ shrug after he hit an 8-foot turn-around.— Jonathan Tjarks (@JonathanTjarks) February 22, 2016
Jerami Grant - Grant is a prototype small-ball 4 defensively - he can guard in the post, switch on the pick-and-roll and protect the rim. The problem is that he can't shoot and I'm almost at the point where I'm like who cares with guys like that. If he can't shoot, you might could slot him as a small-ball 5 but there's going to be a ton of competition for the non-shooting slot in the line-up in the modern NBA.
Richaun Holmes - Case in point. Like Grant, he's a super athlete. The difference is that he has more meat on his bones so it's easier for him to play at the 5 despite giving up height. I'm a little behind on him because I can't front like I watched much Bowling Green when he was in college but I'm definitely intrigued.
Robert Covington - The crown jewel of their developmental model. He's bigger, more athletic and more fluid with the ball than Thompson. He might be a starting small-ball 4 on a good team but he's probably going to be best as a bench shooter. That's a problem when the crown jewel is a 7th or an 8th man on a good team.
Isaiah Canaan - He can shoot 3's off the dribble but he's undersized, he's not a playmaker and he isn't even shooting all that well in Philly. The competition to be a combo guard off the bench is even more fierce than to be a small-ball 5 and I'm not sure Canaan has enough to beat all those guys out. Just to pick a name out of a hat, I'd probably rather have Joe Young than him.
Friday, February 19, 2016
NBA Trade Deadline
At RealGM, a look at the 10 most pressing questions from a relatively uneventful day.
UL-Lafayette vs. UT Arlington
1) Shawn Long has a chance as a small-ball 5 at the next level
Long has been on the NBA radar for a few years, ever since a dominant sophomore season when h and Elfrid Payton took UL-L to the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament. Long put up the type of numbers - 18.6 points, 10.4 rebounds and 2.7 blocks on 52.2% shooting and 42.3% from 3 on 2.3 3PA's - that will get you noticed by scouts no matter where you play. He has stagnated the last two seasons playing without Payton but he has still shown enough to where he will at least get a shot at the next level, even if he isn't drafted.
At 6'9 250 with a 7'1 wingspan, Long is the type of big man who would have been a prototype 4 a generation ago but is now better off as a small-ball 5. In that sense, he reminds me a lot of Robert Carter Jr. of Maryland. The difference is that Long isn't quite as athletic as RCJ - he struggles to finish in traffic and he needs to cut some weight and get into better shape in order to do a better job of sliding his feet and dealing with NBA-caliber athletes at the next level.
It's hard for him to show what he can fully do at ULL, where he sees constant double and triple teams whenever he catches the ball. There just aren't many big men in the Sun Belt who have any chance of handling him 1-on-1, though really there aren't many big men in the country who can handle him period. Long is averaging 18 points, 13 rebounds and 2 blocks on 53% shooting and he would be an All-Conference caliber player no matter the level of the competition.
He is averaging 18.9 points, 12.9 rebounds and 1.8 blocks a game on 51.6% shooting and he can score from all over the floor. He's probably at his best when he's facing up at the high post and using his quickness to get around slower big men, but he's also capable of establishing position in the low block and scoring from a variety of angles. The most impressive part of his game is how comfortable he is with the ball in his hands and his ability to zip passes through traffic - all those games in the Sun Belt have made him very comfortable dealing with help and he's just on a whole different level than most of his teammates.
The biggest thing he will need to work on if he's going to play at the next level is getting into tip-top shape, which would help with his athleticism and his ability to finish in traffic, as well as refining his shot and proving he can be a consistent 3-point shooter. He's shooting 22% on 2.2 3PA's this season and if he can shoot like he did as a sophomore (when he was playing with a guard who demanded defensive attention and could consistently create open looks for him) it will open up the rest of his game and all but assure him of a roster spot in the NBA.
As is, Long will probably have to earn his way through the D-League. ULL probably isn't good enough to make a run in the NCAA Tourney and there won't be that much excitement about an older prospect from a low-major conference whose numbers have gone in the wrong direction over the last two seasons. The odds are always against a player in the D-League, but Long has the skill-set and the body to where NBA teams will be keeping a close eye on him.
2) The Ragin' Cajuns supporting cast isn't quite good enough
Any team with a big man of Long's caliber has to be taken seriously but there isn't quite enough around him to where they are going to scare any high-major teams. They lost all theri showcase games in the non-conference by double digits (Miami, Alabama, UCLA) and they would be the 3rd best team in the Sun Belt behind Arkansas Little-Rock and UT-Arlington, if UTA had Kevin Hervey healthy. They have a 14-10 record and a 10-5 mark in conference play and they will face a tough challenge in upsetting UALR (22-3, 13-2 in conference) if they are going to make the field of 68.
They have a lot of experience and athleticism around Long, as they start two juniors and a senior around him. The problem is that no one else on the roster is a real difference maker. They don't have a high-level playmaker, another quality big man or a legit secondary option and they don't have enough three-point shooting to kill teams if they pack the paint to stop Long. They are a decent low-major team whom Long might be able to carry through the Sun Belt Tourney, but they probably don't have enough to pull an upset in the Tourney.
3) Kevin Hervey is a legit prospect
The real shame about UT Arlington's season is that they lost their best player (sophomore big man Kevin Hervey) to an ACL injury at the beginning of conference play. They had made a huge splash by upsettig Memphie and Ohio State and taking Texas to OT (all on their home courts) but without Hervey they go from a special team to merely decent. Hervey is legit - he's an athletic 6'9 210 stretch 4 who was putting up monstrous numbers before the injury - 18.1 points, 9.8 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 0.8 blocks a game on 45.3% shooting and 32.3% from 3 on 5.8 3PA's. He could play for just about any team in the country and I'm not sure how all the bigger problems in the Metroplex missed out on him.
4) UT Arlington is a program on the rise
The good news for UT Arlington is they don't have any seniors in their rotation so they will be getting everyone back next season when Hervey is hopefully recovered from the injury. The other real notable player is sophomore PG Erick Neal, a 5'11 160 jitterbug whose absolutely dynamite with the ball in his hands. Neal jumps off the screen when you watch him - he's a young guy whose still prone to making the flashy play instead of the simple play but he's almost impossible to stay in front of on the dribble and he's a dynamic playmaker who can shoot off the dribble and make every pass in the book. The core of Hervey and Neal has a chance to take UTA to the next level and they could be the best two players on a high-major team by the time they are seniors.
Combine those two with a bunch of athletic guards who can shoot 3's - UTA has three perimeter players who shoot at least 37% from deep - as well as a 6'8 stretch big man from Europe (junior Jorge Bilbao) and they have a group who will be a serious threat next season. The level of play in the Sun Belt conference is reasonably high (Georgia State famously knocked off Baylor in last year's Tourney thanks to RJ Hunter's buzzer beater) and UTA has the pieces to where they could win as many as two games in the Tourney if they get the right draw. This is a team to keep an eye on.
5) Scott Cross is a rising star in the coaching ranks
Cross, a former UTA player, has painstakingly built up the program over the last decade and he has everything a bigger school should be looking for in a coach. If I was TCU, I'd think long and hard about Cross to replace Trent Johnson, who hasn't been able to get much positive going in his first three seasons in Fort Worth. Hervey and Neal would be the two best players on TCU's roster and UT Arlington's program is in better shape than TCU's at the moment, which kind of says it all. Cross has the three qualities I'd want for that job:
1 - A young coach whose proven he can build a program.
TCU is a job for a young guy looking to make a name for himself, not an older retreat looking to hold on to relevance. You need a lot of energy to undertake that type of rebuilding job country and you need someone whose going to fire up the fan base and bring some energy back into the program. I'm not a huge fan of hiring assistant coaches who have never had a head coaching job and I'm of the opinion that high major programs should focus less on winning the press conference and more on digging through the mid major and low major ranks for guys who have proven they can win. Of course, if Cross goes on a deep Tourney run at UTA, he becomes a guy who could win a press conference too.
2 - Recruiting ties to the Metroplex.
DFW is one of the biggest recruiting hotbeds in the country and any coach whose going to win at TCU is going to have to be able to find local talent and convince them to stay at home. That's the most impressive part of what Cross is doing - these are all local kids. Neal is from Lincoln (the school which produced Chris Bosh and LeBryan Nash) while Hervey is from Arlington Mansfield. Other than Bilbao,the other four starters as well as most of their bench are from the North Texas area.
3 - Runs a modern offense
You can't afford to leave any points on the board if you are going to win at a school like TCU and Cross does a good job of maximizing the talent he has by playing a lot of shooters and running a lot of pick-and-rolls. With Hervey out, he has gone small and put three shooters around Bilbao and Neal and they play a very fast and entertaining brand of basketball that allows them to play up to their competition, including a 75-74 OT victory over UL-L on Thursday. The way UT Arlington plays is a refreshing change of pace compared to some of the brutal slogs that Johnson's teams have made TCU fans suffer through, and that brand of basketball would help to re-invigorate a fairly moribund program in Fort Worth.
Cross has been a head coach for 10 seasons with a record of 171-135 and has made one apperance in the NCAA, one in the NIT and one in the CIT. Maybe even more impressive, he only has three losing seasons in that span despite being a school with zero tradition (they had never made the Tourney before Cross in 30+ years at the D1 level) or fan support. And he has done all that while still being only 41 years old. The jump from the Sun Belt to the Big 12 would be a big one, but if it's not TCU he's going to be at a bigger job soon. File his name away for later because he's a rising star in the coaching profession.
Long has been on the NBA radar for a few years, ever since a dominant sophomore season when h and Elfrid Payton took UL-L to the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament. Long put up the type of numbers - 18.6 points, 10.4 rebounds and 2.7 blocks on 52.2% shooting and 42.3% from 3 on 2.3 3PA's - that will get you noticed by scouts no matter where you play. He has stagnated the last two seasons playing without Payton but he has still shown enough to where he will at least get a shot at the next level, even if he isn't drafted.
At 6'9 250 with a 7'1 wingspan, Long is the type of big man who would have been a prototype 4 a generation ago but is now better off as a small-ball 5. In that sense, he reminds me a lot of Robert Carter Jr. of Maryland. The difference is that Long isn't quite as athletic as RCJ - he struggles to finish in traffic and he needs to cut some weight and get into better shape in order to do a better job of sliding his feet and dealing with NBA-caliber athletes at the next level.
It's hard for him to show what he can fully do at ULL, where he sees constant double and triple teams whenever he catches the ball. There just aren't many big men in the Sun Belt who have any chance of handling him 1-on-1, though really there aren't many big men in the country who can handle him period. Long is averaging 18 points, 13 rebounds and 2 blocks on 53% shooting and he would be an All-Conference caliber player no matter the level of the competition.
He is averaging 18.9 points, 12.9 rebounds and 1.8 blocks a game on 51.6% shooting and he can score from all over the floor. He's probably at his best when he's facing up at the high post and using his quickness to get around slower big men, but he's also capable of establishing position in the low block and scoring from a variety of angles. The most impressive part of his game is how comfortable he is with the ball in his hands and his ability to zip passes through traffic - all those games in the Sun Belt have made him very comfortable dealing with help and he's just on a whole different level than most of his teammates.
The biggest thing he will need to work on if he's going to play at the next level is getting into tip-top shape, which would help with his athleticism and his ability to finish in traffic, as well as refining his shot and proving he can be a consistent 3-point shooter. He's shooting 22% on 2.2 3PA's this season and if he can shoot like he did as a sophomore (when he was playing with a guard who demanded defensive attention and could consistently create open looks for him) it will open up the rest of his game and all but assure him of a roster spot in the NBA.
As is, Long will probably have to earn his way through the D-League. ULL probably isn't good enough to make a run in the NCAA Tourney and there won't be that much excitement about an older prospect from a low-major conference whose numbers have gone in the wrong direction over the last two seasons. The odds are always against a player in the D-League, but Long has the skill-set and the body to where NBA teams will be keeping a close eye on him.
2) The Ragin' Cajuns supporting cast isn't quite good enough
Any team with a big man of Long's caliber has to be taken seriously but there isn't quite enough around him to where they are going to scare any high-major teams. They lost all theri showcase games in the non-conference by double digits (Miami, Alabama, UCLA) and they would be the 3rd best team in the Sun Belt behind Arkansas Little-Rock and UT-Arlington, if UTA had Kevin Hervey healthy. They have a 14-10 record and a 10-5 mark in conference play and they will face a tough challenge in upsetting UALR (22-3, 13-2 in conference) if they are going to make the field of 68.
They have a lot of experience and athleticism around Long, as they start two juniors and a senior around him. The problem is that no one else on the roster is a real difference maker. They don't have a high-level playmaker, another quality big man or a legit secondary option and they don't have enough three-point shooting to kill teams if they pack the paint to stop Long. They are a decent low-major team whom Long might be able to carry through the Sun Belt Tourney, but they probably don't have enough to pull an upset in the Tourney.
3) Kevin Hervey is a legit prospect
The real shame about UT Arlington's season is that they lost their best player (sophomore big man Kevin Hervey) to an ACL injury at the beginning of conference play. They had made a huge splash by upsettig Memphie and Ohio State and taking Texas to OT (all on their home courts) but without Hervey they go from a special team to merely decent. Hervey is legit - he's an athletic 6'9 210 stretch 4 who was putting up monstrous numbers before the injury - 18.1 points, 9.8 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 0.8 blocks a game on 45.3% shooting and 32.3% from 3 on 5.8 3PA's. He could play for just about any team in the country and I'm not sure how all the bigger problems in the Metroplex missed out on him.
4) UT Arlington is a program on the rise
The good news for UT Arlington is they don't have any seniors in their rotation so they will be getting everyone back next season when Hervey is hopefully recovered from the injury. The other real notable player is sophomore PG Erick Neal, a 5'11 160 jitterbug whose absolutely dynamite with the ball in his hands. Neal jumps off the screen when you watch him - he's a young guy whose still prone to making the flashy play instead of the simple play but he's almost impossible to stay in front of on the dribble and he's a dynamic playmaker who can shoot off the dribble and make every pass in the book. The core of Hervey and Neal has a chance to take UTA to the next level and they could be the best two players on a high-major team by the time they are seniors.
Combine those two with a bunch of athletic guards who can shoot 3's - UTA has three perimeter players who shoot at least 37% from deep - as well as a 6'8 stretch big man from Europe (junior Jorge Bilbao) and they have a group who will be a serious threat next season. The level of play in the Sun Belt conference is reasonably high (Georgia State famously knocked off Baylor in last year's Tourney thanks to RJ Hunter's buzzer beater) and UTA has the pieces to where they could win as many as two games in the Tourney if they get the right draw. This is a team to keep an eye on.
5) Scott Cross is a rising star in the coaching ranks
Cross, a former UTA player, has painstakingly built up the program over the last decade and he has everything a bigger school should be looking for in a coach. If I was TCU, I'd think long and hard about Cross to replace Trent Johnson, who hasn't been able to get much positive going in his first three seasons in Fort Worth. Hervey and Neal would be the two best players on TCU's roster and UT Arlington's program is in better shape than TCU's at the moment, which kind of says it all. Cross has the three qualities I'd want for that job:
1 - A young coach whose proven he can build a program.
TCU is a job for a young guy looking to make a name for himself, not an older retreat looking to hold on to relevance. You need a lot of energy to undertake that type of rebuilding job country and you need someone whose going to fire up the fan base and bring some energy back into the program. I'm not a huge fan of hiring assistant coaches who have never had a head coaching job and I'm of the opinion that high major programs should focus less on winning the press conference and more on digging through the mid major and low major ranks for guys who have proven they can win. Of course, if Cross goes on a deep Tourney run at UTA, he becomes a guy who could win a press conference too.
2 - Recruiting ties to the Metroplex.
DFW is one of the biggest recruiting hotbeds in the country and any coach whose going to win at TCU is going to have to be able to find local talent and convince them to stay at home. That's the most impressive part of what Cross is doing - these are all local kids. Neal is from Lincoln (the school which produced Chris Bosh and LeBryan Nash) while Hervey is from Arlington Mansfield. Other than Bilbao,the other four starters as well as most of their bench are from the North Texas area.
3 - Runs a modern offense
You can't afford to leave any points on the board if you are going to win at a school like TCU and Cross does a good job of maximizing the talent he has by playing a lot of shooters and running a lot of pick-and-rolls. With Hervey out, he has gone small and put three shooters around Bilbao and Neal and they play a very fast and entertaining brand of basketball that allows them to play up to their competition, including a 75-74 OT victory over UL-L on Thursday. The way UT Arlington plays is a refreshing change of pace compared to some of the brutal slogs that Johnson's teams have made TCU fans suffer through, and that brand of basketball would help to re-invigorate a fairly moribund program in Fort Worth.
Cross has been a head coach for 10 seasons with a record of 171-135 and has made one apperance in the NCAA, one in the NIT and one in the CIT. Maybe even more impressive, he only has three losing seasons in that span despite being a school with zero tradition (they had never made the Tourney before Cross in 30+ years at the D1 level) or fan support. And he has done all that while still being only 41 years old. The jump from the Sun Belt to the Big 12 would be a big one, but if it's not TCU he's going to be at a bigger job soon. File his name away for later because he's a rising star in the coaching profession.
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