Roundball Reasons

Answering the most pressing questions facing NBA team and league executives

The 2019 Draft’s Most Underrated Prospects

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Earlier this week, I said that the 2019 draft appears to be especially flat, with minimal drop-off in the level of prospect available from the mid-lottery through the early second round. Now I’ll dig a little deeper by identifying a lineup of players that I believe to be excellent value picks based on where they’re projected to go, starting in the backcourt with Carsen Edwards.

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Carson Edwards (Purdue) – 6’0.25” 199 pounds, 6’6” wingspan

Optimistic Comp: Lou Williams in Mo Williams’s body, with shades of Damian Lillard

Role: Hibachi Scorer & Extreme Floor Spacer

ESPN Mock #34 (updated #35)

I have to admit that I’m concerned by Edwards’s similarities to Jawun Evans—probably my biggest scouting miss in recent years. Both Edwards and Evans are undersized, high-usage point guards who led hyper-efficient offenses against a top-5 NCAA schedule. In 2017 I named Evans one of the most underrated players in the draft, along with Donovan Mitchell, Derrick White, and Jordan Bell. Evans’s game hasn’t translated to the NBA, mostly due to his inability to get good shots against bigger and more athletic defenders. Unfortunately for Carsen Edwards, he and Jawun Evans are almost exactly the same size in terms of height, wingspan, and standing reach. Evans also showed better vision, creativity, and pick and roll proficiency as a distributor in college.

So why am I so high on Edwards? Really it comes down to 3 advantages he has over Evans: separation, range, and strength. Whereas Evans was a very crafty scorer in college, using screens and a tight handle to generate just enough space for his jumpers, floaters, scoops, and circus shots, Edwards is a truly dynamic shooter who routinely gets wide open despite being the focus of the defense. His jumper has a suddenness about it that catches defenders flat-footed, as he’s able to go from a full sprint to rising up for a shot in a blink, either off the dribble or running around a screen. Check out the slideshow above and see just how far the nearest defender is from Edwards when he releases his shot.

Combined with this ability to shoot off of movement and create separation, Edwards’s range is what really sets him apart from other prospects. Any decent 3-point shooter helps a team’s spacing; only a few players bend the court toward them. Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, and Trae Young stand out in a league full of outstanding shooters due to their shot volume and efficiency 30+ feet from the hoop. They demand attention from the defense as soon as they cross the half court line. Carsen Edwards may be another such player.

Edwards led the Big Ten with 380 3-point field goal attempts—116 more than anyone else—and many of those attempts were well beyond the arc. In addition, the majority of his made 3s were unassisted. His range off the dribble was on full display in Purdue’s Elite Eight loss to future national champion and perennial defensive juggernaut UVA. En route to scoring 42 points on 14-25 shooting with 10 threes, Edwards knocked down at least a few shots from 30+ feet out:

Finally, though Edwards is undersized by most measures, he’s significantly stronger than the average point guard. He completed 14 reps of the max bench press at the combine—tied for 6th best among all prospects and 13 more than Evans a couple years prior. At 199 pounds, he’s heavier and more muscular than each of the aforementioned shooting savants (Curry, Lillard, and Trae). Since he’s built like a tank, Edwards isn’t bothered by contact, brushing it off or using it to his advantage as a ballhandler. His strength and bulk should also come in handy setting screens, particularly considering how effective great shooters can be as screeners in today’s NBA. He’s actually very similar in build to Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet, the short but sturdy guard tandem that played most crunch-time minutes together for the Raptors during their run to the title. Since their size wasn’t an impediment to Toronto, I’m thinking that Edwards’s size limitations are overblown. If he were 3 inches taller with the same wingspan, he’d be a lottery pick.

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Matisse Thybulle (Washington) – 6’5” 195 pounds, 7’0” wingspan (unofficial)

Optimistic Comp: era-adjusted Michael Cooper, or Andre Roberson with a credible jumper

Role: Tenacious Perimeter Defender & Spot-Up Shooter

ESPN Mock #24 (updated #33)

Simply put, with respect to perimeter defense, Thybulle is arguably the most exciting prospect in recent memory. In the above photo, you can see him licking his lips as a ballhawk salivating in anticipation of jumping the passing lane and possibly nabbing a steal against USC. He wound up with 7 steals and 2 blocks in that game. Then he had another 7 steals and a block the next game against UCLA, followed by 5 steals and 5 blocks at Arizona. In all, Thybulle had at least 6 combined steals and blocks in 20 of his 36 games this past season, including both of his NCAA Tournament games.

Those steal and block totals dwarf what anyone else in college basketball has done. In the past 2 years, Thybulle has seasons of (i) 126 steals and 82 blocks and (ii) 101 steals and 49 blocks. Here’s the list of player seasons with at least 40 blocks in that span, sorted by steals. No one else has more than 85 steals, and limiting the analysis to other major-conference players, Zion’s 70 steals is the next-best total. It’s also notable that every major-conference player in the top 25 on that list is a legit NBA prospect or current NBA player. Steals and blocks are pretty good indicators of NBA-level athleticism and awareness.

There’s no question that Thybulle can be a plus defender at the NBA level, and perhaps an elite one. At Washington he’s starred as a smothering individual defender and a game-changing team defender in the Huskies’ zone, with a combination of quickness, length, effort, anticipation, and timing that made Washington a top-20 defense despite a glaring lack of size on the roster. The questions for Thybulle are on the other end of the floor.

Offensively, Thybulle’s college career has been underwhelming. His 2- and 3-point shooting percentages are essentially average, and his usage is a bit below. His assist and turnover rates are adequate for a wing though subpar for a non-scoring guard. His best statistical indicator is his strong FT%, 78% for his career and 85% in the most recent season, though he doesn’t get to the free throw line often.

Thybulle’s efficiency, usage, and ballhandling metrics align closely with Roberson’s, making him an especially attractive comp. Roberson is an exceedingly low-usage NBA player, with below-average efficiency and a wholly unreliable jumper (25.7% from 3 for his career), yet he’s still a net positive because of his defense. By Real Plus-Minus, he ranked as the league’s #7 shooting guard in each of his past two healthy seasons.

So even if Thybulle is effectively a one-way player like Roberson, shouldn’t he still be a top-20 prospect in this draft class? And then there’s the fact that Thybulle is a much better free throw shooter than Roberson, who made 58% of his free throws in college and just 47% in the pros, making it probable that unlike Roberson, Thybulle will be at least a somewhat credible threat as a spot-up shooter. Prospects with similar NCAA shooting splits like Delon Wright, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Jae Crowder, and Will Barton have trended toward being serviceable NBA 3-point shooters, in the 33-35% range. If that’s where Thybulle ends up, he seems destined to outperform his draft position.

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DaQuan Jeffries (Tulsa) – 6’5” 216 pounds, 6’11.25” wingspan

Comp: Pat Connaughton, James Ennis, Royce O’Neale

Role: Moreyball Wing

ESPN Mock #43 (updated #47)

DaQuan Jeffries knows a good scoring opportunity from a bad one, and he’s only interested in the good ones. Of his 404 points this year, Jeffries scored 372 (92.1%) from three spots: the 3-point line (135), the free throw line (83), and at the rim (154). Those also happen to be the 3 most efficient scoring locations. Thus, it’s unsurprising that Jeffries has been a remarkably efficient collegiate scorer. His True Shooting% by year has been 65%, 64%, and 62% in his 3 seasons, the last of which on above-average usage.

Jeffries should not be a high-usage scorer in the NBA. He doesn’t have the shot variation or creation ability for that. So I’ve dispensed with the optimistic comps and simply listed the most realistic ones. Like many successful overlooked prospects before him, Jeffries projects as a low-usage, reasonably high-efficiency wing with the length, strength, and athleticism to competently defend multiple positions. Most NBA teams could use another guy like that in their rotation.

And though I won’t discuss his athleticism in detail, it’s definitely a plus. He’s strong across the board in the key functional athleticism indicators (offensive rebounds, steals, blocks, free throw rate, scoring at the rim), particularly so with respect to blocks. Though Jeffries is just 6’5” he led the AAC in block rate in 2018 and finished 5th in that category this past year. He also won the 2019 NCAA dunk contest, in fairly spectacular fashion:

For more on Jeffries, check out this great scouting report by Ben Pfeifer.

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Grant Williams (Tennessee) – 6’7.5” 240 pounds, 6’9.75” wingspan

Optimistic Comp: thicker Josh Howard, or David West with shorter arms

Role: Frontcourt Jack of All Trades

ESPN Mock #32 (updated #30)

I’m not going to write a ton on Grant Williams, because it’s all already been written. He’s this year’s winner of the “biggest disparity between NBA draft twitter and front office consensus” award. He’s also the epitome of the super-productive all-around college player who doesn’t look the part of a top draft pick, and those guys tend to far exceed expectations. I’ve listed a couple such players as comps in Josh Howard and David West, and of course Draymond Green is another.

Grant Williams is the back-to-back SEC Player of the Year, and a guy who stands out in a remarkable number of areas: scoring in the paint, getting to the free throw line, shooting mid-range jumpers, passing out of the post, facilitating from the perimeter, rebounding, interior defense, perimeter defense, and probably more.

Take a look at the two photos above, which illustrate Williams’s versatility. In the first, he’s playing post defense against Simi Shittu, an NBA PF/C prospect at Vanderbilt. Though Williams is giving up a couple inches in height and more in wingspan, Williams’s strength and positioning give him the advantage. In the second, he’s defending guard Tyler Herro of Kentucky, a likely 1st round pick, on the perimeter. Williams has no difficulty in this situation either, using his awareness and positioning to contain Herro. That ended up being Herro’s worst game in conference play, as he shot 2-11 with 5 turnovers.

Rather than going on about Williams, I’ll direct you to some more comprehensive analysis of his game, starting with Brian Schroeder’s article in Dime Magazine, which includes the following succinct explanation of why Williams is so underrated:

The scouting report on Williams is hard to contextualize, because there aren’t really many players like him. Undersized as a big man and oversized as a pure wing, he’s a post scoring, post passing, close contact player in an era that emphasizes movement on the perimeter over anything else. His raw numbers are good (18.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.1 steals, 1.5 blocks per game), but don’t leap off the screen the same way that, say, Ja Morant’s do.

He can still hold up in the NBA because he possesses three rare attributes that almost every good NBA player has: he’s smart (both in the traditional sense and in the basketball sense), he’s strong, and he’s got great touch. Those three things can make even a sub-NBA athlete into a star (see: Jokić, Nikola).

For more, check out these two pieces by The Stepien’s Ben Rubin, who’s probably my single favorite draft analyst out there: The Upside Case For Grant Williams and Grant Williams Chosen Between 24 and 40 as The Draft’s Second Best Play.

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Nic Claxton (Georgia) – 6’11.75” 217 pounds, 7’2.5” wingspan, 9’2” standing reach

Optimistic Comp: Pascal Siakam or Josh Smith, hopefully with the former’s self-discipline

Role: Athletic, Switchable Big / Secondary Shot Creator

ESPN Mock #31 (updated #32)

I don’t know if I truly consider Claxton the most underrated prospect in the draft, but in my view he’s the most interesting prospect. His upside is just absolutely massive. If I were ranking this draft by potential, he’d be in the top 5. By every measurable other than weight, he has NBA Center size. But he moves like an athletic Small Forward, and he flashes offensive skills that are rare for any big man, let alone a teenager.

On a team seriously lacking talent in a tough conference, Claxton led Georgia in just about every statistical category: field goals, free throws, rebounds, steals, and blocks, and he even placed a close second in assists. About half the time, Georgia played without a point guard, rendering Claxton functionally a point center.

As a result, there’s some serious context needed to evaluate Claxton’s subpar shooting efficiency (53.3% True Shooting, including 50.9% from 2). Whereas many draft-eligible bigs take around 2/3 of their shots at the rim and the majority of those shots are assisted, Claxton barely got 1/3 of his shots at the rim, the majority of which were unassisted. He made over 70% of those attempts. Given how often Claxton was tasked with creating offense from the perimeter, it’s impressive that he shot as well as he did.

When Claxton created his own offense on dribble drives, the results were sometimes jaw-dropping. Watch the 7 or 8 drives starting at the 3:25 mark and see for yourself:

And that doesn’t even include my favorite clip, which I’ve only found embedded in this TJ Oxley scouting report. There, Claxton uses a hesitation dribble to get by his primary defender before eluding the rim protector with an acrobatic reverse layup.

Watching Claxton, it’s easy to get visions of Giannis or Kevin Durant. Claxton has his share of clumsy dribbling and bad decision-making as well, but again, keep in mind that he’s a 19-year-old, 7-foot tall, #1 scoring option in the SEC.

I can’t think of any other 7-footers in the NCAA who regularly score on dribble drives or run pick & roll as the ballhandler rather than the roll man. Claxton also spots up beyond the arc with some regularity, and while the results have been mediocre (30% on 86 3PA in his career), his combination of decent shooting form and reasonably high volume is promising.

In evaluating Claxton, it’s important to keep in mind that offense is by far Claxton’s lesser side of the ball. Even if he settles into the NBA as a low-usage dive man offensively, he still has a high ceiling based on his defensive potential. He has a 9’2” standing reach and 36.5” vertical, which allowed him to lead the SEC in blocks this year. But more than that, he moves his feet so well that he stands to be one of the most switchable defenders in the league. Here he is defending Texas’s star senior guard and pro prospect Kerwin Roach, staying with him throughout the possession before ultimately forcing a turnover:

Claxton certainly isn’t the safest pick in this draft, and it’s possible that he’ll never settle into a role in the NBA. He’s so thin that he’ll get bullied around in certain matchups, and his ballhandling may be more tantalizing than it is useful at the NBA level. But drafting late in the first round, I’d want to place a bet on Claxton’s potential over anyone else on the board.

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