5 Guys We're Not Buying Into
Sometimes you can see the talent in a prospect but just say "he's not for me." Here are five guys we are out on in that regard
Sometimes you can see the talent in a prospect but just say "he's not for me."
That’s okay! We need to normalize that type of analysis within the draft space. Diving into each prospect reveals a lot about their play style, not just their upside or impact. Sometimes we see an effective prospect who plays in a way that isn’t how we would want someone of his position to play on our team. If draft analysis is supposed to simulate what takes place within a front office, these types of conversations need to happen.
Other times, it’s not just about style, though. There are barriers of risk that go into a prospect — often known as swing skills — that sometimes cannot be climbed over. Too much risk, or risk in the wrong areas, can scare us away from wanting to take that player. For a more detailed look at how risk assessment goes into draft analysis, check out our piece on the topic from last week.
There are five prospects who are guys we are out on. Not our type of investment, too risky for us to put our job on the line for, there are various reasons we are out. That’s the threshold we’re looking for here: would we be comfortable putting our job on the line for these guys? As a result, the prospects in consideration need to be guys within first-round value, as second-round selections whiff more than they hit, so the risk involved is inherent.
AJ Griffin, Duke
Look, we aren’t saying we do not see the upside in Griffin. The upside is pretty clear, and we had a front-row seat to that upside when he was in high school at Archbishop Stepinac and we were recruiting his teammate. He’s chiseled and so strong for his age. He showed bursts of insane athleticism, flashes of great shot-making in isolation and could shoot the triple.
From our vantage point as a glorified internet scout, we have to go off what we see on film. The tape from his college game, compared with what we saw from him in high school, has us fairly disappointed about the development of those standout skills. A few lower-body injuries have zapped his athleticism — while we aren’t ones to attach the ‘injury prone’ label to guys, the functional evidence about these injuries hampering his play is clear. It makes him risky in so many ways as a prospect.
Griffin’s game is a little unorthodox on its own. His shot base is really wide, and that makes it harder for him to separate when attacking closeouts. He’s super square of an athlete on both ends, and while he’s really strong he doesn’t drive or seek contact as much as we’d like. Even if he regains that athleticism we saw in high school, he hasn’t shown he can use it in a functional way.
Those aforementioned injuries, plus the strict COVID rules in New York City, essentially cost Griffin two years before coming into college. Because of those delays in his development, he’s really far behind defensively. We’d feel alright in swinging on his upside at some point if we thought he’d be a solid defender. His unique frame, square movements and lack of footspeed leaves him without a natural position to guard, and with the amount of work that will go into catching him up on defense, we’re really scared away by that side of the floor.
Griffin gets lauded as an elite shooter due to the strong catch-and-shoot numbers he did through 40 games. Shooting 44.7% from deep is really respectable, but we think he shot a little bit (or a lot) above his head. If he isn’t a 40% 3-point shooter, we struggle knowing exactly what his go-to skill is going to be on offense.
Here’s the reality. Griffin played only 24 minutes per game at Duke and was off the floor in some late-game situations due to his defense. If he doesn’t shoot it as well as he did this year for the Blue Devils, he loses the comfortable floor that so many are banking on. With unorthodox mechanics and a lack of recent sample size for us to trust on it, there are just far too many questions for us to feel comfortable giving him a lottery pick. Beyond the lottery, the upside becomes much more manageable of a gamble.
Tari Eason, LSU
While we have a first-round grade on Eason, there are some severe warning labels on the outside of the bottle that we all must be aware of.
First and foremost, Eason has struggled with the consistency of his shot. 16 games into the season, he was shooting under 28% from 3 with uncomfortable form off to the right side of his face, hesitating on most looks and being marooned on an island from deep. The final 17 games saw a tremendous amount of growth — 43% from 3 — but it’s hard to know which version of Eason to trust, how much that shooting sample is legitimate and how fixable the remaining mechanical flaws are.
The shot is meant to accompany a robust driving game of Eason’s, which is currently 95% right-hand-dominant. The LSU offense was designed around getting Eason touches going downhill to his right, and he was athletic and strong enough to get to his spots and create contact for free throws. Touch, counter moves or mid-range pull-ups were not there for him.
Nor was a left hand. Defenders who cut him off and forced him back to his left found success. The lack of diversity in his moves, and how overly reliant he was on his right, is a handicapper in his scoring off the bounce.
Guys like Eason are tough offensive scouts: they’re incredibly productive while also having a strain on your eyes. Can what we’re seeing work at an NBA level despite the clear limitations and skill levels at play? Scoring in an efficient way without a ton of diversity to the game is difficult to peg.
While Eason’s athleticism and defensive impact are above-average, they aren’t elite enough to mitigate if he were struggling on the offensive end. LSU clearly catered to Eason with their playbook, and we don’t think he’ll be a dynamic enough player to warrant that type of coddling in the NBA.
While his scoring numbers were efficient (per-40 scoring rate and high percentages are usually a good indicator of efficiency for an impactful NBA role), Eason was a bit of a one-trick pony: score it, and score it going right.
He finished the season with only 17 assists in the half-court, according to Synergy. His usage rate, above 30%, with an assist rate at 10.2%, is incredibly low. Unlike other prospects such as Keegan Murray, Eason isn’t turnover-averse in the sense that he’s a black hole. His 13.8% turnover rate is fairly high, and his 1.6 AST and 3.6 TO per 40 minutes show that. Dating back to 2009, no prospect has seen such a high usage rate, low assist rate and high turnover threshold and gotten drafted.
Projecting Eason on the offensive end is about envisioning where and how he overhauls his game. The biggest area is in his jump shot. We don’t love the natural feel or touch he shows. Certain indicators can predict whether a raw athlete can gain consistent range to 3: the flick and touch in the 7-15 foot range, the fluidity top-to-bottom of their shot, and the lack of hesitation in getting shots up. All those factors lead us to believe that the 43% over the final part of the season is less realistic than the 28% he shot in the beginning.
The flight risks with Eason as an offensive piece really take us away from sniffing him in the top 20. We’d look for him as a Swiss Army Knife defender in the late 20s, when the upside on athletes of his caliber to turn into a Jaden McDaniels type of player are worth the risk.
Malaki Branham, Ohio State
It’s so easy to fall in love with the second half of the season that Malaki Branham posted. Over his final 15 games, he shot 55-45-84, scored 17.7 points per game in the Big Ten, and had a positive assist to turnover ratio. At his age, the rapid growth and development is worth noting.
Our issue with Branham is purely stylistic, based on his athleticism and where so many of his shots at Ohio State came from. What we don’t talk about enough with Branham is the risk that goes into drafting a mid-range-heavy guy whose primary role is with the ball in their hands. If he doesn’t do enough else as a scorer/ facilitator or has a deep enough bag of tricks, he becomes inefficient when cast in that role. While there’s a legitimate upside to believing that Branham can become a great scorer in the NBA, there’s also the downside that he’ll not be good enough at scoring in the mid-range and be asked to do something entirely different on offense.
Translation: if he doesn’t develop shooting off the bounce from 3, he only takes the shots that opposing defenses want him to take. Branham does not have the moxie to get to the elite level that is required for such voluminous mid-range usage — yet. His 29.9% free throw rate is pretty pedestrian, and 3.0 free throws per game are nowhere near where they should be.
Branham’s shooting impact at Ohio State was drastically two-sided. On one hand, his catch-and-shoot rates were tremendous, making 43.5% of them in the half-court. On the other, he was only 2-9 from deep off the bounce, both an inefficient mark and showing hesitation in attempting them. We’re still somewhat mystified by the lack of consistent range to 3. Mechanically, he doesn’t look comfortable taking them and rushes those attempts or shorts them off the front rim.
The most jarring example of Branham being aided by his college offensive system came in seals at the basket by teammates who were pretending to post-up. We’ve seen the screen-and-seal do wonders in the NBA for methodical drivers, but it isn’t as viable of a strategy as the Buckeyes made it out to be. Plus, evaluating young players (and drafting them accordingly) is about taking them in a range where their natural talent is good enough that they shouldn’t be reliant on those tricks to score.
What we noticed from Branham is that, without those leveraged pieces to help him gain separation, he’s a tad too slow in attacking the rim. A methodical driver based on control and not speed, he has to be more physical in getting to his spots. The natural strength he possesses is great, he just has no clue how to use it yet, and there’s so much that goes into providing an effective mid-range counter game for guys who are not top-tier athletes.
A lot of the gambles on Branham and developing him on that end become more palatable if you like his defense. We think it tops out at very average. Right now, it’s pretty far behind other prospects — he and AJ Griffin were the worst defenders to receive a top-30 grade for us.
All in all, there’s too much risk that goes into Branham for us. What he does well is impactful, but if he doesn’t do it on an elite level in the NBA, the rest of his game isn’t scalable to role player impact. We love the kid, we are impressed by his improvement, but we’re okay in letting someone else take the investment in stretching his range off the bounce to 3.
Patrick Baldwin Jr., Milwaukee
We still see some outlets that have a first round grade on Patrick Baldwin Jr. At this point in time, the evidence is a little too insurmountable that pushes him into a non-guaranteed contract territory. He hasn’t been effective in at least 18 months, is inefficient at his one supposed top skill (shooting) and came out of a horrible combine where he tested and measured as one of the worst athletes in recent memory.
It’s hard to know just how much of Baldwin’s struggles this season are due to the ankle, due to a poor situation in Milwaukee or simply poor play. Baldwin finished the year with 12.1 points, 5.8 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game on 34.4% shooting and a mere 26.6% shooting from deep. That number is insanely low for a guy whose best role in the pros is as a shooting specialist.
There are some legitimate gripes with Baldwin that make it hard to know exactly where to draft him. On one hand, he’s got a great deal of shooting potential, size and the ability to thrive in the right off-ball context. Next to NBA-caliber athletes, he can be a strong spot-up shooter. On the other hand, defensive concerns and a lack of consistent shooting ability negate his biggest strength and make it difficult to justify taking him in the first.
Quite frankly, we wouldn’t take the risk at this point. Increased data points just leave us not wanting to make that investment, and there are enough solid shooters available in the later part of the first round where we could simultaneously get that impact while protecting ourselves from swinging and missing on a guy with clear red flags like Baldwin.
Kendall Brown, Baylor
The final 22 games of the year were a disaster for Kendall Brown. He averaged 7.9 points, shot 49.6% from the field (and 29% from 3), and only took 1.3 stocks (steals plus blocks) per game. All the upside, all the flashes of tantalizing athletic potential that Brown demonstrated out of the gates went away as he became not just a liability on offense but a guy who simply lacked confidence. It’s not like Brown’s start of the season was just the result of him beating up on mid-major programs. He had 15 points and 3 steals vs. Stanford, 14 against VCU, and 17 on the road at Oregon.
Upon our rewatch, we were really disappointed with the total body of work Kendall put together this year. The offense we knew was raw: he finished well at the rim but rarely shot it, didn’t know how to fit into Baylor’s half-court approach and never harnessed some apparent playmaking upside.
The defense, though, was much more of a challenge than we expected. Standing up on-ball, not playing as big or athletic as he is in theory, falling victim to some switches… this wasn’t the same prospect we expected to see after the start to the year.
It’s hard to explain how confidence works, and how to spot it (or its absence) on the basketball court. What we maintain throughout our draft evaluation process is Pillar #10 of our Ten Commandments of scouting: we’re investing in the person as much as the player. Something is going on with Kendall, the person, with his confidence on a basketball court. And whatever it is, however it can get fixed, isn’t available to our limited purview from the outside. We’re simply scared away by the factors around Brown.