Flash Forward: Is Dereck Lively a Unicorn Prospect?
Flash Forward: Is Dereck Lively a Unicorn Prospect?
While not an elite offensive piece, Lively is big, athletic and versatile enough to garner interest as a top-five pick
It’s time to look forward!
We’ve got almost a year until the 2023 NBA Draft, but getting a head start on the prospects coming into college helps us hit the ground running when the season starts in November. This Summer and into the Fall, we’ll be doing some deep dives on fascinating prospects who are either international targets next year or one-and-done contenders coming into the collegiate ranks. The goal with these breakdowns is simple: provide a measuring stick for where they are at the time they enter, frame their draft stock for what they may need to improve to rise up boards and help provide a window to peer through into how we go about the evaluation process.
The idea for a series like this is directly inspired by the results of the 2022 NBA Draft. Some guys — like Patrick Baldwin Jr., Peyton Watson, and Shaedon Sharpe — got drafted in the first round this year based partially on their high school and AAU film, reputations, and preseason buzz. The teams that drafted them felt comfortable enough with what they saw at those levels to overlook poor seasons (PBJ and Watson) or nonexistent ones (Sharpe). If NBA Draft scouting is so heavily reliant on pre-college film to provide context, we should be putting more effort during the off-season to master what each prospect put together ahead of their college career.
I first saw Dereck Lively play in January of 2020 when I made a recruiting visit to see a practice at Westtown School. I was recruiting a teammate of Lively’s and knew I’d be in for a thrilling practice. Lively, a sophomore, wasn’t even the biggest guy in the gym; big man Franck Kepnang was there to guard him and push him. That Westtown team was loaded: Kepnang (Washington via Oregon), Noah Collier (Pitt), Jalen Warley (Florida State), TJ Berger (San Diego via Georgetown), Amir Britt (Manhattan) and Quin Berger (St. Joseph’s).
Yet it was Lively, the youngest of the group, who stood out the most. He was so mobile for a big man of his size and had grown skilled so he could play immediately with Kepnang. His movements, shooting stroke and dominance on the interior as a roll man immediately stood out. “I’m watching a future top-five pick,” I thought to myself.
Now enrolled at Duke, Lively is widely recognized as a top prospect and was the #1 rated recruit in the country by ESPN. We certainly don’t take credit for discovering Lively; he was well-known and highly regarded before we walked into that practice. But what we are fighting is confirmation bias, hoping that we aren’t jaded by our personal connection to seeing him so young, or to our affinity for his coaching staff in program — Westtown is one of the country’s best.
As we’ve tried to comb back those biases, we keep trying to rely solely on the film. In a time when drafting true big men early in the draft is taboo, the film reveals to us enough tantalizing and rare traits to make Lively worthy of being a top-five prospect.
Background
Listed at 7’1”, Lively is one of the biggest American-born prospects in some time. Born in Bellefonte, PA in the shadows of State College, the family connection to Penn State runs deep; his mother Drysdale was a 1,000 point scorer for the Nittany Lions. The guidance of his mother has been important to Lively, even when away at boarding school. It was her initial awareness of the need to develop modern skills for his pro impact that sent him away from home and to one of the better schools for an elite big man in America.
Lively spent four years with the Westtown Moose in West Chester, PA. Westtown, under the guidance of head coach Seth Berger, is a perennial powerhouse on the prep circuit and has produced NBA players such as Mo Bamba and Cam Reddish.
Westtown has a long and deep connection to Team Final on the EYBL circuit, as Cam Reddish rose to national prominence with that program. Caleb Kupa, an assistant at Westtown, is also the 15U and 16U coach for Team Final, bringing continuity and consistency around Lively’s development. Lively popped last summer for Team Final and shot up recruit rankings as a result.
That growth, along with the competitive practice environment, has provided stable and consistent development for Lively over the last few years. While he did not play as a freshman due to injury, he’s been impactful for three years — and seems to keep growing. He’s lauded for his IQ and attention to detail as a prospect, two areas that should carry him far in life.
Film Study
When diving into the film on Lively, AAU was a fruitful place to see him in some regards and constraining in others. Because Lively played on Team Final with 2022 lottery pick Jalen Duren, the combination of two bigs changed the way each was deployed. We’ve seen confidence and different shooting displays, perimeter defense and solid athleticism from Lively because they were necessary.
While we see a lot of benefits to the more perimeter-oriented film, the meat and potatoes of his production will take place on the interior, and there could be a little more there from a defensive standpoint. Yes, he led the EYBL with 3.7 blocks per game. But very few reps were given in overall pick-and-roll coverage in non-switchable situations.