It's Time to Address my Scouting Fears

These athletic, raw, non-shooting, role player wings have haunted me long enough

I firmly believe that in order to be an effective draft analyst, you must be aware of your own shortcomings, challenges, or blind spots. My track record speaks for itself when it comes to some of the challenges I’ve had in the last few years. There are many glaring holes in my analysis from the past, though I’ve worked to value certain traits or skills differently as a result of picking apart my prior evals.

The areas where I’ve struggled most are quite clear:

• Undervaluing high-feel players — especially who can handle and have positional size

• Overvaluing guards who can really shoot — at least when they don’t have size/ feel/ live-bodied athletic traits

• Correctly valuing bigger athletes/ wing role players with questionable offensive outputs — especially a lack of a reliable catch-and-shoot game

I can adjust for the first two categories because, frankly, the evaluation hasn’t really been the problem. I accurately predict which guards will shoot and which have high feel. I just adjust which pieces carry more weight in producing a positive NBA player.

That last category is the toughest pill to swallow, though. I’ve missed on countless players who fit the mold, those 6’6” to 6’10” guys with length and real tools but unrefined and tough-to-translate offensive games without the jumper. Some turn out to shoot, and some don’t.

What I’m trying to figure out is if I’m just missing on my evals of these guys, or if I’m doing myself a disservice by throwing out a blanket statement and avoiding role-playing, non-shooting wings as a whole.

There aren’t many who I’ve actually ranked in my top 20, likely due to my immense valuation of shooting and the skepticism with which I’ve looked at these guys. I was pretty low in relativity to some identifiable non-shooters (Isaac Okoro, Matisse Thybulle, Brandon Clarke, JT Thor, Kai Jones) who turned out to return little value and (predictably) struggled with the jumper.

There are some who I was half-and-half on; too low (almost reactionarily low) on overall impact but correct about their role projection. Patrick Williams was a guy I had 40th on my board in 2020; he ended up going 4th. I was very convinced that Williams wasn’t going to evolve into a successful, high-usage player. I was wrong about how he’d add the jump shot, and that’s allowed him to stay on the floor and return first-round value. The point stands, though: non-shooting wing prospects who were projected as role players really were submerged in comparison to consensus).

I’ve also been far too low on many of these guys in the past as I worked to avoid drafting my weakness. Jaden McDaniels, Tari Eason, Herb Jones, and Jarred Vanderbilt were all guys I was way too low on while operating under the philosophy of “the offense is so unrefined that I can’t possibly take them”.

Yet all five had their fans around draft time and all are making me look foolish for not giving them enough credence. They’re all providing good value in the NBA, have or should earn lucrative second contracts, and have turned into either pretty good two-way players — or at least reliable defensive options in the way we predicted pre-draft.

The question I’m having when watching these players is: are any of them truly that valuable to winning if the jump shot doesn’t fall?

While I want to address my growing phobia of ‘young, raw, non-shooting athletic wings’, the truth is that several of them provide value to the regular season (which is important) but get played off the floor in the postseason. That has come to fruition for guys like Okoro and Thybulle in their early careers. Even some of the success stories that I was lower on (like Vanderbilt and Herb Jones) suffer the same fate.

Look at the NBA Finals teams of the last decade and there are basically no non-shooting, role-playing wings on those rosters. Look at the playoff per-36 totals from the last non-Warriors teams to make the Finals. All non-center role players (outside their core trio of top offensive creators) take at least 3 triples per 36 minutes, shoot over 33% (or are seen as shooters due to their reputation and 3-point percentage).

The Warriors might be an exception, but they’ve galaxy-brained their way through any spacing issues with IQ, organization, and gravity from their superstar backcourt.

I feel like it’s defensible to be really picky — to feel like I need to be blown away by the intangibles of somebody to really bump him into my lottery. But I’m also thinking that, for regular season value at the least, there is a point where this gamble is worth making — and it’s higher than where I was making it the past few drafts.

All this is part of why I’m doing several of these prospects in a row this week. I waited to see if they’d stay in the draft. These three — Julian Phillips, Jordan Walsh, and [potentially] Bilal Coulibaly — are staying. Now, I have to overcome this hurdle and figure out if/ what I’m missing on some of these guys.

This week, I’ll be releasing my scouting report on all three and trying to frame it with the following:

1. How confident am I in their projectability to improve as a shooter?

2. Do they have other offensive skills that can compensate to give them value during the regular season?

3. Are there elite intangibles (motor, work ethic, character) that make them the right guy to buy in on regardless of the shot?

4. What are other trusted scouts seeing in these guys that can try to swing me to buy in on them?

The hope is to be swung enough to move one or several of these guys up my board this year. It’ll take some convincing from the film and (hopefully) this newfound context to nail them down appropriately.