Jaden Ivey: 2022 NBA Draft Scouting Report

Ivey is a top-tier athlete at the guard spot tailor-made for the NBA game. Can he lead an NBA offense to great heights?

As we become more seasoned as a scout, we tend to place a higher premium on guys who have top-tier athletic traits and know how to use them. Jaden Ivey stands out as the one guard in this draft class whose natural athleticism is on an elite level, even by NBA standards. From our vantage point, he is the most athletic guard to come out of college since Derrick Rose.

No disrespect to the other high-flying point guards like Ja Morant or Dennis Smith Jr., but what Ivey has is a different gear of both acceleration and vertical pop. He’s smooth and deceptive with his strides, blowing past them in a hurry or rising up to hammer one home when it looks like he barely has separation. Ivey is great at decelerating, has a good enough handle to play at full speed in the open floor, and hangs in the air through contact to adjust his finishes. He’s a special, special athlete.

The flaws in Ivey’s game were apparent early in the year, and a reason why he had to return to Purdue for his sophomore year. Ivey’s jump shooting needed to progress, both from a catch-and-shoot standpoint and off the dribble. His blistering athleticism could be handicapped in the half-court by teams going under his screens, sagging off or crowding the lane and turning him into a passer.

At Purdue, Ivey did not get as many spread pick-and-roll reps early in the season as many evaluators would like. Boilermakers head coach Matt Painter runs a complex offense with many layers of movement off-ball and stuffs the ball inside on post-ups time and time again. We expected Ivey’s PNR passing to lag behind, the lack of a pull-up to harm his half-court creation and a ton of work to be done to harness the raw talent he possesses.

By the end of the season though, Ivey pleasantly surprised us with the amount of development that already has taken place. He got so much better as a PNR playmaker, to the point where it’s neither a strength nor a weakness. He finished the season clawing close to 30% on his dribble pull-ups, flashing both step-backs to 3 and jumpers when teams go under the PNR.

Ivey is an elite finisher and a guy who gets to the rim often. While there are still improvements to be done to his scoring arsenal in the half-court (particularly in the mid-range), we’ve come around to thinking that his brand of athleticism is so special and unique that the absence of finesse may not be a handicapper. He’ll find ways to get to the rim and score regardless, and that’s the most valued trait a guard can have in our eyes.

Those aforementioned in-season improvements were most evident in January and February as he began to gain the trust of coach Painter to be a higher-usage PNR handler.