Josh Minott: 2022 NBA Draft Scouting Report
A raw athlete, Minott has plenty of attractive natural tools. His basketball prowess and fit on an NBA court are still really underdeveloped.
Top-tier athleticism is one of the most clearly-translatable traits from college to the NBA. Great leaping, ground coverage and overall quickness are unable to be taught, so guys who possess those characteristics are coveted when they can play. Even in moments when their basketball skill lags behind their contemporaries, franchises may opt to bet on their own teaching ability, grab the raw athlete and believe the basketball stuff will get figured out later.
To us, that’s the path forward for Josh Minott out of Memphis. The hyper-athletic 6’8” freshman is unpolished and largely unharnessed, yet he has declared for the 2022 NBA Draft. He averaged only 6.6 PPG this season off the bench, played on a group with a ton of frontcourt depth and never found his footing on the offensive end.
Right now, the athleticism and defensive upside are the two most intriguing parts of Minott’s game. He’s a long-armed 6’8” who can really move his feet in space. He’s got a good feel for aggressive defensive plays, can leap and get to blocks or steals that most guys cannot and has potential to be switchable 1 thru 5. With his frame, athleticism and quick hands, he has immense upside on that side of the floor.
Minott is a toolsy guy who produces a ton on a per-minute basis. His qualifiers as a defensive prospect who falls into some assists is pretty intriguing:
Yet the assists he comes by are exactly that: gift-wrapped. Many come in transition where his athleticism shines. Others are post-entry passes on hi-los or seals from bigs like Jalen Duren or Deandre Williams, easy passes that make for a high assist rate when his minutes are kept so low. There are a few flashes of solid passing, but not enough in comparison to the hair-pulling turnovers. The offensive skills are simply so far away at this point, and that drags down his draft stock in our book, regardless of how his per-minute or percentile-based numbers look. The eye test is much more damning on one end.
There’s also something that always scares me about guys who are marginalized on their own college team, and situations where the group appears better when the prospect is not on the floor. Minott’s role was greatly reduced late in the season, so much so that his role before and after February 1st seem like different seasons:
Following 2/1: 11.8 MIN, 5.6 PTS, 2.7 REB, 0.5 AST, 0.9 TO, 54% FG, 0-6 3FG
Previous 14 GM: 19.1 MIN, 7.7 PTS, 5.2 REB, 1.5 AST, 1.0 TO, 46% FG, 1-7 3FG
Most importantly, Memphis had a 11-3 record after February 1st. Over the previous fourteen games, they went 6-8. Getting pushed to the fringes of the rotation shows just how raw, just how far away Minott is from making an impact on a college court, let alone an NBA one. There’s a definite upside here, but a ton of caution needs to be exercised.
Most guys we have seen recently in the same defensive mold play the 4 spots on their NBA teams — guys like Jaden McDaniels, Jarred Vanderbilt or Brandon Clarke. They’re bigger, stronger and jumpier than most guys at those positions, so a defensive specialist role is befitting for them. There’s either a natural spot for them on offense, like with McDaniels (who is shooting 33% from 3 on the year) or they have to be so good defensively that the team hides them (Vanderbilt, yet to make a 3 this year, is shooting 59% from the field but rarely scores, with only 9.8 PTS per 36 minutes).
Minott is much more of the latter. An inefficient finisher despite flashes of one-foot pop in traffic, he doesn’t have the natural position and comfort to be seen as a 4 in our book. He doesn’t have much fluidity to take guys off the bounce; his handling and overall ball security must improve greatly, and he looks very unnatural when he tries to make a decision that isn’t ‘attack the rim’ from outside of six feet. The shot is a mess and he rarely attempts 3-pointers. He can safely be ignored from deep, part of the reason why Penny Hardaway needed him to sit instead of cramp spacing around their big men. Currently, there are only five players in the NBA listed 6’9” or shorter with a 3-point attempt rate below 0.09 (Minott’s college rate) to play 20 minutes a night: Vanderbilt, Isaiah Stewart, Montrezl Harrell, Kevon Looney and Onyeka Okongwu.
Yes, that list is Vanderbilt and undersized big men. Part of why Vanderbilt works is because Minnesota has the premier stretch-5 in the world in Karl-Anthony Towns, creating enough spacing on offense where Vanderbilt’s slashing and lack of perimeter threat can be mitigated. Beyond him, everyone on the list is an undersized big, even down to those who play 10 MPG: Clarke, Derrick Favors, Tristan Thompson, Drew Eubanks, Freddie Gillespie and Tyler Cook (the lone exception, Markelle Fultz, hasn’t qualified for enough minutes this season to be included).
That brings up the question about long-term placement and role in the league.