Julian Phillips: 2023 NBA Draft Scouting Report
With fascinating tools on defense, Phillips could be the next non-shooting wing who needs to refine his shot in order to stick in the NBA
Earlier this week, I wrote about the reasons that there’s one archetype that really hurts me: raw, athletic, non-shooting wings who project as role players.
It’s one of the most important strides I hope to make this year as a scout, and one of the vital archetypes to nail based on the trajectory of the NBA. I’ve long believed that it’s an archetype that isn’t built for playoff success, and while that’s true, there are still guys who can (and do) improve as shooters or find value as role players nonetheless.
Throughout this week, I’ll be looking at three of the tougher prospects in this class who fit that mold — Tennessee’s Julian Phillips, Arkansas’ Jordan Walsh, and Bilal Coulibaly of Metropolitans 92 — in depth. Their scouting reports will be done and I’ll come to conclusions on their strengths and skill level, then I’ll examine them through the lens of four questions to figure out how to more accurately rank them:
How confident am I in their projectability to improve as a shooter?
Do they have other offensive skills that can compensate to give them value during the regular season?
Are there elite intangibles (motor, work ethic, character) that make them the right guy to buy in on regardless of the shot?
What are other trusted scouts seeing in these guys that can try to swing me to buy in on them?
Phillips has a lot of really appealing traits that land him on the first-round radar and garner a pretty strong level of intrigue from scouts across the league. His size is what stands out most — he’s a thin, long wing with a 6’11” wingspan that somehow looks longer than that. Phillips is decently bouncy, light on his feet, quick laterally, and effectively fast end-to-end. He’s a good athlete with the tools that scream future NBA defender.
In reality, Phillips had one of the more confusing freshman seasons in some time, especially considering where he was in AAU competition. He’s raw and athletic but severely underdeveloped on offense, and inconsistent in some head-scratching ways.
In order to overcome some of those shortcomings, Phillips has to prove that he’s going to be great on defense. That’s the first litmus test for him to pass.
If he passes that, and a team favors his shooting projection, it’s entirely possible that Phillips sneaks into the back end of the first round.