Keyonte George: 2023 NBA Draft Scouting Reports
Three-level scoring potential can make George a lottery pick despite a disappointing end to his up-and-down freshman campaign
While sometimes overlooked in an era where micro-skills and scouting tropes are all the rage, scoring is still the most important thing that a basketball player can do. Everyone on the floor needs to be at least some sort of a threat to score, and putting the ball in the bucket can be a signature trait that makes everything else easier on your teammates.
Since watching Keyonte George play at IMG prior to college, I’ve seen a natural scorer with all the unique traits that go with being a top guy at the highest levels. He’s always confident, has elite touch, scores consistently off wrong footwork, embraces physicality for his advantage, and can fill it up on all three levels.
It’s not a stretch to say that George is one of a handful of players in this class who have clear #1 option potential. Just a look at the first five minutes of our scouting report video will leave you wondering just how many he’ll score in the NBA.
Over his first 24 games, Baylor went 18-6 and it was clear he could lead a team successfully on offense. George averaged 17.5 points, 3.0 assists (with 2.9 turnovers), shot 44.5% from two-point range, and got to the line 5.3 times every game. He wasn’t insanely efficient, but was efficient enough on his volume to establish himself as a top-seven guy on my mid-season board.
As the season went on for George at Baylor, a few inefficiencies became exposed rather clearly. An ankle injury suffered at Texas served as the one-two punch to push his final month of the season off the rails. From February 11th to close (a nine-game stretch), George averaged just 9.7 points per game on 32/31/75 splits while only taking 2.7 free throw attempts, posting 2.2 assists to 2.9 turnovers, and shooting a paltry 31% from two-point range.
That stretch, while heavily influenced by the ankle injury, was as much about the opponents and schemes George was facing. Teams started to really extend their pressure against him, trapping and hard-hedging to turn him into a quick decision-maker. They sat on and jumped Baylor’s favorite PNR set designed to simplify his reads. They sped him up at the point of attack and crowded him so that he couldn’t get clean separation off the bounce.
How George continues to evolve and adapt as a playmaker will have a major outcome on his NBA career. There are flashes of competence that have always been there, but a full-season view shows that there are too many places where his game can be disrupted by the defense right now. He needs to fix those in order to truly be a professional threat with the ball in his hands.