Malaki Branham: 2022 NBA Draft Scouting Report
He's strong and efficient. Branham's numbers pop, yet the deliberate nature of his game gives a little pause being a primary scorer at the next level
Quick trivia question. How many NBA players who did not average 20 points per game took at least 60% of all their jump shots in the mid-range this season?
Two: Chris Paul and Markelle Fultz.
The others who did reach that 20 PPG plateau: DeMar DeRozan, Kevin Durant, Brandon Ingram, Dejounte Murray, Jimmy Butler, and De’Aaron Fox. Some may see those stats and determine that Branham is in pretty elite company: he’s such a good mid-range scorer that he’s deserving of a primary role in the NBA and is this class' sleeper to be a 20 point scorer in the league. What he does well is what many great scorers do well.
Yet we have an issue projecting a guy like Branham to join that level of NBA player. The ways he impacts the game and the diversity of his scoring package (athleticism, rim attempts, touch) are not up to par with those guys. Drafting Branham and giving him the long leash to be a mid-range scorer that he wants to be requires letting him be a late-clock player, a methodical self-creator and literally projecting that as making your team better.
What we don’t talk about enough with Branham is the risk that goes into drafting a mid-range-heavy guy whose primary role is with the ball in their hands. If he doesn’t do enough else as a scorer/ facilitator or have a deep enough bag of tricks, he becomes inefficient when cast in that role. While there’s legitimate upside to believing that Branham can become a great scorer in the NBA, there’s also the downside that he’ll not be good enough at scoring in the mid-range and be asked to do something entirely different on offense. Translation: if he doesn’t get there, some of the limitations that apply to him are reminiscent of a guy like Markelle Fultz.
Those great scorers above justify that heavy load (and the absence of a 3-pointer) by being either so elite in isolations (Ingram and Durant), so athletically gifted (Murray and Fox), or so physical (DeRozan and Butler) that they can justify a heavy load of reps in this space. With the way Ohio State’s Malaki Branham plays: very slow, methodical and based on drawing contact in the mid-range, the appropriate comparisons for his highest level of outcomes are in the current manifestations of DeMar DeRozan and Jimmy Butler.
There are several problems with those comparisons, though — at least as Branham’s game is constructed today. Butler (54.9%) and DeRozan (38.6%) are both among the league leaders in free throw rate, and both finished top-ten in the metric. They use their mid-range scoring to help them create contact and physicality that they exploit for free throw attempts. DeMar (3rd in the NBA with 593 attempts) and Butler (10th with 455) are the best of the best at combining a lethal pull-up with the best benefit that can come from it: two free throws.
Branham does not have the moxie to get to that level yet. His 29.9% free throw rate is pretty pedestrian, and 3.0 free throws per game are nowhere near where they should be.
Similar to DeRozan, when Branham comes off a pick-and-roll, he’s looking to pull in the mid-range and is lethal at doing so. The playmaking out of ball screens isn’t there quite yet, but his conversion rate at the rim was high. What may set Branham apart as an intriguing investment is the 3-point shooting off the catch, which propelled him to a season making more than 40% of his triples. Very few high-volume mid-range scorers are also elite 3-point shooters (for obvious reasons: if they’re elite from 3, they will take more pull-up triples and get the extra point).
Branham’s shooting impact at Ohio State was drastically two-sided. On one hand, his catch-and-shoot rates were tremendous, making 43.5% of them in the half-court. On the other, he was only 2-9 from deep off the bounce, both an inefficient mark and showing hesitation in attempting them. He’s a very tricky eval as a result of this disharmony between dribble and spot-up looks.
Let’s talk about the good for a second. Man is this kid an efficient scorer. 40% from 3, nearly 50% from the field, great at the rim and in most zones on the floor, he takes the right shots for him: the ones that he can make a lot. The rapid improvement of his 3-point shot (he was seen as more of a slasher coming out of high school) off the catch opened up the floor at Ohio State. By not taking a lot of dribble jumpers, he kept his percentages from 3-point land very high, a wise move for how he was guarded.
It’s very difficult to defend Branham in isolations. You know what is coming (the mid-range pull-up) but still cannot stop it. Beyond that, Drop coverage encourages these shots at a high rate in the NBA. It’s certainly plausible that Branham makes a killing in the regular season punishing teams at what they’ve asked to be punished at, making him a really valuable threat out of the pick-and-roll.
We’re still somewhat mystified by the lack of consistent range to 3. Mechanically, he doesn’t look comfortable taking them and rushes those attempts or shorts them off the front rim. The volume he took is far too low for us to be able to glean what he should fix or how far away he is from adding that to his game. He’ll be a wonder of the pre-draft workouts as a result. We fully expect his camp to release some workout video in late-May showing the improvements he’s made to generate buzz, but that doesn’t necessarily prove he’s added it reliably to his arsenal.
There were also many things that Chris Holtmann and the Ohio State staff did to aid Branham in getting free to score. Knowing he struggled with one-on-one separation, they ran him off a ton of Chicago actions (dribble handoffs that start with a down screen for the recipient) to help create that edge. Once Branham go it, he was good: used his body for contact well, took angles and had true elevation on his jumper that made him difficult to contest.
Holtmann also ran a lot of middle down screens for Branham, zipping him up the gut for the catch. He liked to make those catches in the mid-range, where he’d be a threat to score more easily, and could read the closeout of his defender to take a first step either to the left or the right.
The most jarring example of Branham being aided by his college offensive system came in seals at the basket by teammates who were pretending to post-up. We’ve seen the screen-and-seal do wonders in the NBA for methodical drivers, but it isn’t as viable of a strategy as the Buckeyes made it out to be. Plus, evaluating young players (and drafting them accordingly) is about taking them in a range where their natural talent is good enough that they shouldn’t be reliant on those tricks to score.
What we noticed from Branham is that, without those leveraged pieces to help him gain separation, he’s a tad too slow in attacking the rim. A methodical driver based on control and not speed, he has to be more physical in getting to his spots. The natural strength he possesses is great, he just has no clue how to use it yet, and there’s so much that goes into providing an effective mid-range counter game for guys who are not top-tier athletes.
A lot of the gambles on Branham and developing him on that end become more palatable if you like his defense. We think it tops out at very average. He’s long for a 2/3 defender, okay with angles and does try to defend in a team construct.
Our issues come in at the point of attack against smaller players. He stands far too upright when defending screens, particularly ball screens, and gets knocked off contact. It’s a correctable mistake, but one that is too important to get wrong in the NBA. Smaller guys are too quick and go around him, and the lack of desire to guard physically against bigger guys is another indicator of his contact aversion.
Branham has an incredibly wide range of draft outcomes. If some team buys into his mid-range scoring, finishing at the rim, ability to add the tricks to his bag that get him to the charity stripe and believe his jumper will be able to successfully add range, he’s a no-brainer late-lottery or mid-first selection. If they’re hesitant about the athleticism in the NBA, the nature of his shot selection, the consistency of his 3-point shot and the lack of defensive impact to serve as a security blanket if all else fails, he may even slip into the second round.
There’s more risk here than gets talked about. He’s an acquired flavor with how mid-range-heavy he is, and to develop him into a more diverse scorer requires projection based on the traits he’s shown. We cannot safely make the claim that those traits translate to an impactful scorer in other areas on the floor and would rather steer clear of Branham. He earns a high-to-mid 2nd round grade on our board as a result.
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