Orlando's Decision: The Case for Paolo Banchero
Orlando is officially on the clock, and their uniquely young roster may influence which potential superstar they deem best to build around. Paolo Banchero may be the right man for the job
Let’s tune the rumors out for a second. Forget who you hear about with what the Orlando Magic are likely to do at the first overall pick.
Take a deep breath. Clear your mind of those perceptions. Now ask yourself this question: who should the Magic take first overall?
To some, the answer is as simple as figuring out the best player available. There will be plenty of different opinions on who the best player is in this draft class, with the majority of answers focusing on Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren, Jaden Ivey or Jabari Smith. We agree that they are the four best prospects in this class, and we’ll focus on them as well.
In trying to differentiate between them, most pundits will default to valuing the “best player available”. They’ll look at the tape, make a determination of who they like best as a prospect, and then rank the guys in that order. But when a top-tier of talent is so closely grouped together, fit within a franchise does have some influence on who the “best” available guy is.
Think of fit as a tiebreaker amongst tiers where they all have a legitimate case as the best player available. Fit should only be defined, at the top of a draft with these elite prospects, as the fit next to already-existing franchise pillars who the team knows they want to build around. For the Magic, only one prospect really stands out as being that guy: Jalen Suggs.
As a result, the fit between Suggs and Ivey likely strikes Ivey farther down the board in Orlando. Ivey may be better, and/ or the two could find ways to fit together, but without a great deal of discernible difference in our overall evaluation of Ivey and the other three at the top of this draft, he gets punished a bit because of his fit.
So let’s talk about Paolo Banchero — specifically in the context of the roster, team building, design and everything else in Orlando. How might the Magic and general manager John Hammond build a champion around him? What players need to be prioritized next once they make their decision to draft him?
The Case for Paolo Banchero
Every year, the draft comes right on the heels of the NBA Playoffs and the NBA Finals. We love the timing of the schedule, as it allows for the most important games of the season to be freshest in our minds when thinking about roster construction for the future. What wins in today’s NBA, and the trends for how to build a group that can get to that level, are readily on display for all to see.
Watch the 2022 NBA Playoffs and it’s pretty clear what all final few teams have in common: at least one elite, takeover scorer. Jimmy Butler carried the Miami Heat through the Eastern Conference Playoffs and dropped 40 on multiple occasions. Jayson Tatum is a first-team All-NBA guy who scored for the Celtics when it really mattered. Luka Doncic single-handedly did everything for the Mavs offense. Steph Curry’s unique scoring arsenal has built Golden State into an elite offense for the last decade.
Every team needs a guy. The bucket-getter. The go-to guy when games are on the line. Half-court scoring skills are valued in the postseason, when the game slows down, is incredibly physical and defenses hone in on your individual strengths. Diversity, counter moves, getting to spots, finishing through contact, making proactive kickouts to teammates around you, finding ways to take advantage of different types of primary defenders… alphas must be able to have a deep bag of tricks.
To us, this is what you draft for. When you have an opportunity to grab a franchise-altering, polished scorer, do it. Jayson Tatum went 3rd to the Boston Celtics behind Markelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball. Everyone in the world regrets that now. The same goes for Luka Doncic behind DeAndre Ayton and Marvin Bagley. Take the scoring and don’t overthink it.
Of all three top options in this draft, Paolo Banchero is the clear candidate to fit in that Tatum or Doncic offensive engine role. Smith has flaws with rim pressure, and Chet is much more of a defensive-minded prospect than a one-on-one creator. Yet Banchero, as a teenager at Duke, averaged 17-8-3 while shooting 48% from the field and playing out of isolation a ton.
Banchero is big and strong at 6’10”, with a Ferrari engine inside a caravan body. His ball handling is sensationally polished for someone his size, allowing him to get to his spots on the interior like few can. Defenders fly off his left shoulder when he drives to his right. He stops and pivots off two feet without getting bumped off his spots. He is athletic enough to get up over the top of guys and slam it home. Banchero had 23 “and one” buckets this year — his ability to score and play through contact is tailor-made for postseason success.
Put Banchero in different areas on the court with the ball in his hands and he’ll thrive. He’s meant to be a 4 in the modern NBA, so the location he’s effective in will largely be determined by who opponents use to guard him. Put a smaller and weaker primary defender on Paolo and he’ll head into the post. Banchero’s wide shoulders, controlled bounce, feel for quick spins and turnaround jumper give him a complete and well-rounded arsenal for scoring one-on-one. He was 35-78 (45%) on post-ups this year, and created 1.103 PPP on his kickout passes to teammates.
Paolo has a reputation of being a more cerebral, slow-down attacker. Some call him a “ball stop”, meaning when the rock gets moving to find the open guy, he catches and slows down that momentum, preferring to collect himself, read the defense and make the right decision from there. For star players, that’s really not a horrible trait (it can be really infuriating for role players to do that, though). Luka Doncic has some ball stop tendencies, and very few Mavericks fans would complain about that.
Put a bigger guy on Paolo, or at least a true 4-man strong enough in the post 1v1, and the opportunities for his inclusion in the offense are endless. Banchero’s favorite scoring spots are around the elbows right now. He’s a mid-range assassin, loves to get there on dribble pull-ups and has both a high release and unorthodox cadence on his jumper that makes him difficult to contest. The threat of getting to the rim (where he’s finishing at a 58% clip) with his bevy of patient dribble moves forces defenders to back off him, so the jumper and driving work together to make him impossible to guard one-on-one.
Banchero loves elbow isolations to get to those spots. His jab steps, rips, polished footwork and tough shot-making are insanely rare for his age. Banchero scored 114 points in isolations this year, more than any forward in this draft class. He also generated free throw attempts 12.5% of the time in those isolations — his propensity to get to the charity stripe needs to be discussed in his game.
The handling ability allows other aspects of his game to open up. Banchero can run and operate big-to-big or inverted big-little pick-and-rolls. He got about one a game at Duke, and they can be a major part of his offensive package at the next level. The underrated part of Paolo’s game is his passing and feel. When he’s double-teamed, he makes the right kicks. He was excellent at punishing teams for helping uphill off Mark Williams, his center in the dunker spot. He throws one-foot or two-foot cross-court passes.
More than just the ability, Banchero likes to create for others. Drafting him into a primary creation role means entrusting him to be more than just a black hole scorer. That’s a lot on the plate for a teenager, but Paolo thrives and relishes in the role. He finished the season getting so much more comfortable in breaking down defenses, too. He averaged 3.8 assists over his final 24 games, and 4.2 assists over his final 11.
Another unconscionable knock on Banchero is the complaint about his 3-point shooting. Seeing him love the mid-range and take far more jumpers there than from deep has developed this narrative that Banchero isn’t a capable 3-point threat. The numbers indicate differently. While there can be some work done to clean up his mechanics for legitimate NBA range, he’s an above-average shooter in pretty much every way.
He shot a sturdy 33.8% from 3 on the season. He was 52.6% on nearly four attempts per game in the NCAA Tournament. He shot 40.2% on catch-and-shoot looks, showing he can play off-ball and next to another lead guard like Jalen Suggs. He’s at least a solid shooter.
As that reputation changes, Banchero will be guarded more physically and tight away from the basket. As a guy who thrives off contact, that can only help him, both as a scorer and a facilitator. He’s a frontcourt guy that deserves an offense run through him at the elbows and top of the key, where isolations, ball screens and normal Delay actions or misdirections can take place. We’ve compared his ideal offensive role to that of Blake Griffin in his heyday, when he was carrying the Los Angeles Clippers and Detroit Pistons on that end.
Since we’re currently in the business of debunking myths, let’s talk about Banchero’s defense. He’s frequently cited as the worst defender of the big three in this class. While Chet is on a whole different tier of defensive impact, the idea that Banchero is far behind Jabari Smith is flat-out wrong to us. Smith is more laterally sharp and violent with his movements, but his physical profile doesn’t come without its flaws.
Banchero’s biggest error on the defensive end at Duke was not giving maximum effort on every possession. While you’d expect that to irritate a coach like me, it really doesn’t. There’s a track record of guys who are physically capable defenders that carry a major scoring role in college who find themselves in this exact discussion. Jayson Tatum was one. Anthony Edwards was another. Get them to a postseason series and it’s easy to argue they are the best one-on-one defenders on their teams. Yet both got knocked for their attention to detail despite firing off more than 17 shots a game and doing the lion’s share of creating on their team.
The analytic numbers are actually fairly kind to Banchero. His defensive RAPM is in the top eleven in this class! His on-off impact was much greater for Duke’s defense than that of Mark Williams.
While stats like this do have some flaws and outliers from time, the presence of such a number makes it hard to say that Banchero is a poor defender — or at least one that would make it costly for his team to have him out there.
Fit is important. Banchero likely does need a rim protector next to him to thrive defensively. He’s not a 5-man in the long run who can explode up and swat a ton of shots from the weak side. Asking him to communicate and handle angles in Drop PNR coverage would be a gross mischaracterization of his role and, ultimately, take away from the time he should spend sharpening his offensive tools for NBA success.
Unlike the other two top talents in this class, Banchero is one whose defensive success will likely be tied to whoever his frontcourt partner is. In the eyes of many, he slides down draft boards behind Chet and Jabari for that reason.
But we keep going back to this idea about what your team should draft for. The Magic are, as an organization, still in the early stages of building this thing up. They shouldn’t be married to any single player in their organization as a guy that prevents them from taking the best overall guy in this draft class. While we love Jalen Suggs, he didn’t earn that designation during his rookie year.
Sure, the fit with Banchero and Suggs in the half-court is less fluid than the Suggs and Chet or Suggs and Jabari tandem. Paolo will need them to find the right 5-man to pair with him. He’s probably the least-seasoned off-ball and, while still a solid catch-and-shoot threat, is slightly behind the others in that regard.
But when you draft this high, you draft for the alphas. Go for the guy who is so good you have to build everything around him — and you win when you do it the right way. To us, Banchero is that one guy in this class. He’s the type of player a team should draft for: that 25-point-per-game scorer who is impossible to stop one-on-one. That’s the hardest type of guy to acquire for a franchise. Sometimes it really is that simple.