20. Zach Edey
At this point the draft is more or less out of guys that have decent odds of providing NBA value in a traditional mold, so it’s time to get weird.
Edey is currently rated as a late 2nd round pick at ESPN at #58 overall, and the reasons are fairly straightforward. He is a 7’4 giant who excels in the low post and is too slow to chase guards around the perimeter in the NCAA, so he is simply entering the league at the wrong time.
But it is unfair to lump him in with every other productive but slow college big in recent memory. In 14 years that sports-reference.com has been tracking PER, Edey currently is posting the best PER this season. The second best PER over that span was Edey last year. He is an incredibly rare talent.
Slow giants are dying out because they typically cannot punish smaller bigs on offense as efficiently as well spaced offenses can punish them on switches defensively. But how does that value proposition play out if a slower but more skilled version of Shaq entered the league?
Shaq should have been in high school for his freshman year of college, so let’s compare his sophomore and junior seasons to Edey’s career stats. Age weighted by minutes, pace adjusted per 40:
Offensively Edey has slightly better output across the board, although Shaq was slightly younger on average. For the sake of argument, they are approximately equal offensively except Edey is a better FT shooter and can punish teams for defending him by hacking.
Shaq made just 52.7% FT in the NBA. If he made 72.7% instead, he would average an extra 1.8 points per game and his career TS% would leap from 58.6% to 63.2%– a major improvement in efficiency that roughly comes out to an insane +2.7 pts per 100. Edey is shooting 73.2% FT this year, so 72.7% is a fairly conservative longterm target– there is some chance he eventually makes 80%+ in time.
Stylistically, it’s not clear whose style translates better to the NBA. Shaq’s strength and athleticism made him essentially unstoppable in the post, but Edey is 3″ taller and more skilled. He could be unguardable in the way that hasn’t been seen since Kareem’s skyhook by being able to consistently make short range shots over any defender.
The area where Edey falls flat is defensively, where Shaq crushes him with steals, blocks, and athleticism. Edey’s defense would have likely been fine or even good in the 90’s, but nowadays the prospect of him defending a well spaced offense is almost certainly disastrous. UNLESS we see a shift in momentum away from extreme small ball trend and the game regresses slightly back toward bigball.
Why would this happen? For starters, Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid are perennial MVP candidates who both play for contending teams. If they match up in the finals, and smaller bigs have a bad time defending them in the playoffs, teams may decide to compromise a roster spot for a traditional big to dust off just in case of such a match up.
Edey could also force teams to roster such a player if he plays a major role on a contender (sound crazy? I’m sure it sounded crazy to the 40 teams that passed on Jokic as well). After all, if he has a Shaq level offensive output that is +2 to +3 points better because of superior free throw shooting AND teams make it worse by trying to defend him with an undersized big, it’s not going to be super easy to make those points back up on the other end. And if teams end up dusting off their archaic big to limit his offensive dominance, he is already helping neuter the opposing offense.
So it’s not as cut and dry with Edey that he is too slow and should be a late round 2 flier like Luka Garza. He is an incredibly rare talent that is so dominant in the low post that he may help regress the game a bit away from the extreme small ball it has become.
And even without that, there is no rule that teams must play switching defense if they want to contend. Perhaps a creative coach can come up with a successful zone defense that hides Edey’s flaws defensively while he posts MVP caliber offensive output.
Edey is undoubtedly risky, there is a reasonable chance he does not fit in as more than a Boban type of big who eats occasional bench minutes. But he has serious upside that is getting massively disrespected with his current late 2nd ranking. Honestly ranking him 20th is erring on the side of caution. Most of the guys ranked higher are going to be bland rotation players or worse.
Edey might be the most efficient low post scorer in NBA history, so don’t be surprised if he roasts 6’10 bigs more aggressively on offense than modern NBA offenses can roast him on defense.
