2020 NBA Draft

[Duke4life831]

So the guys that have followed LaMelo in Australia. Looks like we have seen the last of him until the draft.

Just blind stat watching, looks like he had a good facilitating season but horrific shooting. How did his D look and where would you put him in this draft?

[Marcus]

So the guys that have followed LaMelo in Australia. Looks like we have seen the last of him until the draft.

Just blind stat watching, looks like he had a good facilitating season but horrific shooting. How did his D look and where would you put him in this draft?

THIS!!!

The people need that "GimmeDat" scouting report ASAP

[Marcus]

RJ too while you're at it.

[Duke4life831]

So the guys that have followed LaMelo in Australia. Looks like we have seen the last of him until the draft.

Just blind stat watching, looks like he had a good facilitating season but horrific shooting. How did his D look and where would you put him in this draft?

THIS!!!

The people need that "GimmeDat" scouting report ASAP

Haha yup, too sum up my post. GimmeDat can you give us your final take on LaMelo haha. Because chances are im just going to regurgitate whatever you say up until draft day haha.

[No-Man]

I'd have LaMelo nº1, the defense didn't look good, he experimented with his shot and had better results with the most stationary form, I think the lack of efficiency is not a huge deal considering his body at the moment, injuries though are a concern, he needs real training, but I think he has a good frame and possibilities of growing strong

[clyde21]

LaMelo absolute peak is Trae Young type player, bigger, maybe not as efficient, but scoring guard who can pass but is a turnstile defensively who can't play off-ball and needs to be uber efficient to make up for his defficiencies elsewhere

don't really know how much of a winning archetype this is tbh, he'll probably get his stats I don't doubt it in today's NBA, just don't really see the impact or value potentially at this point

i'd have him at the tail end of the lotto

[CP War Hawks]

Oturu is having a dominant stretch



Thoughts on the guy?

He obviously plays with a very high motor. Solid at the line so far and has shown the ability to hit a 3 to an extent. We'll see if he keeps this up during March tho.

Gophers will need to get to 18 wins in the regular season (with 2 ranked wins) and then win 1 game in the B1G tourney if they want to get to march madness. Or else right now they are looking NIT bound. 2 big wins against Ohio State (ranked 3 at the time) and Michigan (ranked 19 at the time).

I'm just saying March as that's when teams will be clawing and scratching to make it to the dance. I'd be impressed if he can maintain this level of play the whole year. Either way, I'd love to have him with the Nets pick along with some other guys I have an eye on.

[HeadtopChunes]

I think Lamelos defense is a tad underrated

He’s shown flashes off ball and he’s got the size to not be a complete traffic cone especially if he can put on some muscle. Either way I don’t think he’d be Trae Young bad.

Offensively it depends on well he can score to get his playmaking game going. He’s not a good shooter right now but tbh theirs not many good shooters at the top right now. A team has to bet they can improve that jumper and get him to finish through contact.

I do believe in his touch and instincts but he’s very raw as a player right now and a big gamble. I can see him work out with the right tutelage and also bust in the wrong environment. He’s a dice roll but looking around there’s not many players with his upside (he’s one of the few players I think can be high volume creators at the next level which is really valuable)

For that reason he’s a lock in my tier 1

[clyde21]

maybe not Trae bad defensively, because he does have better size and that's a big advantage over Trae, but I don't think he'll be as good of a shooter as Trae either nor as efficient overall as a scorer

and Trae is a guy that needs to be supremely efficient scoring the ball to maintain being plus asset on the court because of his weaknesses off-ball and defensively.

honestly, whether you like LaMelo or not boils down to whether if you think he can reach that efficiency threshold offensively

[GimmeDat]

I'm here guys, haha! Bare with my, I'll type something up.

First things first, by the reports, he's healthy right now.. they're just shutting him down. His team is well and truly out of finals contention and they're giving some of the local young talent more burn, so it has its silver linings for the team, but obviously they're more fun to watch with Ball playing and would've been helpful for further assessment, but oh well.

Worth noting also, his team has not appeared to suffer from his absence - many felt they improved once he left the lineup, despite them being a young, inexperienced team - personally I felt that they're so far below the competition that it was hard to make any real conclusions on that front, they were easily the worst team in the league either way. Haven't looked at the advanced stats since he went down.

What Ball did in his time here, was put up increasingly impressive counting stats on an extremely high usage rate, at poor efficiency. As you can see below here, his PPP numbers were pretty underwhelming across the board.

Read on Twitter

?s=20

It's worth noting that, as Jordan mentioned above, he was progressing, and had streak of games where he crept up into being a real impact player at the NBL level. The one particular game that stood out was his 32/11/13 line in a win against Cairns (a top 4, Finals team including Cam Oliver, Scott Machado, DJ Newbill and Kouat Noi), in which he went 11/20 FG, 4/7 from 3, and recorded only 2 turnovers. This was his 2nd last game before the injury. He was certainly trending upwards and I would've loved to have seen where he was continuing to take his game.

You can see his game logs here -

https://basketball.realgm.com/player/LaMelo-Ball/GameLogs/103892

Obviously his percentages stand out against him - 37.5% FG and 25% from 3. It screams of a guy getting too much of the green light than he's worthy of, and I'm not going to argue that sentiment, but I would like to emphasize that the high volume of largely ill-advised 3 point shot attempts are the largest contributor in skewing his overall percentage to be that low.

Ball took 6.7 3 point attempts a game, and many were of poor shot selection, and many off the dribble - the typical iso or rush of blood sort of attempts we're used to seeing from him in previous settings. His shot selection on jumpers needs to absolutely be ironed out, and it was a blemish on a player who otherwise showed great diligence in his decision making. Ball was at 45.8% on 2 point FG's - not an overly inspiring figure, but a great deal more passable than the outside shooting. When he holstered the jumper more and looked to attack, he was a lot more efficient. I'm not sure what the actual at the rim numbers looked like, might see if I can find them, but I found him to be a good finisher when he got to the hoop. Obviously he has size and a great deal of craftiness with his layup package. He also had a pretty solid floater game. I certainly think there is a means for him to become a relatively efficient scorer, but it would require far different shot selection/usage and some further progress to his skill-set.

But back to the jumper, I don't want to completely write it off. He had games where he got hot and was hitting some really tough outside attempts (you can check those box scores for this) - I think his propensity for bad, off the dribble attempts and heat checks after makes tanked his percentage to 25%, as well as a willingness to continue shooting when it wasn't his night (case in point, 1/11 from 3 his last game, and only took less than 5 3 point attempts in 1 game). Another hopeful indicator is the decent FT% - 34/47, good for 72.3%. I think his inclination for jump shot attempts of isolation moves ties in to the need for him to get legs into his shot.. when he shot off the catch he often wouldn't get his full body involved and it would be more of a upper body chuck. Between that and the unorthodox arm technique, there's a lot of issues going on with his stroke, and while his streakiness feels like it gives him some hope, you'd have to think some pretty fundamental changes will need to occur with his shooting long term.

I think the most impressive thing for me was the passing. I came in expecting some flashy plays, but also turnovers, but his ability to make reads and excecute them effectively was uncanny to me. He had 6.8apg with 2.8topg. He'd rarely be unsuccessful in forcing a pass, and he played with every bit the flair you'd expect, but without compromising functionality.

As a ball handler, I felt that he had the ball on a string given his size. He plays with good pace in the open court with the dribble tightly attached and in control to make a read whenever it appeared. He had a variety of isolation moves that he could use to get by defenders, to help make up for what I found to be a bit of a mediocre first step. (Just touching on this, I felt he had pretty good speed in the open court once accelerated and was smooth and fluid in his movements, but it's that quick-twitch stuff either first step or vertically that is more mediocre when assessing him as an athlete). I think if I had to critique this area of his game, it comes back to his understanding (and you may question willingness, but I wouldn't) of playing with in an organized, team concept. Sometimes sets devolved into prolonged, ball-stopping isolation play, which would help him break down his defender and make a play, but stagnated the offense. He needs to figure out how to beat his defender decisively and with as few a moves as possible, not to overdribble or be too flashy, and learn that simple plays with the ball can be most effective. Particularly with his size advantage at the PG position, learning to lock defenders in jail and do more subtle, size based plays will be of great benefit to him, especially with the threat of his floater. One particular play sticks in my memory of his last game against New Zealand, where it was a clutch possession, and he was just going through his legs a million times like he was back in an And1 Mixtape, and Sek Henry eventually swiped it straight from him and dunked it down the other end.

He crashes the boards hard, he was great in this regard and sets him up to be a true triple-double threat sort of guy. Ball led his team, including all bigs, in rebounding (somewhat misleading because his Hawks team has no bigs that clock over 20mpg), but he grabbed 7.8 a game, really impressive, nearly 2 offensive. Of course he's great at grabbing the ball and pushing the ball or making early transition looks, like his brother.

Defensively, he came in pretty abysmally, and look, he's still a liability. Illawarra's coach says that he made great strides as he started to get taught and understand even basic defensive concepts, and this is true, but his awareness was still pretty low, generally speaking I'd say the motor was sub-par (though obviously had a massive usage rate on the other end), and his foot-speed and physical tools beyond his size are not exceptional I would say. He had his moments, I think I recall a couple of games where he was pretty locked in and competed on that end, and I don't believe he's lazy or unwilling, I think he wants to get better on that end, but he's just super raw at the end of the day. One redeeming element of his defense you can point to immediately is his anticipation in the lanes - he was tied for 2nd in the league in steals at 1.7 per game. Despite his size, only 2 blocks on the season, btw.

I think that's about everything off the top of my head. Even after watching pretty much all his games, I still think he's just a massive enigma, a really unusual prospect with big strengths and big weaknesses. He's a project who will need to go to the right situation, there's big boom/bust potential here. His effectiveness, particularly as a play-maker, in spite of his lack of fundamentals and experience playing 'proper' basketball is a testament to his truly remarkable instincts as a player, but as of right now, I don't think he's a player that can contribute to winning. He is a player without off-ball utility, who needs the ball in his hands, but currently can't shoot, is still figuring out how to function within a system and not just 'making plays' but truly getting other people involved and maximizing their output, and his a liability on the other end of the court. Some of his perceived potential and development curve come down to the idea that Lavar has totally botched his development. Iirc, Ball didn't even know what a weave drill was when he first came to the team, and had no concepts of basic concepts on either end of the court.

He did make strides in his NBL season, and had plenty of glimpses of brilliance, but it will be a whole new adjustment as he enters the NBA as I believe you can't just throw him the green light at the next level. He is someone that will always be best with the ball in his hands, but in the NBA he'll have to figure how to work as one piece of a unit, and I think the best way to start him off is to have him leading a bench unit and figuring things out in that capacity.

When I watched him at his best this season, I bought into the #1 hype, and given how crap this draft-class is, I know we're all clamoring for someone to rise from the ashes of the collective mediocrity of these prospects. Often times a more out of the box, unusual option with a bit more mystery can be glamorized and overrated, and I think that might be happening to an extent here. I do believe he has a high ceiling, I'm not sure how confident I am in it. I think for me he's probably Top 5, but I'm not sure I like him at #1. I wish I could be more confident in his projection, having watched such a solid amount of him, but he's just a really hard guy to evaluate.

If you're interested in looking at more metrics, this Spatial Jam website has all the stats under the sun -

https://spatialjam.com/spatialjam-public-datasets

Historical Stats link will give you all the season numbers both raw and advanced, then there's lineup, on/off's, shot charts, etc. all there. It'll all be there for RJ too if you're interested.

-

Just to touch on RJ while I'm here, he has returned and played 2 or 3 games since his injury. He's been pretty poor in those games. He was trending positively before his injury as well and this has set him back, and like LaMelo, there's been talk that his team has been better without him, or at least in the capacity that he was getting played. New Zealand went on a win streak without him and are just in finals contention right now, on the back of Scotty Hopson and Sek Henry in particular. Henry took over starting PG duties during the run and has been excellent, and he's retained the starting position as RJ has returned.

There's murmurings that RJ's camp are unhappy with the minutes since returning (it's like 15-20mpg) and if they fall out of finals contention they might shut him down also - we'll see what happens with this, but the team is certainly making the right decision to compete. These guys are promising, but featuring them as bona fide starters is stretching them beyond their abilities to be positive impact players at this level of play, at this time in their careers.

As for Terry Armstrong, he finally got like 2 minutes of court time the other day, haha. Got burned on 2 consecutive defensive plays and got subbed out. It's basically accepted he's not up to an NBL level of play right now. I don't know what his next move is but he's not ready to get drafted. I'd like to see him in the NBL again next season - I've any seen some calls for him to play in our 2nd div league (NBL1) which runs during the NBL off-season, for him to get game time and reps to improve his game. Obviously he's got some good physical tools there. I'd like to see that happen and see how he progresses over here, but idk, he might go elsewhere or back to the US, maybe try for a G-League team. But yeah, don't have him on your draft boards.

[MemphisX]

I still think what decides LaMelo's ultimate outcome is how much strength he can add over the years. He is 6'6ish PG and if he can add strength, it will open up the rest of his game including shooting.

[nolang1]

I had Eboua as a 2nd round sleeper last year and he seems to have helped himself by waiting to declare. Especially in a draft so light on forwards, there are only so many players his size (7'2+ wingspan) who can move like this. If he can develop into a consistent three-point shooter, it wouldn't be out of the question for him to end up a top 10 player in the class.

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[GimmeDat]

I had Eboua as a 2nd round sleeper last year and he seems to have helped himself by waiting to declare. Especially in a draft so light on forwards, there are only so many players his size (7'2+ wingspan) who can move like this. If he can develop into a consistent three-point shooter, it wouldn't be out of the question for him to end up a top 10 player in the class.

Read on Twitter

I had Eboua on my board at one stage last season, but I remember he was a raw/physical toolsy guy. Looks like he's starting to put it together, looks really impressive here imo.

Looking at the stats he's still very much a work in progress, but there seems to be considerable potential there.

In this draft especially, I struggle to see him not getting a 2nd round look.

[big-shot-ROB]

Man, this draft sucks. Not going to get into it too much, because then you end up forcing you to see things that are not there. Thanks 2013&2014.

[BlazersBroncos]

I just cant get behind the LaMelo hype. He has talent, but can anyone really look at his game and say 'ya, I want this guy on my side in the playoffs'. He just doesn't play winning basketball. His shot isn't good enough for his usage, and his is worthless without the ball in his hands.

I see a late FRP and a bench gunner / handler that can play, but not guard, both guard spots. He has some similarities to Dinwiddie, but I don't think he will ever be that good.

[Stillwater]

Man, this draft sucks. Not going to get into it too much, because then you end up forcing you to see things that are not there. Thanks 2013&2014.

I mean it doesn't suck if you need a ball dominant guard with upside, but yeah beyond that there are a lot of hit or miss types of forwards and few if any sure fire high ceiling non guards. But as usual there are several forwards and a few centers that are showing flashes enough that they could get looks in the lottery being only 18 or 19 and with plenty of time to develop. outside of that the depth of upperclassmen is not great compared to last season either beyond rotation non starter level projections for 3 or 4 yr college prospects who are already near their ceilings.
I think you could see a lot of teams valuing 2nd round picks above late firsts to the point of wanting to dump those firsts because the difference in talent for upperclassmen that are plug and play for contenders in the latter half of the 1st isn't a huge drop off between 25 and 45. Obviously when it comes to rebuilding teams the late firsts hold value in the case there is or are sliders with upside they want to develop

[big-shot-ROB]

Man, this draft sucks. Not going to get into it too much, because then you end up forcing you to see things that are not there. Thanks 2013&2014.

I mean it doesn't suck if you need a ball dominant guard with upside, but yeah beyond that there are a lot of hit or miss types of forwards and few if any sure fire high ceiling non guards. But as usual there are several forwards and a few centers that are showing flashes enough that they could get looks in the lottery being only 18 or 19 and with plenty of time to develop. outside of that the depth of upperclassmen is not great compared to last season either beyond rotation non starter level projections for 3 or 4 yr college prospects who are already near their ceilings.
I think you could see a lot of teams valuing 2nd round picks above late firsts to the point of wanting to dump those firsts because the difference in talent for upperclassmen that are plug and play for contenders in the latter half of the 1st isn't a huge drop off between 25 and 45. Obviously when it comes to rebuilding teams the late firsts hold value in the case there is or are sliders with upside they want to develop

I mean yeah, the top 10 is young kids that have shown flashes.

But after that, as you've said, the quality and therefore the value for said pick drops off, a lot. Like, with a the 15 pick last season you were able to draft Doumbouya or Herro. This year you're looking at what? Mannion? McDaniels?

[clyde21]

i see what you're saying but to be fair, not a lot of people liked Doumbouya/Herro last year either?

[Stillwater]

Man, this draft sucks. Not going to get into it too much, because then you end up forcing you to see things that are not there. Thanks 2013&2014.

I mean it doesn't suck if you need a ball dominant guard with upside, but yeah beyond that there are a lot of hit or miss types of forwards and few if any sure fire high ceiling non guards. But as usual there are several forwards and a few centers that are showing flashes enough that they could get looks in the lottery being only 18 or 19 and with plenty of time to develop. outside of that the depth of upperclassmen is not great compared to last season either beyond rotation non starter level projections for 3 or 4 yr college prospects who are already near their ceilings.
I think you could see a lot of teams valuing 2nd round picks above late firsts to the point of wanting to dump those firsts because the difference in talent for upperclassmen that are plug and play for contenders in the latter half of the 1st isn't a huge drop off between 25 and 45. Obviously when it comes to rebuilding teams the late firsts hold value in the case there is or are sliders with upside they want to develop

I mean yeah, the top 10 is young kids that have shown flashes.

But after that, as you've said, the quality and therefore the value for said pick drops off, a lot. Like, with a the 15 pick last season you were able to draft Doumbouya or Herro. This year you're looking at what? Mannion? McDaniels?

I don't see any Sekou or Herro drops this time other than maybe that kind of value from a Okongwu or Nolley if they get passed over.
I would not be surprised if McDaniels is one of the few forwards that might actually go in the top 10 based on that upside , and I would think Mannion is a top 10 lock , but given we don't know the order or how orgs rank him to his peers yet it's possible someone gets a steal late lottery.
I would think a strong 2 way guard like Butler could work his way up into the lottery pushing somebody down too. Either way it's likely ball dominant guards that got passed over by teams not needing one that could allow for a some really solid value mid 1st if you need a ball dom guard

[TheScout31]

He has potential as a shot blocker, but he is pretty slow reacting, has bad instincts and feel and is not a physical player on that end

I don't think he's any worse than Toppin or Naji on defense, and his potential actually seems higher.

Oh I don't think he is worse than them either there, but I like those two significantly more on offense, and Nnaji has more mobility/potential to switch on D, plus Toppin is clearly a 4, not a Center

You mean, Obi "I let players shoot 47% around the rim as a primary/secondary paint defender" Toppin is not a center?!!?





PS, we miss you.