Young Center Prospects to Consider

[Jamaaliver]

Best pick-and-roll finisher: Zach Edey, C, Purdue

Edey, ranked No. 16 in ESPN's Top 100, is a dream target for playmaking guards to pair with in pick-and-roll actions. He sets wide, bruising screens at 7-foot-5, 298 pounds and is an outstanding mark rolling to the paint and catching everything thrown his way with his huge, magnetic hands and 7-foot-11 wingspan. Purdue's small guards would often throw the ball up in the general vicinity of the rim under duress and let Edey go catch it.

He understands the art of rescreening if his initial pick doesn't achieve the desired outcome, and has improved his ability to operate out of zoom actions/dribble-handoffs, catch-and-make decisions out of short rolls, or mix-in slips to keep defenses off-balance. Even if he doesn't catch the ball rolling to the basket (where he is absolutely devastating), the amount of gravity he attracts sucking in off-ball defenders tagging off shooters often creates wide-open corner 3s for teammates -- a big reason the Boilermakers shot 40% for 3 this season, the second-best rate in college basketball. -- Givony

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[Jamaaliver]

Best shot-blocker: Donovan Clingan, C, UConn

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Clingan's combination of elite size (7-3, 7-6¾ wingspan, 9-7 standing reach), coordinated footwork and feel for positioning and timing makes him the draft's top rim-protector, having drawn Rudy Gobert comparisons from his more optimistic fans in NBA front offices. Once he worked back into better conditioning and health, his season turned around in a major way, as he walled off the paint in the NCAA tournament and showed the defensive impact he can make.

The area the No. 3 prospect in ESPN's Top 100 covers and the visual impact he has on the floor can make scoring a daunting task for opposing offenses. While not a vertically explosive help-side rim-protector, Clingan has the length and hand speed to contest everything in his area and make bigs and drivers alike uncomfortable. He's well-suited to drop coverage and has the potential to be one of the NBA's premier defensive bigs if all goes well for him. -- Woo

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[Jamaaliver]

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[Jamaaliver]

Edey played better all season and destroyed Clingan in the Natty.

Spoiler:

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[tbhawksfan1]

Edey is better at everything other than block rate. Clingan is 2 years younger. Edey is much better at everything else. Scoring, boards, minutes and Edey blew him away at the combine agility numbers

I want to draft Edey with a top 15 pick and I would take Edey over Clingan. Clingan gets drated top 5 and some team will be very sorry

Edey is better right now than Clingan will ever be

[Jamaaliver]

Edey is better at everything other than block rate.

Edey is better right now than Clingan will ever be

[tbhawksfan1]

Edey is better at everything other than block rate.

Edey is better right now than Clingan will ever be

Just look at the numbers. The proof is on the court. Then factor in the fact that Edey blows him away in agility...it's just not close

OT: Where did you post the stat that shows that P&R is a losing proposition? I want to look at it again but can't remember which thread

[Jamaaliver]

Just look at the numbers. The proof is on the court.

Then factor in the fact that Edey blows him away in agility...it's just not close.

[tbhawksfan1]

Just look at the numbers. The proof is on the court.

Then factor in the fact that Edey blows him away in agility...it's just not close.

Edey played 39 games and averaged 32 minutes

25.2 / 12.2 / 2.2 / 2.0

[Jamaaliver]

Just look at the numbers. The proof is on the court.

...it's just not close.

25.2 / 12.2 / 2.2 / 2.0

Instead of comparing 4th year Edey vs 2nd year Clingan -- try comparing both of their sophomore seasons:

They are virtually identical levels of production/efficiency.

[Jamaaliver]

Throw in Alex Sarr, DaRon Holmes, Kel'el Ware and this is a really good draft to acquire a young, solid, starting Center.

I predict one of the 2nd round guys will slip into the conversation of best big man from the 2024 draft class too.

[Jamaaliver]

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[Jamaaliver]

[Jamaaliver]

Keep an eye on Kel'el Ware this draft cycle. I've been ringing this bell for months. He's just as talented as Sarr, but more polished.

he might sneak into the top-12 of the draft.

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[Jamaaliver]

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[tbhawksfan1]

Think Clingan is going to MEM at #9

[Jamaaliver]

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[Jamaaliver]

There's a part of me that would love to see us take Zach Edey and then put him under the tutelage of the great Hakeem Olajuwon.

If gets even a slightly above average post game, Edey would be the most unstoppable scorer in the NBA:

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[Jamaaliver]

Zach Edey, Donovan Clingan beg question: Does NBA have room for behemoth centers?



Call it pace-and-space or seven seconds or less or whatever; spreading the floor and shooting 3s has changed the way teams approach the game. In particular, it has fundamentally changed the center position.

Spoiler:

...the league’s persistent creep to the perimeter, and the resultant requirement that all five players be able to guard the perimeter, has steadily eroded the ranks of the behemoth centers. Yes, we still have a lot of tall players, like 7-4 Victor Wembanyama and 7-3 Kristaps Porziņģis, but these guys play more like supersized guards than the human-blocking sleds of yore. To the extent heavyweights remain, they’ve had to change to stay ahead of the curve. Today, it’s a tiny group that mostly includes elite skill guys.

In their stead have been a stream of skinny, tall centers like Wemby, the Zinger and Chet Holmgren; smaller, fast-and-bouncy centers like 6-9 Bam Adebayo and Atlanta’s 6-10 Clint Capela and 6-8 Onyeka Okongwu; and up-gauged former power forwards like Al Horford. Even the traditional 7-footers — your Deandre Aytons, Jarrett Allens, Cody Zellers and Ivica Zubacs — have mostly topped out in the 240-250 pound range. It’s just a much harder game for heavier players, unless they match it with outlier skill and feel the way Nikola Jokić, Joel Embiid and Brook Lopez have managed.

This takes us to this year’s NBA Draft, and the two big man sensations competing in the men’s NCAA Tournament championship on Monday night. That duo, Purdue’s Zach Edey and Connecticut’s Donovan Clingan, are two of the most dominant players in recent college annals.

You can see this any number of ways, including, uh, watching the games, but an easy shorthand to see their dominance is the fact that they are first and second in college basketball in PER by miles and miles, with Edey’s unfathomable 39.7 topping the NCAA and Clingan’s 35.7 mark, ranking second. The other standout stat for these two gentlemen is their sheer size. They aren’t just tall; they’re big, with solid frames and thick calves. Edey is 7-4 and 300 pounds; Clingan is 7-2, 280.

The one thing you can see in the tape for Edey and Clingan is that, if you are going to allow them to just hang out in the paint on defense, you might as well not bother showing up at all. It’s just too easy for them. Clingan is the more nimble and athletic of the two, showing more ability to step out on the perimeter, run the floor and track smaller players off the dribble. That particularly stood out in his epic eight-block tournament performance against Northwestern, where he was unfazed having to switch onto guards. He’ll have to do the same against faster, more skilled NBA players working with more space and (mostly) better schemes, but here’s an example of his work in the Illinois game. Clingan has his feet at the 3-point line when Terrance Shannon begins his move, stays with Shannon’s inside-out move and slides his feet to meet him at the rim before denying the shot.

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Meanwhile, Edey is of an even more extreme archetype — even bigger, even slower, even more dependent on being in the right system with a drop coverage on defense and a post-friendly offense.

That said, the Yao parallels here are even stronger. Like Yao, Edey has a high release and is a very good short-range shooter, a combination that makes his post-ups an automatic bucket at the college level. He could probably extend his range too; he shoots 70.6 percent from the free-throw line for his career and has clean mechanics, although he could get more arc on it. Additionally, as opponents have become brazen about doubling him, he’s become better at reading what’s happening and getting the ball to the right spot.

Thus, offense isn’t the thing keeping scouts up at night. Yes, he’ll have to make some adjustments to play in more pick-and-rolls and fewer structured post-ups. Check out this amazing stat: In just 37 college games, Zach Edey has more post-ups than any player in the NBA this year.

However, his size alone makes him an obvious lob threat, and his coordination, strength and skill on top of that makes him an elite finisher despite lacking electric hops.

Defensively? That is the entire battle. This isn’t necessarily a binary yes-no thing either. There are levels to this.

Edey’s statistical profile certainly has some red flags in it, starting with the fact that he only had 11 steals the entire season, or about 0.5 per 100 possessions. While 7-4 centers aren’t expected to be thieving ball hawks, that’s still a staggeringly low rate even for a center, in a category that has historically had indicator value for the next level.

Edey has also used his size to protect the rim much differently than Clingan, opting for an extreme low risk strategy that prioritizes avoiding foul trouble. Edey has more blocks than fouls this season, just like Clingan; the difference is that Clingan is nearly twice as likely to do either, per possession. The stats will show an unusually low block rate for his size (4.0 per 100), but if Edey isn’t an indispensable star at the next level, it also means he could likely ramp that up quite a bit.

Every game Edey plays in will result in the opponent trying to isolate him in space and use superior speed against his size. (He’ll also be vulnerable in transition.) However, that makes him no different from most centers who take the floor in an NBA game on any given night.

Thus, we get back to levels of vulnerability. It’s one thing to say mobility issues on the defensive end might prevent Edey from becoming a star at the next level, somebody who might be worth a top-five pick. It’s quite another, however, to say the issue would be so egregious that it would render him unplayable, especially given his offensive output.

There are a great many bigs who operate somewhere between those extremes, especially in the regular season, when most teams play drop coverage fairly regularly. Many of those bigs get run off the court at some point in the postseason; if Edey and Clingan are no different from them, that limits the value proposition on taking one with a high lottery pick, perhaps … but it doesn’t make them undraftable. There’s a certain point in the draft where fretting over Edey being played off the court in a playoff series is silliness compared to the upside of having a potential 20-point scorer to plug into the frontcourt.

The Athletic

[Jamaaliver]

If we don't draft Clingan, this guy is a worthy target in the 2nd round.

Hustles his a$$ off on every single play.

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