1UPZ wrote:Absolutely enjoy watching Bagley play with passion.... Then you look at his blocks per game and it's so low lol. He's like Randle in terms of production what he provides... Energy, good scoring and rebounding... But not much rim protection. I mean I wish he was at least a 2.5bpg college player so he can be a 1.5bpg NBA player...but 1bpg would probably mean 0.5bpg in the league.
It would be nice if Bagley blocks it more, but it's strange that's your concern about Bagley if you really like Ayton. At least Bagley will probably play a lot of PF.
Ayton has one of the lowest block rates of men taken in the top 10. He doesn't seem interested in defense which has been a big surprise from the beginning of the season playing on a Miller coached team.
Freshman Block Rates From Big Men Drafted in the Top 10, Since 2010
Player Year Drafted Freshman Year Block Rate
Anthony Davis 2012 13.7
Nerlens Noel 2013 13.2
Joel Embiid 2014 11.7
Karl-Anthony Towns 2015 11.5
Andre Drummond 2012 9.9
Zach Collins 2017 9.8
Jakob Poeltl 2016 8.6
Willie Cauley-Stein 2015 8.4
Alex Len 2013 8
Derrick Favors 2010 7.9
DeMarcus Cousins 2010 7.5
Ekpe Udoh 2010 7.2
Tristan Thompson 2011 7.2
Frank Kaminsky 2015 5
Jahlil Okafor 2015 4.5
Cody Zeller 2013 4.3
DeAndre Ayton 2017 4.3
Greg Monroe 2010 3.8
Shot-blocking is one of the most consistent statistics from college to the NBA. There aren’t many guys who discover the ability to do it at the next level. The NBA career block rates of his historical peer group dropped an average of 57 percent from their freshman seasons of college. Ayton would have a block rate of 1.9 percent in the NBA if his numbers had a similar decline, which would put him in the bottom 15 percent of frontcourt players in the league.
Of course, there’s only so much that shot-blocking numbers can tell us. The more important job for a center is having a defensive presence in the lane, and block rates are an imperfect way to capture that information. A player who chases blocks at the expense of properly positioning themselves and staying within the overall defensive system can end up hurting their team. No one will be accusing Ayton of that. He’s not even trying to block shots most of the time. There have been too many instances this season where he simply watches the ball go past him without even attempting to rotate over or even challenge the shot.
Ayton doesn’t play with much energy on defense. He rarely makes two efforts at contesting a shot, and he’s not particularly diligent about getting himself involved in a play when it doesn’t involve his man. I talked to one NBA scout who thinks the problem is that Ayton has a high school mentality when it comes to defense, and that he is more concerned with winning his individual matchup statistically than filling his role in the Arizona system. You can draw a direct line from Ayton’s lack of effort to the Wildcats’ defensive struggles this season. They have the no. 213-rated defense in the country, a shockingly low number for a team coached by a defensive-minded coach like Sean Miller.
Take a look at the career paths of some of the centers drafted in the top 10 in recent years. Karl-Anthony Towns was a dominant defensive presence in college, and he’s still learning the nuances of protecting the rim in his third season in the NBA. Nerlens Noel is in his fifth season, and he can’t even get minutes on one of the worst teams in the NBA because he doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to be doing in its defensive system. Andre Drummond is just starting to figure it out, and he’s in his sixth. All these guys were ahead of where Ayton is defensively at the same age. When you draft a teenage big man in the lottery, you are signing up for a long and difficult maturation process even in the best of circumstances. If he’s either unable or unwilling to put in the effort on both ends of the floor, that process could stretch on indefinitely.
Now his offensive game is unbelievably good, so he will be really fun to watch and he will help our offense, but I imagine we would continue to be the worst defensive team in the league, so it would be the same old Suns in that regard. But at least we should continue to be more fun to watch if we end up with him.
He is really fun to watch at AZ, but I always scratch my head that AZ can't seem to dominate teams, and it's because of their poor defense, particularly in the middle, which is so strange with such a defensive minded coach.
https://www.theringer.com/2017/12/7/16743900/deandre-ayton-arizona-blocks-nba-draft
