HomoSapien wrote:rtblues wrote:The best lowest ranked player and probably the sleeper pick of this draft is Brandon Clarke. 6-8, 210, PF/C - Gonzaga
Troll me now, see you at the end of next season. There are a few certain key stats I consider and he knocks it out of the park looking at those.
Time will tell, just going on record now. Love this guy!
I've been mentioning him as well. To me, it's pretty clear that he's going to end up being a bigger impact player than anyone we'll draft. I don't care if we have two young bigs already, there's enough minutes for the three of them. That said, Minnesota seems like a great landing spot for him.
Risky to take him anywhere near the top 15:
Although Clarke has been hyped by some as a possible late-lottery selection, it should be of extreme note that essentially every NBA scout I’ve spoken with about Clarke this season is moderately to highly concerned. For what it’s worth, I personally share that trepidation, dating back to watching him play in person against North Carolina in Chapel Hill in December. As I understand it, Clarke’s wildly impressive statistical profile has made a good case for him from an analytically-minded perspective, but those numbers aren’t necessarily going to dictate whether or not a team decides to pick him, particularly with an early selection. While it’s not out of the question Clarke gets picked somewhere between 10 and 15, and he’s been scheduling workouts for teams in that range, there’s some serious risk built in if that were to happen. I’m not making those picks, but personally, I wouldn’t consider him until the 20s.
At the combine, Clarke measured at 6’8.25” in shoes with an equal 6’8.25” wingspan and a 8’6” standing reach. Length-wise, Clarke had the shortest hands (8.25 inches) of any big at the combine. Width-wise (9.5 inches) he was about average. I don’t put too much stock into the athletic testing overall, but he did predictably post a 34” standing vertical and 40.5” max vert. The thing is that none of this is especially surprising: if you watched him closely all season, you knew that he was essentially a big in the body of a wing, who was dominating by dint of elite vertical explosiveness and innate ability to alter shots and cover ground. We’ve seen him do it so often that it’s nearly impossible to throw out the highlight-caliber plays from our minds. Yet when projecting Clarke at the NBA level, that might be the only way to rationally think about his body of work. I’m not concerned about Clarke defensively—he’s proven he can make impact plays and offer some versatility—but the big issue here is what role he plays on offense.
Clarke’s size limitations might inhibit him in one meaningful way: his ability to play in traffic. A huge part of why he was so efficient this season is that he thrives off of tip-ins and offensive rebounds—in nearly every game he played in, he was the oldest (he’ll turn 23 years old in September) and most athletic player. Gonzaga, of course, plays a majority of its games in the West Coast Conference, which isn’t exactly a strong conference. If you focus on the games they played in which he faced taller opposition—the North Carolina game I saw was a good example—teams that were able to throw fresh bodies at him had some success. Clarke had a damn good season, and there were games where he dominated good competition, as well. But there’s enough to wonder about how much of the easy stuff keeps coming easily to him, particularly as someone who’s almost exclusively a right-hand finisher.
The biggest concern for me is role functionality: he’ll run the floor and finish plays, but he’s probably not big or skilled enough to be a pick-and-roll threat, and you’re not going to throw him the ball on the block. Right now, he can pretty much only create shots for himself consistently off one or two dribbles while facing up, and he’s almost always trying to spin back to his right hand or shoot over someone. And I don’t think it’s safe to assume he’ll transform himself into an NBA-caliber shooter simply because he’s made some small improvements in that area: if you’ve watched Clarke shoot solo, there’s just not a lot of reason to think his jumper is going to translate. He’s reworked it, but there are a lot of moving parts, and his best hope is probably being able to hit enough corner threes to expand the threat he presents on offense to where he can essentially be a stretch four. Clarke shot 69% from the foul line, and only attempted 15 threes all season. Most NBA teams aren’t optimistic in that department, as best I can tell. It’s more likely that with his limitations, he’s mostly playing a “dunker” role on the baseline, one that suits his talents, but also inhibits some of the things you can run with him on the floor if he’s a non-shooter.
Don’t be shocked if Clarke slips a bit on draft night, and without continued skill progress early in his career, this situation could be a risky investment. If it takes a lottery pick to take a chance on him, I’ll pass. I’m just not sure how confidently we can make assumptions with him.
https://www.si.com/nba/2019/05/28/nba-draft-2019-lottery-prospects-deandre-hunter-romeo-langford?xid=socialflow_twitter_si&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thecrossover
