yoyoboy wrote:The-Power wrote:Always appreciate your thoughts and insights, so I'm happy to engage more!
Likewise! I know we've been high and low on similar prospects in the past, but so it's interesting we feel very differently on a few this year. I don't know if I've seen anyone on this board who has Cade lower - 7th or 8th - than I do lol.I get the idea behind it, and perhaps it should be factored in in some way, but I have a few concerns.
For starters, you yourself acknowledge that we do not know yet what the difference between college and G-League really is in terms of production. Hence, I wouldn't focus so much on exact numbers and relative efficiency – instead, I'd just focus on the fact that there are a number of good wings in today's league who struggled with efficiency in their early non-NBA years. Is Kuminga going to improve as the examples as mentioned? That's impossible to say, and I understand your concerns. I simply wanted to highlight that his inefficiency is not necessarily something that is going to follow him throughout his career.
There are definitely examples of wings who struggled to score efficiently and went on to become great players but I'm wondering what the percentage is of raw wings are who did everything across the board so poorly and went on to be worth a top 5 pick. Usually it feels like they at least show something - high ORB rate, high FTA rate, decent FT%, good steal rate... It just seems like with Kuminga, it's all hope. I'm definitely not discounting that he could turn out to be a superstar if things go very right for him, because he's long, athletic, fairly physical, and he has decent court vision. But for me personally, the risk just really outweighs the reward when you're talking high lottery where some high upside prospects who have shown a lot more thus far are available. If I'm in that 9-12 range and the prospects left don't have that exciting of upside, and I've done the due diligence to determine his age is legit, then yeah I can see taking a swing at him.Second, while your opinion that it might be easier to score in G-League than in college (at least in some instances – I doubt it would be true for players on last year's Gonzanga team, for instance) is something to consider, it also follows that a) it's easier to score for teammates and b) G-League players are, on average, simply better than college players (you pointed out the advantages of spacing, for instance, which are due to superior shooting ability on teams) and it would be unfair to look at Kuminga's relative TS% when the level of offensive play in particular is just naturally higher because the players are better.
I actually just figured something out that makes a difference.I completely forgot to account for the new G-League rules, which actually means Kuminga's scoring efficiency is even LOWER than I thought because most of his free throws are worth 2 points and not 1. I'm too lazy to do look into the exact numbers but if we take the TS formula and assume 44% of his FTA were and-ones, that would make his TS% actually 45.7% which is terrifying to me. As far as the G-League being harder to score in than college, I guess we'll just have to wait and see until more prospects start following this path. Seeing raw guys in the past like a 19-20 year old Sekou score around 23 points per 36 on 62% TS in the G-League while struggling to get over 12 points per 36 on 47% TS in the NBA makes me wonder if it's way closer to college scoring difficulty than it is to NBA scoring difficulty because of the improved spacing and teammates, regardless of going up against more equipped NBA-style defenders. But we'll see.
Lastly, it bears mentioning that Kuminga has played only 13 games. That's an awfully small sample size. Perhaps it accurately reflects his efficiency, but maybe he was also only on a bad stretch (I'm sure you find inefficient stretches of 13 games for many players). In fact, you'd imagine that a player being thrown into a new league with professional players is going to take some time to adapt and, over time, improves his efficiency rather than have it drop. College players have the advantage not only of playing against non-professional athletes but – in most cases – also of starting out versus non-conference weaker competition. I'm sure Freshmen would struggle more if they started out playing conference games without any notable preparation outside of practice.
You're right about that, and admittedly I didn't really think about it as much as I probably should have. If it was indeed a bad stretch then that could help Kuminga's case. I'll also say though that because of the G-League's function as a means to show off talent, Kuminga was on a way shorter leash than college players are and was allowed to chuck away despite being massively inefficient. Maybe this is a good thing because he took a lot of shots that bogged down his efficiency, and in college he might have put up a better statistical profile not being allowed to do whatever he wants out there. But it's also possible we got a much better glimpse of what Kuminga's performance could look like in the NBA because he wasn't as restricted as college players.Re: Barnes. I have him and Barnes in the same tier. I understand if you have Barnes (comfortably) ahead but I wasn't as impressed with Barnes as I had hoped. Just like Kuminga, Barnes' shot is a big question mark and – perhaps unjustified – I have more confidence in Kuminga's shot than Barnes'. Barnes is clearly a better passer, but I believe Kuminga has more upside as a scorer and shot-creator (for himself). If Barnes cannot score well enough, then his playmaking skills are less useful and he is limited to creation on the break and as the roll man – something I believe Kuminga can do as well, albeit differently. Defense is Barnes' calling card and while he's good, I've been a bit disappointed in some parts of his defense. Kuminga is more of a wildcard – the tools are there to be really good, but he has a lot to learn.
I wouldn't be surprised if Kuminga develops into a better shot creator for himself, but for me, as long as Barnes is able to develop a decent shot, I really like his potential to be a huge impact player. I find it way more likely Barnes can do that than Kuminga improves virtually everything on a basketball court. With Kuminga all his strengths come with the tags "potential," "upside," or "tools to be..." but Barnes has shown me he has fantastic vision and accuracy, and I like how he makes decisions quickly. I personally wasn't disappointed by Barnes defensively, but even if you think that, I'm sure you agree Barnes is still a much better defender at this point and I don't see why Kuminga would have any more upside in that area compared to the guy who's stronger, 3 inches longer in wingspan, better in terms of lateral movement, and has shown better instincts and IQ so far.Re: Sengün. His production is indeed insane. But if you take it at face value, you would have to have him #1 because nobody compares in this draft in his age range. I wouldn't take him #1, though, because production is only part of the assessment. To your point about someone with Sengün's production not becoming a very good NBA player is basically unheard of: well, how many players were there with his kind of production? The number of extremely small, and I wouldn't draw too much from that. What I do believe is that Sengün will be able to produce numbers in the NBA as well, I see no reason to doubt that. How much will this help his team, though, is a different question. After all, there are many Cs who stuff the boxscore sheet but aren't really all that valuable to their teams; especially when they have defensive shortcomings that can be exploited by modern offenses (see, for example, Kanter with his 24 PER only playing 24 MPG).
You're right about that, but it's interesting to note that Sengun's defensive indicators are pretty good compared to recently drafted bigs.
AST/TO also tends to correlate well with defensive ability in the NBA and Sengun is awesome there, as well. I think people tend to overstate the idea that he has no chance against the PnR in the NBA. I think he's more athletic and mobile than he gets credit for, and his IQ and instincts really bring a lot to the table. It's also common for bigs as young as he is to look incapable laterally early on, but then look much better as their footwork and experience improves. I fully expect Sabonis to turn into an excellent shooter as well based on his FT%, the touch on his shot he's shown, and his form, so I don't think it's unreasonable to think of Sabonis with a better shot and better defensive instincts kind of upside for Sengun. If I were to place all my value on the statistical production and age interaction, he would be my far away number one in this draft because he blows everyone else away in the draft models. So I think having him in the lower half of the lottery is just crazy, considering other prospects have their fair share of question marks as well.Re: Wagner. I have him in the same tier as Kuminga and Barnes, so I also don't see anyone preferring him to Kuminga as particularly odd. I agree that Wagner has a higher floor. With Kuminga, you draft him based on his potential due to superior athletic ability. If you want to play it safer, by all means, you should take Wagner. I believe teams in that range of the draft are more likely to swing for the fences in hopes that they can get a cornerstone and thus I'll probably end up having Kuminga ranked a bit higher – but this is not to say that he's necessarily better as a prospect if we only look at the median outcome instead of weighting higher-end outcome (more than lower-end outcomes).
Yeah I agree with that. Kuminga's absolute ceiling is for sure higher just because of the athleticism advantage. I just feel that in probably over 80% of outcomes, Wagner becomes the better player, and teams in general draft based on most optimistic possibility too often. But I get the logic.Re: Giddey. I love his passing ability but everything else is a concern for me. I don't think he has the handles nor the scoring ability to be a lead Guard in the NBA, so that limits his passing impact a bit. I see him more as a great utility guy on offense if his shot becomes at least serviceable. Maybe that's a better outcome on offense than the average outcome for Kuminga, I'm not sure, but with Giddey there are also defensive concerns that Kuminga doesn't have unless you think he's a headcase (which is something teams can figure out more easily).
Yeah, Giddey just smashes so many variables that correlate well with NBA success, but I agree with you, he has a ton of red flags. I'm basically placing all my stock in a guy that tall who's that young and already maybe the 2nd best passing prospect of all time at that height or above behind Magic will basically just figure the rest out. I can see this looking really stupid in a couple years, too, so we'll see.Re: Cooper. I just don't see it. He's a very undersized PG with a suspect shot. He might be heavily targeted by teams on defense, and is his offense really going to make up for it if he can't shoot it well? Not to mention issues of scalability with a ball-dominant PG who doesn't project to be a good off-ball player and doesn't force defenses to come up high to defend him. Right now, I think he'll be someone you'd want to bring off the bench on a good team. I could be wrong, though – maybe I have to watch him a bit more closely.I guess his FT% provides some reason for hope.
He's really boom or bust for me. The form is just awful but his FT% gives me hope he has the touch to be able to improve once he fixes that. I like his intangibles and he had an insane level of shot creation as a freshman and a great ability to get to the line despite his size, which are hard to ignore.On the matter of age, I'll just say this: I don't factor it in, because I have no particular reason to doubt his age. I expect, however, that teams will do their due diligence and if there are any concerns, I understand and expect to see him drop. But this isn't a topic I want to focus on from my keyboard when it's entirely speculative.
That's fair.
Mm, I see you're a fan of my work! Awesome post. Here are my TS%'s for the G-League guys, where I've used their points off free throws and free throw percentage to calculate their NBA-adjusted free throws made and attempts, and then applied the usual TS% formula:
Green - 58.7
Todd - 48.7
Kuminga - 47.2
Nix - 47.0
