2024 NBA Draft Thread

[scott]

Williams seems to be one of those "fluid" athletes at best while Holland looks like he's moving around on springs. I know they only show a couple makes but could the resident ST shot doctors tell me what's broken about Holland's jumper?

I'm not an expert, and I have Holland as #2 on my board, but his shot does have a little bit of that Michael Kidd-Gilchrist to it.

[Mr. Body]

I wanted to try and get a better idea for Stephon Castle's shooting prospects and the odds that he'd be a decent shooter. People cite his FT% often, but using that as a sole factor seems inaccurate. For me at least, trying to get an understanding of "touch" and 3 point accuracy looks at 4 factors - FT%, college 3 pt%, college 3 pt volume, and college midrange %. That said, Castle scores poorly in 3/4 categories - while his FT% is acceptable, his 3 point % (27), 3 point volume (75) and midrange accuracy (35%) are extremely worrisome to me. Looking at these factors, I would expect that he would not project to be a good shooter moving forward.

These are the results of a quick database search. I used Bart torvik to look for all 1st round draft picks (excluding bigs) in the last 17 years with the following:
FT% > 75
Midrange % < 40
3 point volume < 100
3 pt % < 30

Of the 17 hits, there were 3 guys who ended up turning into good shooters by their pre-draft season and then obviously became good NBA shooters
Buddy Hield (Fr), Jalen Williams (So), Mikal Bridges (Fr)

Of the 14 others, 6/14 became league average or better shooters:
Kawhi, Alec Burks, Oladipo, Delon Wright, Grant Williams, Pascal Siakam

Unfortunately, the 8/14 other players who did not become league average or better shooters all busted or are on their way out of the league

If we turn the FT filter down to 72%, we add Jaden Ivey, Kobe Brown, De'aaron Fox, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Jeff Taylor; none of these 5 are what I would call good shooters, although maybe there is some hope for Fox and Ivey in the future

So these results actually are more optimistic for Castle than I would have thought. I basically assumed that he had virtually zero chance of becoming an acceptable shooter with his metrics, but in truth I think that there is some precedent that he can get to at least league average. That may be enough if he is used more as a secondary creating POA defender like Jalen Suggs. However, this list also suggests that if he does not develop into a league average shooter, there is a decent chance he will bust out of the league along the likes of Nassir Little and MKG.

Those are actually some fantastic results, good work. If you have something like a 9 of 17 hit rate would be excellent, and it's notable that many of those who hit (became average shooters) are very high end role players or stars. For busts, a guy like Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is a very close comp and his J was fundamentally broken. He was improving in the NBA before injuries (shooting shoulder, etc.) completely derailed him.

One thing to notice is that a couple of these players, MKG, Mikal Bridges, also won NCAA les. Others, like Oladipo and Jalen Williams, were very high end players in college. There was no Josh Minott "maybe he might be good someday."

A while back, I posted something I found about how smaller players in the lottery are more likely to hit in the NBA than bigs. The gist is that small players are simply better at basketball than bigger players... if they're drafted in the lottery. Basically, stating it the opposite way: if you're good enough to make the lottery as a small guy (6'1 or 6'3" or whatever), you're probably very, very good. A 6'8" guy is more of a 'promise' swing of the bat athlete, and a 7'1" center is even more hopeful.

Ergo, a reason why these guys in Castle's mold are hitting pretty well despite mixed shooting is that they're probably very good at everything else. They're really good players, with one significant question mark. If you can get that question mark figured out, then you have a Kawhi, an Oladipo (pre-injuries), Mikal Bridges, etc. You have a very good player.

[cutewizard]

[cutewizard]

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/551...qv0kTW3TQyrU0K

[spurraider21]

I’d be good with that. I like castle much more as a wing than a point guard

[ChumpDumper]

This is one person's opinion mind you but I saw something similar.

I'd also add that he has that "Street Fighter 1/4 Circle - Hadouken" motion leading into the shot which I believe leads to inconsistencies upon release ie. two shots are never really the same.

Thanks.

[ChumpDumper]

I'm not an expert, and I have Holland as #2 on my board, but his shot does have a little bit of that Michael Kidd-Gilchrist to it.

Yeah. It's not a good or consistent shot, but it doesn't seem to be completely irreparable. I'm biased toward players like Holland but I'm not going to be busted up when the Spurs don't pick him.

[Vienna]

Williams seems to be one of those "fluid" athletes at best while Holland looks like he's moving around on springs.

interestingly the atheltic test numbers of this two are almost identical. Holland jumped slightly higher from one foot (+2.5"), while Cody jumped slightly higher from two feet (+1"). Cody had a slightly better sprint time (3.06 to 3.10), Holland had slightly better shuttle run (2.91 to 2.93).
while I don't see the test numbers as an ultimate proof of the athletic abilities, I see it as an interesting discussion, that the eye test shows one player as a "dynamic athlete", while the other is more of this "fluid athlete", when both might be pretty much the same in the result.
that said, I think Cody might be a bit underrated in that aspect, because he looks so fluid.
in fact, his sprint time is outstanding for a guy his size and he beat most of the guards in the test.
this combine displayed an above average number of great sprint tests, but with his time of 3.06 cody would have won the sprint test in last years combine, as well as in the year before and going back the last 10 years, he would have been top 3 in 9 times out of 10.