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Following Potential 2025 Draftees

David Hume said:
I kinda have Nolan Traore at Number 8 on my Big Board, but I readily admit Im no expert draft analyst.
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I love Nolan Traore, and am a bit of a homer. He was visibly the best player at the NIke Hoop Summit imo, and followed that up by some incredibly impressive performances at the professional level. He's already done enough impressive stuff to make you think he could have All Star potential.

On the other hand...

Over the past month his shooting has fallen off a cliff, like beyond bad. I can't watch the games and can't find many highlights to really know what is going on. If it's just a bad shooting slump and he figures it out, then it might not be a big deal, but he'll need to be able to shoot in order to be an NBA player.

Going through this European league prospect analysis has scared me off of Traore a little bit. He currently compares eerily well with Killian Hayes. I went back and looked at Killian's scouting video and they have a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses. Killian is currently one of the G-league leaders in assists, but because he can't shoot he can't play in the NBA. Players develop at differently, and so you can't just write guys off because someone similar didn't develop, but it is a little scary.

There is still a lot of season left for Traore so we'll see if he can go through a hot shooting stretch at some point. I really wish he would have played college ball so it would be easier to scout and compare.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
I love Nolan Traore, and am a bit of a homer. He was visibly the best player at the NIke Hoop Summit imo, and followed that up by some incredibly impressive performances at the professional level. He's already done enough impressive stuff to make you think he could have All Star potential.

On the other hand...

Over the past month his shooting has fallen off a cliff, like beyond bad. I can't watch the games and can't find many highlights to really know what is going on. If it's just a bad shooting slump and he figures it out, then it might not be a big deal, but he'll need to be able to shoot in order to be an NBA player.

Going through this European league prospect analysis has scared me off of Traore a little bit. He currently compares eerily well with Killian Hayes. I went back and looked at Killian's scouting video and they have a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses. Killian is currently one of the G-league leaders in assists, but because he can't shoot he can't play in the NBA. Players develop at differently, and so you can't just write guys off because someone similar didn't develop, but it is a little scary.

There is still a lot of season left for Traore so we'll see if he can go through a hot shooting stretch at some point. I really wish he would have played college ball so it would be easier to scout and compare.
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Sober, thanks for the analysis.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
After running some more data the trend seems to be holding up. To be more specific the number I'm looking at is 38.7 FP/36 minutes. I'm using the following fantasy points calculation https://fantasydata.com/api/fantasy-scoring-system/nba. I'm now calling this the Killian Hayes line, since this is what he put up. It will be interesting to see how the 2023/2024 draft classes pan out as Bilal, Pacome, Tidjaun, and Zaccharie are all well below the Killian Hayes line. If they all end up being rotation players, and it looks like they could be, then the Killian Hayes line will be debunked.

Here are some selected FP/36 to compare:

View attachment 17680
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I think basic, high level stuff like this has a lot of value. One thing that makes this extra difficult is the difference in competition levels for different leagues.
 
HadAnEffectHere said:
Ace is just generally playing bad, it's not just passing.

Athletically, he's much more similar to MPJ after the third back surgery than MPJ or Durant in high school.

Ace needs to start making way more threes and more shots in general.

He's nowhere near skilled enough or athletic enough to create offense so he kind of needs to become like Markkanen to be a star. Most likely, he just ends up like MPJ after his third back surgery as his ceiling.
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18 PPG on 45/37 splits. He's not playing great and needs to do a bit more with playmaking/foul drawing, but let's not be crazy.
 
I actually think Ace's scoring is quite impressive despite the middling efficiency. Making difficult shots is a valuable trait and he's good at it. He's good at what he does....I'm just concerned he doesn't do much else on the court. It will make for an extremely hard living in the NBA. Ideally he could scale down and get more easy looks, but I feel as though his lack of BBIQ is a real roadblock. I'm not sure he'll have the willingness or ability to fit nicely into a role that isn't straight bucket making. I kind of see Banchero with significantly worse playmaking/IQ/feel. Weird prospect.

I have no idea why Markannen keeps being brought up with Ace. Polar opposites as far I'm concerned. The one thing Ace is good at is the thing that Lauri is horrible at.
 
KqWIN said:
I think basic, high level stuff like this has a lot of value. One thing that makes this extra difficult is the difference in competition levels for different leagues.
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Yes, I wish I understood better how the different European leagues compared. I know that the Euroleague itself is the highest, but most prospects aren't playing in the Euroleague, and even if they are their stats are going to be a combination of the Euroleague games and the country league games. I believe the Spanish league is the best and then French league and then German league or maybe Turkish league?

If someone is an expert on this, I would love your perspective.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
Yes, I wish I understood better how the different European leagues compared. I know that the Euroleague itself is the highest, but most prospects aren't playing in the Euroleague, and even if they are their stats are going to be a combination of the Euroleague games and the country league games. I believe the Spanish league is the best and then French league and then German league or maybe Turkish league?

If someone is an expert on this, I would love your perspective.
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Even in the domestic leagues that are considered good, there's a lot of context.

Like the team Topic/Jokic came from. It's considered a good domestic league, but KK Mega Bemax exist as basically a farm team to develop talent to eventually loan them out to teams with money/develop NBA prospects, so when you look at players on KK Mega's roster, they will always have inflated stats because they are trying to develop players more than win games.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
Yes, I wish I understood better how the different European leagues compared. I know that the Euroleague itself is the highest, but most prospects aren't playing in the Euroleague, and even if they are their stats are going to be a combination of the Euroleague games and the country league games. I believe the Spanish league is the best and then French league and then German league or maybe Turkish league?

If someone is an expert on this, I would love your perspective.
Click to expand...

Definitely no expert. I would say I know enough to know that I don't know enough :p My general feelings are that the French league has caught up/passed ACB...but those two leagues seem to be the best with maybe the German and Turkish leagues right after. But again, I'm kind of talking out of my ***. There are some places that do rankings based on points systems, but I don't know how good those ranking systems are. Personally I just look at records from their domestic league and compare to their results in European competitions like Euroleague and Eurocup.

This might be of use: https://www.eurotopteam.com/basketball/EN/country.php

One of the things that makes international play especially hard is that the levels of play can change pretty drastically over time and sometimes over a short period of time. For example, I distinctly remember that when Hayes was balling out in the German league Givony was warning everyone that the German league was really down that year. On top of that, I think some leagues are just a lot easier to put up numbers independent of the talent level. I think teams like Ulm and Mega are basically created as prospect factories and they set the situation up to make their prospects look good. There are some teams where it's their business model to produce prospects, other teams where it's probably beneficial to them to keep their guys hidden.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
I love Nolan Traore, and am a bit of a homer. He was visibly the best player at the NIke Hoop Summit imo, and followed that up by some incredibly impressive performances at the professional level. He's already done enough impressive stuff to make you think he could have All Star potential.

On the other hand...

Over the past month his shooting has fallen off a cliff, like beyond bad. I can't watch the games and can't find many highlights to really know what is going on. If it's just a bad shooting slump and he figures it out, then it might not be a big deal, but he'll need to be able to shoot in order to be an NBA player.

Going through this European league prospect analysis has scared me off of Traore a little bit. He currently compares eerily well with Killian Hayes. I went back and looked at Killian's scouting video and they have a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses. Killian is currently one of the G-league leaders in assists, but because he can't shoot he can't play in the NBA. Players develop at differently, and so you can't just write guys off because someone similar didn't develop, but it is a little scary.

There is still a lot of season left for Traore so we'll see if he can go through a hot shooting stretch at some point. I really wish he would have played college ball so it would be easier to scout and compare.
Click to expand...

Traore is going to need to be able to make difficult, normally low-percentage plays as a lead ball handler with limited size. If he had Kyrie's skill level, or the athleticism of a DeAaron Fox or Ja Morant, it wouldn't be a problem. But it's just hard to keep up that level of play. Ask Scoot Henderson.

What does Traore's FT shooting look like?
 
SoberasHotRod said:
After running some more data the trend seems to be holding up. To be more specific the number I'm looking at is 38.7 FP/36 minutes. I'm using the following fantasy points calculation https://fantasydata.com/api/fantasy-scoring-system/nba. I'm now calling this the Killian Hayes line, since this is what he put up. It will be interesting to see how the 2023/2024 draft classes pan out as Bilal, Pacome, Tidjaun, and Zaccharie are all well below the Killian Hayes line. If they all end up being rotation players, and it looks like they could be, then the Killian Hayes line will be debunked.

Here are some selected FP/36 to compare:

View attachment 17680
Click to expand...
I feel stupid for asking this but what does FP stand for Fantasy Points? How is FP calculated?
 
Drake plays Kansas State today. Kind of an interesting story as they are undefeated with wins over Miami and Vanderbilt.

Drake's coach and best player transferred to West Virginia this season, and their new coach brought 4 guys with him from NorthWest Missouri State, a DII school.

Bennett Stirtz might be a NBA prospect this year or next year. He's averaging 18-6-5 with 2.3 steals per game.
 
CMB with 22 points on 10fga, to go with 9reb, 4ast, and 3 stocks, leading his team to a nice win over Clemson.

I know it's hard to imagine how his game will translate to the NBA, but he might just be so talented he figures it out.
 
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