Following Potential 2025 Draftees
- Thread starter Elizah Huge
- Start date
seattlejazzfan
Well-Known Member
Durant's assist to TO was horrendous in college. 46 asts, 99 TO.
Like KD, if he becomes an elite shooter/scorer at 6'10" (which is his archetype and what he would be if he reaches his ceiling) nobody is going to give two ***** what his ast/tov ratio was in college.
Bailey's biggest problem is that he takes too many tough shots and as a result is too inefficient. But he's an extremely young freshmen and that's sorta to be expected - the question is whether he improves on that as he gets older and gains experience.
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KD’s is still double as good as Ace, like I said, I’ve never seen an AST/TOV that bad. I don’t want to get too picky about archetypes, but there is no way in hell I’m looking at KD and seeing optimism for Ace. Just worlds apart in ability in production.
HadAnEffectHere
Well-Known Member
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.
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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A couple of observations on European league prospects as I've started my deep dive.
First, the vast majority of European league prospects have been busts. We're still TBD on the last 2-3 drafts, but from 2013-2021 there were 30 1st round draft picks from the European leagues and only 10 of them are guys that I know for sure still play in the league. It might just be a coincidence, but I find it a little funny that in 2016, right after Giannis broke out, there were a high of 7 first round draft picks from the European leagues and none of them really panned out.
Second, the obvious outliers for guys that made it in the NBA were those that were productive in what ever league they were in on a per minute basis. I did a very simple calculation of fantasy points/36 minutes and those prospects who had the highest counting stats were almost all the guys who panned out. The one big exception was Poku, who put up really impressive counting stats, but hasn't panned out. On the other end Hartenstein did not put up very impressive numbers, but has obviously been great in the NBA. Shooting numbers from the European leagues do not seem to be a big prediction for success.
Traore, Saraf, and Essengue are all right on the edge of the FP/36 numbers that have shown to be successful in the NBA. It will be interesting to see where those numbers end up at the end of the year.
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:
David Hume
Well-Known Member
I kinda have Nolan Traore at Number 8 on my Big Board, but I readily admit Im no expert draft analyst.
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.
David Hume
Well-Known Member
Sober, thanks for the analysis.
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.
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.