NBA Draft: Is Cody Zeller Worth the Hype?

There’s a lot of hype surrounding Cody Zeller. He’s the college hoops pre-season cover boy for Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Mag. A look at the mocks suggests he’s considered one of the top prospects in the nation. Zeller is pretty much a fixture in the top 5, along with Noel, Muhammad and McAdoo. The mocks will change as the season progresses. Some players will fade and others will emerge. This happens every year and 2013 seems set for more fluidity than usual, due to the abnormally large number of highly-ranked bigs coming into college balls this year.

While their play in the next couple of months will slot the incoming bigs into draft spots, going in Zeller looks attractive. The most important thing he does is score often and efficiently. As a freshman he hit .623 on 2-pointers and scored 21.5 P40, both very impressive numbers for a freshman. Here are other freshmen centers who scored both often and efficiently as college freshmen with their rebounding and blocks numbers:

There’s a clear line here. The great centers as freshmen could score often and efficiently, like Zeller did. They could also rebound well and block at least 4 shots per 40 minutes, two things Zeller falls well short of. The marginal centers finished well under 3.0 blocks per 40 minutes and were poorer rebounders, as is the case with Zeller.

Zeller is still young and has his sophomore season in front of him, so I’ll hold off on declaring him a bust of epic proportions. But he does have a way to go as a prospect. In his defense Cody Zeller isn’t your basic stiff center who specializes in putbacks, rebounds and little else. He isn’t the 2^nd coming of Mirk PeplAcreski. Zeller is a skilled offensive player who can score several different ways. When we compare him to players who were more in the C/PF hybrid mold he stacks up much better:

I included steals here, because it’s a more important stat for PFs than centers. The PF/C crowd is a much friendlier comp to Zeller. He still comes up way short as a rebounder, but his defense doesn’t look so bad next to the likes of NBA all-stars Love, Jamison and Randolph at the same point in their careers.

Zeller’s mission his sophomore year is to improve on his rebounding and defensive numbers and show he can hit some 3-pointers. If he does that he’ll come close to justifying the hype he’s been getting leading up to the 2013 season. Dramatic improvement in rebounding and defense, while not unheard of, is not an easy thing for a college big to accomplish. For that reason I’ll remain skeptical of Zeller as a top prospect until he improves his rebounding. Early returns are encouraging though, as Zeller posted 10 boards, 3 steals and 2 blocks in just 27 minutes in the Hoosiers season opening win against Bryant. An impressive start in the season opener against Bryant is like a presidential candidate winning the Dixville Notch vote. It’s nice, but hardly a bellweather. More information is needed before I’ll buy into Cody Zeller as a legit top pick.

Bottom line with Cody Zeller is right now he’s not the type of player you draft at #1, plug him in at center or PF and make room in the trophy case for the ROTY, followed by a few inevitable MVPs. There’s nothing in his stats that suggest he’ll be a dominator in the mold of Webber, Malone or Love, let alone one of the all-time great centers. There are even signs that he could become a colossal bust if drafted #1, though it’s best not to go that far until the returns from his sophomore season are in.