Hoops Analyst

I’m going to take a quick break from the forwards here to look at a couple of young big guys. These are a couple of freshmen centers whose most impressive skill is blocking shots. While Orton has been a good shot blocker, Whiteside has swatted away shots at a historic rate. I’ll look at each separately below, but first here’s a table showing the best freshmen shot blockers. I included players from major conferences who played over 500 minutes as freshmen only. The cutoff was 4.0 blocks per 40 minutes.

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The SF class of 2010 is a deep group, but doesn’t have much in the way of potential star power. There are several players who I feel would make a good late first, or second round draft pick, but few who look like lottery picks. The plight of these players is further complicated by the fact that there is a strong group of combo forwards also in the competition to catch the eye of scouts. So we have several SFs who have the potential to forge decent NBA careers, but few, if any stars or impact players.

Here is a quick recap on what to look for in SFs. This might be a little vague. That’s due to the nature of the position. Rather than always having a defined role, such as scorer, rebounder or distributor, a SF is often asked to do many different things. Therefore, the more skills any SF prospect can flash the better.

• Scoring: The best SFs have been at or over 20.0 P40 by the time they were seniors with an Adjusted FG pct of at least .530. In each case, the higher the better. The younger a player is, the more leeway is given here. This year there are no freshmen and only 3 sophs who would be considered prominent prospects. For that reason I’m going to hold most of the players pretty strictly to these guidelines. It isn’t necessary that a player can hit the 3-pointer, but it doesn’t hurt.
• Rebounding: A R40 of 7.0 seems to be the minimum here. Again, the higher the better.
• Passing and defense: For SFs I’ve been using their ASB40 as sort of a combined passing/defense rating. The number is simply combined assists, steals and blocks per 40 minutes. Historically it has been very important for a player to be over 5.0 ASB40.

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I’m not sure it would be accurate to call these guys wing players, because some actually played more inside. The thing they have in common is they’ll probably need to show they can play some SG, because they’re short or slight for a SF. Or because doing so would enhance their value.

I’ll get into what makes for a successful SF prospect a little more in the next post. For now let’s just say that with a weak class of SGs, teams with a need on the wing might be looking to players like this for help. Players are listed in order of preference.

Paul George, Fresno State: Right now George could be listed with either the SGs or SFs. I prefer him here, at SF because his size and skills suggest as much. That’s not to say he couldn’t excel at SG though. The best thing about George is his defensive numbers. Not too many sophomore SFs have topped 2.0 S40 and 1.0 B40 as George did this past season. Those that did have had a solid record of NBA success:

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This is the last of the SGs. Well start to move into the frontcourt next, before getting to the Walls, Turners and Favors of the draft. Things get better after this, because the strength of this draft is in the forwards and big guys this year. Henry and White are basically two players who didn’t fit with the other group of SGs, so they get lumped together. They do have similarities too. Both are young and have flashed some good potential. Neither has scored frequently enough over an entire season. Here are there numbers:

Xavier Henry, Kansas: This is a tough player to figure. As a freshman he fits comfortably into what some recent all-star SGs have done. Henry is ahead of where Jason Richardson, Michael Finley, Richard Hamilton, Latrell Sprewell and Reggie Miller were as freshmen. He also is well below where the likes of Todd Lichti, Rashad McCants and Joseph Forte were as freshmen. In other words at this point he could become just about anything as a player. I’ve compared him to numerous different groups of freshmen SGs and there really isn’t much that stands out. Best thing to do is look at his splits and try to make some sense out of it.

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Unlike the last group of SGs, this bunch has no illusions of playing PG even on a part-time basis. These three players like to fire away and all scored in bunches this past year. In general I’ve been down on SGs as draft picks lately. My opinion is there are usually good ones available for a fairly reasonable price, which lowers the value of SGs as a group and should limit what any team should be paying for their SG. Look at how cheaply Milwaukee was able to get John Salmons and the success New Orleans had plugging Marcus Thornton into the lineup for a time this year. It just isn’t that difficult to find a usable SG and for that reason no team should be using an asset like a draft pick in the top 10 on a SG who isn’t an impact player. By impact, I mean another Jordan, Kobe or Wade, not another Reggie Miller, Michael Finley or Allan Houston. Assuming Evan Turner is more of a forward, the top 2 SGs available this year are Jordan Crawford and James Anderson. Both fall more into the Miller type of SGs than the Jordan type. While I like both players and expect them to have long NBA careers, I feel it would be crazy to draft either in the top 15-20, especially if doing so leaves a potential impact player like Hassan Whiteside on the board. The big danger in drafting and signing such a player is the sudden success they might have often leads to the owner lavishing them with a ridiculous contract that ruins the teams’ cap situation for years. Here are the numbers:

James Anderson, Oklahoma State: I’ve had Anderson ranked as the top perimeter player not named Wall or Turner since about mid-February when it was clear Dominique Jones’ scary good January was just a fluke. My last draft update had him at #7 overall. The reason for this is pretty simple. James Anderson has put up numbers that place him in some elite company as far as junior SGs are concerned. Here is a list of SGs who topped both 25.0 P40 and 9.0 RSB40 during their junior seasons as Anderson did this past year:

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These players are clearly SGs, as opposed to the last group of guards I looked at who were a little hard to define. The thing to know about this group is that while scoring is their main function, they’re also able to pass and have even shown some potential to run an offense. I’ll look at them as SGs though, so here’s a quick recap on what I look for in SG prospects:

• Scoring over 20.0 P40 and the higher the better. This is one benchmark that seems to be non-negotiable for prospects if they’re juniors or seniors. Frosh and soph get a little leeway here.

• 2-point FG pct. over .500, again the higher the better.

• RSB40 over 7.0. This one has been huge and the success of Tyreke Evans just continues to drive home the importance of this number for guards. Any SG who hits double figures in RSB40 is a player to watch if he hits the other benchmarks.

• An A/TO over 0.8. This one also seems hard and fast. This is one area where it doesn’t seem important how far a player is over 0.8, just that he’s above it. A little leeway is given to freshmen.

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