(Julie Jacobsen / Associated Press)
One-size-fits-all NBA draft projections, which is to say, draft projections that treat all NCAA basketball prospects as if they were position-less and that judge whatever position they play in college, and whatever role the player is most likely to play in the NBA as to be essentially without consequence. At least in terms of how well these player’s statistics are likely to correlate from one level to another. We all know them. We all love them.
Kevin Pelton and Layne Vashro, both obviously very intelligent and thoughtful individuals, are probably responsible for two of the most well known and useful tools in this regard. However, I have to say this assumption is one place where their work in this regard breaks down.
Indeed, from this assumption we get all sorts of fallacies about statistical correlations of prospects. The one that annoys me most, that Turnovers Per Possession have very low correlations for NCAA prospects. For only were we to look at all NCAA prospects without respect to the role they play could we make this finding.
It’s something that Ian Levy found in past research; that the correlation of turnovers per possession from one level to the next is only 0.530 to one. To grossly simplify, this finding, were it true for all players, would mean that looking at how a player protects the ball in college tells you close to squat about whether or not the player will protect the ball in the NBA, since correlation doesn’t necessarily indicate a positive or negative relationship. Though there’s since been further work done that shows that not only is the correlation relatively low, but that most players do indeed get somewhat better at protecting the ball in transitioning from the NCAA to the NBA.
And while that’s certainly true in most cases, it’s probably kind of lazy to go from this knowledge to the further assumption that such a correlation is likely to hold true for any and all players, regardless of position. Which is, unless I’ve gravely misunderstood, which is certainly possible, one of the assumptions driving a lot of these One-Size-Fits-All NBA Draft projections.
Now, I’m not a statistician. Nor am I even a nasty grammarian. So I’m not going to give you a statistical argument, and I’m not going to correct your punctuation. What I will do is give you a qualitative argument using numbers and hopefully by the end, you’ll be saying, “Hey, maybe this is kind of bullshit.”
So first let’s deal with the reason most players do get better at not turning the ball over in transitioning from the NCAA to the NBA. After all, that’s slightly counter-intuitive. Why should players get better at not turning it over when the NBA is presumably more difficult than college basketball?
Well, there’s perhaps several reasons for that, one perhaps being the distance of the NBA three-point line (23’9″) as compared to the college three point line (20’9″) creates more space on the offensive end of the floor for player’s to operate. However, that’s not the primary reason. The primary reason is this: That most players in transitioning from the NCAA to the NBA also transition from a primary role in their college’s offense, in which they have to initiate plays for themselves and make plays for others, into a secondary or tertiary role in their NBA offense, in which the player’s actions are almost completely scripted by what has happened in the play.
Generally at the point in the play such players receive the ball, they are either supposed to shoot the ball, in which case it is impossible to turn it over, or to make a simple pass furthering the play, in which case it is unlikely for the player to turn the ball over. Naturally these types of players have almost always have relatively low turnover rates in the NBA. If you can’t do either of those things without turning the ball over, you aren’t going to play very long.
On the other hand, their counterparts, that is players who were primary ball-handlers in college and remain so in the NBA game, have correlations in their turnover rates that are obviously much higher. Which is to say, even if a player who is bad at turning the ball over in college improves a little bit, he generally remains worse at turning the ball over relative to the league as a whole. (Evan Turner might be an example of this. Evan, if you happen to read this, I’m sorry that I’m going to pick on you a little. You are really good at basketball. Just not so much compared to other NBA players. Mad respect.)
Beyond that, there are other kinds of players. Players who transition from a more secondary role in college, like DeMarcus Cousins or Paul George for example, to a more primary one. Not many players are capable of this, though the ones that do often do get worse at protecting the ball from one level to another. Which leads me to this:
That is, the point where I show you a pretty little table that points to this fact.
All data is from Sports-Reference.com. For all players beside Evan Turner and John Wall, I’ve used Turnovers per 100 Possessions, not just because it makes sense in light of the .530 correlation rate cited above, but also because Turnover Percentage completely breaks down for players with low Usage Rates.
As an over simplification, Turnover Percentage judges turnovers as a function of ending possessions or Usage Rate. However, since the way most possessions end is with a shot, a scenario in which it is impossible to turn it over, this doesn’t actually make a lot of sense, and unfairly penalizes any number of point guards for their role in the offense, while also crediting players who stand in the corner, shoot the ball and do not much else. Turnovers are not a function of taking shots, they are a function of possessing the ball and specifically of dribbling and making passes. Which is the whole reason why primary ball-handlers turn the ball over more than other NBA players.
Turnovers per 100 Possessions is a statistic that’s not available for Wall and Turner, but I wanted to include them because Wall is one of the worst players in the league in terms of turnovers and also one in which we have Advanced Data for dating back to his college days. Turner, because he is probably the best player in the league to illustrate my point. As such, we will address his NBA career more individually after this.
I’ve selected many of these players because they turn up as belonging to the group of 40 or so Worst Per Possession Turnover Players in the NBA this year, or others, like Tyshawn Taylor and Marquis Teague, because they register as being among the worst NCAA players in this regard to make the NBA. Still, there are players like Kemba Walker or Iman Shumpert. I chose each of them because I guessed they would be good at illustrating certain aspects of the point I am trying to make. They are present here, but it’s likely there are at least a few players in the league that contradict this point to some degree. (And if anyone finds one, please let’s talk about them in comment section. I would be interested to know who they are.)
I also chose to represent one year or multiple years or by career for my convenience. Yes, I know, this is a totally wonky thing to do. But I looked at these players careers, you could put up just about any season and make the points that are made in the table above. Just wanted to keep the table somewhat readable. (And again, I’m not remotely a statistician. I’m just somewhat okay at recognizing patterns and sometimes being kind of a dick about it. That is all.)
Now that we are done with that:
1) We can identify eight players who clearly got a lot better at protecting the ball, indeed that 50% correlation number works very well for them as whole: Kyle Anderson (from 5.3 per 100 to 2.7), Marcus Smart (from 4.7 to 2.3), Victor Oladipo (from 4.8 to 3.3), Iman Shumpert (from 4.2 to 2.3), Matthew Dellavedova (from 4.8 to 3.3), CJ McCollum (from 5.2 to 3.5), and Evan Turner (from a hell of a lot to 3.6). These players were all their team’s primary initiators in college, and all play at least partially if not wholly a secondary play-making role now. Two of them even play for the same team: Smart and Turner. Which is interesting because it’s Boston and also because their coach is Brad Stevens, and one of the things Brad Stevens is very good at is recognizing his players’ strengths and weaknesses and putting them in a chance to succeed. So it’s not exactly surprising we find both Marcus Smart and Evan Turner here. If I was betting on a coach besides Coach Popovich to get the most out of his players it would be Stevens.
Matthew Dellavedova is a point guard mostly in name. He sometimes dribbles the ball up the court. However, Lebron, Kyrie and Love initiate most plays, probably in that order. Remember back to the Golden State series, after Kyrie got hurt at the end of Game 1 and in Game 2, Matthew Dellavedova is asked to start at the Point. What happened?
7 turnovers in Game 2. Of course, he improved after that and even had a very good game in Game 3, scoring 20 points against only 2 turnovers. What was the difference?
He stopped passing the ball as much and started shooting the ball a lot more. 17 shots in Game 3, compared to only 10 in Game 2. 14 shots in Game 4 against only 3 turnovers. Shooting the ball rather than passing it is a great way not to make turnovers. The problem is, of course, that if you don’t make them that the shot functions as a turnover of sorts. And that’s what happened with with Dellavedova’s Games 4 through 6, only making 5 shots and shooting 26. A bad shot is better than a turnover, but not much.
2) We also see three players who’ve gotten moderately to a lot worse at turning the ball over, as their role in the offense has increased: DeMarcus Cousins (from 3.5 per 100 to 5.3), Paul George (from 3.9 per 100 to 4.7) and Zach LaVine (from 2.7 per 100 to 3.5). With Cousins and George, it’s probably pretty easy for their respective teams, the Kings and Pacers, to accept the trade off. They exert themselves on the game and do a lot of positive things on offense, creating efficient ways to score for themselves and others. You get a few extra turnovers in return. Not one hundred percent ideal, but it works for Russell Westbrook. Why not?
3) We see two players who were reasonably good at protecting the ball in their last year in college in Kemba Walker (3.7 to 3.0) and Shane Larkin (3.9 to 3.0) improve to be among the better point guards, at least in terms of protecting possessions, in the NBA.
4) We see two players in Jakarr Sampson (3.5) and Devin Booker (from 2.8 per 100 to 3.2), whose roles remains unchanged from level to the next and whose Turnover per 100 virtually remain unchanged as well.
And then we see a whole bunch of players, almost all point guards, who either have nearly identical turnover rates to those these had in college (Reggie Jackson, Tim Frazier, Marquis Teague, Tyshawn Taylor, John Wall, TJ McConnell, Phil Pressey, Tony Wroten, Kendall Marshall, and Ian Clark, who actually played both roles in college, as he does now) or those that have improved a little bit in this respect, but only enough that they still remain among players who turn the ball over way too much for how limited their other production is (Michael Carter-Williams, Elfrid Payton, Archie Goodwin, Shabazz Napier.) Indeed these are players who all fall within the 40 worst per possession turnover players in the league. Or would if they qualified. (Napier just misses having played enough minutes.)
To further illustrate this point about a player’s role influencing their turnovers from level to the next, we should look at the career of Evan Turner, since he was a primary ball-handler in college who turned it over a lot, I’d guess well upwards of 5 times per 100 possessions, though we don’t have the data for that. Though that’s not the interesting thing about Turner. The interesting thing is that Turner was initially made into a secondary ball-handler in Philadelphia, to not much success, and then the last three years has played mostly in a hybrid role, doing a little of both, except for his brief stint in Indiana. And in Boston, he has actually done so with a decent amount of success.
| Evan Turner’s Career Turnovers Per 100 Possessions (Thanks to Sports-Reference.com) |
Here we see that in the first three year’s of Turner’s career he seems to have effectively curtailed his turnovers to a great degree. 3.4 or below in every season. Which is still not particularly great for an Off-Ball Wing in the NBA. (Well, 2.3 Turnovers per 100 Possessions is. 2.3 is really good. But aside from that, nah.) It should also go without saying, this improvement is directly attributable the role he was playing in Philadelphia’s offense. He was playing a true shooting guard role, well down in the pecking order behind Jrue Holiday, Andre Iguodola and others.
2013-2014 perhaps demonstrates this best. For we can see in Philadelphia, after Jrue Holiday was traded and Turner was easily the 2nd best ball-handler on the team behind Michael Carter-Williams, that Turner’s turnovers rise to 4.0 per 100 Possessions. And in Indiana, where Turner was a purely off-ball player behind Paul George, George Hill, and Lance Stevenson, Turner’s turnovers immediately fall back to a much more respectable 3.1 per 100 possessions.
Then, in Boston’s 2014-2015 season, we can further spot this trend. That season Turner’s Assist numbers jumped to an almost point guard like 9.9 Assists per 100 possessions, and his turnovers spiked to 4.4 per 100 possessions. Why? Because Brad Stevens was asking Turner to initiate a lot of the offense? Which has continued this year, but in curtailed form as Boston has a fairly skilled roster consisting of a number of players with passing skills: Thomas, Crowder, Smart, Bradley and Turner. So Turner now shares a burden of offense slightly more conducive to his talent level, his turnovers are back into the mid-3 area. Not great. But you can probably live with it if the player does enough other things, and Evan Turner does some good things, mostly in the creating for others department. As you can see below, his assist percentage the last two years has been 30% and 24.4% respectively. Very good numbers for a wing.
These are Evan Turner’s Advanced Statistics (per Basketball-Reference.com). Now it’s hard to tell exactly what Turnover Percentage means, for the reasons stated above, unless a player’s Usage Rate is relatively constant. Luckily, we have three seasons or partial seasons which border each other and illustrate the effect nicely. Indiana, 2013-2014 to this season, Boston, 2015-2016, all hovering right around 19% Usage. And what we see is a pretty standard Turnover Percentage for Turner in Indiana at around 14% (which is still not all that great for a true off-ball wing), when Turner was pretty purely an Off-Ball Player and a huge spike in 2014-2015 for Turner up to nearly 20%. And then finally, we see a decent decrease in Turnover Percentage this year, down to a rate that would allow one to be a great offensive player if he creates positive events for his team as often as Russell Westbrook.
Which is to say again, even an improvement for a player who is bad at turnovers in college, in many (and I would guess most cases) won’t make them particularly good at taking care of the ball if they are asked to create offense for themselves and others. (Steph Curry in recent years is a notable exception. Not in that he was terrible in college, but in that he has drastically improved his ability to protect the ball in the last two years, as if he wasn’t good at enough other things.)
Enough Steph Curry. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Evan Turner’s college numbers, which not only point to his turnover issues but also to two reasons why he is not as effective defensively as he one was. He no longer blocks shots (from 2.9% down to 0.6%), which is common. (Most wings and point guards should definitely expect their blocks to greatly diminish from one level to the next, and if that’s a major source of defensive value at the college level, it could be a sign of problems in the future.) And also, while still a very good defensive rebounder (18% on average), he’s no longer exceptional. (23.5% in college.) Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s look at Evan Turner’s turnovers:
| Evan Turner’s Advanced Stats From College, as if you didn’t already know that (per Sports-Reference.com) |
As we see, Evan Turner had turnover problems in college, the kind that to a certain extent mirror Kris Dunn’s turnover problems the past two years, turnovers which come from a somewhat loose handle and somewhat poor decision making and often, from trying to do too much.
Which is to perhaps indicate this, when judging Kris Dunn or any player who potentially projects as primary ball-handlers, looking at turnovers is really important. Turnovers are not an aspect of such a player’s game to be casually disregarded. Or to make the assumption that they will probably improve. And since the 10 best players in the league are almost all primary initiators of a team’s offense, it’s a very important statistic to consider, since in the draft, every team is really searching for a guy with some potential to end up as a Top 10 player. And if these teams aren’t, they should be, almost regardless of the risk. (The funny thing is that, at least in recent years, many of these supposedly risky players with some actual Two-Way Upside, Porzingis, Antekounmpo, Gobert, Capela, Schroder for example, have also turned out to be among the safer picks as well. Which I believe might point to a slight fallacy in our idea of “Ceilings” and “Floors.” Which is to say that these players, with the exception of Schroder, all have high NBA floors because they all provide actual defensive value. And in theory, there’s no athletic reason why Schroder shouldn’t be a huge plus on that side of the ball as well.)
As related to Top 10 players, here are some Tables of ESPN’s RPM the last three years to get at this point:
Let’s leave aside Nick Collison’s fluky “I only played 17 minutes a game” season. I’m sure he was great in those 17 minutes, but he’s also not the kind of player we are talking about. The kind of player we are talking about is Lebron James (3 times), Stephen Curry (3 times), Chris Paul (3 times), Russell Westbrook (2 times), Kevin Durant (2 times), Kawhi Leonard (two times), James Harden (once), Kyle Lowry (once), Dirk Nowitzki (once), Manu Ginobili (once), Anthony Davis (once), DeMarcus Cousins (once), LaMarcus Aldridge (once). And even Iguodola, who wasn’t playing that role in Golden State, used to do so in Philadelphia and Denver. Plus I’m pretty sure Draymond Green could play this role, as evidenced by how successful he was when Curry was out, or even sometimes when Curry is out of the game.
Even excluding those last two, that’s 22 out of 30 seasons in which a Top 10 RPM player could be said to have somewhat significant to in most cases extremely significant On-The-Ball Shot Creation responsibilities. And that includes virtually every perimeter player who made the list, Middleton being the one exception. So if we’re looking for potential Top 10 players in the draft, looking at Turnovers Per 100 Possession with a serious eye, probably something we should do.
So What Does This Mean For This Year’s Potentially Elite Point Guard Prospects?
There are probably three or four NCAA prospects who have a chance to play point guard in the NBA and potentially be Top 10 players. That’s not to say it is necessarily likely for any of them, but it is to say that these players have the requisite bodies and athletic ability to play plus defense at the NBA level. With two of them, Gary Payton II and Kris Dunn, you would actually expect it. These two should be plus defensive players in the NBA, almost from day one.
The third is Wade Baldwin, for my money the best point guard prospect this year. With his ability to pass, get to the rim almost at will, create foul shot opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, to create and make his own his shot off the dribble from distance, I’d grade him pretty easily in the Top 5 of all prospects this year. And in this case, I’m not even making the caveat that I know next to nothing about the European prospects. Passing, Driving, Shots at rim, Shots from the free throw line, Off-the-dribble Three pointers, that’s pretty much the holy grail of modern NBA offensive skills. And when everyone is trying to talk themselves into Brandon Ingram being the Top NBA Draft Prospect (he’s not, but it’s okay to be number 2), the player they are generally describing is not Ingram but rather Wade Baldwin. Remember, he won’t need to be as athletic as Westbrook, if he can pull-up from three off the dribble.
The fourth, Josh Adams, is perhaps the most underrated prospect in all of college basketball this year, due, if we’re being kind, to the fact that late career growth is notoriously untrustworthy. Though it’s also possible that respectable draft sites aren’t really paying attention to such things, because as was the case with a player like Robert Covington, whose success in hindsight should have been predicted by a number of measures, no one is going to call them on it. (Boom or bust, sure, but there is boom potential with Adams.)
But after them, let’s look at Ben Simmons too, since he figures to handle the ball a lot, and Brandon Ingram, since the most optimistic pathway towards stardom requires that he take more On-ball burden. And let’s add to them a number of prospects who have at least some chance to occasionally, initiate an NBA offense at the point of attack, since these are the player’s most likely to become offensive stars. Since JJ Redick, whose success in college is perhaps the best analog in many ways to Buddy Hield, will tell you, it’s very difficult to do so as a shooter who adds value nowhere else. Possible perhaps, but it’s certainly not a likelihood. The ones that are most interesting to me:
Denzel Valentine, DeAndre Bembry, Jamal Murray, Dejounte Murray, Monte Morris, Jaylen Brown, Fred Van Vleet, Jawun Evans, Malcolm Brogdon, and Caris LeVert. A mix of players who will have to play point at the next level and likely Off-Ball Wings with some real dribbling ability and at least the suggestion of real passing skills, or in the case of Jamal Murray, at least the reputation that it’s somewhere in his game.
1) Here we see three players with very worrying numbers if they are going to stay in the role of a primary initiator in Kris Dunn (6.3 per 100 career), Josh Adams (6.1 per 100 this season) and Jaylen Brown (6.6 per 100). If we return to the NBA Table of Turnovers above, we can see that these +6 Turnover per 100 Possession Seasons (you know, Kendall Marshall, Michael Carter-Williams, Tony Wroten type seasons) generally don’t end with the prospect being able to protect the ball in the NBA.
These are in general prospects who have some problem with their handle, the fact that it’s incredibly loose in the case of Dunn and Brown, and in Adams’ case, the fact that he’s a little right-hand dominant. And also some questions about their decision making.
With the respect to Adams, who has been slightly better in the past on much better teams, there is some question at least to how many of his turnovers belong to him and how many belong to his Wyoming teammates. A question. (This was in large part the case with Wade Baldwin in games I saw, though I didn’t see enough of Adams to truly know either way. Just enough to know he’s awesomely athletic and exciting and really good at creating and shooting three pointers off the dribble.)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsEGyR-5tbc&w=420&h=315]
What We Talk About When We Talk About Kris Dunn
Kris Dunn is really the player I want to talk about here because, in terms of his ideal size, plus athleticism, plus vision, Dunn is in some ways the ideal Point Guard prospect. Add in the real suggestion that he’ll shoot at the next level, which we can see if we look at how often he is forced to create and make shots without the help of an assist and how often he does indeed do so. (37% from three this year with 20 unassisted makes.) Which is especially amazing because one of Dunn’s issues is that he lacks consistency in shot preparation, in issue that should probably resolve itself with more reps.
So far the picture seems rosy, until we watch him and notice how often he gets into trouble off the dribble or by attempting to make basically impossible passes, which often end in easy-to-make interceptions and fast breaks going the other way..
This is one reason why I have suggested in the past that Dunn’s best role may in the hybrid Off-ball role that Manu Ginobili currently plays for the Spurs or George Hill currently plays for the Pacers. Which is to say, the role of a true Combo Guard. Such a move might limit Dunn’s upside to an extent, but as Hill and Ginobili have shown in recent years, a player can still easily be a +4 or +5, even a +6 offensive player in that role, since the type of dribbling and passing ability that Dunn has is pretty rare in an off-the-ball role. And there would be two potentially massive bonuses: 1) Such a move would likely greatly reduce Kris Dunn’s turnovers as such a move has recently helped Marcus Smart, Kyle Anderson and others do the same. And 2) It would also allow Kris Dunn to expend more effort on defense, which is one place he has a chance to be exceptional.
The other possibility which might help Dunn is if he played in a highly structured offense, such as that of the Spurs, which limits Point Guard turnovers in part by allowing the structure of the offense itself (and the other talented players within it) to create opportunities for open shots. Which is part of the reason why Popovich and Buford have constructed a roster in which basically everyone can pass, and everyone can make plays. Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Boris Diaw, Kyle Anderson, Patty Mills, Tim Duncan are all plus passers compared to average NBA guys, while Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green and others are capable ball movers who can make the plays they are supposed to make.
2) Looking again at the table, we can see four players who are pretty exceptional in limiting turnovers, especially considering their role in their team’s offense: Monte Morris (2.0 per 100), Gary Payton II (3.7 per 100), DeAndre Bembry (4.1 per 100 but only 3.1 per 100 this year) and Fred Van Vleet (3.4 per 100.)
We always talk about turnovers when we talk about Monte Morris, but I still don’t think we properly understand how amazing or how valuable his skill in this department is. He almost never makes bad decisions, and even in a down year, Monte Morris is still better than every Off-Ball Wing on this list. Every one of them. And in his freshman season, when he was partially an off-ball player himself, he turned the ball over basically once out of every one hundred possessions, which means at the very least, his team is getting a number of extra chances to score while simultaneously limiting the opportunities of his opponents.
If Monte Morris has a sneaky pathway to stardom, which I am rooting for, just because I love to watch him play, this is where it is. With his ability to affect an offense positively by doing a number of little things that we take for granted right. While also managing to improve his scoring ability from deep (highly possible considering he can get to his spots off the dribble and is pretty decent at connecting off-the-dribble) and to show consistent engagement and effort on defense, as he did last week vs. Arkansas St. Though I am not absolutely convinced, Morris has enough energy in the tank to play top-notch offense and top-notch defense at the same time. (Most players can’t.) And Morris is small enough physically that there is a real question about how he’ll deal with getting around NBA quality screens.
Which is why Gary Payton II is the most interesting of these prospects. A high burden offensive player who manages to greatly limit turnovers. And you would expect the same at the next level. As a guy who projects as a potential huge plus defensively, there’s only one hole in his game, shooting the basketball from deep. Which could potentially mean that Payton is going to be a Tony Allen type hole on offense, even if he is a huge success on defense. Though even in that case, since Payton II is a better dribbler and passer and a player who should be able to handle screen and roll responsibilities, it’s also possible you might be looking at an offensive outcome more like DeMar Derozan. It’s true, he doesn’t look like DeRozan physically, since he is smaller, but Payton II might be even more athletic, has better vision, and currently displays a skill-set in college that very closely models the skills DeRozan has been able to have success with in the pros.
As for Bembry and Van Vleet; Bembry is one of my two favorite non-Simmons, non-Ingram wing prospects in the draft, along with Denzel Valentine. And he’s the only one besides the two Freshmen who displays this kind of combination of Size, Athleticism, Potential for Plus Defense, and Plus Creation Ability for himself and others. Added on top of all of that, even though he bore a very heavy burden in St. Joe’s offense to create plays for others he still found a way not to turn the ball over. (Again, only 3.1 Turnovers per 100 this year.) And it’s an area where everyone is underestimating Bembry’s potential value in the future.
Players who can share the load on offense while protecting the ball are just hugely valuable. Bembry’s only question is shooting from distance, but even with that, since off-the-catch shooting is one of the most likely things to improve, Bembry’s upside as an Off-Ball player should put him squarely in the Top 20 and arguably in the late lottery.
Van Vleet on the other hand is a terrific college player who is probably just too small to lack elite athleticism. Still worth a shot somewhere between 20 and 45, depending on how good the class of foreign players is. It wouldn’t surprise me if he vastly outperforms a lot of player’s drafted above him. He seems at least a good a fit for the league as T. J. McConnell, which would seem a kind of floor for his performance, since he’s better than McConnell in several important areas, like turnovers and off-the-dribble scoring.
3) Now we come to a group of primary ball-handlers with decent to mixed results as far as turnovers go. Ben Simmons (5.3 per 100), Wade Baldwin (4.7 per 100), Denzel Valentine (4.7 per 100), Jawun Evans (5.4 per 100). All in the mid-4 turnovers to 100 possessions to mid-5 turnovers for 100 possessions.
Denzel Valentine likely won’t have any issues since he’s likely to be moved off-the-ball or at the very least into the role of true Combo Guard like Ginobili or George Hill.
Ben Simmons and Wade Baldwin both have safety hatches, in that they have skill-sets which will allow them to move to other positions as well. Simmons to an offensive PF role, Baldwin to the role of a SG.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Wade Baldwin
I do want to discuss Baldwin further, since I’ve watched him a lot this year.
The first thing is that his numbers, increasing from 4 turnover per 100 his freshman year to 5 turnovers per 100 in his sophomore season, do in some respect show that the move from being an Off-Ball player to an On-Ball one does increase the likelihood of a bad turnover outcome. Since Shelton Mitchell and even Riley LaChance were often more responsible for initiating offense in these player’s freshman seasons. Mitchell transferred, LaChance tanked and Baldwin improved his handle considerably, becoming Vanderbilt’s primary point guard. (And also, their only Point Guard, which is one reason why they faltered.)
Baldwin’s handle is however still something of a question mark. It’s pretty solid and should get better if he’s improved it this much, but there still are occasionally loose dribbles, especially when he gets sped up in transition, and while that’s not where his turnovers have most often come from in college, it could be a problem in the pros when he’s going up against guys like Chris Paul or Kyle Lowry on a weekly basis.
That’s one thing, the other thing is that Baldwin is the rare college player for whom I think a somewhat high percentage, I’d guess at least twenty to twenty-five percent in the games I saw, of his turnovers are due to his teammates. He’s gotten numerous turnovers because his teammates can’t figure out which play they are running and where they are supposed to be. (He got a travel vs. Wichita St. for this reason.) Others because his teammates, for some reason, just aren’t paying attention to what’s happening in the run of play, and they aren’t ready for the pass. (This also happened in the Wichita St. loss.) And these are the kinds of turnovers that aren’t likely to translate to the NBA level. Whereas other turnovers he had, like when Fred Van Vleet ripped him on a drive in that same Wichita St. game, are more concerning.
Regardless, there is some reason to believe that Baldwin might be one of the rare guys who improves here from college to the pros, or at least gets back to the level he was when he was a freshman, which is a good place to be for a player who bears a significant burden of offensive creation.
As for Evans, I haven’t seen him enough to say anything for sure. I do know he’s fairly intriguing as a prospect, and not just because he went 42 and 7 as a freshman vs. Oklahoma, but he would be far more so if his jumping ability matched his quickness. Likely he doesn’t enter the draft or stay in it, but I wanted to include him, because I’ve liked what I’ve seen in limited viewings. (Kay Felder is another guy to watch, but I didn’t include him because he’s just so small, and there’s almost no way he plays defense in the NBA.)
4) Now we get to the players with primary and secondary responsibilities in college. Brandon Ingram (3.4 per 100), Jamal Murray (3.9 per 100), Dejounte Murray (5.0 per 100), Malcolm Brogdon (3.3 per 100), Caris LeVert (3.2 per 100). (Simmons could also perhaps have been included here, but even when he operates out of the post, he is really functioning as LSU’s primary creator of offense.)
Ingram has no turnover issues, and the only way that his turnovers are likely to improve is if he can somehow improve his first step to the point where he’s the primary guy on offense, which would be of massive benefit to his overall offensive upside. So there’s nothing to be too considered with respect to Ingram and turnovers, regardless of his future role.
However, that is not the case for Dejounte and Jamal.
A Tale Of Two Murrays
Both prospects may have some issues with turnovers in the future.
First, let’s deal with Jamal Murray, whose season is a microcosm of the On-ball and Off-ball effect on turnovers. At first glance, it seems Jamal Murray has relatively high turnovers for an off-ball player, and if we assumed that, we’d also probably conclude Murray has never really displayed much aptitude for passing the basketball, despite his reputation. That indeed, turnovers would be an aspect of his game that would be likely to get worse if he were asked to take on more of a role in creating for his teammates.
If then we looked back at the beginning of the season, we’d see in fact that we were probably right. Indeed, Jamal Murray used to have much more of an On-ball presence in the Kentucky offense. Murray even had three 5+ assist performances through the middle of January, which is not bad at all for a Freshman Off-Guard. However, he also had six games where he turned it over at least 4 times (including 5 turnovers in the 8 Assist performance vs. Albany which opened the season and a 7 turnover performance vs. Louisville.) After that, in which Murray plays mostly in a Catch & Shoot Or Create For Thyself role, he only had one 5+ assist performance, and no games in which he turned the ball over 4 times or more.
And you’d have to surmise, it’s in large part because Calipari altered what he asked Murray to do. And you’d also have to greatly question Jamal Murray’s upside beyond his ability to score. Since it might come with an even greater downside of not being able to protect the ball.
In Dejounte Murray’s case we see a guy who shared the burden of the offense with Andrew Andrews and yet still managed to cough the ball up 5 times per 100 possessions. Or, if we look at the issue on a game-by-game basis, we find seven games of at least 5 turnovers over the course of the season, including a 9 turnover performance and several 7 turnover performances. And on top of that, there’s at least six more games of 4 turnovers or more. It’s a potentially a real problem that will limit his ability as an on-ball year. Especially because Murray just isn’t anywhere near as talented as player as John Wall or Eric Bledsoe, two notable players who have overcome high turnover pasts to become Top 30 guys in the NBA.
The one thing that might save D. Murray as a prospect, in comparison with guys like Carter-Williams and Tony Wroten, is that despite his equally atrocious True Shooting Percentage (all sub 50% guys), there are some positive indicators with respect to his jump shot. That is, he can make mid-range jump shots at a decent rate (34% with 55 unassisted makes) and his True Shooting Percentage is terrible (48.5%) in large part because he shoots way too many of them. (Almost 40% of his shots.) But shot selection can be taught and even shaped by the offense, and if Murray does improve as a shooter, that might allow him to move off-ball with some success, since he is 6’5″. The problem, in that case, is rather than talking about potential star level production, we’re talking more likely about a player like Jamal Crawford or Rodney Stuckey, both of whom were college point guards with plus scoring indicators. That is, unless there is considerable production on the defensive end, and in Murray’s case, there is little reason to believe there will be.
Lastly, there’s Caris LeVert (3.2 turnovers per 100) and Malcolm Brogdon (3.3 turnovers per 100). These are most likely guys who should be in the late 1st, early 2nd round, who have both mostly done a good job of limiting turnovers. And there’s a lot to like with both players in terms of their NBA prospects but not much to indicate real star potential. Though Brogdon is player, without super positive statistical indicators, that could really surprise people at the next level if he continues to shoot at 40% from three, since there’s some possibility of plus defense. And also a real possibility that Virginia’s pack-line defensive style is the reason for the somewhat less than outstanding individual defensive statistics. (Even if it’s now clear, Darion Atkins was the prime mover on the consistently great 2012-2015 Virginia defenses. Plus, Brogdon has a B+ or A level handle, even in terms of the NBA. Just a very strong dribbler.
We’ll get into all of this more in future posts as we examine these prospects more closely. But I’ve already said way too much.
* In case, it was at all in doubt, Layne Vashro, Kevin Pelton and Ian Levy, all awesome. Some of the most interesting work on basketball. Just disagree pretty strongly on this point or turnovers and their correlation from one level to the next. Positions, or more specifically, roles really do matter. And if you’re ignoring that with a player like Kris Dunn, it’s probably going to be something of an issue unless you can find a way to move him from Point Guard.
** Sorry for any formatting issues and for the huge wall of text. I’m glad you got threw it and hope at least some it was enjoyable or mildly informative.
