During the 2019-20 NBA season, the league-average team took 33.8 3-point attempts per game and hit 35.8 percent of them. That equates to 36.3 points from beyond the arc. Those numbers looked a little different ten years ago during the 2009-10 campaign. The league-average team took only 17.7 treys and shot 35.1 percent—accounting for 18.6…
In a 2020 draft class that’s weak on wings, the guard position fills the void with plenty of names worth knowing. You can find all different types: Those who shoot, are defense-first, are pure passers and those who are supreme athletes. Position and taste will dictate who goes where, not necessarily a clear hierarchy of…
The 2020 crop might have a bunch of potential role players, but it’s low on surefire star power at the top. No one checks all the boxes of coveted skills, and there is certainly no one close to the pre-draft caliber of someone like 2019’s Zion Williamson. In fact, this might be the most wide-open…
6’9″ and 220 pounds with jump-out-of-the-gym athleticism. 39 percent 3-point shooting, 1.06 points per possession on post-ups and 4.4 ppg in transition. The anchor of the nation’s most efficient offense and a National Player of the Year candidate for a team that went 29-2. Obi Toppin checks a lot of boxes. He’s a prototypical inside-outside…
From a managerial perspective, a weak draft class means it’s likely the perfect time to swing for the fences. If the likelihood of hitting is lower, why not swing harder to see if you knock something out of the park? If that’s a common perception shared around the league, teams will begin to covet the…
In this episode of The NBA Podcast, Morten Jensen (@msjnba) and Bryan Toporek (@btoporek) are joined by Bleacher Report lead draft writer Jonathan Wasserman (@NBADraftWass) to discuss Jalen Green’s decision to bypass college for the G League and go over the 2020 NBA draft class. How do scouts feel about Green’s decision to join the…
In this ninth episode of TBW’s Basketball by Association podcast, Arky Shea and Joel C. Cordes are joined by bballwriters.com‘s Adam Spinella to examine how much bias plays a part in scouting players prior to the 2020 NBA Draft. Centered around Adam’s “2020 NBA Draft: On Bias, Tyrese Maxey & Evaluating Shooting”, we discuss how…
Bias props up frequently in the NBA prospect evaluation process. I’m told it shows up in many other forms of decision-making throughout life as well… Those who are making key decisions are informed by their past experiences and anecdotal knowledge. Their job is to understand how what they see, informed by a grasp of how…
NBA scouts and executives are becoming increasingly picky about drafting big men. It’s rare to find centers and combo bigs who can operate as true rim protectors, switchable defenders and multidimensional offensive threats. Teams don’t base their decisions on size as much as they used to, either. They now gravitate toward the speed and interchangeability…
In baseball, the term “five-tool player” gets thrown around to describe those who can hit, hit for power, run the bases, field well and throw well. In essence, they possess all the tools to be effective in every facet of the game. In basketball, I’ve been developing a similarly versatile nomenclature for those skill sets…
