Rounding Out the Draft: Late 1st to Early 2nd

So you want to buy picks, eh?

Before I begin, I just want to thank all the new followers, both on Substack and on Twitter. It’s always a pleasure to share my knowledge of the game with insightful interactions.

Photo by JK Sloan on Unsplash

I’d also like to thank everyone who took the time to watch and listen to the Laker Film Room podcasts on the draft and most recently, the interview with Jovan Buha.

That being said, let’s look at the prospects I haven’t talked about so much.

---

As I’ve prioritized before, the players I want the Lakers to look at in relative order are:

Ron Holland

Isaiah Collier

Devin Carter

DaRon Holmes

Tristan Da Silva

Jaylon Tyson

It seems over the past few weeks, outside of Collier and Holland (go figure), that several mocks have had Carter, Holmes, Da Silva, and Tyson rise up, even over the Lakers #17 pick. It basically leaves Da Silva, a player that I have mocked in the mid-1st, think he’s a lottery offensive talent, but has catching up to do defensively considering the effort and focus he showed last season. Did he play better defense at Texas Tech? Yes, but frankly, I think it’s a good sign when higher usage players exert that effort at both ends at the college level. It’s a 40 minute game, basically once a week, and not a 48 minute game, four times a week.

Tyson would be a good legitimate pick for the Lakers.

---

Now onto guys less mentioned, but wrote about in the last post:

Zach Edey

Kyle Filipowski

Ryan Dunn

Kel’el Ware

Yves Missi

Jonathan Mogbo

In terms of NBA readiness, it’s Ryan Dunn that sticks out for me the most. I know from the jump, he’s going to be an NBA level defensive playmaker. He did show signs of better offensive game prior to playing at the University of Virginia, but putting that into NCAA, then NBA game speed, is a different thing altogether.

Do you like watching Vanderbilt-like defensive playmaking? I do.

In a different dimension, he’s my small ball center. I may have tweeted before that I think Adem Bona is the only center that I trust being able to trap, hard hedge, flat hedge, drop, and switch defensively out of pick and roll situations. Well, I trust Dunn to do that, but at a power forward position.

A lot of the time, I felt that the Lakers were having issues with breaking even in terms of possessions against their opponents. More often than not, they were outrebounded, and didn’t have the defensive play of Caruso to help make up for those possessions defensively. They didn’t have Vanderbilt healthy for the entire season. I just can’t help but picture what it would be like to have a Vanderbilt type at all times on the floor. Vanderbilt and Dunn at 24 minutes a piece would be amazing defensively. Offensive horizontal spacing would be an issue, yes, but do the Lakers have to hire Coach Hurley in order to emulate some of his offensive sets from UConn?

I don’t think so.

One of the reasons why I would have liked Coach Hurley as a Laker head coach, was his ability to make non-gravity shooters (Donovan Clingan) into high level screeners and passers, while the rest of the halfcourt resembled the Golden State Warriors or the ‘72 Lakers in terms of screening for each other, split cuts, spacing out to the 3-point line, and getting high percentage shots at the rim.

Well, this ended up being more of a rant, but needless to say, I wouldn’t mind Ryan Dunn being drafted as a Laker. The worst case scenario is, you get a high level NBA type defender. The last time I made a similar description of a player, it was Herb Jones.

Herbert Jones - It feels like every year, there’s at least one defensive specialist that I’ll take a liking too, despite a lack of skill on offense. But when a player is 6’6” w/o shoes with a 7’ wingspan and an 8’10” standing reach with defensive ability, it’ll make me like him as a prospect that much more. Herbert Jones is a guy that looks perfectly comfortable switching from point guards to power forwards defensively. He’s got the standing reach of a power forward, a lower center gravity than most wings, and uses his verticality well in terms of being in position on the floor, as well as protecting the rim. This is the kind of guy you want to throw in pick-and- roll situations defensively and have no issues switching, hard hedging, breaking even with the level of the screen, or even drop coverage.

Ryan, is 6’6.25” w/o shoes, 7’1.5” wingspan, 8’7” standing reach, at over 213lbs.

The thing is, he just plays bigger than his height.

Here’s a quick comparison between Kal’el Ware in terms of advanced numbers:

Free throw rate: .37 (Dunn) vs. .41 (Ware)

OReb: 9.6% vs. 7.9%

DReb: 20.8% vs 26%

Reb: 15.1% vs 17.5%

Stl: 3.1% vs 1.1%

Blk: 10.4% vs 6.5%

Just to put things into context, those advanced numbers translate to 10.1 rebounds, 1.9 steals, and 3.3 blocks per 40 minutes, most importantly with only 3 fouls in that block of time.

Despite the size difference, that’s what awareness, engagement, physicality, and motor look like. I have tweeted before, that if Dunn was a 7’ center, I’d draft him #1.

---

If you’re willing to take a chance on a player from a smaller school, that is an undersized big, but incredibly impactful, it’s Jonathan Mogbo.

Mogbo is listed at 6’6.25” w/o shoes, 7’2” wingspan, 9’0.5” standing reach, at just over 217lbs. Like Dunn, he has tremendous defensive timing, a low center of gravity, and plays bigger than his size.

Just to add in the player comparison:

Free throw rate: .321

OReb: 14.5%

DReb: 29.3%

Reb: 22%

Stl: 3.2%

Blk: 3.5%

The difference between Mogbo and Dunn lies in the ball handling and passing. Mogbo jumped to a 24.5% assist rate and is a comfortable attacker off the dribble from 16’ out.

Over the course of 40 minutes, that’s 14.1 rebounds, 5.1 assists, 2.2 steals, 1.1 blocks on 3.6 fouls.

Though they don’t approach the game in quite the same way, every time I think of Mogbo, the player comparison that comes to mind is Isaiah Jackson of the Indiana Pacers. You’re just looking for someone that can make a roster and be a rotation player. Even with those standout numbers from Dunn and Mogbo, that’s how hard the transition is going from the NCAA level to the NBA level.

---

Wings

Jaylen Wells - Recent growth spurt wing, 6’6.5” w/o shoes, 6’7.25” wingspan, 8’7.5” standing reach, 206lbs. 99th percentile spot up shooter that brought some of his guard ball-handling with his height. He just has an easy transfer from shot pocket to shot release, especially off the dribble.

Johnny Furphy - High motor Kansas wing, not really a shot creator, but the epitome of a classic 3-and-D wing. He loves to run the floor, be impactful defensively, but sometimes gets knocked out of the way when he’s chasing on screens or when his man is being physical on offense. I think he’s a longer term project, not because of his skill set because I think he’s solid there, but just in terms of core strength and hip flexibility. That kind of thing is out of my department, but if a team is great at working on those aspects, they can find themselves a latter option 6’7.5” w/o shoes, 6’8” wingpsan, 8’8.5” standing reach player.

Nikola Djurisic - I’ve had him ranked as high as mid 1st last year and I’m still intrigued by him. He’s arguably the best passing wing in the draft, a good athlete, and stepped up when Topic left the team midseason. He just has an unusual path to success considering he didn’t scale down well as a tertiary option with Topic as the lead point guard, and the 3-point consistency hasn’t been great. He’s an athletic wing that makes great reads, passes, and adds rim pressure, but has real shot gravity out to 18’. Frankly, it’s going to kill me if the right team gives him the right path to development, and then he starts becoming that secondary playmaker, but with the free throw rate and athletic ability at the rim. It would be my luck that he turns into a bigger wing version of Austin Reaves.

---

Guards

KJ Simpson - Oh man, do I remember having optimism for Scottie Pippen Jr. for years, never counting him out. Now, he’s a solid back up point guard for the Grizzlies. Well, Simpson plays a similar style. There’s a bit more to the burst, but SPJ had extra levels to his footwork and physicality with allowed him a high free throw rate, despite a more slender point guard size. KJ Simpson has burst, a 3pt shot, and makes good decisions. Wouldn’t you welcome a fellow Los Angeles player back?

Ajay Mitchell - There’s always a guard that falls down in the draft where I think he can just get a bucket. Sometimes it’s more of a shooter, or a slasher, but not really both. Well, here’s Ajay Mitchell, 43% of his total shots are at the rim, with 47% free throw rate, shooting 62/43/39/86. The level of competition isn’t as great. I’d like to see more defensive effort. He looks more like an undersized shooting guard at 6’3.25” w/o shoes, 6’6.25” wingspan, 8’5’ wingspan, at 197lbs., but sometimes you just need an aggressive guard on offense. The burst is fine, but it’s really the footwork combination with the handle that dislodges the defensive position of his opponent, and then he’s just at the rim. This is the kind of player you look for in the draft, hoping there’s a path to timing with passing ability. It’s also the kind of player that has shown at his level of competition, he can bend the defense. He can create the advantage. Can he extend the advantage? Can he make it easier for his teammates?

If so, steal.

Tristen Newton - This is more of a macro view. He’s a two-time championship guard, a glue-guy in every since of the definition. In short, he makes simple plays and gets the most out of it. Ever see playoff players play really tense and get out of sorts? Newton is a guy that has a certain poise to his game and the effectiveness remains even when the intensity ramps up.

He’s 6’3.25” w/o shoes, 6’6.75” wingspan, 8’4” standing reach, at 192lbs. His free throw rate is an average of .469 through five years of NCAA play.

Although UConn lost this game, look at how he went about his business, the score early on, and how close it got in the end. This kind of play and poise carried all throughout the NCAA tournament.

You want to see a winning play?

Look at his box out on McCullar Jr. at 2:13.

We’re always looking for players that aren’t afraid of the moment. It would be awesome just to see rotation players step up for 2 of 5 games in a playoff series. Most of the time, these are the few games that we get. Of course, things only get harder at the NBA level, but there’s something to be said about a guy that plays within his strengths to keep his team in it.

That’s the Most Outstanding Player, Tristen Newton.

---

Simply put, we don’t know what the Lakers are going to do with the draft. Maybe it will be traded away. But, if they’re able to trade down, here’s a few more prospects I would also look at, in addition to the prior Top 30 list mentioned in the previous posts.

The most ideal situation is trading down, and somehow still lucking out in getting DaRon Holmes and Ryan Dunn, or trading to get a shot at Ron Holland.

Either way, it’s been a fun draft cycle.

Thank you for reading, following, listening, and watching anything I’ve been a part of this year.