Disrespectful NBA Draft Comps 2020
Prez and Theo bring back a yearly Prez tradition — the Disrespectful Draft Comps, where the high-, medium-, and low-range outcomes are laid out for all of the key players in the 2020 NBA Draft class.
Welcome. Please, pull up a chair. Pour yourself something nice. I have important news for you: if you didn’t think the greatest series ever to be penned on a Knicks website wasn’t coming to The Strickland, you were sorely mistaken.
With our wall-to-wall draft coverage, I’d like to think readers are already learning about who is who among prospects this year. Perhaps you are like us, and have consumed too much draft coverage, even. Consider this a change of pace, something nice and warm for the winter weather. Something untethered by Synergy charts, hyper-specific statistics, and unverified Twitter rumors. Something profound, prophetic, and yet full of hateration and holleration.
WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:
LaMelo Ball
High-end outcome: Featherweight less dunks/more dimes Penny Hardaway
Middle-tier outcome: 2020 Caris LeVert with the passing Infinity Gauntlet
Low-end outcome: Tall Jason Williams
Penny was both of his time and before it. A position-less, tall, springy point guard who towered over guys and had the handle to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Equal parts uber-talented and unpredictable — Hardaway’s FG% during his All-Star years ranged from 50-plus percent to 38%. Modern Penny is in the cards for LaMelo, and if he falls short of that, the inefficient 6-foot-7 combo guard Caris LeVert is actually a very apt comp, given his ability to get wherever, but have a proclivity to settle for bad shots. Just add a few heaping scoops of dime-off-ability.
Anthony Edwards
High-end: Healthy Pacers Victor Oladipo plus 15 lbs, but not dialed in on defense all the time; also not an incredible singer
Middle-tier: Jerry Stackhouse with more threes but normal free throw rates, and nowhere as thorough
Low-end: P90x Dion Waiters
Ant is gonna be a chuck. He’s a happy warrior who doesn’t have much of a conscience, probably because football was his main sport for most of his life before he picked up hoops and became a celebrity. This is a man who said: “I feel like the pandemic is nothing to me. I was already living in the pandemic because all I wanted to do is to get better.” No one knows what it means, but it's provocative; it gets the people going.
The question is: what kind of chuck? Not all chucks are useless. Stackhouse was a classic scorer who couldn’t be the best player on a great team because his volume of bricks was just too immense, even though he could nearly make up for it by getting to the line upwards of 10 times a game and going off for 50 at any given moment. Ant hasn’t shown anywhere near that rim-hunting ability, but the rest of the package is strikingly similar: explosive dunks, incredible pull-up shooting, occasional passing. Ant has the talent, but your mileage may vary.
Killian Hayes
High-end: Jamal Murray with more defense and passing and bratwurst
Middle-tier: More pull-up buckets version of Pacers Malcolm Brogdon
Low-end: Handsomer Jalen Brunson
Murray’s killer instinct and Brogdon’s consistency: both are in play for this B2K boy-band-in-the-face-ass youngster. Now, we came up with this before Murray collected all the Dragon Balls and brought them into the bubble, but the comp still stands. He’s a tall pull-up shooting maestro who learns to manipulate defenses despite lacking nuclear athleticism, speed, or strength, whose shooting consistency sometimes eludes him despite clear shooting skill. Also strong, smart and switchable on defense in equal measure.
James Wiseman
High-end: Fizdale-powered Julius Randle but with actual rim protection
Middle-tier: “Ballislife!” mixtape Hassan Whiteside
Low-end: Team Philippines Andray Blatche
Y’all know how Julius went from dutiful, flawed but productive role player to miscast point power forward thanks to having a hype man for a coach for 30 games? Yeah, the hype man lives in Wiseman’s head. There’s still some use for that player given that even the least aware, slow-reacting bigs his size can still protect the rim, even if you have to live with a few possessions that resemble someone playing 21 rather than NBA ball. His offense will be tied directly to how draconian the rules imposed on him by a coach are enforced, and his defense will be tied to how often teams do (or don’t) take advantage of his slow reaction times.
Deni Avidja
High-end: Who Mark Cuban thought Chandler Parsons was gonna be
Middle-tier: If young Boris Diaw came up with Moreyball and Crossfit instead of fancy coffee and baguettes
Low-end: Fitness Instructor Kyle Anderson
Parsons once cost me a fantasy basketball league. My opponent had him, during what was the best stretch of his career early on in his time in Dallas, and he was putting up an efficient 20, five, and four with (for that era) loads of threes, sometimes exploding for five-plus in a game (highly unusual in the early ‘00s for anyone, let alone a 6-foot-9 wing). At the time, Parsons was just entering his prime; alas, injuries robbed Mark Cuban of yet another potential star white dude. Chandler was born in the wrong era: if he played today he’d be a 4 with range, encouraged to shoot thanks to the increased league-wide 3-point rate, possessing good finishing and passing chops, with just enough handle to attack closeouts in the half court and be a force in transition. Sound familiar?
Obi Toppin
High-end: 2019 healthy Blake Griffin, but mostly finishing instead of initiating the offense
Middle-tier: Lob City John Collins with permanent one-second lag on defense
Low-end: 2012 Knicks Amar’e on offense, Tel Aviv Amar’e on defense
Blake’s deal is sort of an albatross right now for Detroit, but mostly because of health. When healthy, he’s transformed himself into a bully ball finishing, 5-6 3PA per game shooting offensive fulcrum. In Atlanta, John Collins is making the transition from testing out his jumper as a changeup to his dive/paint game to featuring it. How disrespectful this comp is depends wholly on how you view guys like Collins, or late career Blake.
Onyeka Okongwu
High-end: Ball hog Bam Adebayo
Middle-tier: Super Saiyan shot blocking Cody Zeller
Low-end: Better handles/less paparazzi Tristan Thompson
The most common weird take of this long draft season has been the assumption that assists in college are basically useless predictively, and mere flashes and similarities to NBA passers are enough to assume Okongwu will average five assists per game despite a negative college assist-to-turnover ratio. Coordination somehow is equal to potential offensive engine usage? We’re not buying it. Sorry.
More realistically, if he can do the little things — become an awesome screen setter, be great in the lanes, and communicative, like the perpetually underrated Zeller — while pairing them with great strength, touch, hops, rebounding, and the finishing that we saw at USC, that’s a really useful player. This is probably my choice for the most “sounds disrespectful but is actually complimentary” of any of middle-tier comps that I have. As for Okongwu’s high end, If he can combine Bam’s scoring skills with improved aggression on offense and superior rim protection — recall that Bam wasn’t great at that at Kentucky, and that Miami pretty much abandoned dedicated rim protection in favor of mobility and switch-ability — that’s a star, or at least a star-like impact.
Cole Anthony
High-end: Seth Curry Mecha piloted by Corey Magette
Middle-tier: Mo Williams with less quickness but more fire layup line dunks
Low-end: Physical Devonte’ Graham
Cole’s high end is still great. Let’s say that up front. He sucked at many things, but was very good at the most important shot in the game: pull-up jumpers. What he needs is the mentality to spam the 3-ball — like Graham’s “60% of my shots are threes” — and just blatantly drive to seek fouls like Magette. How well he and his coach/team infrastructure enable those two skills will determine whether his weaknesses get mitigated or exposed.
Devin Vassell
High-end: Draft Twitter’s Matisse Thybulle fever dreams
Middle-tier: If all the Suns’ wings (Cameron Johnson, Mikal Bridges, and Kelly Oubre [RIP]) combined into one person
Low-end: Corey Brewer but way less nervous frenetic energy and more solid 3-point shooting
None of Phoenix’s wings drive to the hoop much, especially Cam and Mikal. All of them are longbois with differing defensive talents. Mikal, in his current incarnation, is an only OK shooter. Oubre is a solid shooter. Cam is incredible. Average those out and you get an above-average shooter. None can handle the rock, but all three have a nice two-dribble shoot or pass game; all are threats at the rim on the rare instance they make it there. Add ‘em up, average ‘em out, and that’s probably what Vassell’s impact on a team will be.
Aleksej Pokusevski
High-end: Brandon Ingram possessed by Kyle Lowry
Middle-tier: Davis Bertans if he grew up playing point guard and didn’t only care about heat check threes
Low-end: Kelly Olynk minus 65 lbs.
Does Bertans have a high feel for the game? Or is he just out there launching missiles for the Wizards willy nilly? IDK, and I, Prez, here in D.C., watch the Wizards a lot. That’s kind of how you feel watching Poku — he’s just trying shit out because he can. The two immediate threshold questions are 1) can he play in structure, and 2) can he get to a level of comfort with physicality where he can be just bad at man defense, finishing, and rebounding, instead of getting turned to dust every time he’s bumped? I think both questions are an easy “yes,” especially if he gets picked by a team with a coach with some creativity as well as a passably good physiologist on staff.
Kira Lewis Jr.
High-end: More fun Mike Conley
Middle-tier: Less Jehovah’s Witness/more 3PA Darren Collison
Low-end: Dreadlock J.J. Barea
Some of the youth reading this may not really remember Collison. He was a lithe but fast guard who was very talented, one of my favorite non-All-Star guards of the early ‘00s, an elite finisher who penetrated the lane at will, organized offenses effectively, was small but competitive on defense, and could shoot. The big difference is he shot, like, 1-3 threes a game. If he played today that’d be 4-6 per with his ability to pull up on a dime and splash. The big differences between the middle and top outcomes are really defense-based: Mike Conley (and future Knick Fred VanVleet, to whom Kira is also compared) has always maximized the defensive output for his size, where DC was more middling and sometimes just straight-up hunted because of his size.
Tyrese Maxey
High-end: Late-career surprisingly good shooting D-Rose, but young and wholesome and a plus defender
Middle-tier: Ball hog Goran Dragić
Low-end: HGH Malik Monk
Efficiency separates these three comparisons. Say what you want about his persona, but Rose having career-high TS% in Detroit is a random, unexpected development which occurred because he finally 1) became a solid 3-point shooter on decent volume, and 2) became more self-aware of what he should and shouldn’t do given his late-career limitations. Dragić has always had that self-awareness, and has long been great at dictating what shots he wants to take rather than just using his speed and motor without a plan based on what feels good as a shooter.
Grant Riller
High-end: Ground-bound Donovan Mitchell; replace dunks with fancy layups
Middle-tier: Young and old Eric Gordon combined
Low-end: Less-fashionable Jordan Clarkson
Just gonna quote myself from a convo I had with one Jonathan Macri:
“Is Riller gonna be more like young or old Eric Gordon? Yes.
Old Gordon had about half the vert of young, springy EG. Young EG was actually a free throw magnet, hard to keep out of the lane because of his ridiculous first step and compact strong frame. Neither Eric Gordon was ever gonna be an inspiring defender. Young Eric Gordon was making the transition from a two-guard who can pass to a point guard before getting hurt. Old Gordon had a renaissance in Houston, where he increased his 3-point rate to something more befitting a shooter of his caliber (maybe too high, lol).
If Riller doesn't hit, the most likely reason is pretty obvious: he shows up in the NBA vs. elite athletes and is a Trae/Sexton-level defender, without Trae-level offense and passing.”
Tyrese Haliburton
High-end: Black Joe Ingles
Middle-tier: Post-hype Lonzo Ball, with better decision-making and worse defense
Low-end: Black Jose Calderon
As low as the group generally is on Hali, these are still some nice outcomes. Ingles has carved a nice career as a crafty role player who can hit open shots and operate as a secondary ball handler in a pinch. Haliburton’s not gonna take a bunch of shots, but he’ll make the most of them when he does. Realistically, he’s probably going to be a Lonzo doppelgänger (without the loud daddy). Their collegiate stats are practically identical (aside from Hali being a much better free throw shooter) and stylistically, they play the same. If the defense doesn’t translate (which is possible, considering he weighs like 140 soaking wet), then you’ll still probably end up with a play-it-safe guard who can hit open shots and run the offense, although don’t expect him to do much else.
Isaac Okoro
High-end: Marcus Smart is to guards as Draymond is to 5s as High-End Outcome Okoro is to wings
Middle-tier: Okoro in his 20s is Andre Iguodala in his 30s
Low-end: Justise Winslow with the anchor arms from Spongebob
The undersized, gritty defender who attempts to guard all five positions has become a well-sought after archetype. High-end Okoro would be the latest to follow suit. The median-sized lovechild of Draymond and Smart would be a high-level glue guy on offense with the ability to put pressure on defenses with his driving ability and make above-average reads as a secondary playmaker. Sure, both of those guys are bad shooters. But as we’ve seen with both of them (and Bam and Jimmy, to a greater extent), non-shooters with elite skill and intangibles elsewhere can still be pretty impactful players once surrounded by good shotmaking. On top of that, it’s no coincidence that if you run into Smart or Draymond hitting threes in a given game, it’s basically an automatic L. Of course, Okoro could end up not providing anything valuable on offense at all, which would sort of put him in the Winslow class. Their dimensions are similar (both 6-foot-6 with about a 6-foot-10 wingspan) and they have the same deficiencies (shooting, duh). Okoro would have to regress as a finisher in the paint for this to become realistic.
Patrick Williams
High-end: AK47 , but Southern instead of Russian
Middle-tier: Swaggier Larry Nance Jr with a passable three and fake nice pull-up J
Low-end: Fizdale Knicks Noah Vonleh
For those who have forgotten, AK47 was a problem in his heyday. He had a few seasons where he averaged damn near three blocks and two steals a game while still being a valuable contributor offensively. If PatWill ends up that good of a player then it’s a wrap. He has the tools (6-foot-11 wingspan and bouncy athleticism), and he’s shown very real flashes of pull-up shotmaking potential. If he never reaches his true ceiling, I could see him end up as some version of Nance Jr. — an athletic freak who can rebound, finish, and defend up to three positions. Laugh all you want, but he’s a pretty useful player, and I imagine if he actually played for a contender, people would start to see how good he is. As for the last comparison, we not finna get into that. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.
