A 6-foot-10 prospect with tantalizing skills and a too-skinny frame, is Ousmane Dieng a project, or is he a player that has it all minus the pro body at this point? And should he be the pick for the Knicks at 11?

The background

French wing Ousmane Dieng, who is either 6-foot-9 or 6-foot-10 depending on who you ask, is a 2022 prospect who poses a very interesting question to front offices: what makes a player a “project?”

Is it merely youth and mediocre production coupled with elite physical tools? Is it advanced skills paired with late-blooming physical development? Is it just youth combined with hype?

As a kid who will still be 18 on draft day, and likely still feature a vaguely twig-like physique and middling stats, Dieng has been tabbed a ‘’project’’ by many, so his game is worth examining in some detail — particularly for our New York Knicks, who find themselves picking 11th this year. The Knicks have a crowded roster full of kids who need development, so there is a very strong case that New York is in a position where taking on a ‘’project’’ or a ‘’risky pick’’ with higher potential payoff is better than a more traditional pick, of which they have had many. It’s not that the Knicks’ picks haven’t been successful — they have — it’s more that they have yet to hit a home run in a league defined by how many homers a team hits en route to rings. And for the record, the Knicks aren’t alone in pondering projects — even teams with a lone star are still often left looking for a second.

Let’s do a quick background check: Dieng had significant hype coming into the season after playing (and losing quite a bit) his 20-21 season in Centre Fédéral in the Nationale Masculine 1, the third tier French pro hoops league where teams compete to get promoted to the second division. He had interest from Arizona, Washington State, Oregon State, and Cincinnati in the US, but opted instead to take his talents to the NBL in Australia. He joined the New Zealand Breakers, which featured Euro-hoops journeyman vet point guard Peyton Siva and fellow likely 2022 draftee and Frenchmen Hugo Besson. The Breakers have had a few rough losing seasons, but generally done well by their future NBA blue chippers LaMelo Ball and Josh Giddey (two other tall guys with passing chops and extremely inefficient NBL seasons, similar to Dieng) from a development perspective. It’s a league of grown ass men, where the guards and ball handlers play with pace and the big men are often bruisers straight out of a NBA on ABC game from 1997. 

Young Ousmane had a very steep learning curve, and was written out of the first round entirely by most draftniks — including me — for the majority of the year. He had a horrendous start to the season and didn’t really recover, with his FG% tanked into the mid 30s from the field and mid 20s from three early on. The speed and physicality was an adjustment for him — not to mention the language and location probably took some getting used to for the young man as well. And then, in the last third of the season… things began to click. The advanced pick-and-roll passing flashes flashed more often, a year of physical training began manifesting in his game on both ends, and over the last 10 or so games he shot over 60% from two and almost 50% from the field. He has, in my opinion, shown more advanced pick-and-roll passing skills than anyone else in the lottery in this class. So in honor of him ending his year on a crescendo, let’s get into what makes his music special.

The passing

Let’s start with the good stuff. With Dieng, the passing is the special sauce. It’s absolutely beyond his years, and while he didn’t rack up the usage or minutes to yield triple-doubles like his Breakers predecessors LaMelo and Giddey, Dieng’s passing leaps off the screen. He doesn’t drive and kick quite like Giddey, and doesn’t create preposterous passing angles out of thin air like LaMelo, but when he is operating with screens on the perimeter he makes advanced pick-and-roll passes look awfully easy for an 18-year-old. Or for anyone, any age.

Shoutout Corey Tulaba of No Ceilings for the passing compilation. Dieng’s pick-and-roll reads are almost surgical.  If he gets pressured he doesn’t turn his back, a great sign for a ball handler and passer. If there is a double team he’ll ‘’string it out’’ (i.e. take a dribble or two backwards without turning his back to pull the two defenders further away from everyone else) before using his height and long arms to sling a ball to the open man. Emphasis here on height — his combination of height and ball handling make hard pick-and-roll passes seem effortless. As in, of course he would see the open man on the weak side — he can look over everyone’s head! He isn’t afraid to throw hook passes, to change directions with around-the-back dribbles before reading and diming off. He also is comfortable with one-hand passes on the move. He doesn’t do a ton of eye or fake manipulation yet — that’s next for him —  but he does use hesitations and hang dribbles to throw defenders off, which goes a long way when you’re super tall. 

So he has the passing acumen. But in the NBA, pick-and-roll passing skill without scoring threat is a nonstarter. Isaac Okoro, Deni Avdija, and most famously (for Stricklandites, anyway) Frank Ntilikina all are very impressive pick-and-roll passers. None of them get to showcase that because you need real ball handler touches to run PnRs. Teams ration those out carefully — if you can’t shoot or won’t drive aggressively often, even tanking teams will not give you charity touches out of the goodness of their hearts. So what does Dieng’s scoring projection look like, and is it positive enough to assume he’ll have chances to showcase the passing? 

The jumper

Let’s start with his perimeter scoring. Dieng only shot 27% from three in his season in the NBL, including a pretty steady diet of pull-up threes. It ain’t a pretty number. From the free throw line, he shot 67% on 27 attempts. Also not great! That being said, he’s shot 79% on free throws across all competition levels since 2019, and the shot looks pretty good, in my humble opinion. Here’s some video of him shooting around pregame, and you can see he shoots a pretty effortless ball:

It’s also effortless in games. Here’s five 3-pointers showing his technique in different situations:

He is very balanced, which is unusual for someone who came into the year rail-thin and shows a need for improved core strength in other facets of his game. He’s also tall enough that he is pretty unbothered by most contests. If I had to nitpick, the only thing I would flag is that on some of the threes he’ll float a teeny bit leftward, and sometimes his shot prep footwork is stuck between a rhythmic 1-2 step and a two-foot hop:

The driving

The next question is what does his interior scoring look like? When I first spent a couple minutes YouTubing him early on, I assumed he was a perimeter player who was a great passer and OK shooter who was too thin to drive, and boy was I wrong. He is pretty comfortable putting it on the deck. His handle isn’t amazing, but it’s absolutely solid for someone his age and height. He is also not shy about using it, and willing to call his own number for drives — something I have taken for granted in the past while scouting, where I've assumed (incorrectly) that more passive talented players would simply choose to shoot more 2-point shots upon entering the NBA.

Consider the other 6-foot-10 forwards in this draft — Nikola Jovic, Patrick Baldwin Jr., Leonard Miller, and Jabari Smith Jr. I am comfortable saying Dieng has the best handle out of all of them, pretty easily. Only Miller comes close (and not that close in my opinion), and only Jabari shares a willingness to call his own number inside the arc like Dieng. If you include Paolo Banchero (who I think is 6-foot-9), you could make an argument Paolo’s is close, but he’s just as likely to revert to big man tendencies when feeling ball pressure (turning around and using all 250 lbs. of his frame for half spins en route to the hoop). He can tighten it up, improve his ability to dribble harder and faster while being tall a la LaMelo or Ben Simmons, but I don’t think it’s really worse than, say, Giddey. Like Giddey, he makes his move and goes directly to where he wants to go, instead of meandering and sloping and letting defenders dictate his path (something Dyson Daniels infuriatingly does often). Right now, his handle is good enough to wield aggressively vs. adults in the NBL:

Importantly for my own personal agenda, he loves the wide cross that was en vogue in the early ‘00s and sort of faded from popularity as pull-up threes became more paramount (with a few exceptions like Kevin Durant and Donovan Mitchell keeping it alive). It’s one of my favorite aesthetic moves, and it’s very effective when done right. Like those two star players, Dieng has the wingspan and handle to pull it off saucily:

He’s a willing driver, but the problem is sometimes he has run into grown men who stop him dead in his tracks because of their significant strength advantage. Remember tall-ass Zhou Qi?

Below, he drives past Zhou but sees another defender, and none of his teammates rotate to his side of the court. Ousmane leaves his feet without a plan, which he does too often when confronted with physicality in the paint, and goes nowhere:

Here’s a hilarious example where he decides to go up strong and makes the shot, but just bounces CLEAR off Cairns center Nathan Jawaii, who is almost twice Ousmane’s age and weighs 280 lbs. Kudos to Dieng for going hard, he’s got a long way to go — but the mentality is there!

He’s also beginning to acquire some touch, and beginning to learn how to use his length on drives. Check out this aggressive baby hook:

Speaking of touch, the indispensable draft follow and YouTube draft video pusher ChipJNBA put together a wonderful short video showing every one of Ousmane’s floaters across the first 20-something games of the season. The purpose of the video was to show how his touch improved as the season went on. The sample of shots is small, but you can begin to see the adjustment in the softness of the shot, and begin to see him getting under the floaters a bit more. 

The role of strength in his projection

Let’s rewind back to 2020:

He was SKINNY. He’s still skinny, now but you can see where exactly he is coming from. He was shorter back then as well. Although many 18-year-old prospects are stronger (Jalen Duren says hi), many 18-year-olds are still pretty rail thin (Nikola Jovic says hi) as well. The key nuance is that for his play style — which relies on passing; which relies on just enough scoring; which relies on driving — he needs that strength more than someone who relies more wholly on the 3-ball like, say, Jovic. Contrast that with then-18-year-old frail-as-rails high school seniors BJ Boston and Ziaire Williams. BJ possessed elite handle by that age, and Ziaire was a pretty amazing athlete already. Dieng has neither of those traits. So to be efficient from two vs. Qi and his 7-foot-8 wingspan, of Jawaii and his 280-lb. frame, Ousmane needed strength, and some craft. Hence the inefficiency. 

In the video below, you see three shots, and in the first two, he fails to showcase any strength on the drive to move the defender and fails to show any touch. On the third shot, he gets bumped halfway to half court by a defender who doesn’t even let him begin his trademark wide hang dribble. He still manages to create space afterwards for his step-back, and credit to him for that, but right now he’s very vulnerable to arm bars and bumps.

Now remember when I said in the last 10 games of the season he began scoring from two, shooting over 60%? 

In the compilation of shots above you see him playing with a bit more craft — a sweep through on the first shot, a slow-down euro on the second, change of pace leading to a bump and fade on the third. Finally, in the fourth shot in the clip, you see him end up with one of his best highlights of the year, a nasty combo dribble to step-back that’s all net… but watch how much he gets bumped on the drive. That’s untenable in the NBA. For the kind of game he wants and needs to play as someone who’s not a great athlete and, for now, an only OK shooter, he is going to need to continue to make strength gains to fully leverage his scoring and passing. And to leverage…

The defense

On defense and on the glass, Ousmane can be painfully unphysical sometimes. 

There’s a lot of clips like that where he is just kind of standing around, watching but not seeing, not really in an athletic stance under the rim, with no interest in stepping in to driving players or trying to box guys out. It usually happens near the hoop.

Despite that, when he’s beyond the charge circle Ousmane ironically almost always knows exactly how to position his body and feet to defend well. He has the right ideas out on the perimeter. I’ll show a couple of clips of good positioning in a second, but first I want to highlight the most important clip of this article… he plays good defense and gets dunked on, all because the driving player extends his forearm and gives him enough of a bump to create takeoff space for the dunk. It’s hard to see from the first angle, but in the replay you can see it clearly.

This clip below is another example of his good instincts betrayed by his lack of chest strength in particular. He gets switched on to a shifty guard, the 6-foot-1 Izayah Le'Afa, who gives Ousmane a good forearm and creates just enough room to hit the fading middy. 

That being said, they can’t all forearm shiv him. As a result, he has quite a few impressive defensive perimeter stands vs. opponents of all sizes and shapes. Here’s 30 seconds of that:

You can see his agility, quick hips, very quick reactions, and length all working in concert on those possessions. Moving along, I did want to note another place his lack of strength shows up: fouls. He doesn’t foul a lot — about 2.5 per 36 minutes which is probably due to a combination of his great instincts and his willingness to just sit things out under the rim entirely sometimes — but when he does, it’s usually because someone is imposing physicality upon him, as in the two possessions below:

I do think if (when???) he gains some strength, he possesses a pretty solid defensive outlook. Check the compilation below, it’s a mix of plays where he puts it all on display:

You can see how fast he can decelerate while sliding with his opponent, which is a sign of core strength. You can see how good he is at pick-and-roll defense, and in particular at getting around screens by getting low and using his off hand to propel himself around the screener and his other hand to bother the shooter from behind. You can see how impactful he is as a weak side shot blocker. You can see him not biting on fakes, playing passing lanes. The defensive instincts on the ball are pretty strong, he knows how to use his length. He’s incredibly versatile and has great physical tools, but does not over-rely on those tools at all.

The end: That was a lot of clips. What now?

Does he seem like a project? To me, the answer is no, not really. He seems like someone who is already gifted in terms of scoring instincts and defensive instincts, who merely needs to refine one key tool — his strength and physicality — to make it work. And I've gone on the record as considering strength a pretty low-hanging fruit developmentally. It doesn’t take 2-3 years like going from a non-shooter to shooter or going from a wack ball handler to a proficient one. I don’t think he has the potential to go from skinny to jacked like, say, Jabari Smith Jr. does, but he can absolutely get to functionally strong, particularly with his measurables.

If I am a team considering drafting him, I can rest easy because a lot of the skills — defensive positioning, shooting, ball handling, and passing — are already in place and just need refinement. You can use his rookie year to let him get in improved shape and give him scrap minutes, or — if you’re more like an OKC — just let him learn on the court while you tank. Either is fine. Once his strength gets to functional levels, though, he absolutely needs to be in a position to get touches. I know at the top of the piece I mentioned that NBA teams don’t dole out touches for charity, but if whoever drafts him wants to use him as a connector or a 3-and-D wing, they are missing the forest for the trees entirely. Like a lot of European ball handler prospects, he is ahead of the curve with pick-and-roll proficiency, and not letting him utilize that early on means by the time he’s 21 he will have lost the advantage of more PnR reps as other players catch up.

The question: Should the Knicks take him?

Tough question, though I would be pretty excited if they did. There are other players who have more certainty who are more comfortable taking a perceived home run swing. Perception aside, Ousmane is not a project, he is a prototype versatile wing right now. By 21, he should be a rotation player capable of getting real minutes and earning FGA at different positions on competing teams. For those reasons, he’s high on my personal boards, both for the Knicks and generally.

Assuming they pick him and he stays in New York and doesn’t get immediately shipped out in a trade, he is young enough that they can get away with giving him the Deuce Westchester Plan. Let him be a primary option in White Plains, and giving him junk minutes sparingly in the NBA. In Year 2, the front office will have had more time to clear logjams (and, again, possibly trade him), and as a wing who can probably play and defend 2 through 4 he should have a path to minutes. The Knicks have a ton of solid prospects. but none are really big wings except Cam Reddish. 

Because his greatest strength is pick-and-roll offense, there is a very good argument that it is highly unlikely that the Knicks between 2022 and 2024 won’t have much of those reps to spare. If they have cashed in chips for a more high usage ball handler and Ousmane remains on the team, then he might be able to get some real playmaking reps, oddly enough. If the Knicks don’t make a star deal, he’ll probably be behind RJ and IQ at minimum in the ball handler pecking order, and likely at least another free agent ball handler at some point. So it might not be the best situation for him to develop or for the Knicks to develop him. Additionally, I don’t think they will take him at 11, because teams — the Knicks included — tend to get a bit more conservative as the pick is higher, and Dieng is perceived as risky. Boring answer, I know. Someone else is probably in the cards for New York, but I look forward to watching Dieng develop wherever he lands.

Despite those nitpicky concerns, all my worries about developmental pathways may be for naught if the front office declares he’s BPA with the highest upside in a draft with a very large middle class, where upside is often a bit more nebulous. Guys like Jeremy Sochan, Dyson Daniels, and Malaki Branham all project to have some level of high floor and a high likelihood of versatility and utility, but none project to really be the kind of big wing playmaker who makes the league go round. When you think about what those guys need to reach a serious upside, the asks are tougher than “get jacked,” so Ousmane has that going for him. It would be very reasonable for the front office to decide to draft him first and create the developmental pathway after. 

Ousmane is different enough from the Knicks’ prior picks — who all have been older and tended to have pretty obvious immediate scoring chops, not to mention they have all been shorter — that picking him would signal a departure of sorts for the Knicks. It’s not that he doesn’t have scoring tools, as we know, more that he hasn’t fully weaponized them yet. After all, IQ, Obi, Grimes, and Deuce were all certified buckets in their pre-NBA stops. Other acquisitions like Reddish, Alec Burks, and Evan Fournier also fit that bill. On the other hand, we know this front office prefers drafting players who can take pull-ups and have significant length, and Ousmane checks both those boxes easily, so maybe he is a “Knick” pick after all.

Trying to get in the mind of Walt Perrin is a tall order, and not the point of this article. All I can say is that picking Ousmane would definitely be telling, and very exciting. For reasons I cannot fully articulate, I really don’t think the Knicks will take him, but I kind of hope they do. After all, we’re due for some home runs, if you ask me, and I wouldn’t be mad at Leon Rose swinging for the fences here at all. Swing away!