Ever thought about the number 8/pi^2?
It’s a new number, sort of like a new sentence, and it’s silly enough that my Stats professor made a little note of it. It’s what you get as the Efficiency of the Maximum Likelihood Estimator of a Median for the Cauchy family, and if that sentence made sense to you, I’d love for you to explain it to me, because I’m still a little stumped.
In plain English, divide 8/pi^2, and you get about 0.811. That’s an efficiency of 81.1%, thereabouts. Pretty good! It’s a solid B. No one’s complaining about an efficiency in that range. No one’s writing home about it, either.
What do we talk about when we talk about NBA prospects? A lot of the time, we talk about fit. That’s similar to efficiency here, in the sense that a team can be helped by a player who locks in perfectly to an empty role and a player can be helped by a team that gives them the perfect sandbox in which to evolve. Maybe multiply those numbers together—the team side and the player side—and there’s your efficiency.
Clearly, this is a hopelessly inexact science, but doesn’t it make a certain degree of success? Charlotte didn’t need LaMelo Ball—they already had two point guards!—but once one of them got hurt, he had the perfect chance to evolve his game and raise the level of their play. Or how James Wiseman was supposed to fill the perfect rim-runner role in Golden State, but then Klay got hurt and Draymond lost his shot forever and they realized Wiseman wasn’t bulked up enough to play that role as a rookie. Neither of these were perfect, but when do we get perfection?
We can dream on it, though. We are blessed with a far simpler draft than last year. In fact, if you were looking at the top of last year’s draft and trying to think about fit, you’d realize your team likely didn’t have a need for an uber-athletic inefficient scorer, semi-evolved-offensively long-limbed center, or genius passer without a passable shot.
But maybe you needed an athletic, hard-nosed wing, and so Isaac Okoro was fifth! Or a high-IQ third ballhandler—enter Tyrese Halliburton! Spot-fillers occupied the deep, deep middle of last year’s draft. This year, though, those guys are at the top.
The words flash on ESPN: “Top 5”. You see it on draft boards, draft guides, mock drafts, NBA broadcasts, who knows at this point—and it’s entirely accurate. Scottie Barnes is often sixth, and he’s an athletic 4 with clear potential on both sides of the floor. He doesn’t have nearly the polish of the top 5. Davion Mitchell proved throughout the tourney that he can be a Kyle Lowry-type and hit backbreaking shots all day—what is he, 22? It’s a 19-year-old’s world.
The top 5 are, in probably this order, 1) Cade Cunningham, 2) Evan Mobley, 3) Jalen Suggs, 4) Jalen Green, 5) Jonathan Kuminga. Three college freshmen, two G Leaguers. A boatload of talent between the five of them, spread out in a slow, linear decline. Each one was supposed to look the part, and each one surpassed expectations. It’s hard to believe they’re not sure things.
And the fits? Oh, Lord, the fits. Cade is the new cog that is so hot right now: a big point guard who can make the difficult pass, hit the difficult shot, and take the difficult matchup on defense. If you’re not Dallas, the Lakers, or…the Pelicans, maybe? Then he isn’t redundant, and now you’re expected to contend for a title sooner rather than later.
If you’re drawing Tim Duncan comparisons and you’re not getting picked first overall in every mock, then there must be something special about the guy (Cade) in front of you. Evan Mobley is getting those comparisons. A 4 or a 5 in today’s NBA, he can be the only guy you have down low (after filling out a bit more) or he can pair with your weaker defensive stretch 5. Post moves? Mobley has ‘em. Strong defense? Of course. A three-point shot? Good basketball IQ? The ability to dunk with abandon? Check, check, and check. He’s a do-it-all big, and that’s a role set to make any team salivate. The only thing missing is a killer attitude—he showed that a bit in March Madness, no?We will absolutely see more.
Jalen Suggs had a monster block, a monster pass, and then if we’re talking about monsters, a Frankenstein-level shot to beat UCLA. Cade is clutch, but Jalen makes you recall Damian Lillard. He’s an athletic combo guard who’s a combo guard because he excels at both positions, not because he’s a tweener. He should be able to guard 1-3 and can probably survive a switch onto centers. His shotmaking is divine. Is there a backcourt in the league too full for him? Not even possible.
Jalen Green, who’s probably surprised that the dude who played for a tiny Jesuit school in Spokane, Washington is the better-known Jalen, fits the mold of a slashing scorer to a T. Now, is he doing enough else? That remains to be seen. Will he get Bradley Beal comparisons? Absolutely. Is Bradley Beal the current most-desired player in the NBA? Also yes.
Now, Jonathan Kuminga is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s because we’re not sure about the shot. You might meet a few people wondering if it’s a top 4, not 5. He’d like to prove that wrong. While everyone fights over guards and bigs, the most valuable pieces on championship teams are almost always wings, and he’s the best one in the draft (depending on how you classify Cade). He’s going to be a guy who can get you buckets, play tough defense, hit the open shot, and very likely evolve into a Jaylen Brown-type. Jaylen Brown is the guy everyone wanted the Celtics to give up when Danny Ainge was looking to get Superstar X. Kuminga is a bit more raw than these guys, but should also be starting on Day 1.
So that’s our rundown, and we haven’t even gotten to why I started writing this article in the first place. Let’s get back to efficiency. These guys will plug holes anywhere. A solid 8/pi^2 at any point. Evan Mobley would be pretty good on the Magic, Jalen Green on Minnesota, and Jonathan Kuminga on the Rockets. But none of that makes the NBA a far more interesting place. It raises the ceiling a little bit. A B is fine for your GPA, but there’s not a huge shift in any direction. How do we help legitimately terrible teams become immediately exciting? And how do we put these five players in picture-perfect situations in which they can thrive?
Without further ado, a mock draft built on hope:
1) Houston Rockets, Cade Cunningham
In what amounts to a (small) theme, I’m sending the kid back to his home state. That feels good already. But I ask you—what did Houston do to end up in this position, picking first overall? They traded away James Harden, a big point guard known for stepback 3s and playing the game just a bit slow. That fits Cade to a T. So as far as Harden replacements go, he’s your guy, plus a little extra clutch and defense added in. The fans are thrilled, at the very least.
How does it fit the Rockets? Let’s look at their best lineup recently: John Wall, Kevin Porter Jr., Jae’Sean Tate, Kelly Olynyk, and Christian Wood. Will Kelly be here long-term? Not entirely likely. Is John Wall part of the future core? Also highly questionable. But the fit with the other three couldn’t be better.
First, the fit with KPJ is great simply because neither guy should be the lead ballhandler for an entire game. They’re a bit turnover-prone, and so lightening the load between both guys works well. It’s a lightning and thunder combo, too—KPJ has such terrific athleticism and Cade has that preternatural ability to control the game from a standstill. KPJ will be worlds better than any teammate Cade has had in the past.
With Jae’Sean Tate, both are true lunchpail guys. Each gets their hands into all five categories and plays rugged defense against anybody. The paths are different, of course, but two big, switchable guys on the defensive end will spell trouble for all kinds of opposing lineups.
Finally…remember Christian Wood when Harden was pulling in defenders with his gravity? He looked like an instant All-Star. He still has some flashes when John Wall is in the game, but his ceiling would absolutely be higher with a shooter like Cade drawing in defenders and then using his passing ability to give Wood easy moves for dunks and layups.
As far as development for Cade? The Rockets might be bad now, but with him on board, I doubt they’d be trying to be bad next year. There are enough vets and shooters to make life easier for him, and Stephen Silas is a dream come true for any high-IQ young guy. Under Silas, Cade will be running sets, learning different defensive coverages, and figuring out how to limit his turnovers. Yes, this team has a strange core, but it’s got the pieces to be a contender faster than usual, and Cade has the maturity to take those reins immediately. What a perfect match.
2) Oklahoma City Thunder, Evan Mobley
If there’s one thing the Thunder like more than big point guards, it’s long—impossibly-long, like Poku-long—players like Evan Mobley. Ohhhh yeah, we’re seeing an SGA-Dort-Poku-Bazley-Mobley lineup almost immediately. I don’t know much about Mark Daigneault, but he’s gotta be a fun-loving guy, right?
In a larger sense, though, this is the KD replacement they’ve been waiting for. Not because Mobley will go all Slim Reaper from behind the line, but because he’s going to be a legitimate superstar in a town starved for legitimacy. This has been a bad basketball team this year, and Evan Mobley is a phenomenal player who can make a difference. After this, perhaps the Thunder even sign some people we’ve heard of to play basketball for them.
The first guy you wonder about is SGA. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a massive part of their future, and so a guy who doesn’t fit his style wouldn’t be fun. I know he worked with Schröeder and CP3, but I have a harder time seeing Cade or Suggs here. Jalen Green would be good. Evan Mobley is kind of like cheating.
Mobley stops SGA from needing to be the offensive focal point. No one plays quite like SGA, a lanky guard with shot-creating ability wherever he needs it. But have you seen the quality of guys who’d run a PnR with him? It’s not very pretty. Adding Mobley suddenly means that you have to defend this team entirely differently. Mobley—wait bump him while he goes to the rim and have a second guy meet him there! SGA—wait don’t let him slip through and get to wherever he wants! Every shooter—wait quick get on him. The Thunder would very quickly have a multitude of options, and the Thunder have not had a multitude of options in a very long time.
How does this fit for Mobley? Besides the fact that their program is, like I mentioned, literally drawn up for guys like him, he has the opposite problem as Cade—the ability to find himself this first year. This will not be a competitive team in 2022, so—wait, is that the same OKC team that’s been a surprise contender every year they shouldn’t have been? And don’t you remember how quickly Mobley turned around a frankly-embarrassing USC program? Basically, he gets the reward of low expectations with a surprisingly-high payoff. And he’ll be the focal point in an offense that won’t rely on him being a superstar every night, which is much better than at USC. Mostly, he gets to run PnRs with one of the most dynamic young guards in the NBA, and isn’t that a center’s dream?
3) Minnesota Timberwolves, Jalen Suggs
Hey, have you heard Jalen Suggs played QB in high school? Hadn’t realized. Was friends with Paige Bueckers? Wow, no, that’s crazy. Went to high school in Minnesota? Nope, coulda fooled me.
We know these things. We also know that Alex Rodriguez just bought the Timberwolves, and sometimes you need a force larger than sports to keep a team where it currently is. Jalen Suggs becoming an instant superstar for the TWolves before they can move out to Seattle would be one of those things. (Also, he played college ball in Washington, so technically that’s a win-win, move or not!)
Long-suffering TWolves fans aside, wouldn’t they like to stop suffering? The problem for them this year, along with injuries, poor defense, and general ineptitude, has been De’Angelo Russell. He seems on that strange Ty Lawson verge of being so irrelevant that he’s suddenly out of the league, irrespective of actual talent (hey, that’s how we felt about Andrew Wiggins while he was here!). The man can’t play defense. He actively hurts the team. Playing Ricky Rubio 0.2 instead of him stops the team from being the absolute worst in professional sports and turns them average. DLo, this time the basketball is the problem.
So you say sorry to KAT, kick his main man to the curb, and get to replace him with a guy who already has created a highlight that will live forever. Suggs plays this thing called defense too, and he has this thing called athleticism too, and I dunno, maybe he convinces Paige Bueckers to force her way to the Lynx in a few years just to top things off. But that’s less of the point.
The actual point is how Suggs would function in an offense that includes two world-class scorers in Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns. The issue with these guys has always been the rest of the statsheet, plus the stuff that doesn’t show up on the statsheet. It’s probably not going to fix itself right away, although I could see Edwards becoming a better defender. Regardless, I don’t think there’d be a more athletic backcourt than Suggs and Edwards—like, instantly.
I can’t even overstate the scoring potential right there. Suggs isn’t the most efficient scorer, and Edwards clearly isn’t, but both of those guys have an ability to get to the line that will keep the free throws constantly coming. Plus, when you have the best stretch 5 in basketball, those paths to the rim will always be open, and Dunk City could reincarnate in Minneapolis (or Seattle. Strong Kemp-Payton vibes from these guys, honestly).
Suggs is also the right guy to get more out of KAT. It’s been mostly clear that KAT doesn’t love to establish himself—there’s been a bit of “how much does he really care?” following him around forever, not just during his recent tragedies. But a guy like Suggs who can’t even bear the thought of losing should rub off just right on KAT. Plus, of course, he’d make the offensive burden far easier. With those two guards and KAT creating buckets (and Suggs on defense as well), wings shouldn’t be crazy hard to come by. Jalen McDaniels already looks good.
How does this help Suggs thrive, then? Chris Finch is a good place to start. Like Cade, turnovers are a bit of a problem for him. Playing in a style like Finch’s would help him work on those. Plus, the vibes coming out from Minnesota are finally looking a tiny bit better. (For now.) He’d get to play in his home state, he’d immediately become a vocal leader in this team—the dude is absolutely the loudest voice in every room, and such a good guy as well—and he’d likely have the ball in his hands a lot. It’s the right time to catch the Timberwolves, and getting to play with top-tier offensive talent like he did at Gonzaga should make him feel instantly at home.
4) Detroit Pistons, Jalen Green
These last couple are gonna be a bit shorter. I apologize, they have the unfortunate combination of being G Leaguers and Eastern Conference Teams. But Jalen Green is kind of a godsend to a team like Detroit. Think of it like this: they’re terrible last year. They end up picking seventh and get Killian Hayes, which…fine. Not the end of the world. But they wanted LaMelo REAL bad, and they were absolutely right to want him. Now, they pick fourth? Still would’ve been out of luck last year, but Jalen Green might be the most talented guy in this draft.
Green is a scorer, and as we’ve learned from Jerami Grant, you don’t even need to be a scorer to put up points for these Pistons. It would, uh, help a bit, though. That’s where he comes in—hey, want to ease Killian Hayes in a bit more? Jalen Green will hit shots. Want Jerami Grant to stop doing a PG in Indiana impression? Sure, give Jalen Green the keys to the offense. Want to actually score with teams, not just hope defense wins out, which it usually doesn’t in today’s NBA? Jalen has you covered.
The guy has also been putting up points against legit grown men in the G League. He’s talented as hell, and he would’ve dominated college basketball. Whichever college he attended, he’d have been a March Madness cult hero. As it was, we got Johnny Juzang, who does happen to have a cool name. Detroit is once again thrilled to not be picking in the seven spot.
I think the fit with Grant is the largest part of all this. Having two guys at their level of scorer is simply necessary to compete with teams, and so the team will thrive with him there. In terms of fit, they really, really need a scorer like him. No one else in the top 5 fits their needs anywhere near as well.
It works for Jalen too because he gets to instantly be the secondary scorer on this team. That’s like Harden in OKC as he developed—he added to his bag of tricks every year even as KD led the team from a scoring standpoint and Russ from a leadership perspective. He can grow, get his points, and roll with whichever young guy they add from next year’s top 5.
5) Orlando Magic, Jonathan Kuminga
Wow, the Orlando Magic sure like taking guys who can’t shoot, right? Roll on snare drum. Curtains. But in actuality, Kuminga fits the mold of the player they’ve been actively seeking out for god knows how long.
This is their problem—they’re a little too in love with big guys. Maybe it’s like the guy in your fantasy football draft who takes like five QBs, under the auspices that “hey, they actually score more points than anybody, and I’ll be able to trade with whoever, and I’ll be covered if there are byes or injuries!” Yes, maybe, but you can only play one at a time, they’re usually not in that much demand, and now your roster has a ton of gaping holes that you can’t fix on the waiver wire. It’s bad to overvalue something when literally no one else is overvaluing it.
The Magic have realized this problem, and so they have devised a plan to fix it. They got a bunch of short guys like Markelle Fultz, Cole Anthony, and Terrence Ross. Hey, let’s run PnRs! Why not get some shooting? And then they went up against the wings of the league, couldn’t cover anyone, couldn’t score on anyone, committed way too many fouls at the rim and now their developmental big guys feel pretty useless.
Get a damn wing, Orlando. That’s Jonathan Kuminga here. He can score in the way Aaron Gordon never could, and he can play smart basketball the way Aaron Gordon never could. He can play defense, too. And he’s a better fit on the wing than Chuma Okeke—whom I like!—or Dwayne Bacon and Otto Porter, Jr. It’s a lot of embarrassing stuff at SF for Orlando.
(This isn’t to say I don’t like some of their moves. I have always been very much in on Markelle Fultz, RJ Hampton, and Chuma Okeke. WCJ and Cole Anthony don’t seem hopeless, and maybe Mo Bamba can do some things. But good lord would someone like Jonathan Kuminga help.)
Jeez, I’m talking a lot about fit, huh? Should we talk about Kuminga, who’s got that Jaylen Brown potential? Has Kawhi-type qualities, at least on some levels? I should mention again he’s more of a project than these guys, but he’ll still be able to get 10 points on a lot of nights his rookie year, and he’ll have some where he drops 25. He needs time to develop, and what better place than on a Magic team which is clearly, undoubtedly, figuring things out slowly. He’s a glue guy in a lot of ways and will likely be the best player in this core by the end of his rookie deal. To make a team finally grow together as, well, a team? He fits better than anybody else does here. They don’t need flashy, they don’t need a guy who’s desperate to win immediately, they need a guy who will take things slow but keep consistently improving. And all those things are true of the team Kuminga needs.
Now, after reading this mostly-qualifying profile of him, realize that he can get to the rim explosively, make terrific kickout passes, and use nasty crossovers on guys who should know better. When he wants to do flashy, good Lord can he do flashy. Like the guys above him, he’s probably going to be a star. It all depends on where he goes and if he’s allowed to thrive.