Ochai Agbaji

 Your number 14 selection:  Ochai Agbaji.  

I’m not going to slow play this one, I don’t like the selection, which is more or less why I’ve been low key ignoring him in other pieces so far in the season preview.

The first issue is that 3pt shooting is wildly overrated in the NBA.  Not that it isn’t important, but being really, really good at it- great even- can still leave you struggling to find a role while yammering fools talk about how you ‘always need more shooting’ as if its some unique talent.  Joe Harris led the league twice in 3pt %, and has posted 4 full seasons on good volume (350+ attempts) at > 41%, and he didn’t find a good rotation role until his age 26 season after he had been dumped by a pair of teams.  Seth Curry is a 44% career 3pt shooter who didn’t find a role until he was 26, until his 5 team- and that team let him walk for a 1 year/2.8 million dollar deal.  

OK, so how about more direct comparisons.  Ochai was a late lottery pick after all.  Duarte, Kispert, Mikal Bridges, Vassell, Hunter and a bunch of others have come into the league with as good or better 3pt shooting in college and ended up well south of the 40% line in the pros their first few seasons.  Nesmith shot 41% on 290 college attempts, went 14th overall and is now on his 2nd team after hitting 32% on his first 220 pro attempts.  Saddiq Bey shot 42% on 300 college attempts, went 19th and is shooting 36% on his first 1,000 pro attempts (impressive volume for a guy going into his 3rd season).  Okeke 16th overall, 39% on 220 attempts, 32% on his first 500 NBA 3s.

This isn’t even delving into the picks in the 20s, but the point is made.  There is a large downside for good, or even great, college shooters when they first enter the NBA.  The players listed aren’t all busts, and some of the current misses will even develop into hits.  Our medium outcome for Ochai’s shooting his first couple of years is probably around 35% or league average.  

This puts a significant crimp on the hopes that Agbaji will be a positive contributor over his first two seasons. 35% on good volume would be a definite improvement offensively over Okoro last season, but that presumes solid defense plus Okoro not progressing.  Or Stevens/Winder not becoming a good shooter, or Neto not being able to play that role, or Sexton not fitting that role, or the Cavs not even needing that role when Rubio returns.  The Cavs were poor, but passable, last season with Osman playing the 2 even (-2.7/100).  

Now I don’t mind taking the BPA when there is a logjam at a position, but I don’t like taking a positional fit when the need actually isn’t there.  The Cavs can always use shooting of course, as long as it is paired with other quality skills.  Their offense was 73rd percentile with Garland on the court last season with lots of time to non shooters in Okoro, Stevens, Rubio, Mobley and Levert.  

Once you devalue his first few years in the league the selection becomes untenable.  Tari Eason or AJ Griffin are both much, much higher upside players.  Even Dalen Terry represents a better understanding of the draft process as a selection there.  

Before we get to any sort of praise for the Agbaji selection I want to dispel one shit narrative floating around his college production.  He did not get better every season.  Sophomore year was on par with his freshman season, and he regressed in rebound, block, TS and TO rates without adding volume scoring to his game.  His freshman year ended as his best 2pt% and 2nd best FT%, and his assist numbers never meaningfully improved after his sophomore season.  

The reasonable stuff (I can’t even say ‘the good stuff’ here).  He’s got enough physical traits and college production to reasonably be a 3+D wing in the NBA, though he needs good outcomes to be a 3+D wing who can defend bigger SFs/smaller PFs which is the most valuable type of wing defender.  He plays off ball which is a good fit for the Cavs as long as they have a second creator, and he reportedly has a good attitude and work ethic.  That is sort of it, he’s got one main dimension of potential and if he can’t shoot he’ll hang around until they find someone who can.

That last line is the real damning portion here.  When you draft a guy who has one notable skill recommending him to the NBA he needs to be elite at it or you have a high bust potential on your hands.  As a 34/35% 3pt shooter Agbaji is very unlikely to be notable.  That is KCP but without yet proving hes an above average NBA defender (oh and KCP is 36% and is still a journeyman, going onto his 4th team in 10 seasons).  

Side Rant:  How in the living fuck did Tari Eason fall to 17?  Any team with an analytics department should have had smoke coming out of their computers after running his numbers.  Yeah, he came off the bench and played 24 mpg, but the number of potential NBA skills that he showed was ALL OF THEM.  7 Stocks per 100?!?!!  39 points per 100 on 62% TS?!?!?!  15 rebounds, 56% from 2, 36% from 3, 13 FTAs/100.  I get the foul and turnover issues (though last year his TOs were acceptable for that level of production) but as a team are you declaring that you will never, ever take a foul prone player and try to work it out with them?  Because most of the teams who passed on him have taken lesser foul prone prospects in the past.  As a prospect he should have definitively been taken ahead of Johnny Davis, Jeremy Sochan, Ochai, Mark Williams.  I might take him above Williams and Duran even if you stipulated that the player I took had to play center.  This is back 2 back seasons that the Rockets have landed a tremendous prospect out of the lottery while other teams were farting around and taking 24 year old guards and shit.  Thank goodness they ended up with the worst prospect of the top 4 taken in the 2021 draft, or things would be getting hairy for the rest of the league in a few years.