With the NBA Draft now just hours away, the final questions about LaMelo Ball and the rest of the prospects will, at least temporarily, fall to the wayside as teams make their decisions. The questions about Ball, specifically, have varied to wild degrees ahead of the draft.
Bleacher Report published one of the final articles with scout’s questions of Ball, both positive and negative. As is always the case, the negative questions carry more focus and attention.
Some of them don’t carry much weight, like the ones questioning his maturity.
“He’s every bit of a teenager; there is no maturity about him. His actions are age-appropriate, but I need a top-five pick to act the part of a franchise player.”
“Having a sense of entitlement is the worst thing for young players. Can he be humble?”
Many of those concerns are generic, cliche and unfounded, as is the case with this one. Outside of being a 19-year old, Ball’s maturity questions aren’t any more glaring than any other teenager in the draft.
One of the fairer concerns had to do with Ball’s shot release, which one scout described as “weird.” It may not be as bad as Lonzo’s but still is not pretty or orthodox. He did little to answer any of those questions about his shot with his 25% three-point percentage last season at Illawarra on nearly seven attempts per game.
Likewise, another fair critique was about his defense.
“Can he embrace being the best defender he can be? Can’t save yourself for offense like he did in Australia.”
Ball was given so many offensive duties with the Hawks that he did take many defensive possessions off. Will that change in the NBA? Ball will certainly have the size and length to be a plus defender in the league.
On the positive side, teams looked at Ball’s offensive game and saw plenty to like.
“He’s so dynamic as a playmaker. Spacing will be his best friend.”
“Unbelievable offensive feel. Very confident player.”
“Most talented player in the draft. I feel as good about his future as anyone else in this class.”
One of the bigger points is the first one discussed. With Illawarra, Ball had no three-point threats on his team. The team’s best three-point threat, Tim Coenraad, shot just 37.4% from three. At the same time, he didn’t have a roll threat that created gravity either. At the NBA level, he’ll likely have both of those.
In the end, small blurbs from anonymous scouts likely carry very little weight, especially considering the amount of scouts teams have and the amount of scouting teams do ahead of the draft. But it’s a small peak behind the curtain as to how teams may be looking at Ball ahead of the draft.
