Draft preview, Part 3: This is hell

A look at the high-quality remnants of an NBA Draft Lottery gone terribly wrong.

If you’re reluctant to read this missive, I understand. Nobody around the Spurs or their fandom wants to have the conversation about what happens next should the team slide all the way down to the sixth or seventh pick in the NBA Draft. But considering there’s a 33 percent chance of that happening — 26 percent of falling to sixth, 7 percent of dropping to seventh — it doesn’t hurt to at least be prepared.

Or maybe it does. Perhaps it’s just not something anyone wants to think about.

In any case, I’ve done some of the thinking for you. There are other names I’d like to get to at a later date, but for now, here’s the final tier of this preview — lined with good players who are only considered worst-possible options because of extenuating circumstances.

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The This-Is-Hell Tier

Anthony Black, Arkansas
Height: 6’7
Weight: 198 lbs
Wingspan: (might have to wait for combine measurements)
Age: 19

As we descend further into the realm of the role player, I don’t want to minimize the type of impact these guys could make at the next level. It’s all relative. Drafting sixth or seventh overall can be a major disappointment given the context of San Antonio’s season, but one can still acknowledge the talent that exists in the remaining lottery pool would make the Spurs better.

Anthony Black might be the player in this category who represents the most silvery possible lining. Put it like this: If I’m Orlando, Washington or Utah, and I wasn’t one of the four teams drawn in the lottery, I am pretty damn happy if he’s still on the board when my pick rolls around. A true 6’7 point guard with eye-popping intelligence, tremendous feel for the game, every pass in the books, great touch near the rim, and arguably best-in-class perimeter defense, there’s a chance Black is a more dangerous version of Josh Giddey. He’s not even in the league yet, so we’ll slow down a bit. But man did he look good in the confines of a college environment, on a team with pretty terrible spacing.

Defensively, this guy is a rarity. It’s not often you see players his size pick up marks as far from the basket as he does. Generally speaking, you’re always afraid the smaller, quicker guards are going to torch the bigger ones who decide to press, but Black’s lateral quickness and foot speed allow him to extend up the court with relative ease. On top of that he uses his hands and long arms as weapons against ball-handlers, setting up for quick strikes against crossovers, swatting garden-variety passes out of the air when unsuspecting players are too casual initiating offense, and perfectly timing the wraparound poke when penetrators think they’re in the clear.

Black averaged 2.1 steals per game during his one season at Arkansas, but the defense didn’t stop there. Because of his length, strength and quickness, it was very difficult for anyone to score against him. Opponents shot just 33.6 percent on all shot attempts when Black was their primary defender, per Synergy data, and it’s easy to understand why. His ability to slide his feet and stick to whatever archetype he’s guarding while keeping his long arms high in the air is picturesque, and his timing as a shot-blocking guard just ties it all together at the end of possessions. In a draft that’s packed with good defenders, he is right there in the conversation with the non-Wemby best.

On offense he’s just a smooth operator. Black processes everything at a very quick pace, often living one step ahead of the defense. It’s entertaining to watch him set up defenders into thinking he’s going one direction with a drive or pass, only to use their positioning against them to create easier looks for himself and his teammates in the opposite direction. His basketball I.Q. is off the charts, and he uses it to almost toy with the players guarding him.

Unlike many backcourt players, he doesn’t really have a “head down” mode when he’s on the attack. His eyes are ALWAYS up, and he showed total awareness of where his teammates were on the floor at all times. Not only that, but Black can make every pass in the book: fastballs to the weakside corner, drop-offs to the rolling big, bounces to the cutter, cross-court looks off the drive, flips to the spot-up man off the pick-and-pop, perfect hit-aheads in transition — just all of it. But it’s his ability to leverage his scoring gravity that makes so many of those looks possible.

Black is a big guard with decent burst and great strength, whose pick-and-roll game should translate very well to the wide-open spaces of the NBA. He’s always in control of the situation, understanding when to attack hard toward the rim and when to remain patient with the dribble after coming off the screen. He does well keeping defenders on his hip and biding his time until the defense cracks and he’s able to get to his interior scoring spots, find cutters, or kick it to shooters once players collapse on the paint. He’s truly a master manipulator.

But stop me if you’ve heard this about some of the other point guard prospects in this draft: He really struggles to shoot from deep. There may be something to his pull-up game in the mid-range — he shot 41 percent on off-the-dribble 2s this season — but his outside shooting is as stiff as it gets. It’s a set shot almost by definition, with rigid mechanics and very little elevation, and he hit just 24 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s this season.

The hope is he’ll be able to boost that number to a near-average level, though I have reservations. His shot and mechanics seem in need of an overhaul, and that just makes it really difficult to project an outcome. But if you read and listen to what draft folks tell you, Black is an extremely hard worker who didn’t coast into any of this. The average draft evaluator is always going to love those types, and so do the Spurs. Much like Amen Thompson, he understands how to make up for his deficiencies in that department with his unique size, skill and vision. Defenses will sag off him, but they’ll have to treat him as a threat inside of 17 feet — and especially once he touches the paint — because he utilizes his frame so well against on-ball defenders.

If the Spurs do slide, and the more preferable options are off the table, they’d still be looking at a guy who has the makings of a long-time NBA floor general even if the outside shot doesn’t come along to the degree teams would like. But if it does, even just a little bit, you could be looking at one of the most well-balanced players in this class.

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Ausar Thompson, Overtime Elite
Height: 6’7
Weight: 207
Wingspan: 6’10
Age: 20

The Thompson twins have been the draft world’s basketball darlings for some time now. Competitive, hard-working, smart, athletic as hell, skilled — they check all the intangible boxes.

But considering Amen and Ausar have similar strengths and weaknesses, many wonder why the latter isn’t considered to be in the same tier as the former. Well, there are a couple of reasons, and somehow it starts with the athleticism.

If you’d like to read my breakdown of Amen, you can do so here.

There are degrees to twitchiness and explosiveness, and Ausar got the short end of the stick between he and his brother. It’s a hilarious thing to say considering he’ll likely be in the 90th percentile of athletes the second he steps foot on an NBA court, but given their skill sets, that difference between “great” and “otherworldly” is critical.

I’m not sure people will truly understand how athletic Amen is until he’s playing next to other professionals. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this preview series, he’s explosive enough to render certain coverages against him useless, because nobody can defend with the same kind of quickness and burst. But Ausar is not quite at that level. While it’s likely he’s going to do a ton of damage in the open floor, that added bit of gravitational pull from the earth changes the calculus in the half-court. And that’s where teams will be dissecting his performance.

He is a very smart player, an excellent passer, a lethal transition threat, a strong, above-the-rim finisher, and a connective secondary playmaker who should get plenty of on-ball reps at the next level. But Ausar flashed some tendencies with Overtime Elite that raise a number of questions about exactly what areas of his game will translate.

Like his brother, Ausar’s jump shot is worrisome. Defenses are going to sag off until he proves he can hit from the outside and in the mid-range consistently, and while he’s got the more promising form of the twins, there’s a long way to go for the sub-30-percent 3-point shooter. The math is easy on this, as it is with any of these guards who struggle with their shooting: If he figures out how to connect at a reasonable clip, the whole floor will open up for him. But at this point, we’re stuck with what’s on tape.

One of the most obvious differences between the two brothers is Amen’s willingness to attack off the dribble and adjust as a facilitator or finisher around the rim. Ausar seems hesitant to do so, and once he does get into the trees around the basket, he doesn’t display the same burst to explode over or around defenders. Instead, he prefers to survey the landscape, looking for cutters or spot-up shooters. That’s fine in the moment as he dribbles off ball-screens, but because he has a tendency to pick up his dribble once he gets into his passing zones, options can dry up quickly.

Defenses sag off, find their marks and dare him to shoot, and without a live dribble he finds himself stuck in place and needing to move the ball toward another option given his ineffective pull-up game. The additional space in the NBA is only valuable if it can be exploited, and Ausar’s style of play with Overtime Elite makes you wonder if he will be able to take full advantage.

One comparison I’ve seen and heard in a couple of different places is Andre Iguodala, and I think it’s a good one on both sides of the ball. Ausar does a lot of things well, but hasn’t yet shown he can stand out in any one area on the offensive end. He’s a tremendous connective passer, but you’d love to see him flash more off the dribble; he’s a very athletic finisher in the open and broken court, but there are questions about his ability to attack contests; off the ball he’s a great cutter, but he’s also a subpar spot-up shooter — though his 38.5-percent mark from deep on 39 postseason attempts makes you want to believe there’s something there.

If you think Ausar is going to be closer to a top-five player in this draft than a mid- to late-lottery guy, it’s likely because you trust his shot is going to improve to the point defenses have to respect it. A good development staff should be able to build him up as a live-dribble playmaker to some degree — the passing tools are already there, he just needs to find a feel for the ball-handling responsibilities — and shaping his shooting mechanics and establishing him as a perimeter threat could be in the cards as well. If he’s going to reach his ceiling, it has to be.

At minimum, Ausar feels like a high-level role player who will impact games as a secondary facilitator, an off-ball cutter, a transition monster and, potentially, a team’s No. 1 perimeter defender. I hadn’t mentioned his defense at all in this newsletter, but that’s mostly because his offense is what prompts the most questions. He’s got all the tools to be an on-ball menace, a disruptor in passing lanes and a weakside shot-blocking threat: length, strength, lateral quickness, intelligence, awareness, timing — it’s all there. We just need to see what it looks like when he’s engaged against better competition. Overtime Elite tape isn’t the easiest to parse, and he seemed to struggle with effort in navigating screens at times, but I’m just not too concerned about that stuff right now given his intangibles and the context of that league.

I’ve listed Ausar in this tier because he just doesn’t check enough basketball boxes at this juncture to push him past the players who flashed the most scoring and/or shooting upside. This is a really nice draft, and if he’s selected inside the top seven or eight, I think that’d be a huge accomplishment for him and his camp given the competition in that range. But if the shot starts to drop, and if he can become a legitimate pick-and-roll ball-handling threat capable of collapsing a defense, there is real potential for this guy to make the leap as a top-five player in this class. I’m just not quite there yet.

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Brandon Miller, Alabama
Height: 6’9
Weight: 200 lbs.
Wingspan: (have seen anywhere from 6’11 to 7’1)
Age: 20

I’m going to keep this short on the basketball analysis front, because I don’t believe Brandon Miller will be drafted by the Spurs.

Miller was linked to the January murder of 23-year-old Jamea Jonae Harris after police testimony alleged he brought the weapon used in the young mother’s fatal shooting to his then-teammate Darius Miles, who, along with another accomplice, has been charged with capital murder. Miller was not charged with a crime, nor was he suspended by Alabama for any period of time, as his involvement was eventually ruled incidental.

If you would like to read more about this story, here is a more detailed breakdown.

I don’t really care much about the basketball side of things here, but I understand this is a business and people would like to know what’s at stake here — however dirty that can often feel.

Miller is a talented shooter who can knock down shots from anywhere on the floor in almost every situation, and he’s coming out of school with a ton of experience as a pick-and-roll ball-handler capable of scoring or making plays for others when opportunities present themselves. As the year moved along he began to incorporate some craftiness to his game off the dribble, figuring out how to use his size and length to up his efficiency around the basket despite not possessing the burst to blow by or finish over bigger defenders. He’s a very good player with a nice ceiling, but I am not as high on him as most.

He’s a fluid athlete, but I wouldn’t call him explosive; he struggles to finish against length and size on the interior even at 6’9; his low, extended release off the dribble requires some additional space, and he’s not an elite-level shot-creator; despite ample opportunity, he was not an efficient scorer out of the pick-and-roll; he’s an OK defender with disruptive length and good instincts, but it’s not exactly his strong point; and while people will have differing opinions on this, he really struggled in a number of highly competitive, high-stakes games against aggressive defenses.

Unfortunately, in the world of sports, it often comes down to whether or not a prospect is worth the headache. And I don’t believe Miller is. Unless the Spurs discover something revelatory in pre-draft interviews, my assumption is they’ll identify an extreme lack of judgment from someone who will turn 21 years old a month into next season, and a person whose character is under intense scrutiny. I want to be careful here, as this is a young man who I’m sure was under strict legal guidance, but there was no apology from Miller himself following the firestorm earlier this year. All we heard was coaches and university officials describing the player’s state of remorse.

In fact, Miller continued with what had been a regular pre-game celebration featuring teammates patting him down during starting lineup introductions. It was explained away as Miller being cleared for take-off in a TSA line, and eventually discontinued, but the optics were absolutely brutal. Furthermore, don’t believe for a second the Spurs are without questions for the Alabama program.

We don’t need to rehash the Joshua Primo situation, but he spent his freshman season in Tuscaloosa. Gregg Popovich and that front office value tremendously the intel they get from college staffs, and Crimson Tide Head Coach Nate Oats is not sparkling at the moment. There may have been no way of knowing what was going on with Primo, and I’m not suggesting Alabama did. But as Oats continued to stick his foot in his mouth during the Miller controversy, it did not exactly inspire a ton of confidence in what was going on at that school.

I cannot say for sure San Antonio won’t draft Miller if they slide to a certain point, but it’s highly unlikely in my mind. I included him in this tier because he is a talent that would be difficult to simply toss to the side, but I do believe the Spurs will have options — whether that’s potentially involving him in a trade should he still be on the board, or flatly taking another player ahead of him. (For the record, I suggest anyone still sleeping on Taylor Hendricks cease doing so.)

Writing about a young person like this is the last thing I wanted to do. There is no chance for me to relate to what his life was and is like, but Miller has been linked to the murder case of a woman who was the mother of a 5-year-old child. Regardless of whether or not he knew of his friend’s intentions with the gun that night, life has consequences. Credibility, trust, confidence and forgiveness are not given. That’s all earned.

At the very least, Miller is going to be a contributing NBA player making a ton of money. But unless his name and intentions are cleared in the coming weeks, I don’t believe San Antonio will be his next home.

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