That data can be a little misleading, as the 84th percentile in per 100 stat is not comparing him to players of the same level of usage who get to take more shots within their minutes. Also, I'm not sure where you're seeing the highest proportion of his shots stat, as he took more threes than rim attempts this year. More importantly though, a lot of his rim volume is boosted by transition volume thanks to Alabama's incredibly fast-paced and open spacing scheme. In the halfcourt, he took fewer rim attempts than midrange attempts for the year and within the game film you can see him get bumped off his line a bit against stronger defenders, which will be all of the NBA. It's a pretty consistent theme for Alabama players who come from the Nate Oats scheme to not translate quite as well at times as they don't get the benefit that other players do of bonus spacing compared to the college level; Alabama spacing is the best in the NCAA and is more similar to the NBA.
You're right that I probably could have framed that all better though, as the rim pressure itself was decently strong in college as a sophomore, and it's more the rim projection to the next level that has a few more questions.
Now of course that's not to say he won't be able to make it work in the NBA, as he did take major strides this past season compared to his freshman year (both in volume and efficiency), and he'll be able to leverage some of that transition threat with Maxey and VJ in the open floor. Love him as a prospect and can't wait to see him play!
I am not sure what you mean by saying the rim attempts per 100 is not comparing him to the same level of usage. That’s true but it would seem to help my point not hurt it: that stat would inflate the rim attempt figures of low minutes guys…which Philon is not. So the guys likely bumping him down in the percentile rankings would be non-comparable low actual attempts guys being over-inflated.
We can focus on this by looking at him relative to other first round lead guards:
- On Rim Attampts per 100 only Okorie, Acuff, and Flemmings are better than him. The latter two being <1 attempt/100 better so, pretty marginal.
- On FG% at the rim, only Stirtz and Anderson beat him, both of them are on MUCH lower volume per 100 (notably no player overlap between this point and my previous one)
- On Unassisted Rim Makes per 100, only Okorie is ahead of him.
- On FTR (not exactly rim attempt stuff, but an adjacent indicator IMO) only Okorie and Brown Jr. were better, and only slightly. (so was Wagler but I consider him somewhat positionally different).
- Ben Pfeifer did hand tracking for Half-Court Advantage Creation and Philon was in a class entirely his own among a sample of lottery projected non-bigs (this was in a graphic I saw and can’t share as a comment)
- SportRadar did a comparison of fg% on half-court driving layups including high level prospects from last year’s draft. Philon was number one among players with >/=4 drive attempts per game. Notably, he was better than Dylon Harper on the same number of attempts, better than Swain on the same number of attempts, and better than Dybantsa on one fewer attempt per game. (this was in a graphic I saw and can’t share as a comment)
This is a pretty large sample of different stats and sources and indicators that all say the same thing: dude is elite at getting to and finishing at the rim relative to his peers almost no matter how you draw the peer definition (include wings! Dudes from last year! Whatever the hell Dybantsa is!)
As for the shot proportion thing, that is from DataBallr/DraftBallr and that is in part me reading the graph wrong: he too more shots from 1-3 feet than from 23-25 feet, which was the other high volume area for 3-foot intervals. But, obviously, he took some threes from other ranges and adding those in makes it higher than his 1-3 foot attempts. I think my point about this still stands: 1-3 feet was more total shots than any other 3-foot range interval
All thats said, it’s true that there’s no guaranteed this translates. It might not! Philon is very skinny and the NBA is full of bigger dudes. Two counters to that hedge though: He had huge games against NBA level dudes like when he played Michigan, when he cooked Quaintence a few times playing UK, etc; and the translation risk is also true of any player you could have taken there (or really, anywhere) in the draft, it’s not unique to Philon.
These are good points! The per 100 point I was trying to make is that in his role, he was allowed to take a ton of shots in general which would put him towards the top of any per 100 shots stats. Most other players don't get the free rein to take all the shots they want, so they would be lower on the per 100 even though the stat is attempting to bump up their numbers. Essentially, Philon is allowed to take more shots in his one minute on the floor than a smaller role player would be. A more apples-to-apples comparison is the percentage of his shots that come at the rim overall in which he's more average, though again that doesn't totally capture the full story.
But the two most important things I'm trying to get across are that the Alabama scheme allows for a TON of rim attempts due to their abnormal spacing for a college team, and that same scheme also plays at breakneck pace, which allows him to get a ton of transition scoring opportunities, most of which will come at the rim for the standard college team (over half of Philon's total rim attempts came in transition). Yes, he has strong volume and he took advantage of it, but he was in the single best environment to generate that volume in all of college basketball (this is what makes Alabama players often hard to evaluate).
A lot of what I talked about in my comment is based on a film review as well. Game to game, I just saw him bumped off his line a good amount on drives against stronger defenders and that's what he'll be facing at the next level along with more advanced defenses. He had success as well at times (like the Michigan game you mentioned), which is why I still love him as a player, but flashes like that in film are scary sometimes.
All that said, he was a strong rim scorer as a college player, and you're right that I probably undersold that in the paragraph. The bigger issue I was trying to portray is just that the track record for players of his weight, especially given that he only gained 2 lbs from freshman to sophomore year; the rim scoring point was just one place I saw that pop up in film which is why I brought it up there. I probably should have made that overarching weight theme more of the focus, as it's the core reason he wasn't in the dream pick category, not necessarily the rim scoring specifically.
I don’t want to nitpick this too hard because we’ve picked him and you like him as a prospect.
But saying Philon struggles with rim pressure is ludicrous to me. His highest proportion of shots last year came from 1-3 feet. That’s a layup.
He was 84th percentile amongst guards in rim attempts per 100.
He also is good at floater range, which is awesome. But he took wayyyy more shots from layup range than middle-floater range.
That data can be a little misleading, as the 84th percentile in per 100 stat is not comparing him to players of the same level of usage who get to take more shots within their minutes. Also, I'm not sure where you're seeing the highest proportion of his shots stat, as he took more threes than rim attempts this year. More importantly though, a lot of his rim volume is boosted by transition volume thanks to Alabama's incredibly fast-paced and open spacing scheme. In the halfcourt, he took fewer rim attempts than midrange attempts for the year and within the game film you can see him get bumped off his line a bit against stronger defenders, which will be all of the NBA. It's a pretty consistent theme for Alabama players who come from the Nate Oats scheme to not translate quite as well at times as they don't get the benefit that other players do of bonus spacing compared to the college level; Alabama spacing is the best in the NCAA and is more similar to the NBA.
You're right that I probably could have framed that all better though, as the rim pressure itself was decently strong in college as a sophomore, and it's more the rim projection to the next level that has a few more questions.
Now of course that's not to say he won't be able to make it work in the NBA, as he did take major strides this past season compared to his freshman year (both in volume and efficiency), and he'll be able to leverage some of that transition threat with Maxey and VJ in the open floor. Love him as a prospect and can't wait to see him play!
I am not sure what you mean by saying the rim attempts per 100 is not comparing him to the same level of usage. That’s true but it would seem to help my point not hurt it: that stat would inflate the rim attempt figures of low minutes guys…which Philon is not. So the guys likely bumping him down in the percentile rankings would be non-comparable low actual attempts guys being over-inflated.
We can focus on this by looking at him relative to other first round lead guards:
- On Rim Attampts per 100 only Okorie, Acuff, and Flemmings are better than him. The latter two being <1 attempt/100 better so, pretty marginal.
- On FG% at the rim, only Stirtz and Anderson beat him, both of them are on MUCH lower volume per 100 (notably no player overlap between this point and my previous one)
- On Unassisted Rim Makes per 100, only Okorie is ahead of him.
- On FTR (not exactly rim attempt stuff, but an adjacent indicator IMO) only Okorie and Brown Jr. were better, and only slightly. (so was Wagler but I consider him somewhat positionally different).
- Ben Pfeifer did hand tracking for Half-Court Advantage Creation and Philon was in a class entirely his own among a sample of lottery projected non-bigs (this was in a graphic I saw and can’t share as a comment)
- SportRadar did a comparison of fg% on half-court driving layups including high level prospects from last year’s draft. Philon was number one among players with >/=4 drive attempts per game. Notably, he was better than Dylon Harper on the same number of attempts, better than Swain on the same number of attempts, and better than Dybantsa on one fewer attempt per game. (this was in a graphic I saw and can’t share as a comment)
This is a pretty large sample of different stats and sources and indicators that all say the same thing: dude is elite at getting to and finishing at the rim relative to his peers almost no matter how you draw the peer definition (include wings! Dudes from last year! Whatever the hell Dybantsa is!)
As for the shot proportion thing, that is from DataBallr/DraftBallr and that is in part me reading the graph wrong: he too more shots from 1-3 feet than from 23-25 feet, which was the other high volume area for 3-foot intervals. But, obviously, he took some threes from other ranges and adding those in makes it higher than his 1-3 foot attempts. I think my point about this still stands: 1-3 feet was more total shots than any other 3-foot range interval
All thats said, it’s true that there’s no guaranteed this translates. It might not! Philon is very skinny and the NBA is full of bigger dudes. Two counters to that hedge though: He had huge games against NBA level dudes like when he played Michigan, when he cooked Quaintence a few times playing UK, etc; and the translation risk is also true of any player you could have taken there (or really, anywhere) in the draft, it’s not unique to Philon.
These are good points! The per 100 point I was trying to make is that in his role, he was allowed to take a ton of shots in general which would put him towards the top of any per 100 shots stats. Most other players don't get the free rein to take all the shots they want, so they would be lower on the per 100 even though the stat is attempting to bump up their numbers. Essentially, Philon is allowed to take more shots in his one minute on the floor than a smaller role player would be. A more apples-to-apples comparison is the percentage of his shots that come at the rim overall in which he's more average, though again that doesn't totally capture the full story.
But the two most important things I'm trying to get across are that the Alabama scheme allows for a TON of rim attempts due to their abnormal spacing for a college team, and that same scheme also plays at breakneck pace, which allows him to get a ton of transition scoring opportunities, most of which will come at the rim for the standard college team (over half of Philon's total rim attempts came in transition). Yes, he has strong volume and he took advantage of it, but he was in the single best environment to generate that volume in all of college basketball (this is what makes Alabama players often hard to evaluate).
A lot of what I talked about in my comment is based on a film review as well. Game to game, I just saw him bumped off his line a good amount on drives against stronger defenders and that's what he'll be facing at the next level along with more advanced defenses. He had success as well at times (like the Michigan game you mentioned), which is why I still love him as a player, but flashes like that in film are scary sometimes.
All that said, he was a strong rim scorer as a college player, and you're right that I probably undersold that in the paragraph. The bigger issue I was trying to portray is just that the track record for players of his weight, especially given that he only gained 2 lbs from freshman to sophomore year; the rim scoring point was just one place I saw that pop up in film which is why I brought it up there. I probably should have made that overarching weight theme more of the focus, as it's the core reason he wasn't in the dream pick category, not necessarily the rim scoring specifically.