At a certain point in the draft, floor doesn’t matter, and players’ ceiling outcomes look less like superstars than they do good starters or valuable rotation pieces.

Player outcome distributions are rarely this simple or reducible, but for argument’s sake, entertain the following example.

Player A:

Player B:

In the second round, undrafted free agent market, or even just outside the lottery, this is a fairly common scenario. One could make a reasonable argument that Player B is more likely to be, and probably already is, the better basketball player outside of the NBA context. But why would their respective floors be part of the equation here? The degree to which a player is not an NBA player is completely irrelevant as long as they are decidedly not an NBA player. The first bullet points are a wash.

Player B also has a higher median outcome, but if that outcome still can’t be on the court when it matters, the difference between that and a non-NBA player is significantly less meaningful than the difference between the two ceiling outcomes in this hypothetical. That pulls the argument clearly in favor of Player A, despite Player A likely being the worse basketball player.

Even in the late lottery, many prospects have floor outcomes of non-NBA players, whether we like to admit it or not. Additionally, the marginal and relative differences in median outcomes are far less meaningful than the differences in ceiling outcomes when your goal is finding talent that contributes to winning, is usable in the playoffs and is valuable to have under long-term team control. Especially once you’re out of the first round, the marginal differences in player ceilings are the main driver of prospect value.

Deividas Sirvydis’ offensive IQ, size and shot versatility at his size (6-foot-7) give him considerable impact upside. As Ben Rubin wrote in June, players bringing a movement jumper to the table bring significant bang (Real Plus Minus impact) for one’s buck (usage rate). Adding in contextual playmaking ability doesn’t hurt.

A conclusion to draw from the value of movement jumpers and playmaking is that one of the most valuable traits in a support player is the ability to act as connective tissue. Offensively, this is accomplished in two major ways: spacing the floor and making quick decisions. That is, can the prospect apply pressure to defenses without the ball, and how long does it take him to decide whether to drive, pass or shoot? And regarding the latter, how often does the player choose correctly? Lithuanian wing Deividas Sirvydis excels in these capacities.

Sirvydis was the primary creator for Lietuvos Rytas’s Adidas Next Generations team this past tournament. He demonstrated fearlessness as an off-the-dribble threat in key moments, but he also showed a willingness to defer and and a proclivity to scale down. Without making too much of highly subjective “killer instinct” on-court psychological analysis, it’s encouraging to have seen both sides to his game, as it’s hard to envision a player not showing both proclivities at that level of competition having any level of NBA success. Confidence is important.

Still, as important as pull-up shot versatility is, Sirvydis is unlikely to be placed in repeated high pick-and-roll situations to self-create against set defenses at a high professional level. His shooting, quick decisions with the ball and offensive IQ are the more utilitarian skills for him. His pull-up projects forward more so as a method to punish fly-by closeouts, drive and make plays off pin-downs, or potentially run a secondary weak side pick-and-roll and force defenses over the screen, than it does as a method to create from the middle against set defenses in high pick-and-roll sets or isolation settings. His projection is less rosy defensively, but if he reaches a reasonably high offensive outcome, it’s unlikely his defense would be so bad at every level that it would outweigh his offense.

Sirvydis’ shooting is his most important NBA skill. He’s a left-handed shooter, but has shown some proclivity going either direction, setting his feet and getting into his shot quickly and efficiently.

Here, he hops into his shot coming off a weak side pin-down going to his right. Most of his tape thus far has come against NKL competition, as this possession does, where he started 23 of 30 games for a mediocre Perlas Vilnius team last season, playing alongside some other interesting long-term Lithuanian prospects like Karolis Giedratis, Einaras Tubutis and Simas Jarumbauskas.

This shot doesn’t go in, but it is a particularly difficult attempt for a predominantly off-ball shooter, and it is encouraging for this attempt to at least be quick and look solid mechanically. Executing a full 180-degree turn into a shot is far more difficult than catching on a pin-down or a similar action, where the turn is typically no more than 90 degrees.

Predictably, his catch-and-shoot mechanics are smooth and easily repeatable. He has a good sense for relocating along the perimeter and his size allows him to shoot comfortably over many contests.

I’m not quite as good at breaking down shot mechanics as some of the Stepien’s other writers, but it’s hard not to feel good about his jumper in terms of release motion, rhythm dip, foot placement and landing, and the consistency of each of those parts. In my opinion, in catch-and-shoot settings he could stand to improve his preparation and catching in rhythm instead of stepping into his shot after the catch, but I wouldn’t consider that some kind of death knell.

On the ball, one of Sirvydis’s favorite moves is a step back to his right. Against Real Madrid in ANGT, Sirvydis was frequently asked to create against “mismatches” versus opposing bigs on the perimeter. Usman Garuba and Golden Dike often ended up on the receiving end of those plays. On one possession, Sirvydis caused the quick and athletic Garuba to stumble and nearly fall on his backside, but that was moreso due to Garuba losing his own balance with excessively spastic foot movement than it was due to Sirvydis unleashing some kind of Curry-esque combination of space-creating dribble moves. Here, he gets just enough space against Dike to drain a long-range jumper past Dike’s outstretched arm.

He doesn’t need the step back to get this one off against Dike’s contest.

Senegalese wunderkind (and point of interest for the 2020 draft) Amar Sylla was not spared from Sirvydis’ iso rampage either.

For the most part, Sirvydis’ pull-up and dribble game aren’t so dynamic that I would project this kind of mismatch-hunting to be a realistic NBA skill for him, and even at the NKL level he used it infrequently and only really shot off the dribble when given considerable time and space.

The main conclusion to draw from these off-dribble shooting clips is to highlight his overall shot functionality, which as I mentioned projects more as an avenue to diversify the manners in which he can exploit an already-scrambling defense than it does as a way for him to create efficient shots or penetration against set defenses in the half court. That is an important skill to have as a role player.

In terms of his statistical indicators, Sirvydis is a career 37 percent 3-point shooter whose numbers have remained steady throughout his brief career, ticking up gradually into a 41 percent figure over his last 20 games. He is a career 74 percent free throw shooter and has shot approximately 9 3s per 40 minutes over 69 games. In my prospect database, his attempt rate is in the 97th percentiles for both his position and height. His NKL numbers, which are slightly worse than his career numbers, alone project into a 41 percent from 3 NBA mark by my model.

II. Passing

After rewatching all of his assists recorded at the FIBA U18 European Championships this year, Sirvydis’ offensive IQ in making the proverbial “right plays” in a speedy manner is a key driver of his value. On this possession, Sirvydis catches the ball on the move into an angle pick-and-roll. He uses a rip-through move to create space from his man and quickly reads the blitz, and exploits a scrambling defense with a simple pass over the top leading to a wide open jumper.

Another key element of Sirvydis’ offensive portfolio is the ability to make quick, smart contextual reads. None of this is to suggest he is some kind of Lebron-level basketball savant, but his ability to consistently execute these passes coming off of curls and pin-downs diversifies the ways in which he can turn secondary actions into high expected value shots for the offense.

Sirvydis’ passing feel shows up in transition as well. Here, he waits just long enough for Serbia’s Filip Petrusev to commit to defending the shot in order to get his teammate an open layup.

His feel and timing have improved over time in the pick-and-roll. On this play, Sirvydis executes a nice pocket pass to the roller. He doesn’t have the horizontal burst to really pressure defenses and force responses from a stationary position at higher levels of competition, but it’s easy to picture his effectiveness and versatility employed in a motion-type scheme, where Sirvydis can run into pick-and-rolls off a screen and make basic reads like this.

This pass is kind of awkward, but it at least demonstrates his vision for kickouts in the half court due in part to his height. The fact he has enough burst to get into the lane at this level is encouraging for what it says about his athleticism as it relates to baseline NBA ability.

Obviously this is not directly related to passing, but Sirvydis has a bit of a floater game as well, showing some nice touch with his left hand and getting really solid arc. The discouraging part of these clips is how much he looks down at his hands while dribbling into the lane. Floaters are not a dependably efficient shot, but it is a nice weapon to have in certain settings, especially getting into the lane if the defense takes away his jumper.

The main takeaway for Sirvydis’s playmaking acumen is that he doesn’t project as some kind of high-volume creator for others, but it’s obvious how he can add value within a low usage NBA role, partaking in secondary actions to force responses from opposing defenses on the weak side, or making good, quick decisions on the move within a motion system. Drawing back on Ben’s piece on offensive upside, that set of skills presents notable impact upside.

III. Defense

I’ll lead into this section by noting that Sirvydis’s ideal defensive outcome looks similar to the outcomes for Kyle Korver or J.J. Redick, kings of the movement jumper archetype, who will get burned by mismatches or in on-ball situations, but are at least salvageable on defense by knowing where to be and not making mistakes in a team construct. Sirvydis’s height alone should prevent him from becoming a post-up target, and his stock rates thus far have been largely good, but that doesn’t take away from his relative dearth of redeeming on-ball defensive qualities.

Sirvydis is tall but has short arms, is slow laterally, lacks vertical pop and is too light to consistently sit down in a stance. He won’t (or at least shouldn’t) be asked to guard the point of attack very much. The fact he can get beat with relative ease on the LKL level isn’t great for his NBA projection.

Sirvydis can at least move his feet pretty well and when he uses his size, he presents more reasons for optimism. This play ends in a foul, but the appeal is a bit more obvious.

His north-to-south change of direction is also disappointingly slow. Hopefully with technical and athletic improvements as he develops, he can at least hold up in these areas.

Sirvydis somehow managed to accumulate 8 steals in this game against Mazeikiai. Many of them were just happenstance as errant passes fell into his lap, but he also has a decent sense for positioning and gap defense off the ball. His initial help on this possession prevents Mazeikiai’s point guard, Torrance Rowe, from getting into the lane while cutting off most of his release valves. He posted a 3.5 percent steal rate and 1.4 percent block rate in NKL play, both of which rate into high percentiles in my database across multiple filters.

It will be worth watching this season to see if Sirvydis’ steal rate remains legitimate or if it was more a result of errant NKL passing, as can often be the case at this level of competition.

Wings Sirvydis’ size with decent awareness rarely end up at the bottom of the barrel in defensive impact metrics, so at this stage I am highly optimistic that the value of his offensive skill set will comfortably outweigh whatever he takes off the table defensively. This is especially so since at a reasonably high outcome level and with the addition of more physical mass, Sirvydis probably won’t be quite enough of a mismatch target for post-ups and isolations against him to be legitimately headhunted over the course of a game (at least on efficient attempts).

IV. Conclusions

Most of the time, impact upside is the most important thing when evaluating draft prospects for the NBA. Deividas Sirvydis brings a set of skills that demonstrably lends itself to impact upside, at least on the offensive end, even if he lacks the athleticism traditionally associated with star upside.

To tie things together, here is his profile using RealGM NKL statistical data and percentiles among my prospect database of over 3000 players. Predictably, the elements of his game that pop statistically are shooting and passing related, but his defensive numbers are also good outside of rebounding.

Lithuania has a handful of interesting prospects at different levels at the moment —Tadas Sedekerskis, Laurynas Birutis, Martynas Arlauskas, Rokas Jokubaitis, Jarumbauskas, Giedratis, Tubutis, Matas Jogela, Arnas Velicka, and Martynas Echodas (amongst others) with more coming in the pipeline. For my money, Sirvydis is the best bet for NBA purposes (including the not-yet eligible prospects that obviously still have plenty of time to develop), because of Sirvydis’ safety to value, archetype, impact upside, intelligence and age.

Among the rest of this admittedly weak international class, no other prospect is bringing a more easily translatable, immediately valuable skill to the table within such a clearly valuable archetype. For that reason, Sirvydis deserves to be mentioned in the upper tiers of this class and to be considered a real first-round prospect. If Sekou Doumbouya retains his grip on the top tier primarily due to his physical upside, Sirvydis at least should be considered a potentially better prospect than many in the second tier, including Luka Samanic, Tadas Sedekerskis, Zoran Paunovic and Vrenz Bleijenbergh, all of whom possess alluring qualities in their own rights but either possess more downside risk or lack such a demonstrably valuable skill input specifically for NBA projection.

Sirvydis is the exact type of high-level role player prospect that should be sought outside the lottery, where impact upside and NBA skills are the most important factors into value, even if he presents some downside as an on-ball defender.

The later stages of the draft especially are rife with prospects that possess good traditional defensive tools (i.e. wingspan and run-jump athleticism) and single-season spot-up percentages (which are obviously fraught with noise), checking the absolute bare minimum of boxes to fit within the “3&D” buzzword. This does not take into consideration the fact that high impact NBA players, even “3&D” types, almost always have highly diverse skill sets particularly at lower levels and derive NBA value from more than just conceptual physical tools and decent spot-up shooting. As we have learned time and time again, team defense is more important than on-ball defense, and the difference in plus-minus value between stationary shooting + playmaking capabilities and movement shooting + playmaking capabilities is staggering. The 2019 draft is especially likely to suffer from this phenomenon because it lacks a certain degree of high-level depth outside of the absolute top tier. There is a strong likelihood that much of the subsequent ranges will be littered with prospects who were pulled for checking those bare minimum boxes, rather than prospects that actually resemble players with real NBA value.

Again, the goal in this range of the draft should be to attain legitimate plus-minus impact upside, even via its scalable cousin; ORPM:USG. Sirvydis possesses that because of his shooting diversity and IQ.