The Part Where We Are Introduced Numerically To Xavier Tillman

1) For a player with bar none the best returning box scores of any returning player, Xavier Tillman doesn’t receive a lot of publicity. That’s not to say he’s unknown, but it is to say that we are perhaps not speaking about him enough.

Statistical uniqueness tends to be a very important indicator in terms of locating future high value players in the draft. That’s not to say it’s fool proof. It’s just to say that it’s a threshold most players we term stars do cross. Xavier Tillman, however, is arguably not one of them. He’s arguably not one of them not because he’s not talented. He’s not one of them because this far into his college career at least his numbers almost perfectly map those of Al Horford.

3) Okay, so I lied. When weighing the totality of the profiles Tillman is actually unique. It is true that statistically he’s very similar to Al Horford almost across the board, but there are in fact important differences. Tillman takes less shots than Horford did, a symptom of not having the mid-range game Horford did. Some of the shots Tillman does take are 3s, a symptom of being a contemporary big man, and for a young big, he makes a very high percentage of his free throws, significantly more than Horford did.

4) Other player profiles above are the most similar sophomore seasons to that of Tillman, at least of the guys to make the NBA. A player like Ethan Happ could certainly be on this list of names as well, and perhaps Cam Jackson. There might be a handful of others, but most of the players that resemble Tillman statistically went on to have NBA careers and many of them profound.

Note that none of these players were as good in all the boxscore areas as Tillman is. Free throw percentage is perhaps the easiest dividing line. Those who shot free throws like Tillman either didn’t score super efficiently from 2 (West) or didn’t pass (Brand, Williams). The fact that Tillman is taking 3s at this point is probably most significant.

5) Since their numbers are so similar, let’s return to the natural comparison of Al Horford in order to examine where it does and doesn’t hold up, at least at a cursory glance. For this, after going over obvious points such as Horford being two inches taller than Tillman, I’m going to use film from Florida’s championship game against Ohio State, in which the full array of Horford’s college strengths and college weaknesses were essentially on display.

One major differentiation point in Horford’s favor is his comfort and fluidity in the 10-to-15 foot area with his jump shot. If I had known better, it would be a major reason why I would’ve eventually predicted Horford to shoot from distance, but alas Horford’s example is perhaps one of my many teachers.

That one misses, but look at the ease and confidence Horford has with it, and not only Horford but Donovan and the rest of the team. After all, it’s the first shot taken in the championship game.

This one is a make, a simple step to get in rhythm before going up.

Plays like this post up show some of Horford’s weakness coming out, as he was able to be pushed into weak positions with his back to the basket by players of relatively equal size and strength. It’s one reason why had the NBA remained in the place offensively it was when Horford came into the league I’m not sure Horford would enjoy quite the same reputation he enjoys now.

Of course, on the other hand, Horford completely buried mismatches.

Another area that Horford was very strong for a college four, but not as strong as we perhaps remember given the player he has become, is passing. Horford was an excellent passer and decision-maker, though he was prone to lapses like this one, where it’s fair to ask just what he was seeing.

I’d argue it’s an area that at the same age and stage there is more similarity to Tillman than we’d at first be inclined to believe. At least in terms of understanding and capability. In terms of functional use and overall ability, Horford’s passing was indeed ahead, partly because he could operate in a face up position from ten to seventeen feet, and in part because he had more juice as a straight-line athlete.

Horford’s the kind of athlete you want to grab-and-go in transition. The pass on the move is nice as well. It’s an area of the game that was allowed to grow for Horford perhaps in no small part due to his athletic gifts.

Basically I’m saying Horford was fast, whereas Tillman is, as a runner as we’ll see later, more methodical.

That ability to cover ground also allowed Horford to be more dynamic with his dribble from farther out in the half court.

That’s an advantage for Horford no doubt, though there are again definitely similarities. For instance, Tillman is probably the most similar player to Horford, at least that I can remember, in terms of the ways in which they are constantly looking to screen for teammates, never underestimating that small advantages may eventually add up to big ones. Here’s one example with Horford.

Here’s another. It’s not only their willingness to set screens in the flow of the offense, but the realization of when a defensive body is naturally available to screen.

Another area of the game where we might in our minds give Horford a bigger advantage than he might deserve is in terms of the level of his college defense. It’s not so much that Horford wasn’t great as the fact that Tillman is great as well.

That’s not to say Horford didn’t show some potential weaknesses. He could be athletically overpowered and was by Greg Oden.

This game was one of the points that stuck in my mind with regards to Horford. Having just come off of Shaq and with Duncan and Garnett still dominant and with Oden coming into the league, it seemed that strength in this manner could be a potentially defining weakness for a center.

Of course, we know now how the NBA has changed in that dominant back-to-the-basket centers have mostly died out and that post up play has largely gone out of favor, and as such it was not necessarily a point of play we, or at least I, should have been emphasizing as chiefly important. Rather it was plays like this one where Horford shadows Mike Conley that would prove to be much more important in projecting the player that Horford would need to become within the next half dozen years.

6) We’ll get to the film of Tillman towards the end of the piece. I’m going to focus mostly on defense, because as an offensive player, he’s really good but also fairly basic. Tillman runs hard, has solid hands, is an exceptionally active screen-setter, can read defenses and decide to stick or slip, has some game with his back to the basket especially if there’s a size mismatch, is a solid decision-maker, is a solid to very good passer from the situations that he touches the ball, has excellent efficiency near the basket, makes his free throws, and shoots open shots from distance.

In other words, even though Tillman is 6-foot-8 and his boxscore numbers very nearly replicate those of Al Horford, he’s less similar offensively to Al Horford than he is to a player like PJ Tucker. Not PJ Tucker now, but PJ Tucker as a sophomore in college. Though it should be said that Tillman is much more efficient from the field.

We’ll get back to the potential merits of this comparison later.

8) As far as his prospecthood goes, what everyone will want to see is mainly an increase in his 3-point output. The question is how does he get from out of the dunker position so that he may perhaps play some four in a four or five-out lineup?

9) One note about Horford which relates to all prospects: we shouldn’t forget that Horford’s game has improved in more ways than one since entering the NBA. Prospects aren’t static creatures but human beings who have the possibility to grow and change. And that in marking out faults, we sometimes rob ourselves of the ability to properly project the player forward.

Beyond that, the game has changed around Horford, especially defensive schemes where switching is far more prevalent and the need to guard guys like Shaq in the post is basically non-existent, so that the strengths Horford did have are precisely those emphasized as necessary by the way in which the game is now played. And that’s not likely to change anytime soon, unless perhaps the NBA gets rid of defensive three seconds. (Please don’t.) (Editor would like to add emphasis here.)

10) I have to admit that I greatly misjudged Horford. The player he was in the beginning of his career didn’t wholly surprise me, though I struggled to imagine why a team would pick Horford over Noah, who to me seemed in many ways the ideal center in being able to add value defensively without using possessions on offense, and also a highly capable passer. That Noah didn’t shoot a fifteen footer and Horford did wasn’t of much a concern to me.

Over a decade later, Horford’s fifteen footer has become a solid 3-pointer (though not for the team that drafted him) and his ability to move on defense has become emblematic of what we want and expect out of big man defense. (The fact that Noah was arguably an even better mover than Horford is one reason I liked him significantly more. Though not an excuse for being altogether too low on Horford, which I was.) Their relative age differences, while not much of a difference for the teams that drafted them, now come into play as well, with Horford still highly capable athletically while Noah seems basically spent.

There’s several lessons here for me about bias, about understanding that the way the game is being played is highly important in terms of which strengths/weaknesses end up being most important, and about realizing that this game is about projection and not just recognition.

11) Back to the numbers. One game I like to play is to quickly create metrics using the boxscore strengths of a player in question for the simple reason that it does at least challenge the notion of relative statistical uniqueness.

It’s not too serious of an endeavor, but it does sometimes help visualize numerically, and in the form of a list, just how strong a player is at his strengths and which players were similar in ways we might not at first perceive. As it regards Tillman, the metrics also do a decent job of ordering the non-Tillman NBA players. Brand is perhaps too low, but Green, Webber, Horford and West seem in the right order in terms of talking about both career value and peak. I’m not sure that’s meaningful, but it’s at least interesting.

The three Tillman metric grades here were built, in order, to have scores that resemble what would be a good score in steals per 40, to have the best grade be roughly around 100 and to resemble something like a solid 2-point percentage.

12) Before we get too far in this exercise we should keep in mind things like, though somewhat statistically similar, Chris Webber is an athlete of a different order of magnitude than the other players listed here.

It makes using Webber as a true comparison point highly problematic, just as an athleticism gap would make invoking players like Ben Wallace or Dennis Rodman or Charles Barkley problematic. Or the offensive skill gap makes Horford a difficult comparison in its totality.

13) There’s a reason we spend so much time on boxscores. It’s not just because numbers are possibly predictive. It’s because numbers tell stories about what is happening on the court. Tillman’s assist, assist-to-turnover ratio, ORtg, DRtg and defensive events numbers begin to tell the story of a player who has very high awareness, is good at making decisions and has some passing ability. So it’s only natural that these aspects do indeed show up on film.

Or this clip below, where he’s screening in a manner, seemingly out of intuition, very intrinsically similar to the way Horford did at Florida.

Look at the excellent hook technique as well. Understanding the ways in which one can make a screen illegal without getting called for it is one of the great exploitable loopholes in officiating.

14) Before we get to the defensive film, let’s look at one last analytical note that further paints Tillman’s sophomore season in a highly positive light. That is, balanced (good at both OBPM and DBPM), as well as high overall BPM against a high-level schedule.

Zion Williamson and Tristan Clark in an injury shortened season just miss the arbitrary cutoff point on defense. Of the rest, only Ethan Happ is so far not an NBA guy, and four of the other eight are all-star or All-NBA types, with possibly Wendell Carter and Brandon Clarke one day joining them.

As problematic as BPM is as a metric, or at least can be, if you are looking for one constructive way to use it to locate prospects, this is a good one. And it works fairly well even if you lower the thresholds a bit.

15) Even though Tillman is described frequently as athletic, the fact that he isn’t much talked about seems to speak to some doubt about if he’s as athletic as he needs to be. As such, I’ve picked out a few games and clipped out a fair number of the defensive possessions, mostly good, because Tillman happens to be really good. Those games are first against Duke, where Tillman was matched up mostly against Zion Williamson, then against Purdue, which had useful matchup data against Trevion Williams, Matt Haarms, Aaron Wheeler and on help/switch possessions against Carsen Edwards/Ryan Cline, and lastly against Maryland where Tillman was mostly tasked with stopping Bruno Fernando.

We’re talking mostly about NBA players, NBA type athletes or fairly huge humans, some of them with skill. The fact that the same player is tasked with guarding Zion Williamson, Bruno Fernando, Trevion Williams, Aaron Wheeler and Matt Haarms on different possessions should tell you off the bat a fair amount about his potential versatility as a defender. That’s a the preeminent skilled big wing/combo forward athlete of at least the last half dozen drafts, a very big, very athletic NBA center, an even heftier and more skilled guy in Trevion Williams, an NBA athlete who hangs out at the 3-point and crashes the offensive glass, and a guy who easily clears seven feet.

The Part In Which We Watch Game Film

16) First Duke. There are two things one notices when watching defensive possessions back to back, even between games. The first is how often Tillman gets his hand on the ball with swipes. That, in particular, is an underrated strength of Jimmy Butler, and arguably one of the principal reasons he was for so long such a great on ball defender. Well, Tillman also seems to have very strong and incredibly accurate hands on swipe downs mid drive. The second is how often Tillman is involved in plays that eventually end up generating turnovers, even if they don’t end up in steals for Tillman, and thus are not credited to him in the boxscore.

Zion Play 1. A few guarding Zion plays with nothing much of note. Some sliding.

Zion play 2. Giving space for Zion to measure from 3. Miss.

Zion play 3. Zion outjumps Tillman’s box out. (Another reason perhaps to focus on Spencer’s strength.)

Zion play 4. Zion catches from ten feet and tries to make power speed move. Tillman’s excellent hands dislocate ball from Zion’s grip. Turnover.

Zion play 5. Post possession. Help dissuades Zion. Crosscourt pass.

Zion play 6. Transition. Zion one-on-two with Tillman the primary defender. Zion drives center towards the second defender. Turnover.

Zion play 7. Pick-and-roll look with Tre and Zion. Tre passes to RJ out of the action.

Zion play 8. Lack of help recognition because of Zion focus.

Zion play 9. RJ pick-and-roll with Zion. Long rebound. Zion again rebounds over the box out from Tillman.

Zion play 10. Zion full court look. Pick play with Reddish. Bad communication. Reddish open 3. Will be automatic switch in most NBA schemes.

Play 11. Gives RJ too much space. 3.

Play 12. Stones Zion on drive from the top of the key.

Play 13. Successful box out.

Play 14. Zion non-play.

Play 15. Zion corner touch. Normally explodes on the hop towards basket around and through defenders. Here Tillman sticks. Zion passes out. Turnover.

Play 16. Another successful box out on Zion.

Play 17. Late recognition that he’s cross matched onto Cam in transition. Closeout. Airball.

Long arms and extension somehow get a piece of ball off the hand.

Play 18. Zion again dislodges on the box out.

Play 19. Zion gets deep post position. Earns free throws.

Play 20. Wins against Zion on the post entry. Zion can’t seal. Turnover.

Play 21. Help recognition. He’s here with his body but doesn’t jump. Layup by JDL.

Play 22. Help on the Barrett drive. Hard to tell if Barrett just fumbles or is blocked. Then gets the steal.

Play 23. Zion settles for 3.

Play 24. Zion deep post position. Basket.

Play 25. Gets matched up against Barrett out of pick-and-roll. Barrett quick pass turnover.

Play 26. Barrett gets a semi-weak call on this one. Tillman one of three guarding him but Barrett is locked on the basket. Terrible miss before a bail out.

Play 27. Semi fronting of Zion in post. Forces very difficult post feed. Turnover. Then beats everyone from block to block in transition for the dunk.

Play 28. Again stunts the Zion perimeter drive.

Play 29. Look how easy Zion scores when he generates the switch rather than driving against Tillman.

Play 30. This is a foul on Tillman in college but in NBA this is a bad miss due to the way they call verticality.

16) Now Purdue, a game in which Michigan State got creamed, yet still one with a lot of relevant and often positive defensive information. One weakness that comes out late in the game on a switch play against Ryan Cline is that Tillman like most bigs and even many players who have reputations as elite on-ball defenders, is likely going to have problems with players who can get shots up moving backwards. Welcome to the new world of the NBA.

Play 1. Chasedown block of Carsen Edwards, who is slowed in transition by Matt McQuaid.

Play 2. Average ground coverage on the contest to the corner. Will need to gauge distance precisely in the NBA.

Play 3. Two excellent helps and recoveries to his man.

Play 4. Example of strength as well as Haarms’ weakness as he drops Haarms to ground without much effort.

Play 5. Getting low and boxing out Trevion Williams.

Play 6. Help recognition on the Carsen Edwards drive and contest without fouling.

Play 7. Example of strength, quick reaction and use of length. Post defense on Williams. Side position. Plays the angle of the pass. Steal. Though a better (and more difficult) pass over the top could have perhaps led Trevion to a dunk.

Play 8. Trail technique off the inbounds through two screens. Switch recognition onto Haarms. Picks up Edwards on the help. Mirrors and picks the pocket on the spin.

Play 9. Contest to the corner. Quick enough to get back and force the pass after the pump fake.

Play 10. Guarding an NBA wing athlete in Aaron Wheeler. Help block on Ryan Cline.

Play 11. Drops to help on Haarms. Gets spaced too far from Wheeler. Wheeler 3.

Play 12. Struggles getting through one screen off ball. Easily gets through another. Great switch recognition. In position to stone play but bad communication leads to Tillman leaving ball with no one to fill. This is a play that looks bad, but I actually believe the positive information here strongly outweighs the negative information in terms of projection forward. Since NBA communication should be better and since most defenses will just auto-switch this play without worry about recovery to one’s original man.

Play 13. Help recognition on Edwards. MSU forces the turnover.

Play 14. Full defensive position. Help and recovery to eventual defense of a post up of Williams.

Play 15. These are the kinds of plays that I think are potentially really special, ones that the defender, here Tillman, presents as if he is guarding his man but is also simultaneously somehow positioned to guard the passing lane.

Of course Haarms could’ve done a better job stretching down towards the rim, forcing Goins to cover more ground on the help and potentially leaving Wheeler open, but the fact that Tillman forces Cline to jump to have a passing lane is blowing up the versatility of the kinds of passes that can be made before it even comes out of the hand.

Play 16. Isolated on Ryan Cline. Cline hits a contested step back. Elite NBA pull-up point guards obviously drill this if they get this kind of space.

17) Maryland game. If you were still wondering about strength and about Tillman’s ability when matched up against size, this will go a decent way to answering this question. Tillman’s performance against Fernando was fairly dominant.

Play 1. Holding his own on the perimeter and in the post against Fernando. Fernando leads himself under the basket and makes a bad pass. Turnover.

Play 2. Fernando slips the screen. Advantage. Tillman recovers for the block.

Play 3. Fernando tries to post. Weak position far from hoop. Tries to face up drive. Tillman hands, deflection, and steal.

Play 4. Completely busted the post up.

Play 5. Energy and activity in recovery phase of defense.

Play 6. 20 seconds + of defense on Fernando. At last gets the angle on the entry pass which should be a steal but mostly misses the ball forcing McQuaid to foul Fernando in help.

Play 7. Fernando posts up with better position. Can gain no ground on his moves. Tillman blocks.

Play 8. One of the many beautiful examples of unscripted Tillman screens leading to easier baskets.

Play 9. Another post up where Tillman’s body presence ends up pushing Fernando under the basket forcing a pass into a turnover.

Play 10. Fernando’s first play where he wins clean. Face up from top of the key.

Play 11. Fernando post. Deeper position. Contested miss.

Play 12. Another brutally negative Fernando post.

Play 13. Fernando gets great position. Dislodge. Basket and foul.

Play 14. Fernando dribbles into a post up possession. Struggles to gain ground. Double dribbles.

Play 15. Post up. No advantage. Pass by Fernando that puts the defense in rotation.

Play 16. Transition. Recognition. Block.

Play 17. Deflected entry pass on the Fernando post. The first to recognize and the first to ball is Tillman.

18) Tillman is obviously a very good defender. Good enough that the most important questions we probably won’t be able to answer until he’s in the NBA. That is, the level of switch versatility. Onto big wing drivers, that seems likely, especially those without a jump shot. In regards to off-ball wings who move I think he’ll ultimately be able to do that too. But onto jitterbug guards who can get shots off to any direction?

And the same goes with the differences in guarding a player like Fernando and the truly skilled, hugely athletic or just plain huge players like Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis. There aren’t many players who affect these guys dramatically, but there are a few who indeed do and having such a player can be of great use. You’d have to bet against Tillman here, given that the player who affects Embiid most is probably Jokic, and the player who affects Davis most is probably Embiid, all absolutely huge guys. But stranger things have happened such as Rodman, all of 6-foot-7, being almost unquestionably one of the two best Shaq defenders ever. (The other one in my opinion was Yao.)

19) When we talk about prospects we generally rate the the players who can generate their own offense higher than those who fit into the context created by those players, at times with almost superhuman efficiency. For teams without initiators, this dichotomy makes sense. However, for team’s who already have their initiators and thus have satisfied the first rule of the Fundamental Order of Operations (F.O.O.) for team-building, it does not.

Not that these go-getter offensive players aren’t potentially very useful. There’s a reason every team is looking for the next Pascal Siakam. Yet, there are other ways to create value, and that is if the player possesses skills that fit. Skills which lead to value without the major use of possessions. Roughly speaking:

The ability to add value on defense. Versatility on defense that allows the player to add value almost regardless of the situation/matchup, or that might allow another player to do the same. The ability to have good shot selection and to make good and quick decisions. The ability to score the ball efficiently from somewhere on the floor, but especially from distance which has a spacing effect. The ability to dribble. The ability to pass. The ability and intuitive understanding of how and when to set screens.

There may be others, or we could perhaps get more specific. But those seven roughly cover the bases. A player like PJ Tucker is so good, especially in the playoffs, in part because he possesses all of these skills to a high enough degree.

You are not misreading that +19.5, and it was not a fluke. It was replicated in the 2019 playoffs as well.

Easily the best of any Rocket player, not in small part because the pairings of Harden and Tucker or Tucker and Paul are/were incredibly high-powered.

And that’s largely what teams on the upper end of the win curve are looking for — not the players who create context for themselves and others, but those players who can pair with the players the team already has to create uniquely valuable lineup combinations.

The players Xavier Tillman is getting mentioned against in this piece — PJ Tucker and Al Horford — are largely those kinds of players. The major advancement both of them have made since college, at least the one that allows either to easily fit within the context of almost any offense, is that they have become proficient 3-point shooters, though in the case of PJ Tucker almost exclusively from the corners.

That’s really where Tillman’s game has to grow in order to give NBA coaches a clear reason to make him more than a 15-20 mpg guy. If he doesn’t learn to shoot, we’re still talking about a player with NBA quality. However, if Tillman does learn how to bury a jumper from distance, even if that distance is only as far away as the corner, we’re perhaps talking about something else entirely. We could be talking about a potential full-time role player genius, the kind who never quite gets the respect he deserves.

The bonus here is, of course, that these players are generally available later in the draft, sometimes even into the second round. The negative here is that it can take years and years, as was the case for both Tucker and Horford, for a player to build a jumper into his game.