1) I was writing a piece about offense + defense players and the fact that, while this class outside of Zion and possibly Tre may lack the on-ball offensive skill players many expect at the top of the draft, this college class also has something almost no draft has: a plethora of players with reasonable enough size, strength and athleticism who defend AND who have games that are enough to provide legitimate optimism about their shooting ability.*

That’s a powerful combination that can, in the right circumstances, lead a minimally athletic (for the NBA), minimally skilled player (see Danny Green or playoff PJ Tucker for the apex of this type) to be more valuable to a non-Lebron championship contender than a player like Bradley Beal would be.

2) Though rather than do that just yet, I decided I’d rather focus on Brandon Clarke, an over-aged junior who I ranked, likely to the bemusement of some, number 2 in my mid-season big board. This piece will address why.

3) Let’s start with the what will likely seem the most preposterous part of the case for Brandon Clarke: that I believe he will shoot. The primary reason is laid out in a piece written by Cole a few weeks ago, namely Clarke’s innate touch 15 feet and in.

But let’s add some numbers to this argument. Brandon Clarke has now taken 261 2-point jumpers in his career. He has made 119 of them, and 70 of them are unassisted. Those are fairly incredible numbers for a college PF/C.

To put them in perspective, Jordan Bell, a player to whom Clarke will almost certainly be compared, made 51 2-point jumpers of any kind in his entire 3 year career. Clarke has only played two-and-a-half so far. It’s one of the many ways which Clarke makes the college version of Bell, a player I loved, look almost like a poor man’s version of himself.

Add these numbers, the noticeable touch, the obvious hard work and dedication it took to rebuild his jumper, not to mention the flexibility of his brain to create new synaptic connections and neural pathways which would allow such an alteration to take hold at all, and it’s not difficult to construct an argument that Clarke has a reasonable chance to learn how to shoot from 3.

4) Now let’s forget that part of the argument entirely. That’s the extreme upside case in which Clarke ends up possibly +2 or even +3 on offense in addition to his almost certain defensive contributions. Instead, let’s just consider what Clarke can already do on offense and why he’ll have the possibility to be a positive offensive piece regardless of an ability to extend his range, especially if he finds his way onto a team with a pull-up/step-back threat and a true big who can shoot.

5) So what can Clarke do on offense that separates him from players like Jordan Bell and perhaps, in some ways, even Draymond Green. First, let’s just start with the point we just went over: he can make shots from three to seventeen feet, even shots on the move, at easily better than 40 percent rates, which means he won’t get stuck as Jordan Bell and many such players do in that range. Those shots for Clarke are often buckets.

6) If players then to decide to take those shots away, they’ll risk leaving pathways to the rim where Clarke is a ridiculously good finisher, with above the rim athleticism and also good touch on those shots he can’t merely dunk. He’s converting 79 percent of his attempts at the rim this year in an ideal college situation, one in which opponents can’t merely key on him. But he was 69 percent as a sophomore and 77 percent as a freshman, so we should trust that finishing at the rim is likely going to be a real strength going forward. Clarke is also a versatile threat there on lobs, off of offensive rebounds or even on ground-based attacks, which are more limited in nature.

These two facets separate him from Draymond as a player, who’s always been a very average scorer for a big from inside the arc.

7) Even if you take away access to the rim and the 2-point jumper, Clarke can also pass. Of course, here Clarke is nowhere close to Draymond. However, he’s likely at least the equal of Bell in terms of raw talent, but with a semi-skilled scoring game that will likely lead to passing lanes that Bell cannot easily generate as a result of his own gravity, since opponents just don’t respect him away from the rim. And even though Clarke is 23 and still in college, he’s also ahead of Paul Millsap at the same age in terms of passing acumen.

8) Why do I bring up Paul Millsap? Because Paul Millsap’s offensive growth would be perhaps the most unlikely for a power player of the last two decades. That is, if Blake Griffin did not exist. Almost the entirety of Paul Millsap’s offensive game coming into the NBA was 10 feet and in. He shot over 60 percent of his shots at the rim in his first two seasons and somewhere around 17 or 18 percent from three to ten feet, and only about 20 percent of his shots from beyond (almost none of them 3s). However, Paul Millsap always had fantastic touch and some suggestion of driving skill. *

That is, there are multiple ways Clarke might eventually add offensive value, as a Shawn Marion type or as Draymond/Brandon Wright hybrid taking some strengths of each player, or perhaps even the Paul Millsap path, which would take the longest and be the most unexpected. It wouldn’t be worth bringing up at all, except that Clarke does hit the main Millsap criteria. First, ridiculous touch. Second, coordination, straight line driving ability plus the ability to spin at speed and legit first step quickness.

Another example in the same game.

Third, absolutely absurd, jump off the page stats contributions in just about every phase of the game, which show both the player’s immense effect on the games he plays and his uniqueness in doing so.

Clarke right now has legit first step quickness, but not dribbling moves.

Imagine if Jordan Bell could make either of these moves how good he’d be.

Now here’s Clarke changing speeds from fast to faster on the break against Tennessee.

Also, a putback of his own miss. Remember how I always talk about these as important plays and ones that many great players have in common as prospects. Coordination. Effort. Sense of space. Players who can jump twice before anyone else jumps once.

9) This excellent piece by Jackson Frank that lets us in on the fact that Clarke played point guard in AAU suggests that we really must consider this as a viable pathway, even if an unlikely one. Frank writes:

“Early on, Clarke, then a gangly and slight-of-frame middle-schooler, regularly notched double-doubles with blocks and assists, a phenomenon Ekmark said he’s “literally never seen anybody else do.” As Clarke, who often played point guard in AAU, continues to grow more comfortable in his new Bulldog threads, Ekmark said he expects the assist totals to rise.

“He was just an incredibly long and fluid athlete,” Ekmark said. “But as I got to know him better, I realized he had a remarkable and unique combination of skills. Not only was he athletic, he also understood the game at a high level.”

I wrote the previous section before this piece was published and have been sitting on the thought for a few weeks, since it’s a latent pathway also made evident by Clarke’s physical ability and play, but this realization lends the hypothesis slightly more credence than it would have had otherwise.

10) This combination, in the right offense, surrounded by the right teammates, could lead to Clarke being a pretty valuable and hyper efficient offensive player, even if he doesn’t indeed learn to shoot. Someone who is easily positive and perhaps considerably so (consider that Brandan Wright was a +3 or +4 offensive player in his best seasons or that Draymond has been +3 or +4, with more passing skill but less finishing ability, and it’s fairly easy to imagine situations in which Clarke, conservatively if we’re actually talking about upside, ends up at +1 or +1.5 on that end).

11) Now onto defense. Clarke is definitely going to play defense and he’s going to bring value. Whatever you think the median value for Clarke’s defense at the NBA level is, that’s actually probably the floor.

12) If that sounds like a confident take, it is a confident taken, given the guys who fit the following criteria hardly fail and almost everyone actually greatly exceeds the value that an algorithm would place as their floor on defense: 1) easy to pick out as a defensive stud by stats 2) easy to pick out as a defensive stud by the eye 3) multiple years in college with improvement 4) elite NBA athleticism of some kind 5) solid NBA frame 6) solid competition 7) IQ and 8) feel stats. Clarke’s defense is such that it would be almost impossible to believe it won’t translate to the NBA at a very high level.

Players like Ron Artest, Kawhi Leonard, Donovan Mitchell, Andre Roberson, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Shawn Marion, Shane Battier, Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson, Pascal Siakam, Victor Oladipo, Rajon Rondo, Tony Allen, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Jordan Bell and even Montrezl Harrell. Only we’ve been taught not to trust our intuition when it comes to defense. When it’s this obvious, trust your intuition. In cases like that of Clarke, we are almost never wrong.

13) Clarke is a great defender (check Jackson Hoy’s excellent piece as to the fact). Jordan Bell is a great defensive player and Clarke is better than Jordan Bell. He’s better than Bell on offense, he’s better than Bell on defense. And Clarke, used in the right lineups right now is a +2 to +2.5 defender.

As Bell is a severely limited offensive player, those lineups tend to feature real NBA point guard play and real secondary dribbling options on offense. As you can see in the table below, Bell’s team tends to struggle in certain pairings.

The four terrible four man lineups are all lineups filled with non-ideal point guards and dependent players. And it’s something we see if we look at two man lineup combinations. It’s why Bell’s minutes with Klay, who is a dependent offensive player (though one with usage) are not good, whereas all the players Bell is positive with can handle the ball.

Of course, we should consider Bell’s limitations in terms of lineup versatility as a negative. But if we look at it from the other perspective, look at how the team tends to run up the score when Bell is paired properly. We’re talking major blowout level differentials. And that’s what we saw last season as well, one in which Bell and Draymond actually shared the floor for over 200 minutes at +21 in the regular season and nearly 95 minutes in the playoffs at +11. Yet we have rarely if ever have seen it this season.

That is, we could ask how many of the Warriors issues could be solved by the back door of actually trying to maximize Bell’s minutes, since he plays like an elite player if paired with the right teammates and against a non huge, non dominant center. **

14) Why the discussion of Bell here? Because it provides the only viable argument against Clarke as a player. That is, that he’s a part-timer as an undersized center who’ is going to be lineup dependent and have to be tied to lineups with 3-point shooters and perhaps multiple playmakers. This argument mostly gets blown out of the water if Clarke is fortunate enough to play with a big that can stretch it and a guy who can really drive (Memphis, Milwaukee, Toronto are the three here with Denver, as Jokic is the perfect big in this case, Minnesota and New York not having guards and Philadelphia and wherever Davis ends up needing its other players to space the floor). This argument gets entirely blown out of the water if Clarke does indeed shoot, which not only would allow Clarke to play small ball center, but full-time power forward and even perhaps some wing in the right lineups, though playing Clarke down would not be maximizing his gifts.

Still, the fact that Clarke has a legit first step (this will play better in NBA space), and can make shots at very high levels from 3 to 15 or even 17 feet provides offensive options for him, as well as the future team that plays him that Jordan Bell types simply don’t have. Shooting on the move and from mid-range isn’t popular, but when you shoot as well as Clarke from there it becomes a swing skill in terms of the versatility of lineups in which he can function. Teams will have to honor Clarke in ways they do not have to honor almost any other PF/C tweener.

That ability to hit 2-pointers very likely takes him far enough away from Bell, even in a team fit that is not ideal, to allow Clarke to play another 5-12 minutes a game in opponent killing lineups that can function offensively at high degrees while putting an all NBA type defensive player on the court.

15) The other argument in favor of Clarke, rather than against him, is his age. An NBA team right now essentially has a first round prospect for four years plus another four to five years on their second contract, if the prospect is good enough to warrant it. Clarke’s first contract will begin when he is 24. It will cover him through his age 27 season. That is, it will cover him into the beginning of his prime, on what is likely to be a very cheap deal, since it’s hard to see Clarke making the lottery with the way the NBA currently views older prospects. His second contract, if he’s good enough to merit it, will then cover him through his age 28 to 32 seasons. That is, it will cover Clarke’s entire prime. Whereas when a team drafts a non-Zion level young player, like Kyle Lowry for instance or Chauncey Billups, they may pay for all his development years, only to watch another team reap the benefits of their ascendance to hall-of-fame levels of play.

Age here, if there is legit upside, as there was for older prospects like Dennis Rodman, Paul Pressey and Ben Wallace just to start a list, is a potential benefit given the contract structure under the CBA.

16) Uniqueness. Since I’ve started writing, I’ve posited that statistical on-court uniqueness is a major entryway into the search for future stars. In both ways, Brandon Clarke is pretty unique. There’s a couple guys like Damian Saunders or Marques Blakely, who might have deserved looks and never got a shot, but pretty much every player who Clarke compares to and who got a shot in the NBA excelled. Some like Andre Roberson, Bo Outlaw and Jordan Bell, just on one side of the ball. Others like Shawn Marion, Paul Millsap and Robert Horry on both sides.

And as you’ll see, Clarke compares very favorably across the board with just about every one of these guys. The table below is sorted by the one category that Clarke isn’t good at, 3-point attempts, since there’s a major cutoff between the guys who tend to be more useful offensively, save Andre Roberson, taking 3s and the guys who tend to be less useful, save Paul Millsap, not doing so. So that’s the one bad marker, though I’d argue he makes up for it by having touch that pretty much only Millsap can contend with. The rest is self explanatory, save the color coding, in which columns are color coded to show players who were similar to Clarke in each category. Clarke is also highlighted (dark) where he is the best statistically among all these prospects (4 out of 16 categories) and highlighted (less dark) where he is better than half of them (7 out of 16 categories, with Clarke being top 3 in 4 of those).

As you can see Clarke’s scoring, because of ultra efficiency in finishing but also because of that two-point touch, separates him from the guys who didn’t provide an offensive punch in the pros; Roberson, Bell, Faried and Outlaw (with Bell and Roberson being by far the worst of the group).

His feel for the game, evidenced by both stats and the eye, is also among the best of these players. You can see it in both the assist-to-turnover and stocks numbers, where he grossly outranks just about everyone short of Draymond Green or Shane Battier, and especially guys like Faried and Roberson. This again suggests that he’s not exactly similar to those no offense guys.

The player who Clarke is most similar to across the board is Jordan Bell. But it should be noted he’s better than Bell in just about everything where they are close, save for rebounds, and the places in which they are not similar it is almost always because Clarke is far superior in those categories. This is a statistical corroboration for my earlier argument that Clarke is much better than Jordan Bell. Indeed, he’s a guy we haven’t really seen, a defensive dynamo like Bo Outlaw, but one with legit offensive game that should translate to a great degree because he has the makings of a 2-point mid-range game to which almost no player like him, save Millsap, can compare.

If I’m reiterating this point a lot, it’s because it’s tremendously important and very overlooked. 2-point jumpers are important because they suggest possible translation to 3, at least in time, but they are also important in and of themselves, since they suggest a player who is a threat to the defense any time he touches the ball within 18 feet and thus one who always has to be guarded. It’s not the same as stretching the court, but it could have major value, and value that is easy to scheme for if Clarke ends up in an ideal situation. The most ideal situations are Golden State, Boston (as long as Kyrie is there), Memphis (as long as Conley is there), Toronto (depending on Kawhi) in the short term and perhaps LAC (if Butler and Kawhi team up). Denver, Houston, Milwaukee (Giannis needs spacing), New York (if they get Durant), and the Lakers are other possibilities presenting interesting fits.

17) Conclusion. I don’t expect many, perhaps any others, to have Clarke rated #2, but it’s difficult to see myself coming off the position, even at this early stage. It’s possible, of course. Anything is possible and there are perhaps two to four players who may still be able to play themselves into the conversation, but it’s not likely. When you start out with a player who seems destined to be a +3 or +4 defender, and then you add on the offensive skills he has (thus making him playable and effective in multiple lineup types), as well as the possibility of a jump shot (upside!) or improvement of face up skills in semi-unexpected ways (also upside!), then you get the type of player every team should want to draft.

The upside is that he’s the type of secondary player you can build a champion around. The downside is that he’s a 20-25 mpg part-time player who can feature in any number of +5 to +10 or perhaps better opponent killing lineups that a team gets to underpay on their second contract because there is never huge demand for these types of players in the market. And the middle ground is that he’s already good enough on offense to play 30 minutes a game in a variety of lineups if the coach is smart enough to put him in the types of situations he should be in, which in that case you might already have a +3 or +4 type and by the player’s second season in the league.

Of course there have been players to come into the league with similarities to Clarke, mainly Shawn Marion, Paul Millsap, Draymond Green, Kenneth Faried and Jordan Bell. But if Clarke is clearly better than the latter two, and I would argue, in disparate ways similar to first three guys on the list, there’s a fair likelihood he’s going to be a very valuable player in the league.

*In no particular order, I could make an argument that these players might project to average or above on both sides of the ball, if we are considering offensive contributions indeed happen within the context of an offense. Which is to say, with a fair few of them, there is a credible argument at least that they will shoot, even if it won’t be true for all of them, and others that an NBA offensive context should allow for value:

Zion Williamson, Brandon Clarke, Jarrett Culver, Cam Reddish, De’Andre Hunter, Jaxson Hayes, Tre Jones, Grant Williams, RJ Barrett, Ignas Brazdeikis, Eric Paschall, Matisse Thybulle, Paul Scruggs, Cody Martin, DeQuan Jeffries, Jarron Cumberland, Kevin Porter Jr, Keldon Johnson, Naz Little, PJ Washington, Nic Baer, Killian Tillie, Romeo Langford, Chuma Okeke, Jeremy Harris, James Palmer, and Admiral Schofield, and that’s before you get to the players with less credible offensive translation (i.e. jumper or offensive volume with size lack is hard to buy) like Nic Claxton Charles Matthews, Josh Reaves, Jarrey Foster, Yves Pons, Herb Jones, Barry Brown, Trent Forrest, Justin Simon, Dontay Carruthers, Josh Perkins, Anfernee McLemore and Horace Spencer, or the small guys with less credible/versatile defensive translation like NAW, Shamorie Ponds, CJ Massinburg, Quindarry Weatherspoon, Terence Davis and Caleb Martin, or the freshmen like Talen Horton-Tucker, Aaron Nesmith and Tyrese Haliburton.

Still, we are talking about many more players who actually play defense of some kind than usual and not surprisingly, more players with real translation potential than usual. The super weird thing is that the guys with the best translation potential are very often the same guys who have the best context related offensive value, or at least the possibility of some context related offensive value, either because of positionality (Hayes, Clarke) or because of a jump shot + jump shot statistics that suggest their shooting potential is not a joke and should at least be looked at with profound interest. Examples here are Culver, Hunter, Williams, Reddish, Iggy, Paschall and Thybulle as examples. Not to mention we still have Zion and RJ. This again is not usually the case, where offense + defense skills generally become mismatched much earlier with respect to prospect depth.

** We should pay attention to Millsap when assessing players and why the current NBA age of specialization may actually not be the best thing in terms of developing players with all around offensive skill sets. Millsap was allowed to learn slow, and he did, slowly adding onto and extending his game in each season. This slow development is definitely an argument for the possible advantages of staying in college, ones we don’t see from those players who can leave early but rather only in those lesser thought of players who are seemingly left behind, only to later surpass their over eager brethren.

***Jordan Bell is on a two-year contract and one way to keep the next contract smaller than it should be may be by specifically not trying to maximize his minutes.

***Other potential defensive players in this class fall into two types: 1) those with pathways to offense in Matisse Thybulle, Jaxson Hayes, Jarrett Culver, De’Andre Hunter, Tre Jones, Cam Reddish, Grant Williams and Ignas Brazdeikis, and 2) those for whom pathways to offense are harder to see, or about which we should be more skeptical, exemplified by Yves Pons, Nic Claxton, Charles Matthews, and Barry Brown.