1) One aspect of the 2019 draft that might cause a fair amount of cognitive dissonance is despite the fact that this class is not only supposed to be thin at the top but also lack depth there are a reasonably sized number of players who have NBA ability but look as if they may go undrafted. Jaylen Nowell is one of them.

2) Thanks to Spencer Pearlman, there’s a fairly nice breakdown online of Jaylen Nowell’s early part of the season.

As you might guess, the backbone of Jaylen Nowell’s profile is that he’s reasonably sized (6-foot-4 with a decent enough frame), can get to spots, can score off the dribble and is even a decent enough passer.

3) It’s the same skill set we saw from Allonzo Trier at Arizona.

4) Here’s a statistical comparison. First box score stats.

Now hoop-math.com

You can see one of the major differences is that Nowell shot a ton more in the mid-range as a sophomore than Trier did, whereas Trier shot 2s. Another difference is Trier was much better at turning his drives into free throw attempts despite less athleticism. And a last difference, this time in Nowell’s favor, is that Nowell is reasonably more athletic than Trier and it’s possible he can play some defense, whereas defense is a big ask for Allonzo.

5) Even the plethora of mid-range jumpers is not actually a negative for Nowell. It’s why we should feel better projecting Nowell to shoot 3-pointers eventually, despite his lower 3-point attempts number. According to hoop-math, Nowell hit 77 unassisted 2s in both his freshman and sophomore seasons, and despite being 6-foot-4 he finished at over 70 in both seasons, with 21 dunks in that timespan.

We’re not necessarily talking about an all-star, but when the player seems somewhat likely to go undrafted, we don’t need to be. We’re talking about a player with NBA athleticism and an NBA scoring skill. The thing that very possibly separates players like Trier and I think Nowell from similar-sized failures like CJ Wilcox is that Trier and Nowell can both dribble well enough to put their defenders in peril, something we can see by the amount they get to the rim.

54 unassisted non-putback rim scores in 434 attempts over 12 percent of the time is a good number for a shooting guard.

6) The more confounding thing is that Nowell is not the only one. Less than a month ago, it seemed Terence Davis was not going to be drafted, though that’s likely changed post-combine. Still, that doesn’t change things for D’Marcus Simonds, who will probably not get drafted. Or John Konchar? Probably undrafted. Or Jeremiah Martin? It seems like he’s going undrafted as well. And what about Jordan Poole? Undrafted?

Of course, we wouldn’t expect all of these players to succeed and definitely not to succeed in dynamic fashion. I definitely like some of them more than others,but as dribble-passer-shooters with decent decision-making and in some cases even some defense, it is a group you would normally bet on to a decent degree. Definitely more than some of the 5th offensive players that alternative draft media is slightly hyped about right now.

Those 5th offensive players pretty much have to be incredible on defense to contribute anything on the court, whereas a dribble-passer-shooter can be at home in a high leverage series without nearly as much going for him. It’s why Alfonzo McKinnie and Jonas Jerebko have been played off the court while a player like Quinn Cook, though not a big minutes guy, still gets run in the highest leverage games of the season. This is an offensive skill-set that plays, and with teams often downsizing at the 2 or playing a 5th offensive guy there (Chris Paul, CJ McCollum, Fred Van Vleet/Danny Green are the last three two guards that Golden State has faced), these smaller players have arguably become more playable on defense as well.

If I come out with a big board, you’ll definitely see Nowell ranked over a guy like DaQuan Jeffries or Terance Mann. Of course, I like DaQuan and Terance, but unlike them, Nowell has a potential plug-and-play skill set. If he extends his short range off the dribble touch over the next few years, he might have much more than that.