Calling Connor Vanover: Advocating for the NBA’s Absent Titan

Connor Vanover has decided to retire from basketball, with plans to become a media personality. He is as worthy of being an NBA prospect as…

Calling Connor Vanover: Advocating for the NBA’s Absent Titan

Connor Vanover has decided to retire from basketball, with plans to become a media personality. He is as worthy of being an NBA prospect as when I drafted this analysis before the 2024 NBA Draft commenced. This piece means more to me than others because his career should not be over. I hope Vanover will continue to grace the basketball community with his irreplaceable skill set in 2026.

Mark Eaton was the last American-born 7'3+, 25-year-old rookie to enter the NBA in 1982.

“God gave him 7 feet, 4 inches.”

Add a reported +2 wingspan and a sturdy frame and it’s clear why Frank Layden, the Utah Jazz coach/teambuilder, signed Eaton; not because of any exemplary skill or talent (1.8 points per game on 45% TS over two seasons at UCLA points to an extreme lack of skill or talent) but because he was very tall and was a member of a high-major D1 basketball roster. With this platform and his outlier physical characteristics, Eaton became the starting center of a Jazz regime that made the playoffs every season of his career. His place in NBA history is stamped with an All-Star berth (in a season he averaged 6.4 points per 75 possessions shooting -4% relative True Shooting) and a current lead in all-time blocks per game with 3.5. 42 years later, Eaton’s age/skill deficit would have likely had him start in the G-League or overseas. The beauty of youth skill development in the basketball community leaves us graced with another 7'3+ 24-year-old UDFA prospect, except this one shoots 82% from the free-throw line, attempts 8 threes per 100 possessions, and blocks shots without fouling at an elite level.

Throughout this piece, Vanover’s skill will rarely be in question. Other factors, like advanced age, play against him at first glance. Ten players, including Americans Branden Carlson and Kylor Kelly, made their NBA debut at 25 years of age or older over the last two seasons.

In an increasingly competitive league landscape where margin wins make all the difference in roster building, and depth is needed more than ever to preserve physical condition in as physically taxing a league as ever, identifying uniquely talented players that reach production, size, and athleticism thresholds should be of massive importance, regardless of conventional player acquisition methods.

I am surely one of the highest figures on Earth on Connor Vanover’s pro prospects, but I can acknowledge the rare flaw in his statistical profile.

In short, the query above shows pure play finishers without any meaningful ability to create offense for themself or others off the dribble, while lacking an especially accurate shot from behind the arc. Even in displaying his worst attributes, Vanover towers over familiar names like Cam Whitmore, Jack White, and Yves Pons, and recorded the second-highest career Box Plus-Minus (one of the best singular indicators for NBA success in NCAA big prospects).

What follows this introduction is the experience of a player so tall and so stylistically different from his teammates and peers that his coaches nearly always misunderstood his positive impact due to aesthetics or a stubbornness to win a different way than they were accustomed to.

Connor Vanover walked into the first of many sub-optimal infrastructures as an NCAA student-athlete as a Cal Bear freshman. After dominating Arkansas Class 4A hoops for his first three high school seasons, Vanover averaged 8.3 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per game off the bench at Findlay Prep (NV) on a roster with D1 prospects Bol Bol, Reggie Chaney, Kyler Edwards, and TJ Moss. Taking the skilled giant 2,000 miles away from his home and refusing to play him when the frontcourt rotation consisted of 6'7 Justice Sueing (1.8 BLK%) and fellow freshman Andre Kelly (2.9 BLK%, -2.3 BPM) feels morally unacceptable, but this is compounded when Vanover’s impact is further assessed. Once the season was all but over, Vanover entered the rotation for the final eleven games of the season, and his impact was felt.

Note that the ‘B’ sample above is Vanover’s 480-plus possessions, omitting garbage time, over the final 11 games of the season, and the baseline sample is Cal’s entire campaign, also omitting garbage time. Vanover’s rim protection and deterrence were of massive significance to team success, along with offensive improvements in both 3-point rate and offensive rebounding.

His box score/rate stats over the sample were fine and functioned in tandem with the on-off data. Of players with at least 15 made three-pointers, Vanover led the nation in Block Percentage, and this was done with a tidy 3.2 foul/40 min total. For context, the only high-major Bart-era player to register a full season of 10 BLK% or better with 3.2 fouls per 40 or less is… Connor Vanover in 2021. Luke Kornet and Isaiah Austin both had a season close enough for actual context.

His season totals, even just among freshmen, are outliers as well. One of four Barttorvik-era freshmen w/ 25 3PM, 20 dunks, and an 8+ BLK%. Vanover did this in substantially fewer minutes and under worse team constructs than JJJ, Chet, or Aaric Murray.

Also, never to be forgotten, Connor Vanover was listed at 7'3, 225 during this season. A reserved few players are as skilled as Vanover in shooting and shot-blocking. There is a minuscule group of basketball players on Earth that reach 7 feet tall with no shoes, a measurement Vanover surpassed sometime after his U17 Team USA stint. Virtually zero prospects on Earth check both of these boxes.

This is the thesis of the ‘Connor Vanover is an NBA prospect’ argument.

With Cal’s coach predictably fired after a lackluster 2019 season, Vanover transferred home as an Arkansas Razorback. In the next unfortunate event, he did this in the final season where undergrad transfers were not allowed to play with their new program immediately. In his redshirt season, Vanover added 20-some pounds to his listed 225 lbs at Cal, while growing as a vocal leader on the court, according to head coach Eric Musselman.

“Connor went from kind of a shy, not saying much to being one of our stronger voices.”

Vanover started and produced in 10 of his first 11 games as a Razorback, winning nine games before falling in the first two conference games versus Tennessee and Mizzou (a game where he shot 0–11, his only notably poor performance to that point), with the rest of the season ahead of him to make up for it with impactful minutes on defense and as an an inside-out playfinisher.

Instead, Vanover played 22 total minutes across the next four games and lost the largest minute share on the roster for the rest of the season.

Vanover’s overall net rating ended up getting smoked by strings of low-minute samples and Arkansas going on a run led by Justin Smith (a main recipient of Vanover’s early-season minutes at the 5) culminating with an Elite Eight berth. Across ten games where Vanover played 20+ minutes, Arkansas saw a +3.8 net rating boost, highlighted by holding opponents to 50% at the rim (98th percentile that season) and grabbing defensive rebounds at a 98th percentile rate.

Going into the 2022 season with Smith departing and no bigs joining the roster, Vanover was primed for a breakout!

You know where this is going.

He was out of the rotation by the beginning of December and played his final game in January. Jaylin Williams had an amazing season, leading Arkansas to another Elite Eight berth. Still, it’s hard to explain why Vanover’s proven rim protection, rebounding, and floor spacing were not utilized in his third season with the program. See below all NBA-designated upperclassmen in the BartTorvik database to play less than 240 minutes without a season-ending injury.

Two seasons at Arkansas saw Vanover post 11 BLK%, 7.2 OREB%, and 22.7 DREB% figures en route to a 7.9 BPM. The only Bart-era player to post these numbers over a single season? Connor Vanover at Oral Roberts in 2023 (some foreshadowing here.) Why would Vanover need to transfer after such success at a high-major level?

Eric Musselman committed career atrocities to any semblance of draft buzz Vanover had retained from his junior Team USA cameo and perceived ‘novelty’ skillset. Across those two seasons, seventeen Razorbacks played in at least 10 games. This group included future NBA players Moses Moody, Jaylin Williams, Stanley Umude, and other pros like JD Notae, Justin Smith, and Au’Diese Toney. Vanover’s 582 minutes over 44 GP, out of 59 total, ranked twelfth. This did not stop him from posting the highest Box-Plus Minus and Player Efficiency Rating (22.0) of every player on the roster.

After such treatment, Vanover decided to transfer down, immerse himself in Summit League hoops, and paired with Max Abmas en route to a perfect 18–0 record in conference play. Vanover was named Summit League Defensive Player of the Year, along with All-Summit and All-Summit tournament team nods.

Barttorvik rated the Summit League 25th of 32 conferences in 2023, and Oral Roberts played the 293rd-ranked schedule in the nation, so dominating a weaker level of competition was the perfect remedy to the Mussleman DNP-CD curse of the last two years of his life. He proceeded to do just that.

In the grand scheme, one could wave this season off as a hulking senior bullying a weak conference. Summit League basketball has produced some of our favorite reserve wings, including John Konchar, Baylor Scheierman, and Matt Mooney at the international level. Grant Nelson’s athletic measurements should take him to the NBA in the 2026 season. Every other player on the list played pro basketball for multiple seasons without being seven-foot-five.

Moving on to Missouri to conclude his grad transfer season, the now-bearded giant had a final opportunity to impress and establish himself as a potential high-level professional.

Instead, he returned to a place he knew all too well: the end of an SEC bench. I’ll make this one quick. Vanover finished ninth in minutes played for a Tigers team that went winless in 18 conference games, with concussion-like symptoms later in the year being his only listed injury. The team’s net rating jumped from the 60th percentile in the nation to the 80th across his 500-odd possessions.

Outside of the awareness that the staff had that Vanover dedicated his final season of eligibility to helping the team win, his on-off splits only further verified that his court deprivation was simply his final torture session, signed and approved by Dennis Gates and his staff.

(NOTE: This piece was originally a double feature of my Jaelen House article, meant to be released around the 2024 NBA Draft, and the conclusion refers to the importance of incorporating less conventional archetypes and talent into the NBA ecosystem, with the NCAA player pool getting older)

When constructing the end-of-rotation and G-League portions of an NBA franchise, the incentive for an on-ball, score-first prospect who fails to immediately find touches (think Myles Powell, Shabazz Muhammad, Jared Sullinger, Melo Trimble, etc.) to jettison overseas to continue receiving their accustomed offensive load and fan reception is notable.

Outside of the top 250 players in the NBA, the next 500+ roster spots (including G-League) could be filled by any assortment of players on the archetype and age spectrum, some with meaningful developmental programs prepping them to be impactful professionals. Hundreds of players, even those similarly aged as blue-chip young core members, will receive no priority in their development via the franchise.

House and Vanover, at their more advanced ages, likely understand their nominal high school hype and ostensibly lukewarm NCAA profiles will be the platform for Exhibit 10 contracts or G-League offers.

Once there, I hypothesize that their consciousness regarding the variance of team roles will allow hyperfocus on emphasizing their outlier strengths in a professional environment, a concept less drastic to anticipate from seasoned 24/25-year-olds as opposed to several ill-fated 19-year-old lottery picks that will be dropped into a relatively unorganized G-League system, both on and off-court, after a lifetime of tailored focus and praise.

The above synopsis could apply to a small army of advanced-age prospects entering the league, and further investigation into how many overlooked, multi-skilled seniors make successful transitions to the NBA is undoubtedly more important than the case analysis done here.

I find myself most fascinated with Vanover as his size and shooting acumen present mismatches that his coaching staffs nullified, by being benched and relegated to a glorified mascot, more than opposing players could. An undrafted free agent who aligns as a stylistic parallel of Chet Holmgren (my favorite prospect of all time) is a player I have no issue promoting as an NBA player.

Nile!