Jaelen House, the NBA’s next margin win

(Last updated after 2024 Summer League, iirc)

Jaelen House, the NBA’s next margin win

(Last updated after 2024 Summer League, iirc)

Could I interest you in the unnamed player below?

(Even with his name and likeness above)

I would hope so. Jaelen House is a hopeful second-generation NBA player, the son of 10-year vet and NBA champion Eddie. There is good reason to believe this is a valuable trait in prospect evaluation, as explained in a useful analysis by Tom Haberstroh leading up to the 2024 Draft. Statistical evidence points to 2nd-gen NBA players outperforming their first-gen counterparts at the same draft slot by approximately 30 percent, via win share total.

Read the full article, linked.

This isn’t enough to validate the now-undrafted and unsigned House’s NBA outlook. One cannot argue much about House’s size, as measuring 168 pounds, 6'1 in shoes with a +1.25' wingspan, and 7'11 standing reach as a 24-year-old rookie is suboptimal. This tracks mostly with his on-court performance, as he’s one of the rare 5-year seniors who failed to dunk the ball throughout their NCAA careers.

Outside of dunks, House’s efficiency on two-point shot attempts is still far below common NBA standards. Over his final 3 seasons at New Mexico, which followed some of the worst offensive efficiency imaginable as an underclassman at Arizona State, House shot around 45% on 700-plus attempts. Only Fred VanVleet, Klay Thompson, and arguably Shabazz Napier were as inefficient and had NBA success.

Further anatomizing House’s scoring profile leaves even less promise. Barttorvik’s distinction between rim and non-rim two-point attempts presents only 6'8 Herb Jones as an example of rim and non-rim inefficiency and NBA success.

The pessimists are now glaring at a ground-bound 6'1 guard who can’t convert two-point shot attempts. This is how we capitalize and complete the ever-trendy “margin win.”

Being the worst three-point shooter in this group (consisting of the history’s best NCAA free-throw shooters with high three-point volume, including Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Jimmer Fredette, and Markus Howard) could be a sign of positive regression in the future. The chance House sees his 3PT% increase as a professional will heavily rely on a stark decrease in off-dribble jumpers from his shot diet. Below, one can view the professional shooting successes of players who attempted as many threes and shot as well from the free-throw line as House did at the NCAA level.

Brogdon had an especially low NCAA 3PT%, let’s compare his off-the-dribble versus catch-and-shoot numbers to House’s!

House’s 2023 season saw him shoot off the catch at a more accurate rate than anything Brogdon did as a college player, as well as maintaining the highest OTD attempt seasons of the group, beating Brogdon’s closest season by 20 attempts! This, along with impressive free-throw shooting and his familial background (Eddie House shot above league-average from 3 on volume and efficiency for the vast majority of his career and scored over 2,000 points at the NCAA level) lends promise to House being a more effective shooter in time.

His underclassmen seasons at Arizona State were not those of an NBA prospect, with no signals other than monster steal rates to justify his four-star, top-120 high school ranking. With nearly 3,000 minutes of New Mexico hoops to analyze, we can still extract much information and data by focusing on his final 3 NCAA seasons. For example, ONLY querying for House’s outlier metrics at New Mexico helps to further the case for the rarity of an undrafted prospect.

House’s 2023 season is generally room for extreme optimism for professional success. He was outstanding, being one of 4 Bart-era guards to post >2 AST:TO, 2 BLK%, 4.5 STL%, and attempt 140 3s in route to a nine or better Box Plus-Minus (the others being 2023 D’Moi Hodge, 2008 Mario Chalmers, and 2024 Reed Sheppard).

If the fascination with building an offense (that was minus 6 points per 100 poss. compared to their baseline average) around Donovan Dent accumulating assists was not as strong for Hurley and staff, House could have continued this success into the 2024 season and been firmly in the NBA Draft conversation. In 380 possessions without Dent, House temporarily transformed into one of the best players in the country. An 8.7 RAPM on 46 eFG% shouldn’t be possible, but removing screen-reliant point guards with .1 3PA rates like Dent from the court logically allows for a wider range of offensive flexibility. Cut frequency increased substantially when House played without Dent over the last two seasons.

Instead of fully understanding House’s greatness, the masses were left with compelling on-off data and mere flashes by the May 2001-born guard, such as the absolute heater he finished his Mountain West career with.

Playing four games in 4 days (3/13–3/16), House rattled off four consecutive wins en route to the Mountain West championship. 23 points, 3.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 2.3 steals per game sounds good, but we’re too knowledgeable to use simple box score stats.

14.8 BPM, 8.6 OBPM, 6.1 DBPM, 57.6 TS%, 11.1 DREB%, 23.3 AST%, 3.5 AST:TO, 4.1 STL%

18–28 @ rim, 6–19 non-rim 2s, 23–25 from the free-throw line, 7–21 from 3 (5/15 C&S, 2/6 OTD)

A four-game sample, even one as high-stakes as a senior’s final conference tourney, offers nowhere near enough data to assert any grand ideas about a prospect, but along with an otherwise notable and interesting statistical profile, interest in House as a professional should have been stewing for explorative organizations.

The Boston Celtics, who coincidentally drafted two players from the top 25 of the NileHoops’ 2024 NBA Draft Board in Baylor Schieierman and Anton Watson, were the first to tap into House’s upside with a Summer League invite. In 77 minutes across four games, House showcased most of the skills one would have expected from his college profile. Combining a 2.4 assist-to-turnover ratio with a 35 assist percentage was standard practice for House, as was posting 22.4/5.7/8.8 P/R/A splits per 40 minutes (compared to 21.7/4.8/4.7 in 3 seasons at New Mexico.)

There will rarely be another instance in which Jaelen House records a 1.3 steal percentage and 8.8 personal fouls per 40 minutes, as he did during Summer League. His NCAA profile indicates a player who generates steals at an outlier level with a meaningful sample size to verify.

His foul count relative to other outlier performers is on the high end, but this is a common enough pattern for high-activity defenders in their first summer league, as seen below.

Block % ≥ 0.8; Steal % ≥ 4.35; Minutes ≥ 3000

Jevon Carter (2018)-1.9 steals/6.4 fouls per 40

Isaiah Miller (2021)-3.9 steals/6.8 fouls per 40

Pierria Henry (2015)-3.7 steals/5.8 fouls per 40

Matisse Thybulle (2019)-3.1 steals/3.7 fouls per 40 (my goat)

It also seems fair to assume House will shoot better than 0–8 on OTD three-point attempts moving forward, which looks especially bad in contrast to his 4-for-8, 75 TS% catch-and-shoot performance. These two major flaws did not stop House from posting solid Summer League metrics on the second-best SL offense in the league.

In conclusion, a player with as many positive traits as House is worth investing in at the NBA level. At a cursory level, players with his proclivity to attempt threes at volume, obtain steals, make free throws, and playmaker efficiently are extremely rare. The best-case scenario entails an altered shot diet where his catch-and-shoot abilities are weaponized more often, and a team benefits from positive regression indicated historically by players with similar three-point volume and free-throw proficiency.

The downsides of an undersized, vertically challenged guard with poor shotmaking consistency are heavy enough to leave his career outlook at less competitive levels of basketball. There is too much to be gained for an NBA franchise to not offer House a consistent roster slot shortly.

Nile!