The Pitfalls of Pure Box Plus-Minus Scouting: Ben McLemore’s Kansas Profile

Retrospective scouting reports are like Russell Westbrook flexing at the crowd of babies in the bubble.

The Pitfalls of Pure Box Plus-Minus Scouting: Ben McLemore’s Kansas Profile

Retrospective scouting reports are like Russell Westbrook flexing at the crowd of babies in the bubble.

It is a self-serving, boisterous act celebrating one’s previously unquestioned skill. The prospect in question has already fulfilled their prophecy in most cases, including this one. What’s to gain from dancing on the scorched earth where the next Ray Allen once stood? For me, this is practice. I do this process, with less structured notes and sometimes none, a few times a week. As I luckily continue to gain a following, I can only repay the NileHoops community by offering a look into my comprehensive process. The ability to discern why McLemore categorically failed in the NBA can be instructive for analyzing future draft prospects, and his shortcomings may not be apparent at a glance.

If I woke up from a multi-year coma six hours before the NBA Draft and were tasked to create a board, I would log onto Barttorvik, sort by FR/SO BPM versus top-220 competition, throw an AST:TO ratio filter on that, and go from there. BPM is reliable in small-leverage general talent-sorting situations. Outside of that, one would end up waving their flag for today’s title character.

No need to spend much time on what made McLemore a solid prospect, as these are evident and he was drafted in the lottery. The sell of a freshman shooting 42% from 3/87% from the line with the athleticism to dunk 44 times in 37 games is undoubtedly attractive. Doing this all on an NCAA 1-seed Kansas team without any other standout NBA prospects would further create the narrative story for a future NBA star.

That’s more than enough hype, it’s time to snatch a fraud prospect’s chain, for educational purposes.

Age/Measurements/Athletic Testing

Ben McLemore was a very old freshman, so using his class distinction is almost dishonest. In contrast, Noel, a t2 prospect in the class next to Victor Oladipo, was over a year younger. KCP and Otto Porter Jr. played two seasons in college and were younger than McLemore. Giannis being 18 years old on draft day @ 6'9 and growing allowed for the necessary seasons to make physical and skill progressions, for reference.

The combination of being as light as McLemore, having an unremarkable wingspan, and lacking high-end change-of-direction movement ability (like those displayed in the lane agility drill) is logically and factually damning for returning overly positive NBA returns.

Critical Statistical Analysis

51% rim assisted

49% non-rim2 assisted(!!!!!)

93% 3PT assisted

These are MYTHICAL levels of outlier weak self-creation.

This is why Ben McLemore was nowhere near as good of a shooting/scoring prospect as he appears at a glance.

Find any prospect you, the reader, like or have liked.

If their assisted% looks anything like this and they’ve had success in the NBA, please forward this information to me and I will create a new chapter of analysis to this piece. I have never seen this be a successful way to identify NBA guard/wings.

Being a play finisher as a prospect isn’t the end of the world. The lack of dimensionality for McLemore at his size/age, and with the rest of his profile being so weak, was a death sentence.

Sourced from my secret Shot Diet Sheet, I found that Kevin Porter Jr and Ben McLemore had similar profiles, before accounting for self-creation. Based on the constraints of Bart’s layout (having to go into individual profiles to see assisted #s as opposed to querying), I probably will never add these figures.

Instead, looking at KPJ’s profile and seeing that a player can reach the same diet (in a shortened season) as McLemore on a drastically more self-created diet points to a true deficit in the Kansas guard’s handle and skillset.

Above, we see the Kansas 1&D wings that came after McLemore, Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Oubre Jr. With lower Box Plus-Minuses and worse shooting percentages, both players have had much more successful NBA careers than McLemore, their abilities to self-create shots (in the same general Bill Self offensive landscape) indicating future success to some degree.

Other Issues:

Being on the floor with Jeff Withey playing one of the best defensive seasons of the 2010s gave McLemore’s defensive stats a ridiculous boost. Klay/Moody are the two best NBA defenders on this list (thank Draymond Green and Steve Kerr for that?), and the slope is slippery from there. D-PRPG seems to have good NBA predictive power, but all of these false positives make sense with the apparent weight of minutes played on successful defenses. Defensive playmaking deficits carry over whether there’s an elite NBA defensive big on the roster or not. ‘Technically sound defense’ is something I barely believe in, as seen below.

0.7 AST:TO/1.3 stl%/21 FTR in 15 GP vs t50 comp is a lethargic contact-averse, low-feel effort that was propped up by shooting a ridiculously unsustainable 65 TS%

Note: massive reduction in dunk rate

Final 10 NCAA games

28:76 rim:jumper ratio

.9 BLK%

.7 STL% (comical)

2.5 OREB%

Def Reb % ≤ 13; Ast/TO Ratio ≤ 1; Block % ≤ 2.5; Steal % ≤ 2; Free Throw Rate ≤ 35; Draft pick ≤ 30; Class = FrSo;

NBA Outcome

Not being able to self-generate driving lanes (drove on only 10% of possessions @ Kansas, never got over 14% in a full NBA season), or get to OTD jumpers, draw fouls, or move the ball at a high level ended up meaning his only possible route to success was as a transition/spot-up demon. His NCAA 3PAr was extremely low for this role, compared to these ideal off-ball sniper prospects (Devin Booker and AJ Griffin come to mind, with their .50+ 3PARs and under-19 draft ages.)

Opposing teams, or possibly his malfunctioning Kings organization attempting to develop his game in the line of fire, forced him into unsuccessful play types. It would take the most genius basketball minds of the 21st century to extract maximum value from McLemore, but that’s for later in the analysis.

Time in Houston, or the perfect utility of McLemore’s skillset

By age 25, McLemore was a cooked product. -3 rTS% for such an elite shooting prospect was an unexpected outcome by the masses. The 2.2 BLK% was never real. Real shooters don't play 8700 minutes and end up with a .44 3PAr. We’ve never sniffed a playoff game.

Everything changed sometime around Jun 19th, 2019.

Mike D’Antoni’s simplified Hardenball returned McLemore to a comfortable role, one where he was virtually disallowed from creating off the dribble for himself or others, in case he got in the way of Harden’s genius. Instead, he was able to return to normalcy. Back to the days of receiving Naadir Tharpe and Elijah Johnson’s passes and immediately shooting.

It came and went so fast, but the time spent with Harden and D’Antoni allowed Ben McLemore to be himself on the floor, and success came with that. There were no tangible improvements made that couldn’t reasonably be explained by a less intensive offensive load, and there weren’t any carryovers to future success. By the 2022 season, everyone was gone. Harden, Westbrook, D’Antoni, Morey, McLemore.

All of this is to speak to two things: an intentional emphasis on role/fit by GOAT genius Daryl Morey (imagine how many more conventionally successful players could have matched McLemore’s production in such a low-load role, and the price premium they would have cost versus the tarnished Kansas product), and the fact that Ben McLemore was the least portable shooter in recent history.

In Summary

Ben McLemore failed in the NBA based on being a 6'3.5”(without shoes) 20-year-old freshman wing with a mediocre wingspan, slender frame, and poor lane agility movement that by all statistical accounts could not dribble well enough to create offense for himself or others, while also not being able to draw fouls, defensively playmake, or rebound to the degree where positive value was returned to his team.

These crutches made it so that his only true value was as a play finisher next to high-gravity handlers, which he only found at the age of 26, long after the bust title was firmly imprinted upon him, for a total of 81 games of his career alongside James Harden and Mike D’Antoni, quite possibly the most transcendent playmaker/offensive mind duo of all time.

One day when analyzing a prospect, I hope you notice and apply a pattern from this analysis.

Nile!