Sheed on the Hawks

my final 2026 NBA draft big board another really strong class on the whole, a straightforward number 1 pick, but it gets really interesting after that i'll release my final board notes in 3 parts over the next week or so, if you have any questions, ask away

the way Ngongba seems to have adjusted to being the focal point of Duke's offense looks super encouraging in this game

i'm not there yet fully but getting around the idea that Ant/Melo pairing is the ultimate Wemby kryptonite, there's no other duo that would be even remotely as comfortable at bombing an unholy amount of 3s to counter his rim deterrence

seeing other people's boards, i feel like the two prospects i'm going to be really higher than most to begin the cycle are Luigi Suigo and Miles Sadler

the Tyran Stokes 'character issue' debate

i'm fascinated to see how the Grizzlies balance out the middle p&r reps for Edey and Boozer since it can be tempting to monopolize those reps in favour of Edey because he's abnormally big and screens so well, which can somewhat sideline Cam as a creator assuming Memphis at some point will start running some 4-5 pick and roll, it just makes so much sense when they're on the floor together

yeah this is the best prospect in the world right now

really fascinating to see the prevalence of guard-to-guard, wing-to-guard screening or complete inversion in the middle pick and roll actions, for some teams and players, this is an increasingly important part of their offensive scheming, and it doesn't just involve excellent shooters who slip out of screens into the shooting motion in game 1 against the Kings, Lakers often used Adou Thiero as the primary screener to a) activate his passing on the short roll and b) mask some of his shooting deficiencies by having him as an active participant in the initial action, instead of placing him as a spacer/cutter in the corner the Timberwolves also went to a Ball-Kuminga middle p&r on the very first posession of the Bucks game, we should see a ton of these actions between LaMelo and Ant as well during the course of the season

seeing the Knicks roll with Andre Drummond as a backup center, while simultaneously trying to grasp straws like James Wiseman, reinforces my belief that Celtics signing Mitchell Robinson was one the best and most underrated moves of the off-season not only he makes Boston basically untouchable on the glass and further reinforces their defensive capabilities, but it also just puts a massive hole in the roster composition of one of their main in-conference rivals, while fully knowing they have almost no capacity to bring in a comparable replacement

possibly a knee jerk reaction but Duke's scrimmage has gotten me very, very excited for Pat Ngongba's season

ngl despite all these advanced defensive metrics, i'm inclined to regard the simple stop% as the single best measure and proxy of defensive productivity at the end of the day forcing a stop removes any potential factor of variation, it's a backbone of a good d, and when you stack multiple players with high stop% rates, it puts the entire setup in motion stop% largely cuts through the lineup and small sample noise, just be capable of distilling defensive environments that, for one reason or another, actively suppress (i.e. Illinois) or encourage (i.e. Seton Hall) defensive playmaking

the concept of drapm (or rapm in general) farming is the most noteworthy here this basically answers the question of ‘do you simply look at these numbers and decide which player is better’ and the answer is that you shouldn’t do that blindly