Asa Newell and the Perils of Wingification

Excerpts from Swish Theory's Draft Guide

The following report was published in the Swish Theory’s 2025 NBA Draft Guide. You will not find a more comprehensive, detailed, or accurate resource pertaining to the 2025 NBA Draft. I strongly urge everyone to check it out.

Asa Newell’s success will come down to wingification.

There’s no mistaking Asa’s offensive box-score production this year. In the last 15 years, 13 freshmen had produced 5+ PRPG, and only Cam Thomas didn’t go top 10. 17 players have produced 7+ offensive BPM, and 15 of them went top 10.

How has Asa been so productive on offense?

The simple answer is that he’s been an utter force around the rim. 40% of his scoring possessions have come via cuts or putbacks, and he’s shooting an absurd 67% at the rim in the halfcourt. Asa is such a smart rebounder; he’s able to accurately ball-track while sealing, and he’s so precise in tracking the trajectory of missed shots. This anticipatory trajectory tracking is also apparent as he rises to tap missed shots into the rim. Asa is a big human being, but he’s not that physically imposing. His combination of anticipation and a quick load time manifested in an elite 14% offensive rebound rate.

While he relied on second-chance and cuts en route to high efficiency hoops, it is unlikely that Asa will be able to continue this sort of shot diet in the NBA. Asa has limited viability at the 5, namely because he’s small and can’t protect the rim well. At the combine, Asa measured at 6’9 shoeless with 6’11 WS and just under a 9’ SR. He has good height, but that’s Carter Bryant/Flagg/Ace length. On D, length >> height, always. Asa primarily played the 4 at Georgia, and he is nowhere near a capable enough rim protector to play the 5 consistently (just 3.8% block rate).

Asa will need to diversify his shot diet to play high leverage minutes at the 4, as this “garbageman” scoring archetype has been highly disappointing in recent years.

Two of Asa’s closest statistical comps are Marvin Bagley Jr. and Obi Toppin. Both feasted off offensive rebounds, cuts, and rim dominance, and to be clear, both were pretty good finishers in the league too. Bagley couldn’t score outside of the rim and both were poor defenders, unable to defend well inside or on the perimeter. TJ Leaf was another comparison, as a resounding Lonzo merchant that was effectively awful on entering the NBA. All had much better defensive rebounding, assist rate, and 2P% compared to Asa, but Asa has some sneaky edges that I’ll elaborate on. Please keep this query in mind, as I will continue to reference it.

The framework I’d use to explain relative disappointing outcomes for Toppin, Bagley, and Leaf’s careers is wingification. As you can probably surmise, wingification refers to the process of converting a college 4 into a true NBA wing. The modern NBA wing is able to switch onto smaller guards and bigger wings, take contested 3s, and operate at high decision-making throughput. Let’s go through these three elements of wingification and assess whether Asa can make the leap from modern tweener to wing:

Assessing Wingification

1. Switchability

Bagley and Leaf were actually somewhat quick. Bagley was getting “switchability” shouts prior to his draft, and Leaf put up a speedy 3.19 sprint (he also clocked in a horrible 12.26 second lane agility). But it’s clear neither of them were able to convert speed-for-size to action via reaction speed, as they had hideous steal rates. Obi Toppin had a 1.7 career steal rate, but he was getting beat off the bounce at Dayton regularly. None of these three players were positive defenders per EPM, and while Toppin is the most “successful”, he clocked in with a 1st percentile EPM this season.

How many 95th+ percentile finishers are bottom 5th percentile defenders?

Asa is not only quicker than these guys, but he had the highest steal rate. He has demonstrated legit switchability (albeit in a chaotic defensive infrastructure), and he’s showcased his agility via perimeter swipes into transition dunks, such as here:

Moreover, Asa’s 10.95 lane agility and 2.78 shuttle run indicate strong change of direction and general agility, and these are numbers that (likely) far surpass the aforementioned triumvirate. He didn’t defend there too often, but Asa is a far better bet to defend like a wing than those guys.

2. Decision-Making

Unfortunately, Asa also had the lowest assist rate of these players by quite a bit. Some of this is by virtue of the fact that his scoring burden had a relatively low creation opportunity- a player who scores off putbacks and cuts is not in position to create for others. But shot diets can also be considered the inverse of a players’ weaknesses, and the reality is that Asa took a shot diet unconducive to racking up assists because he is likely not optimized in an on-ball role where he would accrue more assists.

In 14 games across FIBA U17/U19 WC, Asa averaged just 0.8 assists/40 and ~ 2% assist rate. While his assist% is technically on the comeup, my biggest worry with the wingification of Asa is definitely how quickly he can process on O. I suppose his uber low TO% and decent foul rate are encouraging signs.

3. Shooting

Asa is by far the best shooting prospect of that query. He made 75% of his FTs and took 5 3s per 100 possessions. Asa’s soft touch on runners and hooks is also notable; 18% of his scoring possessions came this way, and he averaged a reasonable 0.8 Points Per Shot. He also made 37% of his open C&S 3s.These are not normal shooting numbers for someone considered a non-shooting big, as he’s shown underlying touch and the willingness to take 3s.

Pay attention to that micro turnover rate too- the list of prospects with career TO rate under 10% is littered with shooters. While he’s not a good passer at all, there’s a case to be made that his ball-tracking on the offensive boards, strong steal rate for a 4, and elite TO avoidance hint towards latent processing goodness. I’d be more comfortable making this case if his passing priors weren't so atrocious.

Two more notes about Asa:

First, Asa was a hideous driver, and it's possible he never hits the minimum on-ball skill threshold to play the wing. Just 8% of his HC possessions were drives, and he was both inefficient (0.757 PPP) and contact averse (0.26 FTR). That’s not to say he isn’t functionally strong: his ability to leverage his lower body and push into defenders is how he ranks above the 85th percentile in both postups and putbacks. But the early driving returns aren’t pretty, and given that handle is equal parts decisionmaking on small time intervals and skill development, it seems unlikely that Asa has the underlying skill beds to ever hit legit handling outcomes, even in rosier timelines.

Second, Asa was the unfortunate recipient of Georgia’s horrid guard play. While Toppin and Leaf were considered by some to be products of high paced, lob-conducive offensive systems, you will not find anyone on this planet saying that about Asa. In fact, Georgia’s guard play was flat out horrible (73rd out of 79 high major teams in TO rate). This was especially notable in transition, as Georgia’s guards were not fast enough to push the pace or make quick reads, and their offense stalled in these moments (Georgia was 23rd percentile in transition scoring).

As such, just 8.3% of Asa’s scoring possessions came in transition. For context, that number was 18% for Obi, 17.5% for TJ Leaf, and 13% for Marvin Bagley. Noa Essengue, a player with similar mold and broad playstyle similarities, had a 21% transition frequency! All of these players were remarkably efficient in transition, which is no surprise considering it has the highest PPP on median for most players.

9th percentile in Transition Frequency, 95th percentile in Transition PPP

And there is no question that Asa is built for transition with his quickness, ball-tracking, and vertical. Asa was in the 9th percentile in transition scoring frequency but the 95th percentile in overall. transition scoring. He was deprived of the “easy transition buckets” that the rest of the group did?

Ignore the “how” for now, but what if Asa’s transition scoring frequency was more in line with the likes of Bagley, Toppin, Leaf, and Essengue? As I outlined at the start of this, Asa is one of the most efficient offensive producers we’ve seen, but it’s reasonable to say that this was a fairly low end offensive context for Asa. Could we have seen him hit like 6 PRPG + 130 OTRG + 8 O-BPM if he hit 20% transition frequency? I am certain that he could have put up even more gaudy scoring numbers in a context similar to his comparators.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, the wingification of Asa may not be particularly likely, but it’s more likely than previous iterations of this garbageman 4 mold. As a production truther, I am compelled by his ridiculous consistency in production in every single meaningful simulacrum: from his college catch-all’s versus top 100 teams to his efficiency in both the U17/U19 FIBA World Cup, to his usefulness for arguably the best high school basketball team of all time.

Asa is a prospect who undeniably produces in the highest leverage minutes. Sure, he’s of a bad archetype, has awkward dimensions, and his combination of poor passing feel and limited extent of of wingification may preordain him to journeyman status. But considering that his poor mold and feel is already baked into his draft stock, I think that the delta between Asa’s implied draft capital and aggregate career production makes him an undeniable value in this year’s draft.