Pessimism, ft. AJ Dybantsa
A devil's advocate series on the top three prospects
The upside with AJ Dybantsa is fairly easy to locate.
He’s nearly 6’10 with the handle of a guard and rim efficiency of a center. More importantly, he self-creates his own dunks and scores at will. No one in the country dunked more out of isolation and pick and roll. It’s a dizzying combination of scoring output and athleticism.
The athleticism is what would really justify the “generational” shouts for Dybantsa. Not only does he self create dunks in the HC more than any player in recent memory, but he rocked a 99.5/100 combine score, thanks to excellent vertical and sprint times. He certainly weaponizes this athleticism as a scorer, leading the nation in points per game, while only assisted on a small fraction of his field goals.
With a strong handle and decent passing numbers, he looks certain to step into a high usage role and become one of the highest volume scorers in the NBA.
It’s a rare, anomalous skillset.
Rarity = Impact?
While it’s easy to get caught up in the rarity of skill, efficient collegiate self-creation is less robust of a skill singularity than other traits. Lots of high TS freshman are unable to convert their TS% to the NBA.
AJ was certainly efficient (60% TS on 33% usage), but this intersection alone doesn’t guarantee top pick status: at least 4 other freshmen in this class have exceptional TS% and USG% intersections.
Much of AJ’s allure, relative to these players, has to do with his elite athleticism and frame, which makes his scoring efficiency appear more novel.
An interesting thought exercise: if AJ put up an identical season to this one, but at 6’7, does his upside meaningfully change? Everything would be the same: his stats would be identical, every play he makes is the same. Are the NBA margins strong enough to notably hurt the upside tail of the same player, two inches shorter?
How about 6’6? Or 6’5? If the tape and stats are the same, does his height meaningfully alter his impact footprint?
6’5 may be extreme, but it’s a reasonable, paradigm-establishing question.
In that vein, the primary concern must be that AJ’s scoring novelty is being conflated with an indication of higher upside.
A secondary, more generalizable concern is whether the upside justifies ignoring the downside.
Performance against top teams
AJ benefited from an early season stretch against some of the worst teams in the nation. In 5 games against Cal Baptist, UC Riverside, Pacific, Abilene Christian, and Eastern Washington, AJ averaged nearly 3 steals and 6 assists per game, while going 22 for 22 at the rim.
Note that AJ crushing these teams should never be construed as a negative. Every HM player technically has opportunities to crush bad teams, and crushing bad teams is an important indicator.
However, the issue lies in the rest of the games: AJ has one of the strongest differences between his full-season and conference/competition splits that I’ve ever seen. He shot just 50% 2P & 1.2% steal rate against top 100 teams (basically any high major team other than the absolute bottom dwellers), but 57% 2P and 1.7% steal rate on the season.
I can immediately sense a few refutations. What is the point of splitting against competition? Aren’t there players that have succeeded despite mediocre intra-comp splits? Why are you isolating 2P% and steal%?
First, top 100 is a pretty tame cutoff. The vast majority of high major teams qualify under this criterion. 14 of the 16 Big 12 teams ended the season in barttorvik’s top 100(the two teams were Kansas St. and Utah).
Second, we can compare to two players commonly cited as cautionary examples of relying on intra-season splits, Dylan Harper and Shai.
Dylan Harper put up 54% 2P & 2.8% steal against top 100 teams; 57% 2P & 2.6% steal overall.
SGA put up 49% 2P & 2.6% steal vs top 100 teams; 50% 2P and 2.8% steal overall.
Finally, these stats were chosen not only because they usually have strong signal, but because they encompass AJ’s strengths (interior scoring) and weaknesses (“feel”). With his elite athleticism and handle, we would expect AJ to be a fairly special 2P scorer, but he’s well off from Harper.
However, both AJ’s 2P and steal rate nosedive against good teams, in a way that even these exemplars of comp-dropping success stories never approached. And he’s not a PG like either of them either.
The 2P scoring drop can be attributed to his increased midrange reliance, along with a dive in rim efficiency. While the latter is expected, nearly twice as many midrange attempts as rim attempts in these games has historically been a bust indicator.
Midrange shooting is not a bad thing. Stars need a midrange counter. We saw the difficulties that Boozer had with no midrange counter. It’s notable how AJ’s midrange shottaking suppresses his blocked shot rate (and by extension, his turnover rate). But taking a disproportionate amount of midrange shots is limiting, and it’s not indicative of anything positive on its own.
Defense
You’ve probably seen people talk about stock rates when discussing prospects. It may seem trivial: if even the best stockers are generating stocks on just a small fraction of total possessions, why even use it as an important indicator?
And more commonly asked: what about Reed Sheppard?
I talked to Logan Adams about this a few months ago. The gist is that it’s a cognition-physicality indicator. If that seems like unnecessary jargon, then the simplest explanation is that stocks are the best, single stat indicator of busts.
Reed Sheppard has time, but the mistake would have been over-indexing on the upside of high stocks. We’re talking about the downside of low stocks, which is historically more ascertainable.
Guards with low steal rates, forwards with low block rates. Pretty much all of the best players in NBA history were either such strong thinkers or athletes that they drew a strong rate of stocks. If you’re bored, make a list of the best NBA players drafted since 2008, and check their college stock rates. This is something that is easier received in auto-didactic form rather than demonstrated.
Some of the true elite offensive engines (think Nash or Dame) were so elite at passing and shooting that their NBA low activity badness was mitigated by surrounding players. And even they stocked decently in college.
So: Dybantsa’s stocks are probably the most concerning part of his profile. His foul rate is low, and it speaks to his lack of effort.
Dybantsa’s steal rate is passable, but if we isolate to conference play, it becomes a major worry. Forwards with Dybantsa’s steal rate in conference play have a poor NBA translation record, and the ones that did were mostly bad defenders. Forwards with Dybantsa’s block rate (don’t even need conference split) have an especially poor track rate.
The list of players who even approached a 1% block rate AND 1.2% steal rate in conference play is entirely full of busts. I’m being generous with the filters, but I hope the point is clear. The few players that make it out are mostly shooting specialists, making it even more necessary that AJ provides huge offensive impact.
Should you fade AJ because he doesn’t stock? Doesn’t he have huge dimensions and elite athleticism, so he can eventually learn to guard? Why does it matter when he’s this elite scorer anyway?
Well, it’s a heuristic, but a powerful, predictive heuristic. All of the greats, especially those who he was compared to, stocked. You may not consider their block or steal rates, but the vast majority of HOF forwards had quite strong stocks in college. Both AJ’s block and steal rates are far below average, comparable to Darius Acuff in conference and against top 100 team.
Summary
Altogether, AJ checks a number of critical bust indicators. Low blocks and steals are historically damning, as are his huge proportion of shots from midrange.
It calls his positionality into flux. His lack of off-ball defense and high scoring load is sorta reminiscent of a guard. Thinking of him as a jumbo Jalen Brunson, for example, would mitigate these concerns, but he also doesn’t pass or shoot nearly as well as most guards.
It also makes his downside scenarios more scary. It would appear highly difficult to “scale” AJ down for the reasons given. Additionally, his poor catch-and-shoot numbers extend back to AAU, and he was the first 6’9 player I’ve seen that completely wasn’t used offball as a cutter. Cutting is something that takes discipline and experience; a few years back, Paul George was candid on his podcast about playing off-ball, saying that he’s never been good at back cutting. Picking up these off-ball skills and scaling down likely poses a more difficult than expected endeavor.
With a massive midrange reliance, poor stock rates, and sub-PG passing, it’s unclear what position AJ will play. Though there were times where it was less than ideal, elite efficiency as an “engine” appears to be the anecdote to these concerns.
Refutation
Well, there’s more space in the NBA, he was efficient at the rim even against good teams, and he’ll step into the league as perhaps its most athletic 6’9 player. Moreover, he had much better scoring output, passing volume, and touch than players like RJ Barrett, Paolo, Jaylen Brown, and DeMar DeRozan.
DeMar DeRozan as a conceivable floor is fine. He’s likely better, with better touch than anyone mentioned. He should be able to make up the defensive deficit, and it is partially true that his defense can’t be as bad as other players with his stock rates because of his size.
His offense might just be good enough to make all of this a moot point. Usually bad practice to suggest that for anyone, but it’s uniquely possible for AJ.