The Case for Egor Demin
My change of heart for a contentious prospect
Originally seen on Swish Theory here:
I hate when people say that the draft is a crapshoot.
They’re not entirely wrong. It’s impossible to be a complete developmental determinist given the confluence of factors related to both the drafting team and the mental makeup of the player. These are intuitively important but difficult to decipher without being involved in the draft process with a team.
But what’s frustrating is that “crapshoot” canonically implies utter randomness, as if the entire evaluative and developmental process is entirely unpredictable. It ignores that certain loci of traits are associated with differing rates of development, a principle that forms the basis of my current draft research.
Moreover, even if we know that college production does not exactly scale to pro production, there’s a mountain-load of evidence that suggests stronger age-adjusted production yields better professional results.
This makes the Egor case seemingly open and shut.
At first glance, this is an unmitigated disaster. Egor had a sorta defensible 4.7 BPM … but he was infamously statpadding against inferior competition. 26 of his 33 games came against top 100 opponents, and in these games, he had a disastrous 1.8 BPM. Against these opponents, he could not score (46.6% TS), he could not rebound (0.7% OREB), and he could not secure the ball (25.2% TO). Reread those stats. 46% TS and 25% TO is just preposterous. His role is listed here as “scoring PG”, yet it seems that he cannot efficiently score or prevent turnovers?
It’s fair to ask what can Egor reliably do on offense when he isn’t playing shitty teams. Nothing indicates he can be productive in the NBA.
My initial view on Egor
Full transparency: I ranked Egor 31st on my board. Many analytically-inclined individuals had him far lower. 1.8 BPM vs t100 without scoring upside or outlier athleticism should be a death knell.
Many have lambasted the Nets’ draft, calling it the worst of all time. To me, the bigger issue is accumulating five first-round picks in a single draft: it implicitly punts the value of these picks as they are all competing for the same scant playing time/resources. Even more concerning is that all five of the selected players are fairly low-floor. A few of them will likely bust pretty hard.
Still, it’s nice that there was a coherent vision of accumulating smart, tall guys with reasonable feel. Even if it seemed like they just multiplied height and assist rate, and then took the first 4 guys they saw. While the players they selected were not particularly inspiring, Sam Presti has consistently demonstrated that this size x passing formula has high reward (and also high risk).
Based on some recent conversations and philosophical changes spurred by my year-round historical research, I believe that the incongruence between Egor’s draft capital and my estimated draft capital projection was too large. To be clear, this belief has little to do with his tepid Summer League production, though there were some reasons for cautious optimism. While I still believe the Nets reached to some degree on Egor, and that he has many red flags, I now view him as a strong mid-first option, pumping him up a dozen or so spots on my board.
Here’s why.
The Problem with BPM
Beyond his TO issues, Egor has a terrible BPM, terrible TS%, and terrible 3P%. Altogether, it led to atrocities like the following:
Are these 3 separate issues? Not quite.
The most underrated part of his profile: Egor’s 3P misery collapsed the rest of his statistical profile.
Egor took tons of 3s. Half his shots came from 3. And yes, he shot a absurdly bad 27.3% from 3. But he was completely fine inside the arc.
This is a legitimately great scoring profile inside the arc. Not only was Egor doing it with over 80% of his two point scoring being un-assisted (anything over 60% un-assisted is notable to me), but he shot 55% on twos. While Egor has picked up a label as a “comp dropper”, his inside-the-arc percentages vs top 100 teams (52.5%) and top 50 teams (55.0%) were perfectly reasonable. Egor was self-creating a huge proportion of his two point makes and converted them at a fairly good rate.
Sure, the vast majority of this scoring came in the PnR with the help of a screen, 150 total 2P attempts is on the lower side, and he has less than optimal burst off the dribble. These are all important considerations, and it would be unwise to treat Egor as a future inside-the-arc scoring maestro. But the fact of the matter is that he was highly efficient without a strong assisted shooting profile, and considering his transition woes, this production almost entirely came in the half-court. There comes a point where efficient HC shotmaking on a strongly unassisted shooting profile must be respected.
And yet, despite his strong inside-the-arc efficiency… Egor shot 46.6% true shooting versus top 100 teams. This is what happens when you shoot 27% from three and those shots make up half your shooting profile. 3P bricklaying should not be excused completely, but we cannot simultaneously champion a high 3PR shot profile and demonize high 3PR shooting profiles with less success.
Egor is a great inside-the-arc scorer, and while he takes many 3s, he fails to convert them at a high rate. This should be the Egor scoring evaluation, rather than taking on overlapping metrics at face value.
Egor shot 22% from 3 and took over half his shots from three vs top 100 comp; it’s immensely obvious that his TS% and BPM were going to tank. BPM is famously prone to react strongly to small sample three point shotmaking. The high volume three point misses strongly diluted his 3P%, TS%, and BPM.
This dilution even applies to offensive rebounding, though to a lesser degree. There is a known and strongly intuitive negative relationship between offensive rebounding and 3PR. When you are hanging out on the perimeter, you will be less likely to be in the proper position to secure offensive rebounds. See: known super-athlete Anthony Edwards and his preposterously low 2% OREB.
So while it’s fair to point out Egor’s relative “softness” via OREB and FTR, it must be done with the contextualization of highly perimeter-oriented scoring style. When 63% of your halfcourt twos come from the PnR and half of your shots are threes, you are not in a position to offensively rebound, nor are you in optimal position to draw fouls. It should also be noted that 15% DREB is far more compelling.
Still, as I will note a multitude of times in this piece, Egor’s softness is concerning. His putrid offensive rebounding may be the single biggest road block to his reaching higher outcomes. 0.7% OREB vs top 100 teams is awful, and even 3PR-maxxed PGs like LaMelo and Kasparas were o-rebounding far better. Decent rebounding priors, elite size, and reasonable blocks/defensive rebounding give Egor some outs to neutralizing his functional timidness.
So will Egor’s shooting improve?
This is the million dollar question. Sure, Egor’s high volume 3P inaccuracy tanked his 3P%, BPM, and TS% to a significant extent, but my point is asymmetry; that strong 3P accuracy is going to skyrocket these metrics. How likely is this?
Well, 3 point volume is a helluva indicator, and Egor had a massive 50 3PR. I don’t find it instructive to call Egor a non-shooter when he is legit taking half his shots from 3P.
Unfortunately, the rest of his shooting indicators aren’t particularly encouraging.
Egor shot 69.5% from the line this year, which is okay. Coupling all his shooting samples together, he’s at 74% FT (260 attempts). Egor shot 27% 3P on 154 3PA at BYU, and he shot 31.5% 3P on 615 3PA across all samples.
One point of note is that he took nearly as many c&s 3s as dribble jumper 3s, and he shot 24% on dribble jumper 3s, which are more prone to variance. This would typically be more encouraging had Egor not shot 30% on C&S 3s.
Egor rarely took runners (3.9% frequency), though he made them at a reasonable clip (0.83 points per shot is ~ 60th percentile). Prior to BYU, in 17 games with Real Madrid’s U18 team across 2 seasons, he made just one total runner. Egor’s runner infrequency is especially interesting for two reasons:
A gargantuan 44% of Egor’s scoring possessions came as PnR BH (98th percentile frequency). This playtypes are especially conducive to runners (fairly intuitive).
BYU was one of the best teams in the country at taking (86th percentile) and making (92nd percentile) runners.
A low runner frequency is usually of slight concern for any ball-handler, but this was an offensive context plump for runner liberality. It is a serious red flag that he was unable to get to that runner, and even watching his few runners, it’s clear he’s not comfortable transitioning mid-dribble into runner.
This lack of dynamic comfort is also seen in his lack of functional pullup-2 fluidity. Sure, he has a fairly fluid shot when OTD from 3. But he shot 6/22 on pullup 2s, and it’s clear that he favors pausing his dribble near the highpost and doing a turnaround into the pullup rather than fluidly pulling up.
Egor’s ineptitude in fluidly taking pullup 2s with his lack of runner volume in a runner-conducive context is reasonable evidence for his touch discomfort in dynamic environments.
The last piece of data is secondary, but I’ve heard from quite a few sources that Egor shot pretty well during workouts. Again, this is anything but a dynamic ecosystem, but it’s a positive datapoint.
Overall, there’s reason to be cautiously optimistic, but there are a number of warts that diminish Egor’s shooting projection. It’s hard to tell how his shooting development will progress, but I am cautiously optimistic that legit strides will be made given his age and volume.
A Brief Note on Turnovers
This is more of a stylistic concern, but not all TO prone players should be billed as the same. Consider the following:
There is a clear discrepancy between the badness of Egor’s TO rate and the goodness of his A:TO. Egor was converting passes far more than he was committing TOs, while Kasparas Jakucionis had a slightly lower TO rate but far lower A:TO.
So while Kasparas, Fears, and Demin were all very turnover-prone, Demin was by far the most functionally turnover-avoidant.
We should also understand the issues with TO rate, which is estimated with the following formula:
TO%: 100 * TO / (FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV)
It’s basically estimating the share of a player’s scoring possessions that end in a TO.
By virtue of his three-point heavy shooting profile, Egor wasn’t getting to the line particularly much, nor was he scoring with volume inside the arc. This underestimates the value of the denominator here, as there are fewer than expected total possessions. At the same time, Egor’s relative timidness inside the arc is both a product of his pass-heavy nature and his lack of physicality and comfort getting downhill, especially without a screen. Ultimately, his shot diet likely inflated his TO rate to some degree.
While I understand the logic of the formula, Egor’s softness leaking into adjacent parts of his profile demonstrates the issue with taking metrics at face-value. We know that he rarely gets to the line, but his softness has artifically inflated his TO rate. This fits into my larger point that the downstream effects of Egor’s 3P heavy shooting profile are far-ranging and need to be more thoroughly considered.
So is it fair to call Egor “turnover-prone”? Perhaps, but the turnovers are largely a product of his super-high passing volume. His decision-making is fine, and there aren’t nearly as many head-scratching turnovers (or more generally, bad pass turnovers) in comparison to someone like his new teammate, Danny Wolf.
The number I care most about is 1.9 A:TO. As a raw ratio, A:TO is the strongest indication of scalability, and converting nearly two assists for every turnover bodes very well historically, particularly for size. The TO rate is not nearly as important. I am far more worried about Kasp or Wolf’s turnover issues, considering they convert far fewer assists per turnover.
Egor is an insane passer
This is probably the single most underrated and most publicized aspect of Egor’s game. He can really pass. The list of guys who can run PnRs and pass as proficiently as Egor historically is very, very low. The only 6’8+ player in Bart with even career 30% assist rate and reasonable PnR BH scoring frequency is Scottie Barnes.
In my database of draft measurements, there has never been a prospect listed as a point guard that comes even close to Egor’s dimensions. Forget point guards, there has never been even a shooting guard that has matched Egor’s height in the history of the NBA Combine. This is the type of historical context that makes me uneasy fading Egor.
Another comparison I’ve seen is Josh Giddey. This one isn’t that bad. Let’s take some time to flesh it out.
Per RealGM, Giddey was at 36.3% assist rate, and Egor was at 35.3% assist rate. Giddey was 23.7% TO rate, and Egor was 21.9% TO rate. I’m not sure why RealGM has a lower TO rate than Barttorvik for Egor, but probably dissimilar formulas.
Giddey had a strong edge in rebounding, but Egor clears him in steals. Coincidentally, Egor (84/152, 55% 2P) and Giddey (84/165, 51% 2P) made the same number of 2s in the same number of games, but Egor was more efficient.
The parallels don’t stop there. Giddey shot 29% from 3P, 69% FT, and 25.6 FTR. Egor was 27% 3P, 70% FT, and 26.8 FTR. It’s notable that Giddey had such a poor FTR considering his 2P scoring rate was far higher.
Not sure if the NBL is even better than the Big 12, and if so, it’s probably not worth sweating. Egor and Giddey both played ~900 minutes, so this is a fairly ethical comparison altogether.
Giddey’s rebounding is a large edge, and he was a more efficient passer. But Demin’s combination of wingspan and steal rate is a massive ceiling-raising edge, and he scores far more efficiently inside the arc with better 3PR. Demin offers a much higher ceiling, but Giddey’s floor is probably safer with his elite positional rebounding. These are at least similar caliber of prospects to me. I would prefer Demin, as Giddey’s 3PR+FTR strongly dampens his ceiling.
Giddey ranks 6th in the 2021 class in BPM at 1.3, but much of this is spurred by his career 7.5 rebounds/game. Demin doesn’t have this strength to fall back on, so he really needs to shoot to tap into his upside.
So many good names here. My absolute favorite integration is size x feel, and we approximate this with height/block/2P% to filter out the unphysical players while a:to/steal takes care of feel. If we raise the height filter to 6’8, we get:
Some may immediately point out BPM, but I urge them to use their brains: the box-score stats that are fed into BPM can be evaluated by our own eyes, and Demin is generally in the same ballpark as these guys. Still, Demin is the worst prospect here given that he has by far the worst block and rebounding rates, but he grades fairly well outside of his softness.
Egor has a number of legitimate ceiling-raising traits, which is important considering his age-adjusted production by general impact metrics seems poor.
Underrated Trait #1: Foul Avoidance
Egor’s reaction speed is pretty fire. I assume all readers are familiar with his spectacular passing, but even on defense, Egor has some impressive blocks.
This is a cool clip. Egor’s huge size forced the long initial inbounds pass, and his quick reaction speed helped him get the perimeter block. Despite not being in position to farm blocks, Egor racked up a solid 1.7% block rate.
What’s especially notable is his micro-foul rate.
As always, Egor comfortably cleared these thresholds. 1.7% block, 2.5% steal, 1.8 FC/40, and 6’9. No one has come close to Egor’s combination of stocks+foul avoidance at wing size.
This guy is 6’9 with a 6’10 WS and he can match up against guards. His stocks are solid. He’s at a very reasonable 0.3 blocks/foul. He has the height and instincts to guard up, and he did average ~ 3% BLK/20% DREB in ANGT. There’s enough evidence that if he ever gains enough mass to consistently guard NBA-caliber forwards, he could be a real demon defender. This defensive upside needs to be noted!
Even if we drop the height filter on this query, and throw on an A:TO filter to grab “guards”, it’s a fairly limited group of guys:
By integrating A:TO, steals, and foul rate, this is pretty much the ultimate “high feel” list. It’s just unfathomable that Egor is a whole 3 inches taller than the next closest player. Shai/Haliburton are two of the next three tallest players here. Funny how they find their way into a query yet again.
Remember at the beginning when I noted that “certain loci of traits are associated with differing rates of development”? I think I’ve formed an admissible case that Egor encompasses a particular loci of traits associated with strong feel, reaction time, and potentially, continued strong development.
A better way to explain this is by introducing my new evaluatory framework: outlier cognition per mass. I’ve really grown to value dudes with huge height, length, or weight that can react quickly and process the floor. I will likely write something about this in the future, but something like “cognition-mass index”. BMI, but for cognition. Unsurprisingly, Egor’s immensely feel and huge frame scores quite well within this paradigm.
Overall, beyond this philosophical commentary, my point is that Egor avoids fouls like a guard despite being wing-sized. While this indicates underrated switchable upside, I consider this more importantly a proxy for strong cognition. All signs point to Egor’s cognition-mass index being especially high. We should take note.
Underrated Trait #2: Luck-Adjusted Impact
This is short but Egor’s offensive impact was strong despite being TO prone with low TS. Here, we luck-adjust for 3P%, but -1.6% TO swing against baseline is notable. For reference, this is versus t200 opponents:
4.0 net rating against baseline is huge. Again, A-B is useful for comparing Egor vs his backups, but A- Baseline shows how much better the team was with Egor. He had a legit positive effect on offense, and if he trims the turnovers/makes 3s at a higher rate, his offensive impact will only increase.
Real On/Off and RAPM tell a similar story. It’s clear that Egor’s TO tendencies are mitigated on a team-wide level given his strong assist volume, and he had a strong effect on an already good BYU offense.
It’s also interesting how Egor coincided with a drop in 2P rim%, even with real on-off (which adjusts for teammates), but I didn’t pick up on anything when watching. This is something to sorta keep an eye on in the league.
Overall, this is to say that Egor had a inflationary effect on BYU’s offense even with his current warts. This is a good sign indeed, as he has much room to grow as a ball-handler.
A Cause for Concern
To me, the biggest cause for concern is Egor’s athletic profile. He’s not particularly quick (11.31 lane agility + 3.33 sprint), and he is a straight up bad vertical athlete (awful 26.5 inch standing vert + 32.5 max vert). Coupled with his skinny frame, he has the quintessential bust athletic profile: the low BMI bad athlete.
The low BMI, bad athlete is a devastating, ceiling dropping archetype. See for yourself:
Egor falls comfortably within these thresholds. We can see this softness reflected in his oreb, FTR, and perhaps even in his lack of runner volume. This is concerning, and we will need significant mass gains.
Two reasons why this isn’t as much cause for concern:
This anthropometric sample is pretty incomplete and its skewed towards less heralded prospects. For many years prior to 2024, prospects who accrued significant draft capital did not participate in combine testing.
For instance, we don’t have Giddey’s testing but he’d probably be somewhere here (BMI prolly hits a tad above 23 but still).
If Egor can accumulate minutes at the 1/2, his large size advantage will be more than enough to overcome BMI issues. In other words, positional size will deter disadvantages conferred by his BMI.
He’s also clearly cognizant of all this:
The Elephant in the Room: Positionality
What position does Egor play in the league?
Obviously, Egor could play as a guard. It’s probably not worth discussing too much since he primarily played the 1 at BYU. Egor would need to cut down on TOs and shoot, but it’s a fairly straightforward outcome.
I have seen concern about Egor’s guard viability, on the premise that Egor cannot get downhill without a screen. He’s definitely not the most imposing athlete, but:
I question the independent value of getting downhill without a screen in such a PnR centric league.
Damn near most of his offense either came out of the PnR or spotting up from 3. Are we sure that scoring out of PnR on a PnR-heavy team means that he is reliant on a screen? Causation seems strong.
However, Egor does not need to play the 1/2 to provide meaningful value. He could be a really good wing.
It goes without saying that Egor needs to make 3s at a far higher clip than he did this season. If Egor cannot make open C&S threes at a reasonable frequency, it is likely over. He needs legit shooting development, and we’re betting a lot on 50 3PR to clutch up as a shooting indicator.
If Egor can make 3s at a reasonable frequency, then he offers real positional versatility. The second coin toss is physicality: Egor needs to bulk up a bit and guard wings with consistency.
And, if Egor can make 3s AND guard wings, he offers basically no lineup friction. You can fit him into so many lineups.
My working theory is that cognitive load per position is rising league-wide, so having someone like Egor may end up more of a necessity in a decade. Even with the current league in mind, Egor would have a huge cognitive advantage at the 3 (the 3 probably has the lowest cognitive load by position), a large size and cognitive advantage at the 2, and an overwhelming size advantage at the 1; this would give him pretty strong staying power.
To be clear, this sort of frictionless upside would only come if he’s able to make 3s AND guard wings.
Conclusion
So, how likely is Frictionless Egor?
Based off the evidence I’ve provided, I would equate the probabilities of making 3s and guarding wings (at reasonable frequency) to ~ 60% each. So, by my shoddy odds, there’s a ~ 36% chance at this frictionless utopia, which is easy for me to swallow and rank top 20 at the absolute worst.
The odds of either 3s or guarding wings coming around is 84%, which is nice. That being said, there’s 40% chance that shooting does not come around, which would be pretty disastrous.
There’s also the point that the shooting thresholds for guards are much higher than for wings, as there is legit off-the-dribble necessity. So the odds of him playing as a guard are probably somewhere near 50%, if not closer to 36%.
Here’s the takeaway: Egor is a pretty high variance player. I’ve called other players in this class high variance but I honestly think that title should go to Egor. He could reasonably be out of the league by the end of his rookie contract. Egor needs to shoot, and he needs to shoot at high volume. And he needs to rely on skill and weight gain to overcome the poor BMI x athlete tag.
Previously, I was over-indexing on Egor’s strong downside. There are quite a few ways this could go badly. But I didn’t fully consider the uniqueness of Egor’s game. He has some (dare I say) generational strengths that I’ve demonstrated with some pretty generous Bart query thresholds. The league is built on outliers, and I do not feel comfortable ranking a fairly well-rounded freshman with huge strengths outside the top 20.
That being said, I sympathize with Nets fans and their front office, as they have invested significant draft capital into a guy who could be pretty bad. I would personally have been more risk-averse with this selection, but the upside is high enough for it to be reasonable. This is not a particularly popular take on Draft Twitter, but Egor’s positional versatility is that compelling.
Also, this is a half-serious point but if a conglomerate like Draft Twitter is so opposed to a single player/concept, then it is probably a good idea to zag a bit to account for the effects of overconfidence bias and consensus bias.
Moreover, one should be wary of a massive delta between perception and draft capital barring a catastrophic pick by “unwell”-intentioned front offices (i.e., anything the Raiders did in the last quarter century, or Nico selecting OMP). I do not believe the Nets to be in this tier of franchise ineptitude. That’s not to say that we should become mock draft warriors, but it’s a sensible sanity check for select prospects. The draft is a tad bit more of a crapshoot than we’d like to believe.
Ultimately, so many of the warts Draft Twitter has ascribed to Egor are by virtue of his 3P bricklaying. He has real red flags, and his floor is far lower than I’d usually be comfortable selecting in the top 10. But Egor is tall and smart, he can accumulate 3s and stocks without fouling, and he can efficiently self-create inside the arc. He passes like very few we’ve seen with his size. He managed to raise the offensive ceiling for a dominant BYU offense. The upside is hard to ignore with Egor, and his unorthodoxy is riveting.
He just needs to make those damn threes.
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I needed to re read this. I love you
Very good piece, was very clear & concise. I really like this piece because it was informative & easy to read.