Should OKC Thunder try to move up to nab the intriguing Jarrett Culver?

Skills

At first glance, nothing about Culver really stands out. He’s a cerebral passer who can consistently set up his teammates, but he’s not the kind of dynamic playmaker who can transform an offense.

He can make some tough shots off the bounce and hit three’s from a standstill, but he’s still not a truly reliable shooter. He has his moments as a scorer and he averaged 18.5 points per game, but he had problems creating against other NBA prospects and he doesn’t project to be a particularly great scorer at the next level.

But once you start to dig deeper, his appeal begins to shine through; maybe he’s not the guy you want running your offense, but it’s hard to find someone so ready-made as a high-level secondary option.

His basketball IQ is one of the highest in this draft, both on and off the ball, and it’s easy to see him racking up five or six assists per game right away by simply manipulating defenses and finding angles:

He still needs to polish his handle and work on his shot, but he’ll probably be able to fit into any system off the ball from the jump. Texas Tech’s motion offense gave him a lot of experience away from the ball and it helped him to develop into one of the more dynamic cutters in this draft:

What’s more, he already seems to have a feel for how to work within the flow of an offense. In fact, he’s at his best when he’s catching the ball at the top of the arc as his defender closes out on him, at which point he can collapse the defense and either kick to an open shooter or finish it on his own:

The thing that really makes him stand out compared to other secondary prospects like him is the fact that he can already play in the pick-and-roll. He’s not always the most aggressive ball-handler, but he has a knack for waiting for something to open up and then crashing into the lane to exploit it:

I have more than a few doubts about the way some other aspects of his game will translate – which we’ll get to in a second here – but everything I just listed should carry over from day one. And make no mistake: these are all fairly valuable skills that will immediately get him minutes wherever he ends up.  At the very least, he’s going to be an above-average rotation player for a long time and, if things break right, he could be a high-end secondary playmaker.

Next up, I examine what areas of Culver’s game are suspect and require growth for him to take a step in his professional career.