Should OKC Thunder try to move up to nab the intriguing Jarrett Culver?
By Noah Schulte
Weaknesses
For as high as his floor is and a sure a thing as he’s going to be, I’m just not sold on his ceiling. The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor compares his game to that of All-Star Khris Middleton, but in order for him to get there, he needs to be a better shooter than he is now.
He only hit 30.4 percent of his three’s and 70.7 percent of his free throws last year at Texas Tech, both of which are way too low. it doesn’t help that he had to take a lot of tough, contested three’s by virtue of being the only consistently viable option for that offense but even then, he was clearly a below-average shooter.
His mechanics fluctuated a bit from shot-to-shot and he had a lot of moments with a pretty noticeable hitch at the very top. It was most obvious off the bounce where he’d either have a relatively smooth stroke that looked natural coming out of his hands or, more often than not, he’d hold the ball at the top of his shot for a beat too long and it looked like he was shooting a medicine ball:
For most players like Culver, the jumper would be a problem but it wouldn’t be a potentially crippling one like it is for him. Culver, on the other hand, really does need his jumper to come through.
To be a viable secondary option in the NBA, he needs to at least make defenses respect his shot and he doesn’t seem to be at that point right now.
He had some moments off the catch where his shot looked great this season but he also had some moments where his shot was clearly still a work-in-progress:
Him not having a reliable jumper would also hurt him on the ball where it seemed to me, he was overrated this season. He was good enough to get by some weaker college defenses but when he had to play against other NBA prospects, the cracks in his game started to show themselves.
His average first step and relatively sloppy handle weren’t good enough to blow by guys like Tre Jones and Zion Williamson and so he’d usually have to settle for hard mid-rangers:
Granted, all of this is stuff that he can work on if he’s in the right system and has the right people around him. But that’s a big if.