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Frank Kaminsky led the Wisconsin Badgers to the National Championship game this past season as a senior, and is now ready to see where the next chapter of his basketball career will be written. He is expected to be a late lottery pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, and there is one team in particular that would be a perfect fit for him and needs a skillset like the one he brings to the court.
The Indiana Pacers are entering an offseason that needs to be a statement for them. It was a tough season in 2014-15 due to the injury issues that they were plagued with, but it also showed that they can no longer keep Roy Hibbert around if they want to take the next step as a team. His defense is excellent, but he kills the Pacers’ offense and isn’t consistent enough to depend on.
So that brings the Pacers to the search for a replacement at the center position, and Kaminsky fits that bill and will likely be on the board when Indiana is on the clock with the 11th overall pick. There are going to be other big man options with the pick, but Kaminsky is the perfect fit for what the Pacers need from their next center.
At 7-foot-0 and 234 pounds, Kaminsky has a very complete all-around skillset. He may not be the defensive stopper that Hibbert has been throughout his career, but Kaminsky has long arms and his height forces opponents to change their shots. Offensively, he is a far superior player to Hibbert and would fit in with Frank Vogel‘s system perfectly.
Hibbert has been extremely limited to shooting inside the paint, and hasn’t improved his mid-range game to making himself a threat. Kaminsky, on the other hand, already has an excellent mid-range game and will likely be a threat from behind the 3-point arc in the first year or two of his NBA career.
Vogel loves to run a pick-and-roll offense with veteran power forward David West, and adding Kaminsky would give him another option in that offense.
During his senior season last year at Wisconsin, Kaminsky averaged 18.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game. He is as fundamentally sound as a big man can be, and actually can put the ball on the ground to get into the paint. Kaminsky will need to build up his strength in order to handle some of the NBA’s premier big men, but his body isn’t far away from being capable of holding up at the next level.
It will be very interesting to see what Larry Bird and the Pacers decide to do with the 11th overall pick. They could look at other players like Myles Turner from Texas, Trey Lyles from Kentucky or even Willie Cauley-Stein from Kentucky. All three of those players would be solid fits as well.
That being said, they won’t find the offensive game that Kaminsky can bring to the table with any other player. Bird has quite a few things to think about before making his pick, but Kaminsky is going to be in the conversation.
Evan Massey is the Green Bay Packers beat writer for www.RantSports.com, and also contributes across the NFL, MLB and NBA portions of the site. Follow him on Twitter at @Massey_Evan and like him on Facebook.
