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In the majority of current draft boards, analysts have Arizona Wildcats standout Rondae Hollis-Jefferson falling to the Toronto Raptors at pick No. 20. I’m a bit puzzled, honestly. I have nothing against Hollis-Jefferson, but this just does not make sense from a basketball standpoint. Unless Raptors GM Masai Ujiri knows something we don’t know (always a possibility), I can’t see him following through on this pick.
Hollis-Jefferson, broadly speaking, is a defensive specialist at small forward. Take a look around the NBA; how many players like this exist? You might say, rightfully, that many such players exist; it feels like almost every team has a “3 & D” player on the wing these days.
Therein lies the problem: Hollis-Jefferson is so fantastically far from satisfying the “3” component of “3 & D”. He’s not just a bad shooter; he might be an historically bad shooter. He basically didn’t take threes in college, and when he did it wasn’t pretty. He went 8-for-39 over two seasons with Arizona, and the college three-point line is closer than it is in the NBA.
Is it inconceivable that Hollis-Jefferson learns to shoot? Of course not. But it’s highly unlikely, as his jump shot looks about as broken as any other forward in the draft. He’ll need a total rebuild of his shot, the sort of rebuild we recently saw with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. But Kidd-Gilchrist has been widely deemed one of the most coachable players around, and even his reworked shot has not translated into three-point effectiveness yet.
Can Hollis-Jefferson carve out a role in the league without a jumper like, say, Tony Allen? Sure, it’s possible. But Allen is a rare case, and we saw how problematic his lack of shooting was in the Western Conference semifinals against the Golden State Warriors.
If Hollis-Jefferson were a center, things would be different. But in today’s NBA, it really hurts to have complete non-shooters at the guard and forward positions. Additionally, centers are more important to defenses than are small forwards, which makes Hollis-Jefferson’s skill in that area less valuable. This looks to be a fairly deep draft, and the Raptors will likely have better options at No. 20.
Casey Sherman is the Toronto Raptors Beat Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @shermham
