We need shooting badly (obviously). We've talked about trade targets like Cam Johnson, Lauri Markannen, Trey Murphy etc. I wanted to take a look to see if there were any prospects similar to this in the draft.
When looking at pre-draft trends, my favorite type of prospect is usually the high IQ functional athlete +/- a jumper - lots of stocks, good guard rebounders, good big man passers - think Devin Carter last year, CMB this year. However, the tall wing shooter represents a departure from the aforementioned prospect. If we look at Cam, Lauri, and Trey, we see that all of them had very low STL% and BLK%, not really great passers, and weren't great rebounders. In fact, the only things that matter for these guys are 1) They're really tall and 2) They had pre-draft shooting indicators predicting an elite stroke.
Lauri 7'0" age 19 season - 8.6 3P/100, 42% 3, 84% FT, BPM 8.6
Cam 6'9" age 23 season - 10.3 3P/100, career 40% 3, career 84% FT, BPM 12.1
Trey 6'9" age 21 season - 10.7 3P/100, career 40% 3, career 82% FT, BPM 7.2
In fact, and this may be obvious, but drafted tall shooters with good shooting indicators (specifically good FT%) tend to do very well in the league irrespective of anything else. Quick filter of drafted prospects with >35% 3PT and >80% FT listed at 6'8" or above yields a lot of promising shooters and NBA successes - Cam, Brandon Miller, Paul George, Trey Murphy, Jabari Smith, Tristan da Silva. When filtering out outlier bad STL% and AST:TO, the only bust is Dylan Windler, who is on the shorter side (now listed as 6'6"), and whose career FT% is 76%.
The logical next question to ask from this would be - is Alex Karaban next in line? He seems to be the most obvious "tall wing shooter" mentioned in this draft
Karaban age 22 - 11.1 3P/100, career 40% 3, career 83% FT, BPM 7.2
On surface level analysis, the answer is a resounding "yes", but there are a few factors that give me pause
1. His age-adjusted BPM is relatively low relative to the aforementioned 3 guys, who put up better numbers relative to their age
2. His eFG%/TS% really nosedives against top 100/top 50 compe ion - TS drops down to 56% against top 100 comp, whereas the aforementioned 3 guys were all 63%+ - this may indicate difficulty getting his shot off against bigger/more athletic defenders
3. Really anemic steal rate - not just normal bad, but bad bad, which was one of the filters on the aforementioned list that predicted bust
These are the 3 factors that I'll be looking at for the rest of the season - specifically, how his shooting holds up against decent compe ion first and foremost, and also that hopefully his STL rate starts ticking up.
Otherwise, there are no other candidates who can fit the archetype described above. Payton Sandfort has a very outside shot, but he profiles as much more of a Sam Hauser type of guy.
Just for fun, if we drop the height requirement from 6'8"+ to 6'7", we actually get Miles Byrd
Miles Byrd, age 20 - 12.5 3P/100, career 36% 3, career 83% FT, BPM 12.4 (6.7 OBPM) - (props to Dejounte and jesterbobman for finding this guy!)
TS% is 60% against top 100 comp and is very low mainly due to his atrocious at rim % which when combined with his low rebound rate indicates that he may lack the strength to go up against NBA athletes given that his frame is also quite wiry. Unlike all the other guys on the list, he is actually a stock machine with a decent AST:TO. He will be another one to watch throughout the season to see if his numbers hold up.
Outside of these two guys, it looks like a barren wasteland out there when it comes to tall wing shooters for this draft class thus far.