Draft Guide: The Perfect Picks From An Imperfect Position
Analyzing the best choices for Minnesota's late-second-round draft pick.
Authors Note: This post may be too long for some email outlets. If that’s the case, click this link to read on the Howls and Growls website.
It’s been easy to chalk this year’s upcoming NBA draft up as collateral damage. While the top prospects around the basketball world are hearing their names and donning their caps, the Wolves will feel like the bullied schoolchild watching as their classmates spend their lunch money.
When Tim Connelly waltzed into his role as the front office general, stuffed every draft pick into a cannon, and fired them into the Rocky Mountains, that was the price the franchise and the fan base were forced to endure.
So, it’s almost surprising that the Timberwolves still have a pick to wield this season. Sure, it’s the 53rd pick. The dregs of the draft. The damp cavern where picks start getting traded for cash considerations and many players selected never even feel the big league’s hardwood under their shoes. But it’s a pick nonetheless. And, for the Wolves, they need to spin gold from every morsel of straw available to them.
That’s a tough ask so late in the draft proceedings, but it’s nowhere near an impossible one. It doesn’t even take a high-powered telescope to find legitimate contributors in the postseason just gone that were drafted at the backend of their respective drafts or overlooked altogether. The draft, above all else, is a rambunctious crapshoot.
The Miami Heat were trotting out Gabe Vincent, Max Strus, Duncan Robinson and Caleb Martin in important roles — all undrafted. Not every team can cultivate the kind of environment that allows undrafted gems to be mined and polished to a blinding gleam, but if the Timberwolves are going to look back at the drafts that followed Gobert’s arrival, they’ll need to borrow some of that South Beach pixie dust.
Austin Reaves, another undrafted diamond, played the third-most minutes per game for a surprisingly good Lakers squad. De’Anthony Melton (pick 46), Georges Niang (50) and Paul Reed (58) were all in Philadelphia’s playoff rotation. Torrey Craig and Jock Landale both went undrafted before playing important roles in Phoenix, while newly crowned champions Bruce Brown (42) and, of course, Nikola Jokic (41) had to wait around on their respective draft nights, too.
You need only look inward at Naz Reid, Jordan McLaughlin, Luka Garza, Jaylen Nowell and Josh Minott as players who graced Minnesota’s roster last season for extra evidence that prospects come in all shapes, sizes and draft positions.
That’s just a smattering of the talent that can be found outside of the glitz and glamour of the first 40 picks. The Timberwolves need to pluck one of those shiny needles from the haystack on draft night. With a bulging cap sheet and the obvious scarcity of picks in upcoming years, every cheap rookie they can find and develop will feel like a heaven-sent angel.
And, hidden beneath all of the muck and grime that smothers his name after the Gobert trade, they’ve got the man to do it in Connelly. His start in the Twin Cities has been shaky to the point of catastrophic earthquake, but he was the puppeteer who pulled most of the strings on the Nuggets’ championship roster and he did so in part by excelling in the shrewd areas of scouting.
Obviously Jokic is his Serbian crown jewel and he has a troop of late-first-round picks on his résumé, but Connelly was also responsible for late-round picks like Vlatko Cancar (pick 49), Monte Morris (51), Jarred Vanderbilt (41), and Bol Bol (44), who all worked out to varying degrees.
Now, it’s time for him to do it again. And this one might be the most important of them all. The Wolves are nowhere near a complete article and they have little means to extract outside help. That means a pick and maybe a free agency signing. That’s it. They live on the margins now and this upcoming draft presents Connelly and his crew another chance to find success in the shadows.
What The Wolves Need
It feels like, from an outsider peering through the hypothetical curtains, the Wolves have three options heading into draft night — regardless of whether they stay at pick 53 or attempt to package the gaggle of future second round picks they have to move up.
They could try to catch lightning in a bottle with a pure upside swing. Unless they do find a way to get up into the 30s or early 40s — a distinct possibility — that’s a tough cookie to crumble so late in the proceedings. Even the players with the slimmest chances of booming into meteoric brilliance will likely slip from the board before the 53rd pick. For every Manu Ginobili or Isaiah Thomas, there are a million forgettable names picked in the 50s.
They could also attempt to solve some of their bench shooting woes. The role of genuine shooting threat who can maneuver around screens and launch at pace has been vacant since Malik Beasley was traded and many of Chris Finch’s plays have been neutered without that type of player around. They tried to pigeonhole Taurean Prince and Jaylen Nowell into that role with limited success, and they even scooped Matt Ryan off the free agent pile, but none of those options were really enough to fill the void.
Or, and perhaps most pressingly, they could go after a point guard to shore up the hole behind Mike Conley. Relying on the aging legs and creaking bones of the admittedly wonderful veteran is fraught with a terrifying reality and, while a late-draft rookie won’t be guaranteed to alleviate those fears, it’ll at least provide the team with a safety net of sorts. Even if they were able to snag a combo guard or a player who could potentially share ball-handling duties with Nickeil Alexander-Walker, they would be in a better position depth chart wise than they were before draft night began.
Trade Up Pipe Dreams
Brandin Podziemski
Podziemski is perhaps the hardest selection to pinpoint in the entire draft. Some mock drafts have him sneaking into the first round, while others have him falling well into the 40s and even into the 50s.
In Sam Vecenie’s monstrous and awesome draft guide for The Athletic, the Santa Clara sophomore splits the middle, slotting in as his 42nd best prospect. However, in Vecenie’s latest mock draft, Podziemski comes off the board at pick 28. It’s likely he won’t last past the midway point of the second round.
For the Wolves, though, he should be underlined and emboldened in the upper echelon of their trade-up list. The Wolves need shooters. They need to be able to surround their high-usage stars with low-usage, high-impact role players. The 20-year-old projects as something as close to the perfect void-filler as possible. After floundering in the pits of the bench during his freshman year at Illinois, he transferred to Santa Clara and exploded into a flamethrower.
Last season, he nailed 43.8 percent on 5.8 attempts a game. Mixing a quick trigger on catch-and-shoot jumpers with the ability to rifle around screens, move through the halfcourt into open shooting pockets, or fire off dribble handoff actions. He even converted a scorching 41.8 percent on pull-up treys.
It’s not hard to imagine him sprinting into space and then nailing controlled jumpers like this for the Wolves.
For Podziemski, his high-outcome ceiling isn’t just catch-and-shoot guy, he flashed legitimate pick-and-roll shooting ability in his final collegiate year.
Shooting reliably in different situations is a remarkably valuable trait in today’s league. As the face of Santa Clara’s team, he was often tasked with mega-usage ball-handling duties instead of pure off-ball gunning, but that only served to bolster his passing and finishing nous — adding an extra layer of intrigue to his game.
In fact, when watching Podziemski do his thing with the Broncos, his ability to finish around the rim in ridiculous ways stood out just as much as his shooting prowess.
It’d be a mild shock if he wasn’t an excellent shooter at the next level, and there is a decent chance he is an actual fleshed-out scorer who can set the table for others, too. That’s a player worth packaging future picks in a trade to acquire, but Podziemski is far from a perfect prospect.
Compared to the physical freaks littered through every NBA roster, he is wholly unathletic. He is an astute thinker and crafty as hell on both ends, but there is only so much the mind can do on a basketball court. At 6-foot-4 with a 6-foot-5 wingspan and no discernable advantage with strength or speed, he’ll likely struggle to guard many types of players and may have a bright red target on his back for switch-hunting scorers. Additionally, his lack of on-ball wiggle will probably prevent him from ever harnessing his full one-on-one scoring arsenal in the big leagues.
Unless Podziemski’s elite shooting traits completely fail him, he should be a serviceable role player with some legit scoring upside at the next level. For the Timberwolves, he ticks a lot of boxes that need ticking. Unfortunately, he ticks those boxes for many other teams, meaning the Wolves would need to pull off a sweet deal to get into his range.
Marcus Sasser
If the Wolves want both shooter and point guard rolled into one with a sprinkling of that sneaky upside garnishing the dish, they should find a way to procure Marcus Sasser.
Obviously, those players don’t just freefall into the deepest depths of the second round, and Sasser is at 31 on Vecenie’s big board and taken at 33 in his mock draft. He goes at 37 in ESPN’s latest mock draft, penned by draft experts Jonathan Givony and Jeremy Woo. Again, it’s likely he is off the board before pick 40 rolls around.
So, the Wolves are going to have to spend some serious draft currency if they want Sasser. Maybe, in the aggregate, that trade-off isn’t worth it. But, when you scout Sasser, consider the Wolves’ roster, and amalgamate the two, Sasser potentially makes sense.
For the right now, Sasser makes sense as a bench-scoring guard behind Mike Conley. For the later, he has the ability, work ethic and tools to become a starting-level lead guard alongside a ball-dominant Anthony Edwards.
All of it starts from the 22-year-old’s weaponized shooting touch. In his junior year, he buried 43.6 percent on 8.6 attempts per game and, even with a drop off this past year, he still shot 38.4 percent on 6.9 launches per outing. As the lead guard and most important cog in Houston’s offense, he feasted on pull-up treys when defenders went under screens or when he was able to shake them with his nifty handle.
Sasser is masterful at manipulating point-of-attack defenders, constantly juking and tricking them into the wrong space. He is an unwilling and reasonably unimpressive finisher around the rim — despite his twitchy quickness, solid frame, and sick floater game — so he uses his guile to find more space for his quick-trigger jumper.
And, maybe most importantly with a Timberwolves context, he is an exceptional catch-and-shoot bomber. A willing one, too. That means he would be able to soak up scoring usage with the reserve unit, but also play alongside Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns as a flammable standstill shooter. He made 45.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot triples last season, which is hilariously not a typo.
He’s going to be a rugged defender at the next level, as well. There’s actually a chance he’s an absolute hellhound. Sasser is strong, he is vicious, and he is technically adept. He’s only 6-foot-1, which hinders his switchability, but his 6-foot-7 wingspan helps him contest shots after he is done gnawing at the heels of point-of-attack scorers. He gets a ton of steals by ripping loose handles away and he loves to pilfer balls in the passing lanes when he is playing off-ball.
He’s the kind of player who makes plays like this because he wants it more than those surrounding him on the hardwood. That’s an intangible that teams cherish.
Again, his inside scoring and his ability to defend in switch-heavy defense schemes are a worry. He has his floater to rely on, but he isn’t going to become a three-level scorer — his best path to outlier stardom — unless he figures out a way to get into the teeth of the defense and punish teams around the rim. He also has some minor black hole tendencies on offense. His shifty dribbling and shot-creation are great to watch and he has the touch and talent to back it up, but he can be a bit of a ball-stopper on offense at times.
Alas, he isn’t a legitimate point guard playmaker, either. He isn’t a bad passer, but his mind is geared toward scoring and it wouldn’t benefit anybody by attempting to change that. His median outcome screams electric high-usage scoring guard, one who can defend the point-of-attack with verve.
Warts and all, the Timberwolves could use that player and they could use him immediately.
Ben Sheppard
As recently as a few weeks back, Sheppard might have been available for the Timberwolves at pick 53 or with some minor pick-shuffling to get into the 40s. Then he hit the combine like a tornado and tore himself into a new tier in most eyes. Now, he’s firmly entrenched in the trade-up category, and the Wolves might not even be able to muster up enough ammo to get him.
All of a sudden, Sheppard moved from late second-rounder to 28th on Vecenie’s big board, 30th in The Athletic’s mock draft, and 37th on ESPN’s mock. In the modern game, a player like Sheppard is immensely valuable and his projections are starting to acknowledge that fact.
Standing at 6-foot-5 with a 6-foot-8 wingspan, the Belmont product is a touch on the small side for a true do-it-all wing, but he makes up for it with a delicate blend of pass-dribble-shoot game — everything a team looking for plug-and-play help could ask for.
The 21-year-old checks just about every box as a shooter. He attempted a beefy six attempts per game from deep, nailing 41.5 percent of those looks. He finished the season shooting over 49 percent on unguarded treys, according to Synergy, too, so he is virtually automatic when he finds himself in enough space.
But he isn’t just relying on easy looks to make up his shot diet. Sheppard actually commanded so much attention that it was the hard shots that became the norm for him. And, because he created those looks for himself with such sweet off-ball movements, it’s extremely easy to buy his stock as a seriously good shooter in the big leagues.
Whether it is coming off exit screens and pindowns within Belmont’s motion-heavy offense or simply curling around dribble handoff actions and firing once he wriggles free of his defender, Sheppard was an electric shooter in college and, if he can continue to bury these looks at the next level, could replicate his shooting dominance for a long time to come.
His movements into space are efficient and he is always shot-ready when he finds his spot, making hard shots look buttery really often. In his final year with Belmont, he shot an extraordinary 48.7 percent coming off screens.
That clip is the ideal example of why Sheppard projects to be more than just a shooter. Instead of relying on just the long-ball to generate looks, he leverages his shooting prowess into back cuts and slips, constantly moving to get open shots no matter where they come from. If one option is shut off, he scurries around until another opens up.
When you throw in enough playmaking ability to turn his movement into advantages for others and the fact that he spent the entirety of the season guarding the opposing team’s best player, you get a player with some legitimate punch as a long-term prospect and short-term wallpaper.
There will be some worries about his strength and size for teams looking to stuff him into a small forward role, and he might not have the quickness on either end of the floor to consistently play as a shooting guard. Still, because of his unique mixture of shooting, cutting and movement, and finishing, there will be roles available to him all over the league.
The Timberwolves, if they could swing a savvy draft-night move, would be one of those teams.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Howls and Growls to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.