Confidence is key, and Marko Guduric has it in droves
Confidence is an NBA skill. In some ways, it’s the most important one — it’s nearly impossible to compete with the best basketball players in the world if you aren’t confident that you can hang with them. Nearly every NBA player has some baseline level of elite confidence in their abilities. Where it becomes a skill is when a player has an oozing confidence that allows him to consistently deliver when his team needs it most. Whether it’s a role player or a star, confidence is that “it” factor, the reason you want a guy to have the ball in his hands with the game on the line. There are some players whose games just scream, “I think I’m the best guy on the court every time I play.”
In the 2017 NBA Draft, one player stands above the rest as the king of irrational confidence. He’s a gunner, through and through, and at 21-years old, he already has a three-minute long supercut of last-second shots posted on Youtube. However, you’ve probably never heard of him, unless you’re a follower of Euroleague. The most confident guy in the draft pool isn’t Markelle Fultz, or Lonzo Ball, or Justin Jackson. He’s an auto-eligible Serbian guard from Red Star Belgrade. Let’s meet Marko Guduric.
Guduric has been a regular in the Red Star rotation for the last two years after spending time with FMP Beograd, Red Star’s junior team. He spent last year as a backup bench scorer, averaging 6.7 points and 1.6 assists per game for Red Star’s surprise Euroleague playoff team. He declared for the 2016 NBA Draft to test the waters, but ultimately withdrew. That worked out for him, as an injury to Spurs draft-and-stash guard Nemanja Dangubic thrust Guduric into a bigger role early in the season. He upped his averages to 8.2 points, 2.4 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game, and played a huge role in the Adriatic League finals earlier this month, scoring 10 points in each of Red Star’s first two wins in their sweep of Cedevita.
Guduric exudes confidence in every aspect of his game. He’s not shy about jacking up a contested 30-foot jumper early in the shot clock, and he’s one of the fieriest competitors on Red Star, a team known for always bringing a competitive edge. He’s not afraid to go one-on-one late and try to get his team a bucket, and he can be volatile, with the complete package of Chris Paul explosions at referees like he’s the best player in the ABA.
Guduric’s NBA potential centers around his shooting profile, which is quite strong despite his relatively pedestrian percentages to date. Guduric shot 34.7 percent on 3-pointers this year, which isn’t great, even on nearly three attempts per game. However, this poor percentage stems from his confidence in his shooting ability. Guduric’s shot selection isn’t the best, and there are a lot of contested shots that look like this on film.
Guduric is solid shooting off the dribble, and he’s talented at creating separation with ball-fakes and footwork to launch shots over an extended defender. He has solid footwork on his step back jumper, and does a nice job of reading his defender’s body mechanics to determine when he can create maximal separation.
Guduric also likes to lull defenders to sleep with LeBron-esque ball-stoppages, sizing up the defender with step-fakes or ball-fakes, and then quickly rising above the defender’s delayed reaction.
Guduric is comfortable with these difficult looks, but taking them at the high rate he does will naturally lower your percentage. I have faith in his 3-point shot stabilizing, because he has great mechanics, and he does well in his limited catch-and-shoot opportunities. He has a compact shooting form with soft touch on the release, and he is very good at setting his feet on the catch. Most of his spot-up attempts come from the corner, something to keep an eye on as a potential NBA role.
Helping Guduric’s case is his very stable free throw percentage — he shot 85.9 percent from the line in Euroleague play this year. He’s consistently shot over 80 percent from the line for the past three seasons, and his touch on these outside shots is excellent.
If Guduric can show that he doesn’t need the ball to be effective, he becomes more enticing to NBA teams looking for that ever-elusive floor-spacing threat. Guduric has shown enough that he could fit into that more regimented role, particularly if he can continue to develop his ability to create space off screens.
The biggest improvement seen from Guduric this season was his on-ball creation. With Dangubic injured and Nate Wolters struggling for the first half of the season, Red Star let their 6-foot-6 youngster spend some time as the primary initiator for their offense, with mixed results. On the positive side, this helped Guduric improve as a playmaker, as he posted a career-high 21.1 percent assist rate. He has solid court vision, and he has potential as a secondary pick-and-roll creator. His height helps him see the floor well out of these sets, and his shooting threat creates openings for the roll man at the rim.
Red Star’s pet play for Guduric this year has been the play above — running him off a dribble hand-off at the top of the key into a pick-and-roll, essentially functioning as a double screen. This is the ideal method to create space for him, as he’s not the most explosive player on drives. Guduric can struggle to turn the corner on defenders even off high screens, because he doesn’t have a great first step. This would likely limit his effectiveness in the NBA. However, he has developed some work-arounds. Clearly he’s comfortable just letting it rip from beyond the arc, but he’s also shown the ability to create space and separation with advanced ball-fakes, like this beautiful rip-through move to shake an over-committed Nikos Zisis.
Guduric may have some limitations at the NBA level that prevent him from being a regular pick-and-roll initiator. He needs to develop more strength on drives, as he struggles with getting to the rim consistently. Without the elite athleticism to beat guys off the dribble, Guduric needs to be able to rely on strength to absorb contact and draw fouls. While he’s been decent at getting to the line (4.6 attempts per 40 minutes), he struggles to consistently deal with length and girth at the rim.
Guduric his best when he has a head of steam attacking the rim, as his straight-line quickness is impressive. He could be a strong spread pick-and-roll guard, and he’s confident enough in transition to be an effective finisher on the break.
Guduric’s pull-up game allows him to still be an effective pick-and-roll scorer, but he needs to have some threat on the drive to consistently open up a defense. He does have a strong floater, helped by his deft touch:
But at this point, he’s really just a two-level shooter, and without an effective finishing game, he’s going to have difficulty being a lead creator.
On-ball creation is also the place where Guduric’s confidence hurts him most. He’s very confident in his passing abilities, but he doesn’t have elite touch or zip on passes. Too often he attempts to thread the needle in passing lanes that don’t exist, and this leads to his very concerning 20.8 percent turnover rate.
Guduric has the profile of your typical volume bench gunner. While his statistical profile isn’t the strongest, he clearly shows potential as a three-point shooter, and he’s competent enough with the ball that he should easily be able to grow into a Euroleague-level lead guard. He was not always the most effective player this season, but at 21-years old, Red Star was comfortable relying on him to provide secondary offensive creation and a spot-up threat at the Euroleague level, a rarity. He will draw NBA interest thanks to his confidence and his potential to be a player who can drift between the volume scorer and spot-up shooter roles.
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His ceiling isn’t particularly high, but he fits the profile of a player who will draw draft-and-stash interest in the 2nd round. A team may take a flier on him late in the draft, and bring him over when he’s 24 or 25, at which point he hopefully will have progressed into one of Euroleague’s better lead guards. He may not be ready for the NBA skill-wise, but he certainly thinks he’s at that level, and an NBA team that emboldens that confidence with a draft pick may be very happy that they did.