Breaking down Josh Reaves’ 3-and-D skill set

Every NBA team needs wings. You can never have enough in this league, where positional versatility, shooting, and perimeter defense are all vital to supporting the league’s biggest stars. Quality role-playing wings are important because they help space the floor and facilitate secondary actions on offense, and their intersection of length and quickness allows them to defend multiple positions, unlocking lineup versatility that allows a team to stay alive against whatever an opponent throws at them.

Unfortunately, these players are a rare commodity, and cheap wings are even more rare. Every year in the NBA Draft, many teams are searching hard for that perfect wing player who can hold their entire scheme together. In 2018, that wing player is Josh Reaves of Penn State.

Reaves wasn’t on many NBA Draft radars to start the season, as he had spent the previous two seasons as a role player on mediocre Penn State teams. This year, however, he’s helped sophomore guard Tony Carr propel Penn State to a 15-9 record, with a likely NCAA Tournament appearance coming. Reaves isn’t putting up heroic counting stats on offense, averaging 10.7 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 3.4 assists per game. But he is 10th in the nation this season at 2.5 steals per game, and his advanced stats jump off the page: Reaves is tied for 10th in the nation in Box Plus-Minus with Mohamed Bamba, and only two players (Gary Clark of Cincinnati and Wendell Carter of Duke) have both an offensive BPM better than Reaves’s 6.9 and a defensive BPM better than his 5.6. This has helped him start to creep onto some big boards in recent weeks: he ranks 23rd on the Step Back’s latest board, and the Athletic also had him on their latest update.

Read More: The Step Back’s 2018 NBA Draft Big Board: Version 3.0

Reaves excels in BPM because he can do many of the things that NBA teams want those quality wings to be able to do. On offense, he’s highly efficient on low volume, posting a 61.3 percent true shooting rate, although that comes on just a 16.4 percent usage. He also shows some ability to be a secondary creator. Defensively, he’s all about event  creation — he has a 4.8 percent steal rate and a 3.0 block rate, and only three other players can say that this season.

To start with Reaves, you have to cover his athletic tools, which set a nice baseline for this season’s play to translate to the NBA. At 6-foot-4 with a 6-foot-7 wingspan, Reaves has slightly above-average length, but his lower body strength and vertical pop are stellar. Reaves is mostly a two-foot leaper, but shows good quick-twitch jumping ability on baseline cuts and lobs.

Reaves has finished well at the rim this season, shooting 72.7 percent there, per Hoop-Math. Most of that comes on these open looks at the rim and in transition. He’s a good cutter, finding space in the defense to go backdoor. However, he struggles to finish in the halfcourt, particularly against contact, where he is able to get similar pop, but loses his touch if he’s off-balance.

Reaves also brings outstanding lower body strength to the table, and that comes out primarily in his rebounding and defense. Despite his size, Reaves has been tasked with defending larger wings and frontcourt scorers throughout the year for Penn State, most notably picking up several minutes against Keita Bates-Diop of Ohio State in Penn State’s upset win a week ago. Relying mostly on his lower body power, Reaves is able to handle himself against bigger opponents in the post, and he isn’t easily dislodged on drives. On the glass, Reaves is able to set position against bigger players and get entrenched under the hoop, earning him a 7.0 offensive rebound rate. He also is able to use his hops well on this end, and if he finds space, can put together some impressive putback finishes.

A lot of Reaves’s offensive leverage in the NBA will come from his shooting, which was the primary concern for him prior to the season. Reaves started his collegiate career as a non-factor from beyond the arc, shooting 7.7 percent on 39 attempts as a freshman. He’s slowly progressed throughout his career, though, fixing an alignment issue in his jumper where his shooting elbow cocked to the side. Things are much more fluid now, and it’s resulted in Reaves hitting 38.6 percent from deep on 3.0 attempts per game.

That shooting progression is going to dictate his success in the NBA to a large degree. While establishing a high water mark and consistently hitting at that rate is good, he still has only taken 57 attempts this year, not yet enough to establish full confidence that the jumper is fixed. It is promising, though, that he’s most confident from the corner and on catch-and-shoot looks, which is likely where his value comes from at the next level. Continued stability here is key, because it will not only help him provide more offensive value, but will also assist with creating more of those slashing opportunities in attacking closeouts, which isn’t a big part of his game yet as a function of the PSU offense.

This is because Reaves is utilized more as a secondary ball-handler, something he shows some decent aptitude for. He has a decent handle (though not much more than a straight-line driver at this point), and makes some high-quality passes both in transition and in the halfcourt. He’s very comfortable leading a fast break, recognizing numbers advantages and weak spots, and dumping off to create open looks for teammates.

In the halfcourt, he’s mostly going to make the passes needed in the flow of the offense, but he has some plays that suggest he could be doing more. He appears to have good feel for the game, especially when it comes to picking out cutters and creating shots at the rim.

Reaves seems to have the offensive tools to be a valuable NBA wing, but it’s difficult to project with confidence at this point, mostly due to sample size. The shooting improvement is impressive, but there aren’t enough attempts to truly establish it. He might show some self-creation equity, but we never see it due to Carr’s role as the primary option. He’s an efficient scorer and ball-handler, but he doesn’t have a usage that provides confidence in it translating a level up. At this point, we’re still mostly discussing what Reaves could become on offense, instead of what he is.

The defensive side of the ball is very similar for Reaves, although what’s being shown currently is far more promising. He definitely has the ability to defend multiple positions at this point, handling the point of attack and bigger forwards like Bates-Diop and Miles Bridges with pretty similar effectiveness. He’s also shown some advanced skills in team defense, which is here he will be most valuable at the NBA level.

Perhaps his best singular skill is his quick-twitch anticipation when it comes to defending passing lanes. He denies entry passing lanes well, and his ability to quickly see a pass coming and get a hand on it is elite for this draft class. The ability to jump passing lanes can often be an overrated skill when it comes to evaluating wing defense, but few players make it look this easy this consistently.

Reaves has outlier anticipation skills when defending off-ball, and that makes him a terror when placed on a roster as strong as Penn State’s. Floating between man-to-man concepts and some 2-3 zone, his ability to capitalize on bad passes helps drive Penn State’s defensive success. The Nittany Lions thrive off pressure, and Reaves is often the free safety that sweeps up after his teammates force the mistake.

While he generates most of his steals off-ball, he also has the quick hands to capitalize in on-ball pressure situations as well.

The footwork on the defensive end is also excellent. Reaves’s strength will primarily be what helps him defend up a position in the NBA, but he also displays decent footwork to stay in front of opponents as well. Here we see him against Bates-Diop, and he navigates three screens to stay in front of the larger wing scorer, recovers well to deny a jumper, and closes down the lane to prevent any sort of opportunity for Ohio State’s best player.

Now, this isn’t to say that Reaves will be plug-and-play defensively at the next level. He still deals with some inconsistencies from time to time, mostly coming off-ball. He can fall asleep at times, losing his man by over-playing certain actions and struggling to react:

He also struggles with close-outs right now, which is a pretty big problem for him projecting to the NBA. He again over-commits to the shooter here, and an NBA athlete like Miles Bridges will blow by that every time.

But overall, Reaves’s defensive impact is incredible at this stage, and he’s been a steady plus-five DBPM player over three years in State College. Even with the occasional lapses, Reaves seems ready to plug into an NBA scheme and be a positive purely thanks to his versatility and havoc creation.

Next: 2018 NBA Mock Draft: Marvin Bagley could save the Cleveland Cavaliers

Reaves hasn’t been the most heralded name among the 3-and-D types available in the 2018 NBA Draft class, but he’s certainly been one of college basketball’s best perimeter defenders this year. He is an NBA athlete who brings a high level of energy to the court, and has shown the capability to defend up a position in two games against NBA prospects since his return from an academic suspension in late-January. His offense still needs some development, but the bones of a role-playing wing are there thanks to early returns on his shooting improvement and his potential as a slasher.

If Reaves plays to his potential, he’s the type of player who can absolutely have an impact on a winning team off the bench in an ancillary role. Because of that, he absolutely deserves to be in the conversation to be a first-round pick in the 2018 NBA Draft.