Can Duke get the most out of Cameron Reddish?

There’s a small chance that Cameron Reddish might be the best player in the 2019 NBA Draft class. But with R.J. Barrett and Zion Williamson around, is he going to have room to grow?

R.J. Barrett, Nassir Little, and Zion Williamson appear to be everyone’s headliners for the 2019 NBA Draft class. Barrett has the pedigree of being tabbed as “next” early on in the class’s development. Williamson has the freakish athleticism that wows casual viewers. And Little is the feel-good story of being a hard worker that rocketed up recruiting rankings late in the process.

Cameron Reddish, on the other hand, seems to be forgotten in the mix of the top prospects. He’s included, sure, but it’s hard to find a scout that will put him number one or number two in the class. It can feel as though he’s begrudgingly included at the top of the class in discussions of the top five.

The reasons for this are twofold. Reddish’s game is divisive, as he represents the classic high school scorer model, a player who dominated the ball, rarely tried on defense, and provided production that felt empty given his situation at the high school level. And perhaps more importantly, on a team as talented as Duke, one of the big three is likely to be marginalized. And with how good Barrett is, that seems likely to be Reddish.

Reddish earned his place at the top of the draft class with his potential as a scoring wing. Like Barrett, he has a strong handle and is adept at creating space, and he shows a decent level of craft around the basket.

Particularly interesting in Reddish’s driving ability is his upper body strength, where he showed a pretty impressive ability to dip his shoulder and clear space against smaller defenders. If his body continues to fill out, and he can combine this type of shoulder drive with his start-stop athleticism, that’s a pretty good package to start with.

He combines this driving ability with what is the most established shooting package in the class. Reddish is a strong pull-up shooter with range out to 30 feet, and he’s very fluid getting into his pull-up out of an isolation. His jumper isn’t picture-perfect — there’s a small amount of elbow flare, and he tends to lean back into a fade — but he shot over 50 percent from 3 in team USA action, and he’s leagues ahead of every other guard in the freshman class as a pull-up shooter.

He also has some potential as a passer. While he’s not brilliantly creative like Barrett, he shows pretty good vision, and does a good job of seeing through traffic to make simple reads.

Reddish’s skill set lends to the idea that he can be a strong scorer at the NBA level. However, he has shown some traits that bring the utility of that scoring into question. Reddish is good at getting points and can do so efficiently, but it may not be the most efficient team offense to give the reigns fully to Reddish. His creation ability is somewhat limited to isolations and simple pick-and-rolls, and we haven’t seen him take many advanced reads. He also can be a little over-reliant on his jumper one-on-one, which can lead to early shot-clock contested jumpers and quick pull-ups without teammates in position to clean things up.

This could be where he benefits at Duke. While there’s fear that he could be marginalized by Barrett’s superiority and a quest to explore Williamson’s on-ball creation ability, we should also get a good look at how Reddish looks in a secondary setting. With plenty of options around to bend the defense away from him, we should get to see Reddish’s capabilities as an off-ball shooter and pick-and-roll scorer on secondary actions. Having a more open lane should help him get to the rim a little more easily.

This may be closer to Reddish’s ultimate NBA role. There are major questions about how Reddish’s shot selection will influence his overall impact, and it might be beneficial to have him filling a more restrictive role early on, giving him specific duties and actions as a complimentary player. Watching him come off screens and shoot from the corners will be valuable for assessing his off-ball potential, which could give him a better offensive value than the volume scoring we saw in high school.

Defensively, Reddish’s profile is similar to his offensive profile — the bones of a skilled player that is bogged down by some bad habits and a bad role. At 6-foot-7 with a 7-foot-1 wingspan, Reddish could become a strong switching defender. He has experience guarding fours like Marvin Bagley in AAU, and has shown the quickness to stay with NBA-level wings, such as in his battle with Nassir Little at the Jordan Brand Classic.

Reddish, when engaged, shows some very quick hands and good denial skills, and even has shown some ability to be a weakside shot blocker. However, that “engaged” is the big question mark here. More so than anyone else in the class, Reddish has shown the Kyrie Irving or James Harden-level extremes of bad defensive habits. He often doesn’t even get into a stance when defending off ball, and shies away from contact, giving driving guards the matador treatment in the lane.

Not helping matters is that Reddish spent a lot of his high school time as a wing in a 2-3 zone, perhaps the toughest position to evaluate NBA defensive capabilities from. Much of the tape we have on Reddish defensively is not very useful, and it might be a very difficult transition for him to move too more man-to-man in the future. That puts Reddish in an interesting spot because he’ll need to make strides defensively this year to prove value — especially if he looks locked into more of a secondary creator role at the next level.

And unlike offensively, where a reduced role could help, it’s very likely that Duke moves the needle for him on defense. The recent track record with high-level prospects on defense at Duke isn’t favorable — Jayson Tatum looked demonstrably worse than he has in the NBA or in high school. Jabari Parker was forced to play the five defensively. And last year, the Duke defense was so bad that they turned into Syracuse, playing nearly full-time 2-3 zone because Trevon Duvall and Marvin Bagley couldn’t hack it in man-to-man. Of course, Reddish could be different given it’s a different Duke team, but it’s very likely that this year is a wash for Reddish defensively, and could even reinforce some of his worst habits.

Reddish is a top-five value in this class, as he should be solidly on par with Barrett and Little in terms of ceiling outcome on offense. However, it’s going to be difficult for him to reach that target value with his shot selection and defensive habits being as they are. While playing for Duke should create some opportunities to get a better gauge on his offensive abilities, that defense question is going to continue barring some incredible shift change in the recent record of Duke’s struggles there. Of Duke’s three main freshmen, Reddish is the one whose stock in the 2019 NBA Draft will be most impacted by playing there. The question is whether that skews more positively or negatively.