How do we gauge Keldon Johnson’s defensive ceiling?

Keldon Johnson has had flashes on defense that make him seem worthy of a top-10 pick, but at other times looks lost. How should we project his development on that end?

Defense for one-and-done wings is probably the hardest thing to gauge in the NBA Draft process. The transition from the lower levels to playing consistent, impactful defense in college and the NBA is a massive one, and many young players routinely struggle in that regard. It is rare to see a player like Miles Bridges who can play high-level perimeter defense in their freshman season. More often they look like Nassir Little of North Carolina — players who look the part with solid frames and athletic traits, but little in the way of consistent defensive value. Big men have usually had some significant teaching on defensive principles by the time they have gotten to college, while point guards, often also lagging far behind where they’d need to be to have NBA value, don’t need the skill set as much for overall impact. Elite wing prospects are in a unique spot, usually having to shift from being an all-offense load-bearer at the high school level to being called upon to carry a large defensive load in college.

An excellent piece by Ben Rubin of the Stepien from a few weeks ago highlights this scouting predicament. The bottom line is that concerns about early struggles from one-and-done college wings are often overblown and that it’s incredibly difficult to assess when a guy is Jaylen Brown, and will quickly take to the defensive side of the ball despite early inconsistencies in college, and when they’re Stanley Johnson, and just never going to get there. You can usually find small aspects where a player could have future value, but you also have to be careful not to overinflate those glimpses of competence, lest you end up paying Andrew Wiggins his second contract.

Nassir Little was Ben’s test case, but Keldon Johnson of Kentucky is probably the biggest stressor of this scouting philosophy. On the surface, Johnson looks the part of a high-caliber defensive wing prospect. He’s 6-foot-6 and 211 pounds with a nearly 7-foot wingspan, allowing him to potentially play up a position despite having a 2-guard’s dimensions. He has good strength as well, and has shown legitimate value as a defensive rebounder. But at the same time, he has significant flaws — headlined by a failure to produce havoc plays, one of the few reliable indicators we have of future defensive value. He looks like P.J. Tucker when he steps on the floor, but with a steal rate of 1.0 and a block rate of 0.4, he’s playing more like Doug McDermott.

Johnson’s reputation on defense got a huge boost from Kentucky’s blowout loss to Duke to start the season. For most of the game, he looked like the only Wildcat with a pulse on defense and survived a matchup with R.J. Barrett mostly intact. He was able to stick with Barrett and wall him off from the paint, showing good footwork sliding on the perimeter.

And again, this time shutting off the rim from Barrett:

In a way this Duke game couldn’t have gone better for Johnson — even though Kentucky lost, he earned some respect for continuing to fight defensively when his team was down big, and he got a bump from those few positive possessions against Barrett. The narrative was set that Johnson was in the upper tier of defensive wing prospects in the class.

With eight more games of hindsight, though, we can see that our first impression wasn’t the whole story. We’ve seen the reputation of that Duke performance tarnished slightly, as Barrett has continued to struggle with finishing against length and poor shot selection, showing that his performance very likely wasn’t Keldon-centric. But more importantly, we’ve seen the cracks and inconsistencies that show that Johnson is going through the growing pains of your typical freshman wing.

For instance, there’s his transition defense, which has been all over the place this year. Off-ball, he struggles to locate shooters and falls into the common trap of standing in no man’s land as the play develops. When he does try to stop the ball in transition, he too often is out of control, reacting to ball fakes instead of forcing the ball-handler to help.

He does show some flashes of good positioning, particularly when helping off a man in the corner. With his leaping ability and strength, weakside help should be a strength for him, but so far, he’s been shy to contest straight on, trying to use his length over his body to alter shots as a help defender.

Johnson clings to his man a little too much in the halfcourt, a likely product of Kentucky’s defensive system. But he doesn’t seem to even recognize the need to slide over and help, which is an area that will need a lot of work at the NBA level. When he does help, he doesn’t have good enough footwork to slide and recover, and that can get him blown by at times, even if he forces the opponent into help correctly.

This is where it becomes a struggle to project Johnson’s future defensive value. His frame and athleticism set a nice baseline, but his technique needs work, and his decision-making is acceptable for college but pretty poor for NBA-level defense. So what is teachable, or more appropriately “likely” to be developed, and what here is a long-term concern?

The biggest piece to worry over at this point is likely the havoc play rates, which indicate either unwillingness to create defensive impact or an inability due to lack of athleticism or positioning issues. The film corroborates this most closesly with the former, particularly for his block rate – Johnson does seem to have a problem with shying away from contact inside, and his tendency to cling to his man off ball limits his opportunities to create these plays at the rim. While that aspect is very likely coached, Johnson absolutely does need to learn to use his body better as a defensive player, and that’s going to take significant work to achieve.

The other issues, for the most part, seem workable. Footwork and positioning are coachable and things that guys in their second and third years in the league typically make good strides in. Play recognition will improve with experience, although that’s less of a given, and there are times where Johnson looks lost or zoned out on basic offensive actions. Helping matters is the idea that Johnson is a passionate and competitive defender. While it’s important to not let that mask the real issues with his game, he does get up for one-on-one defense and seems to take pride in his performance as a so-called stopper. It’s not a given, but this should mean he’s receptive to putting in the work needed to continue to provide positive defensive impact.

Johnson likely needs all of this to go right to be a viable NBA rotation player. He’s being hailed as a potential top-10 pick thanks to his potential as a two-way wing, but the defensive side of the ball is more likely to be the area where he proves that value. Johnson projects as more of an off-ball role player at this point, as his free throw rate and lack of on-ball shake look like they will impede him from ever being a primary initiator type. He has his own long-term issues on offense that are a discussion for another time, but his primary value is likely going to come as a fit somewhere in the matrix of the 3-and-D archetype. That means the “D” part is crucial to his development into a viable NBA player.

Johnson’s continued development on defense this season is, therefore, going to be huge for his stock in the 2019 NBA Draft. If he continues to become more consistent in positioning and recognition on that end, particularly against what will be a gauntlet in SEC play, that’s going to assuage many of the questions about his projection, even if he does continue to have periods of lapses. It’s also still early, and we’re in a small sample still — a three-steal or two-block performance changes the calculus on those steal and block rates, and suddenly can make him look closer to what he should be producing at this level. Johnson has issues on defense, certainly — but he’s far from a lost cause, and there’s still reason to be optimistic about his eventual outcome on the defensive end.