Can Devon Dotson make it as a small NBA point guard?

Devon Dotson is one of the smallest players in the 2019 NBA Draft class. He’s also one of its best defensive players. Is that going to work in the NBA?

For years, the NBA has slowly been trending towards lineup flexibility. The dominance of initiators at the wing spots coupled with the benefits of generating switches on offense has forced NBA lineups to trend towards taller point guards, smaller centers, and players who can play multiple positions. When Chris Paul entered the league in 2005, his 6-foot, 175-pound frame wasn’t abnormal for the point guard position. Now, though, he’s an anomaly in a league where the typical frame at the position more closely resembles 6-foot-3, 190-pound Goran Dragic.

Typically, shorter point guards in the league today struggle, primarily because of the prevalence of modern defensive systems. Offensively, they can’t finish at the rim as well because drop coverage and weakside help leave modern NBA big men waiting eagerly to challenge them. Defensively, it means they are walking mismatches, gifts given to an offense trying to generate an easy isolation opportunity on modern switch-heavy schemes.

Small point guards typically survive the modern landscape through one of a select few archetypes.

1. Elite athletes who use their quickness and vertical pop to overcome size disadvantages. Typically these players are still massive negatives on defense but provide some sort of offensive value (Isaiah Thomas, Darren Collison).
2. Elite shooters who can avoid going to the rim through providing high efficiency on outside shots. Typically this means they are an elite pull-up shooter (Kemba Walker) or can thrive almost strictly in an off-ball role (T.J. McConnell).
3. Throwback floor general type point guards with high level court vision. This is becoming more rare because of the necessity for multiple creators in an offense, but Ish Smith and Chris Paul do keep hanging around.
4. Players with freakish wingspans and/or outlier defensive technique who functionally play like wings on defense (Avery Bradley)

If a point guard is under 6-foot-3 and doesn’t have a combination of these traits, it’s very difficult to make an NBA rotation. We’ve seen smaller guys like Jerian Grant and Tyler Ennis struggle to stick in recent years because of a lack of high skill level, and while others like Monte Morris and Frank Mason look like they could stick in rotations, their size proposes potential limits on their development that we just don’t see with bigger wings.

That makes the evaluation of Kansas point guard Devon Dotson very interesting. Dotson fits squarely into the “small point guard” discussion, at 6-foot-2, 185 pounds. He’s fairly thin to boot and doesn’t fit that wingspan archetype, with just a 6-foot-2.5 wingspan. You’d expect, then, that he would fall somewhere on the typical small scoring guard spectrum, have a good jumper, and be mostly a negative on defense. But on the contrary, Dotson finds a way to be a strong defensive player anyway.

Dotson has been Kansas’s best defensive player on the perimeter this season — better than veteran LaGerald Vick, and better than supposed star freshman Quentin Grimes. He is averaging 1.6 steals per game, and he has a 3.6 Defensive Box Plus-Minus. Coupled with his offensive profile as a decent driver and 43.8 percent 3-point shooter on low volume, his overall statistical profile matches pretty closely with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — a player everyone loved last season for his defensive potential.

The problem is that Gilgeous-Alexander is 6-foot-6 with close to a 7-foot wingspan, giving him the obvious benefit of the doubt when it comes to projecting that defensive performance to the NBA level. However, advanced stats love Dotson as a defender, and with good reason. He may not have the length or explosiveness to be a good defensive prospect, but his awareness and quickness combine to make him a very strong candidate to break the small point guard mold.

Dotson might be one of the quickest players in this freshman class, and he can accelerate well after changing direction. On offense, this helps him be a dynamic transition player who can beat opponents up the floor. Defensively, that translates into effective closeouts.

He also is able to close the gap well with his quickness in tight spaces. Here, he recovers to get a steal when back-cut on the perimeter, a play that many freshman defenders would be content giving up on and letting their help defense contain:

Dotson’s ability to read and react to these off-ball movements is an NBA skill. Every perimeter defender in the league needs to be able to recognize where the ball is moving and be able to cover ground quick enough to provide a good contest. Dotson does this well, and he’s also a smart team defender that Kansas has been using primarily as an off-ball defender on taller wings, despite his size. This is mostly out of necessity because Grimes and Vick are woeful in their coverage of cutters off-ball. But Dotson has some truly special possessions playing safety, like this one where he is caught defending two Stanford players, hedges towards the better shooter, and forces the pass to a poor shooter in the corner with enough time for Udoka Azubuike to recover:

Dotson looks like he can be a functional off-ball defender, but it’s his on-ball defense that is what really sells the idea that he can be an NBA defender. Dotson can cut off driving lanes with his quickness, and he’s a nimble pick-and-roll defender.

Dotson’s technique coming around screens is good, especially going under. He rarely hits the screener fully and has the agility to stay over the top to cut off the drive. This is huge for Kansas, who needs to defend this way to account for Azubuike’s cinder block feet. But when forced over the screen, he also does a good job of getting skinny, chasing, and recovering.

One-on-one, Dotson’s performance is predictably a little more hit or miss. But he does have some good technique, particularly in transition. He is hard to lull to sleep with dribble moves and is great at that sudden contest needed to leap out and affect a pull-up jumper, such as the one that ended regulation against Stanford.

The one negative seen in his on-ball defense is that he struggles to flip his hips and change directions, which can help quicker drivers get an edge on him. But he does a good job of forcing the scorer left, and into help. Tightening up this change of direction will be a very important skill for him, given he likely won’t ever have the strength to physically wall off the paint.

Dotson isn’t a freakish athlete outside of his quickness. He isn’t a floor general type, and while his shooting results have been good early on, it’s on a low volume that is difficult to assess in terms of long-term sustainability. But Dotson clearly fits into that fourth category of small point guards, even without the impressive wingspan. He’s a consistent off-ball defender who plays smart team defense, defends the pick-and-roll well despite his size, and has traits that indicate he could survive on switches as an NBA defender as well. Even though he doesn’t have the length that Avery Bradley does, a future as a Bradley-type off-ball offensive player who provides most of his value on defense is in the cards for him.

The problem, though, is that probably isn’t enough unless Dotson is elite on defense or makes truly impressive strides as an offensive player. After all, we’ve seen what Bradley looks like when his shot isn’t falling, and he is almost unplayable when that’s the case, and he’s a very consistent defender. That’s why despite promising film on this end so far, I’m not as bullish on Dotson as a prospect as compared to similar prospects like Josh Reaves, who is an elite off-ball defender, or Tre Jones, who brings potential defensive value alongside brilliant court vision and passing touch. It’s questionable whether Dotson even comes out for the 2019 NBA Draft, given that demonstrable improvement as a shooter and playmaker will likely be necessary for him to see the floor in the league.

However, whenever Dotson does come out, he’s going to be an NBA-level defender. He’s proven to have the prerequisite understanding of team defense and is already comfortable against the bigger scorers that he’ll likely be matched up against. Even without traditional skills that help small point guards survive in the league, Dotson should still be able to do so because of his defense.