People often refer to the NBA Draft as a crapshoot and while that tends to be an excuse for poor decision-making and talent evaluation, it can still ring true at times. The underlying theme behind “crapshoot” is that scouting and drafting is a challenging process. Specifically, projecting how a prospect’s game will translate to the league is rarely easy.
Take Nickeil Alexander-Walker, for instance. Nickeil Alexander-Walker is a good basketball player. He’s 6 feet, 5.5 inches with a 6-foot-9.5-inch wingspan. At Virginia Tech, he displayed the ability to play-make, defend, score efficiently and shoot from deep. If you’re looking at the game of basketball through a macro lens, he checks most of the important boxes. But the question isn’t necessarily about how good he is at basketball. It’s about how it carries over to the next level and that’s where I have some concerns.
Offensively, he’ll garner parallels to his cousin, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Both are tall, long, wiry combo guards without elite burst. But Gilgeous-Alexander boasts better upper body strength, timing on drives and finishing craft near the rim. This isn’t to say Alexander-Walker is a flop on that end. He’s a complementary facilitator, especially on skip passes with his left hand; in fact, at the NBA Draft Combine, he said he’s ambidextrous.
Give him a ball screen, force a rotation from a help defender and Alexander-Walker can make the opposition pay.
Ultimately, though, I think those flashy feeds overstate his impact as a facilitator. He rarely mirrors them with his right hand and while he doesn’t shoot jumpers with his left hand, it’s proven to be his dominant passing hand. He’s not the ambidextrous passer all those lefty dimes suggest him to be and it wasn’t often that he whirled complex reads with his right hand.
This isn’t to say that instinct and know-how for skip passes isn’t valuable; it is. Skip passes are only one slice of the playmaking pie and I’m not sure Alexander-Walker has a complete distributing repertoire. At times, he anticipates the defense rotating a certain way rather than actually checking to ensure that’s the case — evidenced by an underwhelming 4.0:2.9 assist-to-turnover ratio this year. It’s a sign of sharp basketball IQ but poor court awareness.
He’s not particularly dynamic in the pick-and-roll and can develop tunnel vision on drives — forcing up contested or ill-advised layups/runners — despite insufficient finishing skills, shooting 61.3 percent around the rim this season. That would be salvageable if he were a smaller lead guard but Alexander-Walker has the physical profile of a wing-type player. To barely eclipse 60 percent around the rim gives me pause.
Not only does he lack competent vertical explosion but his ability to get downhill came almost exclusively through ball-screen action — an indictment on his NBA-caliber burst and quickness. In isolation, he generated 0.643 points per possession, which ranked in the 27th percentile. It’s a tiny sample of 28 possessions but, to me, that highlights his shortcomings as a go-to scorer. He wields some craft and guile, playing with pace, busting out ball fakes and stopping on a dime to shake defenders, that should periodically empower his dribble-drive game, though I’m not confident it’ll prove resourceful on a consistent enough basis.
Exacerbating his self-creation challenges separate from subpar quickness/a middling first step are mediocre ball-handling and poor technique angling around traps or hedges in the pick-and-roll. Too often, he has a tendency to operate North-South rather than squaring his hips around the big man and attacking downhill. By the time he turns parallel to the rim, the defender has recovered to contain him. On sequences where he finds the edge, his unrefined dribbling hamstrings the opportunity to reach the bucket.
Alexander-Walker isn’t without positives as an offensive player. Beyond those fastball skip passes, he flashed an ability to be a fulcrum from the post, snapping dimes to cutters or shooters on the weak-side. That’s an area hiding some untapped potential if a team is looking to maximize his playmaking upside. His pick-and-roll passing and drive-and-kick dishing are both moderate pluses; my skepticism with those traits primarily stems from concerns as to whether or not he can actually break down the defense enough to command extra attention and find the open man.
Scoring-wise, he should be a fairly versatile shooter, capable of splashing spot-up 3s and some off-movement long balls. This season, he generated 1.088 PPP (82nd percentile) on spot-ups, was above the 70th percentile in both guarded and unguarded jumpers, scored 0.797 PPP (53rd percentile) on off-the-dribble attempts and shot 37.4 percent beyond the arc (39.2 percent last year).
But I don’t have much confidence in his pull-up shooting becoming a regular weapon. His knack for creating space is restricted by a loose handle, high dribbling and low-rung NBA athleticism.
Now, it’s fair to question why I’ve been so critical of Alexander-Walker’s on-ball skills. He won’t be a primary creator in the NBA and he projects as a good 3-point shooter. Why worry so much about those flaws? It comes down to the fact that I don’t buy him as an outlier shooter. His off-ball and relocation instincts aren’t uniquely good; he was only in the 26th percentile (0.72 PPP) in off-screen shooting — albeit on just 25 possessions. Generally speaking, that’s fine; he doesn’t have to be an elite sniper to produce starter-level value. In conjunction with the other identified weaknesses, it’s more problematic.
If he inefficiently (or mildly) produces off the bounce — at the rim, on drives and as a facilitator/pull-up shooter — and almost solely is on-ball creator via screens, he’s not all that valuable as a ball-handler. And if that’s coupled with good, not great, shooting equity, it’s difficult to envision his offense being worth all that much. It’s not that he’s particularly bad at any of things listed — he’s quite good at many — it’s that I’m wary of his athleticism being conducive to sustained success in those areas at the next level.
While unlikely to be a game-changing defender, Alexander-Walker projects very well on that side of the ball. His recognition and awareness are impressive, particularly for a young player, backed by his penchant for leaping into plays and plucking 1.9 steals per game. It’s here where his length proves most useful:
On the ball, he plays with active hands and a pesky demeanor that had a tendency to catch assignments by surprise:
Given his size and length, Alexander-Walker should be capable of defending both wing spots. In due time, once he adds muscle — he was often overpowered when guarding bigger/stronger guys — he might periodically slide down to the block and hold his own against 4s (perhaps only sparingly), given his 6-foot-9.5 wingspan. He’s also shown a knack for effectively navigating on-ball screens, long a valuable trait in the NBA.
He isn’t without flaws, though. Quick-twitch movements give him issues, sometimes caught with heavy feet when reacting to zippy guards or wings — a product of his subpar athleticism and lateral agility. His closeouts are unreliable and generally erratic, failing to contain the shooter. If he doesn’t add the requisite strength to match up with 3s, some of that multipositional upside fades away.
But I’m confident he’ll pack on functional weight; most guys do. The consistent diagnosis of plays off the ball is distinct, too. He’s the type of guy who might never make an appearance on All-Defensive teams but is routinely referred to as a good defender and continues to sign new contracts in part because of it.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker is a good basketball player. Watch a handful of his games and it’s easy to discern that. Because of that, he’s going to be a rotation player in the NBA. He might be more and some people and teams will likely view him as deserving of a top-20 pick. I am not one of those people. His offensive game, while intriguing and well-rounded from a birds-eye perspective, has troubling warts — notably a lack of ideal burst, finishing ability and decision-making/versatility as a passer. He could very well improve on those shortcomings to the point of making me eat crow. The defense is a major selling point, too.
Consider me doubtful that his athleticism ever reaches the point it needs to for the other parts of his game to truly shine through. As such, I’m left analyzing a player whom I know is good at basketball but one who I don’t think has enough translatable skills to be a top-20 selection in this year’s NBA Draft.