Do NBA teams value elite passes?

As good as Jokic is as a shooter and rebounder, it’s his ownership vision that truly sets him apart as a star. Jokic came within 0.2 assists per game of averaging a triple-double in the regular season before narrowly missing out in the playoffs as well. Jokic isn’t the only great passer selected in the second round, as Draymond Green also fits that criteria. Let’s dig deeper into whether this is a trend or whether Green and Jokic are simply outliers.

On the other end of the spectrum, five of these 31 players were selected in the second round: Green (No. 35), Jokic (No. 41), Nate McMillan (No. 30), Doc Rivers (No. 31) and Johnny Moore (No. 43). Among shooting guards, I’m not sure there’s a common theme other than future coaching success.

Rivers was more of a scoring-first guard at Marquette than the setup man he became in the NBA, but Moore was an elite playmaker (he remains Texas’ all-time assists leader) and McMillan was a passer. . quality that dropped due to concerns about whether he could shoot and score at the NBA level.

Even looking at first-round picks that were later than they should have been, including Hall of Famers Steve Nash (No. 15) and John Stockton (No. 16) and All-Star Rajon Rondo (No. 21), no, I don’t know. I don’t think there was much question about his game or his value at lower levels.

That leaves the greats, Green and Jokic. It’s interesting that none of them had outstanding assist ratings before coming to the NBA. Green averaged 4.1 APG as a junior at Michigan State, leading the team but still a long way from the 8.9 assists he had in 2020-21. Jokic, meanwhile, hit a high of 3.5 APG in 2014-15, when he won Adriatic League MVP a year after being selected by the Nuggets in the second round.

Jokic certainly still showed next-level passing ability. In a 2021 text message from Ohm Youngmisuk to ESPN, then-Denver’s president of basketball operations Tim Connelly recalled asking Jokic why he didn’t see those same kinds of dimes early in his career in basketball. basketball. nba But it seems that Jokic’s death was a minor part of the value of him before the NBA.

You could also add Marc Gasol to this group. Although Gasol never had the kind of assist totals that Green and Jokic had in the NBA (he topped 4.6 APG), he was another second-round pick whose passing ability wasn’t as evident statistically before he entered the league. In his great campaign with Girona after passing through the Draft, Gasol averaged 2.3 APG in the Spanish ACB.

Given those examples, I think there is something to the hypothesis if we limit it to big men. Whether non-NBA teams are less equipped to highlight their passing skills or may not have been fully developed early in their careers, it seems like it’s harder to predict how good bigs will be as NBA dealers NBA.