Predraft Workouts: Sunday, May 29th 2011

You may have read that we’re working out six players tomorrow. As you can imagine the Jazz, with two lotto picks (one as high as #3), they would be bringing in some of the better players to fight it out. We can assume that the #3 pick is going to end up getting a chance to even start next year if he plays hard enough. So, it only makes sense that for our first work out this off-season the Jazz are bringing in two point guards (Norris Cole and Shelvin Mack), and four bigs (JaJaun Johnson, Markieff Morris, Dallas Lauderdale, and Jeremy Tyler). Brian T. Smith suggests that out of this lot only Morris could be a lotto pick.

Here's a quick look at their cumulative college statistics. In the case of Jeremy, they are his rookie season professional stats from his team play in Japan.

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Chicago pre-draft camp measurements, results, and half-hearted analysis after the jump …

Chicago Pre-Draft Camp 2011

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Set-up:

The Jazz usually like to evaluate a bunch of similar players against each other. We’ve seen this type before when the Jazz brought in a bunch of bigmen and only two nominal guards to help them out with post entry passes and ball movement. I honestly don’t see the Jazz taking a serious look at Norris Cole or Shelvin Mack. The Jazz will get a chance to look at them though, but their focus would be on the four bigmen they are bringing in. It could be that Dallas, JaJuan and Jeremy all rank similarly to Markieff (whom the Jazz could take at #12, but probably will not as that would be a super reach). By bringing in Markieff and these three other dudes the Jazz may be sneakily actually evaluating talent not for the NBA draft (directly), but instead looking at these three other guys for potential training camp invites.

Maybe I’m wrong about this, but some of these guys don’t even look like they are locks for the second round (we don’t even have a second round pick this year). One of these guys didn’t even attend the Chicago Predraft camp. Dallas Lauderdale did not go, but looking at his Mark Eatonian 4.2 points per game (cumulative college result) offensive supremacy I think this guy may be surprised to even be asked to continue playing basketball at this stage. We do know that he does have the second best standing reach though.

I assume that this is going to be a big heavy workout. And I don’t really think any of these guys are being scouted for either of our lottery picks.

Dallas Lauderdale

He’s the shortest of all of the bigs, but he actually has the longest wingspan and second best standing reach. He’s Paul Millsap like in that regard. Paul was only 6’7.25 but had a standing reach of near 9’ and a wingspan above 7’ as well. Unlike Millsap this guy did not lead the NCAA in rebounding three years in a row. This guy averaged as many rebounds per game as the two point guards we’re bringing in to pass the bigs the ball. I don’t know anything about this dude, but I’m sure he’s a really nice guy. Character counts with our organization.

JaJuan Johnson

This guy is a legit 6’10 big with a 38" vertical and a max reach of 12’1.5 – which is exactly the reach of Derrick Favors. He appears to be an athlete, his lane agility was tops out of the bigs and 2nd best out of all of the guys coming in (yes, he’s more agile than one of the point guards). He was actually faster in the sprint than everyone, including both point guards. More impressive than that is that he just lit the nets on fire during the Chicago Camp shooting drills. His cumulative three point % (C.Three %) was 70.0%, and took care of business from inside the NCAA or HS three point line as well. His college stats show that he’s a big who can also make a free throw or two. More impressive than his 14/6 cumulative college averages are the point that he blocked 1.9 shots a game over his 140 game college career. I like this kid. I’d love this kid if we didn’t already have 5 guys ahead of him on the depth chart.

Jeremy Tyler

This kid pulled a Brandon Jennings by going from an American High School to playing professionally outside of the US instead of going to college. That’s a question mark I’d think, and I’m sure the Jazz will grill him about that during the interview. He played for the Tokyo Apache and played only 15.4 mpg. His stats in the first chart reflect his rookie season. The same size (only 33 games) is smaller than the other guys, but one year of professional basketball isn’t four years of college. And vice versa. He had a shaky shot at the Chicago camp, but is also another member of the 12’ Max Reach club. As a guy 12 months removed from High School it’s not surprise that he was last out of this group in bench press reps.

Markieff Morris

This guy projects to be a Top 15 pick in the draft. His college stats shows that he’s a very solid shooter (55%) and hustle guy. He doesn’t have a very high upside but he didn’t ‘kill it’ in college. I’d rather play Jeremy Evans over him if we happened to draft this guy or whatever. Morris shot horribly in Chicago. He was below average (obviously) and his one saving grace was off the bounce jumpers from 15 to 18 feet. With the slew of guys we already have who work in ‘da paynt’ he’s either going to be moving into a crowded neighborhood or being pushed outside of his capability. What seals it for me is that he went 9/25 from HS three range. It was second worst out of all the guys who were limited to shooting from there. I’m not 6’11, but I can at least make more than 9 HS three pointers when I spot up (well, I could back when I was in college).

Norris Cole and Shelvin Mack

Shelvin Mack went to Butler with our too big, yo, lotto pick from last season: Gordon Hayward. He has a 6’8 wingspan and rocked the bench press for 17 reps. His shooting was kind of shaky at the draft camp. He was very solid in college, his career averages are 14/4/3 but his over-all FG% was in Kenny Anderson territory.

Norris Cole had a similar career in college, going 14/3/3 but was slightly better on defense and a more disciplined shooter. Which was on display in Chicago as he made 2 out of every 3 shot there. He is otherwise unremarkable which further solidifies my opinion that the Jazz are not seriously looking at Cole or Mack – and this is a big workout more than anything else.

Opinion on these six guys:

I have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to figure out how to define this as a ‘non-waste’ of a workout. None of these guys help us get better next year. None of these guys project to be even available where we pick. If we had 2nd round picks it would make more sense. These guys have to be training camp fodder. I’d rather draft Kosta Koufos again than draft any of these six guys.