NBA Draft Scouting Report: Jarrett Allen's Strengths, Weaknesses and Comparison

As we transition from the college basketball season to NBA Draft season I’ll be breaking down the scouting reports for various players across the country who are expected to be in the NBA Draft. We’ll focus on seniors and those with agents to start. If there is someone specific you want on here, please let me know @barstoolreags. All videos are courtesy of Synergy and the stats will come from Synergy and KenPom. 

Jarrett Allen – Texas

6’11”, 224 lbs, 19 years old

Projected: No. 17 (DraftExpress) No. 11 (NBADraft.net)

Comparison: JaVale McGee

Background: Jarrett Allen was the big name get for Shaka Smart and Texas (before Mo Bamba committed last week). He turned out to be a work in progress, but you could see his development as he turned into the best player on Texas and why he was rated so high. Allen put up 13/8/1.5 per game while playing over 32 minutes per game as a freshman. Allen really broke out when he played against Kansas putting up 22 and 19 in one game only to follow it with a 20 and 11 game. He ended up with 12 double-doubles on the year but grabbed double digit rebounds in 14 games with his high being that 19 rebound game at Kansas. What made his season even more impressive was the fact he played out of position for a large portion of it. For whatever reason, Shaka would run Allen at the power forward spot instead of using him at the center spot and getting up and down the floor.

Strengths: When you look at Allen you can see his biggest strength. He has incredible length and wingspan, making him an ideal center with the way the game is shifting. He has a 7.5″ wingspan and a standing reach of  9’2.5″. That alone should help translate into being an effective shot blocker and rim protector at the NBA level. He wasn’t great in college at blocking shots, although he did average 1.5 per game, so with the work of an NBA staff he should be able to develop better timing and strength to become an excellent shot blocker in the NBA. We did see some potential, including this absurd block against Baylor of what we could see in the future:

Allen was wildly efficient on the offensive side of the ball with a 56.6 effective field goal percentage, which was in the top-200 nationally. What makes him appealing on the offensive side of the ball is his versatility. Yes, he’s still a work in progress (more on that later), but he does a little bit of everything. Most bigs, especially as freshmen, in college spend their time strictly in the post and you see about a 40-45% of time in that set. Allen had 463 possessions this past season and only 27.6% of that came in the post. The rest were pretty evenly split as he had 15.8% on offensive putbacks, 14.3% on cuts, 13.5% as the roll man in pick-and-rolls and a little over 8% in transition – which should have been higher, but Texas didn’t have a point guard. You could see his wingspan and length come into play quite often on the offensive side of the ball as he liked to finish above the rim. Allen does a good job of finding space, despite playing with another true post player. He liked to dive to the rim and looked for either a quick dunk or an alley-oop. This play below is something that Allen did a lot of.

While Allen doesn’t have great range, he does a very soft touch and nice form on both his jumper and jump hook. Those are two shots that you’d expect to see him go to in the NBA and work on to improve his range. He shot 25 midrange jumpers last season at just .56 points per possession, but on jumpers inside of 17′ he was at .944 points per possession. If he can routinely hit that 18-20′ shot, he becomes that more polished on the offensive side of the ball. On both his jumper and jump hook he does have a high release point, which is already a step in the right direction. By keeping that high release point, it allows for the softer touch and the less chance for him to get blocked/contested as he has great length to go with it. You can see here against Baylor’s zone his ability to a) find the open spot and b) keep the high release point on a jumper from about 9 feet.

Perhaps though, the best part of his game is rebounding. He had rebounding percentages of 11% offensively and 18.9% defensively, which ranked 154th nationally and 306th respectively. He got better as the season went on too as he upped it to 11.4% offensively and 22.2% defensively in conference play, which put him in the top-5 for both stats. Again, going with his size he has soft hands around the rim, which allows him to grab a variety of rebounds, whether it’s tip-ins or reaching out with the length to grab a ball off the rim. More importantly, he converted those offensive rebounds to points as he had 1.288 points per possession on those 73 offensive putbacks. He has a quick second jump after getting the rebound as he rarely takes more than one dribble before going back up. I’d like to see him dunk it a little bit more, but with his length, he’s consistently over the rim for lay ins. This play against Nathan Adrian shows a little bit what he’s capable of. He’s not necessarily overpowering West Virginia here, but he’s able to get in enough position to use his length. He reaches up for the one handed rebound, quick power dribble and then finishes. This is what will carry over to the NBA the most.

Weaknesses: He is still a raw player and it’s evident when he’s forced to make a decision. There are times when the game moves a little too fast for him, especially when there’s a double team coming at him and he has to try to pass out of it or make a move. That’s where most of his turnovers tend to happen as he had a 20.1 turnover rate. Per Synergy when a hard double came in a post up setting (70 possessions) he ranked in just the 17th percentile nationally with .571 points per possession. What’s scary about that even more is the fact he had a 28.6 turnover percentage compared to a 25.7 scoring percentage on those same 70 possessions. In general he needs to improve passing out of the post. Besides his shooting range, it’s perhaps his biggest weakness on the offensive side of the ball. He graded out as poor per Synergy in passes out of the post as he ranked in the 10th percentile nationally as Texas scored just .698 points per possession when he passed out of the post. With his touch from 12 feet, Allen needs to be a better free throw shooter as well. He shot just 56% from the line last season, which is about 8% too low based on his form alone.

Draft Stock/Projection: This is the week of bigs as we talked about John Collins yesterday. Allen falls right in line with Collins, Ike Anigbogu and Justin Patton as he will go anywhere from 13-20 based on how the teams rank those four players. He’s the exact type of player you see teams fall in love with as he has the length and foundation to be a great player. You see flashes of it and while he’s still relatively young, teams will fall in love with his ability to get up and down the court and hope he can develop that jumper out to 17′ or more. Throw in the fact he by far has the best hair and mustache in the Draft, he’s going to be one of the more intriguing prospects to watch as he can provide a spark off the bench during his rookie campaign. He’s not crazy like JaVale, but the way he is still raw offensively and can be a great shot blocker reminds me of McGee, along with the ridiculously long arms.