Is There a Place for Kennedy Meeks as a Small Ball Center?

Kennedy Meeks is a player that is going to come with varying opinions when it comes to the 2016 NBA Draft discussion.

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The convo is going to range from “should he be a late first-rounder ?”, to “should he be drafted at all?”.

That seems like a wide gap in opinion when you are talking about a player that is 6-foot-9, 279 pounds and that plays at a basketball factory like North Carolina.

The case for him being a late first-rounder is sound because of the fact that he is a space eater in the paint and can get on the glass.

His size makes it where he is going to be hard to discard anywhere in the painted area if he is committed to being a beast in the paint, positioning himself to grab anything that caroms his way.

His size and strength makes him tough to contain in the paint with the ball in his mitts. Meeks has begun to understand that his body is his biggest asset on the basketball court.

It is hard for defenders to truly stop him from doing what he wants because of the fact that he is using his body so well. Meeks is flat out hard to get around.

Even with the fact that he is not an explosive leaper, if he puts his backside on his defender, he easily is able to create the space needed to convert down low whether if he is on the block or grabbing offensive boards and putting them back up.

(Photo: Mike Carter, USA TODAY Sports)

He even has a soft touch that can easily be developed so he can be used in pick-and-pop situations. Meeks should be able to work on a 15-foot jumper and knock it down with consistency.

The downside to Kennedy Meeks’ game is that he is not much of an interior defender. This is where the other extreme of “should he be drafted at all?” comes in.

When it comes to the small ball fad, having a rim protector that you can count on is of the utmost importance.

Kennedy Meeks has improved in the area of blocking shots going from 0.8 blocks in 2013-14 to 1.2 blocks in 2014-15.

But on the NBA level where things are a whole lot faster, chances are that he won’t even rotate and be in position to block a shot because he is slow on defensive rotations.

So the question at the end of the day when it comes to Kennedy Meeks is, ” Can he be the perfect small ball center?”.

In some ways he can be the perfect small center because of the strengths he brings to the floor in the interior including the fact that he runs the floor well.

But the fact that he could end up being a defensive liability is the one glaring thing that will turn you off about him.

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With that being said, if Kennedy Meeks was taken in the second round by an NBA franchise, no one would even complain about that. If he was taken in the first round some people may see that as a stretch. If he went undrafted people may see some disrespect in it, but it would be understandable.

There is a chance, albeit slim, that Kennedy Meeks decides that it is not even his time to declare for the draft yet and decides to stay for his senior year in spite of the probable NCAA sanctions that are on the horizon for North Carolina.

He has improved his game from his freshman year (7.6 points, 6.1 rebounds, 54.8% field goal pct.) to his sophomore year (11.4 points, 7.3 rebounds, 56.2% field goal pct.) enough that it makes the conversation about his impending draft status legitimate.

He is seen as the 25th best NBA prospect by DraftExpress, while nbadraft.net has him nowhere to be found in their mock draft board.

There should be a place for Kennedy Meeks in the NBA especially with the latest small ball craze, it is just of matter of the pro scouts seeing things that way.

Next: Busting Brackets NBA Draft Big Board

2016 NBA Draft Radar: Is There a Place for Kennedy Meeks as a ‘Small Ball’ Center?

By James Fitzgerald | Sep 10, 2015

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