NBA Draft 2019: 7 prospects that could thrive as future role players
Ty Jerome – Virginia
Draft status: Jerome has entered the draft and will almost certainly remain in. Coming off a national championship, it makes sense to leave on such a high note.
Draft projection: He’s gotten the “NCAA Tournament bump” with all the positive attention the tournament brought. Looking through mocks, my best guess is that the tournament elevated him from an early second round pick to maybe a late first round pick.
Role player projection:
Strengths: Although he would likely play largely off-the ball in the NBA, Jerome got great experience playing both on and off-the-ball at UVA. He’s capable of providing some secondary point guard play at times, but he’ll make the most impact running off screens and finding other ways to get open looks from behind the arc. He shot just a tick under 40% from three his junior season, and as a decent amount of these were off the dribble, he’s likely even a better shooter than this percentage suggests. Another student of the Tony Bennet defensive school, Jerome is better than one might initially think on the defensive end. At 6-5, he has decent NBA size that will help both get his shot off and hold his own defensively.
Weaknesses: Although he fared very well as a ball-handler at the college level, it’s hard to see this translating to the NBA. Even at UVA, he had to rely a lot on craftiness and tough floaters to create shots off the dribble, and it will only get tougher at the next level. In comparison to Guy on the offensive end, Jerome has a lot more to offer in terms of ball-handling and playmaking, but I don’t trust him quite as much in a spot-up shooter role. Defensively, Jerome’s size at 6-5 is valuable, but he lacks the athleticism to do too much as an individual defender. In the right system, his Virginia experience should allow him to execute defensive principles well, but he has a limited ceiling on the defensive end of the floor.
De’Andre Hunter – Virginia
A potential top-five pick, Hunter has received plenty of attention, so I’m going to keep his section short. He showed up in this “role player” filter due to Virginia’s system, as the Cavaliers play at a very slow tempo and tend to have no player with too high of a usage rate. Tony Bennet’s system is very unique, which makes it an outlier that a player with the draft stock of a Hunter showed up. Typically, a player of Hunter’s caliber would have a higher usage rate.
Hunter has flashed the ability to do it all, from shooting to defending to playmaking. The question seems to be not whether he’ll be a solid NBA role player, but whether he’ll make the transition to stardom.