I remain high on Kas because of his efficiency + self creation combo. He finished poorly after returning from injury, but he still finished 59% TS. There are guys with more volume, but none of the top freshman had less of their baskets assisted. So he was efficient despite having a very large amount of his scoring be self created. IMO, this makes it easy to believe that he could both scale up with decent efficiency or scale down and be extremely efficient. He did this while only shooting 32% from 3 because his shot distribution was so awesome and he's also a foul merchant. He's a moreball superstar. I am a believer in his shot because that low percentage because of the degree of difficulty on those shots, his volume, his history of shooting it better, and his high FT%. If he shoots it better he could really be a highly efficient creator. So you have highly efficient, self creating scorer and then you pair that with being one of the better passers in the draft. Yes he turns the ball over a lot (more on that later), but he also throws a ton of killer passes and shows terrific vision. What I see is a smart player who can get to the rim+FT line, he has great potential to shoot off the dribble 3's, and also has great potential as a playmaker. There's just a lot of great things he can do, and while I understand some of the hesitations, I'm on the bandwagon of believing that actual production/being good at basketball is underrated.
The concerns for him are obvious, it's the athleticism and defense. He's not super quick and fairly ground bound. I think it's fair to question how that will translate to the next level.....but this is one of those things where I'm trusting the production. He doesn't look like he should be able to get to the rim a lot, but he does anyways. I feel like we've been giving the benefit of the doubt to guys who can't get to the rim in college, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to a guy who actually did it well. He also didn't fade against better competition. Against top 50 opponents his efficiency was essentially the same as his overall efficiency at 58% TS. If he struggled against better competition I would have more concerns about the athleticism, but out of all the top guards his efficiency dropped the least.
Defensively, I don't have many great things to say other than that I think he does play very hard. He's shows great effort and chases guys around tirelessly even if his screen navigation isn't great. I think this shows up in his rebound stats which are pretty good, once again in spite of his supposed physical limitations. I can't say I think his defense will be good, but I do think it's better than some of the guys in the same range (which is not saying much tbf). He has decent strength, plays smart, and plays hard.
About the turnovers.....High turnovers is not why these guys succeeded, of course, but it's also hard to say high turnovers is a death sentence. Below are top 10 picks with > 4 turnovers per36 since 2010. Lot of great playmakers on this list, and the one's who failed didn't fail because of their passing ability.
Cade
Ja
Hayes
Trae
Wall
Turner
Evans
Rubio
Curry
