UCF Knights forward Taylor Hendricks. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Over the next month, you’re going to hear a lot of NBA Draft prospect comparisons — some good, some absolutely disastrous.
With the lottery behind us, NBA Draft season is upon us in earnest. That means it’s time to start breaking out the NBA Draft prospect comparisons.
These kinds of comparisons can be incredibly useful, a sort of shorthand for compressing and communicating a lot of information about a player at once. But they’re much more valuable as a starting point, a place to begin examining what a player is or could be at the next level. They are also prone to some common fallacies, which I tried to highlight below.
Not wanting to put anyone on blast, I won’t link to the sources for any of these comparisons, but I found them all in 10-15 minutes of Googling and anyone else similarly motivated should be able to find them as well. In each case, I tried to highlight why the comparison is flawed and what essential information is missing or being overlooked.
Irresponsible NBA Draft prospect comparisons: 5. Taylor Hendricks is not Pascal Siakam
One of the things that can get messy with NBA Draft prospect comparisons is trying to suss out whether the prospect is being compared to the pro player as they are now, after several years of development, or compared to who they were as a prospect when they entered the draft. In either case, the Hendricks to Siakam comparison falls apart. They might have similar builds and some athletic overlap but the roles and skills don’t line up, then or now.
Hendricks is a fantastic, switchable defender but he especially shines as a weakside rim protector — something that certainly isn’t true for Siakam now and wasn’t really his primary strength leaving college. But offense is where this really falls apart. In college, Siakam was an energy big, scoring points by crashing the glass, running the floor, overpowering small bigs and attacking large players in face-ups. He attempted just 17 3-pointers in two seasons at New Mexico State and while he’s become a reasonably reliable outside shooter with the Raptors, his primary offensive role is as a slasher and self-creator.
Hendricks is very underdeveloped as a creator and slasher, although he has the athleticism to perhaps grow into that role. But he’s already an elite spot-up shooter, hitting 39.4 percent of his 3-pointers with nearly half his shot attempts coming from beyond the arc. He’s a shooter and shot-blocker whose upside is mostly in growing defensive versatility.