The Case for Jaden Ivey as the #1 Overall Prospect
Written by Garrett Johnson (@halfawaketakes)
Throughout the college season, fans and scouts were captivated by the explosiveness, creativity, and confidence of sophomore standout Jaden Ivey. The Purdue star entered the college year with many expecting him to be a first round pick, and right away he made major statements throughout non-conference play in marquee games. By winter, his stock elevated into the top four of many draft boards, and now he’s viewed by the majority as a top-four prospect. Despite generally being associated with the likes of Jabari Smith Jr., Chet Holmgren and Paolo Banchero, I have not seen many others who share my view that Jaden Ivey is the #1 prospect in this class. This article likely won’t be anyone’s first time reading about Ivey’s game, but I hope by the end of it, my perspective will have convinced some to have them higher on their boards on draft night.
He already uses his athleticism like THAT?
This is the clip-heavy section, because the film really speaks for its self here. Jaden Ivey is an insane athlete. As in, one of the most athletic guards in the NBA on day one. But what equally excites me is how comfortable Ivey already is with his athleticism in his 19/20-year-old season. Ivey isn’t all gas and no brakes. He’s got fantastic body control at his top speeds, and his natural ability to weave between defenders at his top gears is remarkable, and it shows in transition.
It isn’t just body control — it’s spectacular footwork, too. Ivey is a master contortionist who rarely travels and can get to the rim from a variety of body moves. He can get low, he can explode for dunks off one foot, and he can sling passes against his body’s momentum. Check out this spin move from one step into the free throw line.
Ivey’s first step is absolutely lethal, one of the best I’ve seen from an NBA prospect, and teams won’t be able to rely on below-average NBA athletes to take on Ivey at the point of attack. His ability to accelerate only adds to defenders’ woes. Watch him punish future professionals like Brandon Slater and DeVante Jones one-on-one when they fail to take away his right hand.
And yeah, if you’re late to close out on Ivey, you’re done. If you’re caught chasing him off-ball, he can get to the rim in a second or hit the brakes for catch-and-shoot threes.
Before moving on to skill development, I wanted to quickly highlight an area of Ivey’s game that I don’t hear talked about — his outlier reactivity, and how it feeds into his driving ability. For someone that drove into trouble as much Ivey was asked to do the last two years at Purdue, he’s learned the hard way how to get himself to a better place when he runs into trouble. Throughout Ivey’s tape, difficult finishes and unconventional passes are created out of thin air just when you think he’s played himself into a turnover. It’s easy to see why Ivey still has room to grow with his anticipation skills on both ends of the floor when he can lean on outlier reactivity. This clip maybe isn’t indicative of Ivey’s most common reactive decisions, but it is one of my favorite weird plays from any prospect this year.
Early role projection… (for the Detroit Pistons)
It can feel like a moot exercise to go into great detail about an elite prospect’s ideal role early in their career before they’re selected. Most teams that are in position to draft at the top will demand more from their draft selectee than what would be ideal for early success, and roster construction is a rough draft rather than a finished product.
That said, projecting development is fun, so I’m going to do it anyway. And since we’re already theorizing about a development path of a player that can go in so many directions, let’s just go ahead and crank up the speculation and trust media reporting on where he’s going to be drafted. In short, this section is a love letter to the ideal young star pairing that could emerge from the 2022 NBA Draft - Jaden Ivey and Cade Cunningham.
Jaden Ivey and Cade Cunningham as a duo contrast aesthetically to such an extreme that it simply demands a nickname. Ivey will enter the league immediately as one of the most explosive players in the NBA, one of the most threatening movers off the ball, and the ability to space when he shoots within his comfort zone. Cade plays with methodical pace, elite floor vision, and in time I would project him to be an efficient three-level scorer from a variety of looks. The Cade PnR will revolutionize with the addition of Ivey’s ability to run circles around the ball and constantly threaten off DHOs and streaks to the rim.
Before the lottery drawings were ever announced, the narrative with the Pistons’ first round pick has been the same – Cade needs to be surrounded by guys who can play off-ball and hit their shots. Ivey may lack a versatile shooting profile, but he projects to be an elite running mate who commands significant defensive attention off-ball and can slide in as a primary or secondary initiator to give Cade rest over heavy minute loads in playoff rotations. Make no mistake – giving Cade primary reps will not prevent Ivey from being a usage monster. Creating significant advantages both on and off-ball will demand usage. But Cade’s expertise as a facilitator and role as primary initiator may help Detroit avoid a problem that long plagued one of my favorite star pairings of all time, KD & Westbrook: falling in and out of offensive balance in the clutch.
Addressing Concerns and Planning Skill Development
I understand the concerns of those lower on Jaden Ivey due to existing holes in his game. His defensive play is lackluster but workable. He’s clearly got the speed and hip flexibility to track his man, but he’s also clearly relied on his athleticism too often against lower competition to make up for poor anticipation skills, and the result is that he’s constantly running behind his man on recovery. Things should improve with further commitment to that side of the ball. When Ivey’s defensive motor is running, he can do amazing things, like he did after the turnover against Texas shown below. He needs more of this motor in halfcourt settings.
Ivey recovers so quickly that he has time to get into blocking position and wait for Courtney Ramey to go up with it.
The biggest area for development with Jaden Ivey is his floater. Ivey tends to decide a bit late that he’s going to pull-up before getting to the rim, and it leads to some pretty inconsistent touch from shot to shot. His floater is a right-handed push shot, and because his left hand is often so unengaged on drives, there isn’t much left hand involvement in the release. If I draft Jaden Ivey, I’m hoping my coaching staff will start working on that left hand to keep it more activated. I think having a capable floater is crucial to his development in game action. For a developing processor like Ivey, having an additional weapon would give him more leverage on his defender to make decisions without relying as heavily on things like acrobatic jump passes or full-extension wraparound passes to the corner. (Sidenote: knowing in context that Ivey’s midrange and floater are still a work in progress, isn’t Jaden Ivey shooting 72% at the rim last year so much more impressive?)
I’ve discussed some major areas of development for Jaden Ivey going forward, and to some that may be intimidating when evaluating a high-level prospect. But on the other side of the coin, no other player in this class benefits more from incremental skill development. This isn’t a completely raw athlete that started basketball a few years ago and needs to be shown the ropes. Ivey is ready to play right away, he’s already effective, and the question is whether he can become great. These skill development pathways could open that door for him.
Here’s my Jaden Ivey wishlist for skill development:
Jaden Ivey has a left hand, but he strongly prefers his right. Training staff should help him build habitual use of the left hand into his driving. From that, help him learn to bring both hands up to the ball on floaters.
Add sidestep and stepback 3s while improving his shooting base on release.
Attempt to tease out Ivey’s tendency towards reactive defending off-ball and build better anticipation skills.
Like any young player, Jaden Ivey will have to improve his offensive feel with the ball in his hands to promote positive offensive flow. Two areas of improvement that come to mind are knowing when to bail on drives, and how to operate as the ball handler in the short roll. However, I think there’s a chance that the Purdue context Ivey played in may have over-exaggerated concerns about his floor vision. First, Purdue’s best players outside of Ivey were siloed in their roles within the offense. Edey needed the ball on the block. Stefanovic could hit threes 3s from all over the floor but had no in-between. Trevion, while being an offensive maestro, generally got the ball on the short roll or the low post and didn’t let it go until he had a play to make. Beyond these obvious reads or the occasional open three 3 for Hunter or Morton, there frankly wasn’t a better go-to shot in the offense than a Jaden Ivey drive to the rim, even if the finish was going to be tough. Going into games with that mindset can lead players to miss “easy reads” once they think they’ve found a worthwhile driving angle, and I think that’s true for Ivey in many instances. With more versatile players surrounding him, I think perceptions of Ivey’s feel for the game will improve pretty substantially, even if the innate ability was already there. Driving directly into the defense will NOT be the best shot in the NBA more often than not. That means Ivey should have fewer out of control drives where he’s just trying to make a play, and having better control going to the rim will allow him to be a better distributor off the bounce.
I also don’t think people should be doom-and-gloom about Ivey’s rough efficiency shooting off movement. If we look at the three point numbers of some of the most athletic star guards in the NBA, there are quite a few that were successful with below-average league efficiency.
Ja Morant (career 33% from 3)
Dejounte Murray (33%)
De’Aaron Fox (32%)
Derrick Rose (32%)
John Wall (32%)
Russell Westbrook (31%)
It would be disingenuous to suggest that Ivey can reach the level of any of these players without offering something beyond rim pressure, but I think this also serves as a reminder that skill development for top athletes like Ivey have many branching paths to success. Ivey could become a legitimate two-way player. NBA spacing may unlock latent playmaking potential. Point is, this isn’t a conversation that can just be boiled down to “he needs to shoot”.
Would a median developmental outcome for Jaden Ivey return good value for a typical #1 overall pick?
To answer my own question: probably not, but could you answer yes to this question to any of the other top prospects from this draft class? In my opinion, no.
This article also isn’t an opportunity to tear down this year’s other candidates for the #1 pick - the top four from this draft certainly deserve to be in the conversation, and there isn’t a clear-cut choice. I think the more interesting draft philosophy question, instead, is whether an ideal 2nd star is a strong enough value swing to merit a #1 overall selection (there are outlier development scenarios where Ivey develops movement shooting and becomes completely undefendable, but I’m not going to predict something like that.) In a void, I would say that finding a high-end, moldable #2 option merits selection above a low-end, more inflexible #1 scoring option that needs #1 treatment to excel. And if Ivey exceeds expectations and becomes your #1, that’s just a bonus.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about how I arrived at such a different conclusion about the top of my draft board than others for the 2022 Draft. My main conclusion is that I think that many analysts this cycle have scouted on the negative elements of Ivey’s game too hard when comparing him against other top prospects, and have forgotten what Ivey can be at his best. But then again, this is just a discussion of how we’d order our draft boards, not whether we can evaluate talent, and those are very different conversations. You’ll struggle to find analysts that don’t recognize Ivey’s potential, and regardless of where we might differ on rankings, we’re all about to enjoy watching one of the best athletes in basketball as he starts his NBA career, and I can’t wait to watch.
