One of the most impressive scoring tapes of a prospect you will see, sheets vs tape. PRO: When I first watched AJ the thing that stood out was just how well he uses his blend of size with technique to create scoring advantages. He's got GENERATIONAL footwork and ground coverage on the offensive side of the ball. He's got bend plus athleticism that really separates him from any modern day wing in the NBA. And advantage creations a key aspect of NBA offence if you're going to be a key creator in the offence. Quite simply there isn't someone close to him at creating these advantages this is an NBA skill he's pretty much mastering. And I think it shows in some of the playtypes he's used in he's very much used as a jumbo Creative guard on the offensive end and thats a really quite interesting concept for what type of impacts he can have in an NBA roster where you can go quite oversized due to this. Statistically, he's great at the rim although it's not perfect at 83rd percentile efficiency and 70th percentile volume but it's key to note how much of that is unassisted at 79 percent. He's not really being helped getting there his unassisted rim attempts rank in the 95th percentile. Mid range is where the true separation is, 93rd percentile efficiency and 95th percentile volume. A lot of talk about how valuable a mid range bucket truly is but when your that efficient and your that good at getting to your spots like AJ is that shouldn't be a question to me. AJ is also very strong at getting to the line, 96th percentile in volume comes with the downhill talent and volume AJ produces, fairly average at the line once he's there. AJ's playmaking has been a huge improvement throughout the year, he's far from being a perfect playmaker I still think some of the reads he makes need to be sharpened out of the post, processing can speed up but he definitely had positive production. 22.1 AST% is in the 95th percentile positional which I think is a key point to bring up when using this number. Compared to many others in AJ's position he's trusted to carry the offensive load and create not just for himself for others. His 99th percentile USG% will show you that. You shouldn't be overly surprised that AJ ranks so highly in playmaking. However he certainly has positive impact in passing his 77th percentile AST/USG% shows you that he's still above average compared to others who are less ball dominant. Aj's handle is very clean it isn't why he's one of the best self creating prospects in recent times and potentially of all time but its very comfortable, functional and has allowed him to make some of the strong passing reads off the dribble that other peers struggle to do. Not the widest variety of moves not gonna break your ankles but it's a very tight handle and doesn't hold him back. CON: Defence has been a big issue in general when you look at statistics but it's also represented pretty strongly in the tape. Of course his offensive load takes away from his impact he can have on this end but thats a reason why we should prioritise widening the range of offensive actions a team uses and adding variety so AJ doesn't HAVE to be that guy and lose out defensively and i'm not Sure if AJ is going to ever be in a situation with that. Its been like that at every level of course you want someone like him with the ball and creating as much as possible but there's never been a great sample size of off ball usage and having that variety in his game. Can't really predict things you don't see. Issues with the defence are as followed: - I like low could when there's stock production but there is none to go with that so it's clear there's a lack of aggressiveness producing stocks. Could that be coaching sure but that was a theme in high school too, relatively low stocks to his peers. Defensive playmaking is key and has contributed to the 28th percentile DBPM, 42nd percentile STL%, 11th percentile BLK%. It's far too low to project him being an average to above average defensive playmaker at the next level. - Had an issue with a lot of closeouts, similar themes with Boozer and Wilson and thats just usually a young guy issue but he does get beat a lot. He's got great ground coverage and sometime's he makes up for it but most of the time he's unable to compensate for what he gives up on a closeout and gets beat. What he does do a good job is when they do shoot is getting a contest due to that ground coverage the issue is when they don't. - off-ball there's just not enough consistency in staying with his man which is why he gets blown by so much cause he has to shift his momentum and he's a long guy its hard but he can really reduce issues avoiding some ball watching and moving a little more. outside of that his defence has real flashes on ball I think he;'s pretty decent at that but off ball defence when we talk about real offensive weapons is more important of a skill than on ball defence and truly AJ doesn't affect passing lanes, help or closeout well enough right now for me to project him to defensive success in the NBA. I could see him reaching average at the top in my opinion you know formulate your own opinion, watch the tape but thats my take on it compared to just historical comparisons of similar play. Rebounding, he's got a lot more he can do to impact the boards, 21st percentile OREB% will be somewhat down to his high shot volume and usage on offence taking way from that but 45th percentile DREB% is fairly average too. A great way to improve defensive impact when your on the court is defensive rebounds so it would do a lot for him to be more active on the glass I don't see much of a reason for him to not do that especially with the potential of what he could do pushing the ball in transition. The 3pt shooting does have low percentages, 33.1% is 33rd Percentile and 6.5 attempts is 52nd percentile round about average but really the only interesting thing of his numbers is the volume assisted, exactly 2 thirds of his three point attempts come from assists. AJ does prefer to work inside the arc and I don't have much issue to that with just how good he is at scoring in the arc. But it would be great if we saw more off the dribble volume, 3pt% is fairly negligible form matters more and his mechanics are pretty good. NARRATIVE:SMALL_GUARD_NUMBERS.: Issue: - Dybantsa's play style uses and stats are representative of guards, typically point guards with his closest comparison being Derrick Rose. What does that mean for his NBA projection. I find this quite interesting but it makes sense, doesn't really take anything away from Dybantsa's projection but actually makes sense looking at the tape. He's obviously the primary handler for his roster it's no surprise he has similar uses in playtypes to guards. Question Is how much of it could be Dybantsa playing downsized and how much is these guards playing taller than they are. Truth is there's some truth to both sides of that, Derrick Rose was a super athlete who offensively played a lot larger than he was and that makes sense he could end up closer to Dybantsa who you would say plays at his 6'9 height region offensively. However on the other side of the ball, his off ball uses on the perimeter, low stock rates and rebounding percentages are going to be closer to where guards usually sit and that makes sense when you watch him he really does play like a jumbo playmaking guard imo and thats a really unique and interesting concept why it's hard for me to pass up on AJ's talents past 4. Because with that size there's really less advantage for offensive players to take advantage of him even if he's technically bad right now. However much effort a Trae Young, Ja Morant, Derrick Rose or, in this class, Acuff jr. put effort into their defence they are still undersized and can be put into actions to get them in bad matchups and create advantages over them. With AJ while there's plenty of way to beat him defensively you cant just outsize him. So because of that I inherently am going to be more intrigued when that isn't a concern even if I view him as a negatively projected defensive NBA player. PROJECTION: Due to the prior reason I cant really project AJ any way that I view accurate because there's not really anybody with that skillset and size to use. I use Julius Randle plus because I think some of the offensive usage plus defensive issues are there but AJ has truly superior offensive talent and functional athleticism as a separator between those two. Then there's Jaylen Brown which I put as a ceiling but thats really like the peak AJ defensive impact I could see, I think AJ could be a player through his offensive production but I can see a world where he's a Jaylen Brown type defender where I think Brown is really flawed especially off-ball but has real on ball defensive talents. true inconsistent defence with positive upside at times. Brown has benefited from defensive insulation to hide a lot of it but he does also get a lot of Flak from stats guys for this I don't think its a hidden narrative.