Jalen Hood Schifino has lottery hype, as he is ranked #13 in ESPN’s latest mock draft. He fits the coveted archetype of being a large ballhandler at 6’6 with 6’10 wingspan and a good frame who can pass and shoot. This past season he averaged 13.4 pts 4.1 rebs 3.7 assists, and won Big Ten freshman of the year while also making all conference second team.
On paper there is quite a bit to like, until you look at his advanced statistics. All conference 2nd team implies that he is a top 10 player in the conference. But out of 111 Big Ten players who played at least 300 minutes, JHS ranked 95th in BPM and 97th in Win Shares/48. According to these metrics, he was much closer to a bottom 10 player in the conference than top 10.
There were a number of flags statistically that resulted in advanced metrics disliking him. The biggest culprit is his efficiency. He lacks the athleticism to create quality shots at the rim, and is more comfortable in mid-range than from 3. This resulted in a horrible shot selection, as 216 of his 403 FGA came from mid-range, and he had a poor .189 free throw rate. And he is merely a decent but not great shooter making 33.3% 3P 77.6% FT. This resulted in a lackluster 49.2% TS.
The advantage of mid-range is these attempts are easy to get without turning it over, but JHS still averaged a somewhat high turnover rate due to his lack of focus and frequent lazy passes that get picked off.
Further, he failed to use his frame and length effectively rebounding or defensively, with a meager 1.6% O-Reb rate and 1.4% steal and 0.8% block rate.
Steals, blocks, and rebounds do not tell the whole story defensively, but on film he is not particularly better. He does not compete hard on D, he is beatable off the dribble, and he is prone to lapses where he loses track of his man or makes the wrong decision.
From watching JHS, it is difficult to see many bullish signs from his eye test that do not show up in the numbers. His passing looks skillful and he has decent court vision, but he does not make more advanced reads than his assist rate implies.
Further, his poor shot selection is worse than “too many mid-range attempts,” as he frequently will dribble directly into horrible contested mid-range jumpers early in the shot clock.
The best thing to be said about him is that he is in a nice mold of a big guard who can shoot, pass, and handle if he makes gargantuan improvements across the board. But statistically he is worse than any one and done player who has succeeded in the NBA.
The Statistically Worst One and Dones to Succeed in NBA
Using BPM from BartTorvik.com and WS/48 from sports-reference, JHS rates worse than any one and done that has ever succeeded in the NBA:
He is older than all of the prospects on the list but Bledsoe, with a significantly worse BPM and WS/48 than all.
Further, many of these prospects were super athletes such as Bledsoe, LaVine, and Brown.
Bledsoe was the typical Kentucky prospect who underperformed due to being underused as he had to play off ball next to John Wall.
LaVine had limited touches on a stacked UCLA team featuring Jordan Adams, Kyle Anderson, and Normal Powell.
Brown had elite physical tools and underperformed his pre-NCAA shooting numbers at Cal and was good defensively in spite of lukewarm box score indicators.
Murray was somewhat similar to JHS in terms of being a big, inefficient PG. But he was much shiftier and had more slashing potential and defensive potential with 2x the steal rate, and he is the one prospect in this group that I was high on pre-draft.
Jaden McDaniels is an odd case of flopping as NCAA player and then being great defensively in the NBA.
Where Can We Find Hope for JHS?
Aside from being worse than the rest of the list, JHS does not have the Bledsoe or LaVine excuse of being suppressed alongside other talent. Indiana’s other PG Xavier Johnson was injured and only played 11 games, so he had full control of the offense playing alongside elite big man Trayce Jackson-Davis.
He does not have elite athleticism like Brown, Bledsoe, or LaVine, nor does he have Dejounte Murray’s shiftiness. And he is a completely different player from Jaden McDaniels, as he lacks his dimensions and defensive potential.
The most similar player to JHS who succeeded is Malcolm Brogdon, who similarly struggled as a freshman:
Both guys have great PG size but poor athleticism and depend on their shooting to succeed.
That said, Brogdon was still better than JHS while being 6 months younger. He missed the following season with an injury, and then came back massively improved for his final 3 seasons of school winning ACC Player of the Year as a senior and ACC Defensive Player of the Year twice. And even then he was only drafted in round 2.
And that 6 month age gap is fairly significant considering Brogdon’s outlier rate of improvement. If you weight his freshman numbers 75% and sophomore 25%, he has the same average age as JHS but his BPM rises to 3 and WS/48 to .132 and suddenly they are not in the same tier of struggle any more.
Brogdon playing on an elite defensive team is partially priced into his numbers, but he had pedestrian steals and blocks and may have been underrated statistically as a two time ACC DPOY.
Also Brogdon was able to overcome his inability to blow by defenders with elite shooting, as he finished his college career with 87.6% career FT.
Essentially, if JHS can improve his defense from bad to good, his shooting from decent to elite, and drastically improve his feel and decision making, he could be something resembling Malcolm Brogdon. But even then that is optimistic, because Brogdon improved much more than an average prospect, and JHS was not as good at the same age.
So you are basically hoping for an outlier developmental arc for him to be a slightly worse version of Malcolm Brogdon, which is a bad value proposition in round 1, let alone the lottery.
Bottom Line
JHS is essentially an extremely poor man’s Cade Cunningham, and is getting overhyped for fitting an ideal mold instead of actually being good at basketball. Granted, Cade was a good prospect who likely goes on to have a good career, but was ridiculously overhyped as a generational prospect which was simply never the case.
In Hood-Schifino’s case, he is not a good prospect. He had a bad freshman year where he was a below average Big Ten player, but everybody fell in love with him based on his mold and potential and is now treating him as a good prospect.
Being in a good mold is an important point to consider, and there is potential that JHS becomes a decent NBA player if he makes unexpected gains. But being good right now is also important, and he needs so much to go right to hit such a lukewarm upside.
He is not nearly in the same tier as other guard prospects projected to go later such as Cason Wallace or Brandin Podziemski.
Even going further down boards, Amari Bailey is projected at #46. He is 8 months younger, much more athletic, much better defensively, and had a higher RSCI at #10 vs #20. He is a bit behind JHS in terms of size and skill, but his offense is in a similar tier as he can use his athleticism to create quality shots more frequently than JHS. It is difficult to understand how JHS is not only rated higher, but they are a full round apart.
Overall JHS can be summarized as a good player in theory but not in practice. He has major weaknesses and only lukewarm strengths, and while he is young enough to develop into some sort of useful NBA player, he has low upside and a high bust risk.
His profile on Tankathon is kind of shocking, and I don't think I've ever seen one similar to it: entirely in the red with 22 "Stat Weaknesses" and 0 "Stat Strengths."
https://www.tankathon.com/players/jalen-hood-schifino