King's Court: Making NBA player comps for the Tigers - PowerMizzou: Missouri Tigers Football & Basketball Recruiting

Published Jun 20, 2024

King's Court: Making NBA player comps for the Tigers

Drew King • PowerMizzou

Basketball Writer

Well folks, school’s out, the NBA Finals are over and I am no longer able to walk the short distance from my apartment to my car without breaking out into a dripping sweat, which means it is officially one of my favorite times of the year: draft season.

I’ve been an NBA draftnik for about a decade and a half. I always find it really interesting which players are able to translate from the college level to the pros and, more importantly, which guys these teams invest millions of dollars into just for them to flame out after a few years (*glares at Luka Samanic*). So, with the draft coming up soon, I knew I wanted to have some sort of angle related to it for this week’s column.

The issue is, Mizzou doesn’t really have any guys who are going to get drafted this year. Sean East II has the best chance among the graduated Tigers to wind up on an NBA roster, but it’s more likely he’ll get there by impressing teams as an undrafted free agent, similar to how D’Moi Hodge did last year. (I’m also planning to do a more in-depth story about East’s draft process in the near future.)

Instead, the idea I came up with was to do NBA player comps for Missouri’s current upperclassmen. A few things to note here:

1. I only did these for the upperclassmen. I know some of the younger guys like Annor Boateng could have the best odds of anyone on the roster to get drafted someday, but I don’t feel like I’ve seen enough of the freshmen or sophomores to come up with accurate comparisons. Do you feel like you know for sure what type of player Trent Pierce is? He apparently played 137 minutes last season and I can’t hardly remember any of them.

2. This is NOT me saying I think Mizzou’s players are going to be every bit as good as the ones I’m comparing them to. It’s more just that I see similarities in how they play. Kevin O’Connor from The Ringer uses the term “shades of” when he makes player comps and I think that’s the best way to put it.

Without further ado…

Tamar Bates - Tim Hardaway Jr.

Bates is obviously a gifted scorer and nearly made it to the 50/40/90 club with his shooting percentages last season but he isn’t necessarily a high-volume guy unless he absolutely has to be. Hardaway made sense in that he’s carved out a role playing off a pair of ball-dominant guards and has been a good shooter throughout most of his career. Their usage rates were within 1% of each other this past season and Hardaway’s stat line (14.4 points, 3.2 rebounds, 1.8 assists per game) was pretty similar to Bates’ as well (13.5 points, 3.0 rebounds, 1.3 assists). Bates would need to shoot more often, gain muscle and improve on the defensive end to reach Hardaway’s level but that’s not an unreachable ceiling for him. Making it to the NCAA championship game like Hardaway did with Michigan wouldn’t hurt, either.