Kentucky Sports Radio

With the NBA Draft set to take place in the coming week eligible players are finishing up their individual workouts with teams while scouts and executives are making their final evaluations.  Recently, Gordie Jones of CSNPhilly.com has been interviewing scouts under the condition of anonymity to get their opinions on the potential draftees of the Philadelphia 76ers.  He gives a breakdown of Terrence Jones’ raw numbers along side with his upside and downside.  The complete breakdown can be found here.  Below are the two anonymous scouts’ opinions on Terrence Jones.

 Scout One: “He’s the tweener in this draft – so good at so many things, and not great at anything. Might have gotten too big. You look at him on top, and he’s got a lot of muscle, and that kind of forced his shot to change a little bit. Didn’t shoot the ball particularly well. But I think he’s a game player. Doesn’t look good in drills, but really knows how to play and he loves to play. I think he had a lot of fingerprints on that national championship.”

Scout Two: “Kind of a bastard size. Wants to be a 3 (i.e., small forward), but he’s really effective as a 4 (i.e., power forward). He’s got great dribble skills. When bigs try to defend him, that’s what he wants: ‘Come play me on the perimeter, and I’ll go by you.’ He gets exposed a little bit in the post, because he’s a little undersized. He’s a good athlete, not a great athlete. The buzzword in the NBA is, is he a ‘spread 4’? Well, spread 4s have to be able to make 3s. He’s not (Knicks sharpshooter) Steve Novak. But from 15, 16 feet, he can make that shot. So he’s still going to drag the defense to the perimeter. And he can rebound, he can pass. I think he’s a really talented player. At 15, for me, that’s a ‘no doubt about it.”

Pretty lukewarm reviews honestly, but I do see some truth in them.  Jones will be expected to be a very versatile offensive player in the NBA and he is just that, but he doesn’t excel in any statistical categories shooting wise.  This is evidenced by his 54.7% True Shooting Percentage, which is brought down by his free throw shooting percentage of 62.7%.  Also, as the scouts said, he had trouble matching up with bigger players in the post, and this is also true as it seemed Terrence had the ability to make himself smaller in the lane at times.  But nonetheless, he is still a solid defender and has great ability to rebound the ball on both sides of the floor as proven by pulling down 3.6 defensive and 2.5 offensive boards per game last season.  He’s a young yet talented player with flaws in his game (that’s to be expected of a late lottery pick), but has much room for improvement and can become a force at the next level.