Scouting report
+ Freakish athlete with rare combination of size, speed, length and leaping ability.
+ Minuscule basketball IQ. Blocks shots but takes bad gambles and goaltends often.
+ Good rebounder. Makes running hooks in post. Poor foul shooter.
Analysis
Part athletic freak, part comedy routine, nobody is totally sure what to make of JaVale McGee yet. Footage of him sprinting back while his team still had the ball, goaltending a jump shot millimeters from the rim and getting hopelessly lost on defense makes it impossible to imagine him becoming a star.
But in between those vignettes, his production is mighty impressive. McGee averaged nearly a point every two minutes, yanked nearly a rebound every three, shot 55.6 percent from the floor and finished 11th among centers in PER. He shot 70.5 percent at the rim with a variety of highlight dunks, although he needs to improve his midrange shooting (17-of-71 from beyond 10 feet, 46.1 percent from the line) and feel for the game.
Defensively, the Nuggets developed him more in two months than the Wizards did in four years, but he still has a ton of work left. McGee is a potentially dominant shot-blocker but has no filter -- he tries to block everything, even if he's 20 feet away or the ball is obviously on its way down. He also has a high center of gravity and struggles to keep opponents out of deep post position. As a result opposing centers blistered him in both stops, registering a 21.2 PER in Denver and a 21.8 mark in Washington, according to 82games.com.
Additionally, McGee's rebounding stats are a lie: For a good rebounder, he has a massively negative impact on his team's overall rebound rate. Denver rebounded just 68.4 percent of opponent misses with him on the court, compared to 72.4 percent with him off it; similarly, Washington's rate dipped by 5.4 percent with McGee on the floor. That's a pretty massive difference considering 6.9 percentage points separated first from worst last season. Again, his mental game is the cause: McGee doesn't block his man out and often leaves the board exposed to go for a block he has little chance of getting.
With all that said, he's still only 24. Even having a limited clue of what to do on the basketball court, he was an effective player last season, and in his time in Denver there were signs of the light bulb turning on.
