Hi, this is the first of a multipart series where I write a summary of each player's season, and give them a grade at the end. Hopefully this post can inspire some discussion in this subreddit, and give us something to talk about as the season ends. And as this is a discussion post, please feel free to disagree with me in the comments! It's been a blast hanging out with you all here throughout the season, even if the basketball was kind of hard to watch at times. Anyways, without further ado:
Scoot Henderson:
14.0ppg, 5.4 apg, 3.1 rpg, 39/33/82 splits (49% TS)
Key stats: 47.3% shooting at the rim, 33.3% on pull-up threes
** The season**
It’s been an up-and-down rookie season for Scoot. During his first 6 games, he shot 34% from the field and 9% from three before he got injured. Then, he came back and played much better – highlighted by a 22 point, 11 assist outing in a win against San Antonio and a 30 point, 5 assist game in a close loss to Denver. After dealing with more injuries, he finished off the season strong, with a 30 point, 7 assist game against Houston, featuring a huge dunk over Jeff Green and going 6/7 from three.
Court vision/passing
The best thing about Scoot this season has probably been his court vision and passing ability. He legitimately can make any pass in the game – he can throw skip passes anywhere on the court, with both hands, without picking up his dribble. He’s patient, able to look off defenders and wait for them to clear out of the passing lanes before throwing passes. And he’s had some really creative moments in transition too. This part of Scoot’s game has definitely been as advertised. Sometimes, he’s a little turnover-prone, but I think this will improve over time as he learns what kind of passes can and can’t be thrown at the NBA level, and he continues to adjust to NBA length and athleticism.
Jump shooting
I’ve also been impressed with Scoot’s jump shooting, which is probably better than I expected right out of the gate. On the season, he’s shot 32.5% from three, and 33.3% on pull-up three pointers (which is right around league average on pull-ups). Granted, Scoot’s shots are probably easier than most PGs because defenders go under screens so much, but this is a great start. And, (I get that I’m committing the cardinal sin of cherry-picking data) but if you take out Scoot’s first 5 NBA games where he went 1/18 from three, Scoot’s numbers this season go up to 34.4% from three, and 35.3% on pull-up threes, which is actually extremely serviceable. I think there’s a solid foundation there to become a decent shooter down the road.
OK, that was the good part. Here comes the improvement areas. Before you guys jump on me in the comment section, I’m not trying to predict anything about Scoot’s future here – I’m just talking about his rookie season.
Finishing footwork
Any talk about Scoot has to come with his absolutely horrendous scoring efficiency. It’s been better in the last few games of the season (against mostly terrible teams), but Scoot simply leaves a lot to be desired in this area. Among players who averaged two or more FGA inside the restricted area this season, Scoot finished dead last in efficiency, shooting a dreadful 47.3% at the rim, nearly six entire percentage points behind second place Bennedict Mathurin, with his 53.2% rim finishing. This is quite frankly, really bad. He has issues with footwork and taking off way too early for layups, causing layups that never really had a chance. This bad habit leads to a lack of forward momentum on his finishes and allows him to get stonewalled by help defenders. Personally, I think he should learn from guards like Jalen Brunson, Brogdon, or SGA, and learn to play off two feet and use his strength to create separation. The good news is that this can be fixed in a couple offseasons.
Lack of a left hand finishing ability
Scoot also doesn’t have a left hand at the rim. He contorts his body in all sorts of awful angles to avoid using his left hand, which needs to get ironed out. It’s really noticeable in plays like this, where instead of taking a relatively simple left handed layup, he twists around like a pretzel and goes across his body to use his right hand. He gets FTs out of it so the result is good, but to me, the process here is almost entirely bad.
Lack of touch
I’m also a little worried about Scoot’s touch at the rim, which I think is a little less fixable than mechanical issues like footwork. Part of it might be that he’s rushing shots, but there have been way too many makeable layups that Scoot just doesn’t make because he throws the ball way too hard off the backboard. Plays like these should be pretty automatic for every NBA guard, but I’ve lost count of how many times something like this happens, and it needs to get cleaned up for sure. Example one. Example two. Example three. This kind of thing is something that really needs to get fixed if he wants to be successful at this level.
Scoot had some nice moments this year with his floater, but as a whole only shot 37% on them. It’s probably right around league average, but if he really wants it to be a weapon (particularly if he continues to struggle finishing at the rim), this needs to improve as well.
Halfcourt explosiveness
Finally, I think Scoot was a little less explosive in halfcourt settings than I was hoping for. He’s great with a head of steam when he has a runway to load up (Jeff Green can attest to that), but in the halfcourt he seems to get stranded in the midrange a lot, and gets forced into some bad attempts from not being able to get by his man. For instance, here he gets switched onto the Pacers’ center, Jalen Smith, but still can’t create any separation and ends up throwing up a wild shot that has no chance of going in. Similarly, here he gets switched onto Brook Lopez, and can’t fully turn the corner resulting in getting stuffed at the rim. The numbers back this up – Scoot averaged 0.74 points per possession this year in isolations, good for the 25th percentile. IF he wants to reach the next level as a playmaker, he's going to have to be able to take advantage of switching defenses in isolations.
Also, this is only tangentially related to Scoot, but I think the team’s refusal to run out in transition has really hurt Scoot’s production this year. We have awful spacing, but a bunch of young athletic players and a PG (Scoot) who thrives seeing open players. As a team, we finished 25th in transition frequency, which is kind of a travesty considering the roster right now. More on this later, when I do the writeup about Chauncey.
Defense
Lastly, the defense. I’ve appreciated Scoot’s willingness to defend, and his motor on that end of the floor – I think those are both positive signs moving forward. With his length, strength, quickness, and willingness to defend, I don’t see a reason why Scoot won’t end up a positive defender down the road. However, his fundamentals are severely lacking right now. He gets lost off the ball a ton and doesn’t have great technique on closeouts (which are both to be expected for rookies). But I think the one that bothers me the most is the fouling. You can blame the rookie whistle all you want, but Scoot has a terrible habit of defending with his hands, instead of sliding his feet and defending with his chest. If you watch many of his “ticky-tacky” fouls, he’s putting both hands on his man, which is definitely going to draw a whistle more times than not – again, if the “rookie whistle” was a thing, why doesn’t Toumani constantly get into foul trouble? This is easily cleaned up, but he can’t be fouling this much next year – among all rotation guards who played at least 50 games, Scoot finished 7th in the NBA in foul rate.
Final thoughts: I think Scoot had an up-and down rookie year. I’ve been impressed with his court-vision and passing ability, and I think the jump shot is better than advertised. However, even by the standards of rookie NBA guards (who are almost always inefficient), Scoot was horrendously inefficient scoring the ball. He was the worst finisher in the league by far – the distance between Scoot and second place Ben Mathurin is the same as the distance between Mathurin and 16th place Westbrook. And he fouls way too much.
Again, before you guys jump on me in the comment section, I’m not trying to predict the future – just grading his rookie season based on how I think he performed compared to expectations. And it’s great that he performed well in the last few games of the season (hell, it’s much better than performing badly down the stretch) but April regular season games are kinda wonky all the time. So anyways, without further ado:
Final grade: C-.
8 comments
I feel like you may get downvoted to hell here because I always do when I saw something even slightly critical about Scoot, but I agree with you. Fouling and finishing at the rim are what I hope he really improves next year; hopefully sharpe and others can be reliable shooters so that can be lower on scoot’s priority list. I do like his motor, willingness to defend, and I can tell he’s motivated to work.
Thanks for taking the time to write this up.
Fair points and final grade. As someone who doesn’t follow prospects and scouting too closely, seeing Scoot griddy draft night on the way to meet Silver I thought we had a cocky son of a gun on our hands. Which I loved.
But his confidence hardly shined through this year except a few occasions. If I had to pick one word to describe his year it would be “inconsistent”. Which non-coincidentally you could sum up the last three years as.
You could tell at moments the game slowed down and he found a groove. But he’s so anxious to do well and do the right thing, his eyes light up, he gets ahead of himself and makes a mistake. For example, needless fouls and rushed finishes, to your point.
He has the mentality, physical tools, support system, HOF HC who started his career equally as shakey, and the room and time to breath and grow in order to be successful. Not worried one bit
A C- seems a tad harsh.
Without the hype and expectations I think Scoot would sit somewhere closer to a C+
He is improving. And these improvements are within a average to better than average range. It’s just that his play hasn’t been as consistent as we would have liked to see – so we’ve seen him stink up some games along with the clear learning curve we’ve seen him take and improve on.
This was a great right up and I agree with almost all of these. I do absolutely agree with concern about the lack of finishing because even in the g-league he barely shot 37% on attempts from under 10 feet on all non dunks. This will obviously improve but it’s still a major concern nonetheless. If he can get to just league average then he should be good moving forward.
“**Lack of touch**
I’m also a little worried about Scoot’s touch at the rim, which I think is a little less fixable than mechanical issues like footwork. Part of it might be that he’s rushing shots, but there have been way too many makeable layups that Scoot just doesn’t make because he throws the ball way too hard off the backboard. Plays like these should be pretty automatic for every NBA guard, but I’ve lost count of how many times something like this happens, and it needs to get cleaned up for sure. [Example one](https://streamable.com/zls5pb). [Example two](https://streamable.com/73zbwx). [Example three](https://streamable.com/omwcpg). This kind of thing is something that really needs to get fixed if he wants to be successful at this level.”
In the first example, he took a very tough shot for no reason. He should have been aggressive to the ball instead of pulling up.
In the second, he needs to be more aggressive and dunk the ball. He had his man beat so worst case is that he gets fouled if he goes for the dunk.
In the third, he was impatient and instead of taking an extra step he jumped too soon. Another step and that’s an easy dunk.
“If you watch many of his “ticky-tacky” fouls, he’s putting both hands on his man, which is definitely going to draw a whistle more times than not”
Agree completely. This is something I can overlook his rookie year since it may have been a bad habit learned in the G League.
Similarly, [here he gets switched onto Brook Lopez, and can’t fully turn the corner resulting in getting stuffed at the rim](https://streamable.com/b6v3uf).
This is an annoying play because instead of turning a little more left and going straight at the rim for the dunk, he allowed Lopez to disrupt this shot. This is fixable because he’s physically able to do it.