With the 2019-20 NBA season officially behind us, it’s time to look forward to the NBA draft. We’ll start with a profile on Georgia guard Anthony Edwards.
Another NBA season is in the books with the Los Angeles Lakers winning their 17th championship. It was the strangest season in the history of the league, and it leads to the strangest NBA draft process we’ve ever seen thanks to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Among the top prospects for the coming draft is freshman Georgia guard Anthony Edwards, with whom we’ll begin our pre-draft profile series.
Edwards looks to be a likely top-three prospect, but that’s debatably due more to the overall weakness of the class than a result of his own transcendent potential. Mind you, he’s almost certainly going to be a solid NBA player, but his career trajectory probably won’t mirror that of guards like Ja Morant, Trae Young or Luka Doncic.
Of course, that’s not the end of the world by any means, either for Edwards or for whichever team ends up drafting him. There’s no shame in not being a surefire superstar, even if you’re a top-three draft pick. Let’s take a look at his statistical output in his freshman season, and following that we’ll look at his strengths and weakness before finishing with an analysis of his overall outlook in the NBA draft.
2020 NBA Draft Profile
Name: Anthony Edwards
Height: 6’5″ (6’9″ wingspan)
Weight: 225 lbs
Position: Guard
College: Georgia
NBA Comparison: Zach LaVine
2019-20 statistics
19.1 PPG
5.2 RPG
2.8 APG
40.2 FG%
29.4 3P%
77.2 FT%
Anthony Edwards strengths
From a physical standpoint, Anthony Edwards is the real deal at the age of 19 years old. He has size comparable to James Harden from a height and weight standpoint, although Harden’s 6’11” wingspan expands two inches beyond Edwards’s own, and of course Harden’s athleticism and physicality dwarfs most NBA players let alone college prospects.
He’s a monster in the paint when he can get a head of steam in transition. He doesn’t need pure straight lines to the basket to score and has the ability to finish with skill around the rim, and he can finish through contact efficiently.
Edwards has the ability to get to the line and had a 33.9 percent free throw rate in his freshman year at Georgia while shouldering a heavy usage load of 30.4 percent.
He’s not there yet, but thanks to his size and strength he’s got plenty of potential to develop into at least a solid defender once he gets some time to work with coaching at the next level.
Edwards is a raw prospect, much like the rest of the top of this class, but there are tools at his disposal that could aid his progression into a very good NBA player down the road.
Anthony Edwards weaknesses
That raw potential is a double-edged sword for Anthony Edwards. While the tools are there to develop, his decision-making is so poor at times that it could severely hinder his upside at the NBA level. Particularly in the form of shot selection, Edwards displays poor judgment far too often and it has a damaging impact on his statistical output.
Per Synergy, Edwards shot just 28.1 percent on his jump shots, scoring a woeful .767 points per possession. Even specifically on catch and shoot jumpers, which are significantly higher potential scoring opportunities, he shot just 28.9 percent and scored .855 points per possession. If he can cut out some of the worst shots he takes, that number should naturally rise at the next level, but there’s a serious reason for concern that especially on lesser teams that would need him to step right in and produce (like the Charlotte Hornets for example), these bad habits may continue.
The decision-making spills over into his playmaking, where although he’s a reasonable passer, he can be a beat or two slow in making the right pass if he decides on the right one at all.
His effort is not consistent, or at least wasn’t in his freshman year at Georgia. Sometimes we find that effort is in there, buried beneath apathy created by playing a one-year stint of college basketball that a prospect is simply not invested in, waiting to be unleashed when that player reaches the ultimate goal of the NBA.
And sometimes we don’t.
Overall outlook for Anthony Edwards
There’s no question that Anthony Edwards has plenty of potential to be an NBA player, but that’s essentially where the conversation ends at this point. His star-potential leaves you wanting, and that may simply not be on the horizon for him.
As a top-three pick, we may find that he ends up being just a guy, and that’s going to be a blemish on both him and whichever team drafts him. Of course, in this draft, no general managers are going to get fired for drafting Anthony Edwards and seeing him not turn into The Guy for their organization, which makes it a fairly low-stakes and equally low-upside situation more likely than not.
Some of the more concerning issues on Edwards’s stat sheet may be fixable with just a tad of NBA coaching, like the improved shot selection. His pick and roll output wasn’t great in his season at Georgia, but in the NBA he’ll be playing with bigs who actually know how to set a screen, which will help unlock some of his potential.
He needs plenty of refinement, and some of his bad habits will need an abundance of work to unlearn, but with the right setting and coach, just maybe he’ll be able to live up to the expectations of being a top-three pick in the NBA draft.