NBA Draft: Zion Williamson still first in 2019 Redraft

Evaluating basketball players is a difficult task to undertake, in large part due to all of the myriad factors that complicate an understanding of how good that player actually is. You cannot evaluate a wide receiver in football without understanding the context of the quarterback throwing them the ball, or evaluate a politician’s performance in an election without understanding the context of how their district naturally votes and the national political climate. It is the same with basketball players, especially young basketball players who have only played in a handful of contexts.

That is the difficulty in evaluating Nicolas Claxton, a 6’11” center with only 47 career regular season games to his name. He played college basketball at Georgia, without any other NBA talent, which is an exceptionally difficult position for a center to be in. After going in the second round of the 2019 NBA Draft, Claxton has played the vast majority of his games alongside ball-dominant offensive stars and has been asked to do very little.

In the 47 games and 781 total minutes he has played, Claxton has been a very good defensive center. He has swatted 2.2. shots per 36 minutes and his career block percentage of 5.4 percent ranks 14th all-time and fourth among active players, behind Rudy Gobert, Anthony Davis and Serge Ibaka. Not simply a shot blocker, the Nets’ defense was significantly better when he was on the court, and his individual defensive rating of 108 was tied with Myles Turner for 13th in the league.

Claxton was also a hyper-efficient offensive finisher, shooting 60.6 percent from the field for his career. Yet that is also largely a reality of the positive ecosystem he is in, as 88.5 percent of his non-putback 2-pointers have been assisted. Almost all of his minutes have come with the likes of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving or James Harden on the court.

That’s what makes it difficult to evaluate how good Claxton really is. He might be a rising star, a future Defensive Player of the Year candidate. He might also just be thriving in the specific role he finds himself in, and is less scalable to a different situation. There isn’t enough information to determine which might be the case for the young center.

Here at 12 the Charlotte Hornets take a chance on Claxton, filling a hole at center that the Hornets even now are still trying to fill. He would clearly help their defense, especially at the rim, and give their young guards a lob threat to stretch defenses vertically. It might be a reach to take him at 12, but there is enough upside for a true defensive difference-maker to make him the first full-time center off the board.