Why Cole Anthony is this year's most polarizing prospect
Some people believe Cole Anthony should be a top ten pick, and others believe he shouldn't be top 20. Both arguments have merit. Let's talk through why.
Before we dive into Cole Anthony’s scouting report, a programming note: If you’ve only subscribed to the email newsletter, you’ve missed out on a number of prospect profiles that are behind the paywall:
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Jordan Nwora, Duncan Robinson and the value in one elite skill (link)
Is Isaac Okoro the next Jimmy Butler, or the next Michael Kidd-Gilchrist? (link)
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Cole Anthony has become one of the most polarizing prospects in this year’s draft class.
Depending on who you talk to, he is one of two things:
1. A selfish, shoot-first gunner with an ego the size of Jason Whitlock’s right butt cheek that was incapable of making the players around him at North Carolina better while single-handedly missing enough bad shots to lose the Tar Heels games.
Or …
2. A talented scorer that found himself in a situation where his particular skill-set did not fit with either the offense that Roy Williams has run for three decades or the pieces that surrounded him — literally, and I’ll get to that.
As far as I am concerned, he is … both?
I know that I am not allowed to say that in an era where sports journalism is all about who can have the hottest take, but I believe the truth is that Cole Anthony’s one season at North Carolina did not do much to tell us who, exactly, he is as a player.
Put another way, there is a lot of truth in both of those statements, and depending on how you interpret the context of this past season, there is valid reason to believe that Anthony should be taken in the top ten and that Anthony should not be taken in the top 20.
Let’s go through it step-by-step.
Anthony was a top five prospect coming out of high school, arguably the best point guard in his class. He committed to North Carolina because, in theory, he fit the mold of a Carolina lead guard. He’s an athletic ball-handler that can create his own shot, make things happen in transition and shoot it from deep. That’s what Coby White was, that’s what Joel Berry was, that’s what Marcus Paige was, that’s what Ray Felton was. It goes on and on and on.
The problem was that Anthony was not all that effective in transition. In fact, it was easily the least-efficient part of his game last season. He averaged just 0.849 PPP, good for the 24th percentile nationally, despite the fact that 22 percent of his offensive possessions came in the transition game.
That, in theory, would mean that Anthony and UNC should have played more in the halfcourt, but Anthony really wasn’t all that much more effective going up against set defenses. You see, Anthony’s real strength right now is coming off of ball-screens. That’s the way that he’s trained in high school; he’s preparing for the league, where point guards have to be ball-screen proficient to have a chance to last. He’s coming off those ball-screens looking to score. That’s how he’s wired. He’s looking to get a bucket first and foremost.
That, in turn, created two problems for him and for his team.
For starters, Roy Williams has not and probably will not ever be a coach that relies all that much on ball-screens. Last season, 18 percent of North Carolina’s offensive possessions ended in a ball-screen action. To put that into context, the Tar Heels ranked 306th nationally, and to put that into context, they ranked 336th and 340th, respectively, in the previous two seasons. North Carolina’s offense is built on the transition game and their secondary break, a system of actions based on specific reads that all try to accomplish the same goal: Getting one of their two big men a post touch. It’s throwback basketball, really. Williams has won three national titles, the third in 2017, playing this way. It works in college, and he ain’t changing what he does for one one-and-done freshman.
Hall of Famers have that right.
But it’s also fair to point out that it didn’t put Anthony in the best position to succeed in the college ranks.
And neither did North Carolina’s roster.
I’ll push back on the people that say that the Tar Heels were not talented. They weren’t talented for North Carolina, but Anthony will be a first round pick and Garrison Brooks was a second-team all-ACC player. That’s more than enough to finish better than last place in what was a bad ACC.
The issue was the makeup of their roster. All of the talent was at point guard or up front. Their wings were not what you would expect out of a school like North Carolina, and their shooting was non-existent. As a team, the Tar Heels shot 30.4 percent from three, which was 306th nationally. Take out the 49-for-141 that Anthony shot from beyond the arc, and the rest of the roster made just 29 percent of their threes. There was no incentive for defenses to worry about staying home on the perimeter because they wanted those “shooters” shooting.
That’s why you saw, throughout the season, defenses collapsing on Anthony any time that he got a paint touch. That’s why you saw him having to go 1-on-3 if he was going to try and score in and around the basket.
And that leads to a couple of bigger picture questions with Anthony.
The first of which is his ability to finish in the paint. Anthony shot just 39.2 percent around the basket, according to Synergy, which is a shockingly-low number for a guy that we know is as explosive as he is. It’s the 12th-percentile nationally. Now compare that to the fact that he shot 44.4 percent on two-point jumpers. It was more efficient for him to take mid-range pull-ups than it was to take layups. Think about that.
But is that number a true reflection of the issues that he has scoring around length at the rim, or is it a sign that trying to score over two rim protectors is suboptimal basketball?
That leads us to the second question: Can Anthony find open shooters when he collapses a defense? Just 18 of his 72 assists in the halfcourt this past season resulted in threes, and he routinely opted to take tough shots in the paint over hitting open shooters. Was this because he couldn’t read the third defender or make the live dribble passes he needed to make, or was this simply a result of the fact that Anthony didn’t trust his teammates to make the shots that he would have created for them?
These are the questions that NBA teams are asking themselves right now.
So where do I stand?
Personally, I am not all that enamored with him as a prospect.
I think that he is a streaky shooter and a tough-shot maker more than he is a good shooter. At 6-foot-2, I think he has the athleticism and competitiveness to eventually be a good enough defender, but he’s not multi-positional on either end of the floor. I think that the extra spacing in the NBA will be a benefit to him, but I don’t think that he is going to be good enough to be the ball-dominant, score-first lead guard that he has been his entire life on a winning team. Put another way, he wants to play like Russell Westbrook, but he’s not as good as Russell Westbrook.
I do, however, think that it is worth noting that Anthony injured his knee midway through what was a lost season for the Tar Heels, after he had already asserted his draft stock. He rehabbed, he came back, and he kept playing. In an era where prospects “shut it down” once they know the range in which they’re going to get picked, this stands out. He’s cocky, there’s no question about it, and his shot selection can be selfish, but I don’t think he’s a selfish kid. He’s a worker. He was a good teammate. He’s got that dog in him despite the fact that he’s a trust fund kid.
I think there’s a place for him in the NBA.
But after his one season in college, it’s hard to know what that place is.
Because there are still more questions than answers when it comes to Cole Anthony.