(January 6th) On the last player profile, Rasheer Fleming’s across the board offensive effectiveness was the primary focus. In the 5 games since, Fleming has only bettered most of those offensive numbers, and has risen to the point that he has, effectively, a rounding error’s worth of peers on that end. Even the FTr number that we flagged as a very minor cause for concern has risen from the 50th percentile to the 57th.
However, this week, let’s focus on the defensive side of the ball primarily. It’s fairly common to see players specialize in either steals or blocks based on their defensive role, to the point that part of our algorithm for assigning positions relies on that distinction. Since it’s much easier to get steals while you’re on the perimeter and have access to passing lanes, a player with a relatively high steal to block ratio is more likely to be a perimeter player. Similarly, since it’s much easier to block shots around the rim, a player with a relatively low steal to block ratio is likely a big man.
As a result, recording exceptionally high values of both steals (99th percentile) and blocks (97th percentile) as Fleming is is a deeply impressive feat that displays both a high level of general skill and a high level of versatility. Both of those will be traits that NBA teams value immensely going into the draft.
(December 12th) Rasheer Fleming’s profile shows a player who has been extremely effective within his role on both ends. We’ll focus, for this first week, on the offensive side of the ball, and particularly on Fleming’s scoring. Statistically, Fleming’s offensive role is not gigantic by prospect standards, sitting in the high 70’s for percentiles across the statistics that categorize a player’s role – Shot Possessions, Box Creation, and Offensive Load. However, that’s in part because we’ve elected here to compare Fleming, who straddles the line between being a wing and a big at the NBA level, to wings. If we had instead elected to compare him to bigs, Fleming’s statistical markers for role size all rise into the high 80’s by percentile. At those numbers, there’s more that he could be doing if the team were absolutely focused on getting him the ball, but he is clearly the dominant force making the St. Joseph’s offense tick.
Far more important, though, is that even with that large role, Fleming is still posting elite level efficiency. 90th percentile in true shooting is a good number no matter what, but it’s made even more impressive by the large role that Fleming occupies– the more you’re asked to do on offense, the harder it is to stay efficient..
The one minor concern we would have, purely from the profile, is that Fleming is “only” getting to the line with a FTr of 33.2 – the exact median result for wings. FTr is rather infamously a big man’s stat, so for a guy like Fleming, who will need to provide some of the advantages of size, to only be okay at drawing fouls isn’t ideal. At the same time, Fleming is so efficient from two and from three that only being okay at drawing contact hasn’t really hurt his overall efficiency. He may need to focus on playing to contact more in the future, but for now he can just rely scoring from the field.