(January 6th) In our first week of player profiles, we primarily focused on Jamir Watkins’ ability to do everything at a very high level, something that is still true on this profile. We would only make two slight additions to what we said previously.
First, the shot, which we said was an issue in the now-past present of then, is no longer an issue. Watkins isn’t exactly shooting at an elite level, but a 64th percentile three-point shooter will never be dinged for that when they’re as good across the board as Watkins is.
Second, the rebounding, which we elided over last time. While Watkins was an approximately average rebounder in the first profile (47th percentile), he has since slid down to the 35th percentile, and is now averaging the lowest rebounding rate since his freshman year. Without diving into the film, we won’t make any strong claims, since rebounding tends to be highly scheme dependent and especially since Watkins is still rebounding at a high enough level that if we don’t mention it in the course of representation no team would ever think twice about it. But with how good Watkins has been at everything else, it seems to be the case that this is the only low-hanging statistical fruit to clean up.
(December 12th) Jamir Watkins’ profile shows a player who is good at nearly everything. He manages a large offensive role (99th percentile in offensive load and 96th in Box Creation) but handles it very efficiently (85th percentile true shooting). He gets to the line at an elite rate (99th percentile FTr), but is also capable of scoring in bunches even when the whistles fall silent (91st percentile in 2 point makes, 77th percentile in 3 point makes). He makes plays for others (64th percentile in assists) while also taking care of the ball (despite a 5th percentile Turnover rate, his true turnover rate is in the 91st percentile). He makes plays defensively both on the perimeter (96th percentile steal rate) and at the rim (82nd percentile block rate).
So far, the only thing Watkins really hasn’t done is shoot the ball (27th percentile three-point percentage), but we have a sufficiently large sample from prior years to know that Watkins is a good enough shooter, having typically seen him hover closer to 34% in prior years. Since three-point percentage often takes a large number of attempts to get close to its real value, there’s no reason to believe that Watkins won’t recover the shooting numbers as the season progresses and be one of the best all-around players in college basketball.