Draft Express goes in-depth while scouting Trey Burke’s NBA prospects, slotting him as the league’s second best prospect behind Cody Zeller. A few highlights:
As the primary ball-handler of the slowest tempo team in the Big Ten conference, with no real post presence and very few creators besides him, Burke is by nature a very ball-dominant point guard. A huge amount of his offensive possessions (nearly half) come in pick and roll situations, where he is pretty effective.
Extremely fast in the open floor, Burke is an excellent ball-handler, capable of playing at different speeds and showing a terrific burst blowing by opponents en-route to the rim. He does a good job of keeping his dribble alive and weaving his way around traffic, which allows him to draw the defense and find open shooters spotting up on the wing or cutters diving to the basket.
The thing that hurts Burkes’ offensive efficiency the most is his propensity for losing patience and falling in love with the pull-up 3-point jumper, something he does on a couple of occasions per game, sometimes before any of his teammates get a chance to touch the ball. Nearly half of his field goal attempts come from beyond the arc, and he makes 35% of them. Pull-up jumpers from 3-point range aren’t a particularly high percentage shot for anyone, but he takes plenty of them every game, sometimes by necessity. Now that he will have more help around him this season (Michigan’s incoming recruiting class is very strong), it will be interesting to see how well Burke can utilize the new different options he has at his disposal, and whether he can improve his fairly paltry 0.73 Pure Point Rating.
Much more at DraftExpress, where Thomas, Craft and Dawson check in at slots 3-5. Draft Express has Burke projected 24th in its 2013 First Round Mock Draft.