Keaton Wagler (pronounced wog-ler), a tall point guard at 6’5”, is another in this class who has come out of obscurity to cement his place as a consensus top-10 pick. Throughout Wagler’s freshman season at Illinois, his production got better and better until it was impossible to ignore, averaging 17.9 PPG, 4.2 APG, and 5.1 RPG on 44.5% from the field and 39.7% from three. Wagler’s season was headlined by one of the most clinical college performances I have ever seen, when he erupted for 46 points
(on nine made threes!) to silence a raucous Mackey Arena, downing the dominant Purdue Boilermakers.
Keaton provides such a fascinating contrast to other guards in this class because he was able to have such a great college season despite the fact that he’s pretty slender and really not explosive at all. How does he do it? Well, it all starts with his shooting ability; Wagler has elite range on his jumper that forces defenders to stay up at all times. When a screener is brought into the action, their defender must be at the level of the screen, or he will pull without hesitation. He was also an expert at shooting the moment defenders “soft switched,” meaning they switched but didn’t “switch up” into the ballhandler and prevent him from shooting.
Where Keaton struggled, however, was 1) getting to the rim and 2) finishing at the rim. I mentioned his stats above, but you can see that he shot just 44.5% overall, despite that number being propped up by his 39.1% from three. You see, for all the great-looking film there is of Keaton abusing Purdue’s Oscar Cluff (my fellow Aussie, no less), there is ugly film of him trying to attack Michigan’s Morez Johnson Jr. Wagler’s athletic and strength conerns can’t be handwaved; to paint the picture, even at 6’5”, he registered zero (!) made dunks this past season (and just wasn’t great finishing at the rim in general).
I don’t know if Keaton will have much success attacking without screens in the NBA, at least not in the early going, but if there is a screen and the defence can just switch and be confident they can contain him, that takes a lot off the table. That said, I have no doubt that Wagler will be successful if the defence is in a non-switching pick-and-roll coverage. I should also mention that these were all concerns people had about Tyrese Haliburton, a player scouts have compared Wagler to. At the end of the day, Haliburton’s shooting ability, vision, and creativity simply overcame his athletic deficiencies. Keaton could certainly follow a similar path because he does have an extremely high IQ and feel on offence.
On defence, Wagler was OK off the ball (as I said, he’s got solid IQ), but his lack of strength reared its ugly head as an on-ball defender. Keaton’s height should give him a higher floor than, say, Darius Acuff Jr., but his wingspan is “only” about 6’6” (just an inch more than his height), and he averaged a so-so 1.3 stocks per game in college. So with that said, it remains to be seen if Wagler will turn into a true two-way guy, which would be the hope of a team drafting him over a smaller guard like Acuff. Like, if he doesn’t become average on that end, his value drops quite a bit. But overall, Wagler seems like a decently safe pick, while still having a good amount of upside if certain facets of his game develop.
Are my concerns about Wagler valid? Also, vote for who you would take sixth!
