Every NBA Roster's Best Kept Secret for 2024-25 Season (2024)

True diehard NBA fans know their favorite squad up, down and sideways.

Those "us vs. them" one-team loyalists won't find any secrets here because, for example, devotees of the Los Angeles Lakers already have a Russian novel's worth of nuanced opinions about Max Christie.

I guess that means this exercise is designed to educate, to give national and surface-level followers of the league a better grip on the end-of-bench pieces they may not know much about. We're here to help everyone appreciate the deep cuts, basically.

Well, either that or this'll help convert the casuals into full-blown basketball sickos who can tell you that some obscure team's fourth-string center spins to his left 64 percent of the time when posting up.

We're about to get dangerously deep in the weeds.

Jalen Johnson would have been a dynamite pick at this time a year ago, but the word is out on him after a very loud breakout in 2023-24.

The Atlanta Hawks hope they'll get something similar from Dyson Daniels, the crown jewel of the return package for Dejounte Murray.

A New Orleans Pelicans roster featuring Zion Williamson and Jonas Valanciunas only had so much time available for Daniels, an absolute terror on defense but a non-threat as a shooter. On a Hawks team with Trae Young and lineups that should only ever feature one player who can't space the floor (Clint Capela or Onyeka Okongwu), Daniels will be better positioned to succeed.

Just 21 years old, the 6'8" point guard is a willing passer with the size to find angles others can't. On the other end, Daniels is a sneaky bet to lead the league in steals if he can carve out 30 minutes per night. Elite rebounding for his position, particularly on the offensive glass, will also give Daniels a shot to stuff the stat sheet.

And if his jumper comes around, look out.

There are no true secrets on a Boston Celtics roster that remains mostly unchanged after everyone in the world watched it cut opponents to ribbons en route to the 2024 championship.

Payton Pritchard is the best we can do without forcing things, and he's a useful player to feature this early because he's an example of a specific kind of "best-kept secret." The four-year veteran guard is more anonymous than he should be because the team around him is so dominant.

Across the last four seasons, Pritchard is one of just six players to appear in at least 200 games, shoot over 39.0 percent from deep and post per-36 averages of at least 15.3 points, 4.9 rebounds and 4.6 assists. The other five are Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Jrue Holiday, Kyrie Irving and Paul George.

That makes a pretty good case that a) Pritchard deserves more recognition than he gets, and b) he'd be just fine in a much larger role than he has with Boston.

One good way to keep a player under wraps is to stash him in the G League, which the Brooklyn Nets did last season with rookie forward Noah Clowney.

They couldn't hide him forever, though, and Clowney's small 23-game sample of NBA reps featured some seriously tantalizing flashes on both ends.

The highlights were largely on D, where the willowy 19-year-old showcased a long reach and great timing as a help-side rim-protector. Clowney's 2.4 percent block rate ranked in the 96th percentile among bigs. Though not strong enough and lacking the pick-and-roll coverage reps to slide over to center, Clowney profiles as a fearsome shot-blocker who can also move his feet on the perimeter.

Watch him stick with Tyrese Haliburton's jitterbug arsenal before batting the All-NBA guard's layup off the glass, and you get an idea of what Clowney brings to the table.

Pair exciting defensive potential with a 36.4 percent hit rate from three-point range (while keeping in mind Clowney is only entering his age-20 season), and the Nets might really have something here.

Stay out of this one, Mavs fans. We know you're well aware of Josh Green's hyperactive defense and quick-trigger passing on the move. This is for everyone else, particularly followers of the Charlotte Hornets who might not be familiar with the Aussie guard's game.

Green isn't perfect, which is also the case for everybody we'll discuss in this exercise. He's not quite big enough to match up with top-tier wings and forwards, and his extremely low-usage style leads to long stretches during which it's easy to forget he's in the game.

In 223 career games, Green has attempted more than 10 shots just 16 times.

Maybe he'll evolve and take on a more prominent role playing without the uniquely ball-dominant Luka Dončić.

Even if Green continues to perform like he has across his first four seasons, the Hornets will enjoy his energy just as much as his 37.5 percent shooting from deep.

If not for Coby White's bust-out campaign, which resulted in a runner-up finish for Most Improved Player, we'd be talking a lot more about what Ayo Dosunmu did for the Chicago Bulls last season.

A rotation mainstay from the moment he joined the team as the 38th pick in 2021, Dosunmu leveled up in several key ways, ultimately securing a starting spot in late January (Zach LaVine's injury absence helped) that he never relinquished.

Increased importance and responsibility agreed with the 6'5" guard, as Dosunmu posted his highest usage rate, lowest turnover frequency and cracked the vaunted 60.0-percent true shooting threshold for the first time in his career. He finished the year at 12.2 points and 3.2 assists per game while drilling 40.3 percent of his long-range tries.

Add high-energy defense and an uncommonly high block rate for his position (76th percentile among combo guards) to the mix, and Dosunmu did more than enough to deserve fringe MIP consideration in his own right.

Unless White has yet another leap in him, 2024-25 should see Dosunmu earn a little more appreciation.

The answer to the Cleveland Cavaliers' question about the ideal fifth piece to slot between the Darius Garland-Donovan Mitchell backcourt and the Evan Mobley-Jarrett Allen frontcourt has been in-house all along.

It's just that Dean Wade, plus-minus darling and mainstay in the Cavs' best lineups over the last couple of years, is so rarely on the floor.

He appeared in 54 games last year and just 44 in 2022-23, never averaging more than 20.5 minutes per contest. If he'd been available more often, maybe we'd be talking about a Cavs team coming off several very deep playoff runs.

In 2022-23, Wade's minutes coincided with a plus-7.7 net rating, one that climbed to plus-20.7 with Garland, Mitchell, Mobley and Allen. Last year, the Cavs posted a plus-7.2 net rating with Wade on the floor, but injuries throughout the roster prevented him from ever seeing action with all of Cleveland's top four stars.

These are all small samples, but Wade's basic and advanced metrics tell a similar tale. He's a career 37.1 percent shooter from deep who's graded out in the 90th percentile or better in Defensive Estimated Plus/Minus across each of the last three years.

For about five straight years, the hipster pick here would have been Maxi Kleber.

Bro, do you realize how much this dude matters?, we'd all say to each other, citing Kleber's rare combination of five-position switchability, rim protection and three-point shooting.

At 32, Kleber isn't what he was during his best days. So he relinquishes the title to teammate Jaden Hardy, a player basically despised by any advanced metric you can find, but one whose fluid shot creation and ability to get to his spots on the floor can't be denied.

Hardy shot 40.4 percent from three as a rookie, and though his overall conversion rate dipped to 36.2 percent overall last season, he still drained 39.4 percent of his catch-and-shoot looks. Any non-center who plays with Luka Dončić has to be lights out from a standstill, and Hardy fits the bill.

The situation in Dallas isn't ideal for Hardy, who'd profile as a primary or secondary creator on most teams. Kyrie Irving's presence means the Mavs don't need Hardy to explore his intriguing abilities as an on-ball weapon, but an injury could quickly change all that.

Christian Braun will step into the starting void created by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who departed in free agency. But the Denver Nuggets also need Peyton Watson to emerge as a high-end rotation piece.

Many hoped to see a leap from Watson last year, but it was unrealistic in hindsight to expect such a raw rookie to be ready for prime time as a sophom*ore. That's not to say Watson disappointed in his second season. He climbed from 8.1 to 18.6 minutes per game and flashed plenty of the athleticism and defensive oomph that tantalized in smaller doses the year before.

Offensively, Watson is a long way from ready. He shot 29.6 percent from three and just 55.3 percent from two-point range—far too low for a player with his speed, length and lift. It often seems like Watson can dunk the ball from anywhere, but his accuracy at the rim only graded out in the 40th percentile among forwards.

Fortunately, Watson is an ultra-elite disruptor for his position and was one of just six players (minimum 1,000 minutes) to average at least 2.1 blocks and 1.0 steals per 36 minutes last season.

Forget the Detroit Pistons, Paul Reed remains one of the NBA cognoscenti's pet favorites.

You can't find anyone with a Cleaning the Glass subscription and a crippling League Pass addiction who won't quickly mention the backup center as one of their favorite "Hey, you know who's actually really good?" go-tos.

Why? Because Reed, now a Piston after being waived by the cap-clearing Philadelphia 76ers, is a mobile switch defender who hoards blocks and has graded out as one of the most prolific steal mavens of the last four years. The 25-year-old's worst percentile ranking in steal rate among bigs since joining the league: 85th last season.

Reed rated in the 98th, 100th and 99th percentile across his first three years, respectively.

In addition to ending opponents' possessions, Reed extends those of his own team. There aren't many better offensive rebounders in the game today.

It turns out spending your entire career backing up Joel Embiid is a great way to avoid being noticed.

Golden State Warriors fans could probably have guessed we'd pick Moses Moody, whose yo-yoing in and out of the rotation basically defines his three-year career. They probably could have also foreseen us mentioning that Moody is such a well-kept secret that even his head coach often seems to forget he exists.

For example, last year Moody started the season by playing at least 15 minutes in 23 of his first 31 games. He then spent huge chunks of January, February and March playing far less than that while racking up several DNP-CDs.

Moody is a jack of all trades but a master of none. He's got ideal wing size and length as a defender, shoots the three at 36.4 percent for his career and generally plays within himself. It's just that the Warriors seem to always have one or two players who are better at each of those individual skills.

So when the Dubs need lockdown defense on a guard, Gary Payton II gets the call. Athleticism? That's Jonathan Kuminga's thing. Quick-trigger shooting? Klay Thompson handled that.

Moody enters a prove-it season with new obstacles to his playing time in De'Anthony Melton, Buddy Hield and Kyle Anderson, plus an ascendant Brandin Podziemski.

Moody probably should have landed a clear rotation role partway through his rookie year before getting regular starts by now, especially considering he's been even better during the two playoff runs he's seen. As it stands, he'll have to fight for the playing time that someone with his game would have already been handed in other situations.

The Houston Rockets added several major pieces—both young and established—to the roster in 2023-24. Amen Thompson wowed with his athleticism and versatility, Dillon Brooks snarled at superstar opponents, Fred VanVleet steadied the ship and Cam Whitmore lit it up off the bench.

Thanks to that glut of new talent and the injuries that limited him to just 22 games, Tari Eason fell completely off the radar.

Assuming a return to full health, the rugged forward won't stay forgotten for long.

As a rookie, Eason was an absolute menace on defense. He posted a 91st percentile D-EPM, rated in the 93rd and 98th percentiles in block and steal rate among forwards and logged 3.3 deflections per 36 minutes, a figure just outside the top 10 among players who saw at least as many minutes as he did.

Here's the kicker: Despite missing so much time last year, Eason actually improved on all of those ratings and rankings in 2023-24.

The Rockets are deep and talented, and minutes won't be easy to come by with both Alperen Sengün and Jabari Smith Jr. emerging as cornerstones in the front court. But Eason is among the game's premier agents of chaos, and he's going to hustle his way back into the collective basketball consciousness.

There's a reason most players don't get to see 36 minutes per game, but it's also fun to imagine what would happen if certain deeper rotation guys got that kind of opportunity.

One such case: Indiana Pacers backup center Isaiah Jackson, a relentlessly energetic rebounder and defensive pest who somehow managed to work his way to 17.9 points per 36 minutes a year ago.

Forget the scoring. It's Jackson's other numbers that intrigue most, led by 11.1 rebounds, 1.6 steals and 2.8 blocks per 36 minutes. No one else who appeared in at least 10 games matched those rates last season.

A highly efficient scorer who knows his limitations (81.0 percent of Jackson's shot attempts came at the rim), the 22-year-old was also a strong deterrent inside, limiting opponents to 53.7 percent shooting inside six feet. That's right in line with Evan Mobley and Victor Wembanyama's rates at the same range.

Kris Dunn is a notorious on-ball harasser at the point whose recent uptick in shooting efficiency helped him land a three-year, $17 million contract via a sign-and-trade from the Utah Jazz to the LA Clippers.

Considering how close Dunn once came to falling out of the league entirely, it's remarkable that he's back in a position to command multiple years of guaranteed above-the-minimum cash—even if the third year of his deal is non-guaranteed.

The Clips will be Dunn's sixth team in nine seasons, and he's going to have a real role as a defensive stopper who can play with or without James Harden. That would have been hard to imagine when he appeared in just 18 games across two seasons with the Hawks and Portland Trail Blazers in 2020-21 and 2021-22.

A 22-game cameo with the Jazz in 20222-23 during which Dunn averaged 13.2 points and 5.6 assists while hitting 47.2 percent of his threes (he was a career 29.9 percent shooter prior to that) salvaged the former lottery pick's career. Across a solid 66 games with Utah last season, Dunn brought his typical defensive intensity and hit 36.9 percent of his treys on the highest attempt rate ever.

If that shooting sticks, the Clippers might have quietly made one of the top value acquisitions of the summer.

We mentioned Max Christie in the intro, and we deliver on that promise by listing him here. And yes, it's hard to justify calling him a secret in the wake of a much publicized (and side-eyed) contract extension that'll pay the untested 21-year-old $32 million over the next four years.

The Lakers must see something in Christie beyond his career average of 3.8 points per game.

A few possibilities: Christie has great size for a guard at 6'6", has made a solid 37.8 percent of his career threes and has looked fairly overqualified for the G League in the limited stints he's spent there.

He'll have plenty to prove in his third season, particularly after inking a much bigger contract than most little-used second-rounders get. Optimists could paint the Lakers' acquisition-free offseason as a vote of confidence in Christie's ability to absorb the minutes vacated by Taurean Prince and Spencer Dinwiddie, both of whom bounced in free agency.

Time will tell, but Los Angeles seems to believe there's more than meets the eye with Christie. Considering his youth and tools, that's not a ridiculous stance.

Most people tuned out on the injury-plagued Memphis Grizzlies long before Scotty Pippen Jr.'s sterling late-season run.

Across the season's final 11 games, 10 of which Pippen started at the point, the undrafted second-year guard put up 14.8 points, 4.3 assists, 3.0 rebounds and 2.2 steals on a 50.0/36.2/78.1 shooting split. We write off standout stretches in meaningless games like this all the time, and it seemed fair to do that until the 23-year-old was arguably the best player in the Las Vegas Summer League.

Pippen defined his run there with intense defensive pressure, which contributed to a remarkable 20 steals in just six games.

The Grizzlies have a roster crunch to deal with, but Pippen, who logged 52 assists and just 14 turnovers in Vegas, has now put enough on tape to warrant a crack at rotation minutes. He could even see real time as a backup point guard behind Ja Morant if Marcus Smart is either hurt or best utilized as a wing.

Haywood Highsmith's free-agency experience certainly suggests he's flying under the radar.

Maybe it owed to the league-wide fear that the Miami Heat's homegrown prospects sometimes flop when severing ties with #HeatCulture. Or perhaps Highsmith's counting stats—6.1 points, 3.2 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game—just didn't move the needle for teams with cap space.

Whatever the explanation, it was surprising to see Highsmith, a long, athletic forward who made promising developments as a shooter, settle for a return to Miami on a measly two-year, $10.8 million deal.

Versatile 6'7" defenders with high-revving motors aren't easy to find, let alone ones who keep getting better offensively. Over the last three years, Highsmith's three-point percentage has climbed from 32.1 to 33.9 to 39.6 percent while increasing his attempt volume every season.

If those gains are legitimate, the Heat secured themselves an absolute steal. And if Highsmith continues to develop while upping last year's average of 20.7 minutes per game, he won't be a secret much longer.

Anyone who claims to know Andre Jackson Jr.'s eventual role with the Milwaukee Bucks is just guessing. But the No. 36 pick in the 2023 draft showed enough flashes as a rookie to create confidence he'll develop into someone his team can trust with rotation responsibilities.

Major bounce, high-end competitiveness and intuitive passing skills are Jackson's calling cards at the moment, and he's already a ferocious offensive rebounder and shot-blocker while being listed at just 6'6".

Though his shooting form isn't anything you'd ever teach, Jackson has offensive value as a ball-handler, connector and finisher inside. His college tape is littered with slick transition setups. It also shouldn't go unmentioned that he was a critical player on the UConn Huskies team that won the 2022 title.

Doc Rivers has always favored experience over youth, but he should give Jackson a longer look this season. If given the minutes, he could be a double-figure scorer with elite rebounding for a wing. Chances are he'll swing the momentum of multiple games with roof-scraping highlights, too.

Leonard Miller's rookie minutes came almost exclusively in garbage time for a 56-win Minnesota Timberwolves team, which means we can't draw any sweeping conclusions about his future just yet.

It seems safe to say that the lanky lefty is, at the very least, interesting.

At 6'10", Miller flashed guard instincts as a ball-handler, particularly in transition and around the basket. He could push the pace himself and find teammates with dump-off passes after jetting past like-sized matchups that weren't quick enough to stay in front of him. Good feel as a duck-in threat and as a cutter suggested Miller could be a sneaky finisher as well.

Don't get too caught up in his 40.0 percent shooting from three, which came on the smallest possible sample necessary to produce that number. He was 2-of-5 from distance on the year.

Defensively, Miller showed good mobility and timing as a 20-year-old, complete with the lapses in attention you'd expect from someone that young.

The No. 33 pick in the 2023 draft is as anonymous as anyone on this list, but it'd be a mistake to overlook the skills he showed off in limited action.

Jordan Hawkins lived up to his billing as perhaps the best movement shooter in the 2023 draft class, darting around picks, finding space and drilling triples from all angles with his quick-trigger release. The New Orleans Pelicans wisely ran sets just to get him open, and Hawkins also showed a facility as a screener for others.

Not every shooter has the off-ball gravity to pull two defenders toward him with a pick, but even as a rookie, Hawkins commanded enough attention to create blown switches. New Orleans routinely ran plays involving Hawkins as a ghost-screener for Zion Williamson, and they always seemed to work.

Despite a relatively difficult shot diet of on-the-move treys, Hawkins converted 36.6 percent of his 9.2 three-point attempts per 36 minutes. That's extremely high per-minute volume, which makes his hit rate all the more impressive—as does the fact that Hawkins was automatic in the rare occasions in which he had time to get his feet set.

Hawkins is the type of offensive talent around which some teams build their entire schemes. Get ready for him to show out when his minutes climb from last year's paltry 17.3 per game.

There might not be a more overlooked sniper in the league than Miles McBride, who drilled 41.0 percent of his triples in 19.5 minutes per game for the New York Knicks last season.

And that's not even his top skill!

McBride's ability to somehow withstand the cardiovascular shock of going from the fringes of the rotation to 40-plus minutes every night during the Knicks' injury-hit stretch run was almost impossible to fathom.

Skeptics will note that McBride hadn't hit more than 30.0 percent of his threes prior to last year, and that his counting stats during those marathon-minute allotments owe more to volume than efficiency. Somebody had to put up shots, basically.

But during that remarkable run (let's just call it March 1 to the end of the year), McBride shot 45.8 percent from the field and 42.1 percent from deep. Both efficiency rates were better than his full-season figures.

The Knicks are now deeper than they were a year ago, so we'll see if head coach Tom Thibodeau tries to test the limits of McBride's stamina again. Even if he returns to a smaller role, the gritty guard deserves more recognition.

Thanks to an increasingly dominant set of Oklahoma City Thunder teammates, Aaron Wiggins' minutes-per-game average has declined—from 24.2 to 18.5 to 15.7—in each of his three seasons since making the league in 2021-22 as the 55th overall pick.

He's lost that playing time while increasing his three-point percentage from 30.4 to 39.3 to last year's ridiculous 49.2 percent during the same span.

So, just to get this straight, as Wiggins went from being a total non-shooter to the most accurate in the league (minimum 100 three-point attempts) last season, he played...less? It must be because he's a terrible defender who gives away so much on that end that his elite marksmanship can't make up the difference.

Sorry, what's that? He posted a 95th percentile steal rate and graded out as a positive by D-EPM last season?

That settles it. Wiggins is one of the best rotation guards nobody knows about.

It's not quite witness-protection level stuff, but Goga Bitadze has effectively changed his identity as an NBA player enough times to throw off pursuit—or at least keep the wider public from recognizing how effective he's become.

The 6'11" center took over starting duties for an injured Wendell Carter Jr. for a while last year and contributed to a 13-7 record by defending the rim, hoarding boards and even doing some playmaking as an elbow hub.

Bitadze had been a decent defensive deterrent inside prior to that run, but his ability to stick with guards in space was new. That the big man entered the league (so now we're talking about two identities ago) as a potential floor-spacer at the 5 speaks to his chameleonic nature.

The shooting never really panned out on his previous team, the Indiana Pacers, but it's no less remarkable that Bitadze has gone from that stretchy profile to one built more around crashing the offensive glass, finishing at a high clip near the basket and facilitating.

Most players flame out when the game they bring into the league doesn't quite work. Bitadze has shown the rare ability to keep finding new and different iterations of himself. The Magic rewarded him this past offseason with a three-year deal worth $25 million. No word yet on how he'll split that cash up between him and his other three selves.

The Philadelphia 76ers' main incumbents, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, are known commodities, and their new additions were all in the news cycle as the NBA world watched Daryl Morey turn a mountain of cap space into an entirely new roster.

Everybody forgets Ricky Council IV was here all along, one of only two non-star holdovers remaining from last year's team.

Undrafted, Council struggled (as expected) in limited minutes with the Sixers before a G League stint helped him find his shooting form and regain confidence. Though he logged fewer than 300 NBA minutes overall last season, the athletic shooting guard had a hand in drastically improving the Sixers' postseason position.

Per Paul Hudrick of Liberty Ballers: "There were two games that the Sixers don't win without Council—Feb. 10 in D.C. and April 7 in San Antonio ... Two wins literally made the difference between the Sixers hosting a play-in game instead of going on the road."

Philly's rotation is even more crowded this year than last, but Council has made a habit of overcoming obstacles and figuring out how to earn his way onto the floor. Don't be surprised if he does it again.

Tyus Jones' arrival brought the Phoenix Suns the starting-caliber point guard everyone agreed they needed after last year's struggles to fill the position, but Monte Morris came aboard before Jones and might have been able to handle first-unit duties on his own.

A rough performance last year—5.0 points, 2.1 assists and 40.5 percent shooting from the field between stints with the Wolves and Pistons— begs to differ, but Morris' reliability prior to 2023-24 should carry more weight than one trade-interrupted, injury-hit campaign.

Regarded as one of the steadiest backup point guards in the league after finishing ninth in Sixth Man of the Year as a 23-year-old for the Denver Nuggets in 2018-19, Morris proved his worth as a starter when Jamal Murray went down for the entirety of the 2021-22 season, averaging 12.6 points, 4.4 assists and hitting 39.5 percent of his treys. Traded to Washington the following year, Morris again averaged double figures in points (10.3) and upped his assists to 5.3 per game.

Most of all, Morris just never turns the ball over. His career giveaway rate of 8.0 percent ranks first among point guards who've seen action in at least 300 games since he entered the league.

It's always fair to question the value of a player's production when it comes in low-stakes games for a losing team. But even if we concede the Portland Trail Blazers never got anybody's best punch last year, Toumani Camara's performance still felt like it meant something.

Drafted by the Suns with the 22nd pick of the second round and shipped to Portland before the season started, Camara quickly emerged as the Blazers' best defensive player. At 6'8", Camara showed the ability to switch across multiple positions and ranked second among all rookies in charges drawn.

He finished the season ranked in the 96th percentile in Defensive Estimated Plus/Minus, and the Blazers' defensive rating was a whopping 6.6 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor.

Camara showed very little potential to shoot the ball efficiently, and he's on the older side as a 24-year-old heading into his second season. Offense may always have to come on the margins for him, which is why it's so helpful that he's a live-wire offensive rebounder who understands how to cut, fill space and make himself available for setups.

The Blazers aren't going to be any good again this year, so Camara will probably remain an unknown for anyone outside Portland for a while.

Except for those of you reading this. You're now fully informed on one of the best young defenders in the game.

Keon Ellis emerged from obscurity last season to start 21 games for the Sacramento Kings, bringing a level of energetic hustle and defensive intensity they weren't getting from anybody else at the guard position not named Davion Mitchell. Heading into a 2024-25 season in which Sacramento will be even more over-indexed on score-first players, Ellis is only going to become more important.

If the 24-year-old shoots anywhere near as well as he did a year ago, when he canned 41.7 percent of his 2.9 triple tries per game, it'll be a huge bonus. Ellis' true value will be as a defensive force capable of hiding his teammates' weaknesses.

De'Aaron Fox has the quickness and length to be a quality defender, but he's always struggled to navigate screens and doesn't consistently summon the requisite effort to be a difference-maker. DeMar DeRozan has been a sub-par defender for his entire career, Malik Monk's focus is always on the offensive end and Domantas Sabonis just doesn't have the lift or foot speed to survive as a rim-protector or in space against guards.

Ellis is a wiry 6'6" shooting guard, which means he can't cover for all of those deficiencies by himself. But the Kings will need him on the floor as often as possible to make sure DeRozan and all the rest aren't getting cooked quite so badly on D.

The situation in San Antonio got worse for Blake Wesley when Chris Paul signed on, moving Tre Jones to the second unit.

The Spurs tried to turn Wesley, an athletic 6'5" first-rounder who entered the league as a 2, into a point guard during a G League stint last year. It wasn't a total success, but Wesley returned to San Antonio for good in late December and stuck in the rotation. He racked up at least five assists in a dozen games after getting back onto the floor with regularity, but it was his uptick in defensive intensity and aggression attacking the basket that opened eyes widest.

Now, though, Wesley sits no higher than third on the depth chart at the 1. His 29.9 percent shooting from deep suggests he's not going to offer value off the ball, so playing time could be hard to come by.

At the same time, it's hard to bet against a player with high-end physical tools who has already shown a willingness to tweak his game in whatever way is necessary to earn minutes. Maybe this year will see Wesley, still just 21 years old, add new layers (ideally ones related to making shots) that force the Spurs to get him on the floor at one position or another.

Chris Boucher isn't quite the floor-spacing, shot-blocking force he was a couple of years ago, but for as much as we mythologize that truly rare player type, he doesn't get the recognition you'd expect.

Turner and Serge Ibaka are the only other players in league history to join Boucher in logging at least 350 career games with a block rate above 5.5 percent and a clip of 33.3 percent or better from deep.

Even in a down 2023-24, there were only a dozen other players 6'9" or taller who matched Boucher's averages of 2.1 made threes and 1.6 blocks per 100 possessions across as many games as he played.

Public Service Announcement: There are spacing rim-protectors not named Myles Turner, Kristaps Porzingis and Brook Lopez, and Boucher is one of them. Lesser breeds of unicorn are still unicorns, and we should appreciate them, too.

Lauri Markkanen is the Utah Jazz's undisputed best player, but most wouldn't suspect that the gap between him and Collin Sexton was pretty narrow last season.

Finally healthy after two-plus years of injury issues, Sexton averaged 18.7 points and 4.9 assists while posting a stellar 48.7/39.4/85.9 shooting split. His 7.4 Estimated Wins narrowly trailed Markkanen's 8.3 for the team lead. Perhaps a better illustration: The margin between Sexton and Markkanen was less than a single win, while the chasm between Sexton and Utah's third-ranked player in that stat, Kris Dunn, was an enormous 3.9 wins.

In fact, Sexton added more to the Jazz's bottom line than Dunn and Walker Kessler (2.3 wins), who ranked fourth, combined.

Sexton is more bark than bite on defense, but he's been one of the most efficient volume scorers in the league whenever healthy. After two years trying to get himself back on the floor consistently, he was finally ready to reintroduce himself to a wider audience last season.

Whether Utah ships him out for draft picks or tries to eke out 40-something wins, Sexton has a case as the team's second-most valuable player.

Of the 124 players who've attempted at least as many as Corey Kispert's 1,893 shots over the last three years, only 14 can claim a higher true shooting percentage. Most of them have All-NBA nods on their resumés. Five have won at least one MVP award.

There's more to being an effective NBA player than scoring efficiency, but putting the ball in the basket effectively isn't exactly a secondary skill. Kispert, despite playing the entirety of his three-year career on a Washington Wizards team that has averaged just 28 wins per season, quietly ranks among the league's very best.

If you know one thing about the 6'7" wing, it's probably that he's a dangerous three-point shooter. Accuracy on those shots is a great way to juice overall efficiency, and Kispert sits at an excellent 38.3 percent from deep for his career. But his numbers actually benefit just as much from incredible hit rates on layups.

A terrific cutter who also expertly leverages fear of his jumper with a tricky fake-and-drive game, Kispert has made at least 71.0 percent of his shots at the rim in each of the last three years.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.