New on Sports Illustrated: How Good Are NBA G League Prospects Jalen Green, Isaiah Todd and Daishen Nix?

Jalen Green, Daishen Nix, Isaiah Todd, and whoever else joins the NBA G League pathway program will go beneath one of the more unique microscopes in recent years.

If you’ve been living under a rock—or, respectably, avoiding the internet for an indefinite amount of time (hey, who among us)—

the NBA G League continues to make significant headway in shaking up basketball’s traditional player development framework. This week, five-star guard Daishen Nix opted to forgo his letter of intent to UCLA and joined the G League’s impressive group of committed players, which includes top recruits Jalen Green and Isaiah Todd. These elite high school prospects will compete as a team, separate from the G League’s affiliate franchises, with the majority of details about the program still forthcoming. What the program will actually look like is a real point of interest right now around the NBA, but the quality of the players the league has landed is substantial, and how well the program fares in year one will become one of next season’s more closely-monitored subplots at any level of basketball. That much seems foregone, with a pair of lottery picks in the fold, and the NCAA seemingly being forced to adapt at long last.

The early question I’ve heard a lot from teams has to do with how competitive the game environments are going to be, whether or not players will truly be placed in a position to fail, and what type of adversity they’ll face, particularly relative to college, which includes a personal growth component for all teenagers, regardless of whether or not they play a sport. As far as on the court is concerned, it’ll be one thing to have them playing real G League teams or international pro clubs on a regular basis. But if this group were to primarily play against, say, the NBA’s global academy teams, or at international tournaments for players their age, the element of challenge could end up being diminished.

From a scouting perspective, having these guys in a brand new environment and playing at a sort of in-between level creates a different type of evaluatory challenge for the brain. We know what college games look like live, and we know what G League games look like, and our brains can make a distinction accordingly, but scouts have expressed the fact that there’s inevitably going to be some type of adjustment on their end as well, which is a component here. There’s certainly a convenience bump from this team being based in Southern California, and, one might posit, potentially getting to play games at centralized locations that will save teams extra mileage. It’s better than having to fly to Australia and effectively lose a week or two adjusting to the travel.

From an intel standpoint, there may be fewer unique points of entry to information on these players as a result of their decision to forgo college, where, surprise, they encounter a lot of different people on a daily basis, all of whom are theoretically sources. But any competent front office should have personnel on staff capable of gathering background from within the G League’s program, which is largely staffed by well-connected individuals, many of whom are former NBA players. Figuring out how to find the most salient information is part of the job description for player personnel specialists, and it’s a big part of why far-reaching relationships in different corners of basketball are so critical. Teams doing their diligence will be able to obtain substantive intel that predates a prospect’s brief time as a professional, as well. The G League program doesn’t rewrite the book here—it simply presents a different set of parameters.

Green, Nix, Todd, and whoever else joins them on the team will go beneath one of the more unique microscopes in recent years. I’ve evaluated all three in multiple live settings over the past 12 months. For now, here’s what you need to know.

Jalen Green

Frankly, the G League’s program may not have been tenable in this particular way had Green’s commitment not been the first domino. His ability and long-term potential notwithstanding, he comes with the type of cachet amongst his peers and younger players to be a trend-setter. Green’s decision in essence ensured that this pathway would be taken seriously moving forward, which means much more in concert with the G League’s ability to make more competitive financial offers to prospective talent. When a potential No. 1 overall pick decides to do something unorthodox, it instantly means more. If Green was eligible for the 2020 draft, he’d likely be picked first. Looking towards 2021, which is shaping up to have one of the more impressive draft classes in years, he’ll be firmly in the mix there, with the early NBA consensus leaning toward Cade Cunningham, but with that draft, obviously, more than a year away.

There’s little doubt about Green’s upside, as he’s a gifted athlete with pop and explosiveness who can create his own shot and do damage from the perimeter. Although it’s far from a given, he has the basic toolbox to eventually be an elite scorer, and in a best-case scenario, the type of guard for whom bad shots are good shots. Granted, it takes a lot of projection to see him getting there. But I was able to see Green live several times this season, and thought he did a reasonable job of answering some of the questions surrounding his approach. It’s one thing to be something of a showman on the court—sometimes it’s decidedly a negative—but it helps to back that up with results, and Green did that during his senior year, leading Prolific Prep to a 26-3 record. He made progress in terms of consistent on-court engagement. For a player who, for better or worse, is going to need to see a lot of the ball to reach his ceiling, it’s an important step.

For what it’s worth, I do think the range of outcomes with Green is a bit wider than advertised, given how hard it is to be a true high-efficiency, high-volume scorer in the NBA, and how long and demanding of a learning curve tends to accompany that type of career arc. But that’s what he wants to be, and as a 6’5” wing, that’s probably his path to stardom, for better or worse. Green has the tools to be a terrific defender, and the explosiveness to live at the rim more consistently if he wants to. It doesn’t take long to see his potential as an isolation scorer, and he’s not a bad passer, although he can be an infrequent one. Just like everyone else, I’m curious to see how much he’s truly tested by whatever level the G League’s group ends up playing at next season, whether it’s against international competition, G League teams, or players closer to their own age. But it seems preordained that he’ll be the face of this operation, and given how talented he is, it’s hard to see him falling too far flat before next year’s draft.

Daishen Nix

Nix’s importance to the ultimate success of the G League’s program shouldn’t be undersold: someone is going to have to pass the ball around on this team, and he was among the best possible options. Right now he should be firmly regarded as a lottery-level talent, and based on my own evaluations and early buzz around the NBA, I’d argue that he’s vastly underrated in the various national rankings, even in a strong recruiting class. At the moment, ESPN has Nix ranked 20th, Rivals 13th, and 247Sports is the highest on him at No. 11. There’s likely a visibility component to that, as Nix didn’t play AAU on any of the shoe circuits and has developed in semi-obscurity, particularly relative to his level of ability. Nix was born and raised in Alaska before moving to Las Vegas to play high school ball at a non-traditional prep program, Trinity International. It’s not like he was hiding (more on that in a second), but his route has certainly been different from the norm.

When first seeing Nix live over the summer in Colorado Springs with USA Basketball, I was immediately struck by his rare combination of traits—terrific size for a point guard, great foot speed and chance of pace, a wider build that can hold up against bigger opponents, and an unquestionably elite-level basketball brain. It’s not just his decision-making and passing, but his defensive anticipation and understanding of how to look off defenders and read the entire floor. There are plenty of flashy high school guards, and they come and go. Not all of them are truly competitive, and there aren’t many who can do that while directly impacting winning basketball in every area, and Nix falls into that category. I tailed Nix and Trinity International for three straight days in Vegas at the Tarkanian Classic in December, and found it hard to look away. Cade Cunningham is the best point guard in high school basketball, but Nix may be closer behind him than you realize, and both were ready to start for most college programs as high school seniors.

The issues that may cap Nix’s ceiling are his finishing and his jumper, both of which are solid at the high school level, but require further progression and projection in order for him to blossom into a star. He’s a good athlete, but not elite creating in isolation or exploding to the rim, and while he already incorporates a variety of crafty finishes, Nix will have to keep working on consistency attacking angles and playing against bodies. He does find his way into the paint and to the line a lot. He shoots more of a set jumper and doesn’t get a ton of elevation—which isn’t to say it won’t work, only that he may not be an overly dynamic shooter. The key here is envisioning what happens to Nix’s game long-term, when he’s no longer the best player on his team, and in that regard, his potential is substantial. This has to sting heavily for UCLA, but I’m optimistic about the long-term fate of the player.

Isaiah Todd

Todd’s decision to join the G League program is the one that makes the least amount of sense, at least from my perspective, as he’s much further away from being an NBA player than Green and Nix, and certainly less of a sure thing. The counterpoint here is that he may actually be in for a higher dose of minutes with this team, where the priority is the development of these players, than he might have gotten in year one at Michigan. It’s very hard to play up front in the Big Ten, and very few true freshmen bigs have taken that conference by storm (Jaren Jackson Jr. was drafted fourth out of Michigan State based off his flashes of potential, not because he was a dominant player). Todd isn’t that caliber of player, but he has an attractive level of skill for his frame, and some projectability as a stretch four long-term once he fully figures out what it will take for him to succeed.

For Todd, the added eyeballs that come from flanking Green and Nix are understandably preferable to having to break in at Michigan, or trying to turn pro overseas, where young players are often an afterthought, and where bigs tend to be developed differently. He‘s walking into a situation that should make him look good, without the pressure that accompanies having to be the best player on a brand new team. If he blocks shots, rebounds, hits open jump shots and assuages long-standing concerns that he wants to be a wing (he likely isn’t one), Todd should be able to help himself. Todd has strong potential defensively as a mobile rim protector, and enough flashes of skill that there’s some basic level of floor here.

Still, after bouncing around between AAU teams and high school programs, what Todd may need above all is to be coached hard and pushed competitively. As noted earlier, whether the G League situation turns out to be conducive to that type of individual growth remains to be seen. But for an unfinished product, choosing to take the risk of participating in a program like this versus training solo and hiding from scouts is at least commendable. Where Green and Nix figure to be fairly stable stocks moving forward, how much the G League program can benefit a prospect like Todd may actually be the better measure of success.