2 weeks out from the 2012 NBA draft, and today we put the 7thdraft profile out of the season, the ACC player of the year, Tyler Zeller. I’ve already previewed Arnett Moultrie, Fab Melo, Jeff Taylor, Moe Harkless, Marquis Teague, and Royce White…you can find their profiles elsewhere on this board.
As is well known, Zeller is an Indiana native, having grown up in the rabid basketball town of Washington, in the southwestern part of the state. His older brother Luke played at Notre Dame and overseas, and his littlebrother Cody is part of the basketball revival at Indiana University. Tyleropted to travel to Chapel Hill to play for Roy Williams and the North Carolina Tar Heels, where he stayed 4 years and had an excellent and successful college career.
Zeller checked in at the NBA combine at 7’0 ½ inches tall,and 247lbs, so he has the prerequisite size to be a legitimate NBA center in today’s game. Due to his excellent coordination,balance, and straight line speed, I also believe that thru his mid to late 20’sthat Zeller will be able to play the power forward position as well in most scenarios. This gives him a certain positional flexibility that in my mind elevates his value a great deal, though not all talent scouts will agree with the idea that he can play some minutes at the “4” spot.
Down below, let’s put the game of the native son Zeller under the microscope.
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I think that the first thing you notice on the positive side about Zeller is his extreme speed for a player of his size in changing ends of the floor.
Zeller is a tremendous “rim runner” for a 5 man, able to sprint to the other end after a defensive rebound and establish early position inside, or to get transition layups and dunks. His ability to catch the ball while running full speed is the best I have seen in big for a while now, as Zeller has really good hand eye coordination and balance, and is able to make tough catches in traffic.
In the very controlled UNC patterned early offense, Zellerrarely filled a wing spot, but I think in the NBA on a fast break that if he accidentally found himself in a 2 vs 1 or even a 3 on 2 break, that he would bean excellent finisher coming in at an angle from the wings. This likely won’t happen very often, but I mention it only to show you how well I rate his ability to run the floor and catch in transition traffic.
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In the halfcourt, North Carolina tape can be extraordinarily painful to watch, as when the game was slowed down their somewhat predictable and regimented system really hurt them I thought. Despite being one of the best players in the country and a player with a clear size advantage inside most nights, UNC’s balance approach meant that Zeller only took just over 10 shots per game. And while I don’t have numbers, it seems like most of those were on putbacks or on fast break chances where he ran the floor….UNC really didn’tmake him as much of a focal point inside as I felt they should or could have.
And, because UNC opted to leave him in the paint almost exclusively, Zeller really didn’t develop much offensive game, or at least hedidn’t show much in his limited opportunities. His one high level NBA move right now is his almost unguardable right hand /left shoulder baby jump hook,which he has really amazing touch with. Zeller can make that shot off the blocks a few steps, which is good because he lacks the lower body strength currently to not get pushed from behind by a defender off his spot.
Zeller will need to learn a few things about how to play post up basketball at the next level, and how not to get pushed off your spot so easily is among them. Having a somewhat high center of gravity hurts him,and he needs to get stronger in his core and in his legs obviously. One veteran move that I know he will learn eventually is to drive his back foot right intothe gap between his defenders two feet,which to avoid taking a shot into the groin a defensive player will almost always give ground and shuffle his feet,which then will enable Zeller to drive his defender backwards into the paint and get leverage.
Zeller is going to have to improve his left hand, and the ability to turn over his right shoulder inside so defenders aren’t able to shade him as much as they do now. His jump hook is so good at this point that he hasn’t had to develop a counter move yet, but at the NBA level he will.
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I believe Zeller will be an outstanding jump shooter from mid range in the NBA, but you’ll have to take my word for it, because at North Carolina, their bigs don’t get to take that shot. Research shows that he only took about a little less than one jump shot per game, which in knowing his strengths and talents before he left for college is really an amazing thing to hear. In many games I watched on tape, he didn’t take a single face up jumper, not one.
But when he does shoot, he has really good form, just like you’d expect from an Indiana born and bred kid from the cornfields of Indiana. He holds the ball high, has a nice follow through, and excellent trajectory on the ball. He also shot 81% from the line this season, so there is no rebuilding necessary on his shot form, other than he needs reps, confidence, and perhaps might need to speed up his “load” of the shot just a bit.
I think he will be a really good pick/pop guy to about 15feet or so in time, maybe even to 18 feet on the optimistic side. And I think in drives, he will be able to catch the drive/dish pass along the baselines and knock that shot down consistently as well.
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Zeller also is an excellent screener, which merits mentioning in this piece. Though he is a finesse type of player in general sometimes, in the screening aspect he has been well taught, and seems to enjoyscreening, as a way to kind of inflict some payback on all the physical play he has to deal with otherwise.
Zeller usually gets wide on his screens, and actually hits people, rather than just stand next to them like so many other bigs do. He also is the best I’ve seen this year at consistently sprinting to his screen, rather than “staggering” to it….as I see many young players do.
And because he is mobile, you can do some different screen actions with him from an offensive point of view. He will be good at the“hammer” screen, my term for a long ball screen, where the screener has to sprint from one block to the opposite wing. He will also be good at the long flare screen, sprinting up from the baseline to the elbow areas to set flaresfor shooters or point guards to get them open off of flare cuts. His mobility gives you as a coach a lot of offensive flexibility in the sets you can run.
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His one major weakness offensively is his ability to pass out of double teams in the low post. Because he gets pushed off the blocks so easily, the ”diggers” often get to him one step quicker than an some stronger post players, and he struggles a bit with arms and hands reaching down into his space. He tends to not trust his own strength with the ball and gets rattled some more than you’d like.
Again, this doesn’t bother me as much as maybe it should. In my view, he can be taught a few things to counteract this, and you can scheme things up to help him.
First thing he needs to learn is how to catch deeper in thefirst place…..I covered that up above.
Second thing would be this: when he catches off the block some, he needs to open up with a reverse pivot so he can see the basket and make a move or shot over his own guy, before the doubles get to him.
Third, a team that he plays for has to give him so more guys to throw to, and in different ways, than UNC did. UNC so structured offensively, that all opponents generally know where the UNC players will be….UNC guys go to spots, they don’tr ead the defense. So, if you doubled Zeller, the rotating defenders always knew exactly where to rotate to on the floor, because they were in pre determinedspots.
UNC always spotted up, and never ran cutters thru the lane area ball side for example, but that will be a very common NBA tactic…..and in the NBA, offenses are sophisticated enough to adjust to the defense and give a player more ways to pass out of doubles than he has experienced so far.
But the main reason will be this: Zeller will almost always never be double teamed inside, because he won’t probably be quite good enough to merit a lot of exotic double teams in the first place, and because I think he, despite all of the evidence at Carolina, will be an above average NBA passing big man.
Zeller I believe will end up being a nice passer out of the high post area, being a good high/low guy in time as a post feeder. And I think he will be good at making the crosscourt skip pass out of double teams, and hopefully he will be able to make passes when he is the recipient of apick/pop, where the defense is able to scramble to him.
In other words, while I don’t think that he can be a GregMonroe level or Chris Webber type passer, I do suspect he will be a bit better than average as a distributor eventually, perhaps in year 2 or 3 of his development.
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Defensively, he is just a smidgen in between positions currently he enters the league.
As a 5 man, he has good quickness and balance, but he lacks a little strength. He is never going to be a brute enforcer type, but he does need to improve his core strength area and his legs especially, so he can play with more force and power. He can be posted up be good players, but he gives legitimate effort and plays reasonably good positional defense, forcing his man to at least make a shot over the top of him….Zeller is good in at least not giving angles.
As a 4 man, he has to be careful in not getting isolated inspace on the perimeter off the dribble, as he isn’t the quickest side to side in a stance that I’ve seen, though he still is around average for the position and probably a bit above for his size.
But as a 4/5 guy, he isn’t so bad in one area that you’d beoverly concerned about him I don’t think. As the league continues to getsmaller and smaller, he clearly will be big enough (once he adds the neededweight and strength) to play the center position most of the time.
And because he has such great end to end speed and skill, Ithink at least early in his career and in to his prime he can give you minutes alongside another bigger slower player. Maybe when the minutes and injuries addup and he gains 20lbs, he will just become a pure 5, but for now and into his late 20’s I suspect he would be a nice 4 man most of the time, depending on thestyle of play and the matchups. Remember, most perimeter oriented 4 men are guys who are spot shooters more than drivers, so lateral speed isn’t necessarily that big of a concern against those guys….he can guard a Ryan Anderson, for instance. And remember thatagainst all of those guys that he will punish them on the offensive end as well I believe.
I also think he will be a really good ball screen defender. Zeller hedges really well when asked to, as he is pretty good at the one step slide (its when asked to make 3 slides or more that he stands up and gets in trouble, like most bigs do). For Indiana, he would give them an ability to be a bit more flexible in theirscreen/roll coverages I think than they currently try.
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As a help defender, it is a little mixed from what I see on tape.
Zeller is not going to be a shot blocker in any way at theNBA level. He lacks the length and timing and explosiveness to be able to dothat to elite professional players.
Instead, I think he ends up being more of a big guy thattakes charges and plays below the rim. In fact, in this one aspect he remindsme a lot of Jeff Foster, who as a big guy rarely blocked a shot or intimidated anybody, but often sacrificed his body and took the charge on out of control drivers.
At UNC, you can tell that defense wasn’t something they overly mentioned there. Especially on the perimeter, UNC was pretty pedestrian in how they closed out on people and in how much they pressured the perimeter. In fact, Kendall Marshall (their highly touted point guard) didn’t play muchdefense at all and was routinely beaten.
John Henson made up for a lot of UNC mistakes defensively, but even he had a flaw, and it is one that Zeller shared with him and that will need to be fixed. That is this: Zeller played too flat on the baseline relative to his man, and that causes him to have to help “uphill” too much.
But on the positive side, Zeller always sees the ball well, and does a good fundamental job of keeping “ball-you-man” vision. He doesn’t seem tomake mental or effort mistakes very often.
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Zeller rates as a good rebounder in college, and I project him to be in the NBA, especially as he develops his body. I don’t think he will be great, but he will be better than average.
He has really good hands, and always gives good effort onthe glass. As an offensive rebounder, he reads the ball well in the air anduses his slender body and good court sense well, sliding in and out of cracksto chase down balls you wouldn’t think he could get. He seems to get a lot oflong rebounds, and is good at chasing loose balls down.
Defensively he isn’t as good on the glass as he isoffensively. Some of that is because he tends (like many fast bigs do) to takeoff just a half a heartbeat too quickly so he sprint to the other end.
But more than that, his lack of strong base sometimes means that, even though he blocks out well) that he won’t get some rebounds because he gets pushed under the rim and the ball bounces over him.
He probably gets most of his rebounds at or near the rim, he is not a great leaper. But he is agile, and he does well at getting tips of the ball, batting them out keeping them alive. He isn’t usually the first guy in the air, but his second jump is really quick.
Like everyone who watches Zeller, you wish he would occasionally just TEAR one rebound out of the sky with more force and power, but that really isn’t his style or personality.
He also is really good at making the 2 hand outlet pass,something that UNC guys learn better than anyone in country currently.
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The last thing that merits mentioning is maybe his most key skill: CONSISTENCY
A lot of players are up and down, where each night you really don’t know what you are going to get…..”box of chocolate” guys. This is maddening for a coach because you really can’t plan on or rely on them much,there is too much variance in their concentration, confidence, and effort level from night to night for them to be RELIABLE. Reliability is a big deal to a coach.
Zeller is going to be reliable I believe. His skills translate and travel, and while he isn’t a superstar level player in the league I don’t think, I definitely think he can be a vital cog to a winning organization for many many years.
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So, what do we have in Tyler Zeller?
I think we have a legitimate quality starter at either the 4or 5 spot (depending on who you pair with him and your style of play). Initially, he might be ideally suited for a role as your first big guy off thebench, backing up both the 4 and 5 spots, but I believe starting in year 2,after he has added experience and strength, that he is a starting 4 man that can slide over and play center in a 3 big man rotation, or who can play center as a starter if need be.
A high character, low risk, medium to high upside veteran mature draft pick with a winning pedigree and valuable positional flexibility, with elite mobility for a 7 footer, and who will be a very good offensive player.
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For Indiana, picking #26, Zeller will of course be long gone by then. But I included him in my write ups because I believe that he is one of a handful of guys that I believe would be worth giving up assets to move up forin the draft for the Pacers…..the fit and the need Zeller would give us is worth going up for, in my opinion, and we know that Larry Bird coveted him lastyear, if you remember reading his comments after the draft was over.
I look for Indiana to try and move up to get him. Placeswhere Indiana can maybe get to would be Toronto at # 8 (we deal Collison to
them, plus#26, and agree to take backCalderon’s one year of high salary) Detroit at #9 (if we agree to take a badcontract….remember, Bird used to like Ben Gordon’s game), New Orleans at # 10 (if we give up Collison, #26, and maybe take back a bad contract like Ariza….no way would we take Okafor), or #14 or #16 with Houston could be in play if Zeller is still on the board at that point.
If we don’t make a move up to get him, I think more than likely that Zeller ends up at #12 with the Milwaukee Bucks. The scenarios/talkswith Houston I think only come into play if the Bucks go elsewhere, like with aMeyers Leonard or somebody else.
Will we actually make a move like I am suggesting? I thinkit is about 50/50, as I write this 2 weeks before this year’s draft. Staytuned.
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Current NBA comparable: Pau or Marc Gasol
Former NBA comparable: A poor man’s Jack Sikma
As always, the above is just my opinion.
Tbird
As is well known, Zeller is an Indiana native, having grown up in the rabid basketball town of Washington, in the southwestern part of the state. His older brother Luke played at Notre Dame and overseas, and his littlebrother Cody is part of the basketball revival at Indiana University. Tyleropted to travel to Chapel Hill to play for Roy Williams and the North Carolina Tar Heels, where he stayed 4 years and had an excellent and successful college career.
Zeller checked in at the NBA combine at 7’0 ½ inches tall,and 247lbs, so he has the prerequisite size to be a legitimate NBA center in today’s game. Due to his excellent coordination,balance, and straight line speed, I also believe that thru his mid to late 20’sthat Zeller will be able to play the power forward position as well in most scenarios. This gives him a certain positional flexibility that in my mind elevates his value a great deal, though not all talent scouts will agree with the idea that he can play some minutes at the “4” spot.
Down below, let’s put the game of the native son Zeller under the microscope.
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I think that the first thing you notice on the positive side about Zeller is his extreme speed for a player of his size in changing ends of the floor.
Zeller is a tremendous “rim runner” for a 5 man, able to sprint to the other end after a defensive rebound and establish early position inside, or to get transition layups and dunks. His ability to catch the ball while running full speed is the best I have seen in big for a while now, as Zeller has really good hand eye coordination and balance, and is able to make tough catches in traffic.
In the very controlled UNC patterned early offense, Zellerrarely filled a wing spot, but I think in the NBA on a fast break that if he accidentally found himself in a 2 vs 1 or even a 3 on 2 break, that he would bean excellent finisher coming in at an angle from the wings. This likely won’t happen very often, but I mention it only to show you how well I rate his ability to run the floor and catch in transition traffic.
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In the halfcourt, North Carolina tape can be extraordinarily painful to watch, as when the game was slowed down their somewhat predictable and regimented system really hurt them I thought. Despite being one of the best players in the country and a player with a clear size advantage inside most nights, UNC’s balance approach meant that Zeller only took just over 10 shots per game. And while I don’t have numbers, it seems like most of those were on putbacks or on fast break chances where he ran the floor….UNC really didn’tmake him as much of a focal point inside as I felt they should or could have.
And, because UNC opted to leave him in the paint almost exclusively, Zeller really didn’t develop much offensive game, or at least hedidn’t show much in his limited opportunities. His one high level NBA move right now is his almost unguardable right hand /left shoulder baby jump hook,which he has really amazing touch with. Zeller can make that shot off the blocks a few steps, which is good because he lacks the lower body strength currently to not get pushed from behind by a defender off his spot.
Zeller will need to learn a few things about how to play post up basketball at the next level, and how not to get pushed off your spot so easily is among them. Having a somewhat high center of gravity hurts him,and he needs to get stronger in his core and in his legs obviously. One veteran move that I know he will learn eventually is to drive his back foot right intothe gap between his defenders two feet,which to avoid taking a shot into the groin a defensive player will almost always give ground and shuffle his feet,which then will enable Zeller to drive his defender backwards into the paint and get leverage.
Zeller is going to have to improve his left hand, and the ability to turn over his right shoulder inside so defenders aren’t able to shade him as much as they do now. His jump hook is so good at this point that he hasn’t had to develop a counter move yet, but at the NBA level he will.
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I believe Zeller will be an outstanding jump shooter from mid range in the NBA, but you’ll have to take my word for it, because at North Carolina, their bigs don’t get to take that shot. Research shows that he only took about a little less than one jump shot per game, which in knowing his strengths and talents before he left for college is really an amazing thing to hear. In many games I watched on tape, he didn’t take a single face up jumper, not one.
But when he does shoot, he has really good form, just like you’d expect from an Indiana born and bred kid from the cornfields of Indiana. He holds the ball high, has a nice follow through, and excellent trajectory on the ball. He also shot 81% from the line this season, so there is no rebuilding necessary on his shot form, other than he needs reps, confidence, and perhaps might need to speed up his “load” of the shot just a bit.
I think he will be a really good pick/pop guy to about 15feet or so in time, maybe even to 18 feet on the optimistic side. And I think in drives, he will be able to catch the drive/dish pass along the baselines and knock that shot down consistently as well.
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Zeller also is an excellent screener, which merits mentioning in this piece. Though he is a finesse type of player in general sometimes, in the screening aspect he has been well taught, and seems to enjoyscreening, as a way to kind of inflict some payback on all the physical play he has to deal with otherwise.
Zeller usually gets wide on his screens, and actually hits people, rather than just stand next to them like so many other bigs do. He also is the best I’ve seen this year at consistently sprinting to his screen, rather than “staggering” to it….as I see many young players do.
And because he is mobile, you can do some different screen actions with him from an offensive point of view. He will be good at the“hammer” screen, my term for a long ball screen, where the screener has to sprint from one block to the opposite wing. He will also be good at the long flare screen, sprinting up from the baseline to the elbow areas to set flaresfor shooters or point guards to get them open off of flare cuts. His mobility gives you as a coach a lot of offensive flexibility in the sets you can run.
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His one major weakness offensively is his ability to pass out of double teams in the low post. Because he gets pushed off the blocks so easily, the ”diggers” often get to him one step quicker than an some stronger post players, and he struggles a bit with arms and hands reaching down into his space. He tends to not trust his own strength with the ball and gets rattled some more than you’d like.
Again, this doesn’t bother me as much as maybe it should. In my view, he can be taught a few things to counteract this, and you can scheme things up to help him.
First thing he needs to learn is how to catch deeper in thefirst place…..I covered that up above.
Second thing would be this: when he catches off the block some, he needs to open up with a reverse pivot so he can see the basket and make a move or shot over his own guy, before the doubles get to him.
Third, a team that he plays for has to give him so more guys to throw to, and in different ways, than UNC did. UNC so structured offensively, that all opponents generally know where the UNC players will be….UNC guys go to spots, they don’tr ead the defense. So, if you doubled Zeller, the rotating defenders always knew exactly where to rotate to on the floor, because they were in pre determinedspots.
UNC always spotted up, and never ran cutters thru the lane area ball side for example, but that will be a very common NBA tactic…..and in the NBA, offenses are sophisticated enough to adjust to the defense and give a player more ways to pass out of doubles than he has experienced so far.
But the main reason will be this: Zeller will almost always never be double teamed inside, because he won’t probably be quite good enough to merit a lot of exotic double teams in the first place, and because I think he, despite all of the evidence at Carolina, will be an above average NBA passing big man.
Zeller I believe will end up being a nice passer out of the high post area, being a good high/low guy in time as a post feeder. And I think he will be good at making the crosscourt skip pass out of double teams, and hopefully he will be able to make passes when he is the recipient of apick/pop, where the defense is able to scramble to him.
In other words, while I don’t think that he can be a GregMonroe level or Chris Webber type passer, I do suspect he will be a bit better than average as a distributor eventually, perhaps in year 2 or 3 of his development.
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Defensively, he is just a smidgen in between positions currently he enters the league.
As a 5 man, he has good quickness and balance, but he lacks a little strength. He is never going to be a brute enforcer type, but he does need to improve his core strength area and his legs especially, so he can play with more force and power. He can be posted up be good players, but he gives legitimate effort and plays reasonably good positional defense, forcing his man to at least make a shot over the top of him….Zeller is good in at least not giving angles.
As a 4 man, he has to be careful in not getting isolated inspace on the perimeter off the dribble, as he isn’t the quickest side to side in a stance that I’ve seen, though he still is around average for the position and probably a bit above for his size.
But as a 4/5 guy, he isn’t so bad in one area that you’d beoverly concerned about him I don’t think. As the league continues to getsmaller and smaller, he clearly will be big enough (once he adds the neededweight and strength) to play the center position most of the time.
And because he has such great end to end speed and skill, Ithink at least early in his career and in to his prime he can give you minutes alongside another bigger slower player. Maybe when the minutes and injuries addup and he gains 20lbs, he will just become a pure 5, but for now and into his late 20’s I suspect he would be a nice 4 man most of the time, depending on thestyle of play and the matchups. Remember, most perimeter oriented 4 men are guys who are spot shooters more than drivers, so lateral speed isn’t necessarily that big of a concern against those guys….he can guard a Ryan Anderson, for instance. And remember thatagainst all of those guys that he will punish them on the offensive end as well I believe.
I also think he will be a really good ball screen defender. Zeller hedges really well when asked to, as he is pretty good at the one step slide (its when asked to make 3 slides or more that he stands up and gets in trouble, like most bigs do). For Indiana, he would give them an ability to be a bit more flexible in theirscreen/roll coverages I think than they currently try.
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As a help defender, it is a little mixed from what I see on tape.
Zeller is not going to be a shot blocker in any way at theNBA level. He lacks the length and timing and explosiveness to be able to dothat to elite professional players.
Instead, I think he ends up being more of a big guy thattakes charges and plays below the rim. In fact, in this one aspect he remindsme a lot of Jeff Foster, who as a big guy rarely blocked a shot or intimidated anybody, but often sacrificed his body and took the charge on out of control drivers.
At UNC, you can tell that defense wasn’t something they overly mentioned there. Especially on the perimeter, UNC was pretty pedestrian in how they closed out on people and in how much they pressured the perimeter. In fact, Kendall Marshall (their highly touted point guard) didn’t play muchdefense at all and was routinely beaten.
John Henson made up for a lot of UNC mistakes defensively, but even he had a flaw, and it is one that Zeller shared with him and that will need to be fixed. That is this: Zeller played too flat on the baseline relative to his man, and that causes him to have to help “uphill” too much.
But on the positive side, Zeller always sees the ball well, and does a good fundamental job of keeping “ball-you-man” vision. He doesn’t seem tomake mental or effort mistakes very often.
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Zeller rates as a good rebounder in college, and I project him to be in the NBA, especially as he develops his body. I don’t think he will be great, but he will be better than average.
He has really good hands, and always gives good effort onthe glass. As an offensive rebounder, he reads the ball well in the air anduses his slender body and good court sense well, sliding in and out of cracksto chase down balls you wouldn’t think he could get. He seems to get a lot oflong rebounds, and is good at chasing loose balls down.
Defensively he isn’t as good on the glass as he isoffensively. Some of that is because he tends (like many fast bigs do) to takeoff just a half a heartbeat too quickly so he sprint to the other end.
But more than that, his lack of strong base sometimes means that, even though he blocks out well) that he won’t get some rebounds because he gets pushed under the rim and the ball bounces over him.
He probably gets most of his rebounds at or near the rim, he is not a great leaper. But he is agile, and he does well at getting tips of the ball, batting them out keeping them alive. He isn’t usually the first guy in the air, but his second jump is really quick.
Like everyone who watches Zeller, you wish he would occasionally just TEAR one rebound out of the sky with more force and power, but that really isn’t his style or personality.
He also is really good at making the 2 hand outlet pass,something that UNC guys learn better than anyone in country currently.
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The last thing that merits mentioning is maybe his most key skill: CONSISTENCY
A lot of players are up and down, where each night you really don’t know what you are going to get…..”box of chocolate” guys. This is maddening for a coach because you really can’t plan on or rely on them much,there is too much variance in their concentration, confidence, and effort level from night to night for them to be RELIABLE. Reliability is a big deal to a coach.
Zeller is going to be reliable I believe. His skills translate and travel, and while he isn’t a superstar level player in the league I don’t think, I definitely think he can be a vital cog to a winning organization for many many years.
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So, what do we have in Tyler Zeller?
I think we have a legitimate quality starter at either the 4or 5 spot (depending on who you pair with him and your style of play). Initially, he might be ideally suited for a role as your first big guy off thebench, backing up both the 4 and 5 spots, but I believe starting in year 2,after he has added experience and strength, that he is a starting 4 man that can slide over and play center in a 3 big man rotation, or who can play center as a starter if need be.
A high character, low risk, medium to high upside veteran mature draft pick with a winning pedigree and valuable positional flexibility, with elite mobility for a 7 footer, and who will be a very good offensive player.
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For Indiana, picking #26, Zeller will of course be long gone by then. But I included him in my write ups because I believe that he is one of a handful of guys that I believe would be worth giving up assets to move up forin the draft for the Pacers…..the fit and the need Zeller would give us is worth going up for, in my opinion, and we know that Larry Bird coveted him lastyear, if you remember reading his comments after the draft was over.
I look for Indiana to try and move up to get him. Placeswhere Indiana can maybe get to would be Toronto at # 8 (we deal Collison to
them, plus#26, and agree to take backCalderon’s one year of high salary) Detroit at #9 (if we agree to take a badcontract….remember, Bird used to like Ben Gordon’s game), New Orleans at # 10 (if we give up Collison, #26, and maybe take back a bad contract like Ariza….no way would we take Okafor), or #14 or #16 with Houston could be in play if Zeller is still on the board at that point.
If we don’t make a move up to get him, I think more than likely that Zeller ends up at #12 with the Milwaukee Bucks. The scenarios/talkswith Houston I think only come into play if the Bucks go elsewhere, like with aMeyers Leonard or somebody else.
Will we actually make a move like I am suggesting? I thinkit is about 50/50, as I write this 2 weeks before this year’s draft. Staytuned.
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Current NBA comparable: Pau or Marc Gasol
Former NBA comparable: A poor man’s Jack Sikma
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