Why Devin Vassell is one of the NBA’s most underrated players

Imagine a player who averages 20 points, 4.7 assists and 4 rebounds per game on 47.4 FG%, 37.4 3P% and 80 FT% while also having 1.2 steals and 0.4 Adds blocks. To put this into perspective, only 25 players averaged 20, 4 and 4 last season, and 10 of those landed on an All-NBA team. Here’s the full list of players who have achieved these points – of course, these stats seem to be a good measure of how good a player is. Kyle Kuzma is the lowest-ranked player in The Ringer’s recently released top 100 player rankings, and he was not ranked in the ESPN rankings.

What if someone told you that the player you had in mind was Devin Vassell in the 46 games he played after Keldon Johnson moved to the bench? It feels like maybe people aren’t talking about how good he actually was last season, right? Especially when you compare him to a player like Jalen Williams of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who is ranked 35th by The Ringer and 44th by ESPN. Those same networks have Vassell ranked 71st or unranked (the only other player ESPN has included). Her top 100 alongside Victor Wembanyama is Chris Paul with 99).

Obviously, the stock of players contributing to a competing team is increased compared to players playing for a lower team. But if that’s all people want to use to differentiate players, then Chet Holmgren is better than Wemby talk. The team’s situation, expectations and goals all play a role in these discussions. So should we hold it against Vassell that Spurs were a -10 with Wemby off the pitch? That’s why we need to look at the numbers a little more closely.

Before we move on, we should note the following: We will be using the aforementioned Jalen Williams compared to Vassell. That’s not to say he’s not ranked right, because J-Dub is a great, great player and deserves his flowers. This is simply to point out that Vassell is closer to him than CJ McCollum (one of the 25 players in the chart above, ranked 76th by The Ringer and 84th by ESPN).

Looking at their basic stats for the entire season, we see that J-Dub has the advantage across the board, as we only used Vassell’s numbers after Keldon was benched 28 games into the season.

He’s just off the mark when it comes to counting stats, but he really comes out on top when it comes to advanced stats and shooting efficiency. Not shown here is that J-Dub was 19.1 to 15.7 in PER, 62.1 to 57.8 in true shooting percentage and 2.3 to 0 in the box plus/minus. All of this shows that J-Dub is great and has a high status for a reason.

That’s why it’s important to see Vassell this year as the player he was after Keldon went to the bench. It’s also important to look at who these two shared the courtroom with. The most commonly used 5-man lineup with J-Dub included him along with Josh Giddey, Lu Dort, Chet and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for nearly 800 minutes in 63 games (12.7 minutes per game). Those five were +10 per 100 possessions at the time. Of the 10 most commonly used lineups with J-Dub, he shared the spot with either Chet or Shai in all 10 – all three were featured in half of those lineups. When you look at the most commonly used 5-man lineups that Vassell has been a part of, you can see a stark contrast.

The most commonly used lineup for Vassell was the starters: Vassell with Julian Champagnie, Tre Jones, Jeremy Sochan and Wemby. These five played a combined whopping 391 minutes (10.9 minutes per game) in 37 games. In those minutes, the Spurs actually had a net positive rating of +4.1 per 100 possessions. The second-most used lineup with Vassell swapped Champagnie for Keldon, and in their 141 minutes in 39 games, the Spurs had a +20.5 per 100 possessions. Experimentation, minute restrictions and an overall lack of depth are reasons why the Spurs’ record is poor and Vassell’s advanced numbers don’t look any better.

Given the overall lack of talent and shooting prowess on the roster (the Thunder shot 38.9% on 34.2 three-point attempts per game, the Spurs 34.7% on 36.4 attempts), Vassell had his work cut out for him night after night. With bball-index.com we can create a leaderboard to find out who had the best shot quality in different cases. In the table below, we have the following statistics for the 305 players with at least 751 minutes played last season: Overall Shot Quality, 3PT Shot Quality, One-on-One Shot Quality, Rim Shot Quality, Homemade Shot Quality, Half-Court Shot Quality, PnR Ballhandler Shot quality, spot-up shot quality, off-ball shot quality and isolation shot quality.

Here are Vassell’s rankings for each:

Overall shot quality: 282 (tied with Luka Dončić)

3PT Shot Quality: 270 (same as Tyrese Maxey)

One-on-one shot quality: 225 (same as Jae Crowder)

Rim Shot Quality: 184 (same as Chris Paul)

Quality of self-made recordings: 287 (same as Zion Williamson and Jeff Green)

Quality of half-court shots: 284 (tied with Brandon Miller)

PnR Ballhandler Shot Quality: 125 (same as 46 others)

Spot-Up Shot Quality: 246 (same as 21 others)

Shot quality off the ball: 277

Isolation Shot Quality: 233 (same as 10 others)

This isn’t necessarily an indication of Vassell’s ability or inability to get good looks, as these numbers don’t give us any context for the game. Knowing who was guarding him, who was on the field, and what the defense looked like behind his defender impacted Vassell’s shooting quality. What these numbers tell us, however, is that we should be impressed with the 19.5 ppg Vassell scored on his shooting breaks considering his shooting quality is so poor.

In case you’re curious about where J-Dub ranks in the same recording quality categories, here you are:

Overall shot quality: 215

3PT shot quality: 121

One-on-one shot quality: 130

Rim Shot Quality: 147

Quality of the self-made shot: 217

Half-court shot quality: 226

PnR Ballhandler Shot Quality: 172

Spot-up shot quality: 160

Shot quality off the ball: 37

Isolation shot quality: 120

Where J-Dub really stands out is on the defensive side. While Vassell is no slouch in this regard, he hasn’t been given matchups as difficult as J-Dub. Additionally, J-Dub guards a wider variety of positions due to his size, strength and athleticism. Perhaps with the Spurs’ new additions this offseason and a slightly lighter offensive load, we’ll see Vassell shine better defensively. There isn’t really much to talk about on defense between the two at the moment.

That brings us back to offense and what we might expect from Vassell this season. When there are more people who can handle the ball and get the team into sets, it takes the ball out of his hands a little bit. That’s not a bad thing. He will be able to break away from screens more often, be used as a spot-up shooter, and find his way into the air against a rotating defense. And if he’s tasked with creating offense, opponents shouldn’t feel so comfortable depending on his teammates. Just think of all the attention Wemby will receive every time he’s on the pitch – in year two, Wemby’s presence alone will open up more space for Vassell to work with.

Add it all up and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Vassell average 23+ per game. Before you freak out and think that’s a wild take, there have been five teams that had two players average at least 23 ppg (seven if you want to include Joel Embiid and Julius Randle, who each played fewer than 50 games) . Remember Vassell averaging 20 points in his last 46 games? Funnily enough, Wemby also played 46 games from the same starting point by the end of the season. He scored 23 ppg in those games. Both Vassell and Wemby have plenty of scope to improve their strike rate as they are able to shoot more efficiently with a higher strike rate than last season. Not to mention the possibility of them getting to the free throw line more often.

With the Spurs likely to win a decent chunk more games than last year and Vassell playing a big part in that, he will be in the spotlight. And by the end of the year, NBA fans and media across the country will be talking about how good he is. We might even see him shoot up some of these rankings.