NBA Draft: Amari Bailey Fits the New Thunder Mold
A quick glance at the Thunder’s most recent draft picks reveals a common theme: players who can comfortably put the ball on the floor, play-make for themselves or others, and have the ability or potential to both score and defend reasonably well.
To put it succinctly, the Thunder aren’t just looking for one or two trick ponies that can only feed off of others. They are looking for dynamic players in the NBA Draft.
Enter Amari Bailey, a 6-foot-5 wing who just declared for the draft after one season with the UCLA Bruins. There he averaged 11.2 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists, and 1.1 steals in about 27 minutes per game, across the 30 games he played in.
No, Bailey’s numbers aren’t going to wow anyone and recent mock drafts bear that out as they have him falling into the second round almost every time, but there’s a reason why he was considered a top 10 college prospect coming out of high school.
Bailey isn’t some cream-of-the-crop athlete who scouts are just falling over themselves to see, but he is quite the versatile player who can do a little bit of everything. He’s shown great competitiveness and instincts on the defensive side of the ball while flashing his ability as a playmaker, ball-handler, and scorer, offering true two-way promise.
This past season, Bailey posted a respectable 2.6 steal rate and combined that with a 1.4 block rate, really solid defensive indicators for a freshman with a usage rate north of 23 percent. And the tape backs those numbers up. He’s a willing defender who is consistently working to stay in front of defenders and does a great job using his hands to poke balls loose and swat shots.
Offensively, Bailey is more of a mixed bag.
While he shot better than 65% at the rim and knocked down 38.9 percent of his 54 3-pointers, he also hit just 36.6 percent of his mid-range jumpers and finished the season with a negative assist-to-turnover ratio despite being hailed for his play-making capability coming out of high school.
The good news is that he just turned 19 years old in February so if Oklahoma City wanted to take a chance on the unpolished Bruin, the Thunder’s coaching staff will have plenty of time to whip his game into shape.
And if Bailey is able to fine-tune his game, the Thunder could be looking at a wing who can knock down shots both off the catch and off the dribble, run pick-and-roll actions, and reliably defend well enough to warrant consistent playing time and possibly a starting gig one day.
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