First reaction to UCLA's Solo Ball

College kept me busy and I lost my oh so precious time to excessively scout and cosplay as a journalist. But no matter! The winter break is here and a player I got to watch for one half last night was Solo Ball in a 23 point victory over the 9–5 Xavier Musketeers.

My first thoughts are as follows; Solo Ball is a player that’ll seamlessly fit into most NBA systems as a role player and possibly develop into more. On offense, he’s something of a mix between Duncan Robinson — from his shooting — and a smaller Jalen Johnson — from his driving. On defense, he reminds me of Warriors rookie Will Richard.

His main role is being a scoring guard, coming off of pin-downs, flare screens, and curls to catch and shoot. Ball is a skilled movement shooter, and this is one of the highly coveted skills for a role playing shooter.

It’s the easiest to develop a stationary shooter. It’s also the easiest to stop a stationary shooter. The easiest thing you can do against a stationary shooter is get to the spot and contest before the shot releases.

Where movement shooting counters this is the ability to hit shots while twisting your body, or getting the shot up before the defender realizes you’re going up. A stationary shooter is static, a movement shooter is much more unpredictable.

Solo’s movement shooting is amplified by how fast he is. He’s speedy, often burning his defender and drawing decent space to go up with these shots. In addition, he’s a lefty, which makes his shot harder to stop as most players are used to guarding shots from the right hand.

Ball also possesses a tight handle if he wants to switch the curl action into a drive. The junior’s driving ability itself is limited, but the pre-existence of this skill is a good foundation to build on. Solo can’t start a drive off the dribble from the perimeter like most point guards can, but he can get into driving formation off of a pass.

He can take contact on his drives, possessing good body control and staying true to a tight handle. Solo doesn’t get off-routed by bumps, and will remain on his path to the basket. His best drives are in transition and open space. Solo’s vertical allows him to take off a decent amount off the floor for a layup, even being able to score over taller defenders.

On defense, he’s quite good. To get the negatives out the way, he’s not switchable. Being a 6’4 guard, he isn’t one of those you can put on a really tall wing or center for a stop. However, this can be developed because he records an impressive 6’10 wingspan. Paired with some of his other defensive skills under the right coach, Ball may end up becoming a top-end defensive guard in the league.

To elaborate on his defensive ability, there are a lot of things he can do well. Ball has good fundamentals which allow him to be extremely viable in 1-on-1 situations. He is good at switching pace with his opponent — often matching the exact speed he competes with — which makes acceleration off the dribble harder to succeed. Ball will also get a hand up quickly when contesting an opponent’s shot, although his arms sometimes do not go all the way up. Which is a shame considering his wingspan.

A positive manner in which he uses his wingspan is for help rim protection. With his amazing 43-inch vertical–an inch below LeBron James’ 44-inch–Solo likes to leap in the way of slashers gliding to the rim. He’ll hold his arms straight up as he quickly gets in their path to alter their shot. However, Solo is best at using this ability when paired with a taller defender, as his 6 ‘4 height can make it relatively easy for skilled drivers to put the ball up over him.

Speaking of help defenses, he is extremely viable in a zone defense. With his speed, he’s able to navigate to multiple spots in one possession. You won’t have to worry about him being restricted to one spot in a zone. To add on to this, Ball gets into defensive stances with haste when a ball-handler is about to begin his attack, which forbids any immediate advantages. The only flaw with this is that his screen navigation still needs work; he will often get stuck.

With everything standing–and keeping in mind this was only one half against a team they blew out–the fundamentals still impressed me. In this new year, I’ll watch Solo Ball with keen interest as he rises in my draft board as an immediate impact role player who can plug into multiple NBA systems.