Jaylen Wells and the responsibilities of an NBA shooter
Shooting is more than a percentage stat and requires more nuance than any other skill when evaluating a prospect's value as a shooter. Jaylen Wells checks all the boxes.
Just over half a decade ago, the NBA was the victim of the Warriors’ boundary-pushing offense, featuring shooters, athletes and quick decision-makers over positional size. This dominant and unprecedented style caused the NBA to overcorrect to an absurd degree, bringing about the five-out and no-big lineups that dominated the late 2010s and early 2020s.
The over-corrections have since quelled, but some of the ideas that were once seen as extreme changes to the game have become mainstays. It’s hard to find a team that isn’t playing with all five of their players on the perimeter. The value of size has not gone away, yet mobility’s value has skyrocketed. Bigs who can show and recover, be mobile and drop and fully switch.
For wings, the changes have been silent yet huge. Coming off an era dominated by Kobe Bryant and his impersonators, nowadays the shooting guard position is one of the hardest to define. Players like Luka Dončić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who are prolific shot creators with wing size now hold full-time point guard duties and anything that had once differentiated shooting guards from small forwards has become what differentiates broader positions like wings, forwards and bigs.
In this era, shooting has become more important than ever, but has also become more complex than ever. So what is required of the modern NBA shooter?
This question will be answered as we break down the skillset of Washington State junior, Jaylen Wells.
MORE
The story of Jaylen Wells is an interesting one already, and he has yet to suit up for an actual NBA team.
The 6’8” wing had only played two years of varsity in high school, largely because he entered his freshman year over a full foot shorter than he currently is. Over the following two years, Wells grew to 6’6” and earned his spot on varsity at long last, going on to commit to Sonoma State, an NCAA Division II school.
In his freshman season, Wells would earn a spot on the CCAA Honorable Mention Team but would receive little Division I interest. That came following his breakout sophomore year, where Wells averaged 22.4 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.6 assists, winning CCAA Player of the Year and finally getting his shot to play at the Division I level with Washington State.
In his single season with the Cougars, Wells would put himself on the map, earning a starting spot about halfway through the season and never looking back. He played his best basketball in the last month of the season, leading the Cougars to a top-25 finish at the season’s close and a seven-seed in the NCAA tournament.
Even with the atypical route Wells has taken to the NBA draft, he’s garnered enough momentum to be able to stay in the draft when many of his peers withdrew.
So what makes Wells different and how does it pertain to the idea of the modern wing at the highest level? We’ll start with the shooting.
Shooting in the NBA is the most valuable skill one can have on the wing, yet one of the most oversimplified skills by the broader scouting community. Frequently, shooting is dumbed down to three-point shooting, and three-point shooting is then dumbed down further into simple three-point percentage and three-point attempts.
The issue with this is that it lacks context and nuance.
Let’s think of a 6’5”-6’8” wing who shoots 10 three-point attempts per 100 possessions on a 40%+ clip. Clearly, the player is a good shooter and if you were to leave him alone in a gym to shoot as many shots as his heart desires, he’d make a healthy clip of them. But is he an NBA-caliber shooter or simply a specialist at the college level?
That’s when film and understanding the broader spectrum of shooting comes into play. Hitting the spot-up looks is important, and going back to Wells, he does that better than almost anybody in the class, ranking in the 89th percentile nationally on catch-and-shoot attempts (via Synergy Sports).
If we look at just his open catch-and-shoot attempts, we can deduce that Wells — aided by a (roughly) one-and-a-half motion stroke that is incredibly quick off the wrist with impeccable footwork — is at the very least the hypothetical player we discussed.
Shooting without a defender in your face is valuable. Outside of a transition layup, the open catch-and-shoot three is arguably the best shot in basketball if you’re a capable enough shooter, which Wells is (20-of-47 on unguarded catch-and-shoot threes).
However, these aren’t shots you can count on in the NBA, especially late in the post-season when you are playing the longest, most athletic, best-coached teams who will have a hand in the shot pocket of every attempt.
The difference between a team like the now-crowned NBA Champion Boston Celtics and the second-round-exit Oklahoma City Thunder is the willingness of their shooters to take these shots over the outstretched hand of a defender. You can count on Boston’s shooters to set their feet and take a shot regardless of the contest, which, even if the shot doesn’t fall, keeps the defense honest and opens up the floor for Boston’s high-volume attackers.
Wells has proven himself more than capable once again in this regard. He took nearly twice the amount of guarded catch-and-shoot three-point attempts as he did unguarded attempts, shooting only slightly worse despite that (42.6% unguarded catch-and-shoot threes; 41.7% guarded catch-and-shoot threes).
As long as these shots aren’t coached out of Wells’ diet, these are valuable and translatable shots in the league.
MORE
The next step in dealing with a closeout is putting the ball on the floor. While Wells’ handle is still a bit stiff and loose, he knows his limits and doesn’t try to force them.
To limit dribbles, Wells will lengthen his strides and utilize strong bumps to create space rather than trying to put a defender in the mixer. Wells prefers to get to his jumper in these settings, which is likely why he prefers to go left when he puts the ball on the floor out of spot-up possessions.
Wells ranked in the 89th percentile nationally on dribble jumper attempts, scoring 102 points on just 97 attempts.
Despite the limited handle, there was a decent variety in these attempts. Wells can pump-fake and take a pound-dribble side-step to free himself up or attack the defender’s top foot and get into a pull-up as they try to slide back into position.
Wells’ balance and length leave little room for step-backs or shots utilizing a lot of backward lean, as he’s adept at getting the defender to move backward by dribbling into their space before quickly and smoothly pulling up into his jumper.
He possesses solid positional awareness on these limited dribble attempts too, being able to quickly cross over if the defender reacts to the initial move. He’ll stay at one to three dribbles on these attempts, but there are clear flashes of more beyond the surface.
Occasionally, Wells will get all the way to the cup, although his handle will need to tighten a bit to be someone who truly applies pressure on the rim. The drives are slower and more thought out than some of the more athletic wings in this year’s class, but the skills he showcases on these will translate even better than most of those players’ bull rush attacks.
He also has a funky floater he’ll get to when he’s forced to pick up his dribble, usually setting it up by leaning into his defender with his pivot foot in tact, then moving towards the basket and flicking it off his palm.
The importance of these closeout attacks can’t be understated. It’s not good enough to simply be a great shooter, you have to truly be able to score the basketball. Wells can do that.
The more nuanced importance of these attacks comes in an example where they were lacking, highlighted by Bowser2Bowser on X (formerly known as Twitter) when looking at where Oklahoma City fell short in the postseason.
There is much more to Wells’ game, as well as a handful of clear weaknesses that shouldn’t lack in importance to teams looking to draft him.
For one, there’s potential with Wells in the pick-and-roll, where he generated 0.983 points per possession as a pick-and-roll ball handler (including passing possessions). His natural poise allows him to use the inherent advantage of a screen to its fullest capability, although he was relatively low volume in his usage of the play as a weapon.
For weaknesses, Wells will have to add to his frame and handle if he wishes to be more dynamic. His play type breakdown was almost exclusively spot-ups, running less than one isolation per game despite his scoring pedigree due to his lack of explosiveness and creativity creating advantages for himself.
However, when it comes to a shooter, Wells is exactly what teams should be looking for, as he checks all the boxes, step-by-step down the list. He hits the open ones and the contested ones, but can also generate something when both are unavailable. Shooting in the league is a complex skill; one that requires more than just the ability to knock down a shot.
Looking back at our profile above of a 6’5”-6’8” wing shooting 40% on 10 threes per 100 possessions, it’s clear that Wells is more than that profile suggests, no matter how valuable it may seem just on the surface.