2024 Draft Prospect Analytics Insight: Kyle Filipowski

An analytics breakdown into Duke's Kyle Filipowski ahead of his sophomore campaign

Kyle Filipowski, the former five-star prospect out of Wilbraham, Massachusetts committed to play at Duke for the 2022-23 college basketball season. In his freshman year, he led Duke in points and rebounds, as well as an appearance in March Madness, where they lost to Tennessee in the second round.

The 7-footer averaged 15.1 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 1.6 assists per game in 2022-23 for Duke and was projected as a mid-late first-round pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, but shocked the world by electing to come back for his sophomore campaign. 

Season Averages

Filipowski's 22-23 Season Averages

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Filipowski’s Offense Breakdown

Filipowski's 22-23 Play Types

Strengths

Filipowski’s ability as an off ball cutter will translate to the NBA immediately. Ranking in the 80th percentile tile of all NCAA players in the 2022-23 Season. 47% of all his cut plays were a baseline cut to rim resulting in over 1.3 point per possession.

He has shown the ability to use his size and versatility to take defenders off the dribble. The right handed center prefers using his left to finish at the rim. Furthermore, 58% of his rim attacks result in a left hand finish.

Transition is another area where Filipowski strives, able to go coast to coast with ease, despite not having the quickest first step, he is still faster than the majority of the bigs in college basketball.

Areas of Improvement

Most of Filipowski's offensive game comes from him spotting up from the wing. He has all the tools to become a threat using his jabs and rip through moves, but ranks in the bottom 19th percentile of all players attacking from spot up. That being said, a multitude of reasons can cause this. One being that 92% of all his spot up attack comes from Duke running him at power forward pairing him with a center. This can cause the paint area to be clogged up when he is attacking the rim. Granted it is a small sample size (8%) when he is the center attacking from the wing his is incredibly efficient scoring about 1.3 Point per possession.

When Filipowski posts up against bigger and stronger players, he struggles to get to the rim, relying on a heavily contested floater or a fade away. This can explain him only scoring only 0.87 points per possession. However he is able to punish smaller players on switches scoring an efficient 1.2 point per possession. If he is able to use his quickness and footwork to get past bigger defenders in the post and his size and strength against smaller defenders. Watch this area of this game to take a huge leap in his sophomore season at Duke.

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Filipowski’s Shot Diet Analysis

Filipowski's 22-23 Shot Chart

Just purely looking at the numbers you would think that Filipowski is a below average shooter. He shoots 28% from three on 3.4 attempts per game which leaves a lot of room for improvement, but he has solid mechanics for a big guy. There’s also some evidence that he can improve to be a solid shooter; Filipwoski shot 76.5% from the line last year.

Why free throw percentage is such a good indicator of NBA 3-point success is because free throw percentage has been shown to be more correlated with NBA shooting percentages than college 3-point shooting. 77% of all NBA players who shot over 75% from the line in college have shot over 33% from 3 in the NBA.

If Filipowski can develop into a more consistent shooter this will help with his rim attack, forcing defenders to play up on him, he can utilize his rip through move to attack the paint, helping increase his efficiency in that area.

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Filipowski’s Defense

Filipowski's 22-23 Defensive Play Types

Filipowski is an incredibly efficient weak side defender. Always in the right spot off the ball despite only averaging 0.7 blocks per game. He uses his size well in disrupting shots, being in the right place at the right time.

He is a versatile defensive talent, preferring to play the drop coverage in pick and roll situations, worked well against guards, especially in the ACC, he only allowed 0.9 points per possession in conference play in drop coverages. However when he is asked to be switched on to a quicker guard he does struggle to slide his feet and keep up with them, allowing 1.2 points per possession.

Like his offensive Post-up game, Filipowski struggles against bigger and stronger bigs. Allowing opponents to score over 58.3% of the time in post up situations.

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Conclusion

Filipowski is a versatile player on both sides of the ball, great footwork and skill set for a big man as well as a solid shooting mechanic. If he can put it all together, he is a very intriguing prospect for the upcoming 2024 NBA draft. 

Data

Playtype, Shot type - https://synergysports.com/

FT% correlation - https://www.nba.com/stats

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