Taking a Look at Nolan Traore’s Efficiency Struggles

Nolan Traore is the top international prospect in the 2025 NBA Draft Class and that’s very unlikely to change, but his shooting woes over the last few weeks with Saint Quentin cannot be denied and require a closer analysis. Here’s what we saw.

Nolan Traore / fiba.basketball

Nolan Traore’s status towards the top of the 2025 NBA Draft class is largely indisputable. He has dominated his age group and at only 18 years old, proving capable of being the primary ballhandler, point guard, and creator for a professional team. Few prospects prove worthy of that responsibility at this age. 

But Traore has struggled over the last few weeks, particularly with efficiency. On the season, he’s averaging 11.5 points, 1.7 rebounds, 4.8 assists, and 2.7 turnovers per game on 36/30/72 shooting splits. Those splits are concerning, and largely driven by the last few weeks where he’s shot 16-of-58 from the field over Saint-Quentin’s previous six games.

We decided to look at all 58 field goal attempts and sort them into three categories: good shots, bad shots, and late clock (game and shot clock) shots. 

For starters, the shot selection is mostly good. Objectively, roughly 32 of the field goal attempts were decent shots, 14 of them were bad, and 13 were late-clock scenarios. The late-clock scenarios are rough, and we’ve seen these drag down a prospect’s shooting percentages before. Luka Doncic was the primary creator for Real Madrid in his final season overseas and ended up only shooting 31 percent from beyond the arc across all competitions. Traore is succumbing to a similar fate, and while you’d like to see a better conversion in these scenarios he does appear to be Saint-Quentin’s best option. 

Traore’s bad shots are primarily shots he is forcing through pressure and contests. None of them are alarming. He gets out of control on drives and will throw up a shot through traffic and hope for a foul call that’s never coming, he talks himself into the occasional contested mid-range jumper or step-back three, and his worst violations are a lone (Patrick Ewing voice) one-legged fading away wing three-pointer as well as some late clock scenarios that he brought upon himself.  

The main area for concern lies within Traore’s quality shot attempts. For more than half of your field goal attempts to be quantified as quality shots (again, objectively speaking), and still seeing a drop in efficiency is concerning. Good shots should be going in. That’s why they're good shots. 

The first reason for the low conversion rate is how poorly Traore is shooting on his stepback three. Teams are almost leaving him open on this shot or resorting to soft contests. They are happy to concede it, and Traore is not making them pay for it. His floater is not falling at all, the attempts are limited but truly don’t think he’s made one floater over this six-game sample. That has to change. 

Finally, his driving angles are bad. He is not exploding to the rim to finish, even when the opportunity is there. He appears to be deliberately choosing bad shot angles inside of 10 feet, and relying on tough spin and touch on his finishes. He especially has this problem when going left, and his confidence in his left-hand finishes seems to be at an all-time low. 

We don’t know exactly what’s causing this for Traore, but the step-up to senior competition appears to be a part of it. Against Paris Basketball and LDLC ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne - two EuroLeague teams - he shot a combined 2-for-23 from the field. His lack of explosion to the rim may very well be driven by the fact that he’s getting fewer fouls called, and getting his shot blocked more because the quality of defense is considerably better than what he saw at youth levels. 

Traore needs to return to explosive finishing and embrace getting his shot blocked, missing out on foul calls, and probably committing a few more charges than he would like. He’s got good size, length, and athleticism for a guard. Those need to be traits he utilizes to improve his accuracy at the rim. It’s an advantage he has over too many other guard prospects to let it go to waste.  

Whether these shooting woes are just a rut or a sign of deeper skillset issues will be up to Traore. The talent he’s shown over the past few years indicates he’ll find a way out of this as he adjusts to the senior game but for now, it’s something all scouts and front offices will continue to monitor.

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