Reaching the Ceiling: Evaluating Dereck Lively’s Offensive Upside

If Duke product Dereck Lively II is going to reach his ceiling at the NBA level, he’ll need to become much more productive on the offensive end.

The top high school recruit in his class, Dereck Lively II entered his freshman season at Duke with incredibly high expectations. While he showed enough to be a clear first-round talent as a one-and-done prospect, he has a lot of work to do if he wants to reach his ceiling.

Defensively, Lively was a monster last season with the Blue Devils. He was one of the best rim protectors in the class, producing 2.4 blocks per contest against elite competition. There’s no question that side of the ball will translate at the next level, as the defensive-minded prospect should get lottery consideration for the defensive upside alone.

However, if he’s going to reach his NBA ceiling, it’s the offense that will need to improve tremendously. While he’s an efficient interior scorer today, converting on 72% of his twos last season, those shots were mostly easy dunks. He’s a good lob threat with a large catch radius and is effective in pick-and-roll scenarios. Lively also generated a ton of second chance points, whether it was on his own put-backs or kicking out to open teammates following an offensive board. At times, he even showed some signs of playmaking with his good positional vision.

Lively generally finishes with power, but has improved his touch. He’ll need to get better with both hands and develop more post moves to generate his own looks, as today he is almost exclusively created for. Lively also struggles with physicality. That’s why he’s not a very assertive scorer, taking just 3.4 shots from the floor per game as a freshman. In the meantime, he does move and relocate well off the ball today and gets himself open for easy looks.

His jumper will be a huge swing skill moving forward, as he made just 15.4% of his 3-pointers last season and also struggled in the midrange. Furthermore, he shot just 60% from the free throw line at Duke. With that in mind, Lively’s mechanics are solid, especially for a big so there is real reason for optimism. Shooting would open up a lot for his game, as defenses don’t play him honest as of today. This would allow him to pop on screens and overall space the floor for his teammates as well.

If the 7-footer can put together the offensive side of the ball and be more of an aggressive and productive scorer, he could end up being among the best two-way talents in this class and a long-term NBA starter. It will be fascinating to see how he performs in pre-draft workouts and if teams buy his upside on that end of the floor. Lively is also a prospect that would benefit from being drafted into a system with the time and patience to allow him to develop over time.

Regardless, the flashes and tools are there for him to be a really good NBA player. 

---

Want to join the discussion? Like Draft Digest on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest NBA Draft news. You can also meet the team behind the coverage.