Ok, so Cole Anthony has disappointed this season. Most people who knew anything had him number one in the class..if you didn’t you probably had Wiseman number one.. And that’s just not my cup of tea.
The idea with Cole, was him being the next Kyrie, Damian Lillard type of offensive engine, scoring guard that’s coveted in today’s NBA. He dominated EYBL (elite youth basketball league) in his junior year specifically but also had more or less just as convincing senior year, putting up 26 ppg, 3 apg and 7.8 rpg and coming away with an EYBL MVP. He was more or less supposed to be an elite shooter at all levels, i.e. Off-the-catch where he’s around 86th percentile as of today. Pulling up and off the dribble he’s in the 72nd percentile and he’s more or less done that, shooting 35% from 3 on super high volume and degree of difficulty, with a farther three-point line than in years past. This has dropped the average 3 point shooting percentage of the NCAA at large by two percent. His ability to shoot off movement and the catch specifically gives Cole a bit more scalability and allows him to play with other initiators. We’ve established that Cole is a good shooter but for him to be truly valuable with that top 10 pick he’s gonna command, he kind of has to be an elite shooter. As far as shooting indicators he shot 38% in EYBL, 35% in college from the three-point line, and 75% from the FT line in college which was sub 70 for a while during the season but he progressed back to what he was as a FT shooter in EYBL. Where he shot an absurd 89% on 9 attempts per game. I personally buy him as an elite shooter, as I am a big proponent of believing guys pre-college samples. Guys like Cole, MPJ, Cam Reddish, and PJ Washington that clearly have some limiting factors in college (except for MPJ he was just really hurt) but were like ridiculous in high school usually have a little something more as far as NBA goodness, as we’ve seen with all of the aforementioned prospects.
To be one of those high load-bearing guards you kind of have to be able to do it in isolation, when things break down and your team just needs you to just get a bucket, and Cole has been pretty awesome there putting himself in the 92nd percentile in isolation situations. In his case, this tells me his pull up shooting is pretty real and that his decision making there is pretty good, which is an ancillary skill for high usage guards.
Cole has just been straight up horrible as a finisher. He is sitting firmly in the 12th percentile. He looked quite good there in high school but in college, it just has not been the same. He does a good job collapsing the defense and staying aggressive with rim pressure but his vertical pop isn’t as great as one would think considering his vertical and how often it showed itself in EYBL play. However, most of his finishing struggles are contextual. He generally plays with 2 bigs who can’t shoot to save Roy William’s life. Cole is their only perimeter talent, to the point where teams are keying in on everything Cole does and disregarding his teammates, sending doubles, and helping off of guys to get in his way. UNC just doesn’t have the personnel to punish that. Aside from the raw finishing numbers, Cole has shown flashes of creativity as a finisher and he’s just really strong, just having NBA spacing and talent around him should make the finishing a bit better, but to be honest, the finishing should not be this bad despite his context. Cole is also a smaller guy. He’s 6’3 with t-rex arms which don’t help when trying for some of these finishes. He can not extend as far as I would like on some of these finishes which hinders his upside there considerably. When going up against NBA caliber bigs, with defensive reputations such as Michigan’s Jon Teske, Virginia’s Jay Huff, and Mamadi Diakite, he has shown that he’s had some issue but then again he did not struggle as much as I would have thought against rim protectors of that caliber considering team context. Oh yeah, did I mention, Cole was also playing on a torn meniscus for a bit during the season before he sat out so this might be a little bit of a Cam Reddish situation where we see a super talented guy be derailed a bit by his team context and injuries that they just played through. All this being said I think Cole will be fine, he pressures the defense he’s a guy that will draw a good amount of fouls due to being super strong and physical which will allow him to throw his body into bigs, which offsets their timing and shot-blocking ability. It should be said this guy is seriously athletic off of two feet and was a legitimate great finisher in high school, granted he was nineteen and more physically mature than most high school seniors.
As far as his shot selection, he takes a bit too many jumpers for my liking, but at the same time, I get it. If I was Cole Anthony on a torn meniscus (for a part of this season) it would just be easier to take jumpers rather than driving and the entire other team swarming me and then I can’t really pass out because I’m playing with 2 non-floor spacing bigs and my second-best player is a guy named Leaky Black. He could still use his scoring gravity a bit more to open up passing lanes for teammates, he seems a bit too trigger happy at times and I would prefer if he deployed a Steve Nash staple and just waited once he beats guys off the dribble using his gravity until something just opens up for him. This is more or less why I am not too in on his passing as anything more than average. He can make open passes and sees the floor well enough but he’s not doing anything advanced. He is not going to be passing guys open, or really reading and dissecting the defense at a high level, he sometimes misses teammates when driving, which I am not positive if it is intentional or not because there are whispers in AAU hoop circles that Cole has a reputation of not really being the easiest guy to play with if he views you as lesser than him, (most guys are in NCAA and high school) however, that’s just speculation and I am possibly wrong. Cole suffers from the same syndrome that RJ Barrett did last year, where they had a passing mode where he takes his foot off the gas, becoming more passive and looking to get teammates looks and attack mode where the pedal is to the floor and it’s the Cole Anthony show.
Defense
Cole is not really that great of a defender, he has some tools to be ok there, but mainly his approach to defense is like I said, not great. However, He really gets after it and competes on that end. I think there’s an avenue for him not to be a net negative by just straight up trying really hard, when coupled with his quick feet and easy turning hips, and general on ball peskiness. Off of the ball, he is a pretty good team defender and in fact, dating back to high school offered some minor weakside rim protection. He is pretty good on rotations overall. Of course, like most freshmen, he can get lost sometimes and does not do a great job navigating screens. It’s not because of a lack of trying, he just has not figured it out yet which is ok, the guy is a 19-year-old. There is a world where if Cole just sucks on offense that he could become something akin to Patrick Beverley, where he just tries hard, is really strong and appears to be really pesky and he can stay with guys. However, that opens up another can of worms about mentality, it has to be discussed that Cole Anthony has always been the best player on his teams and commanded the lion's share of usage, would he be comfortable ceding that power to someone else to be a role player? Only time will tell.
Conclusion
Cole for me is really a mixed bag, he does a lot of good and a lot of bad and to make things even more confusing, he was one of the best EYBL players ever. My approach to the draft focuses mainly on the realizable upside which I believe Cole has a considerable amount of if he can get in a spacious NBA offense with another player that can take ball-handling (and in turn playmaking and decision making duties) away from him a bit and get him playing more off-ball than he has at UNC.
Here are some clips showing some of Cole’s abilities.
Player Comparison
DeVonte Graham, Kemba Walker, Frank Mason, Terry Rozier, Shane Larkin (killing it overseas would be solid in NBA), Jamal Murray
Thank you for reading our player breakdown. This breakdown was brought to you by Xavier Green- Follow him on Twitter@Notzay22. Make sure to follow @TheCloseUpMagic for all your Orlando Magic draft coverage this season.
