Hollinger on Merrill:
To be sure, there are concerns here. Merrill is average at best defensively, even in college, and he may turn out to be too flammable at the pro level for his offensive value to offset.
That said, his production and skill level suggest his draft stock is far too low. Let’s start with the fact that in our quest to find the next Duncan Robinson or Davis Bertans, someone who can launch multitudinous 3s with 40 percent accuracy, Merrill has some serious possibilities. He shot 41.0 percent from 3 and 89.3 percent from the line last season, and his career numbers from 3 are even better (42.0 percent). This wasn’t cherrypicking either — many of his attempts were off the dribble because he was the team’s primary shot-creator, and he was a volume launcher who took nearly seven a game. He has a great shot fake, too.
We’ve had a lot of good college shooters, however, and many of them were unplayable at the NBA level. The difference in Merrill’s case is how good he is on the ball for his size. He’s a 6-5 guard who appears to have decent length, and is extremely comfortably coming off of curls and playing in pick-and-rolls. While he doesn’t have the dynamism to get to the rim consistently, even with a screen, he makes the right decision darn near every time. He played in the mid-major Mountain West Conference, but the tape says that even in games against athletic SEC teams like Florida and LSU he was the best player on the court.
The numbers are pretty emphatic here. Merrill’s rate of 6.5 assists per 100 possession is a really high figure for a wing player who is supposedly just taking jump shots, but what stands out even more is his piddling 9.0 percent Turnover Rate. He’s making plays while hardly ever making mistakes. The only significant prospect with a lower Turnover Rate is Florida State’s Devin Vassell, and Vassell is a guaranteed lottery pick. Merrill is going in the late second round.
Again, Merrill was doing this in a high-usage role that saw him average 32.6 points and 6.5 assists per 100 possessions, while knocking down 41 percent of his 3s and shooting 51.5 percent on 2s. Obviously, Merrill won’t be a primary ballhandler at the NBA level, but the numbers above bode well for his capacity to operate as a second-side playmaker who has a Plan B if he’s not open from 3.
Merrill’s rebound-block-steal numbers aren’t great and signify that he’ll likely face an athletic deficit, and that correctly dampens his draft stock a bit. But in a league increasingly tilted toward skill, Merrill has it in bunches. I don’t know where that puts him on my final board yet, but at worst he’s a second-round sleeper who has been significantly undervalued. And I strongly suspect that not nearly enough people saw him this year
In comparing his evaluation of prospects to where they are ranked by the most prominent draftologists, Hollinger noticed some differences.
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