Full transparency here: I wanted the Wizards to snag Bilal Coulibaly in the 2023 draft when I did a preliminary run of my stat-based draft analysis tool — Ye Olde Draft Analyzer (YODA for short). Let’s just say he popped in the numbers.
Additional analysis bumped him down a little because he played a chunk of the season for his parent franchise’s under-21 team. Still, the final grade in YODA said Coulibaly was worthy of being a top five pick in nearly any draft. The Wizards traded up a spot to select him seventh overall.
All of this is to say I’m a fan. I want him to succeed, and not just because Coulibaly becoming a star would increase the odds of my favorite team someday doing something more than…well…what they’ve done for the past four decades.
All of that preamble is a long way of saying that my rooting interest and analysis are in some conflict. While there was a lot of optimism (including from me) about Coulibaly’s rookie year, the analytical side of my brain is less enthusiastic.
Let’s start with this: perhaps the biggest positive from Coulibaly’s rookie season was that he played 1,715 minutes. That’s good and meaningful experience for a teenage rookie. Some good-and-better players got comparable playing time as teen rookies, including:
- Jrue Holiday, 1,767 minutes
- Jamal Murray, 1,764
- Bradley Beal, 1,745
- RJ Barrett, 1,704
- Josh Giddey, 1,700
- Coby White, 1,674
- Kyrie Irving, 1,558
- Jaren Jackson Jr., 1,515
- Alperen Sengun, 1,489
- LaMelo Ball, 1,469
Giannis Antetokounmpo, who missed just five games as a rookie, played 1,897 total minutes, but Coulibaly’s minutes per game were a shade higher than the Greek Freak’s 26.2 mpg.
Coulibaly’s defense elicited much praise throughout the season, and he definitely had some stellar moments. He took on tough covers and acquitted himself decently…for a teenage rookie. On/off data and other defensive metrics indicate his overall defensive impact was fairly minimal.
That’s not to say he defended poorly. As mentioned above, he was fine for a teenage rookie. However, “fine for a teenage rookie” is not the same as “good” or “impactful” at the NBA level. In other words, while defense was a relative strength for him this season, he needs significant improvement on that end of the floor.
The bigger issue with Coulibaly was on offense. His offensive rating (points produced per 100 possessions) was 103 — -11.9 points per 100 possessions below league average. As I wrote before the season, that kind of inefficiency isn’t necessarily a concern for a teenage rookie. Rookies of all ages typically have a rough transition to the NBA, and that’s true of 18 and 19 year olds as well.
But, that efficiency came on just 14.2% usage. Average is 20.0%. Often, low usage players can have higher efficiency because they’re being more selective. Basically, they’re taking easier shots (open looks, layups and dunks), which they can convert at a higher rate. As usage goes up, so does defensive attention, and that often increases the degree of difficulty for offensive players.
This season, Coulibaly had the usage rate of a selective role player trying to make the easier plays, and he was still -11.9 relative to average.
That said, I’m still not worried about the efficiency. The bigger concern is the usage rate. Of the 114 teenage rookies with at least 500 minutes as a rookie in my database, Coulibaly ranks 105th in usage. If I drop the minutes screen to 250 minutes, he’s 120th out of 132.
Now, the rank itself isn’t important — I’m mentioning it for illustration. The point of concern, as I wrote in the preseason — is that his usage landed below 15%. In studying teenage rookies before the season, I found what I’ll call a Patrick Williams line.
Williams finished his rookie year with 14.8% usage, and while he’s improved some since then, he’s at best been a kinda-okay defensive role player. Go below the Williams line, and there are role players and worse — James Young, R.J. Hampton, Dante Exum (who flamed out of the NBA and worked himself back to the league as a near-average role player this year), Darius Bazley, Nassir Little, JT Thor, Dyson Daniels, Justise Winslow, Derrick Jones, Terrance Ferguson, Max Christie.
Go above the Williams line and there’s Aaron Gordon, Andrew Bynum, and Giannis.
Is it a hard and fast Rule? No. There are plenty of role players and busts among teenage rookies with usage rates north of 15%. But the eventual quality of teenage rookies increases as usage goes up — not in a linear way, but enough to be persuasive.
My theory is that usage is a marker for trying to make plays. For example, 19-year-old Kevin Durant’s offensive rating was nearly 10 points per 100 possessions below league average. But his 26.4% usage rate indicated a guy working to make things happen who just wasn’t quite ready for NBA competition…yet.
In the case of Coulibaly, I think he has the physical tools to excel in the NBA. He’s quick, bouncy, and long-limbed, and he seemed unintimidated facing modern day basketball deities.
If there’s one thing giving me some doubt about whether he develops into a franchise building block instead of a decent role player, it’s the penchant for gliding up and down the court without actively participating in the offensive action and trying to make plays.
Sure, some of that could be related to the possession-guzzling tendencies of certain teammates. And some could be on the coaching staff for not designing and running more actions to get him involved.
But, I also saw every minute of every Wizards game this season, and watched him turn down an array of opportunities to at least try to make plays.
My analytically driven concerns should not be construed as an argument that Coulibaly’s future is written. Even my nerd brain doesn’t think that. His Player Production Average (PPA for short) was 49 this season (in PPA, 100 is average, higher is better, and replacement level is 45), which is a little below average for a teenage rookie but not by much.
And, his rating is in the same general range as other teen rookies who had a rough start like Jamal Murray, Giannis, Aaron Gordon, Jermaine O’Neal, Devin Booker, and Zach LaVine. And that 49 is significantly better than some recognizable names like Brandon Ingram, Malik Monk, and Andrew Bynum
More encouragement? The worst performing teenage rookie with at least 250 minutes — with a -27 PPA — was DeShawn Stevenson, who played 13 seasons in the NBA, and a starter for the Dallas Mavericks during their championship run in 2011.
In other words, Coulibaly doesn’t turn 20 until after this year’s draft, and he’ll be among the league’s youngest players next season. An offseason of work on his body, his mental approach and skills could set him up for a quantum jump in performance.
Of course, that could just be wishcasting from the fanboy part of my brain.
Oh wait, I promised a performance EKG.
My “performance EKGs” (Coulibaly’s is below) tracks a player’s production game-by-game throughout the season. The red line is the player’s full season PPA after each to that point in the season. The gray line is a five-game moving average, the blue is a 10-game moving average, and the pink is a 20-game average.
Observations
- In the latter portions of Coulibaly’s season, I heard online speculation that perhaps he was hitting The Rookie Wall. The ekg suggests that if he hit the proverbial Wall, it was fairly early in the season — after perhaps 20-25 games. I theorized at first that perhaps the performance dip was related to an injury (I recalled that he’d missed a game). However, that was game 15 of the season, which preceded one of his better five-game stretches of the season.
- Coulibaly had six five-game stretches that rated average or better. The last was from the five games played December 6-15. His best 10-game stretch scored an 88 in my PPA metric (that was in November). His top 20-game run was from November 3 to December 15, and it rated an 83.
- This season, Coulibaly had one game with a PPA score that cracked 200 (the November 12 loss to the Brooklyn Nets), 12 games that rated 100 or better, and 32 games (51%) that rated below replacement level.
- When I wrote about Deni Avdija earlier in the week, I mentioned my consistency index. As I mentioned then, zero would mean perfectly consistent (no variation in performance) and a higher score means less consistent. Avdija scored a 78. Coulibaly’s consistency index score was 127. As I wrote then, I’m not applying any analysis to the consistency index until I’ve had the chance to run it on more players. For now, this is a “hey how ‘bout that” bullet point.