Rashad Vaughn – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile

June 20th, 2019

Rashad Vaughn

SG/SF – 6’6, 210lbs – Born 16th August 1996

   Delaware Blue Coats   

An NBA first-round pick only three short years ago, Vaughn fell out of the NBA by not hitting enough shots or playing enough defence. This is the era of the three-and-D non-star wing; invariably, teams want their role players to do both of those things. Vaughn, however, did neither consistently.

A bounce-back season was thus required. One in which he had some consistent employment and opportunity to work on his individual skills, as well as better playing in rhythm on both ends of the court and knowing what to do when the ball was not in his hands. He sort of managed this, yet the advanced metrics tell the story of a player struggling to find his role.

Vaughn can score the ball, and has improved as both a shooter and a finisher at the rim throughout his professional career. The problem is more one of what he does when he is not getting shots. Vaughn can get static, not moving around screens or looking to cut much, and not seeking to be a decoy. He instead seeks to be a scorer, something which becomes sub-optimal when he only has an impact on the game with the ball in his hands. Defensively, Vaughn lacks for consistent focus, and although he has the size and decent physical profile to potentially be a good defensive player on the wing, he has to want to be that more.

Vaughan is still young, still aged only 23, and despite the fact that he has now played four years of professional basketball, he is younger than many of those graduating seniors we considered as being draft-worthy this summer. This in turn gives him further upside still, and he should not be given up on from an NBA point of view when still this young. Progress has however been steady rather than distinct, and Vaughn has a lot more still to do.

– 20th June, 2019

• This above is extracted from the following page in the The Basketball Manifesto, an entirely free 3,775 page, 1.2 million word-ish basketball reference book which contains reviews, strategies, ideas, opinions, and a whole lot of scouting on men’s world basketball.

– View tons more player profiles like this from the Manifesto here.