Kahlil Felder

Kay Felder
PG – 5’9, 176lbs - 23 years old - 2 years of experience

For a wild, ball-dominant attack minded player like Kay Felder, it figured that to go to two teams this season that sorely needed any kind of scoring bench contributions from its reserve ball handlers would be a good thing. Nope, didn’t really work like that.

In Chicago, Felder had absolutely no one to run with. Not that he would have run with them much, anyway; Felder instead drove only to score. Aggression is one thing, but barrelling into the lane without the size to finish is quite another, and pulling up for a ton of jumpers without ever being a good shooter is a third thing. Particularly when not properly collecting himself beforehand and just being, frankly, a bit reckless out there.

In Detroit, meanwhile, he just didn’t play.

His size deficiency being what it is, this leaves Felder as a tiny ball of speed that does not get results. Quick with a dynamic handle, Felder can create spacing in a way that half of the league’s point guards cannot. But he doesn’t do enough with it. He is none of a scorer, a shooter, a prober, a distributor or a defender. So what is he?

Answer: a minor league prospect, in urgent need of very quick development.

Player Plan: Expiring two-way salary. I see no reason for another; he got some air time this season, and he just doesn’t seem to have enough to overcome the size.

Kahlil Felder
PG, 5’9, 176lbs, 22 years old, 1 year of experience

Was a disruptive force in his 11 games on assignment in the D-League, and is too good for that level of competition. It does not automatically follow from there that he is a player of NBA calibre. There is, however, only one way to find out. Let him play. If there are some turnovers and some inefficient outside shooting along the way, that’s OK.

Player Plan: Two years at the minimum salary remaining, with roughly a third of his 2017/18 contract guaranteed. Worth keeping as a project, because his dynamicism is the kind of thing the team both needs and lacks.

[...] Instead, they got more shooters. They gave more roster spots to LeBron’s friends, heaped up on wings, left themselves without a tertiary playmaker, trusted Chris Andersen’s knees would suddenly lose ten years of wear and tear, and brought back pretty much the same already-aging unit as last year, except this time without any backup point guards or centres. They entered the season with little rim protection, with Channing Frye at backup centre, with no backup point guard except a young Kay Felder who they promptly did not trust with rotation minutes, and ultimately put themselves in a situation where Kyle Korver, Richard Jefferson and James Jones took up three roster spots to do pretty much the same thing.