Tommy Williams SG/SF – 6’5, 220lbs – Born 23rd February 1993 Erie BayHawks Williams was designated as a returning player to the BayHawks for his second season after spending a full campaign with the team in 2017-18, making the roster initially via the local tryout route. This season, however, he was cut after only ten games, averaging 2.7 points, 3.0 rebounds and 1.4 fouls per game in that time. Williams’s résumé prior to his successful tryout was two years at East Georgia State junior college, a year far down the bench at East Tennessee State, before finishing his college career at Division II Augusta, averaging 13.1 points and 8.2 rebounds per game. Williams is a powerfully built 6’6 power forward who plays in the post and through the offensive glass, who beat up on less physical and less fast opponents at the Division II level. For the BayHawks, though, with the post no longer as good of an option, he was instead a plethora of missed jump shots and moving screens. It is unlikely he will return next year. – 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.
Craig Sword SG – 6’3, 196lbs – Born 16th January 1994 Erie BayHawks Anytime a 6’3 guard records more than a block per game, you are going to remember it. Sword has now completed his second consecutive season with the BayHawks, starting out as a local tryout player initially but now becoming a very important part of their rotation and their defence. Swords’s stocks totals were part of his game over his four-year Mississippi State career, yet they were drowned out more by his very inefficient outside shooting and an incredibly high number of turnovers for a non-primary ball-handling offensive player. Now, though, he is recording almost as many blocks as turnovers. A good athlete with Bismack Biyombo’s arms, Sword has been in a much more off-ball focused offensive role here with Erie, allowing him to use his driving game more against close-outs and single sides of the court rather than having to create from up top. Never the best shooter, Sword can at least get to the basket in single coverage, invariably going to his right hand to do so, and although the handle is a bit loose and the propensity for committing charging fouls high, it is hard to check his good first step once he has gotten going. This is particularly the case in transition, where he simply loves to be. Defensively, as the stocks suggest, Sword likes to get involved. He makes plays on the ball like a young Matisse Thybulle in his prime, and while gambling and overhelping is an inevitable sideeffect of this, it is a price worth paying considering the number of possessions he wins. Sword needs to be in line-ups with good guards, handlers and creators alongside him if he is to succeed, because he does not do those things […]
Jordan Sibert SG – 6’4, 187lbs – Born 1st August 1992 Erie BayHawks After two years down on the Ohio State Buckeyes bench, making minimal contributions in very limited minutes, Sibert transferred to Dayton for his upperclassman seasons, and massively improved his output to subsequently have a four-years-and-counting professional career. Indeed, he actually received a 10-day call-up from the BayHawks’ parent club, the Atlanta Hawks, in February of this year. They even played in for four minutes. It has been quite the turnaround for the man. When he was with Ohio State, Sibert simply missed his shots. The vast majority of the shots he would attempt would be jumpers, and he missed nearly all of them. Immediately upon transferring to the Flyers, however, his shooting efficiency improved, and it is the fact that he shot 38.2% from three on such a high volume this season that got him the spot on the Hawks’ roster (even if it was only to meet league minimum roster size requirements). High efficiency high volume shooting is at a premium, and that is what Sibert has been able to put up this season. A good athlete and fairly fast, Sibert is slightly undersized for the two guard position without a great deal of length to go with that, yet he is a strong player who has improved his defence and his finishing to go with his better outside shooting. Almost entirely foregoing the mid-range areas, it is all threes and drives for Sibert, not a man to create much with the handle but someone who can raise up over a defence, attack closeouts, drive baseline and always be confident in his shooting ability. Also improved defensively, Sibert’s lack of size limits his effectiveness in many match-ups in this regard and he does not […]
Anthony Mosby PG – 6’3, 160lbs – Born 8th April 1996 Erie BayHawks AJ Mosby – or Anthony Mosby, depending on where you look – has just completed his first professional season out of Alcorn State. Not a powerhouse team in a powerhouse conference, exactly, and the 13-23 record that the Braves (I had to look up their nickname) posted in his two seasons with them in SWAC play meant no postseason platform for Mosby to perform on. The G-League Draft does however like to throw people into the spotlight, and after being drafted 36th overall by Northern Arizona and spending half the year there, Mosby was subsequently acquired by Erie from the available player pool to finish the season, thus completing an entire professional campaign in the NBA’s official minor league. Standing 6’3 but otherwise tiny, Mosby is a scoring point guard who uses a barrage of lefty floaters to score around the basket, flanked with a pull-up three with a quick release. As a senior at Alcorn State, he rated as 90th percentile in pick-and-roll ball-handling, 86th percentile in spot-up shooting, 87th percentile in isolation and 81st percentile in shooting off screens. That’s a lot of efficiency on a lot of shots, and so although it has not entirely carried over here into his first professional season, where the defenders all got bigger and stronger, Mosby nevertheless exhibited this knack for scoring at both of his G-League stints. It wasn’t a bad first season, all told. Considering his tiny size and the limitations this will always put on him defensively and around the basket, perhaps Mosby can use his time in the G-League to develop his playmaking skills for others, something that naturally is second to his own scoring desires currently. Yet Mosby commits few errors […]
Jaylen Morris SG – 6’5, 185lbs – Born 19th September 1995 Erie BayHawks Morris played his way into the NBA last season in his first professional campaign out of Division II Molloy, signing two 10-day contracts and then a minimum salary deal for the remainder of the season with the Atlanta Hawks. Although they ended it at the start of last offseason, he quickly received a two-way with the Milwaukee Bucks; after that was ended in January, Morris was picked back up by Erie to finish the season, and therefore now has two years of NBA experience. That is quite a lot for a G-League player. What gets Morris into the league in this way is his perceived defensive potential. A rotator and keen help player, Morris has decent size and athleticism for the wing, and uses that to try and apply pressure on the unglamorous end. He overhelped quite a bit this season, perhaps overly trying to impress in that role, yet on the flip side, he also was a transition beast this year. Lacking the ability to break down a defence or create much via the slashing game in the half-court, Morris instead ran out at every opportunity. He is not the best three-point shooter and nor does he get to the foul line much, but a steady diet of driving lay-ups made him a two-way player of some worth. Morris does not have the top tier athleticism, and the muscle that he has added to his frame only slightly compensates for it. Given that he also does not have the highest skill level, it will be difficult for him to convert this two-year career in the NBA into a regular spot, unless he can somehow start making more shots. And I don’t mean floaters off […]
Sanjay Lumpkin SG/SF – 6’6, 220lbs – Born 29th April 1994 Erie BayHawks Few players are quite as unique as Sanjay Lumpkin. I mean, even the name is a clue there, no one else is called this. Lumpkin barely scores the ball, and barely looks to try. His usage instead comes on the defensive end, a task he takes to with relish. The fact that he stands slightly undersized for the two guard position seems not to be in anyway a deterrent to him being a multi-positional defender. Lumpkin defends everywhere from point guard through to power forward, an athletic player who guards inside and out, who combines toughness, screening, fouling and some rebounding. He is the rare kind of player who does all of the little things and very few of the big things. There was a time in his Northwestern career that Lumpkin combined this with some ball-handling responsibility. The undermanned Wildcats needed someone to get the ball over the half-court line and initiate, and so while Lumpkin would barely be a part of the half-court offence beyond this, it did at least give him something to do rather than just watch processions unfold around him. Lumpkin is a very limited shot maker from all areas and does not have the ability to handle in traffic; indeed, nor does he seek to assert himself offensively. Erie did not give him this ballhandling responsibility, thus marginalising Lumpkin’s offensive role to the point of being an opportunity scorer without much shooting. He instead focused even further on his defence. As a defender, Lumpkin is valuable. He is strong with good timing, good discipline on his rotations and closeouts, and a possession-winner with deflections when free-roaming in space. He guards bigger players, he guards quicker players, and he always […]
Jeremy Hollowell SF/PF – 6’8, 220lbs – Born 25th February 1994 Erie BayHawks In two years at Indiana, Hollowell struggled. He was inefficient from all areas, turned the ball over a lot, was not aggressive, stopped the ball, did not buy in on defence and was at one point suspended for his lack of focus. In two years at Georgia State, Hollowell started to find himself. He began to play with a better rhythm in his favourite areas of the court – the base lines, the wings, the post – and began to better utilise his athleticism. With good leap along with long arms, Hollowell has a forward’s frame at the highest levels, but realised after his time as a Hoosier that he could not coast on that alone. Especially if he was playing without the right motor. He was less disjointed with Georgia State, and while he was still taking some bad shots and combined being over-aggressive with never being quite sure of when to move or not, the production started coming in offensively, and the defence finally started to emerge as well. Now having completed two years here with the BayHawks, Hollowell continues to make incremental improvements. They are small, yet in picking up his rebounding rate, his foul line efficiency and his assist rate this season, as well as continuing to fight slightly more defensively, he has made himself into a solid G-League player. Hollowell is an opportunity scorer rather than a creator, but when he is going to the offensive glass, running the pick-and-pop, posting up those smaller than him down low for turnaround looks and being judicious with his slightly wild drives and motion-heavy jump shot, he is a bonus to the offence. Hollowell does not always have it every night and falls […]
Kameron Chatman SF/PF – 6’9, 215lbs – Born 1st June 1996 Erie BayHawks Chatman played his first two collegiate seasons at Michigan, yet never found his footing on either end of the floor. He in fact lost minutes as a sophomore rather than stepped up to claim a regular rotation spot, and was effectively deemed unplayable by season’s end. Chatman inevitably transferred out of the program and went to Detroit Mercy, where in the only season he played for the Titans, he significantly improved his averages from 2.8 points and 1.4 rebounds per game up to 17.8 points and 8.2 rebounds respectively. Bolstered by this improvement, Chatman forwent his senior season to declare for last year’s draft, and after going undrafted, he initially signed with Pinar Karsiyaka in Turkey, joining the G-League player pool in February only after being released from there. The Wolverines largely camped Chatman out in the corners and on the weak side as a shooting option, yet Chatman sought to prove with Detroit that he could be more than just this. The long and wiry lefty really wants to be a ball-handler and shot creator, playing half-court offence like a young Josh Smith out there. He has not the explosive athleticism of someone like that, however, and not only regularly loses the handle in traffic, but also forces up shots where a reset or a pass-off would be a better idea. To be fair, Chatman does move well, especially for the 6’9 height he is now usually listed at, but that 6’9 size is something he uses mostly to get jump shots away. And although he shot them well in his one and only season with Detroit, it remains the anomaly for now. Chatman has never been consistent on the defensive end, a liability […]
Cat Barber PG – 6’1, 173lbs – Born 25th July 1994 Erie BayHawks With the exception of very brief stints in Italy and Israel, Cat Barber has spent his entire professional career thus far on the very fringes of the NBA. He has had a training camp contract with Philadelphia, summer league stints with New Orleans and Dallas, and has spent the rest of his time in the G-League. Dog Groomer initially returned to the Greensboro Swarm to begin this season, and was traded by them to Erie in late February for John Gillon, a more conservative point guard type. Erie subsequently allowed Horse Masseuse to play in the ball-dominant, high-usage role he seems most comfortable with. The results, as ever, were mixed. Llama Cosmetologist likes to isolate, and combines his excellent straight-line speed with the ability to change down the gears. He is regularly able to get to the rim and is an excellent finisher at it, small enough to be pushed out of the position he wants yet talented enough to make the resulting tough banker anyway. Driving both ways, great in transition, utilising a spin move and able to pull up from mid-range, Camel Coiffeur is very effective on the ball – he can get to the rim from a standing start, finds it particularly easy to do so using curls and in semi-transition, and although he is a highusage high-volume offensive player, he also does not have that bad of shot selection, a willingenough passer in the drive-and-kick and pick-and-roll situations. Instead, it is simply that in being a sub-par outside shooter, he struggles to play an off-ball role on that end. On the defensive end, Tapeworm Pedicurist has been known to lapse. Perhaps he lacks the confidence in that half of his game […]
