Draft Profile: Phil Pressey - Offense Initiator

In the run-up to the 2013 NBA Draft on June 27, the BDD staff will be profiling several projected lottery picks and other draft entrants. Next up: Phil Pressey.

Phil Pressey has experience leading an efficient offensive attack. (Dak Dillon/US Presswire)

Position: Point Guard
College: Missouri
Current DraftExpress Prediction: No. 21 second round, No. 51 overall to the Utah Jazz

Synopsis: His nickname is Flip. It's not quite as imposing as Pistol, but Phil Pressey is no Pete Maravich, either. He can make impressive passes yet he does not have the same scoring gene as Maravich, making him one of the closest prospects to a pure point guard in this year's NBA draft. Pressey recorded 240 assists in his junior year at Missouri, finishing behind only nine other D-I players in the statistical category, yet he did not crack the top 250 scorers on the NCAA's top level of competition. This is because Pressey was primarily busy advantageously facilitating the talented offensive pieces around him, posting final per-game lines of 11.9 points and 7.1 assists.
 
There will be worries about Pressey's size (5'11" with shoes, 177 lbs), but Hardwood Paroxysm's Kevin Hetrick found that size is often unimportant when it comes to translating a point guard's offensive game into NBA terms. Instead, for an upperclassman such as Pressey, agility is a more revealing statistic. Hetrick's correlation between NBA success and agility tilts in the Mizzou guard's favor. Though he did not rank near the top among players at his position, Pressey's 10.86 measurement is significantly better than the 11.15 combine average for point-men, according to DraftExpress. Coupled with his 3.13-second 3/4 court sprint — Hetrick also found a positive correlation with speed for point guards — Pressey could sneak into the first round or be a steal for a backcourt-needy team in the second round, in which he is likely to slide due to his "advanced" age of 22. 

Quote to note: "A lot of teams know what I'm capable of watching me play over my past three years at the University of Missouri, but what they didn't know is how I can pressure the ball and get into guys." - Pressey on his defense, a less talked about facet of his game, via NBA.com.

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