Kobe Brown, Wing, Missouri
Kobe Brown had the best season of his college career last year, averaging roughly 16 points, six rebounds, and three assists per game on 65.5% true shooting. After years of producing at an average level, he became Missouri’s best player and was one of the best players in the SEC.
The biggest reason for his breakout is that he improved a lot as a three-point shooter. During his first three seasons at Missouri, he shot just 23.7% from behind the arc on very low volume. In 2022, he shot 45.5% from three on a career-high 3.3 attempts per game. It’s fair to wonder if his improved three-point shooting is just a fluke. However, he shot 79.4% from the free throw line the last two seasons, so he appears to have good touch as a shooter.
While his three-point shooting is a bit of a question mark at this point, there are a lot of areas in which he shines as a scorer, including his rim-finishing and mid-range shooting. Last season, he shot 41.3% from mid-range and 66.5% at the rim, which are great marks for a wing.
One of Brown’s best traits, which has consistently been a major strength of his, is his passing. In the last two seasons, he has had an assist rate of 17.6% and an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.26. These are really strong numbers and show that he has the potential to be a solid wing creator.
The biggest issue with Brown is that he is not a great defender. His defensive activity is pretty good, as he has a career steal rate of 2.5% and a career block rate of 2.4%. However, his defensive impact has always been pretty average. His D-RAPM, a plus-minus metric that measures how many points a player’s defense is worth per 100 possessions, has consistently been average, and he has a career defensive rating of just 100.6.
His defense isn’t awful, but his underwhelming production on that end of the floor, along with his below-average combine performance, signals that he likely won’t be a strong defender in the NBA.
Kobe Brown has been overlooked throughout the draft process primarily because he an older prospect who didn’t play at a super high level in college until he was a senior. However, he has an extremely valuable skillset on offense that can make him an awesome connecting piece in the NBA, especially if his three-point shooting translates. He has the talent to be a top thirty player from the 2023 NBA Draft someday.