Author’s note: This is the fifth article in a five-part series examining NBA scouts’ opinions about the potential and development of the Washington Wizards’ most prominent young players.
Part 1 (including an explanation of the methodology): Deni Avdija. Part 2: Johnny Davis. Part 3: Daniel Gafford. Part 4: Rui Hachimura.
When the Washington Wizards assembled for training camp last year, the team’s coaches and executives did not expect Corey Kispert to start games during the 2021-22 season. More experienced options at the wing positions dotted the Wizards’ roster, led by veterans Bradley Beal and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
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Injuries, pandemic absences and trade-deadline deals changed the Wizards’ needs. One of the few Washington players who never tested positive for COVID-19 during the season, Kispert started his first regular-season game on Dec. 23. He would go on to start each of the team’s final 29 games, finishing with a total of 36 starts in all.
“Honestly, I didn’t foresee him playing a lot,” coach Wes Unseld Jr. said. “Had we been healthy, had we been whole, he would have gotten minutes and opportunity, but I certainly didn’t foresee him starting. So he’s probably expedited his growth track because of those minutes. You’ve heard me say it before: You can’t simulate those minutes on the floor, having the opportunity to be in the moment, to be in those situations when it matters. That expedites your maturation no matter what you do.”
After he struggled with his shooting early in the season, Kispert improved as his minutes rose. He logged 31.3 minutes per game after the All-Star break, averaging 11.4 points while he made 38.6 percent of his 3-point tries. He finished with 112 made 3s, breaking Beal’s franchise record for 3-pointers made by a rookie.
“We were sizing Corey Kispert up for Go-Go jerseys in camp wondering if we could get him minutes … and he ends up starting for us and did a hell of a job,” Wizards president and general manager Tommy Sheppard said. “He set some rookie records here. I think he’s got a great future. I think he’s more than just a 3-point shooter and a floor-spacer, and that’s our challenge to him: to come back better.”
The NBA scouts I spoke to for this piece for the most part do not feel quite as optimistic about Kispert’s long-term upside as Sheppard professed. The scouts tend to project the Gonzaga alumnus as someone who is best suited for a narrow, though important, complementary role.
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“He’s got to be an above-average shooter,” Scout A said. “He just doesn’t do enough otherwise to get really too excited about him. He shot it well in college. But he’s got to be at least above-average (as a shooter) to really have some value because he’s not rebounding. He tries on defense, but you’re not putting him in the game to guard. He doesn’t really make plays. He doesn’t get to the line. There’s a lot of ‘nots’ in there.”
Scout B said: “Obviously, it was a little bit of a struggle last year to find some consistency. But he’s clearly shown throughout his career that he’s an elite shooter, and it’s something to be patient with, for sure. His game is very important to team basketball, because of his ability to space the floor once he gets more comfortable.”
Kispert’s strengths
Kispert’s most obvious positive attribute indeed is his long-range shooting accuracy — or at least it finally was by the time late last season rolled around. Scout B was correct to label the early months of Kispert’s rookie season as a struggle. Kispert made just 22.5 percent of his 40 regular-season 3-point attempts in October and November combined and then started to inch toward the form he displayed during his college career. In the season’s final weeks, his accuracy approached the high standards he set during his junior and senior years.
Corey Kispert's 3-pointers in 2021-22
| Month | 3PT | 3P% |
|---|---|---|
October | 0-3 | 0.0 |
November | 9-37 | 24.3 |
December | 13-36 | 36.1 |
January | 17-48 | 35.4 |
February | 21-64 | 32.8 |
March | 39-99 | 39.4 |
April | 13-33 | 39.4 |
Total | 112-320 | 35.0 |
In the video from the Wizards’ convincing road victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves in early April, point guard Tomáš Satoranský drives into the paint, encounters multiple defenders and kicks the ball to the left wing, where Kispert stands all alone. As Kispert converts the 3-pointer, note how Kispert does not hesitate to launch the ball, creating a quality shot opportunity before Timberwolves defender Malik Beasley closes out effectively.
The NBA’s electronic player-tracking system considers that attempt as a “wide-open” shot, a shot in which the closest defender is at least 6 feet away. Those kinds of shots are the lifeblood for a long-range shooting specialist like Kispert, but for most of the season, he struggled to convert those opportunities.
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Before the All-Star break, Kispert made just 32.4 percent of those wide-open attempts, placing him well down the leaderboard of Wizards players who attempted at least one wide-open shot per game in at least five games played, according to the NBA.
Before the All-Star break
Kispert deserves some leeway for his slow start. Even under optimal circumstances, most rookies require time to acclimate to the league. What Kispert and his fellow rookies faced last season was suboptimal by almost any measure. The draft took place one month later than usual, in late July, and the NBA Summer League also started roughly one month later than it normally does. That left the rookie class precious little time to arrive in their new cities and prepare before training camps.
Kispert also joined a team with a brand-new coach and a large number of new players in significant roles. In addition, his sporadic playing time early on made it difficult for him to find a comfort zone and maintain a rhythm. It would have been surprising if Kispert had not struggled.
That said, it should be self-evident that Kispert will need to improve now that he has one season worth of experience.
He should be fine. After the All-Star break, his conversation rate on wide-open 3-point tries rose significantly, boding well for the future. No Wizards player attempted more wide-open 3s than Kispert — thanks to his increased playing time and thanks to the pass-first tendencies of two new arrivals at point guard, Satoranský and Ish Smith — and Kispert sank 40.2 percent of those attempts. That placed fourth among Wizards players with at least one wide-open 3-point attempt per game in at least five games played after the All-Star break, per the NBA’s stats database.
After the All-Star break
Player
| Wide-open 3PAs/game
| Wide-open 3P% ▼ |
|---|---|---|
1.7 | 48.8 | |
2.7 | 47.5 | |
1.9 | 42.9 | |
3.4 | 40.2 | |
2.3 | 36.4 | |
2.4 | 25.0 |
Kispert ranked well above average among wings across the NBA in points per shot attempt. According to Cleaning the Class, an advanced analytics website that omits garbage-time stats and end-of-quarter heaves from its calculations, Kispert averaged 118.9 points per 100 shot attempts (including field-goal attempts and trips to the line) over the entire season, placing him in the 81st percentile among all wings leaguewide. That’s impressive. For comparison’s sake, consider that Caldwell-Pope, who ranked above-average among wings in points per shot attempt, was less efficient than Kispert, averaging 114.5 points per 100 shot attempts.
Caldwell-Pope earned well-deserved praise as perhaps Washington’s most consistent player on both ends last season (certainly the most consistent player on the defensive end). But if Kispert was a more efficient scorer than Caldwell-Pope, why, apart from Caldwell-Pope’s far superior defense, didn’t Kispert receive more plaudits last season? There are many reasons, but one was that Kispert had the lowest usage rate among rotation players who began the season on the Washington roster, finishing just 14.2 percent of the team’s offensive possessions. Yes, he was efficient, but his efficiency occurred in low enough doses that it was anything but easy to notice.
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And that, in turn, brings us to perhaps Kispert’s most underrated, but most commendable, attribute: He understands his strengths — as a long-range shooter, above all else — and rarely deviates from them. This is an important quality, especially for the Wizards, who after Beal and to a lesser extent Porziņģis, had a large grouping of similar-upside players who competed against each other for shots. When Kispert attempted a shot that didn’t mesh with his skill set, it was a rare occurrence.
Scout C regards Kispert, who is listed at 6 foot 6 and 224 pounds, primarily as a catch-and-shoot threat or as a spot-up shooter, and Kispert did not deviate a whole lot from that, as this Cleaning the Glass chart of Kispert’s 2021-22 regular-season shot attempts shows. Wizards analytics specialists likely would laud Kispert for largely avoiding midrange shots.
“He’s just going to be a very good and a very serviceable kind of role player, because of what he does and the importance of what he does,” Scout D said. “I think we saw as the season progressed he got much better at it over time, much better as his rookie season progressed. There was a lot more evidence that he could play that role. The thing for him was kind of just establishing himself as this movement type of shooter that was a threat and had to be accounted for when he was on the floor.”
There’s another takeaway from Kispert’s shot chart: He appeared comfortable attempting shots at the rim. In other words, he didn’t limit himself only to 3-point tries, and for good reason. Kispert converted 75.5 percent of his 1.4 attempts per game within the restricted area, according to the league’s tracking data. The only Wizards rotation players who fared better last season were Daniel Gafford (78.8 percent), Satoranský (78.3 percent), Montrezl Harrell (76.8 percent) and Rui Hachimura (76.1 percent).
Kispert runs the floor well in transition, which helps his success rate at the rim, but there’s something else where Kispert ranks as an elite player: his cutting. He averaged 1.541 points per possession that he finished off cuts, according to Synergy Sports.
This play, from the Wizards loss at home to the San Antonio Spurs in late February, illustrates his cutting ability. He loses defender Doug McDermott easily, receives a pinpoint pass from Gafford and scores on a layup.
Kispert has a knack for this, but Scout B said some of the credit goes to the Wizards’ coaches for their offensive scheme.
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“Cutting, to me, starts with schemes,” Scout B said. “So the more times that they encourage his cutting — because I do think he’s a smart player — I think that would open up a lot of offense for everybody. So I do like his cutting ability. But, to me, that comes from the sidelines.”
Kispert’s weaknesses
None of the scouts I spoke with expects Kispert to be a finished product this early in his pro career, even though Kispert is already 23 years old, which these days is relatively old for a player about to enter his second NBA season, and has the benefit of playing four seasons at a top-notch, well-coached college program.
The issue is that the scouts, for the most part, see Kispert as eventually having a narrow skill set. It’s important to note that Kispert’s particular skill — the ability to space the floor with 3-point shooting — has never been more important in the NBA game, and that will help Kispert’s value. At the same time, however, none of the scouts project Kispert becoming a plus playmaker for others, a high-level defender or a good rebounder.
That line of thinking explains why Scout C emphasized that Kispert’s role should continue to be narrowly defined. Scout C said the Wizards need to be careful not to ask Kispert to do too much beyond being a long-range sniper.
Even then, even as it relates to shooting, Scout C has some doubts. Scout C observed that Kispert’s 3-point shot tends to be very flat, which, in turn, could lower the ceiling of how accurate a shooter Kispert ultimately can become. If Kispert doesn’t eventually approach 40 percent as a 3-point shooter, his ability to benefit a team, particularly a team in the mediocre-to-bad range, would be limited.
Wizards officials almost certainly would point out that Kispert is a better athlete than he’s given credit for, and that contention is accurate.
Still, some of his deficiencies are reflected in his defensive-rebounding stats. Last season, he gathered 8.4 percent of opponents’ missed shots, per Cleaning the Glass, placing him in the 23rd percentile, or well below average, among wings leaguewide.
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His defense is where Washington should have a greater concern, though. Although Kispert’s effort in man-to-man situations and court awareness within a team framework are strong, the results tend to disappoint. As a defender in isolation situations, he allowed 1.102 points per possession, according to Synergy. Among players who defended isos on at least 10 possessions last regular season, Kispert ranked 335th out of 413 players in points allowed per those possessions, according to Synergy.
In the video from Washington’s late-March victory in Detroit, Pistons guard Cade Cunningham waves off teammate Isaiah Stewart from setting a screen on Kispert, preferring to attack Kispert rather than Caldwell-Pope, who was marking Stewart. Cunningham dribbles down the center of the lane, unleashes a shot-fake that causes Kispert to jump and then scores on a left-handed shot.
Kispert’s effort was good. The result, though, was not.
Opponents like to force Washington to switch when Kispert’s on the floor to create more advantageous matchups. In this video, the Indiana Pacers set a screen on Deni Avdija to force Kispert to pick up Tyrese Haliburton late in a close game. Haliburton drives and, after energetic defense by Kispert, misses. Kispert kept up with Haliburton and contested the shot. Well done.
That shows that Kispert can defend effectively, but it also illustrates that, to no one’s surprise, opponents preferred to take their chances against Kispert instead of Avdija or Caldwell-Pope. Kispert can expect to be challenged often in the 2022-23 season, at least until he proves he can defend.
“He’s got to be protected a little bit defensively — not to the point where he’s a liability, because he does give good effort and he runs around and he’s physical and tough,” Scout D said. “But (he has to be protected defensively) more just from the standpoint of when he’s in those situations where he has to guard one-on-one or in situations where he’s got to guard a position that he’s less comfortable defending, like a speed-based guy.”
To his credit, Kispert knows one-on-one defense must be an area of improvement. When I caught up with him after he participated in a Wizards practice two months ago in Las Vegas for the NBA Summer League, he mentioned that he regularly sought out one-on-one games during the offseason against players who are quicker than he is. The goal, he said, was to improve his defense.
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“I can’t be a guy, if I want to really have a mark in this league, who gets subbed out at the end of games (for defensive purposes),” Kispert said. “So I’ve taken huge strides on defense in being able to guard my position really, really effectively.”
If Kispert does become an average defender, it would indeed enhance his value to the team.
Kispert’s future
Barring injuries to other wings, it’s difficult to envision Kispert starting as many games in 2022-23 as he did as a rookie. Indeed, it’s highly unlikely that Kispert will approach the 31.3 minutes per game he played after the All-Star break.
Beal has returned from the wrist-ligament surgery he underwent in February. Although Caldwell-Pope was traded, one of the incoming players in that deal, Will Barton, seems like the most likely candidate to start at small forward. Avdija almost certainly will challenge for more playing time. Point guard Delon Wright, a good defender, could play off the ball when paired with new point guard Monté Morris or when Beal serves as the primary ballhandler. And Washington drafted wing Johnny Davis 10th overall.
Kispert’s shooting nonetheless should be critical to Washington.
“The role that he plays is a really valuable one because of his shooting and the threat that his shooting provides,” Scout D said. “Even if he doesn’t make a high percentage, the volume of the 3-point shots that he takes and the manner in which he takes them, those are the things that kind of warrant the defensive attention.”
Scout C thinks Kispert would have been better off being drafted by a team with a greater number of legitimate offensive playmakers, where Kispert would have benefitted from point guards or slashers who are aggressive in the drive-and-kick game. Echoing what the other scouts said, Scout C said teammates are going to have to create shot opportunities for Kispert.
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Morris should help in that area.
“I think Monté Morris will be a boon to him because Monté Morris makes plays for others and is really a pass-first point,” Scout A said. “They’ll be playing together some. So I think the fact that they upgraded that (point-guard) spot, and upgraded that spot with a guy in particular who can make other players better, that should help Kispert. He kind of got lost in the shuffle a little bit. He just wasn’t a guy they looked to as an option.
“You’ve got to get him shots. He’s not going to get them on his own. You’ve got to run stuff for him. Or even if you’re not running stuff for him, you’ve got to look for him. He moves well without the ball. But to have a point guard who’s looking for teammates rather than himself is going to help.”
Still, three of the four scouts said they project Kispert remaining a backup in the long term.
Scout A said: “I don’t think he’s a starter. I think he’s a backup. But whatever he shot after his initial struggles is probably above average, so maybe that’s who he really is. He’s got to be (at) 38 (percent) or 39 or even 40 to be a real impactful player for them. He’s an OK athlete, nothing special, for a two (guard). But he’s smart. His productivity depends to some extent on the situation, and I think the situation has improved for him.”
(Top photo of Corey Kispert: Wendell Cruz / USA Today)
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