Ht/Wt: 6' 6" / 200 lbs
Position: SF
Team: Clemson
Class: Junior

2014 Draft Profile - KJ McDaniels

Strengths:
In this draft, there are a lot of exceptional athletes who have used that to excel up until this point. McDaniels, however, is at the top of the class when it comes to explosiveness in this draft class. Outside of possibly Aaron Gordon and Andrew Wiggins, McDaniels is the best athlete in this draft.

He has good length for his size, and a strong solid build that will allow him to immediately be an excellent defender at the next level. He plays bigger than his size as evidenced by his top notch rebounding and block numbers.

But that is not to take away from McDaniels’ offensive skillset. Playing on an average Clemson team allowed the opposition to focus on him regularly and he was still able to post good numbers with decent percentages. He’s not a great shooter, but can hit open jumpers, especially if his feet are set.

He has also shown that he can improve at a high rate. He came to Clemson as an unknown prospect and turned into one of the best two-way wings in the country. If he is able to continue that growth he can easily become one of the steals of the latter part of the first round.

Weaknesses:
Despite spending three years in college, McDaniels still lacks a lot of polish when it comes to the finer points of the game. His basketball IQ is lacking some and he doesn’t seem to have a great feel for the game, which leads to some questionable decisions.

His ballhandling skills will need to improve immensely if he expects to get his own shot at the next level, and he will need to. He has a slow release, which allows his shot to get challenged more often than it should.

He spent a lot of time in his college career at the power forward position, so he doesn’t have the court vision you would like to see and in general his skills on the wing will need some work.

With some more development, McDaniels has a chance to be a prototypical wing player in the NBA much like a Wesley Matthews or Courtney Lee. But he’s not 18 like some of the other prospects in this draft so his room for growth may be more limited than others.

PPG: 17.1 RPG: 7.1 APG: 1.6 SPG: 1.6 BPG: 2.8 FG%: 45.9 FT%: 84.2 3PT%: 30.4

Player profile submitted by: Corey Hansford - May 5th

Would you like to write a player profile for any prospect that may be entering the 2014 NBA Draft? Email profiles of any player (even player’s not on our list) to our Webmaster. Credit will be given to the author of the profile.

KJ McDaniels Videos

K.J. McDaniels 2014 Scouting Video
)

KJ McDaniels Dunk Reel
)

KJ McDaniels vs Rodney Hood 01/11/14
)

Clemson's K.J. McDaniels Skies for Nasty Alley-Oop
)






Click here to return