Rookies Deconstructed: Trey Lyles

This season's rookie class could be something special. There is talent and depth, size and skill, and the promise that there could be a few transcendent players in the mix. Oddly, though, some elements of each player's game and physical presentation feel familiar. Rookies Deconstructed is a series that means to take each rookie apart, identifying the building blocks we know and the natural comparisons that emerge and appreciating how they come together in ways that are radically and invigoratingly new. Because these are rookies, with just under half a season under the belts, some comparisons are necessarily forward-looking.

The space between the paint and the three-point line has fallen out of favor. Shaped like the front of a quonset hut, the mid-range has been identified as the least efficient place to shoot from, and most NBA teams now treat it like hot lava. There are still a few tree-trunk big men who live on islands at the elbows, but most other players are simply passing through the midrange DMZ as quickly as possible. It wasn't always this way. There was a time, before shooters got so darn good, that the midrange was the NBA's most prized geographical territory. It controlled access to the precious paint; the team that could win in the mid-range usually won the game.

Detlef Schrempf is remarkable mostly for his surname and his haircut, which are equally delightful. But, in another era, he was a master of the midrange game. It wasn't just that he was a good jump-shooter—he really was—but also that he could occupy every part of the space efficiently. A 6'9 forward, Schrempf had a solid post-up game that could be used in the right matchup, or spun into a face-up if the situation demanded. He wasn't quite strong enough to really bang around the basket, but his touch and agility allowed him to navigate freely a few steps away from it. With his assortment of soft hooks, flips, and runners, ten feet from the rim was home for Schrempf.

Schrempf won with nuance—a post-up, a jumper, a drive here, a perfectly timed bounce pass there. He could help by standing behind the three-point line too—he shot 38.4 percent on three-pointers over his career—but his ability to move through interior space productively was what made him special.

Trey Lyles has the same sort of potential, although he flexes it infrequently. Lyles' rookie shot chart is a half-finished Jackson Pollock—some clusters in the corners, a little bit around the rim, lots of white space in the middle waiting to be filled in. The Utah Jazz haven't needed him to wade through that hot lava very often this season, and he's seemed more than happy to keep his feet on solid ground. But Lyles has also hinted at the ability to make those kinetic in-between plays that are needed to brave the fire and survive. You know the kind: Kawhi Leonard curling around the elbow and exploding to the rim, Draymond Green slipping a screen and then finding an open shooter in the corner, Kevin Durant with a single jab-step-and-go, Paul Millsap going from cutter to screener to cutter in a heartbeat.

Lyles is building that puzzle in real time. He's a good passer, agile in tight spaces, has the soft touch to make the whole Schrempf-ian array of flip shots and not-quite hooks. Right now he's still working on putting together the borders: finishing around the basket and making threes. Filling in the middle is going to make for a beautiful picture.

It's easy to forget what Michael Beasley was, before he became Michael Beasley. Watch him launch enough contested midrange jumpers, dissolve behind box outs, or wave an arm at driving defenders and he just becomes another mountain of wasted talent. But at one point, Michael Beasley was a Force to be reckoned with. For his sole season at Kansas State University, Force was his currency and the opposition crumbled before him. In that one year, he bested the statistical resume of Kevin Durant, who had disassembled the Big 12 just twelve months before. Durant was a surgeon. Beasley was a butcher.

Beasley wasn't physically dominant in the manner of a Shaquille O'Neal; he's big, but he was, and is, of fairly typical dimensions for a professional basketball player. But Beasley was faster and stronger, usually at the same time. He went after every play harder than anyone else, and just battered teams into submission. Like Durant, Beasley controlled the glass, could shoot, finish on the break, drive past a big man or back down a small one. He looked every bit a sure thing to be a star in the pros. Whatever the underlying cause, the erosion of this fundamental forcefulness is why Beasley has struggled so much to be a meaningful NBA player.

Lyles doesn't have that sort of power in his game yet, but it seems like a fire that could be stoked. At the very least, the flame needs to be protected, not allowed to go out completely. Lyles has a similar build to Beasley and a related combination of skills. When players of this type—bigs with some ball skills—flame out, it's almost always because they drift too far in one direction. For Lyles, his jumper is like a warm security blanket. As he struggles to learn this game and find his place in it, there is the danger of wrapping himself in it a little too tightly. Being a reliable jump-shooter is a toehold, but he can't stop there.

Strength and agility are physical gifts, but they are most powerful when manifested in balance. Forsake one for the other, and a player begins to lose what separates him from his peers. Lyles is a long way from losing himself, I should say—he's only played about a thousand minutes this season. Still, now is the time to start practicing that balance. To lean into screens, put a little extra shoulder into your box outs, find a surface to rest your forearm on and start applying some pressure. Feeding that flame means never having to fade away.

Jared Jeffries was a scorer until he wasn't. In two seasons and 70 games at Indiana University he scored a total of 1,008 points. It took him three seasons and over 170 games to break that mark in the NBA. Jeffries averaged 15.0 points per game as a sophomore, his last year before leaving college. In 12 NBA seasons, he never averaged double digits once. It's not rare for college stars to have to adjust to a new role in the NBA, but going from offensive focal point to defensive specialist, and making that change last for more than a decade is unusual, and fairly remarkable.

Jeffries was long and agile, never exceptional, but certainly capable. He moved up and down the positional scale to create defensive advantages. His offense, by NBA standards, was something less than capable. At his best, the two sides balanced each other out; at his worst he belonged in the bottom half of a bad team's rotation, which is a place he frequently found himself. What Jeffries did best was work, constantly, to find a place for himself, a niche for his physical frame and basketball skills. Whatever the team context was, Jeffries got busy making himself useful.

Lyles is no Jeffries. His offensive game is leaps and bounds ahead, in both versatility and efficacy. Lyles is not yet the defender Jeffries was and he may never need to devote as much effort and attention to that side of the ball as Jeffries did, at least not for the sake of career survival. There are some aesthetic and physical similarities, but this comparison rests on the idea of reinvention.

We're not exactly sure what Trey Lyles is going to be, but it feels safe to say it will look fairly different from his rookie year, and almost nothing like his college career. In one season at the University of Kentucky, Lyles was the odd man out, the one who deferred his own opportunities for the team, the one Jared-Jeffries-ing all over the floor just trying to find a way to make himself useful. The Utah Jazz don't need him much this season, but they will someday soon. And when they do, they will need him to grow into himself and to grow into someone else. He may be the next Draymond Green. He may be the next Rashard Lewis. He may be the next David West. Any would be a great career; all are plausible.

The skeleton key to Lyles talent is his willingness to embrace the idea that he may be anything, and that thing might change from moment to moment, game to game, season to season.