Season in Review: Aubrey Dawkins

Dustin Johnson / UMHoops

Previously: Zak Irvin

Along with his reputation as an offensive guru, John Beilein’s become well-known at Michigan for his ability to discover under-the-radar recruits and turn them into stars.* Trey Burke and Nik Stauskas are the most-oft cited examples (along with Caris LeVert, who, like Burke and Stauskas, could become an eventual first-round draft pick), but Beilein’s found success in fleshing out his rotations with mid- or low-major recruits. In the last four recruiting cycles, Michigan developed a penchant for adding late-bloomers near the end of their senior seasons: in 2011, Max Bielfeldt; in 2012, Spike Albrecht and LeVert; in 2014, Aubrey Dawkins and Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman.

*He’s also known for recruiting sons of famous NBA players and Dawkins continues that lineage.

Because of unexpected attrition and injuries to key players, Michigan’s best five-man lineup in the last month of the season featured four of those late additions: Spike, Mo, Aubrey, and Max. Though all four were seemingly recruited as depth guys, they often played as many as 30 minutes per game down the stretch.  Michigan’s frustrating season quickly became unburdened from expectation and silver linings were actively sought for and discovered over the last two months of the season.

Aubrey Dawkins was the most encouraging of those “weird guys.” Before Caris LeVert’s injury in the waning seconds of the first Northwestern game, Dawkins averaged just 8.6 minutes per game and even though he was Michigan’s best player in the conference opener (hitting six threes and totaling 20 points on 9 shot equivalents), Aubrey wasn’t given much playing time. After LeVert went down, his minutes skyrocketed:

Despite taking a prep year and only fielding scholarship offers from Dayton, Cal Poly, College of Charleston, Northeastern, and Rhode Island, Dawk emerged as a high-ceiling prospect and a valuable rotational member going forward – simply put, he can get buckets and he can get them efficiently.

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Checking the Eye-Test

Once he broke into the starting lineup, Dawkins’s strengths and weaknesses became quite evident. The NBA fetishizes so-called “3-and-D” prospects – players who fit neatly into the new wave of spread pick-and-roll offenses (which Michigan emulates to a certain extent) across the league. Providing spacing is an increasingly valuable trait; a guy has solid offensive value if he can stand on the perimeter and shoot 40% from three, even if he can’t do much more than that. Throw in credible (or better) defense on the wing, and you have a 3-and-D player – rapidly rising salary numbers for those types emphasize their perceived value.

Dawkins isn’t one of those guys, though he could possibly get there. His defense was bad across the board: Beilein hesitated to give him playing time early in the season and in hindsight, it’s easy to see why – he was frequently lost on the defensive end, prone to ball-watching, easily shed on screens, and beaten as the on-ball defender. His rebounding numbers were disappointing and he averaged about half a steal and half a block after his ascension to the starting lineup. Theoretically, Dawkins could develop into an adequate defender (or maybe even better than that), but as of right now, he’s decidedly a minus.

If he eventually does progress significantly as a defender – which is definitely possible – he has the offensive tools to fit the 3-and-D mold. He shot a healthy 43% from three on 88 attempts despite a funky, though consistent, release: his length and leaping ability allows him to soar over contesting defenders and he flicks the ball towards the rim with a low trajectory – almost like a shot in beer pong. Beilein drew up some sets to get Dawkins some elbow jumpers and he hit them well enough to overcome the inherent inefficiency of long twos. The “3” aspect of the 3-and-D player is definitely there and he’s shown he could handle high volume – Dawkins shot 46% on 4.5 attempts per game after cracking the rotation.

Like Tim Hardaway, another 3-and-D-without-the-D pro legacy, Dawkins can jump out of the gym, possibly his best hint towards a potential (though unlikely) pro career. I mean, just watch this emasculating throwdown over 6’11 Nnanna Egwu (and it’s impossible to watch just once). More importantly, he’s successful around the rim even when he isn’t dunking – Dawk shot 61% at the rim, per Shot Analytics. He can’t create off the bounce – remarkably, his assist rate was lower than Zak Irvin’s freshman year – but he’s clever cutting off the ball and gets close-range attempts that way (and in the same vein, Dawkins is excellent at moving around the arc to set up open looks from three). He’s a one-dimensional player: a scorer who needs to be set up by others. With Michigan’s bevy of players who can create, that’s perfectly alright.

[Hit the JUMP for the rest of the analysis]

Aubr3y’s Late-Season Surge, Deconstructed

Bryan Fuller / MGoBlog

Near the end of the year, Aubrey went on a three-game stretch of fantastic offensive play: in the double OT loss to Northwestern, Dawkins poured in 21 points on just 12 shot equivalents; he followed that up with one of the best individual team-wide on Senior Day against Rutgers, hitting eight three-pointers (one short of tying the school record for made threes in a game) en route to 31 points (3 short of the single-game freshman scoring record set by Jalen Rose); and Dawk opened up the Big Ten Tournament with 18 points – including twohighlight dunks – as Michigan blew out Illinois. He finished with 70 points combined in those three games and did so on 41 shot equivalents.

I went back and charted all of those shot equivalents.

Click on image(s) to enlarge

A few general thoughts after poring through the game tape:

• I didn’t realize it at the time, but Dawkins played the three pretty much exclusively over these three games (with Irvin – and Chatman, to a lesser extent – playing the four). On the season, Dawk hit 51% of threes (45 attempts) on the left side of the floor and 40% on the right side (25 attempts), so the move was beneficial in that regard. He wasn’t a creator from that side of the floor, but between Zak – who really stood out on tape for his passing ability – and Spike, Aubrey didn’t need to drive and create for himself and others. Understandably, a huge percentage of his makes were assisted field goal attempts.
• His positioning was often superb and helped open space for a ton of these three-point attempts. Dawkins was frequently able to sense the soft spot in the defense and either by subtly shifting to a better location or sprinting to an unoccupied zone on the floor, he generated a lot of those open looks for himself. It was really surprising to see a freshman with such a nuanced understanding of where to be on offense.
• Not only was Dawk able to shift himself into good position on the perimeter, but he made a few timely and excellent cuts to get almost all of his shot attempts at the rim.
• Dawkins was lethal in transition, but not because of his ability to leap around the rim; as other guards pushed the ball up the floor, Dawkins fanned out to the three-point line and Michigan got several good looks from early offense as a result.
• He was often really hot at the start of games. Against Northwestern and Rutgers, he was able to pour in three or four buckets before the first TV timeout and was the main catalyst for Michigan’s quick starts in those games. It’s not that he tended to disappear in these contests for stretches at a time – he did average almost 14 shooting possessions over these three games – but he was particularly lethal early on and set the tone for big scoring performances.
• Opponent quality caveats apply, but Dawkins looked like a star against Rutgers. There wasn’t a high degree of difficulty on most of his shot attempts, but Dawk was utterly dominant, especially because his shot was falling. Michigan would love to get Aubrey 11 three-point attempts on mostly great looks in a given game, and he was able to cash them in for a massive scoring afternoon.
• This is more of a general comment, but it was impressive to see how much crisper Michigan was in March than they were in December. Players moved decisively, made a lot of correct reads, and moved the ball well. One of the loudest criticisms of Caris LeVert was that he was often prone to ball-stopping and reducing the offense to one-on-one battles on the perimeter, and there definitely was some merit to that. Fortunately Michigan shed those habits, and if LeVert comes back and fits a little bit better with the offense, the groundwork laid at the end of this past season should pay major dividends next year.

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Similarity Score Analysis

I know that this is strongly discouraged, but my similarity score model produces some fascinating cross-racial comparisons. Consider the case of Aubrey Dawkins, who counts six white guys among his top ten most similar seasons:

[ED - Alex: this table was incorrectly titled - these are the comps for Dawkins]

With regards to non-Michigan players, Dawkins’s profile produces an eclectic mix of guys: Joey King is Minnesota’s oft-criticized starting stretch four, Bryn Forbes and Brandon Wood were two guards for Michigan State, Keaton Nankivil – a spiritual forebear of Frank Kaminsky – was a dangerous stretch big man for the Badgers and Tyler Griffey played a similar role for Illinois. Down the list, the players who show up as most analogous to Aubrey Dawkins are shooters at the two, three, or four.

Tim Hardaway is the en vogue comparison for Dawkins, so to see Nik Stauskas and Zak Irvin as freshmen (as well as Zack Novak as a senior) in Dawkins’s top five was definitely unexpected. Here’s how their statistical profiles compare – Matt Vogrich shows up at 16 for Dawkins, so he’s included as well:

Click image to enlarge

Freshman Dawkins == freshman Stauskas is a little deceptive, if only because Nik played much more than Dawk did, but the comparison does hold true for their most important characteristic: shooting. Dawkins’s shooting splits as a freshman were 54 / 43 / 87 (2 / 3 / FT) and Stauskas’s were 50 / 44 / 85; the difference between the percent of shots taken on the floor is minimal, but Dawkins actually shot the ball more often. Stauskas showed more flashes of playmaking and played much better with the ball in his hands as a freshman – portents of his breakout sophomore season and eventual Big Ten POY accolades. Dawkins doesn’t have that ceiling, but he’s on track to be a very good shooter – if he isn’t already.

As the scatterplot above shows, Dawkins was a better shooter than Stauskas was as a freshman over the last 14 games of the year (once Dawk became a full-time guy). Small sample size caveats apply, but seeing that level of efficiency at that level of usage is extremely encouraging.

Because nobody would ever think of Zack Novak as fairly comparable to Dawkins, that senior season coming up high on the list was a big surprise – their very analogous shooting was the biggest similarity between the two, as their roles on both ends of the floor were discernibly different. Irvin’s name makes more sense, though he spent his whole freshman year as a microwave sixth man; Dawkins didn’t start playing significant rotation minutes for a while and eventually became a 30+ minutes per game starter.

Stylistically, Hardaway’s still probably the best comparison for Dawkins, though hopefully Dawkins will add a little more ability to attack the rim with the ball in his hands (and not just on straight line drives). These numbers do suggest that Dawkins should be compared to better shooters who wore a Michigan uniform though.

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So disrespectful

Aubrey Dawkins will be in a weird state of flux next year with the depth on the wing. Assuming Caris LeVert comes back, Michigan will have four certain starters – Walton, LeVert, Irvin, and a big man (probably Ricky Doyle, at least to start). Dawkins could play alongside those four, though Michigan could feasibly squeeze Albrecht, Robinson, Wagner, or Chatman in as well. If Dawkins’s defense doesn’t improve, I’m not sure Beilein would be inclined to play him thirty minutes a game with the other options on the roster.

It’s impossible to see Dawk falling too far down the bench though. His late-season scoring binge was legit and his shooting ability might be unparalleled on the roster right now. He improved with time and seems to have grasped the subtle offensive reads that lead to wide-open jumpers and he’s shown an ability to punish defenses for helping on drives – something that should open up room for Walton, Albrecht, LeVert, and Irvin to create. UM Hoops took a look at the elusive Synergy Sports data and came away with the conclusion that Dawkins was an elite offensive option against the zone – something Michigan struggled with a lot this past year.

In the long run, Dawkins will probably go down as a four-year contributor – the experience he gained and the potential he showed after getting an opportunity was invaluable. It’s easy to overrate players if they exceed expectations and it’s important to realize that Michigan was a pretty bad team, even at the end of the year. Still, what Dawkins showed translates onto a team of any quality – unless he somehow loses his shot (like Zak Irvin and Tim Hardaway did as sophomores), he’ll be a quality shooting specialist at worst. With defensive improvement and (hopefully) some diversification on the offensive end, his ceiling could be much higher. A Michigan resurgence next season would be powered by the amount of unique depth on the team: mark Dawkins in for the “designated gunner” role. Hopefully he can throw down a few more amazing dunks too.