What video clips showed me Burke needs to improve upon most is his pick and roll defense. As we saw with D.J. Augustin in the playoffs, defending the pick and roll properly is arguably the most important thing for undersized point guards to learn. Despite his hot shooting, Augustin was unable to stay on the court in the closing minutes of tight playoff games because opponents quickly identified him as a lame duck on the defensive end.
Augustin is too small to switch with big men on picks and isn’t fast enough to catch up to his opponents on blow-bys. Both the Knicks and Heat successfully lured Roy Hibbert out of the paint by merely setting a string of picks on Augustin. When the Pacers would inevitably switch, Augustin would invariably relent positioning in the post. Knowing this, Augustin eventually called off switches and consistently got burnt:
Burke has better lateral quickness and longer arms than Augustin. However, he often goes under screens and is too reliant on his length to disrupt an opponent’s shot. While Burke’s 6’5.5” wingspan helps him make up for some deficiencies in size, his length will only be considered as average among NBA point guards. Slipping under screens barely cut it in the Big Ten, it certainly won’t cut it against Stephen Curry or Kyrie Irving.
Unfortunately for Burke, going over the top of screens won’t exactly solve his problems either. Athletes like Russell Westbrook and Derrick Rose can take an inch of daylight and turn it into two points at the rim within nanoseconds.
Burke also has a tendency to ball-watch, which clearly cannot happen at the next level:
It’s not an uncorrectable problem, but it does happen more times than you would like to see out of your floor general. In the NBA, smart cutters will eat him alive when he loses focus. But I digress.
If I were about to use my lottery pick on Burke, I’d make sure I had a personal trainer ready to work with him on his upper body strength and lateral quickness.
For such a bulky build, Burke is surprisingly weak in the upper body. He only bench-pressed three repetitions at the combine at the point guards’ standard weight. To put this in perspective, both Conley and Teague benched 13 reps at their respective combines, despite having longer arms.
While bench pressing has become a somewhat outdated barometer of total strength, it is still a good indicator of upper body mass. And as several experts have noted, Burke never appears to have smooth collisions when he drives into big men at the rim. If Burke builds his upper body strength, however, he will undoubtedly become a better finisher and reduce his chances of sustaining a serious injury later in his career.
Now that I’ve spelled out all the things Burke needs to improve, it’s time to analyze what the 20-year-old does well.
great analysis, although i disagree about the conclusions. Burke’s game in college is one thing…….he cant do those things in the NBA because he lacks a top gear. This is the problem for DJ augustin for example, and for guys like devan harris and mo williams. If you are a six foot pg, you have to accelerate….ty lawson does that, kemba even does that, conley does that (not as well as one might wish)……or guys are just out there with defense in mind first…Rondo, or both like chris paul. Burke strikes me as smart, efficient, but not likely to score effectively at the pro level…..AND most problematically, he is going to struggle on defense. His lack of lateral quickness is pretty glaring.
Denzel Valentine scored 5 ppg and shot 28% from three. That’s good help, Valentine just happened to make a shot. Other than that good article, I agreed with much of it.
Really great article. Good stuff my man.