Is Jamaree Bouyea the next “little big man"?

The NBA is a cruel league. Players can get suddenly chewed up and spit out, careers can derail quickly, and the NBA can be particularly cruel with smaller players.

Currently there are officially fifteen 6'1 players, ten 6'0 players and no players below 6'0 on regular NBA contracts. Just 5.5 percent of roster spots, for a total of 25 out of 450, are occupied by players below 6'2.

Obviously small guards are the most abundant “macro archetype” in basketball for an obvious reason of height distribution. Every season there are many great small guards in college and GLeague (42 players below 6'2 played at least 5 games this season, 44 in 2021–22). Many of them can get a chance here and there, few can stick around. It's clear there's an extremely high threshold of skills and a consequent narrow bottleneck for small guards to reach the NBA.

Boomyea

Jamaree Bouyea is a rookie guard (born on June, 27th 1999) that played with the Sioux Falls Skyforce this past season and maybe some remember him from his days at USF or got to know him in his two NBA stints with the Heat and the Wizards.

Bouyea could look like one of the many GLeague guards to the casual observer: he isn't a stud physically, stands at 6'0 barefoot (pre draft measurement at the G League Elite Camp), weighs 180 pounds and has a thin, wiry frame. But there's a reason why he could be different from the usual small G League guard and have a chance to stick around: he excels at things that generally limit smaller players.

First of all, he's an outstanding finisher around the rim, that brings intense rim pressure while maintaining a high efficiency. There are few skills more important in the NBA than being able to consistently put pressure at the rim to make a defense rotate and collapse. A lot of smaller players struggle to bring consistent rim pressure either because they aren't able to create the advantage needed to step inside the arch or because their efficiency at the rim is just too poor.

Bouyea’s rim pressure is primarily built on his high-end athletic traits. He’s an explosive athlete with a lightning quick first step paired with a 32.5" standing vertical and a 39.5" max vertical jump.

He obviously isn't the most powerful guy around and lacks some strength but he has amazing balance and his movements look particularly controlled and measured. Bouyea clearly isn't someone that can always push through contact but he showed some flexibility with a consistent ability to crunch and contort his body mid air while finishing around the rim.

Mixing elite horizontal and vertical explosivity with a good amount of balance and a pinch of flexibility you get one of the best finishers in G League.

It’s impressive how easily he turned Keon Ellis’ corner here

Bouyea attempted 5.3 shots per game in the restricted area in 22 Regular Season games, 6.3 if we extend to the 5 feet range. He shot respectively 81.9% and 73.4% percent there. Those look like elite numbers already at a first glance but we can get a better understanding of the level of his rim finishing going through some stats queries and G League historic data. Only 14 players attempted at least five shots per game shooting 75% or better in the restricted area during the GLeague Regular Season. None of them is below 6'6, beside Jamaree Bouyea obviously.

If we lower the percentage in the restricted area to 70%, the only other player below 6'6 is Mason Jones (who shot 73.1% in these situations, that’s 7.7 percentage points less than Bouyea).

Going deeper into his finishing, we can look for players with similar stats in the past G League seasons. The only guards that reached the five field goals per game and 75% in the restricted area in the last 10 GLeague season were Terance Mann in 19–20 and Delon Wright in 15–16. It is worth noting that they are both 6'5 and are having long NBA careers.

All these numbers are even more impressive if we consider that 71% of Jamaree’s made shots were unassisted, one of the highest percentages among G League players. And it’s not even like his finishing and his stats were boosted by some fast, supercharged kind of basketball. The Sioux Falls Skyforce averaging 99.96 possessions per game were one of the slowest teams in the League.

There are other small guards that showed high-level rim volume in G League, like Scotty Pippen Jr or Saben Lee, but none of them had a comparable efficiency.

Is Jamaree Bouyea's finishing just an outlier made of shooting variance or is the indicator of a translatable skill? Is it possible to carve out an NBA role as a small guard relying mostly on rim pressure?

Players like Josè Alvarado, Tre Jones, and TJ McConnell are good examples of small NBA guys that aren’t great shooters (Alvarado better than the others from a volume standpoint) but bring solid rim pressure and can consistently create advantages through it.

Ish Smith is another good example of a guy with similar pros and cons that carved out a solid NBA career as a backup guard (even if he was more pass-first). He was taking around 30% of his shots at the rim in his prime. Over 48% of Bouyea shots were taken within 5 feet from the rim. Is that volume translatable? That outcome may depend on the answer to this question. For reference, Tre Jones took 37% of his shots within 5 feet from the rim this season, Alvarado 29% and McConnell 44%.

Not just rim pressure 

The defensive impact is the other critical area for smaller guards since most of them are a large negative on that end of the floor at the higher level. Contrary to what one might think, he wasn’t a non-factor on the defensive end at the G League level.

He has a 6'7 wingspan (measured at G League Elite Camp) that paired with his quickness and motor makes him an active point of attack defender that can bother NBA ball handlers too.

He flashed some impressive anticipation on the passing lanes,  but it's also extraordinary how many blocks he was able to rack up. 34 blocks in 38 games is an incredible number for such a smallplayer.

How many 6'0 guards can average (almost) one block per game? There are only 3 players listed 6'2 or below that averaged at least 0.9 blocks per game in the G League era (since 2017–18): Xavier Moon (21–22, 22–23), Gary Payton II (18–19, 19–20) and Jevon Carter (18–19).

The sample is relatively small and the raw blocks numbers aren’t really indicators of defensive impact in a vacuum. Blocks are certainly more important if we are analyzing guards though, because a true indicator of high-end athletic traits and feel. Indeed in two of the three aforementioned cases the blocks indicated a certain defensive translatability.

The limiting factor in his game is clearly the shot. Bouyea shot 33% on just 4.6 three point attempts per 100 possessions and overall he made only 43 threes through 38 G League games (Showcase + Regular Season) on 134 attempts. Also the 70.9% from the free throw line isn't good enough to be overly optimistic on his shooting development. However, he had higher volumes in college and he could at least develop some interesting counters from the midrange, where he showed some nice fluidity and shot 29/60 on non-three jump shots this season.

This clearly isn’t a reliable shooting form with a lot of moving parts

He runs, accelerates, slows down and  rarely goes out of control. That's also testified by his 3.45 assists to turnover ratio.

He also flashed an interesting off ball role as an occasional “lob catcher”. It isn’t a reality yet but could be a nice dimension to explore for a creative coaching staff.

Summing all up, Bouyea is a small player with some physical limitations and technical flaws but excels at least at one of the most valued skills in the NBA that generally limits smaller players at the higher level. Is that enough to make Jamaree Bouyea the next “little big man”? It should certainly be enough to grant him another NBA chance.