4 deep-cut breakout candidates

This article rated SO for Sickos Only

The famed NBA “breakout” is a rather nebulous term. Typically, we talk about a player breaking out when they go from bench sparkplug to surefire starter, or from starter to star.

But players up and down the NBA’s food chain are constantly battling for their chance at a breakout. It’s not just seventh men who want to be third men, or lottery picks looking to make a leap in their junior season. It’s also guys on the fringe trying desperately to find solid footing in the league.

Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale recently asked me to join his podcast Hardwood Knocks to discuss the latter type of players. Since I took all these notes for the pod, I decided to write up a few players for you all. If you’re interested in some truly obscure names (plus Bennedict Mathurin!), Dan and I covered more than a dozen such players here:

For podcast listeners, here it is in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And for my readers, here are four guys with an outside shot at a (relatively!) big season.

Jaylen Clark, Minnesota Timberwolves

You know how to get clicks and subscribers in this era of byte-sized news? Lead off your article with Jaylen Clark.

That’ll be $499 for the Masterclass in niche basketball blog marketing. Donate here:

Terrence Shannon Jr. is the more obvious pick to fill Nickeil Alexander-Walker’s role as a 3-and-D-plus player, but I’ve talked about him before. An even deeper cut — but one with upside I like — is defensive hound Jaylen Clark.

For context, Clark was the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year in college before tearing his Achilles at the end of the 2023 regular season, dropping him to the 53rd pick in the draft. He spent all of 2023-24 rehabbing and eventually made his return in January of this year, and he played at least garbage-time minutes in every game from February onward.

If the name Clark rings any bells at all, it’s likely because he looked like Minnesota’s best defensive option against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the playoffs for a few minutes:

Unfortunately, Clark only received a few minutes, undone by his inability to do much of anything on offense.

Clark is the classic all-defense, no-offense wing. Although Clark sported solid efficiency marks last season, an oxygen-starved 11% usage rate proves he was completely uninvolved. 43% from deep sounds great until you realize he only attempted 51 triples the entire season! Clark was a poor shooter in college and didn’t look like he’d improved much this Summer League, so I’m nervous about his prospects of holding up on that end.

Which is a bummer, because the defense is truly electrifying. Relentlessness is the primary virtue. Continuing a long tradition of hardwood shinobis from Pablo Prigioni to McConnell to Jose Alvarado, he’s mastered the smokescreen arts of the backcourt steal:

Clark’s path to playing time is murky, but plausible. The Wolves have a lot of questions in the backcourt after Anthony Edwards. Aside from the obvious injury possibilities, what if Donte DiVincenzo forgets how to shoot again? What if the clock tick-tocks Mike Conley into a pumpkin? What if Terrence Shannon doesn’t pan out, or Rob Dillingham’s theoretical-to-this-point offense can’t compensate for his defensive deficiencies?

If Clark plays consistent minutes, that probably means something went wrong for the Wolves. But that’s how it works for guys scrapping at the back end of league rosters.

Saddiq Bey, New Orleans Pelicans

Remember Saddiq Bey?

Bey began his career in Detroit and started almost from day one. The 6’7” wing had a tantalizing mix of size and shooting, and he made First Team All-Rookie in 2021 while shooting 38% from deep on high volume.

It can be argued that Bey peaked as a rookie, but he averaged 14 points per game in his four seasons for Detroit and Atlanta before he tore his ACL. After spending a year in Washington rehabbing his injury, Bey landed in N’awlins as part of the odd Jordan Poole/CJ McCollum trade this offseason.

We won’t know what the still-just-26 Bey will look like physically until we see him on the court, but New Orleans is in desperate need of someone with Bey’s size and shooting ability. Although his defense waxed and waned (mostly the latter) throughout his career, he’s at least shown some ability on that end, which could be helpful on a Pellies team that finished last in defensive rating.

The Pelicans have arguably the worst-shooting big man rotation in the league. Zion Williamson, Yves Missi, Kevon Looney, and Derik Queen provide as much stretch as a steel spoon. (And although they’re not bigs, Herb Jones and rookie Jeremiah Fears will be ignored on the perimeter.)

Bey has experience playing everything from shooting guard to power forward. If the Pels find a way to survive on the boards, Bey could space the floor for Zion or Queen as a four. If they decide they need to address the rebounding problems, he could play as a two next to Fears or Poole (Bey is particularly valuable as an offensive rebounder).

The Pelicans have very few players with positional flexibility, and even though there are sexier names on the roster, I can’t help but think that Bey will find a way to weasel into bigger-than-expected minutes.

Collin Gillespie, Phoenix Suns

Gillespie spent one year as a lightly-used Nugget before moving to Phoenix, where he earned an opportunity in the last 15 or so games of a lost season. He did the absolute most he could in that time. Without any true point guard on the roster this season, he should have a chance to run the second unit and perhaps even play spot minutes with the starters.

There is a lot of former teammate Tyus Jones in Gillespie’s game. He sets up teammates without turning it over (his 4.6 assist-to-turnover ratio slotted him right in between Chris Paul and Kyle Lowry), and he’s a deadly shooter from outside, making up for a complete inability to get to the rim. Gillespie has shot 42% from deep in his short career, and he’s been deadly both on the catch and off the dribble.

Synergy says Gillespie only shot on 41 possessions as a pick-and-roll ballhandler, a number so small as to be random noise. But I’m obliged for narrative-pushing purposes to point out that he was in the 99th percentile in points per possession! Making threes off the dribble is a vital skill for a point guard, and Gillespie showed no fear pulling the trigger when given a hint of an opportunity:

I mentioned that Gillespie can’t get to the rim, and unlike Jones, he has no one-handed float game to lean on. Instead, he has a little bit of the TJ McConnell-esque 8-foot pull-up.

Gillespie will always be a defensive liability, which limits his upside as a starter, but he fights hard and does all the pesky little-guard things to at least make opponents work for a second while the help defense coalesces behind him. While Gillespie lacks Jones’ craft from two-point range, he brings far more energy on and off the ball.

Gillespie showed his ceiling in a 22-point, 10-assist performance that came with both Devin Booker and Kevin Durant healthy and playing. His shooting and kinetic energy can carve out a very real role in this league.

Ja’Kobe Walter, Toronto Raptors

Walter is the biggest name on this list as a first-round pick last season, but injury struggles and the lethargic haze of uneventfulness around Toronto mean most fans probably didn’t get to see too much of him.

Walter is more of a shot-taker than a shotmaker at this point. But it’s worth pointing out that he was the rare rookie who calibrated his rangefinder as the season went on, hitting 40% from deep over the last half of his games. And although he struggled to finish, Walter also was able to get to the rack for a spacing-starved Raptors team without much trouble, often through a keen sense of timing on backdoor cuts:

On the surface, Walter might come across as that least loved of player archetypes — the volume-scoring two-guard who doesn’t bring a lot else to the table. But with a 6’10” wingspan and good lateral quickness, Walter actually thrived as an on-ball defender last season. In a small sample, Walter graded out as a well-above-average isolation defender.

Unfortunately, Walter also never met a screen he didn’t want to sit down and have a snack with, and the complexities of NBA pick-and-roll defense left him befuddled more often than not. But there’s a good, perhaps great, point of attack defender in here somewhere. If coach Darko Rajakovic and his staff can find him, Walter could emerge into something like Gary Trent Jr. with a handle, or perhaps a smaller Jaylen Brown (without the All-NBA upside, of course, but the general outline is there).

Don’t expect it to happen all at once; Walter is still just 20, and he’ll have to earn his minutes in a surprisingly crowded wing rotation that also features RJ Barrett, Gradey Dick, and Ochai Agbaji. But Walter has more two-way upside than any of those players save, perhaps, Barrett; keep an eye on what’s happening north of the border.

---

That’s what I got for ya! If you’re looking for more guys of this ilk, make sure to watch or listen to Hardwood Knocks at the links above!