Isaiah Collier is The Trojans Horse
Isaiah Collier is The Trojans Horse
Isaiah Collier has seen his luster diminish after coming into the season with massive expectations. Has his recent play turned around his stock enough to recapture his hype?
In the Aeneid, an expansive Latin epic poem written in dactylic hexameter, a Trojan citizen named Aeneas chronicles the fall of Troy and his subsequent travels to Italy after his home city’s destruction. As the story goes, the Trojans welcomed in a wooden horse as a supposed peace offering from the Greeks, only for the Greek warriors to emerge under darkness and open the city up to their invading army.
What does this have to do with the NBA draft? Other than a clever pun (in my mind) using the mascot for USC, there is nothing in and of itself! The loose concept of a “Trojan Horse,” which has wedged itself into the common vernacular, refers to a strategy to get your opponent to invite your forces in under the guise of peace or a gift.
That may sound like a draft bust in disguise to various NBA teams. For teams, players projected to play at a certain level, only not to meet that expectation, could be considered “Trojan Horse” prospects due to not being what they seemed to be pre-draft.
While the term is malicious, I think more positively about what a “Trojan Horse” prospect could do. While overlooked for various reasons, several draft prospects have burst onto the scene and shown a much higher ceiling than projected. In that way, the surprise inside the horse these players offer is one that teams would want to invite inside their gates.
That brings us to a USC Trojan himself, who, in a non-Bronny year, would be the most discussed prospect on the team: Isaiah Collier. His freshman season has gone far from expected, but could he be a “Trojan Horse” because he’s an impending danger to the team that drafts him or because he’s primed to erupt past his dwindling draft stock?
Demigod of Mythology: Collier in High School
Before he got to USC, it was hard to poke any holes in Isaiah Collier and his game, and for good reason. As the star at Wheeler High School in Georgia, Collier was the straw that stirred the drink, and stir he did, creating some of the cleanest offensive concoctions of any point guard prospect in recent memory.
It’s hard to zero in on just one thing that made Collier the RSCI #1 recruit in 2023, as he had several elite traits going for him. It’s easy to start with his athleticism, as Collier rarely looked like a high school athlete during his high school years.
Collier has excellent upper and lower body strength, which helps him create space against defenders and absorb contact on both ends. He’s also a blur of a horizontal athlete, zipping between defenders with his quickness and sprinting past defenders in transition.
Unsurprisingly, the high school game often looked easy for Isaiah Collier on offense. He could get to the rim at will, finish with impunity, and utilize his strongest asset outside of his athleticism when he drove: his passing. When combining his playmaking and scoring, it’s hard not to see Wheeler Isaiah Collier as a pristine prospect.
Collier isn’t just a missile with the ball in his hands for his benefit; he is often even better at setting up his teammates than himself. Whether it be a dizzying lob, whip to the corner for an open three, or split-second dish to a cutting teammate, there isn’t a type of pass that Collier can’t deliver on a dime.
Combining his athleticism, rim scoring, and passing prominence makes it easy to see what made Collier such an attractive prospect. He was courted by all manner of blue-blood programs but chose to attend USC over Michigan, UCLA, and Cincinnati. With momentum for the Trojans, it seemed like Collier would be the final piece to lead the team to the promised land. So why hasn’t that happened?
The Trojans War: Why has USC Fallen Short?
We must discuss the USC Trojans team to preface Collier’s tumultuous freshman year. They were the preseason #21 team in the AP Poll, and for supposed good reason. According to 247sports, the team had brought in the third-best recruiting class in the country, with Collier as the top player in the 2023 class, and barely lost any of their talent.
Even before snagging DJ Rodman from Washington State, the team had a solid stock of veterans. Boogie Ellis, Kobe Johnson, and Joshua Morgan returned to the team, and all three ranked in the top six for points, assists, and rebounds for the Trojans. This gave USC both an established foundation and an injection of youth.
All in all, an already solid team was adding the best high school guard in the country. However, instead of the top-tier team many expected, the Trojans have collapsed and are on their way to one of their worst seasons under Andy Enfield.
How did it go so wrong? Collier certainly doesn’t bear the brunt of it, although we’ll get into his warts later. He’s part of the injury bug that aggressively bit the Trojans, as he suffered a broken hand and missed a month of PAC-12 play. Kobe Johnson, Boogie Ellis, and Bronny James have also missed time. Still, the broader issue is that each player has stagnated developmentally or failed to meet their projected standards.
When combined with, per BartTorvik, some of the worst defensive rebounding and opponent three-point percentage in the country, it’s clear that almost everything has gone wrong for USC. You can point the finger any which way and be partially correct, but a cascade of issues has hamstrung what should’ve been a much better team.
Again, having missed six games, it isn’t all Isaiah Collier’s fault. The team could’ve used what Collier was supposed to be coming out of high school: a stocky and speedy floor general who lives in the paint and hits his teammates right in their spots. Had they had that player all season, the Trojans would likely resemble the team they were supposed to be.
The crux of the issue is that Collier hasn’t exactly lived up to what he was anointed as coming out of Wheeler High School. In some ways, Collier’s fit the bill and more for the Trojans. In others, he’s below the mark. Finally, and most interestingly, there’s a different version of Collier who’s emerged after his injury.
To learn more, let’s start with the strengths of his game!
Attacks, Sneaky and All: Collier’s Key Strengths
I wouldn’t have written about Isaiah Collier if I didn’t love his game, and boy, is there a lot to love. Despite the issues in Collier’s game that raise doubts about being a point guard, which I’ll get into later, he’s shown enough both before and after his injury to be, in my eyes, an easy lock as a first round point guard prospect.
The strongest part of Collier’s game is his ability to get downhill. Few players have a better first step in this draft class, and Collier uses his burst as a weapon. He’ll dart around screens, explode past an isolation defender, and commonly beat players down the court in transition. Watching how fast Collier can get going and beat other players down the court for easy scores is almost comical.
Collier has shown the same proclivity to attack at will in the halfcourt. It doesn’t matter if he’s the lead ball-handler in the pick-and-roll, attacking a spot-up situation from the wing, or spraying an array of dizzying moves; Collier’s a highly effective driver. Per Synergy, across 151 attempts at the rim, Collier is shooting 61.6%, which ranks as “Very Good” in their Points Per Shot metrics.
On tape, it’s easy to see why Collier is a magnificent finisher for a guard. Sometimes, he’ll thoroughly beat the coverage and have a wide-open lay-up. Other times, he’ll use his upper body strength to bump players out of his way or absorb the contact of a bruising big man. Collier often contorts his body at absurd angles and flips up a moonshot for an and-one. Alongside his burst, Collier has some of the best finishing moves of any guard in the 2024 draft class.
These drives come from his raw athletic abilities, but not highlighting his handle would do him a disservice. Collier has a robust bag of tricks that he uses with his dribble, whether it be a quick cross, hesitation, or in-and-out dribble, but what’s most important is the pace at which he wields it. He knows when to slow down his dribbling to bait a defender, then speed it up and pound the ball on his way to the rim.
Another critical area of Collier’s interior dominance is his sneaky post-up game. Although he’s only shooting 31.3% on it during the season, he’s been deploying it more and more since his return from his hand injury, especially to good effect against Washington and Washington State. His combination of strength and finishing package helps Collier with his baby hooks and is something he can build on as a counter for the future.
As a scorer, Collier is still incomplete; until he figures out a jumper or runner in the mid-range, he’ll be a bit one-dimensional. The dimension that he does have figured out, however, is such a developed weapon that he deserves first round consideration. You can’t find the same type of athlete and finisher outside the top lottery prospects in this or most other draft classes.
Luckily, it’s not just about scoring with Collier. Despite his early turnover issues, a sudden realization slaps you across the face when you turn on the tape: Collier is a frisky and talented passer. He has mastered a host of different passes in his arsenal, and when combined with his speed, he’s hard to stop when setting up others.
The foundation of Collier’s passing is his mind. It doesn’t matter how fast he’s going or how many bodies the other team throws at him; Collier possesses acute processing speed and can see angles and wrinkles in defenses that others can’t. He leads the Trojans in usage and assist percentage, with both up over 30%, which is a tricky tightrope to walk as a lead ball-handler.
Collier uses the same quick decision-making for cuts and drop-offs for his lob passing. Collier’s high school teammates Arrinten Page, Joshua Morgan, and Vincent Iwuchukwu have all received crisp lob passes that were thrown while Collier was barrelling into the lane at full speed.
Collier’s ability to hit the shooting pocket or dump-off spot at full speed is a weapon defenses can’t take away. Because of his excellent finishing, there’s already a heightened awareness of his scoring compared to his passing. His unselfish attitude and desire to involve his teammates in their preferred spots show why Collier is a true floor general prospect who excels at captaining an offense.
This is a quality passing draft class at the top, from Nikola Topic and Stephon Castle to Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham, but Collier’s name deserves mention amongst the best passers. He can hit every read, set his teammates up in their ideal spots, and use his burst to consistently create advantages in both the half-court and in transition opportunities.
When querying BartTorvik, a fascinating potential archetype emerges for Collier’s NBA outlook. When filtering for freshman guards with at least a 30% usage rate, 30% assist percentage, and 4.0 BPM, Collier is one of four guards in the database alongside Tyreke Evans, Trae Young, and Markelle Fultz.
Before the pitchforks assemble, I’ll address the obvious: by the numbers, Isaiah Collier is not in the same tier as these three prospects. They’ve lapped him in BPM, which isn’t the end-all-be-all but is an important indicator of the impact that made them highly-ranked draft prospects. I’m more intrigued by how Collier is matching these numbers without having the same outsized impacts as them.
Collier hasn’t played the same minutes or as well as these other prospects, but he’s improved since his hand injury. When stacked against these other prospects, Collier’s effective field goal percentage, steal percentage, free-throw rate, and two-point percentage are all first or second in this group.
This query doesn’t suggest that Collier should be drafted in the Top 5 of the 2024 draft: he’d need to have a massive close to his season and a killer predraft process to sniff that. Instead, the advanced numbers speak to the best part of Collier’s game: his advantage creation and what he can do with said advantages.
That advantage creation will be what buoys Collier’s game until his shooting catches up. If he was in the NBA right now, there’s a role for a guard who’s a blur towards the rim and is an unselfish, talented passer. That role is a sixth man, which is a downgrade from the franchise cornerstone that Collier was projected to be in the NBA in the preseason, but the fact that he has a defined role that he could play at the next level is more than other first round prospects can say today.
If Collier is to reach his ceiling and burst onto the scene, Trojan Horse style, he’ll need to improve his outside shot enough to make defenses start to respect him. I’m less concerned about his turnover issues, as he’s only had one game with more turnovers than assists since returning from injury, but his shooting is his swing skill, just like it is for many athletic players.
Will he improve his shot enough to do so? I’m not sure. The deck is slightly stacked against him due to his numerical indicators and smaller positional size. It’ll take a lot of dedicated work and growth, but given the in-season strides that Collier’s made to his passing and ball control, taking a bet on him developing into a league-average shooter is a bet I’d be willing to take.
Reasons to Flee: Where Collier Struggles
Coming into college, Isaiah Collier had a reputation as a quintessential point guard prospect. He could get his own in the flow of the offense, score in several different ways, and, best of all, was a reliable lead ball-handler who could create advantages as well, not only for himself but for all his teammates.
So far, that’s only partially true. We’ve discussed the positives already, but it’s important to consider where Collier has fallen short as a floor general. The most challenging sell for Collier is how loose he’s been with possessions, averaging 3.2 turnovers per game. Two key areas to clean up stand out when digging into how he’s turned the ball over at such a clip.
The first significant cause of Collier’s turnovers is his curious tendency to foul offensively. He’s a superb driver due to his physicality and aggression, but those positive attributes have also gotten Collier in trouble on his drives. Part of the issue is an overzealous whistle that he won’t see as much in the NBA, but he will need to play a bit more under control when seeking contact to avoid as many unforced errors.
The other area where Collier can cut down on turnovers is his passing. There’s a lot to love about how Collier slings the rock in the halfcourt and in transition, but he tends to hunt the hero pass more than he should. He could improve the pacing on his passes, as some of his reads oscillate between too fast and too lazy.
Collier’s such a good passer and ball-handler that these are more of a nitpick of his game. He does have a clear turnover problem, but since returning from his hand injury, Collier has cut down on his turnovers. He’s only averaging 2.5 turnovers a game with a 1.64 assist-to-turnover ratio in PAC-12 conference play, which speaks to how he’s started to turn the corner on this downturn in his game.
Collier’s actual swing skill is his shooting, even more than his turnovers. He came to USC with a reputation as a mediocre shooter, and he’s done nothing to shake that perception. Instead, while there may be a few silver linings, his jumper has stagnated in its unfinished form.
Per Synergy, across his 107 jump shots, Collier is only shooting 33.6%, which gets grizzlier when you dig into the details. For one, Collier is just a 67.8% free-throw shooter on over a hundred attempts this season, which confirms his warts as a shooter. That doesn’t bode well for his touch as a shooter either, which is a cause for concern.
Two elements have rendered Collier an ineffective shooter. First is his balance. Collier’s handle and natural burst let him get to his spots whether he has the ball in his hands or gets into a spot-up look, but he doesn’t always get his feet under him with his attempts. Many of his pull-up shots are rushed or harried, as evidenced by his 36.7% clip on pull-up twos and 27.3% clip on pull-up threes.
Collier needs a reliable jumper as a guard who’s probably closer to 6’3” than 6’5”. Sure, a guard like Russell Westbrook can excel without a good perimeter jump shot, but he was money from the mid-range. Besides, how feasible is it for Collier to try to fit into an archetype like Westbrook’s that’s barely yielded good results?
The second issue for Collier’s jumper is the depth of his threes. I noticed more and more as I watched Collier feel confident pulling up and firing from way beyond the NBA range. While that’s crucial for sniper guards to further disrupt the court’s geometry, Collier should focus on hitting closer jumpers before stretching his range.
While the depth of his shots could improve, his catch-and-shoot attempts are the rosiest part of his long-range outlook. Collier has attempted 44 catch-and-shoot threes this season and hit 36.4% of them, primarily due to the rhythm at which he can take them. Instead of dipping or rushing his shot, Collier’s spot-up attempts are much cleaner and serve as the blueprint for what he should strive for with all his jumpers.
Given his poor free-throw shooting and struggles in other areas, it’s hard to gloss over the ceiling that being a poor shooter puts on Collier’s game. No matter how good of an offensive player he is otherwise, the lack of spacing will stifle his effectiveness. Thus, it’s hard to project imminent measurable growth or the potential future to be a perimeter star without the jumper.
The last issue for Collier serves both as a swing skill for his ceiling and could be the least consequential if he can improve his turnovers and shooting. Collier’s a poor perimeter defender, which isn’t an impossible hurdle, but it does have enough troubling trends to deserve its own spotlight.
Collier lacks the size to contest shots, the strength to hold his own in the post, and the effort to chase guards on the perimeter. He often dies on screens and closes out too slowly. Despite the dynamite foot speed and agility he uses to be a meaningful offensive player, he has yet to translate those athletic tools into being a meaningful defender.
Again, this isn’t to say Collier’s a lost cause on defense. He’s an opportunistic defender who jumps passing lanes pretty well, as evidenced by his average of 1.5 steals per game. Still, even that type of turnover generation isn’t sustainable, given the risky nature of most of his swipes.
It may seem harsh to go into such detail on the negatives in Collier’s game, but that’s the price to pay when you’re a top-notch prospect with expectations. Whether fair or not, Collier will be judged at the next level on whether he can shore up the negatives with his turnovers, shots, and defense. Given his athletic advantages and his driven work ethic, I’m bullish on him solving at least one of these major issues, but it would go a long way to getting him back on a star trajectory to improve on two of the three.
A Story Still Unwritten: Conclusion on Collier
Unlike the Trojan Horse itself, Isaiah Collier won’t go down in legends as a prospect. He came into college with a sterling reputation, but some issues on both ends of the court have knocked him out of contention for a lottery spot.
That would be a mistake for lottery teams and a win for a playoff squad. Although he’s currently a minus shooter and defender, Collier already has the athleticism, finishing, and passing to play minutes on an NBA team. A host of play-in contenders could use the punch of offense that Collier routinely delivers to opposing defenses.
Thus, Collier should still safely be a first round prospect due to his floor. That’s a funny statement about a former #1 overall high school recruit, but there’s still more to his game that he can unlock. A player with Collier’s speed who doesn’t turn the ball over as much and can hit a decent clip of shots is the type of player that teams can start to build around.
Again, I’m not saying that he’ll get there: to do so would be a significant developmental win for Collier and the team that drafts him. In a draft that is a bit dry on star prospects, however, gambling on Collier hitting his upside and blossoming into the type of star he was projected to be could be a gamble worth taking compared to some lower-ceiling prospects.
At this point, due to his star and spectacle, Isaiah Collier isn’t going to sneak up on anyone, like the Trojan Horse. As a basketball player, however, Collier has been the horse for the Trojans that they can rely on to get them a bucket and command their offense. It’s why I’m bullish on his chances to put it all together and remind everyone, in a surprising fashion to some, the high-caliber point guard prospect that he was and still is to this day.