Koa Peat Is a Force but Can He Be More? | New Man on Campus
Koa Peat is a sublime athlete and a force of nature, but the Arizona freshman has a great opportunity to prove that he's got the potential to be more than that.
Powerful athleticism is always a good thing to have as a basketball player. Players with it immediately pop, have more room for error, and can simply do things that most can’t dream of. That natural advantage can also lead to bad habits developing from the fact that nearly no one else can match them physically until it’s too late to adjust. Parsing bad habits and inabilities from indifference and boredom with these athletes at lower levels can be really tricky. That’s the conundrum I continuously find myself battling with one of the best athletes for the 2026 NBA Draft and Arizona’s new man on campus, Koa Peat.
The most enticing aspect of Peat’s game is that he is a physical force. The 6’8” 235-pound forward has done nothing but produce and win at ridiculous levels throughout AAU, high school, and international play. He knows that his physical tools surpass nearly everyone else on the court, and he isn’t afraid to use them. Peat does a tremendous job of blending speed with power to feast around the rim with scoring and rebounding.
What sets Peat apart from most excellent athletes of his age and size, though, is how comfortable he is with the ball. Whether he’s pushing in transition, cutting, attacking close outs, or participating in the pick-and-roll, Peat has a really encouraging handle for his position. This allows him to further elevate his physical gifts to make himself far more than just a play finisher. Instead, Peat is able to execute spins and crossovers effortlessly while also changing speed and direction in the blink of an eye. He’s a constant matchup problem as bigger defenders tend to be too slow, and smaller defenders aren’t strong enough.
The problem, though, is that as Peat continues to scale up in competition, he’s not going to be able to get to the rim whenever he wants. He’ll be facing the best defenders and athletes in the world, so a lot of his bully ball style won’t translate. He has to develop some sort of counter so when he’s cut off from the rim, he has another way to impact the offense. One of the obvious routes for that is through shooting.
Peat has had flashes of fun midrange scoring, but unfortunately, they’re just flashes. The most consistent ingredient has been his shot creation, because the numbers are pretty rough. His jump shooting numbers with Team USA over the summer were pretty good as he shot 53.8%, but that was only on 13 attempts—and 12 of those were inside 17 feet. Instead, let’s look at the largest sample size we have via Synergy, which is his 15 games and 100 jump shot attempts with Compton Magic on the Adidas 3SSB circuit.
In those games, Peat ranked in the 36th percentile in shooting, shot 34% on jumpers, only took three attempts off the catch, and shot 34.8% on pull-ups, where he also ranked in the 99th percentile in frequency. Peat’s touch and shot creation are fine, but his shot selection, mechanics, and history are really troubling for his game translating to the NBA. As we can see, Peat has an inconsistent release point, inconsistent timing on his release, and a follow-through that results in erratic misses; he falls out of his shot a lot.
We’ve seen players who can’t shoot have long, successful careers plenty of times. The hand-wringing over his shot isn’t to say that Peat has no chance of making the NBA. Of course he does. The point is more to stress that it may not be as clear of a road as we hoped it would be. Peat will have to change a lot about the way he plays, which is a tall order. If things go right and Peat hits a high-end outcome, becoming a player like Aaron Gordon is absolutely in the cards for him.
Over the years, Gordon has done a tremendous job of reshaping his game and turning into an elite role player (this is always a compliment). Since moving to the Denver Nuggets, Gordon has improved his passing efficiency, turned into at least an ok standstill shooter, and bought even more into the defensive end. There’s no reason why Peat shouldn’t be working towards following the same path, even if some of those are more realistic than others.
Peat wasn’t a prolific playmaker, but there are some encouraging figures and flashes from last year. With Compton Magic, Peat had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.09, a turnover rate of 10.3%, and averaged 2.3 assists per game. Peat should continue to live in the middle of the floor at Arizona, given his athleticism. Instead of tossing up a bunch of errant midrange jumpers, I’d love for him to focus more on setting up his teammates on the wing or on cuts. It isn’t his instinct to create for others, but if he makes it more of a priority, there is some real juice that could help take his offense to another level.
When it comes to spot-up shooting, I’m significantly more skeptical that this will be a quick implementation. The last three “seasons” for Peat in Synergy’s database are seven games with Team USA U19, two games with Perry High School, and 15 games with Compton Magic. Across all of those, Peat has attempted five total shots off the catch. It’s not like he was buried on the block either. Peat was on the perimeter plenty and had more than ample opportunities to let it fly spotting up. Instead, he rarely looked at the rim or exclusively looked to drive. The lack of confidence and comfort shooting off the catch suggests that this route to offensive versatility may be a bit of a steeper climb. For what it’s worth, Peat did take 30 three-pointers off the bounce and shot 30%. Not great numbers, but another data point to work with.
The quickest route in my eyes for Peat to diversify his impact is to fully and totally buy in on the defensive end of the court. There is some exciting upside for him in this area, but the consistency has been pretty rough. The biggest issues, which aren’t uncommon among high school stars, are disengagement and indifference for fundamentals. A lot of Peat’s defensive success came through just his dominant physical tools, again, not uncommon for high schoolers. When Peat was in situations that required discipline, proper technique, and quick processing speed, it wasn’t uncommon for him to get torched.
These situations were always incredibly frustrating because Peat is too talented for that stuff to consistently disgrace his film. The hope is that it was mostly just a symptom of what typically comes with high school basketball. While it still wasn’t great, Peat’s defense was substantially better with Team USA than with his high school or AAU teams. Peat still had some games where he got into foul trouble, but with more structure and accountability, his defense took a massive step forward. If that’s the case again this year with Arizona, along with his fantastic defensive playmaking, it would do wonders for the confidence in Peat’s game translating to the next level.
The talent and physical tools with Koa Peat are undeniable. You always notice him when he’s on the court, and his energy is infectious. He’s the type of player that you desperately want to work out. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that there still aren’t major questions that need answering. Ideally, Peat will follow more of the Aaron Gordon path to success as he molds his game into always executing the little things at the highest level. If he doesn’t buy into that route, though, and continues to just try to overpower everyone, his career could unfortunately look more like that of Derrick Williams. Peat has all the tools a basketball player could dream of, and he’s going to have an incredible opportunity to show us what he wants to do with them.