The Simmering Stock of Alex Karaban
After a bit of a slow start to the season, Alex Karaban really started to heat up as the calendar has turned to 2024. His recent run has boosted his stock and could make him a first round candidate.
Alex Karaban was seen as a potential breakout candidate for the 2024 NBA Draft heading into this season. After coming off an impressive freshman season as part of UConn’s National Title run last season, Karaban was slated for an increased role this season with Jordan Hawkins and Adama Sanogo both making their way to the NBA.
While Karaban did take some notable steps forward to start the year, his sophomore campaign did not exactly kick off as he might have hoped in terms of his draft stock. Karaban took on an increased role in the offense with positive results, as he has upped his scoring to 14.6 points per game this season without much of an uptick in playing time (from just under 29 minutes per game last season to just over 31 per game this year) as he stepped into a larger role in the UConn offense.
Karaban’s scoring overall may have gone up, but his greatest weapon appeared to be a bit diminished. Simply put, his long-range shot was not falling; Karaban put up 5.6 3PA per game through the end of December 2023 and hit them at a 32.9% clip. That’s a decent enough hit rate for a non-shooter who was starting to space the floor out to the three-point line, but it’s nowhere near good enough for a prospect whose shot was touted as his greatest weapon and who connected on 40.2% of his triples last season.
Since the calendar turned over to 2024, though, Karaban has been on fire from everywhere on the floor. He’s back up to 40.4% from long range on the season, with truly absurd 54/49/88 shooting splits since the start of January.
The small sample size of three-point shooting in a college for even the most prolific long-range shooters can make a poor long-range shooter look great and can make an elite shooter look pedestrian or worse. Alex Karaban has managed to turn the ship around completely on his mediocre early-season shooting numbers from distance—and in the process, he’s made it easier to take stock of the clear improvements he’s made in other areas of his game by erasing those potential shooting question marks.
After flirting with draft consideration last year, Alex Karaban’s late season push could boost him out of the mid-late second round range (he was #41 on the latest No Ceilings BIG Board and #48 on the latest $DRFT rankings) and potentially into consideration for a first round selection. So…let’s dive deep!
Shooting: Proof of Touch
With Alex Karaban, the issue with the shot was never one of appearances. While you could potentially quibble with his low release, especially when it comes to shooting off the dribble, Karaban has smooth and consistent form on his jumpers. The low release is also less of a problem for someone with Karaban’s 6’8” frame than it might be for other players.
That being said, the concern about Karaban’s ability to shoot off the dribble is real. He’s taken just six dribble jumpers all season after taking four all of last season. Still, it’s certainly less of a problem for an almost exclusively off-ball shooter like Karaban than it is for a primary initiator who will have the ball in their hands on every play. When you can be a spot-up threat like Karaban can at his size, the off-the-dribble shooting is much less of a concern—especially when you have the kind of parking lot range that he does:
Hot streaks and cold streaks can really sink a prospect’s draft stock if they come at the wrong time. I think it’s safe to say that Alex Karaban will not shoot 49% from three-point range in the NBA as he has so far in 2024. Conversely, the conversation about Karaban’s draft stock would look dramatically different if he had knocked down 49% of his triples to start the season and then gone somewhat cold from distance in 2024 instead of the other way around. Timing, as with much of life, is everything when it comes to draft stock.
Still, at this point in the season, I’m comfortable with saying that Alex Karaban is an elite shooter. The question that then arises with nearly every long-range marksman is: well, what else can he do? What can he do when he’s forced off the three-point line? As it turns out, Karaban’s answer to that question this season has been nothing short of emphatic.
Overall Offense: Efficiency, Efficiency, Efficiency
While it took Alex Karaban a couple of months of red-hot long-range shooting to return his three-point percentage to the expected lethal levels, his scoring game inside the arc has been another matter entirely. Karaban was very efficient on his limited looks inside the arc last season. This year, though, he has gone from very efficient inside the arc to truly lethal—and he’s done so in a way that will work wonders for his NBA future.
Let’s start with the numbers from last season. Karaban took just under 40% (39.9%, to be exact) from two-point range. Those weren’t jumpers just inside the three-point line either; 96 of Karaban’s 111 two-point tries last season were at the rim. He was decent around the rim, converting 58.3% of those looks, good enough for the 55th percentile, per Synergy; unlike his overall 58.7% mark on two-pointers, though, that rate at the rim isn’t really anything to write home about.
This season, though, has been a different story. Karaban has averaged 10.2 shots per game this year, up from 7.0 per game last season, but the majority of the new shots have been inside the arc; he’s gone from 2.8 FGA per game from two-point range last season to 4.6 FGA per game this season. As with last year, most of those looks have been right around the basket.
Karaban has taken 95 shots at the rim this season, and converted them at a remarkable 70.5% clip—the kind of mark you expect from a lob-finishing big man or the elite of the elite drivers. That rate puts Karaban in the 91st percentile among at-rim finishers. He’s not ground-bound by any means, but he’s not an elite vertical athlete either; however, he’s gifted at using his height to his advantage at the rim, and he’s starting to take advantage of his strength and muscle opponents out of the way near the basket. His much-improved ability to finish through and around opposing defenses will be vital to his NBA future:
The basic two-point percentage numbers back up the improvement; Karaban is shooting a red-hot 67% from two-point range overall this season. The advanced numbers add further fuel to the fire; Karaban ranks in the 98th percentile offensively this season, up from the 90th percentile last year—and that comes in spite of his efficiency falling off (albeit slightly) in his two most common play types: spot-ups and transition play.
He’s still elite in both categories, to be clear (85th percentile spotting up and 78th percentile in transition after ranking in the 94th and 90th percentiles, respectively, last year), but Karaban’s three-point percentage recovery makes it easier for the improvements he’s made elsewhere in his game to shine through. He’s been extremely effective off-ball in two other key areas this season; Karaban ranks in the 91st percentile as a cutter, and he ranks in the 99th percentile as a pick-and-roll roll man. His ability to set solid screens and either pop or rim run while involved in the action pairs perfectly with his ability to cut and wreak havoc when defenses try to guard him tightly at the three-point line and give him a window to cut backdoor. Karaban is always active off-ball, whether he’s running around screens to lose his defender beyond the arc or darting into the paint whenever there’s an open lane to the rim. There’s an element of death by a thousand cuts to his off-ball game: leave him space beyond the arc, and he’ll bury you; guard him too tightly, though, and he’ll slip through an opening and finish at the basket.
On top of his off-ball brilliance, Karaban has also continued his trend from last season of absolutely punishing size mismatches in the post. It’s not something he does often (as would be the case at the NBA level as well), but Karaban is a menace when teams try to stick smaller guards on him; he ranks in the 98th percentile on post-ups this year after ranking in the 94th percentile last season, per Synergy.
Karaban could stand to force the issue a bit more around the basket—you’d love to see more than 1.8 FTA per game from a guy shooting 88.9% from the charity stripe. There’s room for improvement from him in the midrange game as well, but overall, Karaban has taken key developmental strides forward in the most important areas of his game. Filling out his off-ball repertoire with improved screening and more active cutting just makes him all the more dangerous in the areas where he’ll be operating the vast majority of the time on the offensive end.
As our own Maxwell Baumbach covered brilliantly in his article yesterday, it’s becoming more and more difficult for pure three-point shooters to find a place in the league if they don’t do anything else. With the absurd efficiency that he’s shown when he’s been forced off the three-point line, especially during the cold spell when his triples weren’t falling, Alex Karaban has shown that he is far from a one trick pony when it comes to his offensive game.
Future Outlook
The story of Alex Karaban’s season has matched quite nicely with UConn’s story as a team this season. After a really strong but not superlative 10-2 start to the season, UConn has yet to lose a game in 2024. Barring a thoroughly unanticipated collapse in their final five regular season games, the Huskies men will be the favorite to repeat as NCAA champions.
One could argue that it would be difficult to find a way to boost a player’s draft stock more than playing a key role on a title-winning squad would, but Karaban has taken on the responsibility of a larger offensive role this year and filled that role with aplomb. He found his footing despite struggling with his greatest skill early on in the year, and turned it up to another level as soon as his shot returned to expectations.
There are certainly still concerns about Karaban’s game. His limited in-between game and limited off-the-dribble game give him an uphill climb to being an on-ball player. He makes the simple passing reads and keeps the offense moving, but he’s far from being a playmaker for others. He has done a bit more in terms of defensive playmaking this year and does use his size well on that end, but he’s far from being a lockdown guy. That being said, Karaban’s full toolkit of complementary offensive skills at his size makes him a nearly picture-perfect fit as a shooter who can fit into virtually any lineup.
Alex Karaban might have slid under the radar up to this point in the season due to his relative struggles early on in the season. However, focusing on any sense of disappointment about his early season shooting ignores the more recent information that points to those issues being more noise than signal. More importantly, it glosses over the fact that Karaban has made serious strides forward with the rest of his scoring arsenal—and become absurdly efficient in the process. It might not have been the breakout season that some had anticipated, but Karaban has shown that he can be effective when his long-range shot isn’t falling and lethal when it is. He may need to shine in March Madness again for more people to take notice, but Alex Karaban is putting together a spectacular season for a spectacular team. It might just be enough for him to get drafted far higher than anyone looking at his stat line in late December might have anticipated—and it could even be enough for Karaban to hear his name called on the first night of the 2024 NBA Draft.