Jay Scrubb is an under-the-radar draft target for the Minnesota Timberwolves

Weaknesses

Competition level

While Scrubb has put up impressive stats and scoring percentages, he’s done so playing against junior college basketball teams. It’s impossible to know just how much his numbers have been inflated by playing against inferior competition.

There’s obviously several recent examples of players from small, non-power-five conferences in Division-I having success in the NBA (Stephen Curry, C.J. McCollum, and Damian Lillard all come to mind), but junior college isn’t exactly the same thing.

Inconsistent shooting

Sure, as a freshman he shot 46.4 percent from 3-point range, but the next year his percentage dropped 13 percent from deep. This could signify that his freshman year shooting was an aberration and that he could just be an average shooter. His free throw percentages have been 79.1 percent as a freshman and 72.7 as a sophomore, and free throw shooting as an indicator of how good a shooter actually is.

The overall inconsistency and decent-but-not-great free throw numbers could indicate that he’ll just be an average shooter.

Assist-to-turnover ratio

Being that Scrubb is in a much lesser league and can competently play with the ball in his hands, it would make sense that his passing stats would look acceptable.

Unfortunately, his assist-to-turnover ratio is less than 1:1 over his two college seasons. Breaking it down further, that means he’s turned the ball over 2.3 times a game compared to 1.5 assists as a freshman and 3.1 times compared to 2.7 assists a game as a sophomore.

This is certainly one of his biggest red flags, unless you take the ball out of his hands and relegate him to more of a shooter’s role.

Overall, Scrubb’s game profiles as a guy who can be acquired at a relatively low cost (likely a second-round pick) and potentially has a high ceiling. He fits perfectly with Rosas’ brief front office and what it appears that the Wolves want to do moving forward.

In some ways, Scrubb’s game is reminiscent of Malik Beasley, and having 48 minutes of that style of play alongside D’Angelo Russell wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Somewhat of a disclaimer: there’s a chance that Minnesota opts to not have three rookies on the roster with myriad youngsters already in the fold. With the team in somewhat of a rough cap situation, the team could use their second-round pick and one of the rookie contracts they acquired at the deadline like Jarred Vanderbilt or Omari Spellman and pick up a future asset while opening up small flexibility against the cap and another roster spot or two to fill out the rotation.

However, if they opt to keep the pick, Jay Scrubb could be the most interesting and noteworthy prospect of the entire second round.