Every year around draft time, no matter what sport it is, there always seems to be that one guy who is ‘flying up draft boards’ and it ‘making a lot of team executives turn their heads’. You know, those buzz words that analysts and insiders use to describe a situation about an underrated guy in the draft that teams realize might actually be good.
This years version of that player in the NBA Draft is Cameron Payne, point guard out of Murray State. Payne was first reported as a lock with the Oklahoma City Thunder at the 14th position and now it appears that Payne’s stock is indeed rising. Rising so fast that he is getting looked at by teams with a top 5 pick.
Following from Yahoo! Sports basketball insider Marc J. Spears.
Never heard of Cameron Payne? Check out the scouting report from Draftexpress.com.
Payne measured 6’0.75 with a 6’7.25 wingspan and weight in at 183 pounds. He’s slightly bigger than Atlanta Hawks Jeff Teague who measures at 6’0.25 with a 6’7.5 wingspan and weighs in at around 175 pounds.
Payne has decent size for a NBA point guard at 6-2, although his 183 pound frame still needs to continue to fill out, which it will as he reaches physical maturity. Payne also has big hands and a very long wingspan (6-7) which helps him particularly on defense.
Payne biggest appeal as a NBA prospect is the terrific blend he displays between scoring and passing. He shouldered a huge amount of offense for Murray State (32% Usage, second highest in the DX Top-100), but still managed to remain relatively efficient (57% TS%) and dished out passes at a terrific rate (39.5% assist percentage, #1 in DX Top-100, 7.1 assists per-40, #4 DX-100).
He’s an extremely unselfish player who passes with great creativity and loves to move the ball ahead in transition, either utilizing his excellent ball-handling skills or by finding the open man running the floor.
In the half-court, he changes speeds nicely and has a few different gears he can get to, which helps him in particular on the pick and roll, an area that made up nearly half of his overall offense. Payne sees the floor very well and utilizes all kinds of different types of passes, using both hands and sides of the court with outstanding timing and confidence. He stays very low on his drives, which, along with his ball-handling ability and variety of hesitation moves, helps compensate for the fact that he’s not blessed with incredible blow-by speed or great strength.
It could be a stretch for Payne to go as high as 2 to the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers have a bounty of riches at that pick and can seemingly not go wrong in the draft. No matter what the Minnesota Timberwolves do with the first overall pick, the Lakers at 2 can take anyone of the other top prospects. If the T-Wolves get Karl-Anthony Towns, for example, the Lakers can still take any of the other ‘can’t miss’ prospects in Emmanuel Mudiay, Jahlil Okafor or D’Angelo Russell. Not to mention Mudiay and Towns have expressed that they wouldn’t mind playing with Kobe Bryant, so Payne going at 2 could be a stretch.
The same could be said with the Knicks at 4. There are already reports of the Knicks bringing in Justise Winslow for a workout and they also can take whatever is left out of the top 4 ‘can’t miss’ guys. This workout just seems like something the teams might be interested in to see if he’s worth trading another piece for or could be just bringing him in to improve their draft spot for one reason or another.
Payne is a talent though, undoubtedly. Most projections have him going in the middle of the first round. The lefty out of Murray State might be small in stature but he does have some skill.
See for yourself where we have Payne going in the 2015 NBA Draft with our Def Pen Sports NBA Mock Draft.
