JEFF TEAGUE, PG
Projection: 15.9 pts, 4.0 reb, 5.9 ast per 40 min; 15.31 PER | Player card
• Quick, scoring-minded guard who can get to basket and draw fouls.
• Mediocre outside shooter with improving in-between game. Subpar passer.
• Athletic defender with good lateral quickness. Must improve strength, smarts.
Teague's regular season portended little of what he accomplished in the second round of the playoffs against Chicago. While his regular-season PER was respectable, it was built mostly on the athleticism he brought to the defensive end of the floor -- he was first in blocks, 11th in steals and seventh in defensive rebound rate.
Offensively, he drew fouls at a high rate but otherwise was below the league average for point guards in every metric. Combining 2s and 3s to get something of a decent sample size, Teague made just under a third of his shots from beyond 15 feet. However, Teague's in-between game improved by leaps and bounds as the season went on, and by the playoffs he repeatedly burned the Bulls (not to mention a certain Atlantan who questioned his in-between game) with short runners. That helped Teague shoot 53.7 percent as a starter in the Chicago series after he'd played only 10 minutes the previous round, an outcome that left him poised to claim the starting point guard job.
As Teague gets more comfortable with the short runners, it may help him in another respect. He had 10.5 percent of his shots blocked, the second most of any point guard; in addition to improving the J and not relying so heavily on his athleticism to bail him out on defense, he'll need to get that percentage into single digits this season.