Kel’el Ware Pre-Season Scouting Report
Name: Kel’el Ware
Birthdate: 20.04.2004
Birthplace: North Little Rock (AR)
Height: 7–0
Weight: 220lbs
Wingspan: NA
College: Oregon Ducks
High School: North Little Rock (AR)
AAU: All Arkansas Red
Visited following schools per 247sports.com:
• Oregon
• Alcorn State
• Arkansas
• Arkansas-Pine-Bluff
• Auburn
Physical and Intangibles
When engaged, Ware possesses an above average straight line speed in transition, which often leads to easy points in transition. At this level, nobody can really stop a 7–0 tall gazelle from sprinting down the floor from getting early position for a duck-in, which often results in easy points.
The length overall is very functional. I don’t have an official wingspan measurement yet, but I would think it’s around +4 or +5 at least from seeing him play. I would like to see him increase either his weight/strength, or become a bit more comfortable with physicality by learning to embrace it. We’ve seen guys like Chet Holmgren, who should be more vulnerable than Ware in this area, really thrive by “just” being able to play through contact and really embracing physicality and using technical aspects like creating early contact at hip level to utilize lower body strength. In addition to his length, Kel’el possesses a clearly above average pop time to get off the ground quick and close vertical space.
Kel’el Ware’s most recent tape was at the U18 Americas for Team USA and to be honest it really confused me. It was my first real Kel’el experience because I haven’t really dove into his high school film at that point. He looked out of place in most games, playing without much intensity, looked to just get by his physical tools on both ends (slight exaggeration here of course). I’m totally aware that things like the “motor” of a young player, especially for a young big man, as we saw in recent years with senior year Evan Mobley for example, can be totally misleading. Nobody would question things like this when evaluating Evan Mobley today, and it is totally common for a) a young player, b) really physical gifted players, to not go all out, all the time. But we have to take it into account at this stage. From the high school tape I watched, it wasn’t nearly as present, and he felt more engaged in my opinion.
Offense
On inside finishes, Ware mostly wins by length and simplicity. He doesn’t have the “death by a thousand counters” post-game, otherworldly touch or “brute force” to him, but what makes him interesting is the scaled-down version of him which could be enabled by a reduced role and change in playing-style from High school to College to the NBA with way more usage as a roll-guy and diver. His catch radius is huge, paired with his overall length and vertical pop, I can see him really shine in a pick and roll heavy setting. He surely has to improve his proprioception and his finishing through contact, which also limits his impact as an opportunistic off-ball scorer for now, as he often chooses weird spaces to flash into and is frequently impacted by taking contact going up.
Ware’s postgame is very rudimentary right now as he looks to be very right-hand dominant (seriously, I’ve never seen him use his left in the post) and he lacks counters as well as strength and overall touch to be more dominant. He prefers one or two bump dribbles into the defender to gain a bit of space and go over the defender. Occasionally, he tries an up-fake to get the defender in the air to shot after the block-attempt goes up. This is often the perfect situation/footwork pattern to do a step-through. Currently, his whole post-game is very length base, as he mostly tries to score straight over his defender, which gets him great results right now, but in regard to his translation, I’m very skeptical moving forward.
His shooting projection is something to monitor here. The volume still is quite low, but both process and results are good enough to expect an increase in attempts in the future. There is some minor stuff mechanically, but overall Kel’el’s shot is one of the few offensive skills I would bet on (aside from near-rim finishes as a diver/roll-man).
Looking at the Bart database, there are some interesting names even with lower volume 3PAr that could give hope for a Kel’el Ware shooting development, heavily depending on where his volume end up because most of the lower volume guys don’t turn into meaningful volume shooters going forward.
Some examples from the list and how they progressed so far in the NBA:
Ayton 56 3PA in four years
Koufos 4 3PA in 10 years
Bagley 323 3PA, 29% 3P% over five years (4.7 3P100 peak in 20/21, 3.7 3P100 over his career)
Bamba 576 3PA, 35.2% 3P% over four years (7.9 3P100 peak in 20/21, 6.7 3P100 over his career)
Turner 1121 3PA, 34.9% 3P% over seven years (7.3 3P100 peak last season, 4.4 3P100 over his career)
To set the 3P100 into context, Jaren Jackson Jr. had an around 11 3P100 peak and is averaging 8.4 3P100 over his career. The big-sized extreme end of the spectrum last season was Kevin Love with 14.3 3P100 taken which still is mind boggeling.
I don’t expect him to become a elite shooter in volume and efficency, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he is able to take a similar route to someone like Myles Turner to slowly increase volume over his career and ending up with a decent 3P100 volume.
*3P100 = 3 pointers attempted per 100 possessions.
Is this something? Questioning the unicorn status.
Ware is considered a potential unicorn-type prospect by many, and just from watching random highlight tapes, I can see why. He fills all the typical boxes -grab-go-slam in transition? Check! Shooting threes? Check! Impressive blocks, dunks and other athletic feats? Check!
We’ve seen this movie before with many young big man prospects, and rarely all the unicorn aspects stick through college and later in the NBA, and it’s rarely their fault. The threshold to do on-ball stuff in the NBA is pretty high, and most big prospects just aren’t good enough in this aspect to really do it on a nightly basis against high-level competition. Once open driving lanes shrink, and when confronted with a defender stepping in your lane, most big prospects who before had a straight line to the basket, have to make either a quick change of direction, which often ends up being an offensive foul or turnover because they physically and mentally aren’t build to succeed here. It’s not the players fault! Driving on-ball usage on an NBA floor against the best and smartest athletes in the world is just difficult for every player, let alone a relative big person that isn’t built to change directions quickly and process every action on the floor in a split second. But we should stop to expect that every big prospect that shoes anything with ball in hand is able to do it on an NBA floor too.
Let’s dive in some examples.
What happened here is that by the defender sagging off Ware, he saw a good opportunity to drive and finish. The problem came when the defender just made one step forward to put his body between the basket and the offensive player. Ware had to make a quick decision between a) changing his pre-determined footwork to go around the defender, or b) pass it to the sealing player under the basket. He got stuck somewhere in between those decisions and attempted a weird shot.
Nothing wrong here, process and result are both fine in my opinion, but you can see that his handle and comfort just isn’t good enough to do this regularly against better competition.
Here we saw some stuff I really liked to pop up. His road to success on offense shouldn’t come from driving on-ball offensive usage, but from low-key stuff he is really suited to. Sprinting the floor hard, he will be able to do so much damage with his straight line speed and length. On dribble, sealing his defender and getting an easy dunk like here. Slipping the screen and rolling hard, like here, to use his great catch radius. Crashing the offensive glass, making quick, good reads when the defense overreacts to him, and to be able to do stuff like this will really get him touches and increase his role in the end.
He widely explored the studio space, and it gives us a good idea of his strengths and weaknesses. What I would like to see next is cutting out all or most of the “bad” stuff, and concentrate on what he is good at, which can be super valuable going forward.
Defense
Stylistically, I would like to deploy Ware in a drop coverage scheme, where he doesn’t need to defend much above the free-throw-line, at least without having a strong backline-defense behind him. I don’t think he has the agility, positioning and feel required to hedge and recover or even switch (clips of his defense in space are here). Speaking about switching, Ware had some solid flashes here, but only against guys that didn’t pressure him as drivers, but relied on jump shots or step backs. With his length and ability to take a good amount of space away from his one-step contests, he had some positive moments switching against them. On the college level, this area will likely be less of an issue, because he most likely can get by just by his tools on most nights. Currently, I won’t expect him to be able to defend much above the free-throw line in pick & roll situations.
He is best suited defending near the rim, where rotations are shorter for him, he is able to take away vertical space with his one step vertical contests which are quite impressive. He is really solid using verticality and doesn’t foul too much in these situations. Kel’el is a bit light on his feet and vulnerable to up fakes, which will limit his impact, at least for now. An interesting sidenote, his “jumpiness” translates mostly to situations in space, but with actions in his vicinity, he mostly stays on his feet which leads me to believe he at least isn’t getting out of position because of block haunting.
I tend to not care too much about individual rebounding, and think Kel’el can improve in that regard just by staying a bit more focused until the possession ends and an increase in overall intensity. He regularly loses his assignment and tends to ball watch, but his ability to just hunt the ball and use his length leaves room for optimism.
I think the way to provide positive value on defense is really straight for Kel’el and involves playing him in specific schemes plus keeping him engaged. To provide really great value as a defender, he has to develop a better consistency in regard to his motor (maybe this part is overstated as mentioned earlier, but it’s really a problem right now) and improve his overall feel on defense.
There is a lot of good result, bad process involved in Ware’s play so far and many really impressive moments, come from his ability to erase many scoring attempts despite being out of position, not finding his man on the box outs initially or getting blown by, but being able to just erase shots out of nothing. He for sure has a far bigger margin of error than other players because of his physical tools, but that margin will most likely shrink going forward, because NBA athletes of course are better in every aspect and Kel’el will most likely struggle in areas he looked solid at first glance.
