A consensus All-American in college during his senior year at Cincinnati, it took a couple of years for Brooklyn Nets guard Sean Kilpatrick to get recognized on the highest level of basketball. Now that he’s here, however, he’s doing what he can to make up for lost time.
Signed by the Nets to consecutive ten-day contracts, and then a three-year deal at the conclusion, Kilpatrick had to cut his teeth in the NBA D-League before an NBA team was willing to take a risk on him. While teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets each gave him chances, the Nets will be the team who gets the chance to see him realize his full potential.
A leading scorer in the D-League, Kilpatrick has picked up right where he left off since coming to Brooklyn. While head coach Tony Brown has improved the offense in his own right, Kilpatrick has been just the punch that they were missing off of the bench.
He’s able to score in a variety of ways, but even with that he plays within the offense and you’ll be hard pressed to find many instances of him trying to force the issue if the defense isn’t giving him anything. While he showed the makings of a decent three-point jumper in college, Kilpatrick has taken another step forward in that regard and is up to nearly 37% from deep on the year.
That addition to his game will make his scoring ability all the more lethal and it could help him solidify a spot as the Nets sixth man even as they drag themselves out of the cellar in the Eastern Conference over the course of the next few years.
While the potential of becoming an NBA sixth man so quickly in his career may not have seemed possible just a few months ago, the ability offensively is there for Kilpatrick. What’s preventing him from really pushing the envelope into the starting lineup, however, is his defense.
His athleticism is by no means off the charts, so he’s not able to compensate for some of the issues that plague him on that end. He gives full effort, but his footwork and overall awareness are just not anywhere near where they need to be if he ultimately wants to make a push for the starting lineup.
He can be beaten off of the dribble relatively easily and his closeouts become quite a problem when performs them using long strides rather than quick steps. These skills may take time to develop, but until then Kilpatrick will just be an average to below-average defender at the NBA level, but certainly not enough of a liability that it prevents him from playing regular minutes.
With the scoring ability that he’s shown over the past couple of months, including a career-high 26 points against Denver just a few days ago, Kilpatrick may be the diamond in the rough that draft pick-barren teams like the Nets need to be able to compete.
His rookie season has been incredibly promising and were it not for his issues defensively, he’d easily be receiving one of the higher season grades on the team. Over the past few years Kilpatrick had been knocking on the NBA’s door and the Nets were lucky that they were the team who answered.