Brooklyn Nets: Evaluating Willie Cauley-Stein’s potential fit

Team fit

Just signing Willie Cauley-Stein would benefit the Brooklyn Nets from a depth perspective. We saw how short-handed the Nets were when Ed Davis went down. Adding WCS would potentially give Brooklyn two backup centers with him and Nicolas Claxton. But how would he fit the team?

WCS is 6-foot-11 with a 7-foot-3 wingspan. He’s very athletic to go with this and is extremely quick laterally for his size. He has huge defensive potential and all the tools for it. That was probably one of the biggest attractions to him as a prospect coming out of Kentucky.

He just hasn’t been able to live up to it fully.

Regardless, you can’t coach height — so at the very least he’ll be able to bother shots, but working with the Nets’ player development staff and defensive-minded peers such as Jarrett Allen and Claxton, the Nets could find a way to tap into his defensive well.

Offensively, the Kings have mostly used Willie as mainly a pick-and-roll weapon. Most of his shots have come around the basket and he converts these at a high rate — making 71.4 percent of his attempts in the restricted area, which made up 59.4 percent of his 741 attempts last season.

But the Nets are a jump-shooting team first and foremost. They do, of course, have pick-and-rolls in their offense with the centers. WCS can give another athletic option for lobs, but that’s not all he wants to do.

As a player who feels he’s gotten better with each passing year, he’d like to expand his game. He himself said he wants to do a little more pick and popping. Cauley-Stein told The Sacramento Bee in March:

"“I just want to hoop freely. That’s kind of the biggest thing for me, just going somewhere, whether it’s here or anywhere else, just taking that next evolution to the game where you’re not just a rim runner. You’re a pick-and-pop guy sometimes. “You can get rolling with what the defense gives you. I wanna be that dude.”"

That sounds like Brooklyn. Coach Kenny Atkinson gives his players a lot of freedom on the court. Willie can join Brooklyn and hoop freely and get to take more of those pick-and-pop jumpers that he’s been shooting more and more as the years have passed.

Kenny and the rest of the coaching staff can also help him extend his range even farther out as well. This will give Kenny the option to play Willie Cauley-Stein at the 4 next to Jarrett Allen for bigger lineups.

Willie Cauley-Stein wouldn’t be the first career that the Brooklyn Nets help to resurrect. Another young player who started his career in California can attest to this in D’Angelo Russell.

Maybe the Nets can find a similar story in a talented player who just can’t found the right place for himself yet.