Dusty May continued his portal invasion last Monday, when Alabama transfer Sam Walters committed to Michigan.

SCOUTING (Offense)

Sam Walters' primary role on offense is quite simple, make perimeter shots. And that he does. The raw numbers are impressive, as the 6'10 PF knocked down 39.4% of his triples as a freshman. The catch + shoot numbers are terrific given the competition level, as 1.18pps places him in the 82nd percentile nationally per Synergy.  

The raw numbers are great, but a deeper-dive under the hood makes it relatively easy to project Sam as a great (perhaps elite) shooter for Dusty May. At 6'10 with some lift on his shot, Walters is nearly immune to contests at the college level as seen in the film below. And the numbers back it up. Dropping 1.29pps on 57 guarded catch + shoot jumpers doesn't seem possible. For context, that is 94th percentile in the country.

In addition to being contest-immune in college, Sam also has NBA range that comfortably extends to 27 feet.Walters can increase defender closeout distance by setting up a few feet behind the line and has shown that his size makes it functionally impossible to bother him? Sign me up for that. This can be a real defense-bender at the college level. 

And while he's primarily a stationary shooter, Sam flashed some ability to be a movement shooter during his freshman campaign. The first possession in the clip below is a standard Delay set where the big sets a pindown for a curling shooter at the top of the key (Michigan used this often under Juwan Howard). In other words this is a designed action, which means Nate Oats saw some things in practice that warrant this shot type. The remainder of the clip sees Walters relocating before hitting triples. This has a a lot of functional utility. As being able to hit relocation threes translates to maximizing passing windows and not being reliant on perfect passes from teammates. It is an undervalued facet for shooters in your author's opinion. 

[After THE JUMP: just a shooter now, but probably more down the road]

Sam is the epitome of just a shooter, the profile makes that undeniable. In terms of PnR Ballhandler, PnR Roll-Man, Isolation and Post-Ups..............Walters had an aggregate total of 13 possessions for the season. I'm not going to sell you on him being some sort of primary creator as that would be disingenuous. But the random flashes do suggest there is some potential down the road to be a low-volume tertiary creator based on matchup.The second possession in the clip above is a designed action - Zoom (also labeled Chicago action by some). It sees Sam inbound the ball, receive a downscreen that flows into a DHO. From there its on Walters to make a read based on the defense. You could make an argument that the more optimal read was the skip pass kickout to the shooter, but he fit that dumpoff in a fairly tight window in the context of a 6'10 freshman. 

The weakness for Sam offensively was the inability to finish at the rim efficiently given his size. 1.09pps at the rim (42nd percentile) per Synergy while Torvik has him at 55.8% (24-43) with 45.8% being assisted. Not great by any means. But he is a freshman that wasn't quite up to speed in terms of physical development. I'd anticipate marginal improvements as a finisher at minimum with natural physical gains and more experience. 

SCOUTING (Defense)

Let's get right to it, Sam wasn't a great defender in year one, as is the case with most freshman. He doesn't move particularly well and needs to add muscle mass + strength. But there were some moments of solid rim protection that suggest he'll be more of paint deterrent moving forward. Again, he's not a great athlete, but the sheer size + length at the college level can go a long way if he can master the art of verticality without fouling.  

Even when he's tasked with defending just-a-shooter types, the length can aid him. In the clip below Walters' lack of stop-go agility is badly exposed. But he's able to re-engage within a few strides and block the shot based on sheer size/length.Margin for error is what I'm getting at here. If Sam can simply make marginal improvements in terms of agility/strength and optimizing his positioning/angles on the court, he can be a solid team defender. 

Again, I'm not going pretend Walters is ever going to be a true difference maker on the defensive end. But we do get random flashes that suggest he's capable of putting it together in terms of off-ball defense, timely rotations and rim protection as we see in the clip below. Look at the off-ball defense against Haugh (#10 for Florida) as Sam face-guards him on the dive. Florida then goes ballscreen action and Walters peels off Haugh and rotates to the roll-man to prevent the easy bucket and force a kickout. Finally, he meets Will Richard (#5 for Florida) at the rim for a block to end the possession. Multiple efforts with great timing and awareness. 

Walters was a solid defensive rebounder at Alabama. A 17.6 DReb rate in SEC play is pretty darn good for a freshman. While the DReb rate dropped to 10.8 against top-50 opponents, it's still considerably better than what we received from Tschetter (DReb rate of 7.6 vs top-50) and TWill (DReb rate of 9.3 vs top-50). I'd anticipate the DReb rate for Sam to inch closer to 15 against top-50 opponents as a sophomore. 

PROJECTION

Sam is fairly easy to slot in as the staring PF that plays 25+ minutes per game. You simply don't have many players at the college level with that combination of size + perimeter shotmaking. He may very well be the best catch + shoot floorspacer on the roster the day he steps foot on campus. 

Walters' offensive role is quite simple, be a play-finisher that makes good on the playmaking of Rubin Jones, Tre Donaldson, Roddy Gayle and others. In short, we want Sam taking catch + shoot jumpers after others do the grunt work of collapsing the defense. He'll get downhill a bit when attacking closeouts and have some off-the-dribble moments against favorable matchups, but mostly projects to be a floorspacer as a sophomore. We're probably looking at a low-usage, high-efficiency player that hovers somewhere around 10ppg as a sophomore.

Walters is the perfect match for Vlad Goldin (!) as a strong-side corner spacer that places opposing defenses in real conflict. You either tag a roll-man in Goldin that converts 72% of his rim attempts (1.235ppp on roll-man possessions/78th percentile) or run the risk of leaving an 82nd percentile C+S shooter open for three. 

The defensive end of the court is where the addition of Goldin looms large. Having Goldin as the backline anchor allows Sam to stay with his primary assignment most of the time without much worry of covering tons of ground as a helper on a consistent basis. Goldin is going to be a drop-coverage big almost exclusively and that mitigates Walters' lack of agility, as he won't be forced to tag rollers/double the post and recover ~20 feet to shooters. 

Walters is a tweener that doesn't really move well enough to be intriguing to NBA GMs absent great production. Not big enough to adequately defend NBA bigs and certainly isn't agile enough to defend wings. All that to say I think Sam will be in Ann Arbor for a few years unless he improves considerably as a shot-creator or movement shooter. With another year of S+C and development under his belt, Walters should be one of the better offensive players in the B10 as a junior and will likely challenge for All-Conference honors assuming the team wins enough.