Man, the Kings just can’t catch a break, huh? They have a future All-NBA Center on their hands and they let him walk before he has a chance to fully develop into a superstar. The Sacramento Kings and giving up on players too early; name a more iconic duo.
If I’m being fair to the Kings, this really isn’t their fault. Talent evaluation is SO difficult in the NBA, and when you see a large enough sample size of a player and they aren’t performing as you’d like them to, it only makes sense to move on from them. I have a lot of love for Kings fans; it’s mostly out of pity but it’s still love. The version of Neemias Queta that they had on their G-League roster is night and day different to what we’re seeing in Boston right now.
I do want to make it ABUNTENTLY clear that it’s only the casual Celtics fans and the NBA fandom at large that is becoming aware of the beast that Queta is. Me on the other hand? I’ve BEEN here. Don’t believe me? Peep my socials:
Sure, I’ve been known to make a joke or two from time to time, and this could easily be interpreted as one, but when you see highlights like this from EuroBasket and you can see the future, that’s when you know that I’m serious.
The growth that Queta has shown this year has been gradual, but expected. You could sit there and play the “what if” game with 100 different players in the league, but sometimes all you need is a change of scenery and a defined role to turn you into a guy who shows up on Finn Kuehl’s twowaytalents.com (please go check it out; it’s an incredible database for all the 2-way guys in the NBA and Finn rocks) into someone who might be the starting Center on a championship team on day.
Queta spent two years in the Sacramento Kings system, and if you just watch the highlights it is really hard to deny how talented he is.
Post game, amazing footwork, up and unders, left and right shoulder hooks; he’s arguably one of the most skilled bigs the team has ever had. He played really well for them, phenomenal even, but never really got the chance to show what he can do in the NBA.
What I don’t think gets talked about enough to or about G-League players is that if you want to make a NBA roster and stay there you don’t need to dominate. You don’t need to average 30 in the G-League to make the jump to the NBA. As a matter of fact, someone who can average 9 PPG but plays great defense and shoots 40% of catch-and-shoot 3s is WAY more likely to get a call up than the guy who’s a walking bucket. Now, you can turn into that eventually; Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam come to mind as guys who gradually were able to showcase what they can really do, but for the most part it’s the role players that get the nod. If you can commit to buying into a role at the G-League level, then you’ll have no problem adjusting to the NBA. Even though you can see from the highlight reel that Queta was an incredible individual talent, what most teams need is a center who will rim run and shot block.
I don’t have individual plays to show you from these games because the G-League doesn’t keep archives of their games like the NBA does when you’re looking at the box scores (fix your league Adam), but I can show you the evolution of Queta and the simplification of his role in three pictures. Here is a look at a shot chart of a game during his last year in Stockton against the Utah Jazz G-League team where he took the most shot attempts of the year:
Hyper efficiency is something that I will never take for granted, but unless you’re Joel Embiid or Nikola Jokic teams probably don’t want their Center taking that many shots. Especially that many shots outside the paint. I think that sometimes when you’re in the G-League you have a chance to develop skills that you want at the next level, and I think that you can clearly see that Queta was trying to add a reliable jump shot to his arsenal. To his credit he made a lot more than he missed this game. Now contrast that to a game during his first year playing for the Maine Celtics:
Again, this is the most shot attempts of that season for him, and you can already tell that one year and one coaching change later he’s simplified his role. All of his shots came from lobs, put back dunks, and baby hooks. There were a couple of exceptions but for the most part he was starting to play the role that we would see him play for the Boston Celtics and that is by design. Much has been said about Celtics legend Phil Pressy and his playing career but he’s really found a niche for himself coaching the Maine Celtics. Him and Joe Mazzulla run very, eerily even, similar schemes and that is very much on purpose. The Celtics organization has streamlined their player development by running the same offensive and defensive schemes. This allows the players to have the schemes ingrained in their mind so when they do eventually get the call-up to Boston they don’t miss a beat. For proof of how well that can translate take a look at the shot chart for Queta last night during his national coming out party:
Hyper efficient again and EVERYTHING was inside the paint. I said earlier that Queta’s growth was expected, so much so that I didn’t think that we needed to trade for Vucevic because I believed in Queta’s play so much. All of his offensive production came from either hustle plays, crashing the glass, or rim running, and once he catches a groove it’s really hard to stop him.
Now of course he isn’t completely polished yet; there were a few times last night where I was slightly frustrated in his processing on the court. I do, however, understand that all of this will come with time and reps. During the first clip in the video below he misses the shot because rushed the shot when he had time to collect himself. He missed the second shot because he was too open. Finally, he missed the last shot because he was a prisoner of his own mind. He had flashbacks of what he was in Stockton, tried to fight the urge to “go to work,” and ended up forcing a shot with 11 seconds left in the shot clock. In the moment those were frustrating to watch, but when he makes up for it with his effort in the rim running department you can easily overlook any mistakes he made.
Of course when you’re playing for Joe Mazzulla, if you don’t commit to defense he will simply not play you at all. Thankfully for him, and for me as a Celtics fan, he’s a natural born shot blocker. Queta continues to be one of the best shot blockers in the league at 1.3 per game, and even when he doesn’t get his hands on the ball he’s still an effective shot deterrer. Opponents are shooting nearly 11% worse at the rim when Queta is defending which is in the 84th percentile in the league, they shoot 4.5% worse from the field when he’s defending which is in the 80th percentile, and he’s got a 3.3% stop percentage which is in the 82nd percentile. If all of that was too many numbers, just look how beautifully and aggressively he sends these shots back.
I’m glad that I’ve seen so much Queta love on my timelines over the last 24 hours because he has certainly earned it. I think he’s been the perfect compliment to Derrick White and Jaylen Brown this year, and my mouth is already watering thinking about the pick-and-rolls that he and Jayson Tatum are going to have whenever he comes back to the lineup. I would never put these kind of expectations on someone so young in their career, but I really do think that Queta could be in conversations to be an All-NBA type of talent based off of his efficiency and his shot blocking ability, a la DeAndre Jordan in 2015. Even if he never reaches those heights I think that the floor for him could be the starting Center of a championship team. I may be putting the cart before the horse there, but after reading this article and watching the clips, do you blame me?
Round The Game 
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