Projecting Khaman Maluach (and Thomas Sorber)

Intro

This is the first in a series looking at different 2025 NBA draftees with an analytical lens. There is value in the eye test, but this is not that. To evaluate the success of players, I used a combination of Min, BPM, WS/48, and PER. It is basically career Win Shares with some adjustments for other all-in-one statistics available on Basketball-Reference. If you look below, you can get a feel for it.

For more recent players (whose careers aren’t over), I have used a simple model to project their career mWS. Also, I was able to run a logarithmic regression to see how much value each draft pick produces on average.¹

Khaman Maluach got drafted 10th overall by the Phoenix Suns. He is a 7’2” freshman center out of Duke. He profiles as a defensive presence and offensive finisher with upside. NBA Draft Net compares him to Jakob Poeltl and Ivica Zubac, HoopsHype likens him to Rudy Gobert and DeAndre Jordan, while The Ringer compares him to JaVale McGee, Christian Koloko, and Kel’el Ware.

Thomas Sorber went 15th overall to the Thunder. A 6’10” frosh out of Georgetown, he isn’t as physically impressive as Maluach but has more of an all-around game. His internet comps range from fellow Hoyas Greg Monroe and Roy Hibbert to Europeans Jonas Valanciunas and Jusuf Nurkic to other Americans Xavier Tillman and Onyeka Okongwu.

Cohorts

There seems to be some disagreements on how Maluach and Sorber will play in the NBA. Everyone is their own individual, but let’s look at the data to see if we can find some more consistent comps.

Using stathead, we can see college stats for every “defensive center” (height >6’10” and block/40 >2) drafted in the first round over the past 20 years. There’s 81 of them - about 4 a year. Based on where they were drafted, you would expect that cohort to average 28.5 (my) Win Shares for their career which is close to the 27.9 mWS they have averaged. It’s a pretty general list, though. You can see KAT is on there and isn’t a defensive center and Wiseman is on there and his stats are useless since he only played 70 minutes in college and etc.

Let’s try and pare it down further. What sticks out most to me about Maluach is that he is quite tall (let’s up the minimum to 6’11”), wasn’t an elite shot-blocker (just 6.8%, so let’s limit it to guys under 4 blocks per 40 min), and he wasn’t used much on offense (his usage% was seventh worse of the group, so, let’s cap it at 20%). This gives us a more precise cohort of six players. As a whole, they underperformed (19 mWS vs an expected 25.9 mWS), but I think his best comp is the productive Steven Adams - who was a foreign player who got drafted in the lottery after his freshman year based more on his physical capability than his stats.

Now, for Sorber. What differs him most is his passing, so let’s look at guys with at least an ast% of 10. This group of 16 performs well producing 43.1 mWS on average compared to their expectation of 31.2 mWS. In fact, 14 of the 16 produced at least 20 mWS as Frank Kaminsky and Jason Smith would be the only ones considered real disappointments.

Correlations

Looking at the 80-ish players from the original cohort, we can see if there is any signal from a rate statistic. And remember, the number one rule of statistics is correlation /= causation.

Unsurprisingly, assist% does well, but turnover% edges it out as the most correlative. However, correlation is sensitive to the extremes, so it doesn’t tell the whole picture.

As you can see, assist% is more of a threshold stat. Having an 18% assist-rate is not really better than having a 12% assist-rate, but if you reach 10%, you are going to at least get some minutes. Ekpe Udoh is the worst player who reached this threshold, and he still played 400 games across 7 seasons. Take someone like Justin Patton who played 22 games across 4 season for 4 different teams. There’s a difference between Udoh and someone who was immediately known to not be an NBA-er. 33 of the 56 players who did not reach the 10% threshold did/will reach 5000 minutes for their career while all 20 of the guys who hit the threshold reached 5000 minutes.

This is a pro-Sorber, anti-Maluach stat. Still, we can do even better. Looking at Ast%-TO%, we can get a correlation of 0.307.

This is better news for Maluach. His assist% is a low 4.3%, but his turnover% is an acceptable 11.6%. With a -7.3% Ast-TO rate, Maluach is actually in the positive according to the linear regression. Sorber is at an elite +0.3% (15.6-15.3).

Details

And that’s useful in itself, but we can (and should) go further. There’s other stats than passing and context matters.

For instance, why is an 18% assist-rate not better than a 12% assist-rate? Well, if you look at the ten players who are above 12%, four of them played for mid-majors. It is pretty easy to assume that those numbers are inflated due to the lack of talent around them (hence, they would have the ball in their hands more). Then, you have Frank Kaminsky and Roy Hibbert who played in egalitarian offensive systems. This leaves Joakim Noah, Evan Mobley, Spencer Hawes, and Wendell Carter who all had at least moderate NBA success.

I don’t think Ed Cooley involves as many Princeton Offense concepts as the Georgetowns of the past, so I wouldn’t discount Sorber’s elite passing numbers, but I didn’t watch a lot of Georgetown this year. Maluach played on a team starting 4 other NBA players, so his role need to be looked at more closely. You could compare him to Bam Adebayo (played next to three NBA guards) who is possibly the biggest outlier in terms of NBA performance vs college passing numbers.

Let’s diver further into Maluach’s profile. His shooting numbers are impressive… at first glance.

Thomas Bryant and Chet Holmgren had dunks make up 24% and 33% of their two-point attempts; Maluach had 52%(!) of his shots in the arc be dunks. Over the past 15 drafts, there have been six players to have over 40% of their two point attempts be dunks - Dereck Lively, Udoka Azubuike, Kai Jones, Jericho Sims, Jaxson Hayes, and Quincy Acy. That is not exactly a murderer’s row.

The other large portion of TS% is FT%. FT% is an important predictor of outside shooting ability which is more important than ever in the modern game. Maluach did well from the line shooting 76.6%. Looking at the 24 players from the original cohort who shot in the 70s from the line, they underachieved by 2.5 mWS. It is not surprising given we knew the low correlation already, and a lot of those 24 players don’t have similar games (from the smaller/more similar cohort of six players, only Jaxson Hayes a 70+ FT%).

Offensive rebounding was more correlative, and Maluach recovered an elite 16.5% of offensive misses (Steven Adams was 15.3% in college). If we look at the 15 players that had offensive rebounding rates above 13.5%, we see they produced 38.2 mWS which easily cleared the 28.9 mWS expectations based on draft capital.

Conclusion

Will Maluach be successful in the NBA? Maybe. You can’t teach height. If you really think he is going to be a star, you have to either believe that he is still going to develop a lot (he picked up basketball late in South Sudan and was just a freshman) or that Duke limited him showcasing his ability.

Pascal Siakam makes a nice story, but I have never seen an analysis showing Africans develop more in the NBA than other players. I do think Maluach’s stats would have been different if he played for another team. For better or worse is another question. Someone like Devin Booker had to fit his role at Kentucky, but was able to flourish once he got to the NBA. SGA maybe would have flashed more in college if he was the star of his team instead of ceding a bit to Kevin Knox and PJ Washington. But, it works the other way too. How much easier did Marquis Teague, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Terrence Jones have it playing next to Anthony Davis? If I had to guess, I would lean the latter.

I don’t think his shooting is that helpful. I think in theory, he could hit threes, but the rest of his skillset doesn’t fit that mold. He is seemingly not skilled enough (passing numbers are poor, Duke chose not to utilize him offensively except on lobs), and offensive rebounding is, statistically, his biggest strength. In a world where Luke Kornet doesn’t shoot 3’s because his rebounding is more important, I don’t see why a team would stick Maluach in the corner. I don’t understand the Gobert-comp - Maluach doesn’t have an elite feel defensively nor the numbers to back it up (block percentage of 6.8 is quite mediocre). I could see a career like JaVale McGee or DeAndre Jordan. He isn’t as explosive of a jumper as those two, but his shooting as a threat could help his pick-and-roll two-man game. I think he is slightly closer to the mold of Steven Adams - though not as strong but can’t be hack-a-Shaq-ed. He’ll have to buy into that archetype which isn’t a given. I do think there is a fair amount of downside. He doesn’t have the block% and assist% that Lively had which made him a safe bet to be a rim-running paint protector. Maluach could follow Jaxson Hayes or Hasheem Thabeet career paths if he doesn’t develop his IQ. It’s very possible if he wasn’t at Duke his Ast% would be 5 and his TO% would be 20. This would put him in with the cohort that never matches their draft capital.

I don’t see the All-NBA upside of Maluach that some people do (obviously, anything is possible, but ~5%), and I think his downside is larger than an average lottery pick. I would prefer Sorber who seems like a safer pick (though, I haven’t looked as deeply into his profile). Being a healthy Mark Williams should be the hope.

1. The regression is mWS~58-13*ln(pick)