Much is made of drafting \u201csteals\u201d at the NBA Draft. Players that slip well below where they should, despite some impactful traits or a developmental game lying in plain sight.<\/p>\n
Now-Orlando Magic guard Jase Richardson was already added to the list of potential steals following his slide to No. 25, and his short Summer League stint reinforced he could\u2019ve been drafted much too low.<\/p>\n
Richardson wasn\u2019t on draft radars heading into his would-be lone season at Michigan State. In fact, he wasn\u2019t much on his own head coach\u2019s radar \u2014 at least in the capacity he would be by season\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
The son of NBA standout Jason Richardson, Jase stands at just 6-foot-3, and lands directly in between point and shooting guard. He has plus skills at both positions, but some limitations as well, likely leading to him starting on the Spartans\u2019 bench.<\/p>\n
Still, Richardson forced Tom Izzo\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n
For all of Richardson\u2019s skills \u2014 handling, shooting, passing, plus defense and more \u2014 his simple feel for the game stands out the most. It\u2019s somewhat encapsulating of those other things, but more highlights his ability to simply make the right play and limit mistake more than anything. And that\u2019s ultimately what led him to become a starter for MSU, and an eventual first round pick.<\/p>\n
In 15 games starting to end the season, Richardson poured on 16.1 points, 4.6 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game, shooting 47% overall and 42% from three.<\/p>\n
He then parlayed his success to Summer League for the Magic, across his two games averaging 16.5 points on 56% shooting, cashing in on half his triples and adding 2.5 assists and 1.5 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n
Richardson is now set to join a near perfect situation with the Magic, who will look to lead a down Eastern Conference this upcoming season. He likely won\u2019t be a lead handler at this point without a perfect dribbling package, or a pure two-guard without the size to defend up. But his skillset lends itself well to blending into the Paolo Banchero-led squad.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen whether Richardson’s feel for the game will continue to carry him to further success, this time at the NBA level as a late-first pick looking to prove himself above that ranking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much is made of drafting \u201csteals\u201d at the NBA Draft. Players that slip well below where they should,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-18754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}