Jahmai Mashack Scouting Report
Defensive specialists are vital. But there's more needed than that to stick in the NBA. Jahmai Mashack is ready to take on a different role at the next level. Here's why his game fits in today's NBA:
Jahmai Mashack (#15, Tennessee): Senior, 6'3.75"
Shooting Guard — Born: Nov 10, 2002 (22 years old)
Introduction
As an All-SEC defender, Mashack won The Field of 68’s National Defensive Player of the Year. He’s a defensive specialist with a steadily improving offensive game. Context is essential when evaluating Tennessee, a program that’s been putting their offensive scoring load on one or two players and fully relying on their system, where everyone has a clear role. Maschak is the defensive stopper on a team praised for its defensive system year after year.
The NBA has a love-hate relationship with defensive specialists. Yes, they are essential in getting stops, but they form a liability when teams try to sustain their offensive rating. Regardless, it’s vital to see past the numbers when evaluating Mashack. There’s enough offensive potential in a new environment for Mashack to fit into any offense and continue to do what’s best. This scouting report emphasizes his NBA role and long-term potential.
Physical Profile
At a confirmed 6’3.75” in shoes, Mashack has good positional size to play the one and the two in the NBA. He’s a strongly built athlete with great foot speed and natural toughness. He continued to add muscle to his frame throughout the years. At 200 pounds, there’s room to continue to get stronger in the NBA. Mashack has big hands and great length. With a confirmed 6-foot-8 wingspan, Mashack can impact the game with his length on top of his strength.
He has great footwork, especially on the defensive end. With decent core strength and flexible hips, Mashack keeps his balance at all times, considering how quickly and precisely he moves his feet. He built the reputation of a switchable defensive specialist in college. With good verticality, Mashack projects to guard two, maybe three positions at the next level.
Offense
Catch-and-shoot
With back-to-back seasons shooting over 35% from three, Mashack has a good sample size to evaluate his jumper throughout two seasons. Despite the lack of volume caused by the aforementioned context of his role, there’s room to be an average shooter in the NBA. That’s his role. Mashack has a translatable jumper, considering how quickly he sets his feet. He’s also an active mover, looking to get into the passer’s angle.
The first two plays below show examples in a different environment. At the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, Mashack showed a good jumper without the context of his role at Tennessee. He’s moving actively and sets his feet before he catches the ball. The jumper is fluid and consistent. However, the lack of a high-arcing release brings issues as he’ll struggle against NBA length. Regardless, the fast release compensates for most.
The best part of Mashack’s shot translation comes through his hips. He’s great at moving them to 180 degrees of the rim before he enters his shooting motion. The third, fourth, and fifth plays show examples of him moving to the passing angle, setting his feet, and quickly releasing his shot. Considering a role with fewer ball touches in the NBA, that’s a value adder for his profile.
Creativity and self-scoring out of closeouts
Despite having a decent burst, Mashack doesn’t get his fair share of drives deep inside the paint. He often settles for jumpers, and that’s bailing defenses out. NBA teams accept this when they face a close-to-elite shooter. However, that’s not the case with Mashack, and he must adjust and find ways to express his offensive creativity. The California-born looks to have gotten accustomed to not throwing in his creativity as a self-creating scorer anymore after four years at Tennessee. However, there’s clear potential to compensate for lost time at the next level.
The positive in Mashack’s game is that he leverages the threat of his burst with jab steps. The first play shows an example. There was a tight driving angle on the weak side, and with no clear passing options, Mashack opted for the long elbow three instead. However, his first step already had the threat of his burst to follow after that. This helped him to create space for the jumper. The second possession shows the toughness of Mashack’s game. He knows the baseline is what he should do. However, Mashack found a better angle on the strong side and immediately used his burs to attack the closeout defender’s feet and hunt the interior defender’s chest. The finish was out of balance, as he expected a whistle. Regardless, the toughness and getting the paint touch that easily is the intriguing part for NBA scouts.
The other side of the coin is Mashack showing tunnel vision and prioritizing jumpers when his driving angles are not good. The third and fourth plays below show an example. For NBA standards, ball movement and motion are two essentials. By settling for jumpers, he’s bailing out opponents and decreasing the margin of error for his team to sustain their offensive rating by taking away rhythm. He must look to make the extra pass when his self-created space is not good enough.
Passing, ball-moving, and playmaking
At 1.5 assists per game, Mashack has notched a positive assist-to-turnover ratio in his four seasons at Tennessee. However, considering his limited role, the height of the number is irrelevant. He’s a connective passer and ball-mover and will play a similar role at the next level. One of the positives in his game is the hip flexibility. Combined with the aforementioned burst and paint touches, Mashack can grow into a secondary creator, but that’s unrealistic this early in his career. In his case, it’s better to develop into a niche and embrace being a fast ball-mover who makes purposeful passes.
However, for NBA scouts, it was vital to see what he had to offer. Therefore, he has been given more runway at the Portsmouth Invitational. The first two plays below show examples of him penetrating inside, drawing help defenders, and executing his passes to open teammates. They are basic reads, but those are the most vital ones to execute. Back to his role as a ball-mover in the third and fourth plays below, it’s visible that Mashack does not make plays but keeps the ball moving based on the motion around him. The floor reading and court vision are there. However, because of a lack of on-ball touches in his career, he has embraced the role of a connective guard instead. For NBA teams, that’s a much better entry point to work with.
Active cutting and play-finishing
Mashack is a prolific play-finisher. His active cuts are by being physical in matchups and focusing on sealing off his opponents helps him to get open angles deep inside the paint. The unfair part of his assessment is his zero dunks on the season. That’s something being actively held against him. But it doesn’t take long to see that Mashack only cares about substance and is zeroed in on any flashy plays. He’s a great athlete, but he shows it with his strength, footwork, and fundamentals in contact rather than highlights.
However, there are some areas of concern. The first one is the hands. Mashack has big hands, but fumbling the ball in the fourth play with a paint touch in his pocket is something NBA coaches are not forgiving of. The margins for error are slim in the NBA, and these mistakes cost a team rhythm on top of the two points. However, that’s fixable. The process of his angles and cutting makes him an NBA player.
He’s active and physical. In the first play below, he embraces contact and plays much taller than a 6-foot-4 guard. Despite the missed layup, that’s a good play. He’s also a master of positioning himself. The second play shows an example where he’s moving and trying to initiate positioning, where he’s making the decisions as a cutter. He’s tagging and sealing actively. Those are guarantees to find good angles and looks in the NBA.
Subscribe Now!
Defense
Pick-and-roll
Mashack is a menace in the pick-and-roll. His toughness, aggressiveness, and skill of using his big hands and length to actively tag screeners and create cushions to curl around them. He has great awareness and recognizes the types of sets opponents run early in the process. That’s the maturity of his game, which intrigues NBA scouts. He adds value to a team’s defensive rating, as opponents will try to force switches and take Mashack away from duties on the ball. The first play shows an example.
In the second possession, Mashack shows him sticking to the ball handler while his feet and body both move to ensure the right positioning to meet the screener. The last step, while meeting the ball handler at the elbow, was also well-timed. His patience, endurance, and footwork bring a level of maturity that’ll make NBA coaches confident he can raise their defensive rating, which makes him capable of playing vital playoff minutes.
Even when he’s stuck on screens, Mashack uses his length and body positioning to turn it into winning plays. The third play shows an example. He’s colliding with the screen and giving separation to the ball handler. His peers would have kept their backs turned to the basket. But Mashack knows that to increase the ball handler’s margin for error, he must add options to his answer. He’s facing the sideline at 180 degrees and opens up both arms to close the passing angle with his left or fully dive into the shooter with his right arm, using his vertical leaping and length to impact the shot.
Closeouts
There is no better defensive prospect than Jahmai Mashack in this draft class when it comes to sliding his feet as a skill. He moves his feet and hips so fluidly that it’s already derailing a scorer before making his move. The positive for the NBA is that Mashack knows he’ll get beaten off the dribble against creativity. That happens to the best defender as well. Growing a niche and being an elite defender means having a reliable plan B and executing that plan B. In Mashack’s case, it’s his long strides, immediate tags, and strong last step in re-picking up his assignment. The first play shows an example of him being shaken out of balance, but Mashack’s quick feet and balance ensure that he can elevate his burst and use his length to retag and gather control of his assignment.
The second play leads to him getting burned off the dribble in his closeout. As mentioned before, he immediately changes his body positioning by facing the sideline and betting on closing the angles, while his length and quick feet allow him to read and react when he has to contest the shot. In the third possession, Mashack is slower in his closeout as he can rely on his length to contest when the ball handler decides to shoot. His long sliding ability makes it easier for him to adjust to ball handlers. His patient approach makes him almost arrogant in the way he defends. There’s no question that Mashack’s one of the top defenders in this draft class with his skill to defend both in the pick-and-roll and getting stops with his closeouts.
Point-of-attack
Mashack is a pest when he’s defending in isolation. That’s a part of his great positional awareness and the aforementioned elite defensive footwork. That’s a result of his recognition and focus to keep an eye on his assignment and still close angles as a team defender. The first play shows an example of him picking up the live-ball turnover. It fell close to him, but he was quick to the ball, and focus is one of Mashack’s main defensive attributes.
Mashack moves together with how a scorer moves the pivot foot. The second play shows an example. That makes him less vulnerable to bite on jab steps or fakes, as Mashack’s quality as a defender is to focus on the opponent’s feet and be a step ahead of the scorer. Despite the blow-by, he kept the tag alive and used his physicality to derail and take away the scorer’s balance.
Another trait that’ll earn him a niche in the NBA is the ability to slide his feet while putting his chest forward to absorb contact. Mashack moves his feet quickly and has either the tag on a scorer or his chest to absorb the contact. The way he slid his feet in the third play below kept him attached to his man, making his quick feet and balance his weapon to respond accordingly against the pull-up midrange shot. His strength makes it almost certain he can unbalance scorers. The completeness of his defense should add intrigue to his profile, allowing him to fill a need for all thirty teams.
NBA Draft Projection
Based on the strengths and areas of development mentioned in this scouting report, I project Jahmai Mashack to be a lock in the second round of the 2025 NBA Draft, somewhere between 31 and 45. He has a niche role, and it’s clear what he must do on an NBA floor. That helps him to set boundaries early on.
The other side of the coin is the lack of long-term potential, whereas teams do not need to give him a rookie-scaled contract. However, as a senior, it helps him if he’s selected in the second round to bring the moment of his second contract earlier in his career, ensuring maximum career earnings.
Thank you for being so supportive
As we get closer to the draft, I want to give back by taking away the paywall on my posts. However, with content thieves on the web and AI bot training being two legitimate threats, I am forced to use the paywall more effectively in next year’s cycle. It’s a labor of love on my end, where I aim to use the newsletter to expand my network. Luckily, some NBA front office members and many agents joined the movement. For only $6 per month, you’ll get multiple articles per week while helping me to make this labor of love cost-neutral.