Rasheer Fleming Scouting Report

Teams that want to bet on physical tools and long-term potential will find themselves a gem in Fleming. But how much development does he need? What's his projected role? Find out below.

While finishing the season at 10.7 points on 52.8%, Fleming saw his interior usage increase compared to his freshman season At St. Joseph’s. His activity on the glass made him the A-10 leader in offensive rebounds (88).

He played for a nationally-ranked Camden HS team before college. His play for the New Jersey Scholars during the AAU cycle after his junior year in high school slowly put him on NBA radars, where he finished his career at Camden HS with 14 points and 11 rebounds per game double-double.

For the NBA, Fleming has many physical tools that suit him to serve as an offensively versatile forward in the future. This scouting report focuses on the realistic outcome while projecting a role for the next level. As of April 30, 2024, Fleming is one of the early entry candidates for the draft.

Physical Profile

At 6’9” and a 7’3” wingspan, Fleming immediately stands out with his length. During his sophomore year, he got stronger and continued to fill his frame. At 230 pounds the intrigue comes from the combination of strength and fluidity as a frontcourt piece. His positioning and vertical pop helped him to emerge as a top rebounder in the A-10 conference.

Fleming has fluid hips and is an active defender which will help him defend in a faster-paced game. With his footwork still being an area of development, Fleming shows the ability to slide his feet and guard outside the perimeter. In terms of his defensive versatility, that’s an area an NBA decision-maker will make an important part of his developmental plan.

Defense

At the NBA, the number of switches on the court will leave Fleming with the task of being able to close out and guard the perimeter. There are positives to mention as he’s good at leveraging his strength to absorb contact and get opponents to lose their balance before the shot, especially smaller guards and wings.

However, there are some areas to work on, with being too reliant on drop coverage, as shown in the last play below being the most crucial one. At times, Fleming looks passive on the defensive side of the ball. But his physical tools make up for quite a lot. In the second play, his teammate gets in his way in the middle of the floor, leading to Fleming losing his assignment. However, his vertical pop still led to a decent contest near the rim.

What he did well in the first play was forcing his opponent to the strong side. He’s focusing on staying between 150 and 180 degrees from his ball handler, mainly closing out to cover the weakside area.

When defending against spot-up shooters, we see Fleming relying on his length more often than not. He’s good at using his physical tools to his advantage, but Fleming needs to work on closing out quicker and not gamble on letting his opponent shoot. In college basketball, he’s more likely to give away a three compared to the NBA, where it’s so shooting-based that Fleming simply cannot afford to gamble on misses.

In the first play below, Fleming doesn’t close out hard on the play to not get burned on the closeout attack. Despite his length, his contest on the shot was late due to the distance he had to cover. Another area to develop is Fleming’s ball watching which he is caught with often. On a wider NBA floor, the amount of ground to recover as shown in the second play will be too much to overcome.

The positive in his defense against spot-up shooters is shown in the last play below. Fleming reads the play well from the elbow area where he dodges an incoming pindown to hard-contest the wing shooter on the three off the catch.

At the NBA level, Fleming will often be asked to guard the play-finisher inside the arc when he has to defend against cutters. What stood out is that despite his fluid hips and mobility, Fleming is often late to react to plays where he could have gotten the stop, but simply takes too much time to process the play.

In the first two plays below, the cutter gets hit in the middle of the floor for the rim finish. Despite being quicker to react on the first play, he was still a tad too slow when foreseeing the quickness of the NBA game. Another area of development for Fleming is jumping on plays too often, which led to him giving up the dunk in the second play.

The same applies to the last play below. He’s vulnerable when put in position against pump-fakes, as his desire to make winning play gets the best of him. For the next level, his activity as a mobile team defender is positive, but the above-mentioned areas make it hard for Fleming to guard on an NBA floor on day one due to the risk he’ll negatively influence a team’s defensive rating.

As a pick-and-roll defender, Fleming will often be put to the task of guarding against opposing ball handlers. What stood out is that he’s an above-average screen navigator for his size. Fleming already getting accustomed to using his physical tools to his advantage puts him in a promising position as a pick-and-roll defender.

In the last play below, Fleming detects the pindown very well but has to recover quickly after the immediate down screen looks too much to overcome. He still got the block on the shot due to his excellent vertical pop and strength to fight through the screen.

However, when playing drop coverage, Fleming looks too passive at times in terms of deciding when he has to contest hard to driving ball handlers. It seems that he’s gambling on pull-ups from the midrange more often than not. However, in a changing NBA game where we see more lay-ups in these types of plays instead of pull-up jumpers, an NBA decision-maker should make this an important part of his developmental plan.

Regarding the small details, Fleming does well in tagging potential rollers, as he did in the second play where the first drag screen occurred and tagging helped him to slide between the second stagger screener.

Offense

With 0.6 assists to 1.1 turnovers per game, Fleming doesn’t stand out as a passer. However, for the NBA there’s a specialty to develop for him as he has a combination of excellent screening, quick decision-maker, and decent connective passing.

His value is mostly focused on exploiting offenses via handoffs. What’s mostly the case in these plays is that the big handing the ball off is usually a dump-off. But Fleming does well in using his length on handoffs to give ball handlers enough space to drive, where he follows it up with hard screens that show the value of his strong frame. The first and third plays below are two examples.

When it comes to him serving as a playmaking hub, there’s a small sample size of Fleming making quick reads out of the post. However, they are not advanced reads, which doesn’t have to be the case. The flashes he has to show to grow as a passer are detecting open teammates quickly and executing his reads without hesitation. And that’s what he does in the second play below.

As a cutter, Fleming finds most of his attempts inside the arc. Serving as a play-finisher helps him in his early NBA role where it’s likely he won’t get many ball touches. While he’s at 18.9% usage as a sophomore, Fleming is a good candidate to play a complementary role to a higher-usage frontcourt piece.

Despite playing for higher-ranked programs before college, Fleming always played a smaller role. This helped him program his game to maximize his potential as a cutter to still get to double-digit points without the ball in his hands. This continued at St. Joseph’s where he emerged as one of the best cutters in the conference. As a sophomore, this resulted in him having one dunk per game.

He’s excellent at rolling hard after off-ball screens, as shown in the first play below. But what Fleming is specializing in his role is the ability to use his mobility and motion to make himself the forgotten man on offense. Relocating to the corner and then using backdoor cuts is how he gets to the rim often. And at a 70.3% rim-finishing rate, his high-quality attempts at the rim complement the efficiency of his game as a cutter.

In his NBA role, shooting off the catch will be another important must-have to stay on an NBA floor. And while he’s at 32.4% from three on 3.0 attempts per game, there are a few positives in his shot that make it feasible he’ll improve in the upcoming few years.

Fleming solely focuses on shooting off the catch in his attempts per game at St. Joseph’s. Two major positives are that he’s always moving toward the ball. Whether it’s in motion or using his arm toward the pass from a standstill, Fleming is quick to get himself into position, as shown in all four positions below.

However, he should experiment with shooting without lowering the ball to under his waist. Fleming looks strong enough to keep the ball high and shoot quickly, as he doesn’t need to power up for the jumper. This makes the whole process quicker for him as well, as an NBA team will ask him to serve as a spot-up shooter early on in his career.

His mechanics look good as they are consistent on each play. With a high-arcing release combined with his length, he’ll rarely get blocked on attempts.

The key element for Fleming to score outside of cutting and shooting off the catch will be to play out of closeouts. This will help his passing game improve as well. At St. Joseph’s, Fleming started to show a growing desire for more on-ball reps. This led to him forcing offense at times, as shown in the first play below.

However, when closely watching his attempts via closeouts, two things stand out. He has an impressive hesitation move in his arsenal and combined with his solid burst, Fleming creates looks for himself at the rim when he’s attacking the closeout.

In the second play below, he uses his pivot foot very well before using the hesitation move to blow by his defender. Another area that stood out is his touch at the rim, which is another big reason leading to the earlier-mentioned 70.3% finishing rate at the rim.

While doubling his free-throw attempts to 2.8 per game, Fleming shows that he can draw contact near the rim as well. These free-throw attempts mostly were a result of his closeout attacks, with the third play below being an example. At a 61.2% free-throw shooting rate compared to 69.0% as a freshman, that’s an area where Fleming needs to improve in the early stages of his NBA career.

NBA Draft Projection

An NBA team is buying physical tools with Fleming. His combination as an excellent cutter, screener, and specialized passer out of handoffs gives him a clear role on day one. Compared to other underclassmen, he’s the rare case where his offensive role is clear on day one, and in the years before the NBA, he has played a similar role which gives a good sample size to evaluate for NBA teams.

However, defensively, Fleming has several areas to clean up before playing consistent minutes. As of now, an NBA decision-maker will carry the weight of his pros on offense to what his team will give up in their defensive rating with him on the floor.

The lack of awareness and being too reliant on drop coverage leading to gambling on misses from opposing three-point shooters are the two foremost areas of improvement. Both are fixable with more reps. Therefore, it’s likely that Fleming will play many G League minutes in the first two years of his career.

Based on his NBA role, and the pros and cons of his profile, I project Fleming to be a late second-round pick or one of the first off the board as an undrafted free agent. He’ll sign a two-way contract for two years.

While I normally don’t mention team-fits, in Fleming’s case, the Sacramento Kings are the best team for him. With two frontcourt pieces hitting unrestricted free agency in Len and McGee, their front office will focus on adding frontcourt pieces that complement Sabonis’ game.