RJ Felton Scouting Report
A reliable backup PG makes the difference in a secondary unit. Whereas many less-coveted guards find their way to rotations, East Carolina's RJ Felton is next in line. Here's why he belongs in the NBA
RJ Felton (#3, East Carolina): Senior, 6'3.5"
Point Guard — Born: May 28, 2002 (23 years old)
Introduction
As a last-second addition to the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, Felton was one of the most productive players of the event. His scoring prowess and leading guard skills put him on the NBA radars. While staying at East Carolina for the full four years, the two-time All-AAC honoree led the Pirates in the last two seasons, scoring over seventeen and eighteen points per game.
However, for the NBA, the production is less relevant as it’s purely on his skillset, with fewer ball touches translating. Among other NBA-caliber talent at PIT, Felton made that happen. The emphasis of this scouting report is to identify which parts of his game fit into the role of a backup leading guard, which is still an archetype many NBA franchises seek to add via the draft.
Physical Profile
At 6’3.5” in shoes, Felton has excellent positional size to be a one in the NBA. His length is eye-popping, with a confirmed wingspan of 6’9.5”, making him relatively one of the longest guards in this class. He’s built an incredibly well-filled upper body and a thick frame. His game is built on physicality, whereas he’s a good athlete as well.
Despite a lack of true speed, Felton is a vertical athlete, and combined with his length, it opens up the opportunity to defend more than one position at the next level. He weighs 208 pounds, which matches the expectation considering his frame. Felton has good core strength and footwork, adding compensatory factors to his lack of speed, which is the only concern for NBA scouts.
Offense
Creativity out of closeouts
Felton’s role will be to serve as an off-guard with some creation responsibilities. He’s best to adapt and play next to a more ball-dominant initiator. Therefore, shooting off the catch is essential, and to gain and create leverage for its gravity, Felton must be a good closeout creator and scorer to help a team sustain its offensive rating. That’s a must in his profile. Felton shows a good handle with a good pop at the rim. He shows decent touch but, more importantly, a good core strength, keeping his balance well when he absorbs contact.
The first play shows an example. Felton does not have top burst or blowby speed; therefore, he must time his closeout attacks. That’s his M.O. His technique of pivoting out wider and leaning to the lane he’s driving in forces defenders to cover more ground, which helps him get them off balance more easily. In the second possession, he shows another good scoring skill, keeping his head low. He’s leveraging his physicality well and ducks inside the paint before creating the finishing angle at the rim.
The other side of the coin is Felton finishing 47.4% of his rim attempts when excluding dunks. The main reason is forcing finishes when he’s getting paint touches. There’s tunnel vision in his game where he’s often Hail-Marying when facing a help defender arriving. Regardless, the footwork will prevail, and that’s the factor that’ll make it imminent that he’ll improve at the next level. The third and fourth plays below show his strong last step. The spin move followed by the fadeaway is his signature shot inside the lane.
Shooting off the catch
At over two hundred three-pointers attempted this past season, Felton shows he’s a volume shooter. The positive in his game is that he doesn’t need to heat up. He’s good at creating his catch-and-shoot opportunities with his movement away from the ball. He’s good at cutting and relocating to a ball handler’s angle. That makes it more likely he’ll have the opportunity to create out of closeouts. However, he often prioritizes threes. That’s a good sign for a team’s offensive rating, as he has the craft to get downhill effectively. This helps him to gain leverage to make the most of his shooting prowess.
His sweet spot is the area between the break and the left elbow. He’s often cutting in that direction. The positive is that he’s setting his feet right after the last step. His fluid and flexible hips help him to immediately position himself at 180 degrees of the basket. Combined with his earlier-mentioned 6-foot-10 wingspan, Felton shows a high-arcing release, which makes it a better outlook for NBA scouts in his role as a shooting-heavy guard. The quickness of his powering up is consistent as well.
The area of development is Felton lowering the ball to his waist before powering up. That costs him time, and on a less-spaced NCAA floor, that led to defenders closing out faster on him. He’s strong enough to shoot in volume and try to take away the dip from his process. That’s something NBA coaches can help him develop and add to his game.
Isolation scoring
NBA teams try to build depth for the playoffs. In Felton’s case, isolation scoring is essential to bring to the next level. With continuous adjustment and counters, especially in playoff settings, isolation ball often helps teams find that extra offensive rating to improve their margins of error, and thus, improve odds of winning. Isolation-heavy scorers will have a tough time adjusting to the NBA. A healthy number is a must to bring to ensure Felton can differentiate himself from most of his peers.
He’s a born hooper. The creativity and tight handles are the beginning of him creating isolation scoring looks for himself. His ball control and footwork help him to deceive defenders and create angles. He’s focusing on the midrange jumper. Regardless of how analytics-driven minds try to eliminate that part of the game, the midrange is essential to win games in the playoffs. The first two plays show his creativity and his downhill drives with the focus on creating the angle to launch his fadeaway jumpers. His length allows him to play taller defenders, as he has the proper length to shoot over the defense.
However, the other side of the coin is that Felton often forces his shots. The third and fourth plays below show examples of him overdribbling the ball in the third possession while he has the play-finisher right in his passing angle for the dropoff pass, and still insists on scoring with the midrange pullup in the fourth play below. These are the types of possessions that’ll get a player off the floor quickly, as they negatively influence the margins of error a team can have to sustain its offensive rating.
Passing, ball-moving, and playmaking
Despite doubling his assists from 1.3 as a junior to 2.5 per game as a senior while posting a positive assist-to-turnover ratio, there are some issues in Felton’s passing. As described above, he has tunnel vision and doesn’t look to make the extra pass often. This effect trickles down to the scoring load staying with Felton. At over eighteen points per game, the outcome is intriguing, but the lack of playmaking flashes gives an area of attention for NBA coaches to ensure that they make the most of his skill and angle creation that leads to advantages for others.
Felton mostly serves as a ball-mover at East Carolina. The first two plays show examples. He’s their main scoring initiator, and when he doesn’t see the right angle, he’ll keep the ball moving. He’s not a fast ball-mover, and that’s something for Felton to work on. In the third play below, he shows a good post-entry pass. To grow as both a passer and a cutter, he has to recognize the angles he can create for others. Instead of freezing at the elbow in the third play, Felton should cut to the weak side corner to make it easier for the post scorer to force the help defenders to not forget about Felton.
Another area of concern is Felton not making risk passes. The fourth play below shows him running the play in transition. It’s okay he’s not passing the ball right ahead, considering teammates close by. But a born playmaker and passer hit the play-finisher in the paint, where Felton chose the safe route with the side pass. These are essential details showing Felton is not bringing extra playmaking skill to the NBA, as he’ll primarily serve as a ball-mover instead.
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Defense
Pick-and-roll
Felton struggles defensively with his screen navigation and the lack of true lateral quickness. He’s playing a drop-coverage-styled defense as he’s avoiding ball screens instead of aiming to create space to dive between the screener and ball handler. He doesn’t tag screeners actively. Although he can dodge screens, the other side of the coin is him giving full control to the ball holder to dribble, pass, or take the pull-up three. The first play below shows an example. Faster decision-makers in the NBA will immediately punish him with downhill drives if he’s looking away from the ball for that long.
In the second play, we see a similar outcome with Felton avoiding the drag screen. This made it easy for the screener to lock him and again give the ball handler full control. The compensating part is good body control. In the third play, he’s getting bumped into and corrects his balance well before picking up his assignment around the rim again. Felton’s strength is positive considering the slow lateral movement and lack of screen navigation. Regardless, he’ll struggle to help sustain a team’s defensive rating as NBA teams will struggle to consistently defend in the pick-and-roll with him on the floor.
Closeouts
Felton is big and has quick feet. Despite the slower lateral quickness, the footwork will prevail, as he shows good closeout techniques. The skillset that’ll help him to grow into a niche as a defender is to be better at hedging if opponents will shoot or try to blow by him. The latter is more likely, and with a plus-6-inch wingspan, Felton can bet on allowing a tad more space to opponents in closeouts.
In the first play below, Felton slides his feet incredibly. Despite biting lightly on the pump fake, he corrects his stance immediately with calmness and good footwork before heavily contesting the shot. In the second possession, you see how well he plants his last step and immediately balances himself out. Despite the lack of speed, Felton uses his feet incredibly to compensate as much as possible. For NBA scouts, it’s an extra intrigue when considering the physicality and toughness Felton has. In the third play, he keeps his balance well after absorbing the hit. Despite being guard-sized, Felton can defend out of his position, which is an extra value for a team’s defensive rating. Outside of the lack of speed, there are solely positives in Felton’s closeout defense.
Catch-and-shoot
His fluid hips and feel to consistently make rotations help Felton in closing out against shooters. Despite not possessing top speed, his verticality and length help Felton to still make his presence felt all around the floor. The first play shows an example where Felton picks up the rotation above the break before switching back to the elbow with a solid shot contest. However, one of the main areas of development is to close out at 180 degrees, whereas Felton gives away a driving lane most of the time. The second possession shows an example where he went too far with his help defense, and this trickled down to him having to cover unrealistic ground to the corner. In the process, he slid to the left of the ball handler and couldn’t block vision, giving away the possibility to drive the baseline as well.
This effect trickles down to Felton not boxing out after shots. The process of closing out with long strides in his first steps compensates for the lack of speed. The length and leaping ability help him to jump early in the process. But the other side of the coin is that Felton makes himself more vulnerable for pump-fakes and drives as he’ll always find himself back around the level of the perimeter line. Despite averaging an impressive six-plus rebounds per game in back-to-back seasons as a guard, Felton can grab more boards if he finds a way to focus on his boxouts. The third and fourth plays below show examples.
Cuts and defending away from the ball
Consistent rotations are essential to properly defend away from the ball. That’s where Felton’s four-year experience kicks in, as he’s one of the leading factors for East Carolina in that regard. He’s often embracing the challenge of keeping the space on the weak side. It’s normal for prospects to overhelp, and Felton has a similar thing. Regardless, the maturity and consistency of his rotations are the prevailing factors. He’s making good decisions and shows a good motor. In the first play, he has no chance after the immediate dropoff pass, but rotation-wise, you see Felton making the right decision while pivoting out with his right in anticipating a potential kick out to his corner.
One of the issues in his profile is being too reactive to cutters. In the second play, you see Felton is lured to step on the perimeter line while the entire game is already in the paint. The backdoor cut through the middle was inevitable. For Felton, it’s essential to keep a foot in the paint regardless of what’s happening around him and try to focus on his rotations and timely help. When he does that, good things happen.
In the third play that leads to a deflected pass after he stays physical and keeps his opponents off the interior with physicality, recognizing cutting lanes by opponents. At 1.4 steals this season, the numbers show how he’s effectively playing the passing lanes as an off-ball defender, with the third play as an example.
NBA Draft Projection
Based on the strengths and areas of development mentioned in this scouting report, I project RJ Felton to be an undrafted free agent. However, it’s imminent that’ll be in contention to sign a two-way contract after a good Summer League performance. Felton can grow into a backup guard’s role, and when considering need, teams like the Miami Heat or the Los Angeles Clippers come to mind. His experience, maturity, and strength level combined with a skill that’s a given makes his role easy and compatible with what NBA teams try to add to their depth chart.