Tyler Harris Scouting Report
The Washington standout made a great decision to transfer to Vanderbilt. It's a given he'll continue to impact in the SEC, while putting himself on NBA radars. Here's all you must know about his role:
Tyler Harris (#8, Vanderbilt): Junior, 6'8"
Small Forward— Born: Feb 14, 2005 (20 years old)
Introduction
After putting up over eleven points per game as a sophomore, Harris became one of the hottest commodities in the transfer portal. He shot 49.5% on three attempts from downtown, adding to the intrigue. However, his specific role as a wing-defending sharpshooter gives him a clear role at the next level. The intrigue continues when considering the extra untapped potential that’s still left.
Harris recently committed to one of the best defenses in the country. Vanderbilt is a great spot for him to continue to showcase his talent in a loaded SEC conference. However, context matters, and shooting numbers don’t tell the entire story. NBA scouts will be all over Harris, and this scouting report emphasizes why and what his future role will be at the next level.
Physical Profile
At 6-foot-7, Harris has the ideal size to play as a three. That’s his natural position. At 202 pounds, he’s a strongly built, wiry wing who’s continuing to fill his frame. He has long arms and great hip flexibility. While continuing to strengthen his core, Harris improved on his offensive footwork as well. There’s no official statement available, but his wingspan should measure around seven feet.
He’s a great athlete with good speed and quickness. The first step is decent, but the lateral quickness overall gives him an advantage to switch to guards while also defending against bigger wings. Harris also stands out vertically. The combination of fluidity, physical tools, and role versatility gives Harris valuable physical tools that NBA teams can continue to develop.
Offense
Catch-and-shoot
Excellent footwork. That’s the base behind Harris's shooting prowess and efficiency from downtown. Harris is an active mover away from the ball and does well to play the angles. He’s seeking to stay in the ball handler’s passing angle, and that helped him to improve his volume as a shooter. Harris’ movement leads to defenders having to adjust. He’s good on the weak side, as his continuous movement leads to the weakside defender not solely focusing on the strong side.
The first play shows an example. Harris sees dribble penetration and does well to move toward the elbow. He’s quickly pivoting with his left while using his right for the jab. That keeps the threat of his closeout attack alive. The positive in Harris’ jumper is that he’s keeping the ball high. That, combined with his good ball placement and length, gives him a reliable jumper off the catch. For the NBA, the high-arcing release is another intriguing trait. The second play shows how he’s shooting over the two-handed shot contest while showing a consistent process before his release.
Harris’s understanding of angles and constant movement make his three-point shooting one of the positives in his draft profile
Self-creation out of closeouts
Shooting gravity is built up by being a threat in closeout play. Harris must show he can create paint touches and scoring opportunities around the basket to gain more leverage as a shooter. We have seen that the footwork gives him an advantage that NBA scouts value. Despite being right-hand dominant, Harris has a creative scoring arsenal to show for. He’s not relying on his speed, but often gets his paint touches by simply bullying him to the basket.
However, the other side of the coin is that Harris settles for midrange floaters and push shots. That doesn’t mean it’s a negative, but it makes him close to one-dimensional as an interior scorer. Teams can load up on taking his right hand away and make Harris less efficient inside the arc. However, that hasn’t helped in college basketball, as Harris’s strength gives him enough tools to create his angles to get his attempts off. The first two plays show similar outcomes. His touch is good, and the core strength and footwork help Harris to maintain balance when he’s handling physicality from defenders.
Balance after contact is where most young NBA players fail to see the floor. Their frame must fill before they can handle the toughness of NBA players. However, in Harris’ case, I’m leaning toward the contrary. He’s a bully and handles contact very well. The third play shows an example. His vertical leap and high release point make him nearly unblockable, and that has value when he must play against taller defenders. The value of his excellent footwork on top of the physicality is shown in the last play below. With his fluid hips, Harris euro-stepped himself to a clear finishing angle with two feet inside the paint.
Passing, ball-moving, and playmaking
At 11 assists to 30 turnovers as a sophomore, the numbers show poor returns. However, the context of his role is essential. Harris hasn’t shown reliable playmaking so far in his collegiate career, but nor was he asked to be a distributor. When diving into his ball-moving and execution of his reads, the lack of comfort in an on-ball role immediately became visible. Harris is used to playing and impacting the game without many ball touches, and that’s a positive in his profile.
In the first play below, Harris shows good composure after the ICE. Instead of rushing a pass or bailing himself out, he scans the floor and makes the right pass. In the second possession, it leads to dribble penetration with an immediate kickout. Harris can execute simple reads without an issue. He also has good handles that help him to secure the ball when defenders double him or attack his handle. The last play below shows an example. Despite the lack of a good sample size, it’s feasible that Harris can serve as a good ball-mover while executing some of his reads as a playmaker as well. That’s a must to bank on the leverage and gravity he has as a shooter.
Cuts
As mentioned earlier, Harris is a good and active cutter. It’s all about him recognizing angles and using a simple tool in how defenders focus on ball handlers. That may sound easy, but in reality, it’s completely relying on a player’s feel for the game. Recognizing angles and staying in a ball handler’s passing angle are must-haves to play winning basketball. These habits often lead to multiple paint touches and easy opportunities to get baskets around the rim. That’s the focus more NBA teams try to have.
In the first play below, Harris sees help defense arrive, and he immediately backdoor cuts through the elbow to finish the play. In the second possession, he sees the ball handler’s struggle after picking up the dribble. Hereafter, he made himself available for the post-entry pass. Recognizing angles and responding to ball handlers is his M.O. The third play shows another example, after help defenders collapsed on him after the jump stop. Harris’s feel for the game often had the purpose of being an easy bailout option for his team.
Cutting is an essential skill, and Harris passes the test. It becomes more valuable when considering his role and his way to impact winning with fewer ball touches.
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Defense
Pick-and-roll
Harris is tough and physical. He’ll immediately throw his strong body when he’s defending inside the arc. But that’s where a majority of his issues in the pick-and-roll come from. He’s not a good screen navigator yet. Harris often dies on screens and therefore, relies on drop coverage and his physicality. This led to teams hunting him in screens and shooting off the dribble threes from the perimeter. Regardless, there’s potential for Harris to flourish as a point-of-attack defender while improving his decision-making in the pick-and-roll.
In the first play, Harris uses the pushoff to immediately take on the ball handler who rejected the screen. The bump before the ball handler picked up his dribble and tried to finish was great timing. Timely decision-making is a big part of what makes Harris successful as a defender. At 2.2 personal fouls per game, he shows he can play in control as well. However, in the second and fourth plays below, Harris shows his struggles as a screen navigator as he’s focusing on drop coverage too much.
With his speed and foot speed, he should be more comfortable attacking ball handlers and wearing them out with his physicality. NBA coaches will likely use him for that, rather than having him play drop, which isn’t his strength. That turned into a habit for Harris as well, with the drop coverage in the third play showing how easily he gave up the off-the-dribble three.
Closeouts and catch-and-shoot
Overhelping is Harris’s biggest current enemy. He’s often caught rotating too actively and being an interior presence rather than focusing on guarding the moving shooters on the perimeter. In the NBA, Harris must defend and close out properly to stay on the floor. Otherwise, he’s too much of a risk to see a worse defensive rating with him in the game. That’s a recipe for young players being benched and losing their spot in the rotation.
But when diving into the details, Harris executes his rotations well. He’s struggling with his positioning. That effect might trickle down in the NBA, as he has to deal with better spacing there. Therefore, improving Harris’s positional awareness is the biggest area of development in his draft profile. In the first play below, Harris is the weakside defender but rotates and stays attached to take away the dropoff pass. Instead of teammates rotating around him, he had to fix the mistake.
In the second possession, Harris was busy checking his positioning while the action continued. He was checking if he had one foot inside the paint and lost time to rotate above the break. That’s the positional awareness he must improve in the next few years. Another issue is the overhelping against dribble penetration. He’s rushing his rotations often. The third play shows an example. His immediate two feet inside the paint made it easy for the ball handler to kick the ball out for the wide-open three. Hedging and decision-making in shots to give up are things NBA coaches will help Harris with.
Isolation and point-of-attack
Despite the toughness and physicality, Harris looks passive in the point of attack and isolation. He has the foot speed, footwork, and agility to be a positive factor on that end. However, he’s playing safe more often than not. That’s not his style. It’s visible he’ll then pile up the toughness when he sees scorers trying to take over control, and then it’s easy for referees to call fouls against him. There are no motor issues in his profile, but Harris must stay aggressive and demanding, even when his strength can be used against him.
In the first play below, Harris bites on the jab inside the arc. The scorer attacked his footwork and waited for the right moment to lure Harris up in the air. He’ll have to embrace a ‘beat me’ mindset where he’ll be less responsive and in full control of the scorer, rather than reactionary, which gives scorers the edge more often than not. The second play shows another example. Harris bumps in early, and this didn’t help him establish dominance. That led to him having to pile up the strength underneath the basket, which led to the easy foul call against him.
One of Harris’s struggles is determining whether he should use his speed or his strength. He’s often trying to outmuscle opponents, but a good and fast athlete should embrace using both to remain unpredictable as a defender. When Harris is patient and makes opponents beat him, he’s much more comfortable. The third play below shows an example of him using his footwork to stay in balance and push his assignment to launch the off-the-dribble three with the shot clock moving to zero. However, he must get rid of the habit of being lured easily. Betting on fakes is worth it and reduces fouls significantly. The fourth play shows an example.
Post-ups
For the longer term, it’s feasible that Harris can expand his positional versatility to defending forwards as well. There’s room to fill his frame in the next few years. On top of that, his toughness and footwork enable him to defend and switch to pick up options in the post. The NBA moves toward skill, and advantage creation out of postups is a task many guards and wings embrace nowadays. Therefore, Harris’ counters have NBA value and improve his profile for front offices. Considering the SEC’s physical aspect, it’ll continue to be a factor that determines Harris’s NBA value.
In the first possession, the strength difference looked overwhelming, but despite the ground given up, Harris kept his toughness level at par, not backing away from defending against a stronger interior scorer. In the second play, he’s much more comfortable using his elbow in the scorer’s arm, pushing toward the area where the scorer picked up his dribble and fully overwhelmed his defender with his presence. However, the third play shows the NBA readiness of Harris when defending against opponents from his position. Great initial positioning and footwork. He’s simply staying strong using his frame and using his footwork to close angles and move with the scorer. He recognizes angles so well on offense that it’s making it easy to adjust to take away angles from opposing scorers.
Harris will improve in the next few years. He can become an above-average defender, but for that, the decision-making has to improve. Overall, the flashes are there to grow into an All-SEC Defense caliber option.
NBA Draft Projection
Based on the strengths and areas of development mentioned in this scouting report, I project Tyler Harris to be a top-40 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. The combination of a wanted archetype, readiness in terms of his role, and physical potential that’s yet to be untapped gives him the edge among most of his upperclassman peers.
More NBA teams make a run for the playoffs, and Harris’s role and strengths add to the margin of error that teams try to improve. I am cautious with using terms like ‘two-way’, but growing in a niche as a shooting wing and guard defender is one of the possible outcomes. However, his adapting to the SEC and maintaining his efficiency might even help him to move to the late first-round range.