Kasparas Jakucionis

Jakucionis is a talented, but imperfect, offensive player who has a lot of struggles on the defensive side of the ball.

Offense

As a scorer, Jakucionis operates almost entirely below the rim. He has decently wide shoulders and has a decent build for his age that allows him to absorb some contact and to create angles to score against defenders especially with more space. However, he still has mediocre athleticism, hang time, springiness, and he is not overly long or is very stiff with little bend or fluidity. He struggles to finish inside against traffic and contests, especially when defenders recover. His touch is inconsistent, as he’ll miss bunnies due to his other limitations, but he also converts some tough circus finishes with footwork and creativity. He compensates for athletic shortcomings by taking good angles, pump fakes, and showing good footwork (Eurosteps, step-throughs, and hesitations) around the paint. Still, even decent college athletes were able to challenge or block his shots when recovering, highlighting his potential limitations at the next level.

Jakucionis is a good shooter, especially when he can step into shots in rhythm, whether off the catch or with 1-2 dribbles gathering himself. However, his shot becomes less reliable when he’s forced to shoot on the move or off more creative, evasive dribble packages. His release is compact but not especially quick or high, and he can be bothered by length when contested.

Kasparas is at his best running the pick-and-roll, which helped him to create some separation and take advantage of his passing. Jakucionis thrives when allowed to manipulate defenders with ball fakes, pass threats, or screen rejections. He takes intelligent angles and reads coverages well.  Fortunately for Jakucionis, this is one of the most common NBA players; however, without it he tens to lack elusivity or the ability to create separation, which may limit his ability to be a first option in the NBA.

Kasparas may lack the speed or shiftiness to create separation; however, he has a competent handle and a solid array of moves such as hesitations, step backs, and crossovers. He also has the ability to change his pace up, but more like a control pitcher mixing up a 90mph fastball with an even slower off-speed pitch.  But these tools are more functional than explosive and at times even slow-footed college big men were able to stay attached to him enough to his contest shots.  Jakuciounis doesn’t stop have the ability to stop quickly on his drive and takes a moment to gather before getting off his shot (giving defenders a chance to recover); however, he does have an effective pump fake. which can be legitimately dangerous and frequently gets defenders in the air, both on the perimeter and as a secondary move on drives.

Off the ball, Kasparas is a smart cutter and relocator. He reads the floor well, punishes ball-watching defenders, and maintains spacing.   Sadly, even when he does beat his man, they can catch up or still contest or block his shot at times (e.g., there was a play where he torched 6’3″ Purdue freshman CJ Cox on a back cut, only for Cox to catch up and block Jakucionis’ shot from behind).

Jakucionas had a few possessions this year where he showed a willingness to post up smaller guards and that he can either score or facilitate from the block.

Jakucionis isn’t the biggest offensive rebounder, but he will pick his moments to crash the glass hard.  He picks his spots well and times his efforts, though his limited leaping ability often neutralizes him even when he secures the board, as he struggles to go back up quickly and allows defenders time to recover.

Jakucionis’ is a plus passer for his age showing strong vision and accuracy and that he is capable of delivering the ball from a wide variety of situations and angles including live dribble, stationary reads, behind-the-back, overhead whips, and wraparounds. He processes the game quickly and can make advanced reads, skipping to shooters when help collapses, hitting cutters with precision, and surveying the floor to hit a wing player whose man is cheating over instead of his big man rolling to the hoop.. He’s capable of both reading the defense and reacting dynamically in real time. Kasparas has good anticipation, often while receiving a pass he is already moving it very quickly with a direct or skip pass to an open man as the defense scrambles. Although like with shooting he almost seems to gather the ball for a moment before making the pass giving the defense an extra moment to recover.

However, Jakucionis is also turnover-prone, with giveaways falling into three categories. First, the flipside of his more advanced passes is that he can get overly ambitious and have passes that get deflected or picked off, which is relatively forgivable given his creativity and the volume of assists he gets.  This should improve over time. More concerning are the other two types of turnovers.  Jakucionis tends to get sped up and has lapses under pressure such as jumping into traffic without a plan, forcing drives into the teeth of the defense, or panicking against hard traps. And most worrying, Jakucionis’ handles are good but not great and he either just loses control of his dribble or was picked a lot. And this isn’t only in heavy traffic or congestions, but even making his move up top in or in 1 on 1 situations. This will be a liability in the NBA unless he really improves.

Defense

Defensively, Jakucionis faces significant questions that could limit his role or require heavy scheme protection at the next level. Kasparas struggles to contain quicker guards on the ball. His lateral quickness is ok and he has a poor ability to change directions both east to West and north to south. He sort of flies all over and then takes a moment to restart his momentum. This makes him highly susceptible to counter moves. He does a better job changing from east to west than north to south, but once he steps backwards, he can’t shift his momentum forward quickly at all. A couple of times even had to almost hop and reposition himself and then run forward, so step back jumpers against him tended to be consistently wide open.

Overall, Kasparas just does not provide much resistance, slightly bigger players can drive in and shoot over him as he doesn’t have great length, explosiveness, or athleticism. Quicker players can generally get a step and if he hedges or overplays at all to compensate, they can beat him with a quick counter like a crossover or spin move and again his slower change of direction paired with his so-so length and jumping makes it hard for him to get a good contest.

Off the ball, Jakucionis isn’t much better. He has a tendency to ball-watch and overhelp, which allows his man to relocate for open shots or back cut for an easy bucket. Because of his lack of speed and burst, he gets set up really easily with offensive players faking one direction and then hard cutting the opposite direction either to the hole or out for an open three. He just cannot recover quickly enough.

Jakucionis shows some effort to tag bigs in the paint, and he’ll dive on loose balls or try to knock away post-entry passes. He’s also alert in the passing lanes and has decent instincts for anticipating plays. However, his lack of verticality, wingspan, and  strength makes it difficult to contest shots or defend post-ups. He can be backed down by bigger players and struggles to recover when caught in mismatches.

Kasparas does a good job fighting through screens and he takes pretty good angles and doesn’t get stuck, but this also highlights some of his athletic limitations as even losing a step, he’s often just out of the play.  And once he gets caught on off-ball screens, he manages to loses track of shooters and struggles to contest cleanly.  NBA offenses will likely target him early and often. In the NCAA Tournament, Kentucky kept running his man off screens and they were getting open looks and even circling around and just running right to the basket. There was not much Jackucionis could do to catch up and contest.

And to Kasparas’ credit, he shows a willingness to help.  And he will rotate and shade towards the ball on defense and he will rotate over to cover bigs.  And he will dive on the floor for lose balls and generally play hard.  And there are moments where Jakucionis can be a pest and his anticipation and timing allow him to jump some routes and generate steals. Though when he misses, can be left out of position and give up an easy basket to the offense.

But overall, Jakucionis was a liability at the collegiate level and is going to have to make some real adjustments and hope that NBA athletic training can really help him in order to take some of the pressure off his offense to always be on.

Note: Jakucionis suffered a forearm injury in January.  He missed a game and after he came back, his shooting in particular was worse.  If’s unclear if this was caused by the injury or just some normalization that would have happened either way.  But worth at least flagging that this may have impacted his performance.