Last week, Peter Jok participated in the NBA combine with 66 other college and international players. The 5-day event combines the measuring and drills familiar to those in tune with the NFL combine and adds three scrimmages to the mix. Since all the teams are there, they can talk to the players as well as evaluate their performance. How did Pete do? Let’s get to it.

Measurables

All ranks are among SGs and SG/SFs, as Jok is listed as the latter.

Overall, this jives with what Iowa listed Peter at throughout last season at 6’6” and 205 pounds which is surprising. It’s normal to see some guys lose more than an inch off of their listed height (shoutout to his lifted shoes as he jumps a couple guys between the without and with measurements). He ranks pretty middle-of-the-pack for most of these with the exception of Body Fat percentage - most of the guys are under 8%. This is a clear opportunity area for him to maintain his weight while shifting it to muscle. It will allow him to guard bigger wings and the shift to muscle will provide some explosiveness.

Jarrod Uthoff - a rail throughout his whole time at Iowa - was able to pack on 20 lbs between his combine showing and signing with the Dallas Mavericks once he was able to focus 100% on basketball. I would expect Peter to follow a similar template in terms of developing his body.

Drills

Here is where you see some of Peter’s measureables come to bear. In terms of straight-line speed and explosiveness, he does not fair as well as he does in the agility-based exercises. But he does fare well in the next set of drills.

Peter showed up in the spot up shooting, where he never dropped in the lower half. It’s obvious this will be his calling card at the next level, wherever that is. He did drop off, however, once he was asked to shoot off the dribble, his performance dipped.

Scrimmages

Pete had a rough go of it on Thursday where he went 0-6 and had a number of mental miscues:

The second day was an improvement, as he cleaned up his play to have 6 points on 2-7 shooting with no turnovers. Jeremiah Davis was able to catch up with ESPN’s maven of all things combine and draft, Fran Frascilla:

I would say this wasn’t his best performance. In this environment, he didn’t show as well as he did during the (college) season. Teams are going to bring him in for workouts and he’ll get a chance to show what he can do in those workouts. With guys like him, it’s more a matter of, ‘Did he help himself?’ And I would say he probably didn’t help himself.

Mark Emmert snagged some time with Sam Vecenie of Sporting News, who had some kinder words:

He’s gotten a lot better at navigating ball screens and creating his own jumpshot off of it. He never really gets to the rim doing it, which is a little bit of a concern, but if he can navigate ball screens on the wing and get himself a free, open look with that quick release, that’s a legitimate NBA skill. And if he can take two dribbles confidently and attack a closeout on a spot-up opportunity, that’s a legitimate NBA skill. Everything that he has done over the course of the last two years in terms of shooting the basketball, it’s an immediate translation.

(Mark Emmert also caught up with our Favorite Fran - McCaffery - in the above link who offered the following quote about his son, Connor, regarding the upcoming MLB draft: “A lot of times it depends on how they view signability. Will he sign or not? He might. He’s probably good enough to get drafted.”)

Back to Jok.

Up Next

Jok talked at length about defense, defense, defense, in his time with reporters on Thursday. Randy Peterson of the Des Moines Register touched on the same subject and offered a nice sidenote about Peter’s mom, as they will reunite Memorial Day weekend after over a year away.

After meeting with Milwaukee and two unnamed teams at the Combine, Jok is set to work out for Boston (who he met with last year), the Clippers, and Orlando. Though he remains unlikely to get drafted, these workouts generally offer fringe players the opportunity to match up with more highly rated players behind closed doors to show their stuff.

All it takes is one workout and one team.