Height: 6’6
Weight: 231
Year: Junior
Position: Shooting Guard
2014-2015 NCAA Statistics:
12.2 PTS 4.0 REB 1.7 AST 46.6 FG% 45.2 3PT% 78.0 FT%
Draft Projection: Late 1st Round/Early 2nd Round
NBA Player Comparison: Iman Shumpert
Justin Anderson had a solid junior year that was only short of excellent because it was marred by injuries. Still, his 3-point shot is what has people impressed. His first two years at Virginia were sub-par and he struggled from deep. That all changed this past year. Some say that it was too small of a sample size from just one year of good basketball to characterize Anderson as a solid NBA prospect. While I believe that he should have stayed another year to prove those doubters wrong, I truly believe Justin can be a key piece for an NBA team.
NBA teams continue to look for 3-point shooters and with the game transitioning, it’s rightfully so. If Justin can replicate what he had done for Virginia last year, then many teams will want to draft him and might not wait until the 2nd round to do so. He could definitely help a lot of playoff teams coming off the bench. Chicago at 22 could use a scorer like him, so could Portland off the bench at 23, and the list goes on. Some scouts have him as a small forward coming into the league and because of his length, size, and versatility he is more than capable of playing there, but I personally believe he is best suited at the shooting guard position.
Iman Shumpert, in college, was a kid with a great touch from outside, fantastic defensive skills, and was a freak athlete with some of the dunks he would pull off. He was also labeled as a promising young prospect, but needed to work on his main weakness, the consistency. Justin Anderson shares most of Shumpert’s qualities. The one thing he has over Shumpert is that he has actually proved in college that he can shoot from deep. Scouts had only wishful thinking with Iman’s outside game since he struggled from there in college. The ball-handling and quickness deficiencies are the biggest reason for Anderson’s projection of going late in the 1st or early in the 2nd. I think Justin can have a fantastic career, it just depends if he his put into the right system. Unfortunately for Shumpert, that didn’t happen. Let’s hope it does happen for Justin Anderson.
Future Professional Potential: Solid Sixth-Man
