Cole Anthony has been a very well known player since his high school days back at Oak Hill Academy. Cole is a 6’3 190 pound PG that attended North Carolina last fall. Cole was ranked 2nd in the ESPN Top 100 for the class of 2019 behind another top prospect James Wiseman. Cole Anthony has a pretty bumpy road for his freshman campaign, he had to undergo arthroscopic surgery to repair a partially torn meniscus in his right knee. But he came back and ended the season averaging 18.5 ppg, 4.0 apg, and 5.7 rpg on 38% from the field and 35% from downtown. Now I’m not here to hate Cole. I think he has a lot of untapped potential but I’ll give you his strengths and weaknesses and then I’ll tell you why I think he should drop in this upcoming draft.
Strengths: Cole Anthony is a bonafide scorer to the bone, the guy can basically do it all on the offensive side of the ball except for some parts but I’ll go over that later. Cole is a very creative scorer which means that he puts a lot of thinking into different ways to score to throw off the defense. He can make you think he’s doing this one move and then switch it right then and there. He’s very much a volume shooter that has great footwork and a NBA ready jumpshot. He’s confident in the PnR but scoring is his number one priority which is also a concern, he loves his stepback and sidestep to create space for his shot which both of those are pretty advanced for his age. He has the potential of being a dominant 3 Level Scorer with the range he has and his finishing ability and his soft in-between game. His finishing is a very good part of his arsenal, with his athleticism combined with his creative play style you can see his potential with 3 level scoring. Did I also mention he can dunk, yeah his explosiveness would surprise a lot of people from looking at his height and frame. And the final strength I’ll talk about is his rebounding for his height and position. Cole is a very good rebounder, he tracks the ball well and wins battles with big men in the paint.
Weaknesses: So now you’re telling me “how could this guy drop because you just made an argument for him to be a top 5 pick?” Well here is why he will drop, firstly his shot selection is horrendous majority of the time. He chucks up a lot of unnecessary shots and I don’t know if that had to do with the lack of talent on UNC this year but sheesh his shot selection will really need to change. And here is what I was talking about earlier, his score-first mentality. Cole has a tendency to take the first shot available and pass up an open teammate for his own well being, this shouldn’t be a surprise after seeing his shooting% earlier. His confidence probably makes him believe that every shot he takes is a good shot. His court awareness can be non-existent sometimes because he doesn’t see the open guys on the court at all. If he wants to be a successful NBA player that can change a franchise he needs to learn to pass the ball. Now for the biggest weakness against Cole Anthony, his injury history. I’ve stated already about his injury in college and even in high school his ankles were bothering him. I just don’t see a lot coming from him if this injury bug keeps hitting him and teams should really look into that. He could drop this year because of the selfish behavior he’s shown on the court, no team wants an injury prone player, it would be very hard to pair him with a superstar or start a franchise around him.
TheDyspatch 