Cognition x Physicality: The Ultimate Driver of Development (Part One)

This is part one of a two-part series explaining how the divergence of a player's offensive rebound, assist, steal, and block rates relative to what is expected based on their size:

1. Approximates their blend of cognition and physicality.
2. Heavily influences their developmental curve.

Introduction

Many NBA players have received the “outlier development” tag: Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, Draymond Green, Russell Westbrook, Jrue Holiday, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic… the list goes on. This reveals a flaw in the term: how can such developments be outliers when they occur so consistently? Something predictable must be happening here beyond inexplicable development. Finding what traits consistently drive supposed inexplicable development is certainly a market inefficiency to tap into.

Fortunately, we possess a blueprint to build from in the form of these tweets from Avinash:

Slightly deviating from Avinash's initial interpretation, I hypothesize that a rare blend of cognition and physicality is the primary driver of outlier development. This blend is most commonly centralized within the integration of offensive rebounds, assists, and stocks1, which is what makes strong performance in all three categories so predictive of outlier development.

This hypothesis aligns with Avinash’s updated interpretation, which — alongside analysis of how he arrived at his conclusions — can be found in these Trevor Ariza notes, these Allen Graves notes, and these Nikola Jokic notes. I greatly recommend the reads, though they aren’t necessary for the scope of this article.

I’ll attempt to convey the predictive power of this cognition-physicality integration with a historical example at three different positions: Kyle Lowry at Guard, Draymond Green at Forward, and Donovan Clingan at Center.

Example #1: Kyle Lowry

Kyle Lowry seemingly had no business being an NBA player after his freshman season. His 13.8 Player Efficiency Rating (PER) was incongruent with that of freshmen who typically become NBA players, a product of inefficient two-point scoring, poor free-throw shooting that pulled down sizable free-throw grifting, low passing volume, and inefficient passing.

Lowry became not only an NBA player, but one of the greatest offensive true-shooting influencers in league history and a positive turnover suppressor.

How did one of the most inefficient NCAA scoring and passing guards, with poor free-throw touch and three-point shooting volume (14.5 3PR), achieve such feats in the NBA? A glance at his offensive rebound, steal, and block rates as a freshman essentially summarizes the story.

A 4.2 offensive rebound rate is atypical for a 6-foot, 185-lb freshman with mediocre vertical leap, as was noted (but not necessarily properly valued) in his pre-draft scouting report. When paired with similarly strong steal and block rates, Lowry’s outlier blend of cognition and physicality began to take shape.

Accruing steals and blocks at volume indicates strong performance in all of:

1. Pattern Recognition
2. Reaction Time
3. Hand-Eye Coordination

Together, these traits form the foundation of “cognition” alongside cognitive bandwidth, and are what intertwine steal and block rates with cognitive ability. Though the general imagery of blocks might default to at-rim rejections from Rudy Gobert or jumpshot swats by Matisse Thybulle, vertically-challenged guards like Kyle Lowry accrue theirs through timely swipe-downs. Powered by the quick reaction time and precise hand-eye coordination found within cognition, these swipe-downs enabled block rates such as 1.0 for Kyle Lowry, 0.7 for Trae Young, and 0.8 for Kemba Walker despite vertical limitations.

These players also managed to accrue a handful of vertical jumpshot swats anyway through their superb cognition. They possess the pattern library to recognize block opportunities (pattern recognition), reaction time to act quickly, and hand-eye coordination to cleanly swat a shot while the shooter’s release is still low.

Lowry’s integration of offensive rebounding, steals, and blocks became truly 1-of-1 during his sophomore season, when he somehow further improved his offensive rebound and steal rates.

These outlier cognitive indicators, some of the greatest in amateur basketball history, now laid the foundation for the rapid passing, interior scoring, and shooting development that followed.

Continuing these scoring and passing development curves in the NBA, via outlier cognition, is how one of the worst creation seasons in draft history eventually became one of the most effective NBA creation peaks. Lowry maintained high offensive rebounding and defensive activities with these creation improvements, leading to a top-10 impact peak according to RAPM and DARKO. He’s one of the most special players in basketball history, and I will miss his presence in the NBA dearly.

Example #2: Donovan Clingan

Turning to a more recent example, Donovan Clingan’s development as a passer and shooter has been nothing short of historic. We’ll arrive at his particularly outrageous shooting development shortly, but I first want to highlight his freshman-to-sophomore passing leap. He follows the same path as Lowry and other outlier offensive rebound-steal-block rate players who developed their passing rapidly.

Players like freshman Clingan and freshman Lowry may have lacked the pattern libraries necessary to identify and capitalize on defensive lapses with their passing. However, they clearly displayed elite reaction time and precise hands through outlier offensive rebound and steal rates. Once those pattern libraries grew, they were equipped to exploit the reads they could now see, reacting faster and placing more precise passes than others with low steal and offensive rebound volume.

Clingan's outlier block rate was also fueled by high cognitive bandwidth. I define this trait as tracking multiple actions at once with minimal loss of pattern recognition, reaction speed, and hand-eye coordination efficacy. Players with high bandwidth can identify the pattern of several actions, process every potential reaction, and respond with the optimal solution at high speed. Players with low bandwidth struggle to process multiple actions and often short-circuit under stress.

In simpler terms, high-bandwidth players can stack reads while low-bandwidth players cannot. Those with strong cognitive abilities elsewhere but low cognitive bandwidth excel in low-variable areas like one-on-one scoring and man-to-man defense, but are limited in high-variable areas like passing, off-ball steal, and off-ball block volume.

Clingan uses his cognitive bandwidth to track multiple actions simultaneously, his reaction time to time contests up, and his hand-eye coordination to block shots with precision. An example of these three cognitive traits interacting is in the first clip below.

Passing is an activity that inherently demands strong cognitive bandwidth. Players must map the positions of four teammates and their defenders (eight players total), identify the highest-leverage pass available, and react with an accurately placed pass, all in the matter of a split second. Navigating multiple options without sacrificing reaction time or hand-eye coordination is vital to success here. Therefore, the cognitive bandwidth that drives high steal and block rates is transferable to the cognitive bandwidth that drives high assist and assist-to-turnover rates. High stock rates paired with high offensive rebound rates specifically often signal latent passing ability.

As a side note, this theory behind outlier passing development can be gamed by any team looking to win more basketball games, and the University of Connecticut already has. They consistently recruit bigs with outlier offensive rebound and stock rates, teach them a set of passing reads to expand their pattern libraries, and churn out better passers. Adama Sanogo and Clingan were the first, Tarris Reed Jr. the most recent, and Najai Hines and Oskar Giltay are next. It’s no coincidence that the winningest basketball program of the 2020s was the first to weaponize this theory.

Switching back to the theory itself, an alternative framing of players with poor passing numbers but elite offensive rebounding and stocks is that they benefit the most from film study and on-court drills. These players evidently possess strong reaction time and hand-eye coordination by virtue of their high offensive rebound and stock rates. Poor passing despite strong reaction time and accurate hands isolates pattern recognition as their primary passing limiter.

Film study and on-court drills inherently expand a player's pattern library, as they expose players to new patterns over time. Those with a quick reaction time and accurate hands can then recognize and act on these patterns in-game. You can show a player with poor offensive rebound and stock rates the same patterns and put them through the same on-court activities, but their poor reaction time and hands will ultimately limit their ability to apply an expanded library.

As far as shooting goes, two jumpshots in a game are rarely identical, as two possessions rarely unfold in the same environment. Between contextual traits (floor spacing, shot clock), individual traits (number of dribbles, footwork pattern, balance, court positioning), and defender traits (court positioning, balance, contesting length, contesting velocity), the variables in a shooting environment are constantly changing.

The reaction time needed to process an ever-changing environment and adjust the release accordingly, along with the hand-eye coordination integral to converting jumpshots, are what drive shooting accuracy. A player may not make jumpshots at an above-average rate yet, but outlier offensive rebounding, passing, and ball-hawking relative to size suggest outlier reaction time and hand-eye coordination. These traits lend themselves to rapid development of shooting touch.

A center who shot 52% on free throws and attempted one three as a freshman just wrapped up a season of 68% on free throws and 34% on threes, the latter on 246 attempts with a 36.0 three-point attempt rate. Bet on players with outlier offensive rebounding, assists, and stocks to undergo rapid shooting development.

Example #3: Draymond Green

Draymond Green is another example of outlier rebound and steal rates at a young age leading to long-term growth in shooting and turnover economy.

His position-relative passing as a freshman was already far ahead of Lowry and Clingan's at the same age, though.

This indicates two things:

1. Green's raw cognition was better than Lowry and Clingan’s, as he paired precocious rebound and stock rates with precocious assist and assist-to-turnover rates as a freshman.
2. Green was simply a more impactful passer at the same age, and would go on to be a more impactful passer in the NBA.

At his peak, Green combined above-average shooting and tremendous passing to produce an outlier-high offensive true shooting impact on his team.

He maintained above-average turnover economy alongside this strong offensive true shooting impact, which led to a top-25 offensive RAPM finish in the 2015-16 season.

Green saw outlier-high offensive true shooting returns similar to Lowry and Clingan. However, I chose Draymond as the final example for another reason. The outlier cognition displayed in his offensive rebound, assist, and steal rates also led to outlier defensive development. Such precocious cognition is how an unathletic 6-foot-7 tweener developed into one of the greatest defenders ever.

Green's all-time great defensive cognition — composed of outlier reaction time in identifying a potential action, proper timing in acting on it, and technique in executing it — is what powers his defensive excellence. This historic level of cognition could have been foreseen to some extent by referencing his all-time great cognitive indicators.

Collin Murray-Boyles possessed identical cognitive indicators and defensive production to Green during his two years at South Carolina and seems to be on a similar defensive curve in the NBA. In fact, his early returns already surpass those of a young Draymond according to Dunks & Threes.

While it’s unlikely he can one-to-one replicate Green’s defensive cognition, he might make up for the cognitive gap with far better athleticism at a younger age.

Murray-Boyles’ margin for error when reading and reacting to offensive actions right now, before his athletic peak, is already larger than Green’s ever was. Perhaps this superior athleticism enables Murray-Boyles to approach the peak of one of basketball history’s greatest defenders. We’ll see soon enough.

In general, the Toronto Raptors are the first NBA team to actively identify and select players with outlier cognitive production rooted in outlier offensive rebound, assist, and steal rates. They've executed this strategy consistently across the past five drafts: Scottie Barnes in 2021, Christian Koloko in 2022, Jamal Shead in 2023, Collin Murray-Boyles in 2024, and Allen Graves in 2025. The strategy has since extended to their pro transactions as well, signaled by their trade for Kawhi Leonard and the signing of Kyle Anderson. For this reason, they’re in contention for the league’s best front office in my book.