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How do you evaluate a prospect with elite traits who comes with a clear red flag in part of his game? 

More specifically: how do you project Amen Thompson, one of the top-10 prospects in the 2023 NBA Draft class, who pound-for-pound may be the best athlete in the NBA as a rookie next season -- yet has a shoulder dip in his shot mechanics and a shaky long-term forecast as a shooter?

It's a complicated conundrum that may well be the biggest deciding factor for this month's draft and how the lottery ultimately shakes out. 

Go back a few years and you might remember right-handed Lonzo Ball launched shot attempts from closer to his left shoulder than his right and nearly obstructed his view of the rim by releasing across his head when he came out of UCLA as a freshman -- only for his shot-creation and passing to be too tantalizing to pass on at No. 2 overall for the Lakers in 2017. Devin Vassell in 2020 showed some worrying mechanics in his game -- but he's now a career 36.7% 3-point shooter and a building block for the Spurs after being selected No. 11 overall.

Might Thompson, twin brother of fellow top-10 prospect Ausar, and the older of the two (by a minute), be next in line to have a distracting pre-draft mechanical tweak to his shot only for it to be largely overblown? 

At a recent workout with the Portland Trail Blazers, Thompson's shot -- long considered one of the most worrying parts of his game -- popped on screen with the shoulder dip that wasn't as glaring in his previous mechanics. And with shooting consistency considered the most important growth area for him since joining Overtime Elite two years ago, now more than ever there is uneasiness about it. Was it an in-workout tweak to appease team decision-makers, a one-off funk, something more concerning like a case of the yips? 

"My immediate reaction to the video was how drastic that right shoulder dip was," 247Sports Director of Scouting Adam Finkelstein told CBS Sports. "Now, that is inevitably a thread that is going to be tied to other variables when you start to pull it, and every Twitter scout is going to have their own theory as to the ultimate route of it. But, the bottom line is that there are some alignment and balance issues that are pretty glaring."

There is perhaps no player in the 2023 draft class as devastating a force as Thompson at driving downhill and creating as an attacker and slasher. And players with concerns have over the years developed weak spots in their game -- like Ball's reworked shot release and Kawhi Leonard's now-famous development (which, to be fair, is an outlier). So how much stock do you put in a video snippet? How much stock should you put into it?

Tweak to mechanics

When there are already concerns about a player's shooting mechanics and now an evident tweak to the load and release within those mechanics, Finkelstein said, it's not nothing.

"I think there are some very real concerns about his ability to be any type of spot up shooting threat," he said. "It's really hard to be a secondary playmaker if you have no gravity behind the arc. So either he has to completely rework that shot or he has to prove he's capable of being a primary creator at the NBA level. 

"I do think he has that type of upside with how dynamic his athleticism and burst are, as well as his passing potential. In my opinion though, there is a wider range of potential outcomes for him, in large part because of the shooting, than there are for any of the other prospects at the very top of this draft."

Dave Leitao, one of the coaches with Overtime Elite who worked with Thompson within the program, doesn't sugarcoat the issue, either. While Leitao speaks glowingly of Thompson's  willingness to improve, his work ethic and his tangible and intangible traits as a prospect and player, he knows Amen's shot is the thing that dictates his future success and may unlock his star potential.

"It's the least spectacular part of [his game]," Leitao told Jeff Goodman last month in an interview with The Field of 68. "When he got here, there were a lot of adjustments that needed to be made. Is it where it needs to be? No ... [But] he's come leaps and bounds, mainly because of work. They're there four times a day: before and after skill development, at practice and before practice."

How big of a factor will Thompson's motion be?

Tip-toeing the line for NBA evaluators is key with the elder Thompson twin. Do the mechanics of a shot matter? Yes, absolutely. But should it outweigh the strengths he presents elsewhere? No. Defining how much it matters -- and perhaps most importantly for NBA teams, how confident they are in being able to reconfigure his shot -- is the balancing act that must be struck.

"Some NBA teams are far better than others at developing shooting," according to Finkelstein. "There's also plenty of players that make their mechanics repeatable enough that they can become reliable shooters with room and rhythm, despite unorthodox mechanics. With Amen, the first question is going to be whether or not whoever drafts him is going to completely rework his mechanics or whether they are going to try and tweak what he already does. It's also relevant to note that at OTE he's been in a situation where he's worked only on basketball for the last two years, and presumably has tried to work on it quite a bit during that time. Regardless of the strategy, there are two main priorities. The first is to be able to be a threat to make open catch-and-shoot 3s when he is in rhythm, so that opposing defenses have to at least account for him on the weak side of the floor. The second, as someone who projects as a potentially high-volume creator, is for him to be a pull up threat, so that opposing defenses can't go under ball screens constantly without any repercussions."

Pat Quinn, OTE's shooting coach assigned to work with refining the shot mechanics of the twins, told The Ringer's Mirin Fader, that tweaks weren't just made to shooting mechanics for Amen: "It was the whole [shot.]" They worked on creating different backspin. On what to do with his arms, with his knees. They did passing drills to generate repetitive motions on how the ball should spin to gain familiarity in hopes of it correlating to his shot. 

Now we watch and wait to see if things eventually click and whether or not teams buy his potential long-term (and at what price). Most in the scouting community believe the 20-year-old is still scratching the surface of his potential, and he is comfortably expected to be selected inside the lottery when the draft is held later this month. He's a potential four-dimensional player in a three-dimensional game. Unlocking the shot may be both the biggest concern for a top-10 player in this class but the most exciting unknown, too.

"Basketball is played at three levels: behind the arc, mid-range and at the rim," Leitao said of Thompson in his interview with The Field of 68. "But he has a fourth level. He'll take off inside the foul line before the dotted line, and do these miraculous, athletically gifted -- almost like he takes off as a triple-jumper and can stay in the air more than really anyone I've been around. Then he has these finishes -- left hand, right hand, side step, eurostep – it's like 'Did you see that? Did you see what I just saw?'"