Harry Lee Giles III
Position: Power Forward/Center ▪ Shoots: Right
Born: April 22, 1998 (age 22 years), Winston-Salem, NC
Height: 6′10″
Weight: 240 lbs
Wingspan: 7’3
Standing Reach: 9'1.5
Vertical Max: 32.5 Inches
NBA Draft: 2017 20th Overall/1st Round
School: Duke
Current teams: Sacramento Kings (#20 / Power Forward/Center)
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/gilesha01.html
https://www.spotrac.com/nba/sacramento-kings/harry-giles-23615/
2020-21 Salary: $3,976,510 4th Year Rookie Club Option Declined
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-nba-player-projections/harry-giles-iii/
Wins above replacement projection
Category: PROJECT
5-yr market value: $27.2m
Projected RAPTOR Plus/Minus : - 2.2 / WAR: 0.3 / 2020 Market Value: 2.7 million / Total Rating: N/A out of 250 total players
https://247sports.com/college/duke/Article/Harry-Giles-heads-into-free-agency-following-Kings-season-end-150334828/https://okcthunderwire.usatoday.com/2020/10/10/b-r-thunder-should-target-kings-big-harry-giles-iii-in-free-agency/
Harry Giles heads into free agency following Kings' season end
By John Watson Aug 17, 6:00 AM
To say that former Duke power forward Harry Giles' career has been a roller coaster would be a pretty serious understatement.
Once considered the most electric and dominant players in high school basketball, the 6-foot-10 North Carolina native has endured a number of knee injuries that considerably reduced his once potentially unlimited ceiling.
Prior to arriving at Duke for the 2016-17 season, Giles suffered a second ACL injury while competing at Oak Hill Academy. The injury would cost the five star forward his entire senior season and most of the summer before he matriculated to Durham. Once he arrived, Giles underwent a second "clean up" procedure on the injured knee which further delayed his Blue Devil debut.
Eventually, after being sidelined for more than a year, Giles returned to the court in December and would go on to appear in 26 games for Mike Krzyzewski's club, averaging 3.9 points and 3.9 rebounds per game while playing just 11.5 minutes per night.
Despite the tepid production, Giles' potential was enough to get him drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers with the 20th overall pick of the 2017 NBA Draft. His rights were later traded to the Sacramento Kings.
Following the Draft it was announced that Giles would sit out the entire 2017-18 season to focus on more vigorous practice activity and individual workouts tailored to continue developing overall strength and aid ACL injury prevention.
Over the past two seasons the former Blue Devil has begun and continued the climb back from injury and has become a fan favorite for the City of Sacramento. However, prior to this season the Kings - via now fired general manager Vlade Divac - declined to pick up Giles' fourth year team option. Accordingly, Giles enters the offseason as a free agent and appears rather unlikely to play for the franchise again.
In a recent lengthy interview with The Sacramento Bee, Divac says the decision to cut ties with Giles was brought on by the 21 year old showing up to training camp last year out of shape. This followed reports that Giles was the only player on the roster who didn't show up regularly to the team's facilities to workout during the summer.
“My message to him was to be a pro,” Divac said. “You have to be a pro. And he responded very well. When we came back (after league-wide the COVID-19 shutdown) he came in shape. I was very pleased. My idea was to keep him around.”
While Giles acknowledges his mistakes at the time, he made the most of what could be his final appearances for Sacramento in the NBA Bubble over the past few weeks. He hit 9-of-11 shots for 23 points and eight rebounds against the Orlando Magic on August 2nd. He added 12 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and two blocked shots a few days later against the Pelicans.
It remains to be seen whether or not teams will be wiling to bid up Giles this offseason. Because of collective bargaining restrictions, Sacramento can only offer a contract worth just under $4 million with eight percent annual raises. Other teams can, of course, offer more. And while Giles' second contract certainly won't be overly expensive (relative to other NBA deals), a team with a mid-level exception to offer would be a far superior deal for the former Duke star.
When asked about the possibility to leaving the Kings due to Divac's decision, Giles was emotional in speaking with local Sacramento Sports Talk personality Carmichael Dave on Sports 1140 KHTK.
“It’s like, wow, this is where I started it,” Giles said. “This is where I watched myself grow in this city and I grew. I grew every year and it was just amazing how many people I’ve met in this city. Like I told you earlier, it’s like home, so you know how it is being comfortable at home, how it is going home, that’s how I feel."
Over the two seasons he played with the Kings, he averaged 7.0 points, 3.9 rebounds and 1.4 assist in 14.3 minutes per game.
He is more impressive than those stats indicate. The Kings began running some plays for him, and he is a good passer, though maybe not to the level that he has proclaimed.
Bleacher Report thinks he’d fit well with the Thunder. Reporter Zach Buckley wrote:
“He’s still just 22 years old and clearly skilled. He filled out this season’s per-36-minutes stat line with 17.1 points, 10.1 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.0 blocks....”
https://thesmokingcuban.com/2020/07/09/dallas-mavericks-harry-giles-fa/2/
Giles has played 1,399 career minutes. He sat out the entire first season after being drafted in 2017. The 22-year-old has seen limited playing time over the next two years.
This season, Giles averaged 7.0 points and 4.2 rebounds in 15.2 minutes per over 38 games. He shot 56.0 percent from the field and 76.7 percent on his free throw attempts.
There is a lot to like about his offensive game. Giles has made 76.7 percent of his 90 attempts inside the restricted area this season. He cuts to the basket well for easy scores at the rim.
Giles has also connected on 27 of his 58 mid-range jumpers this season. The 22-year-old can shoot the ball....
Giles averages 16.5 points per 36 minutes this season. He is a capable shooter and rebound too. Those traits alone should have teams calling on the young big man.
Kings fans know Giles has a unique ability. Only a few 6’11 players can run the offense out of the high post, and he may be joining that group. The numbers are not flashy. Giles averages just 1.3 assists per game this season, but the tape is there....
He is showing improvements in his playmaking. Giles dropped his turnovers from 1.3 per game as a rookie to 0.9 this season. The growth is a positive sign that it becomes a larger part of his game during his peak.
Giles is a bad defender at this moment. He ranks 470th in ESPN’s defensive real plus-minus. Plenty of young big men have developed into passable defenders, though.
The Kings mostly played him at center this season. Giles’ best position is likely at the four because he struggles to protect the rim. The 22-year-old has the length and athletic ability to improve significantly on the defensive end.
https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/kings/what-harry-giles-complicated-contract-situation-would-mean-kings
https://theplaygrounder.com/2020/10/09/free-agency-preview-harry-giles/
Trouble With Harry
by James Ham
November 8, 2018
General manager Vlade Divac declined Giles’ fourth-year option on Oct. 31, which was a jarring move for almost everyone involved.
Giles struggled to return from a quad contusion at the end of the season and it spilled into the summer. When the team reconvened for the California Classic and Las Vegas Summer League, Giles wasn’t ready to compete.
It was about this time that the Kings hit the free-agent market and landed both Dewayne Dedmon and Richaun Holmes to play the center position. These additions weren’t coincidental.
According to a league source, when Giles showed up to training camp not in the shape that the Kings expected and then struggled with pain in his left knee on the first day of camp, the team was forced to reconsider their future plans.
Giles has worked his way back. He has been practicing and then doing extra work with development coaches Rico Hines and Stacey Augmon, but he’s already missed all of camp and the first eight games of the season. He also gave away any shot of competing for a job under a new coaching staff....
There may come a time when Giles finds his way back on the floor, but Divac wasn’t willing to risk nearly $4 million in salary for next season. If he is going to remain a King, he will have to “earn a contract for next season,” sources told NBC Sports California, as well as Jason Jones of The Athletic.
Unfortunately, the Kings’ decision opens up alternative options for Giles. By declining his fourth-year option, Giles is now an unrestricted free agent following the season and can sign with any team in the league. He can return to Sacramento, but the Kings are limited to a one-year, $4 million offer. Other teams in the league do not have the same restrictions.....
Shooting Touch
This past season, Giles placed in the 99th percentile for midrange shot attempts, according to Cleaning the Glass. Specifically, he canned an above-average 43 percent of his shots from the long midrange. Many will interpret this data and walk away frowning. After all, long-distance twos are the least valuable shot in the game. Yet, the eye test shows that Giles only attempts these when left wide open, and also indicates a possible extension to the three-point line.
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/ewRaFQd3/hg-shooting-touch_dvd.mp4
Giles’ high release makes his jumper hard to contest. When the situation calls for it, he can also step into those shots with rhythm. What’s more, it simply looks like he shoots an easy ball (my favorite term in basketball.) Perhaps it is just the eternal optimist inside of me, but it is not difficult to see the former Duke Blue Devil knocking down triples in the near future.
Distributing
Giles is a far cry away from becoming the Al Horford to Domantas Sabonis’ Nikola Jokic, but he is a capable passer nevertheless. He finished in the 86th percentile for assist percentage in each of his first two seasons, and his assist-to-usage ratio does not lag too far behind.
In particular, Giles excels from the high post. He can complete big-to-big passes and dish to backdoor cutters with either hand. On short rolls, he can spot perimeter shooters and hit them with on-the-money passes. Giles’ patience while creating only accentuates some of his impressive, fastball passes. A smart team is going to use him as a focal point of their second-unit offense.
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/9Cd4EIu1/hg-passing_dvd.mp4
Defense, Wingspan and Active Hands
Oh, the things I’d do for a 7-foot-3 wingspan. Giles has one and knows how to use it. In fact, it often makes up for his lack of quick-twitch athleticism. When he defends pick-and-rolls, he seems to bait guards into trying to squeeze through dangerous passes. When they do, Giles often lets loose that wingspan and snatches a steal.
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/1UDUk0BP/hg-wingspans-and-hands_dvd.mp4
He loves to muck things up as a pick-and-roll defender. It shows in his steal percentages, which both ranked in the top quarter for his position over the last two seasons, according to Cleaning the Glass. Although he’s susceptible to getting beat over the top on rolls, Giles’ active hands and long arms force in plenty of turnovers. He has the footspeed to hang with quicker players to boot.
Defensive Agility
...Giles’ injuries seem to have sapped his leaping ability, but not his foot-speed. There are loads of examples of Giles sliding his feet or turning his hips to make a defensive play. Given the unreliability of his leaping, beating defenders to the spot is paramount to Giles defensive success.
Watch him fluidly turn his hips to recover on a feed to Steven Adams. He did more of the same versus the speedy Chris Chiozza (another bargain-bin free agent whose preview you can read here.) We can be sure that whichever coach and general manager duo signs Giles will have a plan to mitigate injury risks. Injecting him into the game when the defensive script calls for an agile, long-armed big could be a solid plan going forward.
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/6d6z4gPi/final_5f7c57b2d70dd7008d9a0bce_5716-1_dvd.mp4
Explosiveness
Of course, the aforementioned injury risk is embedded into Giles next signing. Few have questioned his skill set, yet many have questioned his explosiveness. There are some moments when Giles reminds us why he was once projected as a high-end lottery pick. Unfortunately, those moments are overshadowed by the times he has trouble getting lift off the ground.
The first handful of clips in the below video show Giles soaring throughout the paint. Don’t expect him to do this routinely wherever he lands next. A handful of previous knee injuries has permanently limited his once top-tier athleticism, as you can see in the last two plays of this video.
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/Lm3d1Qj1/hg-explosive_dvd.mp4
Giles is at his best physically when he has the space and time to leap off of two feet. This makes sense when keeping in mind the injuries to his knee ligaments; the power of two legs is better than the power of one. When he lacks the time to load up, however, Giles can fall short of reaching the heights necessary to jam a dunk home or collect boards.
Fit & Potential Contract
The Kings either believe Giles is not worth bringing back, or that there isn’t a team that will offer him more than $3.9 million. But an organization... could offer Giles around $4 million of their MLE and probably have money left to sign another rotation player. Struggling teams who can allot playing time to develop Giles should take a risk on him.
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Injury Profile
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2803293-harry-giles-would-like-to-re-introduce-himself
Harry Giles Would Like to Re-Introduce Himself
He was once described as "the future of basketball," but three knee surgeries and five years later, the Kings' second-year big man is just trying to prove he has a future in basketball.
David Gardner
October 30, 2018
Harry Giles was the 20th pick in the 2017 NBA draft, but this will be his rookie campaign with the Kings because he is just now healthy from the lingering effects of three knee injuries he suffered in high school and college. Most teams draft players with a vision of who they will become. The hope with Giles is that he'll be the player he once was—the one who was the clear No. 1 prospect in a class that included Jayson Tatum, Markelle Fultz and Josh Jackson. For his part, Giles is content just to be on the court. His last full season was his junior year of high school, and he's sick of being on the sidelines.
"Harry has seen the highest of the high," says Kenneth Bates, who trained Giles in high school. "Everyone has told him he's the best player in the world. He's also felt the lowest of the low. He's heard people tell him his career is done and he'll never be himself again. He experienced all that by 20. He's always had the talent, and now he's got the maturity, too. What he's going to do next will amaze you."...
Harry Giles is shooting hoops in the courtyard of his California home. He lives in a ranch-style house in a gated suburb and has plenty of space in the driveway for a hoop, but he prefers the privacy of playing back by his pool—even if that means his sliding glass doors take regular beatings from bouncing basketballs. He swishes a few short jumpers then pauses to point to a tattoo he got at the beginning of the year. It's a lion's head and a cursive Bible verse, 1 Peter 2:15-16: "For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God's slaves." It's on his right shin—just beneath the scar from his second knee surgery.
Giles' first knee injury happened in the summer before his sophomore year. As a freshman, he'd paired with Theo Pinson at Wesleyan Christian Academy in North Carolina to produce a state championship. He'd also started receiving interest from powerhouse programs like Duke. At the time, Jeff Capel III was the Blue Devils' top recruiter. As a young man, Capel had watched his father, Jeff Capel Jr., recruit high schoolers to the colleges where he coached. One of the younger Capel's favorite memories was hearing his dad gush about a player he'd seen at Mauldin High School in South Carolina. "I just saw the future of basketball," Capel Jr. told his son, "and his name is Kevin Garnett."
On the car ride home from seeing Giles play for the first time, Capel III called his father. "I just saw the future of basketball," he said, "and his name is Harry Giles." Then he called Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and told him it was time to start recruiting. A few months later into his freshman year, Giles visited campus for a game against Miami and came home with a scholarship offer.
"There are a few players I never saw live in high school," says Capel, who is now the head coach at Pitt. "I never recruited LeBron James or Kevin Durant. But without question, the best high school player I've ever seen in person was Harry Giles."
In June 2013, while playing for USA Basketball's U16 team in Uruguay, Giles planted on a fast break, got pushed by an Argentinian opponent and felt the dreaded pop. He had torn his left ACL, MCL and meniscus. He was feeling sorry for himself when he returned home to North Carolina, but a few days later, he received word that a friend of his, Celeste Burgess, had died in a car accident in Alabama. The emotional pain compounded his physical pain, but the news also put what he was experiencing into perspective.
"What I was going through was bad," Giles says now, "but it wasn't the worst thing in the world. She was a basketball player too, and I knew I had to come back and play for her."
He didn't play at all his sophomore year in high school. Instead, he spent his mornings waking up at 5 a.m. and working in the pool with his trainer, Kenneth Bates. He spent his afternoons rebuilding the strength in his lower body and doing hot yoga with his high school coach, Keith Gatlin. By his junior year, he was back on the court with a brace. And that summer, the brace went off, and so did Giles. A power forward with a preternatural knack for rebounding, a point guard's ability to pass and a remarkable explosiveness, Giles skyrocketed back up to No. 1 in the recruiting rankings.
For his senior season, he transferred to a powerhouse prep school, Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. Before the first game of the year, he got some troubling news in a text message: Kedrick Flomo, a friend from home who was playing guard at Murray State, had been rushed into emergency heart surgery that afternoon. In the locker room before the game, Giles connected with Flomo on FaceTime and told him to stay strong.
Then, two minutes into the game, it happened again: Plant, push, pop. Friends and family tried to tell Giles it might not be that bad, but he knew he had torn his ACL—only this time, it was his right knee. He knew some of what would come next—surgery and rehab—but he didn't anticipate how his reputation would change. He would no longer be the star prospect who suffered an unpredictable injury. Instead, he'd be labeled the injury-prone prospect who may never reach his potential.
The next week, he committed to Duke live on ESPN. It was the decision he'd dreamed of making, but it was dulled by the knowledge that he wouldn't play again until he put on that Blue Devils uniform. Out of the spotlight, he noticed how certain people in his circle didn't stick around. Maybe it was because they had been pulling for him to go to a different school, or maybe it was because they didn't think he'd ever be back to the level he once reached. But either way, it left him with a little less trust but a lot more motivation.
"When you ain't playing, everything changes," he says. "A lot of people turn their back on you. Even people who said they believed in you no matter what. But when you're not on the scene, you stop being so cool to be around. Even girls ain't popping on your phone in the same way. That's just the truth. It keeps me humble to this day knowing how quickly that fame can fade."
Again, the perspective from a close friend helped to keep him grounded. "On the day that my career stopped forever, Harry's only paused," Flomo says. "We talked about that a lot. And when I watch him on the court now, I feel like I'm out there. I feel like I'm playing through him."
But Giles didn't play much at Duke. In a preseason practice, while his teammates were playing five-on-five, Giles was working on agility drills on the sideline. He felt a flare-up of pain, and Duke's doctors determined later that day that he'd need an arthroscopic knee surgery to clean up his left knee. After missing the first 11 games, he became a regular in Duke's rotation—but never a dominant force. He averaged just 3.9 points and 3.8 rebounds in 11.5 minutes per game.
"I tried to turn on the TV and watch him a few times, but I couldn't" says Gatlin, who's now an assistant at High Point University. "I looked at that player on the screen, and I could tell it wasn't Harry Giles."
Giles has no regrets about committing to Duke, but he says he should have taken a redshirt. Watching himself fall in NBA draft boards without being able to perform like he knew he could was torture.
"I should have sat out that year of Duke," he says. "I wasn't ready to play. I thought I was, but I wasn't. I wasn't rushing, but I was still rushing, you know? I took my time, but I still wasn't ready. ... It's nothing like the way I feel now. Now, I'm more than ready."
Lined up on the shelves of Harry Giles' living room are awards and honors he's received throughout his basketball career. There are some silly ones, like custom peanut butter and jelly jars Smuckers sent him. And there are some serious ones like Duke's Glenn E. "Ted" Mann Award, given annually to a backup who contributes most to team morale. But when he looks up at his collection, he can't help but fill the spaces in his mind with the moments he's missed, like playing in the McDonald's All-American Game or being selected in the NBA draft lottery. So he feels compelled to stack these shelves with heftier hardware.
"Rookie of the Year is my goal," he says. "I'm not going to let it control me, but if I play my game, I believe it'll come on its own."
Now, more than a year after being drafted, he's finally getting the chance. The Kings suggested before they drafted him that Giles sit out a season to work on getting completely clear of his past injuries. When the coaching staff reminded him of that plan, he remembered how rushing at Duke hurt him, and he resolved to be patient this time. He used the year to transition into the lifestyle of a professional player: traveling with the team, learning the playbook and taking his training and rehab more seriously than ever. He was a constant in the cold tub and on the training table, and by midseason, there were whispers that he was dominating team practices.
"I was down for a while because I wasn't playing all the time or wasn't playing as well as I wanted," he says. "But I had to remember what it took to get as good as I was. It didn't happen overnight. It took me so much work—so many drills, so many practices, so many games. Basketball was my life for years and years, and I had expected all that to come back right away. I had to give it time. Now I feel like I'm killin' it again."
While the past few years have been a struggle, Giles knows he has little to complain about—and he reminds himself of that regularly. In his driveway sit three vehicles, one a luxury sports car. He's been dating a woman he's known since high school for the past two years, and his mother lives in his house to help acclimate him to the responsibilities of adulthood.
Still, Giles' fall off the basketball radar rankles him. As we walked out of his house, he told me about attending the Drew League in Los Angeles this summer with Jayson Tatum and Kings rookie Marvin Bagley III. He noticed how the announcer in the gym shouted out Tatum and Bagley as Duke's alumni in the building—but left him out. It was another reminder of the fleeting nature of fame.
"Being famous is weird to start with, and it gets weirder as time goes on," he says. "Look at Kanye [West]. He's just saying crazy **** right now. At a certain point, you can't force it. You have to say to yourself, 'If I gotta do this to stay relevant, I might not want to be relevant anymore.'"
This preseason, Giles appeared as normal as a young, promising player could be. He averaged 13.3 points and 5.7 rebounds in 22.1 minutes per game. Early in the regular season, his numbers haven’t popped (3.7 points, 2.8 rebounds per outing), but he’s getting closer to game speed with each outing. Statistics aside, any time he feels his feet on the court, he knows it's a positive step.
After all he's endured, he knows there are no guarantees, and he plays now with the kind of freedom he hasn't had since he was a freshman in high school. Back then, people didn't know who Harry Giles was, and he showed them. If they've forgotten, he doesn't mind offering a reminder.
In early October, right before the preseason began, Kings point guard De'Aaron Fox found an old Ballislife mixtape of Giles on Twitter and tagged his teammate. Giles watched the entire three-minute video, entitled "16 Y/O Harry Giles is the Best NBA Prospect in High School Basketball," in the driveway of his house with his car idling. And all he can remember thinking afterward was, That mother****er was good.
As he tells the story, he's climbing back into his car to return me to my hotel. I ask if he ever thinks he'll be the player he could have been if he hadn't hurt his knees. He pauses for a few seconds.
"Man…that's tough," he says. "The **** I was doing back then was wild. I can see why people were gassing me. But I'm stronger now, and I'm smarter now. I sometimes wish I had had more of that back then. I don't think I could have prevented my injuries, but I might have been more aware. I might have been able to change something—anything.
"To be honest, I don't know if I'll ever be that player I was before. I'll be different. But I won't stop working until I'm better than I ever was going to be."
****
Analysis: He's young and will come relatively cheap. He does come with some injury risk. My thought process for Giles is not to try to stick him as a traditional big. He can't space the floor, he's not a great rim protector and he lacks the lift and agility to ever be a great anchor/quarterback for a defense. He can pass extremely well for a big man and has tremendous court vision. He can hit mid range shots fairly consistently. Pair him with a rim protector and let Giles run the offense. He'd do a better job than Payton, Frank N and DSJr. A little unorthodox but his tremendous length will help him some on defense. It's not perfect, he will need to be used for specific matchups, but I see some sneaky value here on a flier type contract.
Thoughts?
10/13/2020 3:38 AM