Tristen Newton is loving life. After transferring from East Carolina, he won two NCAA Championships and was named Most Outstanding Player of the 2024 NCAA Tournament. Now, it is time to head to the NBA and he will be an intriguing name as a Day 2 pick for the 2024 NBA Draft.
Tristen Newton 2024 NBA Draft Profile
College Career
Newton played three seasons at ECU and then left for greener pastures after a monster Junior season. He chose UConn where he was thrust into point guard duties and did not play his best. However, that season ended with an NCAA title and then Newton chose to come back for more. In his fifth season, Newton was easily the most improved player in the country and won yet another title.
Newton averaged 15.1 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 6.2 assists per game on 41.5/32.1/80.8 shooting splits. He was consistently relied upon to steady the ship of the most dominant team in the country from start to finish as one of the main returning players from the previous year.
Strengths
Look at the stat line. Newton does a little bit of everything. His ability to get to the rim is probably most impressive though. Newton has good size as a 6’5 point guard and he uses that plus his ability to change paces to create driving lanes and good looks at the rim. There are numerous times per game that Newton makes a layup that seems to have no chance of being successful.
UCONN’s Tristen Newton with a TOUGH layup ? pic.twitter.com/5gHXhej1NK
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) March 25, 2024
Newton is a high-usage player. He played for a team that runs the most beautiful offense in college basketball but still had a usage rating of nearly 25%. With that, he had a 31% assist rate which is phenomenal. Looking through his career, his lowest assist rate was 25.5% so you can see that whenever Newton has the ball, good things happen.
Finally, Newton is a phenomenal rebounder. To average nearly 7 rebounds as a point guard on a team with a 7’2 center and other great rebounders is insane. He pulled down 17% of the defensive rebounds this season. Look for him to come up with multiple triple-doubles in the NBA.
Weaknesses
Newton needs to improve his jump shot. If he doesn’t then he needs to improve his shot selection. This season, Newtown attempted a three on 50% of his shots, however, he only shot 32% from deep. Admittedly, he has a tendency to take difficult step-back threes and loves to do so going left. It will be rare for him to get catch and shoot threes in the Association so he must improve as a shooter. He did shoot 37% on 6 attempts per game the previous season so there is hope.
The other issue for Newton is a high turnover volume. Through his five seasons, he averaged a turnover somewhere between 15-20% of the time which is way too high. That number also did not decrease with experience which is concerning. It will be interesting to see how Newton fares when he is in an NBA offense with free-flowing motion, compared to the strategic movements of the UConn offense.
NBA Player Comparison
Okay, sit down for this one. It will be a lofty projection but it is a fair one. Tristen Newton can easily create shots for himself at all three levels. Although he is more of a combo guard/scorer, he can easily make plays for his teammates. He can defend at a fairly high level. Newton does all of these things with a cool confidence and plays with a controlled pace. That sounds a lot like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
2024 NBA Draft Projection
Mid-second round.
