NBA Two-Way Deal Research

I've done research on every single player that has signed a Two-Way deal since the beginning of the 2017-18 NBA season to see what we can learn from the type of players that have succeeded and failed.

I pride myself on having a great feel for under-the-radar prospects vying for an NBA contract. The players that are getting signed on Two-Way deals. The ones that are on Exhibit 10 deals hoping to get converted to a Two-Way deal down the line. It’s my bread and butter. I spend an unhealthy amount of time evaluating deep-cut talent in college, Overseas or in the G League. I’d much rather exhaust my energy and resources on finding the next Austin Reaves that slips through the cracks then to write another Cooper Flagg scouting report. Although that matters to be clear. It matters *way more* than a prospective Two-Way deal, which is insignificant in the grand scheme of things considering the lower hit rate. Nevertheless, my point still stands.

At the same time, I didn’t know exactly what type of player historically has had success on Two-Way contracts, or on the contrary what archetype has been the *least* successful. I didn’t have a feel for the hit rates of guys on Two-Way deals in general. I don’t think a majority of teams (except the ones that give a s*** about their G League) have a great plan for their Two-Way deals either. I was not able to stumble upon any research data on Two-Way contracts online, so I felt this was the perfect research project to utilize my time on over the past few months.

The Data:

Here is the google sheet link that I’ve been working in for countless hours: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hc_pvimt16ipu85NSLWuGRnn95VPpO0akBjZGdSYMX0/edit?gid=0#gid=0

I pulled advanced stats from each college prospect from College Basketball Reference. I took the pre-draft year statistics from each international prospect from RealGM as well as the career stats for D2 + JUCO prospects from RealGM. 

454 players have been signed to a Two-Way deal prior to the 2024-25 NBA season. I did not include current NBA rookies drafted or undrafted on a Two-Way deal following the 2024 NBA Draft.

To determine what a success story was for a Two-Way deal player, I ranked players based on their total NBA minutes, total NBA games and the combination of their BPM, VORP and Win Shares together from Basketball Reference. I also used total playoff minutes and guaranteed contract details as metrics for this analysis.

Listen, it’s not a perfect way of determining NBA impact or performance. I could have used EPM which is probably the best all-in-one metric out there. Or I could have separated BPM, VORP and WS to their own individual columns. I also considered using Darko Plus Minus (DPM) from Kostya Medvedovsky.

I decided to broaden the archetype groups instead of narrowing it down to the five traditional positions. I placed players into 16 different archetypes based off what they were *prior* to the NBA: 3&D wing, 3&D big, all-around guard, score-first guard, score-first wing, score-first big, 3pt shooting specialist, connector, dribble/pass/shoot wing, ball of clay, forward, versatile big, rim-running big, defensive guard, defensive wing and defensive big.

Questions I wanted to answer:

What are the most successful archetypes on Two-Way deals historically? And what about the least successful?

How many players ended up playing non-garbage time rotation minutes in the NBA Playoffs? (50 total Playoff minutes was my cut off)

How many players were converted to a standard guaranteed contract?

How many players earned a second guaranteed contract?

Can we learn anything from Combine athleticism testing or from physical measurements? Does pre-NBA production matter more than athletic traits?

Which teams have had the most success with their Two-Way deals? 

How many players were signed to a second Two-Way (or two-year Two-Way deal)? And what was the success of those players?

Did older Two-Way deal players have more success than younger prospects on Two-Ways?

Were their subjective commonalities from the pre-NBA statistics that were worth noting?

How many players played over 120 NBA games? “Sticking” in the NBA to me is playing over 5 years, but because of the newness of Two-Way deals in NBA history 120 games was an arbitrary number I used for this project.

Was there a positional and/or age correlation with players that earned second guaranteed contracts? 

Diving into the results:

First off, I narrowed down the list of 454 players to a top 56. I found this group to be the most pertinent data set for what I determined as a successful Two-Way deal development. The criteria for that was the following: players had to have played over 1,000 NBA regular season minutes and had a combined BPM/VORP/WS of 0 or higher. For example, Robert Franks and Tacko Fall had higher than a combined 0 BPM/VORP/WS, but they only played a couple of hundred minutes in the NBA. We can’t learn anything from the players that got cups of coffee in the League.

That means that 12% of every single Two-Way deal signed has been a useful bench player at least in the NBA. Not exactly a promising number to get excited about.

I flagged players as “trending towards playing over 120 NBA games” who were NOT included in this top 56 who seem to be players that will eventually stick in the NBA: GG Jackson, Vince Williams Jr., Craig Porter Jr., Keon Ellis, AJ Green, and Duop Reath.

Possibly the most interesting finding was that youth did not seem to be a positive indicator for success on Two-Way deals:

In statistical research like this, even a small difference like these data points are useful to evaluate. The data from the Two-Way deal research shows a notable difference in the hit rate and miss rate on players from the youngest-to-oldest prospects.

Although 22 year olds have had the most amount of hits from the cream of the crop two-way deal success stories, it is important to contextualize everything. The top of the draft in the first round it is best to gamble on younger prospects. The data backs that up historically. This doesn’t mean you should only swing on true seniors or fifth-year seniors if you’re an NBA team investing in a Two-Way deal.

But with how talented the NBA is nowadays it’s incredibly hard to put the amount of a time into an unpolished, extremely youthful prospect on a Two-Way deal. Knowing what we know now might make me a little more apprehensive to invest on a young project on a Two-Way deal. John Butler Jr., Michael Foster Jr., Trevon Duval, Billy Preston, Trevor Keels, Cassius Stanley and Brian Bowen are prime examples of this.

This research also doesn’t mean NBA teams should only sign dribble/pass/shoot wings that are 22 year olds even if the data is more in favor of that Two-Way deal archetype.

It’s important to grasp that there are simply less 19 year old prospects signed to a Two-Way deal than 22 year old prospects. Younger prospects are maintaining their Draft eligibility for the most part as opposed to a deeper class of seniors or auto-eligible players in every Draft class. There are simply more bites at the apple for these older prospects on Two-Ways.

*This data is also slightly flawed considering players like Harry Giles and Marquese Chriss are included in the 18-to-20 year old section. They qualified for the top 56 of regular season BPM/VORP/WS, but technically they were top 20 first round selections who later were signed on Two-Way deals after their careers didn’t go as planned. They aren’t exactly success stories for the purpose of this research.

And the 19 year old prospects that did hit come with a bit of caveat. Naz Reid was undoubtedly a first round talent who slipped because of intel concerns. He corrected that and matured. Kudos to the Timberwolves for believing in their infrastructure and taking the chance. Lu Dort should have never slipped that far. He was 11th on my board that year. I also am assuming Dort chose to not be drafted in the 2nd round to pick his UDFA destination. Derrick Jones Jr. is a success story for the bet on an unpolished skillset, but Derrick is also an elite athlete with a better feel for the game than most in his archetype. 

Age Group of Players who have been on Multiple Guaranteed Contracts (66 total players):

18-to-20 year olds - 8 players

20-to-21 year olds - 6 players

21-to-22 year olds - 13 players

22-to-23 year olds - 21 players

23-to-24 year olds - 15 players

24+ year olds - 3 players

There was an uptick in younger prospects who garnered multiple guaranteed contracts which is understandable on face value. Younger guys deserve more opportunities as their career extends. There’s more room for growth and chances to reinvent themselves. Older prospects at the time of their Draft don’t have as much of the benefit of the doubt. Still, the 22 year old age group had the most total success stories in another category for how we can define/quantify success.

Sidenote: it’s part of my core as a scout to want to view things from a player archetype perspective, but that type of evaluation process has bit me in the a** a couple of times before. A good player is a good player. It’s useful to retroactively study what has worked historically, but you’ll miss on a possible Two-Way deal candidate if you simply evaluate by archetype.

There are takeaways to be had from this archetype data. First off, it’s telling how the score-first guards and wings have struggled to have success on Two-Way deals. You need to be able to have a game that scales down in the NBA and players like Bryce McGowens, Kobi Simmons, Lindell Wigginton, Johnny Juzang, Malik Newman, Marial Shayok, etc. have had problems sticking in the NBA. You better be amongst the best of the best if you’re only providing scoring in this era. The Jordan Clarkson types are few and far between. It’s a flawed bet on the fringes. Anyways, this type of player typically could be had on the free agency/trade market for cheap.

I also think there’s something we can takeaway from the higher hit rate of dribble/pass/shoot wing player type on Two-Way deals because those guys were OVERQUALIFIED for their NBA role based off of their pre-NBA context as fulcrums of their offense. Duncan Robinson remains a unique outlier development.

Archetypes of Players who have been on Multiple Guaranteed Contracts (66 total):

Dribble/pass/shoot wing = 12 players

Defensive wing and Forward = 10 players each

Versatile big = 8 players

All-around guard, Specialist and Defensive guard = 4 players each

Yet again, there seems to be a positive correlation with dribble/pass/shoot wings and defensive wings based on the history of Two-Way deals.

Versatile bigs featured in the top 3 in regular season advanced stats data and top 5 in the top playoff rotation archetypes as well.

Forwards on the other hand were in the top 3 least successful archetypes, which might be a risky player type for teams to reconsider betting on.

My main objective of this research was to find if there’s any correlation between player archetype or with age for the players that have had success on Two-Way deals. But for NBA teams there are numerous ways to determine the success rate of Two-Way deals. One criteria being guaranteed contracts. And another being NBA playoff success.

22 players have played over 200 NBA playoff minutes.

The Miami Heat signed 5 of those top 22 players to a Two-Way deal. And all 5 were in the top 7 in total playoff minutes.

Golden State Warriors had 4 of the top 22 playoff rotation players.

Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers each had 3 of the top 22.

Quick-hitting facts and/or thoughts based on the Two-Way deal research:

-I pulled athletic testing and physical measurements for Two-Way deal players from the NBA Combine, G League Elite Camp and Portsmouth Invitational. However, I am not confident we can take anything meaningful from this data besides the fact that outlier bad measurements should be concerning. And even then, it’s not the end of the world if you rank close to the bottom percentile in body fat or max vertical jump.

-137 players out of 454 players were converted from a Two-Way deal into a standard contract guaranteed money (15 man roster spot) deal. 

-Only 84 out of 454 players played over 120 NBA games. That amounts to 18% of Two Way deals ever signed. 

-Only 9% of players who were at one point signed to a Two-Way deal have played over 50 NBA playoff minutes.

-216 out of 454 played less than 250 NBA minutes total in their career. Nearly half of all Two-Way deals have played close to zero minutes. I’d be curious to see what the minutes looked like if I excluded garbage time minutes. Or if I didn’t include Covid-year data when a good amount of the League missed a lot of time during the 2020-21 NBA season amidst a global pandemic.

-161 players out of 454 players were signed to a second Two Way deal contract. However, only 22 out of the 161 have played over 1,000 NBA minutes. It’s not likely that a player who signs a second Two-Way deal will be a meaningful NBA player.

-90 out of 454 players have played over 1,500 NBA minutes.

-Only 9 of the top 56 Two-Way players based off of regular season data were 6’3” or under. 11 of those 56 players were Bigs.

-Max Strus is the only player to have recorded over a combined 10 BPM/VORP/Win Shares to have played for more than 3 teams on 3 different Two-Way deals.

-Fun Fact: Moses Brown has the record for the most teams played for on a Two-Way deal. Moses played on a Two-Way deal for five different teams!

My subjective findings from the pre-NBA statistical profiles:

Common success stories on Two-Way deals have been perimeter players that shouldered a heavy burden, usage load offensively for their pre-NBA teams. The kinds of guys who don’t necessarily traditionally fit a box athletically yet their production and feel for the game allow them to meaningfully stick in the NBA. The Alex Caruso, Austin Reaves and Lu Dort’s of the world.

One of my biggest philosophy shifts in recent years has been that I value players that dominated college while doing everything offensively, specifically as an upperclassman. Players don’t typically go from a 3&D wing in college to the same role in the NBA. Chaundee Brown is a great example of this.

Austin Reaves had a 27% assist rate on 27% usage on an NCAA Tournament team that wasn’t particularly good besides him. Reaves has shaped my evaluation a lot since I whiffed on him badly. I pigeonholed him as a specialist. Aesthetic bias played a role here as well. But I also didn’t value the fact that he was OVERQUALIFIED pre-NBA. That’s a common them with the players that have had success on Two-Way deals.

Max Strus checked those overqualified boxes. Strus did everything for DePaul averaging over 20 PPG as a senior, got to the line over 4 times a game, shot over 8 attempts from deep, 2 assists per game, etc.

Naji Marshall carried a heavy burden offensively on the perimeter for Xavier (over 24% assist and usage rates as a junior) yet he had a niche to scale down to as a defense-first role player like Max Strus did as a 3pt shooter to start out his NBA career. Being a college/star overqualified perimeter player but having a niche to scale down to is important here.

Amir Coffey did it all offensively as a jumbo wing for Minnesota on a high major team. Nearly 20% assist rate at his size is not exactly common.

Anthony Lamb never had a usage rate below 30% in college.

Shake Milton carried a large scoring and playmaking load at SMU.

Lamar Stevens was also the fulcrum of his entire college offense. 

Keita Bates-Diop hasn’t had the most illustrious NBA career, but he checked a ton of versatility boxes on both ends of the floor and is another score for the importance of high scores in Usage rate and BPM advanced metrics prior to the NBA.

If you have a usage rate below 20%, you better have an astronomically high assist rate to have real NBA staying power. Call it the Lonzo Ball/Tyrese Haliburton rule. Alex Caruso was a point guard on an NCAA Tournament team. Caruso’s usage rate was pretty low at Texas A&M because Usage rate does not account for his high Assist rate. Caruso had an elite steal rate and superb all-in-one advanced metrics. Caruso also had one of the best defensive win shares in the pre-NBA advanced stats database of Two Way players. Side note: Craig Porter Jr. checked the low usage but high assist rate and high BPM boxes as well.

Out of 37 Two-Way deal players to have played over 100 total NBA playoff minutes, only Jordan Bell, Alfonzo McKinnie, Luke Kornet, Gary Clark, and Duncan Robinson are non-point guards to have had usage rates below 23% in their final pre-NBA season. Usage rates above 23% for wings aren’t the be-all and end-all, but they’re clearly a useful indicator to keep track of.

Caleb Martin averaged 27% usage both years at Nevada with an above-average BPM both years. That should have been telling. He admittedly had a tough diet of shots in college which made the evaluation tricky for me. Ironically enough, I didn’t give him enough credit for being skilled enough and capable of even attempting those kinds of shots.

Usage rate has its flaws as stat. We can’t use it religiously as a strict rule of thumb. It would be better if we had tracking data publicly available that tracked the time spent on the ball for each prospect. Still, I found that Usage rate was a commonly shared data point of the success stories of Two-Way deal players. Jalen McDaniels had a 28% usage rate his final season at San Diego State. The rest of his advanced stats profile isn’t anything to write home about necessarily, but the fact that he took on a major scoring load in college while exhibiting impressive defensive flashes with pro tools was telling how he could stick in the NBA.

It was also important to locate the *special traits* in each player’s statistical profile. This specifically is crucial for mid-major prospects. And the lower-end high majors like Oregon State or Minnesota. Gary Payton II had an absurdly high BPM of 11 as a guard.

John Konchar had one of the top career Win Shares in the Two-Way deal database as well as one of the higher PERs. Konchar essentially checked every box: unique rebounder for a guard, extremely efficient from the field, a threat from 3pt range, racked up steals on defense and was a high feel passer who was the fulcrum of Purdue Fort Wayne’s offense. This was a profile that screamed NBA player.

Paul Reed had an outstanding and funky advanced stats profile; that typically means something positive for the NBA. Reed was able to seamlessly scale down to a backup big man role because of his skill, size and length. He had the size to do that unlike a Matisse Thybulle type of non-shooter.

Juan Toscano-Anderson and Alfonzo McKinnie are rare developments. Both of their college profiles were pretty bad. Tough to really learn anything from them. Both have size on the wing, the requisite defensive prowess and were positive intel guys. Have to be a hard worker with good self-awareness to grind through the G League like they did. Outliers happen in the world we live in. 

Jordan McLaughlin didn’t have the profile of an NBA player that sticks, but I thought it was notable how high of an assist percentage he had, above 5 career BPM and combined with the fact that he made an All-Defense team in the Pac-12 as a guard. I always find it useful to track who wins their Conference Defensive Player of the Year or consistently makes All-Defensive teams in college. We’re not perfect as scouts, especially on the defensive end which is much harder to quantify and evaluate qualitatively. We don’t always know what coaches are asking of each player in their schemes and what their responsibility is on every given coverage. But opposing college coaches know who is a pain in the a** to gameplan against.

Only three players out of the top 56 Two-Way players based on regular season advanced stats data had less than a 3 career BPM in college. Those three players were Drew Eubanks, Torrey Craig (who played on a bad low-major D1 team), and Juan Toscano-Anderson.

We can take a step further even. Having below a 4 career BPM is also a red flag. Only Saben Lee and Yuta Watanabe made the top 56 from that group. And Lee isn’t someone who has played meaningful NBA playoff minutes as someone who has truly stuck in the NBA.

I originally anticipated that below a 5 career BPM would be concerning, but guys like Amir Coffey (4.8), Jericho Sims (4.6), Chimezie Metu (4.5), Daniel House (4.3), Derrick Jones Jr. (4.3), Eric Paschall (4.3), and Garrison Mathews (4.1) have had successful NBA careers after being on a Two-Way deal to start their careers.

In addition to Chaundee Brown, players in that same mold include D’Moi Hodge, Vic Law, Ahmed Hill and Josh Reaves as examples for the type of player that is not skilled enough for the NBA. They were college 3&D role players as upperclassmen. Low-ish usage rate. All red flags.

Keon Ellis is a notable name to discuss here. I wasn’t a huge fan of his coming out of Alabama because of how limited he was on the ball as a senior. But I likely undervalued how legitimately good Keon’s defense was and how impactful he was efficiency wise in college on offense. Keon’s BPM metrics were superb and his 3pt rate was as high as your traditional 3pt shooting specialist.

Vince Williams Jr. fits this bill too. If you aren’t spending a lot of time on the ball self creating offense in college, you better have an ELITE advanced stats profile while being versatile on both ends of the floor. Vince had that profile at VCU. I f***** that evaluation up. He was way too low on my board.

But for every dribble/pass/shoot, overqualified wing you bet on you get someone who flunks like Justin James. Although his low BPM scores should have been the cause for concern. Similar ordeal with Omari Moore (who I was a fan of but misevaluated clearly.)

Wrapping things up:

To be clear, there’s a chance someone reads this piece and is like how the hell did he not think to infer X or Y from all this data. Could totally be that I’ve just looked at the Two-Way deal database wayyyyyyy too often over the past few months. But that’s more than okay with me. My hope is that the feedback from this allows me to learn from others that scour over the data. My plan is to use this data to compare future prospects in the statistical database. I’m excited to use this as a resource a year from today.

With how grueling the second apron will be under this CBA, it’s imperative teams develop talent on the margins and turn them into longer term affordable contracts.

It’s going to be an enormous advantage for teams that nail their Two-Way deal investments. And now each team has more developmental opportunities with the presence of a third Two-Way deal (although that also subsequently diminishes the non-Two Way deal pool of available players.)