Player Information:
- Full Name: Jean Claudio Montero Berroa
- Date of Birth: July 3, 2003 (Age 16)
- Height: 6’2" (188cm)
- Position: Point Guard
- Weight: 172 pounds (78kg)
- Wingspan: Below 6’5" (apparently)
- Current Team: CB Gran Canaria Junior Team (Spain)
- Nationality: Dominican Republic
- Draft Eligible: 2022
Physical Tools: Jean Montero doesn’t stand out physically. He isn’t tall and rail thin. According to Mike Schmitz, his wingspan is also shorter than 6’5", which surprised me when I first read it since his quickness allows him to have an impact in places (passing lanes for example) that somebody with his wingspan usually wouldn’t get to. He is very explosive and shifty, which allows him to blow by defenders as well as outrun everyone on the fastbreak. It’s important that he doesn’t lose anything of his explosiveness and quickness when he inevitably puts on more muscle. Additionally, he decelerates quickly, a quality that he uses to pull up for jump shots in the midrange. Furthermore, he’s a good vertical leaper with impressive hangtime and mid-air body control. He’s a right-handed shooter, but an ambidextrous dribbler and finisher.
Inside Scoring: Due to his explosiveness and advanced dribble moves, Montero gets to the rim rather easily. There, he is creative and able to finish with both hands effectively, although he seems to prefer going to his right hand in such situations. Due to his size and slight frame, he is not unaffected by contact, but he doesn’t shy away from it either and generally does a decent job of absorbing it, and drawing a lot of fouls in the process. He possesses great body control and touch, which increases his effectiveness as well. When the rim is sealed off, he has the touch to counter with a floater that could turn into a real weapon as he polishes his game.
Shooting: His touch in the paint also translates to his jump shot. His shot mechanics look normal to my untrained eye, he gets good rotation on the jump shot and generally has promising shooting percentages. The main appeal of his jump shot is its versatility. He is not only comfortable in catch-and-shoot situations, he can also pull-up from three and from midrange going left as well as going right. Additionally, he has shown some flashes of an effective step-back jump shot. He even manages to draw quite a few three-point fouls because defenses (have to) guard him really tightly on the perimeter.
Shot Selection: Montero’s shot selection is decent, albeit not perfect. He generally sticks to taking the shots he can make, but in two situations he should consider possibly better alternatives more frequently. The first situation is early in the shot clock where he occasionally takes immediate pull-up three-pointers instead of looking for an easier shot. The second situation occurs when Montero drives by his defender. Once he enters the paint, he settles for floaters quite a bit. While he’s good enough at floaters that it’s not a bad shot, you would like him to replace some of the floaters with kick-out-passes to the corner or dump-off-passes to the dunker spot.
Handle: His handle is fantastic. He’s comfortable dribbling with both hands and the dribble is fluid and tight with both hands as well. He is outstanding at creating separation and utilizes almost every trick in the book to shake his defenders. He uses quick crossovers with both hands, in-and-out and between-the-legs dribbles as well as decoy steps, hesitations, ball fakes and head fakes to make staying in front of him in a 1v1 situation an absolute nightmare. He also possesses the wrist flexibility to string multiple moves together with incredible fluidity (e.g. in-and-out into a right-to-left crossover into a pull-up three-pointer going left). When he gets his defender off balance, which happens a lot, his ability to score on all three levels comes in handy. He can pull up from three, drive by his man and pull up from midrange when the rim is well protected, or go directly to rim.
Passing/Creation: Passing is definitely the most frustrating part of his game. He always plays with his head up, and I’m relatively convinced that he has good vision and sees a lot of passes, but he doesn’t seem to trust himself to execute them. He mostly plays two handed passes, like hit-aheads on the fastbreak. Those passes tend to lack velocity, possibly indicating a lack of wrist/forearm strength, which probably shouldn’t be surprising considering his age. The strength issue is magnified in the pick-and-roll. He receives a lot of attention because of his quickness and ability to make the right decision on the move, but he can only play one pass to the roll-man, and that is the pass over the top of both defenders, which isn’t always available and often times gives the defense the ability to react and recover. He frequently creates passing windows for bounce passes to the roll-man, but during the eight games I watched, I didn’t see him attempt that pass once. I can’t even say that he is incapable of playing that pass, he just doesn’t try it, even though his head movements indicate that he knows it is there. In general, he doesn’t seem comfortable playing one-handed passes. There were some flashes of right-to-left passing with one hand, but not much from the left to the right. If I am correct and this is just a strength issue, his ability to take advantage of the windows he creates with his scoring gravity should improve a lot in the years leading up to the draft. There is definitely signs of his passing ability, like two-handed skip passes or hitting a cutter/big in the dunker spot, but those “only” come in flashes and need to (and presumably will) be polished further.
Rebounding: Usually, rebounding would barely be worth discussing with players of his size and build, but he’s actually a really engaged rebounder. He’s willing to boxout bigs and really skilled at using his length to tip rebounds, which he wouldn’t be able to fully grab, to his teammates. He also has a really good instincts in general for where the ball is going to go — that applies to rebounding as well as playing the passing lanes. In the LEB Plata, the Spanish third tier, he’s averaging 0.82 offensive rebounds per game and over three rebounds per game, and for the youth national teams of the Dominican Republic, he’s averaging 6.1 rebounds per game (2.8 offensive!) over an 18-game span against competition of his age. He might not become a huge value-add in that department in the pros, but it’s certainly better than not contributing at all.
Perimeter Defense: As an on-ball-defender, he slides his feet reasonably well and is therefore mostly able to stay in front of his man when he tries (the effort comes and goes with him). He can, however, get bumped off his spots by stronger opponents due to his slight frame. One of his major weaknesses is getting through screens. He doesn’t have the awareness to see them coming and doesn’t feel for them either (there might also be some communication issues with his teammates there). He gets completely stuck on most screens, which puts his team at a major disadvantage every time. He actually manages to draw occasional offensive fouls by blindly running into screens and bouncing off so hard that it looks the offensive player pushed him.
Off the ball, he is very active in the passing lanes. He gets a lot of steals (83 steals in the 33 games that are in RealGM´s database) by being alert and using his quickness and length to intercept passes. Additionally, he likes to dig at the ball as an off-ball defender when he is in the area, and he usually does this without giving his own man an advantage (maybe better players could take advantage of this tendency a bit more). One quibble with his off-ball defense is that he ball-watches too much, especially when the ball is on the other side of the court. In general, he will have to develop his peripheral vision to be able to observe the ball as well as other actions (incoming screens, his own man etc.) at the same time. When his matchup does receive a pass after Montero has given him too much space, Montero has the ability to make effective closeouts and contests due to his explosiveness that allows him to recover in some situations.
Rim Protection: Montero is largely ineffective as a rim protector due to size and strength, but he does manage to get the occasional block by using his length and vertical ability well. Those blocks and his good instincts provide hope that he could at least impact some plays as a help defender in the future.
