The Developmental Leap of VEF Riga’s Offensive Dynamo Kyle Allman Jr.
Kyle Allman Jr. has been one of the revelations of the FIBA Champions League 20/21 group stage. After graduating from Cal State Fullerton in 2019, a low-major school with a total of three NCAA Tournament appearences (1978, 2008, 2018), Allman Jr. had an unremarkable stint in Greece with GS Lavrio (11 PTS, 2.2 AST, 48.3% TS in 20 games), before signing with Latvian powerhouse VEF Riga during the summer of 2020. Riga led the Latvian-Estonian Basketball League 19/20 prior to the COVID-induced cancellation of the season. Despite that, their spot in the league earned them a place in this season’s FIBA Champions League. There, the electrifying guard excelled during the six group stage games, averaging 16.8 PTS and 6.3 AST on 56.7% TS and even winning the competition’s player of the month award in December.
The 23-year old stands out as an athletic slasher with a solid pull-up jumper and a multi-faceted playmaking game. He gets downhill with great frequency, taking his matchups off the dribble with a good first step and decently shifty handle.
He impresses with acrobatic finishes and finesse at the rim. Finishing among the trees isn’t an easy task for a 6'3" guard, but he efficiently scored at the basket with his combination of a strong first step, some vertical leap and good touch with either hand, even using crafty inside hand finishes to evade contests. He’s also clearly experienced at reading his matchups, attacking the hips of badly positioned perimeter defenders or initiating contact around the rim to create space for layups or to draw fouls.
Allman Jr. converted a solid 62% (21–34) at the rim during his first six CL games. While the efficiency is notable, there are additional levels to unlock. For the European level, Allman Jr. is excellent at getting defenders leaning and creating driving lanes, but attacking the basket isn’t always a sprint to the rim. Adding more deceptive hesitation moves, head/shoulder fakes or in-and-out dribbles would make him more unpredictable as a driver and therefore even harder to defend. He occasionally utilizes pace or direction changes to freeze defenders on his drives, but he also still lands himself in trouble when he drives full speed in a straight line (i.e. 25% of his turnovers during the CL group stages were offensive fouls).
European defenders struggle with his quickness alone, so every move that might catch them off guard will make him even more dangerous as a slasher. With his recent performances, he’s unlikely to remain at this level for long, so he’ll soon meet defenders who are better equipped to deal with his explosive first step and handling ability. Therefore, unpredictability will be the key to transferring his effectiveness to higher levels of competition.
Another reason why he’s able to consistently get to the basket is his dangerous pull-up jumper. He’s taken roughly 30% of his shots from downtown for a while now and converted them at a good 35.2% clip during his four years at Cal State Fullerton, even though a majority of his three-pointers are shots off the dribble — according to InStat, only 42.1% of his three-pointers over a 93-game sample between 2015 and 2021 were catch-and-shoot opportunities. Because of this ability to knock down challenging long-range bombs at a good percentage, defenders are forced to stick to him tightly on the perimeter.
Allman Jr. gets tremendous elevation on his two-motion shot, which allows him to create aerial separation against defenders playing him tight or against matchups trying to chase him through a ball-screen.
With high-flying jump shooters, there’s always concern that they won’t be able to maintain their jump shooting efficiency during the latter stages of games as their legs tire out, and they have to generate more energy from the lower body to get the same amount of elevation. Contrary to popular belief, this hasn’t been an issue for Russell Westbrook, whose fourth quarter percentages don’t differ from his numbers towards the beginning of the game. Eric Paschall’s numbers are more worrying. He drops from 31.7% from three in first halves to 23.3% during second halves, though the sample size is too small to consider this conclusive evidence.
Similar tendencies can be seen with Allman Jr’s shooting. During the six CL games, he shot 8–15 from three during the first halves and 2–13 during the second halves. Part of this is just shooting variance — he’s going to start convert more shots in second halves as the sample gets bigger — , but it’s also partly an ongoing theme, which has carried over from his college career. According to InStatBasket, he shot 17–64 (26.6%) from three and 16–43 (37.2%) from midrange during the last 10 minutes of games compared to an incredible 54–127 (42.5%) from three and 39–97 (40.2%) in first halves through a sixty-game-sample of his four-year NCAA career. This will be a phenomenon to monitor going forward, though strength and conditioning usually matures into a professional basketball career.
Nevertheless, Kyle Allman Jr. is an outstanding offensive player and his abilities go beyond scoring as well. At Cal State Fullerton, playing shooting guard, he plateaued at 2.34 assists per game over a full season and recorded an AST/TOV ratio below 1 for his whole career. Since then, the guard has improved tremendously and evolved from a scoring guard into a true primary initiator. He processes the game really well, executes pinpoint rockets with either hand, displays good vision on the move and has developed telepathic chemistry with Michale Kyser, Riga’s athletic play-finisher.
Kyle is showing a steep developmental curve as a playmaker, but still has room for further improvement, especially in terms of the placement of his passes, which are occasionally too high/low or wide. So far, he has racked up 24 turnovers in six games — though only roughly 15 of them were actually bad passes — but also dished out a highly impressive 39 assists, third most in the whole competition. His leap as a playmaker can not only be seen in the numbers (0.85 assists per turnover in college to 1.625 assists per turnover in the Champions League) but on film as well, where he sticks out with vision, tremendous creativity and quick processing speed:
The coaches of “Slappin’ Glass” recently attested to Riga running “a lot of great actions.” Their coaching staff has done a fantastic job putting their players in positions to succeed, and Allman Jr. seamlessly fits into their system. He combines the ability to create off the bounce with consistently good execution of the team’s creative playbook, a quality EuroLeague and NBA coaches will surely appreciate.
With his recent performances, Kyle Allman Jr. has no doubt played himself onto the radar of EuroLeague teams, which will surely monitor his performances during the next stage(s) of the FIBA Champions League. If he keeps improving at the rate he has since leaving college, he could even turn himself into a long-term NBA candidate, especially if he impresses during the Summer League opportunities he’s likely going to get in the upcoming years. He played an uneventful 11 minutes for the Raptors during the Las Vegas SL in 2019, but, as discussed, he’s taken a big leap since then, so he’d fare much better if he decided to come back for a second run.
