CALEB HOMESLEY: a diamond in Hamburg

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Starting from today, Eurodevotion is launching a new format focusing on those Euroleague-level players not currently playing in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague, with a weekly appointment that will let you discover future potential high-caliber players at the next level.

There are many interesting profiles outside Euroleague, mainly in the 7Days EuroCup and in the FIBA Basketball Champions League, and we gonna start by probably the most intruiguing one in Europe right now, the MVP of the last round of Eurocup: Caleb Homesley, of the Hamburg Towers.

HOMESLEY

BACKGROUND

Caleb Homesley is a 25-year old (born November 27, 1996) american shooting guard in his rookie year at a European level. He started his career at Porter Ridge High School in Indian Trail (his hometown), North Carolina, where he registered 20 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists in his junior year (17 y.o.), and later committed to Liberty University, settled in Lynchburg, Virginia.

There, Homesley spent five years (from 2015-2016 season to 2019-2020), entering as an unranked prospect and improving his numbers season by season, passing from 7.3 (7.8-35.7-66.7%) to 15.3 points (47.4-36.9-59.8%), and having “one of those nights” on March 23, 2019 during the NCAA Tournament, when he led the Flames to a big upset over Mississippi State University by delivering a 30-point game.

Homesley concluded his collegial career by being nominated as Atlantic Sun Player of the Year, but still went undrafted in the 2020 NBA Draft, being forced to sign an Exhibit-10 contract with the Washington Wizards, which waived him after the training camp.

The following step was a contract in the G-League with the Erie BayHawks, where he was able to put up quite good numbers in a 15-game span, scoring 9.3 points, grabbing 5.7 rebounds and dishing 2.3 assists, and, more importantly, he managed to sign a multi-year contract with the Wizards, but got waived few months later without appearing in a single game.

On September 1, 2021, he finally signed a 1-year deal with the Hamburg Towers, playing his first career season overseas.

CALEB HOMESLEY: PROS

SIZE

When we look at Homesley, the first thing coming to mind is his size: Homesley is infact a 6’6 (198cm) big shooting guard with a 7’1 (216cm) wingspan.

This physical structure allows him to be threatening either on the defensive end, where he is able to intercept passages and contest shots with his long arms, even in the low post after having switched on bigger bodies, or on the offensive end, where his talent, together with his lenght, allow him to both attack the rim against rival centers and score on his direct opponent on every miss-match.

It’s clear that, thanks to his size, Homesley is an excellent advantage-creator cause, especially at a EuroCup level, he can look with no difficulties for the best possible solution, by deciding wheter to force the switch and attack front to the rim or to bring his defender, usually smaller, close to the basket, where he can then easily score or let the defense collapse in the paint and pass the ball outside on the perimeter where Hamburg is one of the best three-point shooting team in the competition.

I believe that Homesley’s size is not just perfectly suited for the Euroleague, but maybe even something more, as there are very few backcourt players in the competiton with such a size, and I would not be surprised to see him playing back in the US within 1-2 years, this time in the NBA.

3-POINT SHOOTING

We said it, Hamburg Towers are one of the best team in the 7Days EuroCup in terms of 3-point shooting, averaging 31.1 3-point attempts per game (first in the competition) and a more than discrete 37.3% from behind the arch (eight in EuroCup), and Caleb Homesley is not an exception.

Homesley is shooting 43.4% from downtown in this european campaign, with 9.22 attempts per night, by far the greatest number in his team, and it is therefore not difficult to guess the impact of this component on his game.

The guy from Indian Trail has always been a 3-point scorer, but sometimes lacked consistency in this aspect, and the numbers are wittnessing this, but this season he is bringing his game on a way different level, keeping the same, extremely smooth and compact shooting form, and adding accuracy from the long range.

In this video, we can see two very important aspects for a great shooter: first of all Homesley is either capable of scoring from catch-and-shoot or creating his own shot by getting rythm from his dribble and from his terrific side-step and step-back; secondly, it is also important to notice how quick his shooting release is, thanks to smothness and ability to make the same movement in every sistuation, even when the shot clock is running down and there are only few seconds remaining, situation in which Homesley increases dramatically his percentages.

CALEB HOMESLEY: WHERE TO IMPROVE

DEFENSE

As we can see from the clip above, Homesley has quite a good athleticism.

Despite this and a physical structure that, as said at the beginning, allows him to be threatening defender, Homesley still lacks of defensive skills, as his defense is mainly based on his size advantage rather than on the ability ro read at a high level different situations when facing them, and tends to use his athleticism mostly on the offensive end. This leads to scenarios where Homesley committs unnecessary fouls or looses his man by turning his head to the ball, not looking at what happens instead on the floor.

Actually, his foul average is of just 1.8, much less than the fouls he receives (4.0 per game) but still, there are games in which the opponents are not scared of attacking him one-on-one (while instead they should be due to his size), since they know his difensive committment still has a big room for improvement. Done so, Homesley is gonna be one of the most complete players in the European landscape if compared to the others of his age.

CONSISTENCY

The other aspect that Homesley has to improve is his consistency.

Infact, even though the points scored are always good, with a minimum of 10 in his EuroCup campaign, Homesley has nights where scoring is the only thing he does, without being able to help his team in other ways, and this results in overall performances that are not always as good as it could have been thought by looking at his points.

What has been just said can be seen by looking at his PIR, a much broader index, which makes evident how other aspects of his game are still inconsistent, like rebounds (11 vs Ankara, 0 vs Partizan), turnovers (usually between 2 and 4) and 3-point percentages.

If Homesley wants to make the next big step, he absolutely has to understad how make his game more complete, espcially in those situations where his 3-point shooting is not working as good as usual, otherwise he will still have games like the one at Pionir where he scored 14 points (2/11 from 3) but had a very limited impact on the match, putting numbers only when Hamburg was down 20 or more.

COMPARISON: JAMES HARDEN

Ok, I know we are going way too far here, but still I think there are some similarities in their game, clearly at a complete different level.

By the way, no, the similarity is not just that they are both left-handed.

First of all, look at Homesley’s ability to attack one-on-one: he is able to consistently beat his direct opponent and thus beat the first defensive line (the perimetral one), causing enormous trubles to the rival defense, that has to decide wheter to collapse and stop the ball, betting on the shooting percentages of Hamburg (not a great idea as we saw), or to stay with the shooters, leaving instead big room for Homesley to attack the rim, where he has a great touch.

Second step: the defense could decide to double him outside the three-point line to force him passing the ball, but Homesley is an underrated passer and always keeps his head up, so that he can read the double coming and let the ball go where the advantage is now present, as you now have a 4-vs-3 in favour of Hamburg. In particular, as we can see from the video, he is very good at making pocket passes to the rolling center.

Another option, especially when the clock is running down, is to challenge him by closing the paint (if he passes the ball, the shooter is gonna have too little time to shoot) and putting pressure on the ball (if he beats the defender, there will still be no space to attack the rim), but in this case Homesley is simply too good, as he can both rely on his extremely efficient step-back and (it is spreading more and more) side-step, creating space between him and his defender and letting the ball fly, usually not being contested because of his lenght.

Now, said so, I think this dynamic is very similar to the one many NBA teams face when they have to guard James Harden. They have infact to decide whether to double him and let him pass the ball (but with the defense already rotating, so a big advantage for the attack) or to challenge him by saying “ok we know you extremely good at scoring, but we gonna risk putting the best defender on you and limiting all the other player: if you want to win, you just have to score a lot”.

Clearly it is not that simple, as many other factors can influence your choice (for example, Harden has Durant and Irving, Homesley doesn’t), but the starting point is the same: you are facing a player that is extremely good one-on-one and at creating advantages for his team, so you have to make a (risky) choice, CLEARLY AT A DIFFERENT LEVEL.

(all the clips were taken from Manolo 77, on YouTube)

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