With the 2023 NBA Draft on the calendar for this week, everyone wants to talk about prospects. And while I hardly consider myself an expert in the practice of pre-NBA player evaluation, I have picked up on one trend. In general, to succeed at the NBA level, a player needs to either be elite in one specific skill (i.e., shooting) or they need to be a jack of all trades.

The latter category is where soon-to-be NBA draftee Ricky Council IV falls. “I would say he’s a swiss army knife. Tell him what to do, and he can do it,” Council IV’s older brother, Ricky Council II, told Forbes during an exclusive interview.

“I’m excited to go into the NBA and be that guy who does all the little things,” Council IV himself told Forbes. “Do all the things that make your coaches love you. That makes your teammates love you.”

On the surface, it can be easy to see Council IV as just another tantalizing vertical athlete who may amount to a textbook “3-and-D” player if he gets his jumper right (more on this in a bit). And once upon a time, that developmental track would be perfect. But in today’s rapidly-evolving game, being a “3-and-D” player just doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to have more to your game, and Council IV has that.

I mean, how else does a player ascend from 88th-ranked prospect in his high school class, to a Mid-Major conference sixth man, to the leading scorer at a Power Five school, to a player ranked in the top 40 on NBA draft boards?

After two fruitful seasons at Wichita State (one in which he earned American Athletic Conference Sixth Man of the Year honors), Council IV decided it was time to move on. He felt like he was being typecasted into this raw off-ball athlete we alluded to earlier. He felt like his greatest skill – his playmaking – wasn’t being properly spotlighted.

“What people don’t understand is that depending on who your coaches/teammates are, certain parts of people’s games get diluted,” Council II explained. “At Wichita State, they had a bunch of smaller guards, and having them off-ball on the wings would have been disadvantageous to the team. So, there wasn’t really an opportunity for Council IV to be the on-ball playmaker he was capable of being. When he got to Arkansas, there was more opportunity for him to do that.”

Council II knows better than anyone what his younger brother is capable of. And being that he also transferred once (from Providence to the University of Maryland Baltimore County) during his collegiate basketball career, he wanted to make sure he was right alongside his brother as he was navigating through the portal.

“When we had a conversation when he was at Wichita State about transferring, the main thing we wanted to do was find a program that could help him get to that next level,” Council II told Forbes during a Zoom interview. “We wanted to find him a school where he could showcase his playmaking ability. So, one thing I did when I was on the phone with college coaches is I asked, ‘Are you guys going to showcase his playmaking ability?’”

He continued, “I did that because that’s a huge part of his game that we felt wasn’t being spotlighted enough. The freedom in how he plays. The looseness in how he plays. That comes from having the opportunity to play make, and find his guys for open looks. Wichita State wasn’t really providing that type of opportunity for him.”

Ultimately, Council IV and his family felt that the Arkansas Razorbacks – led by head coach Eric Musselman – would be the perfect fit. However, although they courted him heavily, even they were surprised by just how advanced his handle and playmaking acumen were.

“Even after I got to Arkansas, the coaches didn’t really know how good my handle was until they saw it firsthand. The coaches literally told me that,” Council IV recalled. “I remember it was the game that Anthony Black went down against Fordham. Coach [Musselman] put me out there at point [guard], not really knowing whether or not it would work. And I went out there and had 15 points and seven assists. That was a great moment for me because I got to prove what I could do all along.”

His decision to transfer turned out to be a good one. Despite Arkansas housing three other NBA-caliber prospects (Black, Nick Smith, and Jordan Walsh), it was Council IV who emerged as the team’s leading scorer (averaging 16.1 PPG). But even more telling was how he performed against big-time competition. On the season, he averaged 24 PPG in three games against Big 12 teams (the conference that touted four of the top-15 teams in the nation).

His penchant for showing out against stronger opponents is an indicator of the fearlessness with which he plays the game of basketball. This brings us to the next intriguing facet of his game: his ability to attack the rim.

“I just knew at the beginning of the year that I was at that level of athleticism and strength where I could compete with anyone in the country,” Council IV said. “And that’s what I did. I was getting into the lane, attacking, and not even really feeling the contact at times. I was getting vertical and challenging bigs at the rim.”

One way to measure how relentlessly a player is attacking the paint is to look at their free throw numbers, and Council IV’s are nothing to scoff at. According to KenPom’s database, Council IV finished in the 80th percentile in the conference in free throw rate. He’s got a knack for seeking out physicality, which is something that was fostered during his adolescence.

“Ever since we were ten, my dad would have us play pickup basketball against grown-ups,” his older brother recalled. “So, being able to get in the lane, draw fouls, and finish through contact, that all came from [Council IV] being ten years old trying to battle with grown-ups.”

“There were times when I was 12, 13, or 14, and I was playing in gyms against guys who played professionally overseas or were top high school players, and I was the leading scorer in those games,” Council IV told Forbes. “That really helped my finishing because I was shorter and couldn’t really dunk yet, so I had to get creative with how I was doing it.”

Back to that “3-and-D” label, while it underscores his utility with the basketball in his hands, the second part of that designation (the “D”) clearly applies when talking about Council IV. Whether it be on the ball at the point-of-attack, off-the-ball chasing players around screens, or near the rim as a supplementary paint protector, Council IV can wear any hat you ask him to. But ironically enough, that wasn’t always the case.

“To be honest, defense didn’t really matter to me too much growing up,” Council IV laughed. “I grew up in a household where we were all scorers. The best defender growing up was my middle brother, Ricky Council III. When defense really started to become important for me was my freshman year of high school at Northern [in Durham, North Carolina.] I always did a good job of guarding my man, but before my freshman year of high school, I wasn’t too focused on help defense. It was there that I realized that basketball is all about team defense, not just individual.”

“We talk a lot about defense,” Council II added. “[Back in the day,] he came to me saying he wanted to be a great defender. He wanted to be a great two-way player. And I told him, ‘Yes, defense is about quick feet and good hips. But more than anything, defense is about effort. If you want to be a great two-way player, you can, but you have to put in the effort. You need to watch film and work on your body.’”

Nowadays, Council IV has that in spades. And when you combine his chameleon defense with his passing, driving, and God-given vertical athleticism, you almost have the complete package. The key word here is “almost.” The one major question lingering over Council IV’s game at the NBA level is his jump shot. Last season at Arkansas, Council IV shot just 27% on his 3.5 3-point attempts. That clearly didn’t hinder him too much at the collegiate level, but in the NBA, teams are going to sag off of him/closeout short to him and dare him to beat them from the outside. His ability to drive/create for his teammates will be stunted if he can’t knock down his shots with some consistency.

However, context is key here. Despite mediocre 3-point percentages, Council IV was a 79.4% free throw shooter on 6.1 attempts per game last year (84.9% the year before). This matters because free throw shooting is one of the best context-independent indicators of shooting we have.

Another thing to think about is how much his alpha status in the offense at Arkansas forced him into taking tough shots to bail out his team late in the clock. At least early on in his career, this won’t be his responsibility at the NBA level.

“One thing that will change in the NBA is his shot selection,” Council IV’s agent Adie von Gontard told Forbes. “At the NBA, he won’t be forced to take those late clock heaves that he was often forced to take at Arkansas. He’s going to be put in a more optimal situation. Being able to do that, the ceiling is endless for him.”

Still, even when you factor in those variables, there are improvements that need to be made, and Council IV and his team are putting in the work necessary to make sure that those changes happen.

“I’ve always been so intrigued by [Council IV’s] work ethic,” Von Gontard told Forbes. “I’m really able to see it now that college is over, and he’s a pro. The one major difference between being in college and being a professional athlete is that, as a professional, you have so much free time. In college, you have such a regimented schedule. Whereas, when you’re a professional, you have two hours of practice, and then it’s really all up to you in terms of what you want to do on top of that. That’s where you see the separation of guys who like it, love it, and are obsessed with it. For [Council,] throughout this entire process, he’s been calling me on Friday nights, not to go out, but to ask me how he can get a key to get in the gym. And I think that type of mentality, it can’t be taught. It’s either something you have or don’t have. And [Council IV] obviously has that.”

Von Gontard continued, “What we did that was different than what most people do is that, right after the season ended, we sent [Council IV] down to Miami so he could get in the lab and start working on his jumper. He was in the gym making a thousand shots a day while other prospects were either still in the tournament or taking a break. It goes back to his work ethic. Most players want to take a couple of weeks off at the end of the reason to reset. But [Council IV] was so determined to improve, so we were able to get back to work immediately after the season concluded. At the next level, with his work ethic, his shot will continue to improve.”

Council IV’s older brother also believes that having access to his own personal trainer for the first time in his life (in this case Ronald Taylor) is going to make a massive difference for him.

“Growing up, our dad was our trainer,” Council II said. “He taught us the game of basketball. He taught us everything we knew. And it was a lot of good stuff, but he never played high school/collegiate basketball. At the NBA level, he’ll have access to the best trainers. And one thing people don’t understand about trainers is they have such a large frame of reference for all this stuff. They see things that your parents might not see because they have worked with so many different players. His first time having a trainer was during this pre-draft process. And in just that short amount of time, I’ve already seen a massive improvement in his shot.”

“Taylor has done a great job not trying to completely change my brother’s shot. Instead, he’s trying to sharpen what he already has. You can’t just tell a guy at this level to completely scrap their jumper. You will erase all their confidence. He’s done a great job of improving his shot without doing that.”

As for those short closeouts that defenses will plan on deploying against Council IV until he proves himself worthy of a different coverage, he and Taylor are working out potential counters for them too.

“Not only have I been working on my shot and my shot mechanics,” Council IV explained. “But I’ve also been working on my closeout attacking. I feel like I’m already really good at that, but Ronny [Taylor] has been showing me different counters for different types of closeouts, and I think that has made me even better at driving closeouts.”

But at the rate he’s improving, Council IV might not need to worry about using that counter for too long. Soon, he hopes that his shooting is up to par with his driving, playmaking, and defense. And once he has that jumper in the bag, he’ll be the jack of all trades that we prophesied at the onset of this article. The one that not only sticks at the highest level, but has a long and prosperous NBA career.