I want to know how someone with his length and athleticism gets so few deflections.
I'm not going to sit here and pretend it's the end all stat when Gary Trent Jr. leads the league (although I find that amazing given his defensive reputation and his career stats coming into the year)
Smart is 6th in the NBA. 2nd is Caruso, 3rd is FVV. Melton 4th, LaMelo 5th.
Romeo is dead last in the league. 179 minutes played, 0 deflections. That's so bad I wonder if NBA.com is even correct, but looking up the definition of the word, it could very well be.
349 players have at least 1 deflection. So Romeo is tied with 104 other players for last, and has played 118 more minutes than anyone else on the list with 0 (Mamu).
6'11 wingspan, 8'7-8'8 standing reach, pretty good athleticism, great reputation as a defender. Gets as many deflections as Semi Ojeleye. Also not true, Semi has 186 minutes and 5 deflections.
He really doesn't do anything that shows up in a box score, whether it's traditional or advanced. I don't know if I've seen someone with worse per 36 or % stats.
I'm not saying any of this is good or bad, just that he's an outlier either way. His per 36 this year are 10.1 points, 4.4 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 0.4 steals, 0.2 blocks.
6.6% rebound rate, 3.3% assist rate, 0.6% steal rate, 0.5% block rate.
A good trend is 3PA/36 going from 2.6->2.3->3.8. And obviously the shooting %, even if he will return to earth at some point, .185 to .278 to .474.
The bad: 3.8 3PA/36 is not very good. But he's young and with more success may come more volume. Plus there are a lot of Brandon Ingram examples out there.