Ivan Perasovic

DOB: 23 April 2002 – 18.7 YO
Height: 6-foot-7
Wingspan: 6-foot-9
Weight: 210 lbs
Active hand: Right
Primary position: Small forward
Secondary position: Power forward
Medical history: N/A

Ivan Perasovic was born on April 23, 2002, in Croatia. He is the son of Velimir Perasovic, a famous basketball head coach. He fell in love with basketball watching his father and older brother play. The game pretty much became a profession for him when he realized he can make a career out of it. He had offers from NCAA schools but did not want to go to the United States because he wanted to stay in Europe. He likes to play video games, especially action games. He also enjoys reading. His favorite meal is pizza, his favorite movie is “Interstellar” and his favorite TV show is “Peaky Blinders”. He wants to play in the NBA, his favorite city in the USA is Miami. His interests besides basketball are economics and marketing.

Physical & Athleticism & Approach
Standing 6-foot-7 with a 6-foot-9 wingspan and a well-developed 210-pound frame, Ivan Perasovic has pretty impressive size and frame in my opinion. His skill-set and physical tools make him a versatile basketball player, which the modern-era basketball needs. Perasovic does not have the best physical tools in his class but by looking at his progress physically, you would define him as a hard worker. Two years ago, at the FIBA U16 European Championship 2018 in Novi Sad, he had great length but had no any physical strength. However, right now, he has good width on his shoulders, giving him the opportunity to build good triceps and biceps in the future if he puts in the work in the weight room. His arm strength is not impressive but his length is good. His strong chest and core muscles give him an advantage in the post-up and low-post games. He won a lot of face-up possessions in the last two years by using his chest and core muscle strength. He possesses good body coordination, knows when and which part of his body he has to use on both sides of the ball. He has nice lateral movement. He is not that quick but he knows how to use his feet laterally to slide around the perimeter at the defensive end. He has a baby jump in his shooting technique with nice energy transfer from his hips, giving him extra energy on his shots and low-post turns in my opinion. Despite not having an explosive or aggressive BBIQ, Perasovic came up with highlight dunks both in transition situations and creating for himself (putting the ball on the floor, attacking the basket and making impressive dunks). He is not particularly linearly, but he is quick in the open floor and without the ball. His legs need more work in my opinion. Thin and slow, I think his legs need the biggest improvement on his body right now. This creates problems defending one-on-one situations. For the European level, Perasovic has decent physicality – he doesn’t look like most Yugoslavian basketball players but he also doesn’t look like other high-flying basketball players. He is not 100 percent versatile.

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Offense

Ivan Perasovic does a little bit of everything at the offensive end in my opinion. Despite not having any killer weapon in his offensive arsenal, Perasovic is a different scorer for his age. He is excellent on flare, backdoor, V, shallow, deep and curl cuts to take his low-post position on off-the-ball motions. He starts position at the right attack area, uses the cross/down screen, cuts to the left low-post, takes the ball, uses a drop step to the baseline or reverse spin to the flashy basket.
On the finishing side, he has a soft touch but I would like to see a little bit of finger sensitivity on his final touch, because sometimes the ball goes out his hand too hard. He can finish with both hands, is a solid finisher and does a pretty good job getting the ball quickly. Also, he does a nice job switching hands when has to avoid the shot blocker/rim protector. He can change direction on the ground but doesn’t have a strong first step or smoothness. He is just a solid athlete. He cannot shift his weight to his opponent to create an advantage but he knows how to use his length when he attacks the basket. He can finish going to his right better than to his left, so he is a better finisher around his right shoulders than his left shoulders. He does not have any floater or teardrop with his finishing, also I would like to see him more actively use the glass. He has great BBIQ, does not dribble or try to finish in intense traffic but if he has to, he can rise off one leg and finish through contact sometimes. My biggest concern about his finishing ability around the basket is that his IP sometimes is too shy. I mean, when he takes the ball under the basket after a cut from the weakside to the strong side, he waits, worries about the blocker and this creates a huge timing disadvantage. He has had this problem since 2017. He has to be more self-confident. He can finish as a slasher but usually, he is more of a lob threat (at the FIBA events, he had a lot of lob points thanks to Croatia’s flare cut setup), dunker spot, low-post cutter, quick finishing scorer.
The shooting side is another reason why I called him different. Ivan Perasovic can stretch the floor with his shooting ability. He is not a good mid-range shooter, just spotting up on the left baseline, not in the middle or right side. From three-point range, he can create his shots and can hit them as a spot-up shooter. However, his shooting form is really unorthodox. His shot pocket is almost stuck to his forehead, his right hand is right at his head, his left hand is wide open and he grabs the ball from the edge and gives it balance. This makes it difficult to block his shot but it also hurts the release. Perasovic is not an inconsistent shooter, but the ball comes out sometimes very curved and sometimes very flat. It is now very difficult to change his shooting form, but if he can keep his left hand a little lower, he can give better momentum to the ball in my opinion. Everything is fine in his lower body. He transfers energy from his hips, the parallelism between his knees and his feet is good, and he also has a nice mini jump. His shot is a little gamble but the best thing here is that Perasovic does not force the shot, almost using true shots every time. Briefly: he has versatile shooting potential, but yes, he has room right now. (By the way, he is a better shooter in the left zone than the right zone. He does not try shots in the middle.
So he can stretch the floor, is a good fit for a small-ball lineup and also has a good interior scoring package. He is active on off-the-ball motions, has off-the-ball BBIQ – which is very important for all 18 year old basketball players in the world – and he has good length. But why he is not a “hot” prospect?
Very simple reasons: Ball-handling, passing, responsibility and pick-and-roll scoring. Ivan Perasovic has a lot of room for improvement in all these areas. He knows how to protect the ball and how to take steps to attack while going to the basket, but he does not have any crafty, shifty or extra things. He is just an average dribbler, ball-handler and passer. He is not even a good read-and-react passer. So he knows that and plays as a third ball-handler (was the fourth ball-handler in Croatia’s youth national teams because of Roko Prkacin’s ball-handling ability).
Ivan Perasovic cannot score in pick-and-roll situations. He knows when and which style he should try to make something happen at the offensive end but he is not someone I would like to give the ball to in clutch time if he is not the best scorer in the game.

Defense

Ivan Perasovic is not a defensive playmaker and does not defend intensively consistently. However, his team awareness, off-the-ball defense and closeouts make him a good defender in my opinion. His defensive skill-set is out of charts. He does not get lots of steals or blocks, but he really can be a factor at the defensive end in my opinion.
He has good BBIQ and possesses good awareness. He does not talk too much on defense but this is not a must for him because he knows when and where to rotate, slide, and help defend. He slides really well around the perimeter against fake screens. The Croatian prospect also does a good job tagging the cutter in help and getting back to his man later.
He is almost an excellent off-the-ball defender. Even though he has room to get stronger, Ivan Perasovic does a good job getting through screens when necessary but his best job on off-the-ball defense is zone control. I mean, while he guards his man on the weak-side he also watches strong-side actions. If the ball comes to his zone, Perasovic offers nice help defense without giving free space to his man. If the ball comes to his man, he really does a nice job sticking close to him – shoulder to shoulder. So he can limit the opponent’s spacing. The biggest bad factor here is his lack of quickness at the defensive end. He runs well, follows well but if his man is quicker than him and has good slashing ability, Perasovic cannot get in front of him. Even though he slides laterally to cut off the ball-handler while absorbing the contact and has active hands, his lack of quickness hurts his off-the-ball defensive and actually general defensive package in my opinion.
HIs closeouts defense is really good. Ivan Perasovic does pretty impressive things closing spacing on the shooter by using his length, vertical pop, active hands, BBIQ, timing and stop ability. I mean, when he runs out for the closeout, he can stop very well in front of the shooter and avoid the foul. He can rotate the hips but sometimes bites on pump and burst fakes. He forces his man by pressuring the ball, can control the attacker and force him to expose the ball by using his BBIQ.
He needs to work on his on-the-ball defense. He is better when defending top-of-the-key attacks. However, when the offense plays against him from the left or right zone, his efficiency at one-on-one defense goes down. Probably the biggest reason here is his lack of quickness. I mean, the court’s space limits his zone. Plus, he can guard quicker players. He even can guard physical players thanks to his strength, but he cannot do it against shifty, crafty players.
He does not have any pick-and-roll and post-up defensive abilities. He does have interesting switch potential. He showed that he can guard PGs, SGs, SFs and PFs. He is not super quick but his hips, length, anticipation, BBIQ and active hands make him a good positional defender. However, he has to work on 1v1 and PnR (he just slides well on off-the-ball screen games, cannot do it on classical PnR games) defenses in my opinion.
Last and best probably, he has great rebounding ability. He will find a man on shots to box out or he will run down rebounds. He is not afraid to mix it up against bigger and stronger players during defensive rebounding situations. At the offensive end, he likes to mix it up under the basket to create an advantage for his team. This is pretty impressive in my opinion.

Questions

Does he have the ability to compete at the NBA level and adjust to the NBA’s level of physical play and defensive rules?
Is he able to play as a power forward at high-levels to stretch the floor?
Is he able to play multiple pick-and-roll situations?
And most importantly, will he add a little above average ball-handling skills?

Overall

Ivan Perasovic is an 18 years old basketball player with versatility. He has impressive BBIQ for his age. He is active on off-the- ball motions, can stretch the floor, has post scoring, knows how to use his length at the offensive and defensive ends and gives everything. However, his lack of ball-handling, scoring consistency (he is not a hot scorer), passing, elite athleticism and shooting limit his projection in my opinion. I do not think he can be an NBA player due to these problems. But from the European side, he has the potential to play in a top EuroCup team or lower level EuroLeague team. He already has BBIQ, is a good team player, has good a off-court life, is an average shooting threat, and can score in the post and under the basket. Split’s youth system is not the best but it is above average. And do not forget that Perasovic has basketball genes. He is used to working and learning about basketball. So while he may not the NBA through the draft, he could make it when he is 24-26 years old like dozens of European basketball players in my opinion.

Kuzey is the chief editor at Eurosport Turkey, where he lives and attends all Euroleague, Turkish Basketball League and Youth League games. Kuzey has been writing about basketball since he was nine and working as a freelance scout since 2017. He has interviewed over 100 prospects.

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