It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for 10 more NBA things I like and dislike! This week, we highlight a single play that could, sort of, maybe save the Los Angeles Lakers, an NBA MVP as volleyball star and a hero’s tribute to fashion icon Jarrett Allen.
1. The play that can (not really, but let’s be nice) save the Lakers season
It’s not great that 75% through a dispiriting Lakers season, I jolt out of my seat whenever I see this — the same reaction I might have if I spotted a tiger outside my office window:
It was not hard to predict Russell Westbrook would be an awkward-to-disastrous fit alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis — and erase the idea of playing traditional centers. As I wrote upon the trade, if James is the best shooter in some core lineups, you’ve done a bad job building a team around James. Westbrook isn’t the typical non-shooting point guard, either. He’s a non-shooting point guard who shoots all the time.
Westbrook needed to tweak his game, and the easiest tweak was setting ball screens for James. Everyone within the team knew this over the summer. When it became a talking point after the Lakers’ 0-2 start, Westbrook set eight ball screens in the next game — the most he has set in any game since Second Spectrum set up video tracking in 2013.
He has not set more than two in any game since. Westbrook screening more is not on its own turning this sub-.500 mess into a title team. Duh. But it would help, and that it hasn’t happened is an organizational failure.
A lot of the media — this writer included — is guilty of underestimating how difficult it is getting stars to change how they play. It’s hard for successful people in any profession to hear, You’re not good enough anymore to do what you’ve always done. Good luck convincing the triple-double king to become some hybrid of Bruce Brown and Draymond Green. The Lakers have at times gone the other way, encouraging Westbrook to “be Russ” in an effort to buoy his confidence.
But Westbrook has the explosiveness, vision, and creativity to average 20 points and 8 assists in that Draymond-style role — provided he could still “be Russ” when James rests.
Buckle up. Either the Lakers are squeaking through the play-in back door — they have almost 0% chance of cracking the top six — and reminding us any team with James and Davis is scary, or limping into a perilous summer.
2. The guts of the Point God
Skill is nothing without courage to push its limits. It’s easier to notice bad passes than potential good passes not made. You can watch a decent point guard without really digesting what opportunities he might have missed due to lack of vision or guts.
But if right after that, you watched Chris Paul, it would hit you — all the profitable passes that are there, waiting to be seized upon by a distributor with the bravado, timing, and accuracy to thread them. By noticing the passes Paul makes, you begin to notice the passes regular point guards don’t (or rarely) make.
That is short-distance lob, over a trap, squeezed between the baseline and encroaching help. Paul releases it before taking a single dribble, giving the ball a head start against the rotating defense. That allows him to loft it soft and high, where only Ayton can reach it. Paul gets no (traditional) statistical credit here, but this pass conjures an open triple for Devin Booker that would otherwise not exist.
The straight-on, long-distance lob in the cleanest circumstances is one of basketball’s trickiest passes. Fitting it between two help defenders and leading Ayton right to the rim? Come on.
Paul deserves a healthy postseason run for this incredible Phoenix Suns team. The basketball world deserves to see it.
It will be interesting to see how Paul’s injury impacts his All-NBA chances. A nod would be his 11th, tying (among others) Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, and Michael Jordan on the all-time list.
3. Devonte’ Graham is on notice
In one narrow sense, Graham is doing exactly what the Pelicans hoped: shooting 41% on 4.8 catch-and-shoot 3s per game. Graham would feast on more such looks if Zion Williamson were around. If there’s one player on this team whose skill set screams for Williamson, it’s Graham.
With or without Williamson, Graham has to jack more catch-and-shoot 3s because he doesn’t provide enough value anywhere else. That has been magnified without Williamson, to the point that Graham is getting squeezed some with CJ McCollum on board. McCollum already supplanted him as starting point guard. That leaves plenty of minutes for Graham in different configurations, though Jose Alvarado has done well as backup point guard.
At 6-1, Graham is a liability on defense. He is a career 39.7% shooter on 2s, and has hit fewer than half his shots at the rim. He gets lost in the trees:
He doesn’t have the oomph to compensate, or draw fouls. Graham is averaging a career-low 2.3 free throws per 36 minutes.
In a vacuum, the Pelicans would indisputably be better with Lonzo Ball instead of Graham — even though Ball earns $18.6 million, compared to $11 million for Graham. The Pelicans would argue that the $7.6 million difference enabled them to acquire McCollum without going into the luxury tax next season. In other words: The choice was Ball or McCollum, not Ball or Graham. The Pelicans nabbed Jonas Valanciunas in the trade that brought Graham — and then signed Valanciunas to a fair extension.
I’m not sure I buy all that. There were alternative paths that would have enabled the Pels to fit both Ball and McCollum without butting into the tax. Also, are we sure Ball, Josh Hart, and a league-average-ish starting center earning maybe $40 million combined isn’t more valuable than Graham, McCollum, and Valanciunas pushing $60 million?
In the long run, it probably doesn’t matter much. Vaulting into contention over the next two or three seasons was a long shot regardless. The Pels have extra picks to burn. The priority now is repairing whatever the hell is going on with Williamson.
4. Minnesota’s defense, at a crucial inflection point
In their final two games before the All-Star break, the Wolves scrapped their bedrock blitzing defense and sagged into a more conservative scheme. The change was jarring. It’s unclear if it will last, or if Minnesota — down to 15th in points allowed per possession — is built to play that dropback style. (The Wolves mostly reverted to their aggressive scheme Thursday against the Grizzlies.)
Their original scheme was intended both to protect Karl-Anthony Towns up the middle and leverage the size and bounce of the defenders around him — notably Jarred Vanderbilt, Anthony Edwards, Patrick Beverley, and (in reserve units) Jaden McDaniels.
Towns has not offered enough resistance around the basket to work as a Brook Lopez-style drop-back center. The solution: have Towns trap pick-and-rolls above the arc while wing defenders lunge into the paint — and then rotate back to shooters. It was a high-risk, high-reward style that — for a while — coaxed enough steals to net out as a positive.
The Wolves knew it might not last — that better offenses would have enough skill to pass over and around those traps. When opponents finally hit some open 3s, the structure wobbled.
Minnesota’s scheme has yielded tons of 3s and shots at the rim. Swarming defense brings the risk of fouling; Minnesota is dead last in opponent free throw rate. It becomes harder to rebound when your biggest defenders are flying around the arc; Minnesota is last in defensive rebounding. (Towns’ blah box-out habits do not help.) It isn’t forcing as many turnovers.
The onus is on Towns to show he can improve as a rim-barricader. Against past versions of this scheme, opposing ball handlers revved up and drove right through Towns — sometimes baiting him into jumping too soon at fakes.
Towns has enough skill and feel to be an average defender in this kind of role. He looked engaged in those two recent games, sometimes waving at ball handlers to try him. Against poor shooting teams it should be workable; those nasty wing defenders can take an extra step into the paint to support Towns.
That level of help can be untenable against ace shooters. Leaving Towns naked could yield too many good looks at the basket — and uncontested midrangers.
This is a fascinating under-the-radar storyline. Minnesota has a chance at that coveted No. 6 spot, but a more realistic goal — given its tough remaining schedule — is holding on to No. 7, and cinching home-court advantage for the play-in.
5. Nikola Jokic, volleyball star
Add volleyball to the list of sports Jokic plays while also playing basketball:
Jokic throws one-hand-only water polo passes, and dabbles in volleyball while tipping misses. Jokic might be the best tipper, with the softest touch, I’ve ever seen. He smacks tip-ins from six and seven feet away — distances that usually require shooters to actually, you know, hold the basketball.
Jokic’s volleyball now extends to inbounds plays: If nothing is available, just loft the ball over Jokic’s head and let him initiate self-tipping.
While we’re here, some tips for How Not To Talk About MVP:
• Do not act as if the winner should obviously be Joel Embiid, and that anyone who dares disagree is a dunce. You can make reasonable cases for Embiid, Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, maybe a few others. I might end up voting for Embiid.
• Current playoff seedings do not constitute a standalone case for Embiid. Yes, the Sixers are No. 3 in the East, and Denver is No. 6 in the West. 1.5 games separate them. The Nuggets have a better point differential. The Sixers have gotten zero from Ben Simmons; the Nuggets have gotten zero from Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr.
Peel back one layer, and you’ll realize there is — to this point — no qualitative difference between Denver and Philly. If there is one at the end of the season — if the gap between their records fattens — let’s discuss that then.
Also: Should we really care that MVPs have historically come from top-two seeds, with the (recent) exception of 2016-17 — when Russell Westbrook won while averaging a triple-double for the sixth-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder? Just because we’ve always done something one way doesn’t mean that way is ironclad in its correctness. What are people going to say if the Sixers finish No. 4 or 5?
Westbrook’s triple-double — on 42.5% shooting — was historic and worthy of celebration. Is that 31.6-10.7-10.4 line so much more significant than Jokic’s current 26-14-8 line (on 57% shooting) that we should make an exception for one but not the other? Two assists make that much of a difference?
• Do not push the bogus narrative that you must lean on fancy stats to craft the argument for Jokic. Traditional stats do just fine. Does it count as an “advanced” stat that the Nuggets are plus-10 points per 100 possessions with Jokic on the floor, and minus-10.6 when he sits? Is that “advanced” or regular math? What are we doing here?
6. Isaiah Hartenstein, please shoot
Are you ready to feel confused when your favorite team pays some backup center you’ve never heard of a non-trivial portion of the mid-level exception? Get ready! Hartenstein has been sensational backing up Ivica Zubac. He’s shooting 62%, and dishing about 4.1 dimes per 36 minutes. Hartenstein is (I swear this is true) one of the best passing bigs in the league — spraying fire in 4-on-3 situations out of the pick-and-roll.
He can shoot from there too; Hartenstein has drilled a preposterous 54% from floater range, per Cleaning The Glass.
Hartenstein is a key cog in bench units that have won games for the rag-tag Clippers. The Clips have outscored opponents by 10 points per 100 possessions (!) with Hartenstein on the floor; they are minus-212 (!) for the season when he rests. He’s the main reason Serge Ibaka plays for the Milwaukee Bucks.
Hartenstein has even tightened his defense. Opponents have hit just 48% at the rim with Hartenstein nearby, the second-stingiest mark — behind only Nic Claxton — among 105 rotation players challenging at least three such shots per game. Hartenstein ranks among the top 20 or so (!!) in several advanced metrics.
That’s a bit much. Hartenstein’s footwork on defense can get wonky. He fouls so much he can’t play starter-level minutes. Everyone loves a pass-first teammate, but sometimes when you are a very large human very close to the basket, you should shoot:
Go up and get fouled, big fella!
7. A weird officiating loophole
With 2:03 left in overtime of the Feb. 17 game between the Charlotte Hornets and Heat, Kyle Lowry hit a long 2 — only referees counted it as a triple, putting Miami up 92-91. The Charlotte announcers speculated referees would review Lowry’s shot at the first stoppage to clarify the score.
The (apparent) first stoppage came when Miles Bridges hit a 3 with 1:45 to go. There was no review. Officials can only halt the game to review the 2-versus-3 issue at the first stoppage after the shot in question.
The clock stops after baskets once you hit that 2:00 mark in the fourth quarter and overtime. Lowry’s shot went through the net at 2:03. The ball squirted away; an official scrambled to retrieve it. The clock hit 2:00 and stopped for a beat before the Hornets inbounded. That split second was by rule the referees’ only chance to stop the game.
The game continued until a timeout with 45 seconds left. The teams played that minute-plus without knowing the score. (Had they known this arcane rule, they would have understood Lowry’s shot was locked in as a triple, but very few people can digest that in real time.) Imagine playing crunch time without knowing whether you’re tied or down one?
The logic behind the first-stoppage-only rule is something of a slippery slope argument: Do you really want to give officials leeway to review every play going back to the opening tip?
This was an ultra-rare occurrence; rules are not written to address ultra-rare occurrences. But in end-game situations, it seems feasible to review this — the freaking score! — at the second stoppage.
8. Can the new-look Mavs find the right amount of variety?
This legitimately startled me:
That can’t be the Dallas Mavericks, right? This is what would happen if you told the Mavericks to do an impression of the Golden State Warriors: a hard push from Luka Doncic; an extra ball handler in Spencer Dinwiddie to move things along; a respected gunner (Davis Bertans) to enter the ball and pivot into a split action with Doncic; and finally a step-up screen for Doncic leading into a Maxi Kleber pick-and-pop triple.
The Mavs are probably the league’s worst and most disinterested transition team — the slowest to get up shots after both defensive rebounds and turnovers, per Inpredictable. Dallas has pushed up the standings — it’s 18-6 since Jan. 1 — behind smart, suffocating defense. The Mavs rank 16th in offensive efficiency overall, and a tick above league average during that 18-6 stretch — even as Doncic found his A-game.
Imagine how dynamic they could be if they sprinkled in more of this around their Doncic-centric spread pick-and-roll attack? Deviations from that usually took the form of obligatory, low-efficiency post-ups for Kristaps Porzingis. That is a happy trickle-down effect of flipping Porzingis to Washington, which was really about dumping Porzingis: replacing him with two players who added at least the possibility of a healthier sort of variety.
You don’t want to over-democratize, and shift too much offense away from Doncic. But more transition play is a no-brainer, and the constant presence of at least one of Jalen Brunson and Dinwiddie around Doncic (and sometimes both) will unlock some around-the-horn sequences Doncic can both start and finish.
Hell, even just getting Doncic a few open catch-and-shoot looks would be a nice reprieve for him:
Dallas has been my sleeper “if all goes well” Finals threat all season. Doncic is that good in the playoffs. My first reaction to the Porzingis deal was that the Mavs had slightly lowered their ceiling now to wriggle more flexibility later — that they would miss Porzingis’ rim protection and occasional bursts of shooting.
What if that turns out wrong?
9. Jarrett Allen, American — nay, international — hero
Jarrett Allen wore normal clothes to a gymnasium. Some corners of social media pilloried Allen for wearing normal clothes to a gymnasium. Allen (and happier corners of social media) responded with genuine confusion: Wait, because I’m a rich athlete, I can’t wear normal clothes? I have to devote an outsized portion of my earnings and time to things I drape over my body for a few hours — instead of things I care about, like more Legend of Zelda memorabilia?
Put Jarrett Allen in the Hall of Fame.
10. The Matisse Thybulle fly-by dance
Imagine trying to shoot with this half-man, half-magician anywhere within 15 feet of you?
That is Thybulle jumping four times in 5.5 seconds, with one lunge into a driving lane sandwiched in there. My god. Thybulle is the Wing King of Stocks — steals and blocks — one of only nine rotation players averaging at least 1.4 of each per 36 minutes.
Thybulle is 6-5 with a gigantic 7-0 wingspan. He doesn’t move like a normal human; he apparates, traversing huge chunks of space in a blink as if by magic. Even if you can’t see him, you know he’s there, lurking, ready to get a fingertip on your shot. You hear him, feel him, sense him. Thybulle has blocked 42 3s over the last two seasons, more than double every player but Toronto’s Chris Boucher — who has rejected 34, per Second Spectrum.
Thybulle’s own 3-pointer is one of the most important role-player variables in the title chase. If he can stay on the floor without cramping Philly’s spacing, the Sixers are in business. Thybulle is down to 29% on 3s, and 33% on corner 3s.
He has improved as a cutter skulking baseline when opponents double Embiid, but he can only scrounge so many buckets that way.
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