Star Wars has the shameful second and third trilogies (Revenge of the Sith exempt here). Jurassic Park has created a lot of slop. Ghostbusters continues to churn out garbage. The Matrix creators decided a fourth movie was necessary for whatever reason. All devoid of the original magic that made them great.

The Terminator franchise is the most apt when I think about the current Warriors. The first movie was fantastic, something new the masses had yet to experience, much like the 2015 Warriors. They somehow came out stronger with T2, akin to the KD-era title teams. T3 was not as good as the first two, yet they managed to pull it off like the plucky 2022 Dubs.

Then the rebooting began, and the magic was lost. Terminator: Salvation still had their Steph Curry equivalent in Christian Bale, yet everything else failed to live up. Chris Paul did his best Sam Worthington impression, utterly without lift. Bryce Dallas Howard mailed it in like Andrew Wiggins, which I suppose makes The Village her 2022 Wiggins playoff run?

Like the IP holders of the Terminator franchise, the Warriors are faced with a choice: do we keep making the same movie and hope for a different result? Or try something new and reap the potential rewards?

The Crossroads

We’ve all seen the stories by now. Steph wants a winning situation. Klay Thompson is a free agent with suspected suitors. Draymond Green is under contract, but the patience may have run out.

It’s not as hopeless as many would make it out to be. The fans of the other 29 teams have been waiting to ring the death bell of the Warriors for some time. They tried to ring it once before, and that didn’t pan out. But even if the title hopes are gone, this team still has some meat on the bone.

Assuming the core trio stays together, the predictable outcome, GM Mike Dunleavy Jr. has things to work with. Chris Paul, Andrew Wiggins, Gary Payton II, and Kevon Looney have all made themselves expendable. That’s over $73 million that can be moved. Paul’s $30M is completely non-guaranteed, and Looney only has 3 of his $8M guaranteed, making them ideal expiring contracts to move. Wiggins is a tougher sell with one more year at $28.2M, but the right tanking team won’t mind.

I hope for Andrew’s sake that he can continue to cash the checks while spending the time with his family that he needs in these difficult past couple of years.

They’re also possessed with strong trade incentives to go with the salary. They can move at least two first-round picks with Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, and even Brandin Podziemski or Trayce Jackson-Davis if they so desire. I’m not advocating for one deal or another. The point is that options are out there.

The Desired Path

I think I can speak for most Warriors fans in saying the last thing we want to see is the core being shattered this offseason. The chance of returning to a higher contending status is narrow, but it exists. The right trades and use of cap space could see them recover some of the old magic, and title #5 or no we’d all like to see them give it another try.

Equally disastrous as the nuclear option would be to continue chugging along with the current formula. Trotting out the old IP like a lazy studio executive. Make moves on the fringes, use all the draft picks to add more inexperienced talent, and continue to be content with mediocrity. That would be the path that takes a Steph trade decision out of their hands.

Retain the core. Be aggressive with trades and free agency. The rarest thing in basketball is to have a core this accomplished that starts and ends their careers together, and the fans would love to see it happen. It’s something we may never see again in the league. Riding off into the sunset with a whimper would be devastating. The front office must give them a chance to go out on their shield. Hopefully, this soul-crushing end to the season gives them the motivation needed to do so.

Let’s get something new and imaginative to put a bow on this. Don’t have next season be your Terminator: Genisys.

The post The Rebooting of the Warriors appeared first on Swish Theory.

Besides being a lefty who looks like the upper half of a centaur with a funky love of hook shots, his proficiency as a rebounder is nearly unparalleled among NBA guards. Podz rates as a 99th-percentile defensive rebounder amongst guards, and 97th-percentile on the offensive glass.

Even with the rise of huge guards (and Podz is no slouch at 6’5″), his rebounding stands out. Only two guards boast higher offensive and defensive rebounding shares than Brandin: Ben Simmons (6’10”) and Russell Westbrook (all-time rebounding guard). I’d say that’s pretty good company.

Rebounding at this kind of level doesn’t just happen. It takes effort, timing, and technique to reach the level Podziemski has already achieved as a rookie. How does he do it?

Using Boxouts

Like Westbrook, Podz excels at using boxouts by his teammates to secure boards. He checks his man well and has an innate understanding of angles, knowing how to best position himself behind the boxout:

Podz isn’t just reliant on boxouts from others to generate rebounding success. He’ll happily do the dirty work himself:

In fact, among all the guards who have played as many minutes as Podz, only two boast a higher rate of boxouts per 48 minutes: Jaylen Brown and Jalen Williams. Not bad at all!

Boxouts are decreasing in frequency and importance as the game spreads out further. The real question for most rebounders is how you handle your defensive rebounding zones.

In Zone vs Out of Zone

An important part of rebounding is making quick checks. Players have to move into the proper position when the shot goes up. Using that time to check for potential offensive rebounding threats helps make a great rebounder, and Podz excels at this.

Those quick checks give him a better idea of what kind of resistance is coming in addition to whether or not a boxout is needed. It makes him a fantastic in-zone rebounder (i.e. rebounds that come to his natural defensive position).

Controlling the rebounds that come your way is great, but it’s not as impressive as out-of-zone boards. Recognizing chances to crash into other zones and help collect rebounds impacts team rebounding hugely.

A huge part of recognizing out-of-zone chances is noticing when your teammates are at a potential disadvantage. Podz can check the scene, recognize opportunities to tip the scales and help to secure that defensive stop.

Podz doesn’t just excel at securing defensive boards: he sparks the transition game once secured.

Transition Triggering

Podz isn’t exactly a big transition threat. He has mediocre transition frequency (56th percentile) and even worse efficiency as a scorer (28th percentile). But he still finds ways to contribute, especially as an outlet passer, which all comes from his defensive rebounding.

He reads the floor quickly and has good loft/accuracy on his passes. You probably noticed the middle clip was a deflection, but given the time and score, it was a good risk to take.

If you can’t grab the board and burn down the floor like prime Westbrook, find other ways to help out the team transition game. This is a welcome addition for a Warriors team that has struggled to generate transition opportunities all year.

And it’s not all on the defensive end where Podz impacts the boards.

Offensive Rebounding

As previously mentioned, Brandin posts elite offensive rebounding numbers. His combination of technique and effort stands even taller when getting busy on the offensive end.

First, the technique. Inside positioning is the name of the game when it comes to the offensive glass. If you can get through boxouts and work harder for that position, you’ll find yourself creating a lot of second chances.

When you’re amongst the trees it can be difficult to outright secure the board yourself. Podz loves to high-point the ball for tipouts and give the perimeter players a better shot to secure the board, taking the bigs out of the play.

Tipouts by themselves can lead directly to second chances. When you play a lot of minutes with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, they’re as good as assists.

In addition to being technically sound, the effort sticks out. Podz is constantly outworking his opponents to create these second chances. That kind of hustle endears you to teammates and makes them want to compete harder.

Does that kind of effort make you want to run through a brick wall? That makes two of us.

In a season where Golden State has suffered from inconsistency, lethargy, and a lack of size, this kind of rebounding from the guard spots can be a game-changer. There will be years to come when the Warriors try to build around a smaller team. Rebounding will have to be made up on the margins. Brandin Podziemski is a guy who thrives on the margins. You go, Mr. Tumnus. You go.

The post Brandin Podziemski: Guard Rebounder Extraordinaire appeared first on Swish Theory.

That’s how ex-NBA’er Tim Legler described his baseline requirements for a championship-level NBA defense on JJ Redick‘s podcast, The Old Man and the Three. And all Leglar has to point to for evidence is the NBA’s most recent champion, the Denver Nuggets.

Denver’s defense was the definition of ‘adequate’ in the 2022-’23 regular season, finishing 15th in defensive rating. But try telling that to the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat; each of those teams scored just 38 points in the second half of their respective season-ending losses to Denver. Their defense didn’t just “ramp it up,” they shut it down.

The Nuggets did it again in their most recent win, a mere regular-season triumph over the Golden State Warriors on Sunday night. Their moment of truth didn’t come at half-time of an NBA Finals closeout-game, though, but when Head Coach Michael Malone chided his group for their poor defensive start, down 45-32 after 14-and-a-half minutes of play.

“I don’t know if you guys are watching. Klay’s got 21, five threes. Make him work for it. “

Over the final 33-and-a-half minutes, the Warriors scored just 58 points. Klay Thompson scored two more points, and zero after half-time. Switch: flipped.

The Warriors remain the pre-eminent test for NBA defenses. Not because they are still the league’s most fearsome offense, but because the Dubs exist to force mistakes. Splash Bro Ridiculousness aside, Golden State’s buckets are often the result of clear defensive breakdowns. Sure, it’s hardly a sin to overcommit to Steph Curry and let his screener slip to the rim, but mistakes are mistakes, and the Warriors give defenses ample opportunity to make them.

In Sunday’s contest, Denver either didn’t take the bait, or hastily covered their tracks. In doing so, their defense took the shape of their offense; Nikola Jokić led the way, and his teammates were everywhere they were supposed to be.

This started, naturally, on Steph Curry’s pick-and-rolls. With Jokić in the action, the Nuggets showed two to the ball as many teams do, but with a wrinkle. In an effort to prevent some of the 4-on-3 mastery that Draymond Green has long showcased, Denver had Curry’s defender go under the screen to jam Green before recovering to Curry. Watch Kentavious Caldwell-Pope body Green up before stealing the ball here:

In order to throw two bodies at Curry and slow down Green’s prolific short-roll ability, the Joker had to hold up on one of the toughest individual covers in the world. At least, for the split-second after Curry sees Green isn’t an immediate release valve and thinks he has space to attack, a scary proposition for a seven-footer.

Here, Jokić doesn’t fall for Curry’s hesitation move and forces a change-of-direction back toward an oncoming KCP, which results in a turnover:

Caldwell-Pope was characteristically terrific on D, whether it was nailing off-ball switches or going under these ball-screens while still providing pressure.

So too was Aaron Gordon, AKA chicken soup for Michael Malone’s soul. How easy it must be to trap ball-screens with Jokić when Gordon is on the back-line, capable of both recovering to the rim for a block…

…and recovering to the perimeter to make a textbook closeout, as the Nuggets ultimately stifle the 4-on-3 advantage Golden State spent a dynasty perfecting:

The Nuggets couldn’t prevent every 4-on-3 advantage for the Dubs — the accepted cost of trapping/hedging vs Curry — but Gordon consistently de-escalated those situations.

Yet, it was Nikola Jokić who played the role of Denver’s biggest neutralizer.

Players like Sabrina Ionescu and James Harden, both possessing outlier hand-eye coordination but regarded as poor defenders for the majority of their careers, don’t suddenly lose their athletic ability when defending their basket. For all their flaws on that end of the floor, each can rack up deflections, using that same skillset that allows them to be such prolific off-the-dribble shooters on offense.

Nikola Jokić is cut from the same cloth, but has turned it up a notch. The notion that he is a negative defender is long gone. Are we surprised that his singular feel for the game is now apparent on both ends of the court?

Draymond Green just had to learn the hard way. Here, Big Honey punks Green in a vaunted 2-on-1 opportunity, feigning at his drive before breaking up the lob, forcing a turnover:

The Warriors had won that possession. A high ball-screen for Curry in early offense created the roll opportunity Denver had been trying to eliminate all night: Green storming downhill unimpeded, with a lob threat in the dunker spot. We’ve seen this movie on an infinite loop, but Jokić changed the ending.

Denver forced Golden State’s hand. Not only is Jokić now nimble enough to run aggressive schemes on the perimeter, but he has defenders like Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to fill the gaps. Let him roam around the basket, and the mistakes Golden State forces don’t amount to much. Slip your little off-ball screens, sure, and slip right into the hands of Nikola Jokić:

The defining sequence of the game — and perhaps this new era of Western Conference supremacy — came with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. The Nuggets led by five points, and each coach had subbed their big guns back in for the stretch run. Curry and Green checked in, as did Jokić and Caldwell-Pope.

As Golden State got into the meat of their out-of-timeout play, Curry floated off a flare screen from Trayce Jackson-Davis. Green watched Caldwell-Pope get caught on said screen, and passed it to a soon-to-be wide-open Curry.

Only, Jokić broke the rules. Green knew Jokić was too smart to get beat on the slip from Jackson-Davis, but didn’t consider the obviousness of that line of thinking. So the two-time MVP picked off Green’s pass and headed the other way to run a 2-on-1 fast-break against the greatest defender of his generation. The roles had been reversed, and the two basketball savants locked into a three-second chess match.

It was over before it started:

The Denver Nuggets still have it. Their defense is much like their offense, led by Nikola Jokić and capable of exploding for game-breaking stretches.

And of course, they’ll still dunk on you.

The post How the Denver Nugget Defense Dominates appeared first on Swish Theory.

No, it’s not “fire Kerr”, “trade Klay”, “European bigs” or “affordable housing”. It’s two timelines.

We know it didn’t work. The youth gave a minimal boost at best to the 2022 championship team, and the sheer volume of developmental roster spots arguably cratered the 2022-23 season. Trades were made, roster spots were consolidated, but still, the Warriors struggled to get production from the youth.

This season marks a turning point, all from the back of one man. Jonathan Kuminga‘s breakout as a legitimate second scoring option. That breakout stems from one word: drive.

I wanted to explore what has…driven this breakout, the only way I know how: watching every drive of Jonathan Kuminga’s career and tracking his development in four key areas: handling, finishing craft, midrange counters, and creating for teammates. I’ll work through each category in chronological order, starting from his rookie year up until the present day. So, let’s get going.

Handling

If you watched rookie year Kuminga, you can probably guess where this starts.

He was legitimately one of the worst handlers I’ve seen. Dribbling off his foot, failing to read help, losing the ball when the momentum got away from him. All that could go wrong did go wrong.

The turnover numbers certainly could have been worse: his 7.2% turnover rate on drives was in the range of James Harden, LeBron James, Luka Doncic, and many other stars. It’s the context of the turnovers that hurts: Kuminga was a low pass percentage player on the drive, and wasn’t creating a lot of offense for himself either. One turnover for every 4 baskets made is not ideal.

He had one handle play he could count on: the spin move. It was the one thing he had some semblance of control over, and he used it so often it would make Pascal Siakam blush.

You can see the flashes of advantage creation with his handle. Driving with the intent to draw help and spin away is huge, and he thrived while doing it at full speed. These were still simple reads and handle plays on the whole, and it wasn’t all sunshine and roses when he went into the spin cycle:

The slow spins were pretty rough. He failed to create advantages and was often trapped into bad shots or turnovers. Even with the majority of the spin results being positive, one good move does not a solid driver make.

Beyond the spins, most of his handle successes were 2-3 dribbles in a straight drive. There’s something to be said for a lack of wasted movement, but when that’s just about all you can do, it’s concerning.

But I did want to note one particular play, a foreshadowing of sorts for his handle development:

That body control and awareness combination – a running stop without traveling AND the well-timed fake – was a small sign of what was to come.

Moving to his sophomore season, his bag of tricks grew exponentially. To be sure, he still used the spin move to a high degree:

You can see the development in his methods with the spin. Incorporating fakes, changes of pace, a drop step on the finish. All of this requires a higher level of footwork and ball control in addition to the fast processing speed as he reads the defense.

Other tendencies remained. His propensity for travels contributed to an increased turnover rate on the drive, up 2.1% from his rookie season:

Despite this, the good in his handling started to outweigh the bad. Kuminga began to challenge himself, chaining multiple moves to create better advantages while cutting down on the careless lost ball turnovers. He created an impressive set of dribbling highlights in comparison to what he produced in that first season.

There were still the “oh no” moments, to be sure, but they were fewer and further between.

It’s also worth noting that the quality of his straight-line drives increased. He powered through digs and nail help, even bigs being placed on him, to get the looks he wanted.

With the handle tightening up, we got to see more of his power/speed combination on display. Put too slow or too weak of a wing/forward on him and he can dust them. Put a big on him daring him to shoot, he goes right around them. It’s the beginning of a serious defensive conundrum; all he needs is to add consistency.

Year three brought that longed-after handle consistency. Chaining moves, mixing up his looks and speeds, and keeping the handle-based turnovers way down.

The sheer volume of unguardable drives also increased. He began to exert his will over opposing defenders, some of whom are known for their defense:

There are still issues, to be sure. He has cut down on the travels this season but they remain, and he’ll lose his handle from time to time or have a rough gather affect his finish.

The development in this department cannot be ignored. He went from simple 2-3 dribble drives and constant, predictable spin moves to move combinations, maintaining balance with good footwork, and manipulating defenders with his dribble. By and large, Kuminga will be able to physically overwhelm defenders with his athletic tools. There will be situations where more advanced dribbling is called for to create advantages, and he is beginning to seize those opportunities.

Getting yourself to the rim is one thing. What happens when he gets there?

Finishing Craft

This is another area in which Kuminga has grown by leaps and bounds. Much like his rookie-year handling, the finishing was generally ugly and inconsistent.

Jumping off the wrong foot, using the wrong hand, not aligning himself into the shot leading to bad mechanics. A lot of major red flags. It only got uglier when he tried more complex footwork patterns in his finishing, like drop steps or drag steps.

Finishing with the left was a clear issue. Too often he tried to force it with his right hand in situations that called for the left or tried to adjust a drive to get to his right when the left presented the better option. But he did have some solid flashes with his right, showcasing a baseline level of coordination on the move.

Kuminga managed a solid 58.4% finishing rate on his drives, but if anything this was a reflection of how easy the majority of his drives were. 2-3 dribbles and a dunk were prevalent outcomes, especially when considering the bigs or slower wings that were tasked with guarding him. It’s not to take away from his skill – excelling at the easy stuff is important – but it left lots of wanting.

Going into his sophomore season, the finishing numbers dropped tremendously to 51.3%. This, however, is not an indication of a decline in finishing skill. It was a sign of pushing harder to get tough finishes.

The volume of his straight-line drives went down, replaced with tougher finishing angles after more complex dribble moves. As covered earlier, his turnover rate also rose during this season – another confirmation of the increased difficulty present in the film.

In a strange twist, the disparity between his righty and lefty finishing grew larger – in favor of the left. He displayed a lot of good touch with the left throughout the season:

A greater control over his body was leading to better results. His momentum was contained, he could pick better angles off the glass, and slow himself just enough to get soft finishes instead of clunkers.

It was the strong hand finishes dragging him down. Some of this was a product of the defense; at times they would dare him to finish left in single coverage, but sent major weak side help if he managed to penetrate the paint going right:

A major part of that increased difficulty on his drives was the increase in finishing moves he applied. Instead of spamming the spin button repeatedly, Kuminga mixed a healthy set of drop steps, drag steps, pump fakes and hesitation moves to unsettle his defenders.

Of course, some spins were still mixed in.

You’re probably wondering “Hey, this all looks great, but why the drastic drop in production?”. Well, there were a LOT of finishes that didn’t quite work out despite his best efforts.

What was important to me was that he was trying things. Development isn’t a process of doing the same things over and over until they’re perfect. Development is polishing those things that are good while working on those that are bad. So, you have to power through a LOT of bad to get to the good.

This process of trying things led to another important development: serious foul-drawing potential. With Kuminga putting together more consistent drives and drawing the attention of the defense, on-ball and help defenders alike chose to hack him down instead of allowing a finish. For the second straight season, Kuminga finished tops on the deal in percentage of fouls on the drive amongst rotation players with more than 2 drives per game.

Those final two clips are the most important to me. Pressing an advantage on a line drive and getting hacked is one thing. Using fakes and hesitations to get defenders off-balance or in the air and forcing the contact? That’s an important tool in the bag of an elite driver.

Now that we’ve seen the increase in difficult finishing tries and foul-drawing techniques, let’s see how he has put it together this season.

In the current season, Kuminga has risen to new heights of efficiency mixed with increased difficulty. His 57% finishing mark on the drive is not only a 6% increase from the previous season, but it also leads all Warriors players who get at least one drive per game. He’s also second on the team in personal fouls drawn per drive, with only Dario Saric beating him there.

Another important mark is the rise of his right-handed finishing. It jumped over 6% to sit at 50% for the year, nearly equaling his 51% mark with the left. It’s been great to see him power through increased defensive help on his stronger side and convert tough finishes.

Kuminga’s growing awareness has led to better finishing outcomes in many ways. His quick floor reads have led to an increase in “catch and go” possessions, where JK scans the floor to see an opportunity to drive off the catch and poises himself to take off as soon as the ball hits his hands. That gives extra fractions of a second before his defenders can turn to contain the drive.

It’s all coming together from a finishing and foul-drawing standpoint. You can see the complex moves to draw contact mixed with tough finishes:

His points percentage on the drive has reflected this. His rookie season, full of easy line drives, recorded a 77.4% mark. That dipped to 60.2% in his sophomore year, yet another reflection of the increased difficulty and defensive attention he garnered. Now, with all of those strenuous factors still at play, he has risen back to 77.2%.

To put that in context, 116 players in the league match or exceed his mark of 5.6 drives per game. Kuminga places ninth of all those players. Here’s a snapshot of who has him beat:

That’s your last 3 MVPs, another former MVP, and a whole bunch of All-NBA/All-Star players in front (Alpie, you were robbed!). I’d say that’s good company.

We covered the development in his handle, and the finishing has risen to match it. He went from struggling with complex dribbles and finishes to pulling them off with relative ease in only two years. Now he finds himself as one of the elite players at generating points off the drive.

But there is more to this than how you get to the rim, or what happens when you get there.

Midrange Counters

This has always been a very important aspect of driving to me, even if less so for wings/bigs.

Once a player gets past the three-point line on a drive, there are essentially three ways it can go: rim attempt, midrange attempt, or pass attempt. Knowing what the driving player is capable of dictates how the defense will play them. If only a rim attempt is likely, the whole defense will load up the paint. The midrange as a counter move can buy extra time for the driver to read the help. It also offers an alternative to the rim if the paint is loaded and no passing options are available.

(We will get to the importance of the passing aspect later; don’t fret.)

I don’t think it is reductive to say Jonathan Kuminga is a rim-first driver. He should be, in all honesty; what midrange attempt or kickout pass brings more value than a guy finishing 75% of his rim looks? But if that’s the *only* thing he threatens to do off the drive, it makes things quite difficult to generate those shots. Therefore the midrange is a necessity for the development of his rim pressure.

You could probably guess that the midrange was a bit ugly in his rookie season. Results were poor overall – 34% in the short midrange (26th percentile) and 5/11 on long twos. To be sure, there were some decent-looking possessions and he had confidence in his shot:

Ugliness was the dominant result, however, especially when it came to floaters. He simply did not have the touch for one-handed shots on the move, and the majority of his movement twos looked similar:

But the signs of life were there. He was willing to try and understood to some degree that a balance between the rim and the midrange had to be found. Even without good results, Kuminga rated in the 42nd percentile of midrange frequency in that rookie season. It was a threat, but not a convincing one. Compared to his rim looks, the midrange was a dull knife next to a katana.

The knife was sharpened a bit during his sophomore year. The confidence remained and the results looked a bit better; his short midrange jumped up 9 points to 43%, a 58th percentile mark. A rise in frequency was a welcome sign to boot – midrange shots went from a 24% to 29% share of his total shot profile, while three-point attempts dropped. Increased volume and efficiency is tough to pull off for *any* shot type, but especially the midrange since they are nearly all self-created.

He especially got comfortable with the turnaround over his right shoulder. It was an easily repeatable and often available shot. Kuminga seemed to be more settled physically when shooting the midrange; it felt less forced and more mechanically sound. This led to more soft-touch rolls on his shots, contributing to better results.

However, the floater still refused to come along for the ride. There were makes, but they looked awkward and with poor footwork/body alignment. The vast majority of the looks ended up looking like this:

Still, he tried much harder for those shots. Floater attempts became a bigger part of his game. He was on a similar track to his rookie season: take a lot of attempts and process the failures to deliver better results later on. He wasn’t just missing shots, he was collecting data in the process.

Now, the current season. Once again we see a huge jump in frequency, this time from 29% to 36%. That is an 86th percentile frequency amongst all wings. Paired with his 85th percentile rim frequency, you’re now looking at a player seeking to dominate at the first two levels.

Another important development in frequency is the number of long twos. 11 attempts in his rookie year were followed by 20 in his sophomore season. You could call it an increase, but at that level, it could have been a simple scaling up in shot attempts. He’s up to 38 attempts in this current season and still has 29 games left to add to it. Now we have a trend.

He took major steps in the variety of his midrange looks as well while seeing comparable success in terms of his makes (42% last year to 43% this year). There was a lot more variety beyond the right shoulder turnaround. He could comfortably pull up left and right, use the step-back, put defenders in jail, turnaround left, whatever you wanted.

It’s becoming a thing of beauty. He’s mixing increased volume, solid efficiency, and a deepening arsenal of moves to greatly advance his scoring profile.

Here’s a snapshot of forwards that can match Kuminga’s midrange frequency (35+%) and efficiency (43+%) with more than 200 midrange attempts: Kevin Durant, DeMar DeRozan, Tobias Harris, Paul George, Jimmy Butler, Julius Randle, and Mikal Bridges. That’s some damn good company for midrange success.

This success has enabled him to add further layers: drawing/baiting fouls in the midrange, using pump fakes and step-throughs to get himself to the line.

It never hurts to snatch some reliable points by getting your defender up in the air. His processing speed has grown by leaps and bounds in so many respects this season.

In addition to the massive gains in his midrange success, the floater showed real signs of life:

The additional confidence (and success) with his floater has done a lot for his midrange success, especially around the restricted area. Not only does it enable his short midrange frequency, but boosts the array of moves he can pull to keep defenders off-balance when anticipating his finishes.

As we saw with his handling and finishing development, Jonathan Kuminga was already a tough cover. Adding this level of prolific midrange shotmaking brings him to a new level of danger. The only forwards in the league that can match his driving and midrange efficiency? Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard. End list.

There is a last category, however; one that brings him down a rung.

Creating for Teammates

This part gets ugly. We’ll just rip the Band-Aid off.

Only one player posted a worse rate of passing out of drives (3+ per game) and assist percentage than rookie Jonathan Kuminga: Jaren Jackson Jr. The film asserts what the stats say. He couldn’t handle more than the most obvious reads, and even many of those were a struggle.

Here are his best plays made off the drive that season:

No, really. Highlights.

Then, you have the lowlights:

Bad footwork. Late reads, or entirely missed ones. Poor pass placement and body control. He checked all the telltale signs for a player struggling to catch up with the speed of the game. Picking up two turnovers for every assist on the drive was a tough scene.

It got somewhat better in his sophomore year. The passing rate on the drive increased (27.4% to 33.7%) and the assist rate jumped (3.4% to 11.0%) while the turnover rate increased modestly (7.2% to 9.3%). Much like his driving to the rim and midrange, he scaled in volume with increased success while not letting some bad results get in the way of him trying.

There were still plenty of bad turnovers on the drive and processing issues, to be sure:

This was balanced with better execution of simple reads: kicks to the near and far corner/wing, dunker spot finds, reading cutters or open shooters in space. It’s not impressive playmaking, but beats the hell out of no playmaking.

So it would seem his playmaking is on the up and up. But as I’ve stressed in previous articles, development is not linear, and his playmaking off the drive has crashed back out in the current season.

This season, he’s back at the bottom of pass rate (26%) and assist rate (2.8%) with – guess who! – Jaren Jackson Jr. To some credit, he’s cut down on the turnover rate (9.3% to 8.3%) but it’s nothing to write home about with that playmaking drop.

The bad pass placement could have been expected, but it seemed like he was less active in reading the help and has been prone to lazy turnovers. Despite the scoring heights he has reached the current season, the playmaking on the drive has clearly regressed.

Another problem with his drive playmaking has cropped up: running into an excessive amount of charges. Failing to read the help and carelessly running into turnovers feels like rookie-year behavior, not the player we have seen this year.

The most frustrating part is that he still put on the flashes of a solid passer, and even showed a better sense of how to manipulate the help on the drive to get higher-quality looks for teammates:

It was a question of consistent effort on Kuminga’s part, not a true regression of skill. If anything, the gap between his good and bad playmaking widened. The problem is that the bad once again outweighed the good.

This lack of consistent playmaking for others, especially considering the driving gravity he will draw, could become a major limitation of his star status. It’s something I’ll keep a close eye on as we track his trajectory.

Wrapping Up

It’s clear through the tape and stat mix that Kuminga’s development in handling, finishing, and midrange scoring has taken a major leap, all contributing to huge success on the drive. There are obvious playmaking concerns that loom large over this, but he has all the time in the world. He won’t turn 22 until next season. And don’t forget he went from utterly inept on the drive to borderline dominant in the span of 2.5 seasons.

Parts of this article may come off as overly critical and expectant for a player his age. That was partially my intent. He has put himself into a stratosphere of offensive performance that demands expectations for further development. When your game grows this quickly, why would it stop? We (the fans, the analysts, the team, Kuminga himself) all want the same thing. To see his game kick into an even higher gear, and the next one after that. And the next one. And the next one…

The post Jonathan Kuminga’s Drive to Stardom appeared first on Swish Theory.

This is not one of those articles. The basketball world just saw Trayce Jackson-Davis follow up a strong outing against the Portland Trail Blazers with 29 minutes of shot-blocking, rebounding, rim-running excellence against the Boston Celtics on national television. So did his teammates and coaching staff; in postgame, Steve Kerr stated Jackson-Davis will be a consistent part of his rotation going forward, while Klay Thompson gave the rookie a new nickname:

Forget finding a role, Trayce Jackson-Davis just found one in front of the whole country.

So, I’m not exactly breaking news here. But in fairness, we tried to tell you. Our Charlie Cummings had this to say the day after the Dubs selected TJD late in the second round: “A clear path to a rotation spot, great value, and an experienced winning player on a cheap multi-year deal. What else could you want from the 57th pick?”

What was that clear path to a rotation spot Charlie identified so accurately? It started with Jackson-Davis being, by far, the most athletic Golden State big, the strongest interior presence on both ends of the court. Unlike the increasingly limited Kevon Looney and the perimeter-oriented Dario Šarić, TJD is a fearsome rim-runner, the first one the Warriors have employed in some time.

Not only is he an alley-oop partner for Chris Paul off the bench, but he’s already a consistent beneficiary of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson drawing two defenders (they tend to do that):

TJD is 6’9″ with a 7’1″ wingspan, can finish with either hand and has good but not extraterrestrial leaping ability. So, he’s not prime Dwight Howard, but he’s a legitimate threat. That’s more than enough when playing with the Splash Brothers.

See, we’re not totally past simple, positional math. Trayce plays the 5, so he’s guarded by the opposing 5, in this case Al Horford. When Trayce screens for Klay Thompson here, Horford jumps at the all-time great shooter, who hits his lefty big on a roll to the basket. The only thing that stands between the Warriors rookie and two points not a center, but Derrick White, one of the great rim-protecting guards the NBA has seen, but still just 6’4″. Jackson-Davis finishes right over the top:

TJD makes it look easy — and for him, it might be — but his fellow bigs aren’t able to take full advantage of the looks the Splash Bros create. Better yet, the lefty’s ability to finish at the rim may be the jelly to Golden State’s peanut butter, but the sandwich comes with a side.

On the very next possession, the Warriors flow into an identical action. Jackson-Davis hands it off to Thompson, who hits his rook right back on the roll. Derrick White is prepared though, and meets TJD with the proper respect, but it hardly matters because Jackson-Davis is already hitting a cutter for an easy layup:

This comes as no surprise, as the Indiana University product was dropping dimes consistently in Bloomington:

TJD’s lack of playing time to start the season infuriated many Warriors fans, and it’s easy to see why. The 23-year-old hasn’t exactly added many new skills, and his existing ones have translated predictably. In the words of excellent Warriors writer Joe Viray: “He’s a fundamentally sound screener who can make things immediately difficult for defenders at the point of attack; he’s nimble and mobile enough to force defenders to have to make quick decisions; his athleticism and above-the-rim capabilities make him a credible finishing threat.”

All of that was certainly on the pre-draft scouting report — and hey, it’s why the Warriors picked him — as Viray continues: “On a team that currently goes to the rim at the lowest rate among 30 teams…Jackson-Davis is an infusion of new possibilities the Warriors have yet to explore this season.”

TJD doesn’t have to be perfect to create the rim pressure the Dubs have been missing this season. And he’s not. He’s still learning how to time his rolls to the rim; on this one, a potential lob is erased because Jackson-Davis is simply too slow getting out of his screen and then doesn’t sprint to the rim…

…but his mere existence on the court makes up for the occasional rookie mistake. Jackson-Davis loves to sprint the floor in transition, and is tough for his matchups to keep up with. That creates a cascading effect here, where Horford lags behind the youngster, forcing Jayson Tatum to respect a rim-running threat. Thus, Tatum is poorly positioned to recover to Jonathan Kuminga, who catches the ball with an immediate advantage to drive to the rim (where he smokes a finger-roll):

This is TJD’s appeal, an ability to create pressure on the rim both in traditional settings, like your standard pick-and-roll, or in chaos: Golden State’s movement offense or transition. Hopefully, we see some more of this too:

The best part of that play? Jackson-Davis was slightly late in rotating over to the rim; Brown hit the paint before he did. Yet, “late for the help, early for the poster” did not apply here. Rim protectors are afforded leeway when they possess the athletic gifts Jackson-Davis does — a well-positioned rim protector who can’t jump is little more than an oversized traffic cone. Once again, TJD doesn’t have to be the perfect rookie to impact this Warriors roster; he just has to be himself.

Thanks to his fluidity at 6’9″, Jackson-Davis hasn’t just shown potential as a help-side rim protector, but when playing drop defense as well. His hips are much quicker, his feet much more nimble than his counterparts in Šarić and Looney, and thus, he can play closer to the level of the screen while giving up little on the back-end. He is not Brook Lopez, whose size and strength repel drivers from the rim and erase offensive-rebounding opportunities, nor is he Draymond Green, whose anticipation and hands allow him to play between two attackers seamlessly.

Yet, over the last two games, Jackson-Davis has made it clear he’s not going to bleed points as the last line of defense for the Dubs. Here, he meets deadly pull-up shooter Anfernee Simons outside the paint but is unmoved by Simons’ crossover, forcing the explosive guard to take a sweeping lefty hook, which DeAndre Ayton ultimately puts back:

This play results in another bucket, but the process and movement skills are undeniable. TJD meets Jayson Tatum at the arc, who throws an in-n-out at the young big. Jackson-Davis closes then opens his hips instantly to stick with Tatum, who burrows into his chest. Jackson-Davis remains straight up through the contact, not fouling and forcing a tough floater that bangs in off the backboard:

The rookie beats one of the NBA’s best drivers to the spot, avoids fouling, and contests a tough floater that really had little business falling. Jackson-Davis has put a lot of positives on tape in his last two games, seemingly earning him a spot in the rotation after 47 minutes of play resulted in 24 points, 21 boards, and four blocks on 11-16 shooting. Yet, that defensive rep on an MVP candidate might be the most telling play he made. This dude is going to be just fine.

The case for TJD the NBA Draft prospect was not hard to make. He could move, he could pass, he could score around the rim, and he displayed those qualities in spades during four seasons at Indiana. Unfortunately, the case against him was obvious as well, and 29 NBA teams bought it, some of them twice: 6’9″, couldn’t shoot, and four seasons at Indiana.

Yet, it’s that first batch of qualities that’s shining through in The Bay. Jackson-Davis is 6’9″, perhaps undersized for a big, but he’s a bouncy, active 6’9″ with long arms, ambidextrous finishing touch, and fearlessness as a shot-blocker. And hey, it doesn’t matter if you can’t shoot when your shots are dunks and layups.

Trayce Jackson-Davis fits like a glove on the Golden State Warriors. But that’s not news, is it?

The post Finding a Role: Trayce Jackson-Davis appeared first on Swish Theory.

So, here we are. The season hasn’t even begun and the Dubs are scrambling to make up for injuries.

Couldn’t we at least have waited until January?

Regardless, this is the reality for the time being. Draymond Green is out for the entire preseason and highly questionable for the beginning of the regular season. The Warriors are rolling out a smaller version of the new-look squad for their first preseason game on Saturday against the Lakers. Chris Paul will be starting in the backcourt, and Klay Thompson will transition to guarding power forwards (4s) in this new-look unit.

So, how is this going to work for Klay? Let’s look at his new responsibilities, how he has fared in the past, and how he can translate in the near future to this defensive role

Post-Ups

First and foremost, post-ups are a trump card against the bigger wings of the league. If Klay is going to be guarding taller, bigger players, the more skilled ones of the bunch will look to get him in the post to isolate. But over the last two seasons, Klay has held up very well in the post.

On 95 post-ups over the past 2 seasons, Klay surrendered 0.979 points per possession, putting him squarely in the league average zone by PPP. But when you dive further into the tape, you can see why he’s a strong post defender for a wing.

He’s exceptional at leveraging his strength against larger guys, digging in to concede very little ground. You hardly ever see a post mismatch end with feet near the restricted area. He may allow a good amount of post fades or hook shots, but you’ll take those all day in a 1v1 size mismatch.

You’ll notice all three of these possessions come without Draymond on the floor, where Klay is ostensibly playing the 4. He gets a low base, fights with strength, and does his best to hold up as long as he can to let his help defenders read the play. This is his more conservative form of post defense, but he has some Iguodala-like strips when the opportunity presents itself.

Though he is capable of winning 1v1 in the post, his main job is to stay sturdy while help is sent. Golden State usually offers early help when he’s being posted up by some of the league’s premier post-up talents, like these clips you see against LeBron James below:

A lot of this is a result of strong team defense. Take the below clip for example, and notice how the help affects where the 264-pound Naz Reid chooses to go:

The idea here isn’t to leave Klay on an island all of the time and expect good results. There are plenty of wings and bigs he could handle in these 1v1 situations, but the wings and bigs showing help against the more prolific post-up threats helps him to be more effective on the whole, and ultimately become a solid-to-good post defender.

Screen Action Defense

This is where things get fuzzy. And by that, I mean very little changes, but some things will change and it’s hard to predict how.

There are very few possessions where Klay truly guards a roll man, due to A) the nature of Golden State’s switching scheme and B) the kind of assignments he draws along with the help he gets. If he’s guarding the man setting the screen, he will usually just defer to the switch and let the other defender make a decision on whether to send the double or defer to the other 3 helpers. Here’s a handful of examples of the quick switching:

That last clip against new teammate Dario Saric is the closest approximation to a real roll-man possession, with early help sent by his teammates. It still ends with a layup by The Homie, but you can see the general idea.

Smart teams will bring Klay into the screen action hoping he will switch, assuming the other defender is smaller and has to cover the bigger player. This version of Klay post-injuries is less adept at shading the ballhandler and allowing the screened defender to recover back to the ball, forcing more switches and more mismatches for his teammates. Whether he is guarding 4s, wings, or guards, this would be the case.

Most commonly, the bigs he is guarding that can shoot will try to pop or fade across the arc in order to take advantage of the switching and his lack of burst. This “55” double drag set by the Utah Jazz with Klay guarding Lauri Markkanen is designed to do just that, even if the result is subpar:

Klay tallied a total of 32 PNR defending possessions across the last two years, with many coming in the playoffs. Ultimately, teams will not employ this enough to take a big chunk out of his defensive impact in the regular season, and hopefully Draymond will have returned before Klay gets torched too often.

Rotations/Weak Side Protection

This is another potential problem area, where Klay put forth a very mixed bag on the tape. There were some solid possessions where Klay rotated on the back line from the weak side, using timeliness and verticality to affect opponent shots. He was even capable of getting some authoritative blocks when everything panned out:

Again, Klay can only go as far as a rotator as his teammates allow him to go. Notice the timing of Gary Payton II sinking inside to pressure Derrick Favors while Klay rotates onto the spinning Kenrich Williams. Everyone has to move on a string to help Jordan Poole with the mismatch, similar to what we saw above when Klay was tasked with guarding LeBron post-ups.

Unfortunately, his athletic limitations and tendency to overhelp/help late showed up all too often. Take the below possession, and see if you notice where Klay goes wrong, even though the play works out:

Klay makes the correct read to rotate from the corner as Keon Johnson rejects the screen, catching both Jonathan Kuminga and Otto Porter Jr. off-balance to create an easy path to the strong side of the rim. However, he rotates quite early, abandoning the corner shooter with a window where a pass can be made. Johnson, a relatively raw rookie, does not see the read but that doesn’t excuse the timing by Klay. I am tapping the “process over results” sign here.

Then we have possessions like these. Granted, the defense is scrambling a bit as Klay tries to navigate Steph rotating back to Moe Harkless in the corner, so it’s not exactly a normal gameflow. Yet he’s early on the jump and off-balance with his verticality, doing little to impede Damian Jones while giving him the foul to boot. Typically, Klay is really good at preemptively wrapping up bigs that he cannot contest and forcing them to earn it at the line, but this was not the case here.

I think overall the back line rotations are my biggest area of concern with Klay’s defensive potential if he will guard more 4s. This means more corner-based possessions and more responsibilities rotating from the weak side or acting as the low man. He needs to be paying attention, crisp with his timing, and making plays within the construct of the defense to turn good shots into worse ones.

Corner Digs and Tags

I came away pretty impressed with how Klay digs and tags out of the corners, which I would qualify as different than a full rotation. A dig is when a wing defender rotates over to impede a player driving on their side of the floor, and a tag impedes a roll man in a similar fashion, often before they get the ball to discourage a layoff pass and narrow the window. Thompson was largely successful in both of these areas over the last couple of seasons.

Primarily, Klay is going to be asked to tag the middle rolls off the weak side. But what happens when the ballhandler is clever enough to see this and make the skip pass across the defense?

Notice the timing of when Klay plants his foot inside, and how that gives him the spring to get back out to the perimeter and contest Bobby Portis’ shot. He struggles more if this player were to collect and drive off the closeout attack, but his responsibility with most spacing bigs is just to get out there in time. His ability to break down and contest without overtly conceding the drive improved in 22/23, and will be much needed in 23/24 if he gets tough assignments who can both shoot and put it on the deck.

The tagging aspect was solid, but a bit of a mixed bag like his rotations. Those quick and strong hands can make for some strong possessions, like you see below:

This one is especially relevant with Klay guarding a 4 in Aaron Gordon and using his dig to prevent a higher-value shot (whatever Jokic does driving off the short roll) over the Aaron Gordon corner 3. Ultimately, the Warriors will try to force non-stars to beat them from beyond the paint at every turn instead of letting the offensive focal points get the shots they want.

Rebounding

This is the opposite of ending on a high note. We know Klay hasn’t been the greatest rebounder in his career, and it’s not going to get better when guarding larger guys. I could only find a few clips of him trying to fight for rebounds with bigs, and they were not great:

I labeled the first clip “boxed out, didn’t matter” because the process is as solid as it can be from Klay, there’s just nothing he can do about Isaiah Stewart being a gigantic beef castle.

The technique in the second clip is where the criticism comes from; he easily concedes the inside position, doesn’t make an effort to force Julius Randle under the rim where he is less effective, and predictably loses the battle.

This is where his teammates will be counting on him. Nobody expects Klay to win 1v1 board battles against these bigs, but they expect him to do the little things necessarily so that Kevon Looney, Andrew Wiggins, Kuminga, and Saric have chances to come clean up the mess. More of the former clip, and less of the latter one, please.

Conclusions

Ultimately this comes down to what, if anything, changes in the system. If Klay is still switching everything, as the Warriors do, it has little bearing on screen actions. It also has put him in a position in the past to be the back line guy, the corner dig/tag guy, and the post-up mismatch guy. These are not unfamiliar concepts to Klay Thompson, and it’s hard to imagine he will be scrambling to keep up with any of these responsibilities.

The main question is how far the adjustments go without Draymond in the lineup. With CP3 in the backcourt instead of a taller guard like Moses Moody or a vertically explosive one like GP2, will he be asked to get more aggressive with his help? Should he be expecting less help in the post considering the personnel of the starting lineup? And how will the switching go on guard-big PNRs with Chris Paul at the point of attack?

We will start to get answers to these questions tomorrow. Yet I am still counting on Klay Thompson to be the defender he has always been, just with a different alignment of priorities.

The post Can Klay Guard 4s? appeared first on Swish Theory.

So how did a 6’9″ undersized center with two surgically repaired hips become one of the most impactful rebounders in basketball?

Enter the Loon God.

Positioning

“Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him.” -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Not moved by him” can certainly describe Looney’s positioning on the boards; the same cannot be said for the man he is trying to box out.

Let’s move from the most basic positioning until we get into the real diabolical stuff. For starters, if you are on the edge of the paint, expect Loon to throw an arm across your chest just in case:

It may seem like nothing, but it’s a simple deterrent: if you try to crash the glass, I WILL get physical with you. In other words:

However, if Looney is the one going for the offensive rebound, you’ll need more than just a light hand to deter him. In the clip below, James Harden tries that same method before realizing he’s getting a lot more to handle than he bargained for.

Notice how hard he tries (and how low he gets) just to maintain that inside positioning. That left arm stays in Harden’s chest until the ball comes off the rim, and he tips up with ease.

His commitment to staying on the inside at both ends of the floor is incredible. It requires attention to detail and effort (both of which will be explored more in-depth later), two things he has in spades. I love this possession where he boxes out Walker Kessler. After the arm strategy fails, he uses his hips to push Kessler back to the outside and secure the paint.

Not only is Looney very good at the simple boxout and positioning moves, but he also has an advanced understanding of angles and how to manipulate them. In the below play, Loon reads the layup and decides to wall off the strong side of the rim from Jakob Poeltl. He’s playing the numbers, assuming that a miss will come off the front or at the strong side, and the gamble pays off.

Not only is he smart about putting himself in a good 1v1 boxout position, but he also knows how to seal for others. Notice below where the majority of his teammates are and how it affects where he pushes Mitchell Robinson.

Just for safekeeping, he tips it out into the yellow and gold sea of jerseys to ensure Robinson cannot wrestle it away.

Kevon is also sound at knowing when to push his man under the rim. The concept is very simple: a missed shot is not going to wind up underneath the rim, so put your man there if they manage to win inside positioning. He’s quite prolific at blowing people off their spots to do so.

Again, he’s controlling angles and playing the numbers. He’s not deterred if denied inside positioning. It can always be used to his advantage.

Plus, if you’re a guard, he’s just going to shove you into the dirt like a middle school bully who hit an early growth spurt:

Brunson does an admirable job of trying to get low with inside positioning. Kevon is not going to be moved that easily.

With how good Looney is at establishing inside position, players are going to throw all manners of counters at him to get back to that position. Watch where he tries to direct Bruno Fernando after a well-executed swim move:

Hip-on-hip contact, working for the lower position, and tangling arms: he checks all the boxes necessary to be a deterrent. It takes Fernando out of the play just long enough to secure a victory on the glass.

A last important factor in positioning: not compromising it once achieved. Loon knows how to avoid losing his rebound positioning for unlikely blocks, but can still contest shots. Pump fakes rarely throw him off his game to boot.

Positioning is a significant factor on the glass. Positioning without technique, however, is almost worthless. Let’s look closer at how Kevon has mastered the technical aspects of the board wars.

Technique

“Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.” -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

There may be only one person in the world with better hip usage than Kevon Looney. And unlike Shakira, Kevon Looney (probably) pays his taxes.

Technique in rebounding, outside of being in the right spot, comes down to leverage and making your opponent uncomfortable. In other words, Sun Tzu’s words to be exact, impose your will on the enemy. And boy does Kevon know how to impose his will using his hips.

Look at how much lower his hips are than his counterpart in each clip. These aren’t slouch rebounders either; all three of DeAndre Ayton, Jakob Poeltl, and Domantas Sabonis placed in the top 20 in total boards per game with Sabonis pacing the league in glasswork. Yet all three were physically outclassed by a smaller player. The low man always wins.

Though the below clip falls more under the category of a shot contest, it still points to his mastery of hip usage to throw opposing centers off. He practically contests this Alperen Sengün attempt with his hips as much as his hands. It serves the dual purpose of also setting him up to collect the board.

This hip leverage is only half the battle, however, and the above clip forms a good segue. Hips and hands must move in concert. It’s the flamenco of basketball.

Notice how he is constantly changing hands when the player moves from one side of his back to another. As we discussed earlier, he gets that first hand out early as an initial deterrent but continues to use them once the player has committed to fighting for the board. Sengün gets upset in the second clip for how high his arm gets, and understandably so. This is another consistent theme in Kevon’s rebounding tape: force the refs to make a call, and walk that line of a loose-ball foul. Ultimately, you will trade 1-2 loose ball fouls per game for rebounding dominance.

A last technical aspect of Kevon’s rebounding that I greatly appreciate is his swim move. When being boxed out on the offensive glass, especially when by a smaller player, a well-timed swim move is the easiest way to put yourself back in a strong position. But it’s far more difficult than it looks.

The release needs to be strong enough to shed the other player, but not so strong that it looks like you “pulled the chair”. You have to use your hands to make it work; outright throwing the player aside will get you called for a foul. And you must time it right. Swimming too early gives them time to reposition, and swimming too late could mean the ball is already in someone else’s hands.

I’m a sucker for seeing technical mastery on display in basketball. If you watch Kevon Looney on the boards, that’s all you will see. He’s not crashing the boards; that implies a kind of reckless violence to the act. He seduces the boards.

Effort

“If you fight with all your might, there is a chance of life; whereas death is certain if you cling to your corner” -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Kevon Looney certainly does not cling to his corner. He will put himself out there, making several efforts while not conceding an inch if it can be helped. His work to not get put off of his spots is the standard for rebounders as far as I’m concerned:

I salute the smaller players like PJ Tucker and Saddiq Bey trying to force Kevon off his spot. You can put two hands between the numbers and extend, yet he maintains his balance somehow. Throw your whole body into his chest, he will contort over the top and snag the rebound right in front of your face.

Entrenched in his spots, this brings the multiple efforts into the picture. You’re not going to get away with beating him on the first effort and expecting the rebound to fall in your lap. He’s going to grab, poke, swipe at, and tip away the ball endlessly until he or a teammate has secured it.

Even if out of the play initially, he will throw himself wildly back into it just for the chance at tipping a board away:

Another important factor in his effort is knowing how to make sure a good end result is produced. He sticks with the ball, having a great sense of when he has a window to tip it up himself:

Of course, I’d be remiss if I mentioned his tip drill putbacks without showing his statue-building game-winner against the Hawks in January:

Not only does Looney know when he has a chance to get the putback himself; he can rule out the possibility in an instant, and look to find teammates on the perimeter or cutting toward the basket.

This would be a valuable trait in any offensive system. It carries extra weight on a Warriors team full of prolific cutters and even better shooters. That extra split second he doesn’t need to take in turning and finding a pass can mean an open layup or uncontested three by Stephen Curry or Klay Thompson. All of that is borne out of Kevon’s excellent sense of effort mixed with timing, our last skill factor to discuss.

Timing

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Though not quite like a thunderbolt, Kevon’s planning is often impenetrable to prediction by his opponents. His innate sense of timing and internal clock would make George Michael Bluth jealous.

Watch the below clip and pause when he starts to load up his jump. Notice how quickly Anthony Davis can get back up for a second jump off the ground; Looney does not have that luxury (double labrum repairs, remember?). He has to jump at the exact right moment to make this tip work, and does just that:

It’s pretty crazy how often he collects his rebound at the absolute highest point he can reach. Knowing how long it takes you to reach that point and when to make the jump cannot be taught. That’s just an incredible level of learned skill over the years of dominance on the glass.

His timing also extends to knowing when to crash. Looney is much like a wizard: he arrives neither early nor late, but precisely when he means to. It jumps off the screen when watching his tape:

That impeccable sense also shows up when going for his own misses. Loon knows just where his own shots are going, and picks the quickest path to intercept them and get it back up before anyone else notices.

The Whole Rebounding Package

The timing brings together a complete package of rebounding skills. You’ve probably noticed by now that a lot of these clips could easily slide into other categories. Rarely does he have an effort play that doesn’t involve positioning, or technique that doesn’t involve timing; really, any combination of the four.

This brings me to the main point. Too often I see rebounders who employ some of these skills, but leave out the microskills that lead to truly dominant rebounding. Being tall or a hard worker is great, but these skills have to work in conjunction to find true productivity.

Another thing I have come to appreciate about Looney circles back to his high school days. He went from Milwaukee’s Kevin Durant to a yeoman-like worker on the glass. Few NBA players can maintain a spot in the league after suffering such a devastating alteration to their physical attributes. Even fewer can thrive, especially at such physically demanding parts of the game

Kevon Looney has mastered this Art of Board, and we get to watch him ply his trade for 82 games per season. What an incredible gift.

The post Kevon Looney’s Art of Board appeared first on Swish Theory.

Yet there is no such thing as too much good defense, provided those players can maintain offensive cohesion. Outside of GP2, they’re not possessed with many strong backcourt defenders and need an increased quality on the wings and in the paint to make up for this deficiency. To get playing time at those spots, you need to show serious defensive gumption.

Moses Moody has been on the fringes of the rotation for the first two years of his career with Golden State and has yet another opportunity to solidify his spot in Steve Kerr‘s lineups. I will go in-depth on the defensive side of his game to answer one question: Is the defense good enough to demand minutes?

Methodology

We’ll break down tape and stats from his rookie and sophomore years to compare and contrast. I’ll separate everything into on/off-ball categories, doing my best to track his strengths and weaknesses in these individual areas and explaining why. Hopefully, by the end, you will have a better idea of what Moses can do, what he cannot, and what he might do.

Rookie Year

Let’s kick it off with his on-ball defense from his rookie season.

Hip/Foot Movement

Lower-body movement and coordination were the major defensive selling points for Moody coming out of Arkansas. He was a true artist with foot placement, hip-flipping, and using his lower body excellently to make up for a lack of traditional athleticism.

Making the jump from NCAA to NBA athleticism and dribble craft is something else entirely. You don’t have the same mistakes to pounce on or the same hesitations in which you can make up ground. These guys are decisive, explosive, and very shrewd with the ball. Even the average players can make you look silly if you aren’t prepared:

No disrespect (maybe a little) to Austin Rivers, but you don’t want him beating off the dribble if you want to stick. You can see how slow he is re-setting his hips and getting back into the play. This was a definite theme of his rookie season.

It would be SO easy to say “Hey, that’s Jalen Green, things happen” and excuse the athletic deficit. But this is the NBA, where a select few hundred of the 7 billion people on Earth come to play. You have to go up against the best athletes in the world on a nightly basis, and you have to learn to deal with them. The foot/hip skills that Moody consistently displayed in college did not translate during his rookie season.

Of the hundreds of perimeter possessions I watched from 2021/22, I found one wire-to-wire defensive stop. Just think about the nickname of the player he’s stopping in the clip below and you’ll see why it’s concerning.

And yes, that was called a foul. So the whole “on-ball” athleticism thing was not panning out.

One shiny silver lining: he was pretty amazing as a rookie for keeping his feet moving and getting superb positioning to draw charges. There were more than a few impressive instances, and the one below was perhaps my favorite. Keeping in front of Keldon Johnson with the proper separation is impressive by itself, and he sells the call like a real vet to boot:

It was a consistent theme of his game and showed up on the stat sheet. He tied for the team lead in charges drawn per 48 minutes with Draymond Green in his rookie season. If you can be in the same stratosphere as Draymond with any defensive stat, you must be doing something VERY right.

Hand Placement

One thing I did love to see was how he uses his hands. Armed with his +7 wingspan, Moody has serious length to bother guys in all kinds of situations. But with albatross-like power comes serious responsibility.

Most young players with that kind of length are constantly getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s so tempting to reach or swipe, and while Moody was caught his fair share, more often than not he showed an excellent sense of verticality.

With those hands splayed outwards and the lower body keeping him in pace with Jose Alvarado, there’s almost nowhere for the diminutive Pelicans guard to go. He gives no opportunity to draw contact while deterring the strong side of the rim and still manages to affect the reverse layup attempt. That’s the good stuff right there.

It also came into play when switched on to bigs. He has a great sense of when to grab and when to disengage in the post, and keeps his arms steady without swiping down to provide the maximum deterrence possible in a disadvantageous situation:

What impressed me most was his sense of when to gamble, and how often it paid off. The arm length and strength combination give him a lethal pair of clubs to dislodge drives. He recorded a ton of strip blocks on drives, perhaps most impressively on this possession against a mammoth Xavier Tillman:

If you’re going to have agility/straight-line speed issues, superior wingspan and hand placement is going to be a prerequisite to make a defensive impact. Moody checked both of those boxes relative to rookie wings and gives him a strong base to build on.

Trail Defense

Trail can be a difficult thing to evaluate because of how context-dependent it is. With the simple truth that an offensive player knows what he wants to do before you can figure it out, finding yourself in trail is common. The main questions are: can you do things to avoid getting in trail, and will you stay under control once there?

The above play is a good example of the margins a defender working in trail has to deal with. Moody is a step late reacting to Deni Avdija‘s movement towards the dribble handoff with Porzingis, setting off a chain of events. The screen further dislodges him, forcing Looney to play higher than he would like to prevent the drive. Moses is too far behind the play to switch on to Porzingis and prevent the roll in what is now effectively empty-side PNR, and Loon has to gamble as the sole strong side protector. Deni makes the read, and Kristaps gets an uncontested dunk. All this cascades from one missed step.

This fell under the more preventable type of play. In this league, you can’t give extra advantages to anybody. It’s not just a question of timing either; look at the angle Moody takes trying to intercept Lonnie Walker‘s curl and how it costs the team another uncontested dunk.

This circles back to the straight-line athletic deficiencies that Moses has. If you’re going to be a step slower than your man, angle, and timing mistakes cannot happen if you hope to stay in the play. Fortunately, Moody is possessed of inherent and learned traits that help him contain well in trail if he gets himself in the right position.

Two things allow Moses to make this play: the wingspan of a large coastal gull and excellent hand placement. Jaylen Brown is going to beat you clean off the dribble sometimes, but he’s never truly out of the play. He breaks down his left arm to keep some measure of pressure on Jaylen from behind as he goes directly into the help, but gives him just enough space as not to risk a lean-in foul draw. He knows Jaylen will have to bring the ball back in order to try and finish over Kevon, so all he has to do is time up his extension. The jump is timed perfectly to get his right arm at the apex and devours the shot attempt from behind the play in a Kawhi-like fashion. This is what ideal trail defense looks like for an athlete of Moses’ caliber.

Of all kinds of on-ball plays, I was most confident I would see improvement in trail going into Season 2. He has the footwork skill, arm length, and hand placement skill to be an elite recovery defender after getting behind the play. It was just about repetition, adjustment, and eventual growth. We’ll get into whether or not that improvement happened later on.

Closeouts

This was another tough thing to navigate and involves a lot of subjectivity. A big factor here is how much the Warriors ask of their wings in terms of paint protection and how it affects their ability to recover to contest outside shots. Here are a couple of plays that show what I’m referring to:

In the top clip, Moody has to shade towards the paint off the corner with Kuminga playing high to deny the Brunson drive. It may seem like he’s abandoning his man, but the team will trade open corner threes for open layups if the initial POA defenders cannot contain the action. So he is making the right play, but it makes him look bad. Though he is a tad late with his help in the second clip trying to dig the ballhandler, he still helps to contain the drive and force a deep three from Rajon Rondo. A preferable outcome to what a Russ/Dwight Howard PNR could generate.

This isn’t to say that all late Moody closeouts were a product of their defensive alignment. He had moments of losing his edge and forgetting to move with purpose, and they led to open shots more often than not:

Yes, it’s much easier to slack off when up 36 in the 4th quarter, but this was no isolated incident; just the most egregious.

Mostly I came away impressed with how Moody navigated offering help without sacrificing his ability to provide a closeout. He showed the wherewithal needed to process who he is guarding vs. what he is trying to prevent. Take a look at the tag and recover below against Memphis:

With Jordan Poole directly in the action, Moody knows he will more likely than not have to provide help, assuming (correctly) that Andre Iguodala will have to play up to the level of the screen. Jaren has empty space to roll into unless Moses can provide some kind of deterrence with his tag, which he goes. Tyus Jones, one of the better playmakers in the league, anticipates and hits the skip to the far corner. But Moses is more than ready.

Watch how he chops his feet as he tags Jaren, staying physically ready for a quick change of direction. He’s off to the corner in two quick strides to close down Ziaire Williams. Again, the chopping of his feet allows him to prepare for a drive and ultimately stops Williams from attacking a very strong closeout. There is give-and-take still; the pull-up three is still available, which Ziaire takes and makes, but he was a 28% three-point shooter at the time. Golden State will trade that shot for a rolling Jaren slam all day, and the quality closeout prevented any kind of baseline drive from developing.

Here’s another example of providing great help off of a non-shooting threat and following up with a beautifully controlled closeout:

Again chopping the feet while tagging the roller gives him a platform to close back out quickly. Instead of a foot chop going into the closeout, he plants hard with his right foot in an attempt to deny Josh Christopher the middle. A rapid flip of the hips counters JayGup continuing to go down the middle, and he provides excellent defense on the drive. Even though Gup gets 2 feet in the paint and ends up scoring, denying both the three and the rim look with a healthy closeout is what is asked of him.

One thing I really enjoyed about watching Moses close out on the perimeter is how crafty he is at recognizing situations and giving himself little advantages. I am enamored with his “slingshot” trick, a clever way to toe the line of committing an off-ball foul to create a momentum advantage that makes up for his lack of burst.

Notice how he uses the non-contesting hand to wrap himself around the screener, helping to balance himself and ever-so-slightly shift more of his momentum into the closeout while remaining under control. If he grabs too hard it could be a costly foul. He’s too wily for that, applying just the right amount of force to create a positive result without drawing the attention of the zebras.

A last thing on his smarts when closing out: transition offense. Recognizing when to leak out after closing down the ball takes a long time to master, and the fact that Moody did it often was quite impressive. It’s a simple and effective way to generate transition offense by opening up outlets without sacrificing team rebounding if done right, as he does below:

On the whole, I’d say Moody was pretty superb at closing down the ball for a rookie wing. Three-pointers aren’t going anywhere, and even if it’s not the sexiest form of defense you have to be proficient and smart about it to stick on the perimeter. Moody showed an excellent baseline of skill in this regard in his debut season, a very promising sign for his defensive future.

On-Ball Wrap Up

There was a lot of good and a lot of bad. Moody really cleaned up in the technical areas, especially with foot movement and hand placement, in addition to some flash plays with his hips and swipe timing on the ball. But the lack of true stopping is hard to get past, and it led to him being a negative overall on-ball defender in his rookie season. Fortunately, you can see a skill base being developed, and it wasn’t all for nothing.

The main concern: athletic limitations are much, MUCH harder to improve on than technical limitations. You can teach footwork, hand placement, and much more over time but you cannot teach the athleticism that Jonathan Kuminga or Gary Payton II have. This is something to monitor.

Off-Ball:

To me, off-ball defense in Moody’s role is much more simplified. Some of the on-ball components are baked into this, and since I chose to put closeouts under the on-ball category (truly, you could go either way on this) it leaves us with only a few crucial parts to cover.

Tracking Man

For a rookie wing, this guy knew how to keep his head on a swivel.

According to Synergy Sports, Moses Moody did not allow a single shot attempt off a cut in his rookie season. I will, unfortunately, have to dispute this – I found one (1) shot attempt he conceded off a cut:

Considering it was the last 2 minutes of a 40-point blowout, I’ll let that one slide.

If you paid close attention to a lot of his on-ball clips, you’ll notice how Moody is great at keeping his head moving between man and ball and ensuring he moves his feet to stay between his man and the rim when playing off the ball. That is about 99% of the battle in preventing easy off-ball buckets: attention, attention, footwork, and more attention.

Watch this possession below and how frequently his head moves:

This part of his game was absolutely dialed. No notes.

Rotating/Helping

The answer to the question “What is Moody’s defense like in rotation?” is “yes”, to quote Mr. AVO Nekias Duncan.

He seemed to get just about everything right. This is where the technical proficiency and great sense of timing can really be shown off, and boy did he show off at times.

Getting thrown into PNR roll-man defense situations with Jordan Poole defending the ballhandler? Not a problem:

Rotating out of the corners to prevent drives? Sure thing.

What about last-second switches onto cutting bigs? Covered, and then some.

Just look at how he high-points the ball to obliterate the layup, then immediately gets vertical to prevent the putback attempt. Explosive stocks potential AND a technically sound follow-up play? You have my heart, Moses.

The below possession was easily my favorite:

He shades off Kleber in the corner (feet chopping, of course) to discourage the initial Brunson drive, and the kickout puts the whole defense in rotation. This gets Luka going downhill against Steph, and Kleber has only to execute a strong “Gortat” screen to prevent Moses from interfering with a clean layup. But Moody can feel it coming and shakes the dubiously legal screen at the last minute to punch the ball out of Dončić’s hands. It’s perfection.

This kind of rotational impact from a true wing is SO impressive, mixing the physical tools and smarts necessary to put himself in the right spots and create event plays. I think it was by far the most outstanding part of his defensive game in his rookie season, and it left me wanting to see much more.

Rebounding

This was the main part of Moody’s off-ball game that I found lacking. Despite his constant responsibilities as a low man sluffing in from the corners, he recorded a paltry 8.4% defensive rebounding rate, in the 22nd percentile amongst wings. That was a disappointment to me considering his length, but the problems showed up on the tape. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, he was just physically outmatched at times:

He’s just not physically strong enough to hold up against big forwards like Grant Williams, and considering his defensive role as a corner helper, that was primarily the type of guy he was tasked with boxing out.

At times, he was still able to show off the technical skill and vertical athleticism/wingspan to make up for his lack of size. He has a knack for high-pointing the ball (reaching the ball at the apex of his jump) which you can see in this battle for the zenith with Josh Hart:

He also does the small things that I really appreciate in a wing rebounder. As always, Moses is using active feet and court awareness to his advantage:

As the shot goes up, he’s moving his feet from a lateral position to get closer to the rebound area while staying ready in case an offensive rebound and quick kickout happens. It puts him in a spot to help the Warriors with a rebounding numbers advantage while doing his best to prepare for open second-chance threes.

It’s a major theme in his game across the board, in case you haven’t noticed: smarts and technical skill make up for athleticism in many ways.

We have now finished the half marathon known as his rookie season tape. But this is a full 26.2. Strap in.

Sophomore Year

On-Ball

Boy, did we have some drastic changes in this category. Let’s jump right into what made him such a different player on the ball vs. his rookie season.

Hip/Foot Movement

Before we dig into his defensive stopping from last season, I encourage you to go back to the beginning for his struggles, and who his most impressive stop came against.

After digesting that Slo-Mo possession, prepare yourself for what comes next.

Three of these guys would have blown past him like Mark Few through a DUI checkpoint. Look how he seems to be the aggressor on these possessions, not falling behind but utterly containing these drives with his hands and feet. Though LaMelo is not the most explosive athlete in the league, he has excellent handle and change-of-direction skills, but that didn’t seem to be a problem for Moses.

These weren’t the only outstanding point-of-attack possessions he put on tape. Especially in the playoffs, real clamps were present all year. Kevin Huerter tried to take him off the dribble a few times in the first-round series against Sacramento, and it went rather poorly for Red Velvet:

Notice how quickly he’s flipping his hips to counter these crossovers. The difference in his flexibility and hip speed is night and day compared to his rookie season. As I said before, athletic development is one of the most difficult things to achieve, yet he clearly took a step in this regard. How did this happen?

Like a Silicon Valley divorcee, Moses found self-improvement through yoga. I’d also like to take a moment to acknowledge Kevon Looney being credited for athletic improvement. That’s my king right there.

That newfound athleticism led to some improved screen navigation as well. I found myself wowed at how quickly he went from dying on a high proportion of screens to flying around them as if they weren’t there. Watch the subtle shift of the hips below and how little time the screen costs him. It’s hard to not be impressed.

It’s a good re-screen by Mo Bamba that should create separation. Moses simply slides over it like a trout over a riverbed, hardly noticing the impediment. That is quite different from a rookie season where he simply did not have the short-area agility necessary to make these plays. Maybe I should try yoga.

Of course, there was the typically great foot movement and body control that made him a great on-ball charge taker from the get-go:

The hip movement only enhanced footwork and solid foot speed, turning him into a different beast with his lower body and unlocking a new level of on-ball prowess. And that’s before we even get to his hand/arm usage.

Hand Placement

Much like his rookie season, this was an area where Moses excelled on the tape.

There were definitely sore spots with getting a bit too in-your-face with his hands, resulting in unnecessary fouls. But on the whole, I came away dazzled with how good he is at verticality and knowing when to gamble.

The clips under hip/foot movement contained lots of impressive hand usage, which you are free to go back and look for. I loved seeing possessions where he could quickly change his hand positioning to adjust to the situation, as he does on this Terry Rozier corner drive:

He flashes quickly in case he has to contest the pull-up, drawing his hands back quickly to prevent a lean-in foul. He smoothly checks with the left hand before going vertical as Rozier begins to drive, never swiping down and focusing on containment instead of outright stopping. Rozier does get two feet in the paint and hit the turnaround, but that’s excellent process by Moses not conceding the easier shot by keeping his hands where they need to be.

That impressive hand placement and activity frequently paid off with event plays on the ball. I love seeing a guy go full wacky inflatable tube man to deter passing on the ball and getting rewarded for it.

Happy feet, timing, activity. All things that will endear you to a defensive-first coaching staff.

Though the risks did not pay off sometimes, there were echoes of Death Lineup-era Iguodala when he committed. He yoinked the ball with a high frequency on the ball with clean strips and hand strength:

Look how precise that timing is. With Fox, he waits for the hang dribble before pouncing; on Hayes, he perfectly anticipates the pull-up.

I’d be remiss if I omitted the instances where the gambles didn’t pay off. You need to see the bad to appreciate the good, and there was bad:

But that’s not to say his hand skills were a detractor to his game. Far more often than not he was making impact plays with his gambles, and did an excellent job keeping verticality on the ball and denying passing lanes. This, combined with his newfound athleticism, made him quite dangerous on the ball.

Trail Defense

The athletic improvements led to far less avoidable trail defense for Moody in his sophomore season. This unlocked a new level of his proficiency in trail, both in preventing it and executing it when thrust into the situation.

Getting around screens in trail was certainly a problem. A lot of anticipation, foot speed, and agility goes into perfectly locking into trail. He wasn’t able to put it together on possessions against some great off-ball movers, and the tape showed it:

Working out the angles takes time and repetition. As the season went on, he put together stronger and stronger showings in trail.

Notice how quickly he anticipates the action, scans the floor, and then locks his eyes on Pat Connaughton. He takes a great angle and keeps his feet in motion (in sync with his hands per usual) to close down the drive and block the shot.

It’s pretty ridiculous how often he ended up blocking shots in trail. That wingspan and anticipation made for some serious event creation in a disadvantageous situation, which most wing defenders cannot physically do.

Bonus points for ripping the ball away from Landale to deny the second chance. The below possession against Devin Booker felt so casual that it made my jaw drop:

There are going to be instances where he gets knocked off the ball by screens. Guys end up behind the play all the time. If Moody can continue this athletic development and continues to his hands and feet to get back in the play at a high level, he could really thrive in trail going forwards.

Closeouts

The major issues with Moody’s closeouts in his rookie year were A) heavy paint responsibility and B) not being able to stay under control while aggressive. Despite being in many of the same situations, he showed marked improvement closing down the ball for the entire season.

The short-area agility allowed him to get much closer to the ball without sacrificing drives. Not only did he contain drives, but he also managed some outstanding recoveries.

In both of these clips, he does an incredible job breaking his feet down in order to contain dribble relocations. The first one impressed me most because of the quick tag on Adebayo before closing down, again emphasizing his responsibilities in rotation. The second is just flat-out silly, completely flipping his momentum around and finding an ever-so-small block window to deny the Malik Beasley three.

We’ll go back to his rookie year closeouts out of low man rotations to emphasize how different he is with his athleticism and decisive movement. See if you can guess which comes in which season:

The loading of his inside foot makes all the difference. Instead of being high in the air and unprepared to swing his momentum around, Moody breaks himself down in the second clip expecting to close out into the corner. With the momentum on his side, he’s able to quickly spring at Keegan Murray for a quality shot contest late in the clock.

Here’s another instance of him rotating to cover the big man and closing out. Only this time, he completely runs his man off the line and *still* recovers to contest the middy.

Not only was Moses able to maintain his level of activity in the paint, denying drives as the low man and tagging rollers from the wings, but he turned those possessions into strong closeouts. Yet another part of his on-ball game is falling into place, all because of…yoga??

On-Ball Wrap Up

This was about as night and day it gets compared to his rookie season.

Impressive stops. Much fewer athletic limitations. Better foot speed to accentuate his footwork skill and elite hand placement. It was all there. I don’t have words for the changes he underwent; it was just astounding.

Off-Ball:

Home stretch, people. Stay locked in.

Tracking Man

Yet again, Synergy did chart Moody with zero shot attempts or free throws conceded out of cuts. For those keeping score at home, that means he allowed one (1) basket off cuts through the first 1,500 minutes of his NBA career. Pretty good if you ask me!

He’s constantly keeping his head in motion and keeping active, preparing for all scenarios to deny his man. What stood out the most was the level of activity he was able to manage while also keeping track of his own man.

While still in a position to cover a skip pass to Lonnie Walker, Moody recognizes the brief opening for Anthony Davis at the nail and moves at lightning speed to blow the play up. Awareness, anticipation, and great hand strength to boot. This is awesome stuff.

Positioning is a major part of the equation. On this below possession, he offers nail help to deny Fred VanVleet the drive while staying between the ball and his man (Siakam). At the last second, he commits on the drive to force the kick and closes down with the idea of preventing the drive. Leaving the 32% shooter open to deny the paint touch is great stuff, and he keeps his feet sliding to avoid allowing the open three unnecessarily before FVV is fully in drive mode.

Moody’s superb attention to detail made him a great off-ball tracker the entire season. This is one part of his game I have no concern over going forward.

Rotating/Helping

Once again, Moses looked first-rate in rotation for a wing.

I’m absolutely enamored by the way he gets vertical when contesting shots in rotation. He jumps into the opponent in a Goldilocks fashion (not too hard, not too soft) and does everything he can to affect the shot without fouling.

When he got his timing and jump apex right, it produced some explosive blocked shots off the ball. He can close gaps in a hurry and use his condor arms to erase layups from the weak side.

You can also consider me a huge fan of how he navigates being the roll man defender in pick-and-roll/screen actions. Those arms can make up ground quickly, and he can position himself very well to make an impact:

The footwork and positioning skill brought the usual amount of charges drawn, including ones in rotation as you see below against Jimmy Butler:

In this switch-heavy scheme, it’s very important to have players that can make an impact either navigating the screen or switching on to a big. Not only is Moody capable of doing so, but his processing speed to recognize when to switch is outstanding for his age/experience level. Count the switches he makes in the below clip, all coming one after the other:

There’s not much more to say about his rotational skill compared to his rookie season, which was already well above average. Moses is just chock-full of smarts and court awareness with the physical tools to make an impact, and you could see it whenever he got on the floor.

Rebounding

Save the worst for last, I guess?

It wasn’t for a lack of trying. I love how Moody checked his immediate area to find a body, and often looked like a strong rebounder in isolated situations. You can see that impact below.

He gets really low going for his boxouts, applying the football mentality of “low man wins.” The vertical spring gets him there for high-pointed boards, allowing him to beat guys like Bam Adebayo to the zenith of the ball.

Unfortunately, this did not translate into an overall improvement in his defensive rebounding impact. I wouldn’t call going from the 22nd percentile to the 27th a leap as much as simple statistical variance. But if rebounding is going to be his defensive weak spot, I will absolutely take it.

Conclusions

I went into this article with very little expectation of improvement, and frankly thought there would be much less to uncover than this. What I found was a player completely reversing his defensive forecast while building on existing strengths.

His off-ball defense (outside of the rebounding) is damn good for a wing, and this only got better going into his second year. That’s not going to keep you in the lineup, but it’s a great thing to have. The problem from his rookie season was that no amount of rotational impact off the ball can make up for being a poor on-ball defender. Wings have to make their money at the point of attack, not on the low block.

The improved athleticism unlocked everything going into his second season. He was aggressive and fully shutting down drives instead of merely containing. The foot movement and agility complemented his game excellently, and the hand placement/strength combined with his overall discipline looked fantastic. Now he can pair a strong on-ball game with his quality off-ball game. That may just be enough to keep Moody in the lineup on a nightly basis while he fleshes out his offensive role.

It’s worth pointing out that growth is never truly linear. This isn’t 2K; sometimes you regress, other times you stay stagnant before making a jump, and sometimes you don’t grow at all. The point of this article isn’t to create a forecast of a future All-Defensive player. Exploring outcomes, both positive and negative, is always the name of the game. Keep your mind open to all player development possibilities and you will never be surprised.

By the end of this piece, I had completely changed my mind about Moses’ defensive potential. The leap in athleticism is opening new doors to new outcomes, and I cannot wait to see what he puts on the tape next year.

Thank you for finishing this marathon with me.

The post The Defensive Growth of Moses Moody appeared first on Swish Theory.

Picture you are ten years in the past. 2013 Blake Griffin is dominating on the pick-and-roll, jumping over cars and defenders (sorry not sorry Kendrick Perkins), and dominating in the paint. Imagine you’re given a glimpse into the future, and you see this:

Since AI deep-fakes are not a thing yet, you’d just assume this is some sort of black magic or bath salts-induced hallucination. But yes, Blake Griffin is a perimeter guy now. How things change.

Now, I could prattle on about mystery shooting development and leave you thinking “hey, anything is possible!”, but my brain cannot work that way. We need to at least narrow things down, via film and stats, to develop realistic shooting development comparisons for Jonathan Kuminga. So, let’s get into it.

Criteria

For this exercise, I picked out players with comparable frames, shot diets, and development arcs. They’re not perfect fits, but it’s the closest you can get to Kuminga’s profile. We will use Brandon Ingram, Jerami Grant, and Tobias Harris as examples here.

All of these guys have broken out into high-volume deep shooting near or above 40% at some point in their careers. I want to explore how each of these individuals got to an elite level of shooting, and how these factors could foretell a future for Jonathan Kuminga.

Tobias Harris

A one-and-done combo big (in the NCAA at least) coming out of Tennessee, Harris’ prospect profile didn’t scream “future elite shooter”. 36.6% from the midrange, 30% from deep, and 75% from the line is about as middling as it gets. Yet a 6’8″ frame and a baseline touch gives some hope, and though it took a while, Tobi arrived. Look at his shooting development in the first 4 years in the NBA:

Getting to 36.4% on solid volume isn’t the level of breakout you will see with some of these other players, but considering this was the prelude to elite shooting 2-3 seasons later, I’ll count it for our purposes.

A few things to consider: all of the shooting percentages are very steady, from both midrange spots and the line, but the three-pointers fluctuated between bad and below-average. As he scaled up in his role, he began adding far more three-point volume, going from a 14% three-point frequency to 25% by year 4. This increased confidence in his shot began to show; he didn’t take an unassisted three until getting out of Milwaukee and began showing his off-the-dribble game.

The 2013-14 season for Orlando was crucial for his development. Despite hitting only 25.4% of his threes, he took almost 10% of them off the dribble. Midrange and free-throw indicators remained stable, and this built into his year 4 breakout. The increased confidence led to volume, volume lead to production, and just like that Tobias Harris was a good NBA three-point shooter.

His journey was built on stability and slow-burn scaling. He didn’t abandon the productive parts of his game, instead choosing to slowly expand his range and follow the process, not the results. These days he’s incredibly well-rounded, using his shot gravity to do work in the midrange and having some of the best rim frequency/finishing seasons of his career.

The length of his journey, however, was far different than the others we will look at.

Jerami Grant

Talk about a breakout nobody saw coming.

A below-average free throw shooter at Syracuse with career 6/20 marks from deep and 33.3% in the midrange, there were very few reasons to think Jerami Grant would turn into a borderline elite shooter at the NBA level. Yet, we are here.

Grant went from a non-shooting off-ball 4 to a true on-ball scoring machine on the perimeter and in the midrange, completely transforming his offensive profile with the addition of these new perimeter skills. He jumped from a middling usage scorer to a 90th percentile-plus usage wing, taking tons more threes and midrange shots at far lower assisted rates. The development hasn’t stopped: Grant now boasts one of the quicker catch-and-release jumpers you’ll find in the league.

Compare that jumper to what you see in the video below, and you’ll see the technical strides he has made:

He tightened his base (which is more conducive to movement looks) and killed the dip in his release while becoming more efficient from deep, a difficult feat by itself. This allows Grant to add a wider array of shots to his diet with the same repeated mechanics: if your off-the-dribble or off-screen mechanics are the same as your standstill shots, it builds more consistency in the shot. Keep that on-the-fly shot tweaking in mind when we get to Jonathan Kuminga.

Grant is an interesting contrast to Tobias Harris in terms of building offensive layers. While Harris slowly expanded his game, adding to a strong rim-finishing game with midrange and later threes, Grant burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man. The shot arrived, and the rest fell into place as a result: foul drawing (89th percentile last year), unassisted rim looks, and tons of long midrange creation off the dribble. Now you have a 20+ PPG scorer for the last 3 seasons on 45/37/83 shooting splits.

Exploring scoring growth via shooting is an interesting case, and I like to look at different ways it shows itself. When projecting a player like Kuminga, that potential growth could be explosive (like Jerami) or slow-burn (like Tobias). It’s good to see how those indicators develop, and what could be construed as indicators for those growth patterns.

Now, let’s look at a more explicable example of shooting development: massive volume increase.

Brandon Ingram

Now, there are certainly some reasons that can explain this massive leap in shooting production. One is named Fred Vinson, the New Orleans shooting coach who has worked wonders, including a total overhaul of Lonzo Ball’s shooting (which also happened the same year as Ingram’s breakout). At the time Ingram was on the team, the Lakers were the only NBA team to not employ a shooting coach. Yes, the mighty Lakers forgot to work on the “shooting” aspect of the game up through 2019. What a shame.

Ironically, the team only hired a shooting coach the summer after trading Ingram and Ball to the Pelicans, and the hiree in question was one of Vinson’s underlings. Too little too late.

You can see the lack of a shooting development plan in Ingram’s shot profile. Despite the rough numbers from the line and from deep, he was always a player with touch and shooting indicators and the frame to work wonders with. Yet his three-point attempts actually decreased in his first 3 seasons, despite the Lakers not being very serious teams on the court. His shot development was completely adrift, aimless, just waiting for something to break.

And since Ingram was shipped to New Orleans, he transformed into one of the best perimeter shotmakers in the league.

Encouraged to shoot from deep instead of discouraged, Ingram quadrupled his three-point attempts from his last season in LA to his first in New Orleans. That is a ton of high-level reps that developed confidence and consistency, and he responded with his best overall shooting season. The Bingy striped 43% of his long twos, 39% of his threes, and jumped his free throw percentage from the high 60s to mid 80s.

The shot development from deep opened up the best part of his game in the midrange. In New Orleans, Ingram has been the premiere midrange shot taker of the league not named DeMar DeRozan: 61% of his total shot attempts last season came from these spots. Considering he also has crazy unassisted shot percentages, these are of the highest difficulty, and he manages to make them at a strong clip. Adding that three-pointer to his arsenal, albeit at low volume, has served to accentuate the best part of his scoring game.

Many other factors have gone into his overall scoring breakout, including a higher volume of on-ball reps and lack of competition for touches. Adding the three-point shot helped turn Ingram from a lanky potential-laden wing to a primary scoring option and perennial All-Star caliber player, and unlock the true strengths of his game. In terms of realistic needs for a guy like Jonathan Kuminga, this is the ideal outcome: adding enough of a strong perimeter shot to accentuate the true strengths of his offensive game.

Man of the Hour: Jonathan Kuminga

We’ve seen a range of shooting development outcomes now, and it’s time to do some projecting.

You’ll notice something in the shot diet right off the bat: lots more threes than midrange attempts. But when you look at the film on his midrange attempts, you see a lot of touch, handle, and confidence that translates to success. When he gets going to his right at the elbows, he has a really soft touch and great apex on his jumper from all angles:

It’s not a shot he is encouraged to take often, but one he could certainly add more to his diet if space is opened up by his threes down the road.

Not only have we seen an improvement from below-average to above-average shotmaking from deep, but Kuminga has drastically improved his form. This is one of the factors that led to Jerami Grant’s breakout: locking the elbow and speeding up the release without sacrificing efficiency. Kuminga has sped up his release compared to last year, but his percentages did not suffer. That’s a great sign of his preternatural touch, something largely necessary to long-term shooting development from multiple levels.

Just listen to Klay Thompson discuss it, a guy who knows a thing or two about shooting form:

What I have also enjoyed over his first two seasons is the commitment to work on his form and add new tweaks when necessary, something that was also of great benefit to Jerami Grant. He’s working on his feedback constantly, improving the speed, efficiency, and repetition of his form. Look at the second clip here and note the angle of his shooting elbow:

Now here is his free throw motion last year. Check out how tight that shooting elbow is to his body, but with the same speed and eye tracking:

If Kuminga is comfortable speeding up the work on his jumper like this, and seeing an uptick in his shooting results through that process, then we should be bullish on his future shooting ability.

He’s capable of sustaining strong shooting stretches already. Over the second half of the season, Joku hit 41% of his 2.5 attempts per game, and it correlated with strong midrange looks. This really helped to round out his offensive game, again much like Jerami Grant: his foul-drawing and 2-point % both went up over that stretch, as teams had to respect the shot and opened up his lightning-fast closeout attacks.

Concluding Thoughts

It becomes simple math once Kuminga has established himself as a strong “time and room” shooter. If you leave him wide open and he continues to make it, it’s time to play him closer. And the vast majority of defenders cannot keep him in front physically. As his handle-footwork combo continues to develop alongside his superior athleticism, this will play off his perimeter game, and you will find yourself looking at a well-rounded scoring wing sooner than later.

How he ultimately shapes his game in the future will be interesting if the shooting is real. Perhaps it simply serves as a way to keep the defense honest as he tries to relentlessly drive the paint. Maybe the midrange game comes around, and he cultivates a Harris/Grant-esque scoring profile. Heck, he could just be a great perimeter AND inside-the-arc talent like Ingram, only with the frame of a competition-winning bodybuilder instead of LeBron’s skeleton (no offense, Bingy). Now that’s a scary thought.

I’ll be closely watching Kuminga’s shooting development over the coming season, and we will begin to get a better idea of his future scoring profile based on the data gathered from this season. Maybe he will carve his own path in the wing-shooting development world. We can only sit back and watch.

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I’ll also touch on my misses from last year, and how I hope to correct for shortcomings next cycle. Let’s waste no more time and dig in.

2023 Values

This section covers the players I ranked highest relative to the actual draft results, utilizing Kevin Pelton’s draft selection value table. Is there a common theme, am I missing or onto something?

Drafting with One Eye Closed

GG Jackson (my #12, drafted #45), Trayce Jackson-Davis (my #26, drafted #57), Leonard Miller (my #9, drafted #33), Jalen Slawson (my #28, drafted #54)

My biggest difference this cycle from last was trying to have a more holistic approach to a player’s own role curve. That is to say, comfort with a role (particularly in the NCAA) is not automatic, unlikely chosen by a player and often different than presented in recruiting efforts. College teams need players to win, development systems need player to develop, players just want to be selected as high as they can while balancing the goals of stakeholders around them. It can be messy, and often is.

The group I’m discussing here did not all have sub-optimal roles, but perhaps ones that masked their appeal as prospects, or distorted viewpoints of how they might contribute.

My single greatest difference to actual draft results was one Gregory Jackson the Second. At #12 on my board, Jackson was not selected until the second round by the Memphis Grizzlies. While rumors abound of immaturity from GG during team workouts, I’m less bothered given the substantial talent, obvious at his young age.

The most significant obstacle to draft analysis, in my view (beyond not knowing ball) is to make a one-to-one connection between items you notice and items of significance. Watching GG, it is not difficult to spot places where he could do better. Passing is the most obvious, often tunnel-visioned in his scoring approach, amplified at South Carolina by few other legitimate options but still clearly present in Summer League play as well. But if one were to ding Jackson for each and every missed pass, one might come away with a more negative view than is accurate in consideration of his star power, and that’s really what we’re here for.

It is more damaging to not take major swings than it is to have the occasional bust. If a player busts, his on-court impact simply goes to zero – there is a natural downside limit in that you’re not forced to give a player playing time, nor does it necessarily hurt your odds of acquiring more talent. But if he hits, and I mean truly hits, as in worth a max contract, that changes your franchise’s profile over a decade or more. This asymmetry runs up against basic human intuition: risk aversion means we are naturally suited to play it safe. But for that exact reason can be the source of extreme value in the NBA draft.

GG was third in usage of all freshmen as the youngest player in all of college basketball. He never looked overwhelmed athletically, consistently hitting the boards (17% defensive rebound rate) while using up a mega amount of iso (100), PNR (107) and spot up (143) possessions. Simply put, senior year HS aged players are not built like GG, not often. While a scout may see a sea of red marking up his execution on complex plays, he is able to put himself in those scenarios over and over with the flexible tank that is his hulking 6’9’’, 215 pound frame.

GG has a combination of traits I view highly in combination: when he has his nose in a play, he is determined to finish it (dawg factor); a frame to play power forward or small-ball center; the flexibility to get low into drives; an elite second jump; good shooting mechanics. Those are the traits of a scoring engine – as I put it in my scouting report of Jackson early in the season, “GG wants to be your team’s leading scorer,” and he has the mold for it. There are simply not many people in the world who have that combination of traits at an NBA level, and it takes two seconds watching GG move in Summer League to see how easily he belongs, physically.

Moving on to the rest of the group, the theme remains of swinging into uncertainty, where you have tangible evidence of NBA player-ness. By that last term I mean a collection of base skills that would be surprising to find in a non-NBA player. Let’s go through them quickly.

• Trayce Jackson-Davis: production, production and production; second jump; balance; sparks of creativity and touch at size
• Leonard Miller: dawg factor; production at age and competition; elite flexibility; sparks of creativity and touch at size
• Jalen Slawson: production and athletic versatility; team success; sparks of creativity and touch at size

The common trait for these remaining three is having some passing and some shooting touch but also defensive creativity, capable of picking up unexpected assists, steals or blocks in ways that took their opponents by surprise. Being two steps ahead of processing at lower levels, or even just hanging in at a higher level (in Miller’s case) is a good sign of being able to pick up NBA schemes, and the size of all three makes it easier to get the reps to showcase that. The flashes of touch and passing are simply compounding benefits as different areas of value on the court and expanding number of schemes in which they fit.

All four of the players here have role questions. “Can GG play off-ball?” (Summer League answer: yes); “Does Lenny fit cleanly into the 3, 4 or 5?” (Summer League answer: yes); “Can Trayce Jackson-Davis protect the rim as a 5?” (tbd); “Can Jalen Slawson shoot well enough to be a 3?” (tbd). But I also think these questions oversimplify what is a chaotic process in scouting. As Avinash said in his stellar Leonard Miller piece, “since when can we effectively project roles to begin with?”

That is not to say we shouldn’t try to project role, but we certainly shouldn’t let confusion in the exercise stop us from ranking a prospect highly.

I call this section “Drafting with One Eye Closed” as drafting is foremost an act of imagination, but that includes some willful optimism at times. The balance of cost relative to benefit of trying to make an unusual player work is lopsided, assuming the talent is indeed there. We draft players to try to alter the path of franchises, and the only way to do that is to try where others do not. Role occlusion, whether established upperclassmen or molds-of-clay youngsters, can be an opportunity masked by the same risk that drives people away.

To put the concept in more human terms, the game of basketball evolves in unexpected ways, and you need unexpected players to fit that evolving vision. The talent and effort side is the player’s job; fitting them onto the basketball court is the role of those around them.

Make Something Happen

Nick Smith Jr. (my #13, drafted #27), Amari Bailey (my #19, drafted #41), Sidy Cissoko (my #25, drafted #44)

Decision-making can be the most maddening NBA skill to dissect, making it all the more important in our evaluation of guards specifically. Guards typically survive on being nimbler, better handlers, shooters than their taller brethren, but this also means they have to make a greater number of decisions with or near the ball. If their decision-making is sound, they will make the product better, scheme running smoothly each time; if poor, the whole system can collapse. Repeat the process not once or a few times but dozens of times per game, thousands over a season. Despite having only middling 17% usage (7^th on his own team), Kyle Lowry still touched the ball over a thousand times in the 2023 playoffs, as an example. Whether or not a guard is a true lead initiator, they are going to be making countless decisions for your team.

Nick Smith Jr., Amari Bailey and Sidy Cissoko all make decisions in vastly different ways, which mixes differently for each of them with their differentiated skillsets. Sidy Cissoko is tall and strong for a guard but a poor shooter, Nick Smith Jr. is shorter and very skinny but a great shooter, Amari Bailey falls in between for all three traits.

Their playing cadences are vastly different, with NSJ being an elixir, playing like white blood cells seeking out weaknesses; Sidy is a maniac, unpredictable-squared; Amari Bailey is consistent in effort first and last. All are deviants from the expected in their own ways: given Nick Smith’s elite touch and handle creativity, one would expect him to be a pure hooper. Sidy one could easily cast aside as an unreliable project. Amari’s consistency of effort could prevent an analyst from noticing the flairs of upside.

My source of comfort in ranking them highly varies for each of them, as well. But it is consistent in one thing: the route-making of offensive schemes has always been a jagged line rather than a straight one. The ideal basketball play is a run to the basket and dunk, or run to the three point line and swish. But with the constancy of movement and ten athletes making decisions simultaneously, the way forward is rarely straight through.

This section is a dedication to the basketball weirdos, or irregularities in subtle ways. Amari Bailey may seem like the outlier in his inclusion, as Sidy and NSJ’s funkiness jump off the page. But Amari covers a ridiculous amount of ground as an athlete, both laterally and vertically, the type of athlete which would thrive as a cornerback or an outfielder or tennis player or…really anything. But Bailey plays subtly, workmanlike to the point of nearly hiding this fact. One is used to athletes of Bailey’s versatility taking up usage wherever they can, testing the limits of the dynamic fun that it must be to have those tools at one’s disposal. But Bailey, for whatever reason, does not seem to care about all of that, or else finds such enjoyment from applying them, not bluntly nor florid, but simply so. That aspect is maybe the easiest to look over: someone simply doing their job for its own sake. Especially in a freshman one-and-done, highly touted from a celebrity program. Don’t miss it with Amari.

Role Reducers: Priority UDFAs

Craig Porter Jr. (my #33), Adama Sanogo (#38), Terquavion Smith (#36), Justyn Mutts (#42), Ricky Council IV (#43), Taevion Kinsey (#45), D’Moi Hodge (#46)

Here we have a group of undrafted players I had ranked in my top 50. I’m not sure if there’s a common thread here beyond role players who I believe have a shot of being starters, even if miniscule.

All have their quick pitches as NBA role players: Porter Jr. makes sense as a defensive play-maker and creative passer next to a high usage guard. Sanogo if a team wants to run a five-out scheme on either end with a hybrid big. Terq is the obvious, nuclear pull-up shooting threat. Mutts is one of the best passing big wings in the country. Council had perhaps the best slashing tools in college hoops. Kinsey may be the most unusual, a stellar athlete ball custodian type with funky shot. D’Moi Hodge the cleanest role fit, and the most surprising undrafted for that reason as a steals & threes maven.

I mention the concept of “false ceiling” prospects, a term I coined to mean prospect commonly seen as low ceiling but with tougher-to-see avenues to outperform those expectations. I believe this entire group qualifies, let’s run through the list again. Porter Jr. does not make sense as a shotblocker, at 6’2’’ putting up a 5% block rate (one of every 20 opponent two pointers) while only fouling 2.3 times per 40(!!!). Sanogo has rare touch, shooting 77% at the rim on gigantic volume and above average everywhere else. Terq has become underrated as a passer, improving his A:TO from 1.2 to 1.9 and assist rate from 14% to 23%, all while shooting 14 threes per 100 possessions. Mutts is a rare breed, a strength-based wing with soft passing touch, perfect for motion-based, precise systems. Council’s athleticism shines in transition where he can improvise to the hoop for an acrobatic finish, at 1.2ppp on 114 transition attempts. Kinsey played in a lower conference, but that may mask his NBA athleticism, dunking over 200 times across his five college seasons. Hodge is underrated in his aggressiveness, with over 100 rim attempts finished at a 72% rate this past season.

The entire group are sophomores or older and non-premium selections as UDFAs, as it is safe to say you won’t build your team around this group. But if I were to bet on anyone undrafted ending up a useable starter at some point in their careers, it would be from this crew. The avenue to that happening has been laid out roughly in their previous spots, but amplified by further conforming to a reduced role and playing with greater talent around them.

Lessons of the Past

The 2022 draft cycle I spent obsessed with archetypes, attempting to break down the roles on the court into four: 1. Rim Protectors, 2. Connectors, 3. Shotmakers and 4. Engines. As I felt already by the time that draft day arrived, this approach had clear shortcomings. Prospects are not fully formed into their archetypes yet, and flashes of potential can be more important than fully fleshed out skills.

My three biggest misses all came from this too narrow of a sorting process. For Walker Kessler, I zoomed in too far on his inconsistent rim protection footwork technique, missing how he was blocking a gargantuan quantity of shots despite it due to advanced hand-eye coordination, size and effort. He also was able to quiet my mobility concerns by slimming down some, bringing us to another point of analysis: at the ages of prospects, they are still getting used to their athletic bodies.

Jalen Williams is another illustration of this, showcasing a major athletic leap from Santa Clara to the pros. The tape transformed almost overnight, as before when his closeouts lagged and he may have settled as a table-setter, now he looks a full power primary. The signal here was the Combine scrimmages, where J-Dub adapted to a more off-ball slashing role the second he hit the floor, using his plus wingspan to dunk in traffic with ease. The archetypes system over-fit for his Santa Clara role, not adaptive enough to appreciate his flashes of elite versatility.

Finally, a player I was too high on: Johnny Davis. At the risk of reacting too early, Johnny appears at the nexus of both of these points as well. From an archetype approach, JD is interesting. He was super physical in college, capable of some dribbling, passing, shooting, if not dominant anywhere. But he looked like he could carry a large load, and had enough clips of looking like a dynamic athlete, all the while fighting hard on the defensive end. The script has completely flipped between him and J-Dub, as Davis has been losing on the margins at the first line and without tools to salvage missteps. Where before he looked like a potential to hit in multiple archetypes, now he looks more like a mediocre prospect for each. The difference in athletic and skill profile from NCAA to NBA makes previous roles potentially untenable while also opening up new avenues for what were only flashes before.

Lessons for the Future

My goal this past cycle was to take a more holistic approach to a player’s basketball narrative. Where are they in their own cycle? A draft cycle involves only 6-8 months of new tape to indicate what a player might be for an entire career, and we need to imbue that with the appropriate lack of certainty. Imagination is the name of the game for draft work, something I’ve reminded myself constantly this past year, and helped me to be more comfortable with the one-eye-closed upside swings. Similarly, I have been keener to extrapolate those flashes out, as a player’s developmental trajectory can be as dynamic as their playing style.

The one item that remains elusive to me is projecting athletic profiles to the future. Already in Summer League I see a potential miss in Keyonte George, adapting quickly to weight loss with a more explosive playing style than we saw at Baylor or IMG. Athletic projection, again, a source of my miss on all of Kessler, J-Dub and (in the other direction) Johnny Davis, requires a technical level of biomechanical knowledge I have not attained. We have in our sights a theme for the 2024 cycle: how does the body develop amid intense athletic demands, and how can you tell who can incorporate these changes better than others? Stay tuned.

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