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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The 2019-20 NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers Appreciation Post

The Los Angeles Lakers are the 2019-20 NBA Champions. Damn, that feels great to type, so let me do it again: the Los Angeles Lakers are the 2019-20 NBA Champions. I’ve already written before about why this team was so lovable, so let this serve as part two.

I think what makes this championship so sweet, outside of actually winning the damn thing, is the fact that this was far from a guarantee, despite the fact that once we reached the Conference Finals, the Lakers were prohibitive favorites. But the Clipper love from numerous pundits was there after Kawhi Leonard’s run last year. The Bucks’ numbers were astronomical. The Raptors were defending champions despite not retaining Kawhi Leonard. Buzz was there for the up-and-coming Celtics, Sixers, and Nuggets. Surely, the Lakers were right in this mix and above most of these other teams (it’s not like they snuck up on anybody with LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the squad), but this thing was up for the taking. It also might have been the Lakers’ best shot at a title. They will be even better next year, but the Clippers should be too. The Nuggets as well if Michael Porter Jr. takes a leap. The Brooklyn Nets get a healthy Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving back. Jayson Tatum took a leap in Boston. Not just that I’m a Laker fan, but I’d still take the Lakers over any of those teams with two guys you can argue are the best players in the league. But you can make the case for any of those teams, I feel. That the Lakers upended their franchise to put Anthony Davis next to LeBron James and already have a championship to show for it just ensures that all the moves they made to get to this point was worth everything and then some.

What also made this championship so awesome is that it truly took a collective team effort to make this happen. Sure, the stress and attention LeBron and AD put on opposing defenses make the job of those around them way easier than it normally would be, but the players still had to get the job done. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope made GM Rob Pelinka look like a prophet when he called Pope ‘mana from heaven’ at his introductory press conference in 2017, shooting 38% from deep in the playoffs, and hitting arguably the biggest shot(s) of the entire season in Game 4 with about three minutes to go to push a two-point Laker lead up to 7. Playoff Rondo made his triumphant return like Luke Skywalker at the end of ‘The Last Jedi’ and was a constant difference-maker since returning to action in the second round against the Houston Rockets. Want to know drastic a difference there was in Rajon Rondo’s play in the postseason? In the regular season, the Lakers had a Net Rating of -5.2 points per 100 possession when Rondo shared the floor with LeBron James and Anthony Davis. In the playoffs? That number skyrocketed to +12 points per 100 possessions. I can’t understate how wrong I was in writing off Rondo, but boy am I glad to be wrong because he was awesome throughout the entire playoff run.

But that isn’t all. Frank Vogel saved his ‘secret weapon’ for literally the last game of the season, but Alex Caruso was great all season long. His two-man game with LeBron James bore itself out again and routinely accepted and stood out in arduous matchups against Damian Lillard, James Harden, Jamal Murray, Tyler Herro, and Jimmy Butler defensively, along with playing the exceptional help defense we’ve been accustomed to seeing from him throughout his young career. There’s a reason why us fans love him so much. The Lakers had a +3.6 Net Rating with Caruso on the floor in the playoffs, the fourth-best mark on the team with only LeBron, AD, and Danny Green ahead of him. Danny Green’s shooting drew ire from fans, but I always trusted and wanted him on the floor in big moments because he would make similar plays to Caruso, like here against Denver swatting Mason Plumlee and Nikola Jokic in big moments. Markieff Morris made like Denzel Curry and unlocked lineups to feature Anthony Davis at center with Kieff’s ability to stretch the floor. For the playoffs, Markieff Morris shot 42% on 3.3 attempts per game. The Lakers had a Net Rating of +16.5 for the playoffs when Morris shared the floor with Anthony Davis to better free Davis to swarm the paint. Kyle Kuzma may not have become the third scorer many were hoping for, but he totally bought into defense and routinely snuck through crevices in opposing defenses honing on LeBron and Davis. Dwight Howard bothered Nikola Jokic in the Conference Finals much the same way he did in their matchup before the All-Star break back in February. The Lakers had a Net Rating of +19.7 when Dwight was on the floor at the same time as Jokic during the Conference Finals. Even the rook Talen Horton-Tucker had a moment against Houston flashing versatility defensively and playmaking off the bounce (watch out for Young Talen next season). Jared Dudley, Dion Waiters, Quinn Cook, JaVale McGee, and JR Smith brought even more chemistry, camaraderie, and/or accountability to the team. The celebrations on the bench were nonstop. When Talen Horton-Tucker got run against Houston and produced, you could just hear and see the love from his teammates. That always stuck out to me. Before this season restarted, Lakers head coach Frank Vogel said that the third option on this team was going to be ‘the open man,’ implying that anybody on the roster could have both the ability and opportunity to step up when the Lakers need it the most. That couldn’t have been any more true. It truly was a team effort.

But of course, those guys were third options for a reason. It’s not bad having LeBron James and Anthony Davis be your first or second options, I suppose. Let’s start with Davis. If there were questions of whether or not the Lakers could win a title, I think those hinged on whether or not pundits believed Davis could step up the way the Lakers would’ve needed him to. Now, that felt particularly silly after Davis averaged 30.5 points, 12.7 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 2.5 blocks, and 1.8 steals per game on over 50% shooting with elite defense in 13 previous playoff games (nine of which coming against the eventual champion Golden State Warriors), but any questions about Davis in the playoffs were quickly answered. He was dominant on both ends. Teams had no answer for him, and if they did, that meant they didn’t have any answers for LeBron. Lumbering bigs like Nikola Jokic, Jusuf Nurkic, Hassan Whiteside, Meyers Leonard, or Kelly Olynyk couldn’t contest Davis’ perimeter jumper, and after trying to take that away, he’d fly to the rim with lobs from LeBron and Rondo waiting for him. Wings like Carmelo Anthony, PJ Tucker, Robert Covington, Jerami Grant, Paul Millsap, Jimmy Butler, Andre Iguodala, Solomon Hill, and Jae Crowder all got their turns going against Davis and he laid waste to all of them, whether it be with his iso face-up game on the elbows, in the post or clobbering the offensive glass. Post-ups and isolations have become two of the less-glamourous modes of offense, but in the playoffs, you have to get offense by any means necessary, and Davis generated 0.97 points per possessions out of post-ups and 1.09 points per possessions out of iso, per NBA.com, both healthy numbers. Davis shot well from basically anywhere on the floor, embodying the persona of a three-level scorer. Davis managed to pull off an effective field goal percentage of 60.2%. The only player to have a better eFG% in the postseason while shooting at least 15 attempts per game and at least advance past the first round? Some guy named LeBron James. Not only was he efficient, but he also was clutch too, as evidenced by the buzzer-beater against the Nuggets in Game 2 and the dagger in Game 4 of the Finals. When the game was within five points in the last five minutes of the game in the playoffs, Davis shined, shooting 75% from the field, scoring 20 points in 26 clutch minutes. No matter the time, no matter who, what, where or when something was thrown at Davis, Davis had an answer. He averaged 27.7 points, 9.7 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and basically 2.5 stocks (steals + blocks) on 57.1/38.3/83.2 shooting splits. He did this all while playing elite, defensive player of the year level defense as well, going from corraling Damian Lillard’s pick and roll prowess to shutting down Houston’s three-point brigade, to stifling the Jamal Murray-Nikola Jokic duet with switches to slowing down Jimmy Butler rim romps simultaneously while limiting Miami’s shooters in Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson from truly getting comfortable AND stuffing Bam Adebayo at the rim repeatedly (check out Kevin O’Connor of ‘The Ringer’ break Davis’ defense down even further here). Anthony Davis did it all time and time again. He didn’t win Finals MVP but he could’ve. He likely will win at least one of those before it is all said and done.

Unfortunately for the rest of the NBA, I can say the same thing about the man who DID win Finals MVP, even though he is about to turn 36 in a couple of months and just finished his 17th season of basketball duty. LeBron James is still THAT dude, the best player in the league, the ultimate alpha dog, the man who shapes this league like no other can. Do you want a crazy, mind-blowing stat? Well, check this out, courtesy of Michael Pina of GQ. I want you to guess who is who:

Player A: 10.5 drives per game, 60% FG% from shots off of those drives.

Player B: 12 drives per game, 68% FG% from shots off of those drives.

So who are these mystery characters? Player A is back-to-back MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo in the regular season. Player B is LeBron James in the playoffs. Yes, when defenses are honed in on everything you do, LeBron James at age 35 was somehow more lethal plowing through the rim than the extraterrestrial Giannis was rampaging through everyone in the regular season. That seems impossible, but impossible is nothing for the King. When the Lakers smelled blood in the water, it was typically LeBron who made sure to ignite the impending doom awaiting his opponent, whether it be a 36-7-5 performance against the Rockets to take a 2-1 lead, a masterful 38-16-10 triple-double to eliminate the Denver Nuggets and advance to the NBA Finals, or an even better 40-13-7 masterpiece in Game 5 of the Finals that tragically was wasted after a masterpiece from Jimmy Butler in his own right and Danny Green’s three-ball at the end went begging short. LeBron took on defensive challenges in his own right, as he did all season long, most-notably shutting down bubble star Jamal Murray towards the end of the Western Conference Finals. LeBron averaged a career-low in playoff minutes per game at 36.3, but his averages and play were right there with his Finals runs of yesteryear, putting up 27.6 points, 10.8 rebounds, 8.8 assists and 2 stocks on 56/37/72 shooting splits. As mentioned earlier, he was the most efficient scorer in the playoffs among those who made it to the second round at least, and Davis was right behind him. There isn’t much more that really can be said about LeBron James. The end isn’t anywhere near sight, and it likely won’t be for the foreseeable future either.

Which leads us to this offseason. The Lakers have a mid-level exception of about $10million to spend, have the 28th pick in the draft, and will likely be a destination for ring-chasers to snatch one before their careers are over. Anthony Davis is still only 27 years old. Maybe Kyle Kuzma becomes more consistent and is more comfortable next season after buying and playing well in his new role. Talen Horton-Tucker should be a rotation player next year on the wing. They’ll have max money in 2021 when numerous free agents will be on the market. LeBron can continue to age gracefully playing off the 7-foot gazelle that is Anthony Davis. This could be the start of another Laker dynasty.

But this 2019-20 team will likely stick out amongst the pack if things go the Lakers way in the future. This team went through so much, from being in China during the aftermath of Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey’s tweet to healing a mourning city after the tragic passing of franchise icon Kobe Bryant and his daughter and three other members of separate families to the ongoing coronavirus to helping lead in the racial reckoning this country faced in the summer. Through all of this, there were these Lakers, there to help us fans get through it all. Maybe you could use the term ‘distract,’ but damn it at least I know I needed that distraction. And through it all, you could see and feel how much fun these guys had together.

This team was more than a basketball team; it truly was a family, one I eagerly awaited to welcome into my room time and time again once their games tipped. Head Coach Frank Vogel and GM Rob Pelinka deserve a ton of credit for putting this team together and having it gel as quickly as it did. Pelinka was put in a tough spot after the Davis trade and Kawhi Leonard stalling their free agency plans (Vogel on the latest episode of ‘The Lowe Post’ podcast said the team was put together in three hours after Leonard’s decision broke). Vogel sifted through different lineup variations when called upon and cooked up all the correct and necessary game plans to short-circuit all the opponents in the Lakers’ way in the playoffs. They didn’t get off to the strongest of starts (Pelinka especially) and I was skeptical because of it, but those two proved me wrong BIG TIME, and boy am I glad I was wrong. Hopefully, those two hold on to their respective positions for quite a long time.

It stinks the fans in the city of Los Angeles can’t truly celebrate with the team, but that time will eventually come. This wasn’t my first Laker championship to celebrate; I remember being in Las Vegas in 2009 when they won in Orlando and watching Game 7 of the 2010 Finals. I never thought that moment could be topped, yet there I was with tears of joy strolling down my face once the clock struck zeroes in Game 6. After all those years of losing. After all the shit 2020 threw in the face of the world. Something worth celebrating happened. So again, thank you to all the players, to GM Rob Pelinka, to Governor Jeanie Buss, to everyone who played a part.

The Los Angeles Lakers are the 2019-20 NBA Champions. Damn, that feels great to type.

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Comeback Nuggets

Before I get the ball rolling on this article, I just want to make a couple of things clear:

No, this is not going to be about how the Los Angeles Clippers gagged away a 3-1 lead after being the supposed title favorites in the eyes of many (not mine!), blowing leads of 18, 19, and 12 in Games 5-7, respectively.

No, this is not going to be about how the stars of the Clippers (Kawhi Leonard and Paul George) did their best to imitate the Clone Troopers in ‘Star Wars’ by shooting nothing but clankers with their livelihood on the line, going 0-11 from the field in the 4th quarter for a whopping 0 points.

No, this is not going to be about how the head coach of the Clippers has blown a 3-1 lead now for the third time, with three more blown 3-2 series leads attached to that resume.

I’ll let someone pettier than I to hash on with these topics. You can’t blow a 3-1 lead to yourself; someone else has to snag victory from the jaws of defeat. And, for the second time in this bubble postseason, the Denver Nuggets were the ones to send the Clippers packing, becoming the first team to ever win two playoff series in a single postseason after going down 3-1.

Obviously, as a Laker fan, it brought me great joy to see who many regards as the stiffest competition in the conference to bow out early in the playoff proceedings, but as a fan of the league itself as well, it was cool to see the hipster Nuggets work their way into the mainstream spotlight by knocking who many considered the favorite to win it all and reconsider the actual effect and impact of certain popular NBA trends of previous years. The Nuggets win was a big-time score for continuity, as the Nuggets currently have seven playoff contributors who have played together for at least three consecutive seasons, starting with the 2017-18 season (and that doesn’t even count Will Barton since he has yet to play for the Nuggets in the playoffs). To put that in context, the Nuggets missed out on the playoffs that season after they lost the last game of the season to… Jimmy Butler’s Minnesota Timberwolves. Butler has now played for two more teams since and is now thriving for the Eastern Conference Finals-bound Miami Heat. LeBron James beat an upstart Boston Celtics team featuring Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Marcus Smart, sans an injured Kyrie Irving to get back to the NBA Finals. Tatum, Brown, and Smart are the only Celtics from that team that are on this year’s iteration of the team, while LeBron is a Laker alongside Anthony Davis, who won his lone series as a Pelican in the 2018 playoffs. The only 2017-18 Lakers that are on 2020’s team? Kyle Kuzma and Alex Caruso. Only four members of the 2017-18 Miami Heat are still on the squad: Game 1 Eastern Conference Finals hero Bam Adebayo, Goran Dragic, Kelly Olynyk, and Heat Culture OG Udonis Haslem. Amongst the 2020 conference finalists, the Nuggets are anomalies.

The Nuggets also got here riding the back of an actual center. Nikola Jokic and his transcendent skillset make him anything but a traditional center, but in a league where wings and perimeter playmakers are the ones everyone around the league is fawning over and building around (and rightfully so), Jokic still is a seven-foot brute force. Teams have not had as much success building around big men as in years prior. The last time an NBA team that featured a center to make an All-NBA team (Jokic made this year’s All-NBA 2nd team) reached the conference finals, let alone the NBA Finals, was the 2012-13 season with Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs. Coincidentally, Jokic’s foe in the Western Conference Finals, the Los Angeles Lakers, feature Anthony Davis, who made First Team All-NBA as a center, but still. The Nuggets are zagging while most of the rest of the league is zigging, and that helped them pull off one of the bigger upsets we’ve seen in NBA history.

For a team lauded with so much depth and versatility, the Clippers had no match for Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray’s duet, and that led to their demise. Clippers’ big men Ivica Zubac and Montrezl Harrell were thrown into the fire and could not put it out. Zubac at least could bang with Jokic, but could not stop fouling him and stay with Jokic’s herky-jerky shiftiness. Montrezl Harrell had to deal with personal tumult and was late to the bubble, but the Clippers got killed by his ineffectiveness. For the playoffs, the Clippers were -68 and outsocred by 11.6 points per 100 possessions when Harrell was on the floor, per NBA.com. Meanwhile, the Clippers had a Net Rating of +17.7 when Zubac was on the floor.

When a big would guard Jokic, Jokic would pop to the three-point and drop bombs on the Clippers almost every time when the Clippers took away air space for the guards initiating the two-man game. When the Clippers would make the next rotation to try to take the Jokic threes away, that in turn led to open threes for other guys to drill, spearheaded by great unselfishness and movement with Jokic leading the way, as evidenced by this Jerami Grant corner three. Jokic shot 35% on threes during that series against the Clippers but missed all four of his threes in Game 7 when it did not end up dictating the outcome of that game and missed both of his threes in the Clippers’ Game 1 rout. Not those threes don’t matter because they do, but in the other five games of the series, Jokic shot just below 47% from deep on 6.4 attempts per game.

But it takes two to tango, and Jamal Murray took his turns at terrorizing the Clippers’ frontcourt as well. Getting dealt the waves of arms from the likes of Patrick Beverley, Paul George, and Kawhi Leonard did not do many favors for Murray’s efficiency, but he did his work against the Clippers’ bigs. When he was able to get a big switched onto him, Murray made quick work of said big man. When Murray was able to get daylight in the pick and roll against a dropping big, he fired those shots quicker than Han Solo sitting in a booth at the Mos Eisley Cantina sitting across from Greedo (Murray shot 46.5% from three in the seven-game series against the Clippers, and is now shooting an astronomical 49.1% from deep on just below eight attempts per game). Jamal Murray made his name in the Nuggets’ first round series against the Utah Jazz with three straight games of 42+ points, including two fifty pieces, but, as someone who hasn’t always seen the light when it comes to Jamal Murray, he has clearly leveled up and his play against the Clippers was the last evidence I needed to see to believe it. Want a stat to believe it? Jamal Murray has run 9.6 pick and rolls per game in the playoffs, generating 1.10 points per possession, per NBA.com. The only players to generate more points per possession while running at least three pick and rolls in the playoffs? Donovan Mitchell and Lou Williams. Not too shabby.

So if both Jokic and Murray are killing it from deep, in order to prevent threes, you’re supposed to switch ballscreens, right? Well as we saw earlier, Murray is going to roast any big the Clippers have that switches onto him. So how can the Clippers switch? By putting Kawhi Leonard on Nikola Jokic and Paul George on Jamal Murray. That should work, right? Nope, wrong again. Put a wing on Jokic and Big Honey gets to work on the block. Maybe the Clippers probably should have just lived with Jokic posting them up to death; after-all, in the regular season, Jokic post-ups generated the same amount of points as a Marvin Williams spot-up jump shot, but scoring is so hard to come by in the playoffs and the Nuggets likely knew they could get Jokic on the block pulverizing the Clippers *any* time they wanted, and because Jokic is one of the few efficient post-scorers in the league (remember, these Nuggets are anomalies), they could live with post-ups taking them home. So the Clippers would counter by doubling Jokic, feeding directly into his prowess as the greatest passing big man in NBA history. The Clippers could have played smaller more to get more offense on the floor if their game plan was just to double Jokic anyway, but that isn’t stopping the fact that they had no answer for Nikola Jokic.

That wasn’t the only weakness the Nuggets exploited. Playing through a big man was one way to take out Kawhi and George’s on-ball defensive sturdiness, but the constant movement and cutting from the Nuggets was another way. The Clippers rotation features a couple of defensive liabilities in Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell and the Nuggets made sure to make the Clipper pay for playing them. Watch Jamal Murray set a screen on Lou Williams, hiding on a lesser offensive player (Torrey Craig). Williams isn’t paying attention, gets caught on the screen and Craig gets a layup. Typically, teams will seek a lesser defender out and make him defend the offense’s best player and iso him to oblivion. The Nuggets did that too, but emphasized movement and cutting and executed it to perfection. Kawhi and George are great off-ball defenders as well, but it is easier to score on them with someone delivering you the ball in front of the rim as opposed to asking them to do it by themselves. This play is a good example. Denver runs Murray off a pin-down screen with George trailing him. Murray then gets the ball from Jokic in a dribble-handoff with a head of steam, then rejects the screen with a gorgeous spin move to eschew Paul George and get to the rim for a dunk.

Watching the Clippers play offense was a polar opposite. They never had an offensive identity. Trading for Marcus Morris Sr. was a move many (not me) lauded, but one I found puzzling. Why get *another* ball-stopper on a team full of ball-stoppers? Kawhi has grown a bit as a playmaker, but wasn’t good enough against the Nuggets. Many Nuggets would stunt and rotate off Clipper shooters to get Kawhi playing in more traffic, and it worked. That the Clippers could not hunt Michael Porter Jr. after he looked lost against the Jazz Round 1 was pretty damning. The best pick and roll playmakers can read the floor and manipulate defenders into thinking something is going to happen, only to get what they originally wanted. Kawhi couldn’t throughout the duration, like here when Porter Jr. rotates perfectly to stall a Clippers possession then pack Harrell at the rim after a Clipper offensive rebound.

Yes, the Clippers choked this series away, but that doesn’t do the Nuggets service for what they did. Nikola Jokic outplayed a two-time Finals MVP. Jamal Murray outplayed Paul George. Michael Malone ran circles around Doc Rivers in the coaching department (Malone deserves a lot more credit in the discourse). Some will chalk it up to the randomness of the bubble with no home-court advantage, which surely there is something to say about that, though the Clippers don’t have a home-court advantage and the Nuggets were without the Mile-High altitude they feast upon. Maybe the Clippers were the better team all along; they did have double digit leads in three consecutive elimination games. But the Nuggets have shown resilience far before the landed in Disney-World. This iteration of Nuggets literally knows nothing but seven-game playoff series. This wasn’t a fluke. The Nuggets were better than the Clippers, and deserved every ounce of their two comeback series wins in their route to the Western Conference Finals. The Lakers will have their hands full as well. They will have to earn everything. After all, that’s all the Nuggets have done in this postseason.

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Upset of the Bucks?

The Heat and Bucks sets up as one of the more compelling and fascinating conference semi-final series in recent memory. One team features the current Defensive Player of the Year and reigning MVP while boasting the league’s best defense that runs counter to today’s NBA’s conventions by allowing the most threes per game as more and more players feel comfortable hoisting from the logo thanks to the revolutionary Steph Curry, while their opponent boasts one of the few humans alive capable of slowing down the extraterrestrial Giannis Antetokounmpo in Bam Adebayo and rank in the top three in both effective field goal percentage and three-point percentage. I’ve already talked a little bit about Bam’s defensive prowess vs Giannis, but can Miami score and hit enough shots to actually take down the Bucks?

I think the answer is yes. Now does that mean I think the Heat *will* win? No, I’d still take the Bucks. But this certainly won’t be easy, and I’d be stunned if this series doesn’t go at least six games. Miami did take two of the three regular season matchups after all, for whatever that’s worth. The Heat have the antidote for Milwaukee’s conservative drop coverage in more ways than one. One way is the Bam Adebayo - Duncan Robinson dribble handoff game. Great basketball writer Michael Pina wrote a more extensive look at this dance duo for FiveThirtyEight, but one statistic really stands out: the Heat generates 1.42 points per possession when Adebayo and Robinson participate in dribble handoff action. That is obscene.

It makes sense too: teams often stick their center onto Adebayo since he doesn’t have deep range quite yet (I’d imagine Milwaukee will put Brook Lopez onto Bam at the start to possibly buy possessions with a cross-match to not have Bam guard Giannis on the other end). So Miami’s counter is to have Bam and Duncan Robinson come together to give Robinson, an already elite and other-worldly shooter, room to fire away. It works. If players try to run Robinson off the three-point line, he’s great at sliding the ball back to Bam and letting him do his thing with it. Look familiar? These two have put a nice remix to the same play Steph Curry and Draymond Green terrorized the league with for years prior to this season’s hiatus from title contention with their avalanche of Curry threes and Draymond alley-oops (coincidentally, Draymond’s former lob partner Andre Iguodala now can do the same with Bam Adebayo). Perhaps it isn’t coincidence either that Adebayo and Robinson led the Heat in On/Off Net-Rating during the regular season.

That stuff is cute and fun and effective, but Miami will need more. Thankfully, they’ve been getting more from Goran Dragic and Tyler Herro. Milwaukee will give teams space in pick and roll coverage; the Orlando Magic just didn’t have the horses to make the necessary pull-up jumpers. The Heat do. Among the 76 players with at least four pull-up field goal attempts per game this season, Goran Dragic ranks 17th in effective field goal percentage (49.6%). Not unlike his doppelganger Benedict Cumberbatch, the Dragon excels at delivering objects through circular portals, as the Indiana Pacers can attest to.

Tyler Herro has been even more efficient on pull-ups in the playoffs than Dragic was in the regular season. Every game seemingly, Herro brings something out of his bag that I didn’t quite know he has. He’s already a great catch-and-shoot shooter but has flashed brilliance as a secondary playmaker and scorer alongside Jimmy Butler and/or Goran Dragic. Herro is far from bashful either.

Shotmaking is important because it is something the Bucks are willing to concede in order to patrol the lane and protect the rim. The Bucks allow the most threes per game in the NBA. Teams shot 35.5% from deep against the Bucks, ranking smack dab in the middle of the league, while the Heat shot nearly 38% from three. The Heat boast six players who shot at least 35% from three on spot-op shots during the regular season, and all but Meyers Leonard have been key contributors for them during the regular season. Jimmy Butler’s three-ball disappeared this season, but he is a ferocious, physical driver and excellent playmaker, averaging a career-high six assists per game during the regular season. He only had one season above five assists per game before this last season. Bam Adebayo’s presence as a vertical lob spacer paves the way for him to dish to his shooters on the outside, averaging a career-high five assists per game in his own right. Those two are more than capable at slicing into the teeth of the Bucks’ defense and kicking it out to their lethal shooters. If Miami’s two All-Stars can do so with any regularity, the Bucks are in trouble.

Problematic for Miami’s upset chances are that neither are true floor stretchers. Miami does have counters as stated above, but you are going to need your best and star players to take you home. Getting production off pull-up jumpers from Kawhi Leonard, Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet helped Toronto propel them to victory a year ago in the Eastern Conference Finals. Though Jimmy Butler did shoot 4-7 from three in the Heat’s series against the Pacers and hit timely shots off the bounce, those are shots Milwaukee is going to make him take and ultimately make when Butler has spent most of this season either passing those up or missing. Bam is not there as a shooter yet. Dragic and Herro are capable of draining those, but it just puts more pressure on them to do so since that isn’t the strength of Miami’s stars.

The Heat may not be the tidiest and perfect mismatch for the Milwaukee Bucks, but they are damn close. Butler is a superb closer and tenacious defender. He likely will be matched up against Khris Middleton on the defensive end of the floor, who hasn’t exactly litt the postseason on fire outside of matchups against the Boston Celtics. Bam is probably the closest thing we have to a ‘Giannis stopper,’ though stopping superstars is an impossibility. They have the shooting to counter Milwaukee’s defensive principles. They have the better in-game adjustor from the coaching standpoint in Erik Spoelstra. The Heat also want a crack at Giannis in 2021 free agency. Though that’s a ways away and I typically don’t like playing up free agency angles before it happens, it is pretty hard to ignore this one. The Heat have enough to take Giannis and the Bucks down. The beauty of basketball is we’ll truly figure out if that will ultimately be the case.

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Fading Fantasy Superstar

Todd Gurley II has won many a fantasy player a championship or a few. Many have seen him be the ultimate cheat code to essentially guarantee a title, similar to what Christian McCaffrey has been the last couple of years. However, things have changed. He’s on a new team and, most importantly, his play has declined, most likely due to whatever exactly is going with his knees. After getting released by the Rams, he has found new digs back in Georgia with the Atlanta Falcons, replacing Devonta Freeman. Can he get back to form?

2019

Before we get to Todd Gurley’s 2020 expectations, let’s go back to last season. The 2019 season saw Todd Gurley look like a shell of his former self. In fact, if we look at a blind resume, we’ll see that his statistics were rather pedestrian:

Player A: 223 carries, 857 yards, 3.8 yards/carry, 31 receptions, 49 targets, 207 yards, 6.7 yards/receptions (15 games)

Player B: 242 carries, 889 yards, 3.7 yards/carry, 25 receptions, 35 targets, 185 yards, 7.4 yards/reception (16 games)

Player C: 184 carries, 656 yards, 3.6 yards/carry, 59 receptions, 70 targets, 410 yards, 6.9 yards/receptions (14 games)

Looks pretty even, right? Well, let’s take a look at these guys’ red zone usage:

Player A: 29 10-zone carries (carries inside the 10 yard-line), 11 10-zone touchdowns, 15 5-zone carries (carries inside the 5 yard-line), 8 5-zone touchdowns, 5 red-zone targets, 3 red-zone receptions, 2 red-zone touchdown receptions

Player B: 23 10-zone carries, 5 10-zone touchdowns, 18 5-zone carries, 5 5-zone touchdowns, 2 red-zone targets, 2 red-zone receptions, 1 red-zone touchdown receptions

Player C: 3 10-zone carries, 1 5-zone carry, 0 touchdowns inside the 10, 12 red-zone targets, 7 red-zone receptions, 4 red-zone touchdown receptions.

So, player A and B are fairly similar in terms of their usage inside the red-zone, but player C isn’t. Regardless, now let’s just look at how many times they scored and where they finished on the season.

Player A: 12 rushing touchdowns, 2 receiving touchdowns; RB14 finish

Player B: 6 rushing touchdowns, 1 receiving touchdown; RB25 finish

Player C: 2 rushing touchdowns, 4 receiving touchdowns; RB21 finish

Who are these players? Player A is Todd Gurley, player B is the much-ballyhooed rookie from a year ago in David Montgomery, whose rookie season could be considered a disappointment, and player C is Devonta Freeman, who is currently unemployed and is the man Todd Gurley is replacing. Yikes.

2020

The only source of optimism I could find for Gurley this season is if he can get the receiving work we’ve been accustomed to him getting in Atlanta. The Falcons have 235 vacated targets from the likes Freeman, Austin Hooper, Mohamed Sanu, and Justin Hardy departing. Gurley was a target vacuum the previous two seasons before last year, garnering 87 and 81 targets, respectively. If Gurley can combine his red-zone usage with Freeman’s leftover targets, there is room to take a jump from last year’s production. However, with Matt Ryan at the helm, Atlanta has tended to throw more prominently in the red zone, as Matt Ryan was third in the league in passes inside the 20. It also didn’t really help matters when the first reaction to Gurley signing in Atlanta was offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter questioning his health status.

At the end of the day, Todd Gurley’s top 15 finish was largely touchdown-dependent, and he was even over his head in that department. Perhaps leaving the Rams’ porous offensive line could help, but the Falcons’ line isn’t much better. The path for Gurley to improve upon his RB14 finish from last season doesn’t seem all that realistic, yet his average draft position on both ESPN and Sleeper is in the third round, being drafted ahead or around the likes of stud receivers like DJ Moore, Allen Robinson, Calvin Ridley or Robert Woods. Heck, I’d rather have David Montgomery himself over Todd Gurley and he’s being drafted after Gurley. Why not wait for a round later and get Jonathan Taylor, when Taylor has a much better chance at being a top-five running back than Gurley does behind that dominant Colts offensive line?

Todd Gurley was a fantasy superstar. He’s won many people plenty of leagues over the years (and cost me at least one). Are those days over? Maybe. Probably? Even if they are, that doesn’t mean he still can’t be useful. I don’t dispute Gurley can’t be useful; he’s guaranteed for a big workload (I wouldn’t sleep on Brian Hill though), but the downside outweighs the upside for me regarding his fantasy prospects, especially for where he’s being drafted. Todd Gurley is not likely to be on many if any, of my teams this season (if we have one). Hopefully, Gurley proves me wrong and cements himself among the greats in the game again.

#Atlanta Falcons #Todd Gurley II #NFL #Fantasy Football

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Playoff Bubble Swing Characters

Remember playoff basketball? It may seem like forever ago since we saw out favorite teams and players duke it out on the hardwood in the postseason, but now we are back and get the chance to see them all return in the bubble set up in DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida. These teams aren’t just here for shits and giggles either; they’re here to win a damn championship! With that in mind, I thought it’d be a good time to bring back a recurring article of mine, highlighting a few NBA characters who can swing the season. I wrote one before the 2019-20 season started in October, and wrote another before the season was paused in March. But now we’re in July heading into August, and things have certainly changed not just in the NBA, but the world at large. With that brings new characters and developments that can alter the course of the remaining season. Welcome back, NBA!

Alex Caruso PG/SG & Dion Waiters SG Los Angeles Lakers: In previous iterations of this column, Kyle Kuzma had been earmarked because of his potential for this Lakers team. While that still applies, things have changed for the Lakers since the season was halted. Avery Bradley opted not to play, choosing safety for his family and helping fight social injustice over basketball (sidenote: anybody who chose not to play, for whatever reason, has no qualms with me. I’m happy for Avery and all those who chose what they thought was right), and later on, Rajon Rondo broke his thumb and seems like the closest he could return is the 2nd round of playoffs. Suddenly, 44 guard rotation minutes per game just flew out the window for a title contender. As frustrating (and flat-out bad) as Rondo has been, any time you lose two rotation pieces, your margin for error decreases… or has it?

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has started the three scrimmage games in the bubble for the Los Angeles Lakers, as he did when Avery Bradley missed 20 games earlier in the season and the Lakers went 17-3 in his absence. Though they will miss Bradley’s pestering defense and cutting offensively, Caldwell-Pope brings an offensive punch that fits the Lakers better. Whoever starts, in my opinion, is not the primary concern (just about anybody who plays next to LeBron James and Anthony Davis should kick-ass) more so than what the rest of the rotation looks like.

Rondo’s struggles this season have been well documented. He was about as frustrating to watch as being behind a driver looking at their phone at a stoplight. The Lakers have been outscored by 8.1 per 100 possessions in the 984 minutes Rondo has played, the majority of which playing with at least one of LeBron James and Anthony Davis. In Rondo’s stead comes the man of many nicknames, the living legend Alex Caruso, whose results have been the exact opposite of Rondo’s this season. Caruso has the 2nd best on/off net-rating on the team, trailing only LeBron James. In fact, when Caruso and LeBron share the floor, those two possess the best net rating among 2-man lineups in the entire league (+20.8)! It makes sense; Caruso is one of the best help defenders in the league. Not only that, but he’s a great individual defender when his number gets called upon, whether it’s a speedy guard like Damian Lillard or a bruising wing in the mold of Khris Middleton who tests Caruso’s defensive acumen. Caruso is also a smart off-ball player who routinely frees up players with screens and cuts. The area Caruso can improve upon is as a playmaker with the ball in his hands, but in his first attempt to showcase said improvement, he did, slicing up the Wizards to the tune of a 17 point, 6 assist, 5 rebound performance. Granted, everybody has sliced up the Wizards this season, but still. Caruso looked comfortable running the offense and showing he *can* create off the bounce, although it isn’t necessarily his strong suit. Luckily enough, the Lakers also brought in someone whose strong suit is exactly that.

Remember when Mark Jackson said on a broadcast that the Lakers didn’t have *anybody* to run pick and roll with? While ridiculous because he was talking about a team that employs LeBron bleeping James, he wasn’t totally off base. Outside of LeBron (who, while operating as the pick and roll ballhandler generates 0.98 points per possession), the most efficient pick and roll ballhandler on the Lakers this season has been… Anthony Davis at 0.92 points per possession. When your most ideal roll man is your second best ball-handler in the pick and roll, that seems like a sign for help. Enter Dion Waiters. In his last two seasons in Miami, Dion generated 0.88 (on about 5.5 possessions a game in 2017-18) and 0.86 (on about 2.6 possessions a game in 2018-19) points per possession while running the pick and roll, both marks better than any guard on the Lakers this season. The only Laker guard to run more than 2 pick and rolls per game this season? That would be Rajon Rondo, who has only been able to muster a paltry 0.78 points per possession while doing so, ranking inside the 38th percentile. Dion’s only played three scrimmage games in a Lakers uniform, but the results have been promising. He came off the bench to drop 18 points and six assists against the Wizards in their final scrimmage, which came on the heels of him icing their previous scrimmage against the Orlando Magic. No Laker guard on the roster has the size nor the scoring repertoire Waiters has and it isn’t close. I may not trust him with my Scooby Snack gummy packs, but I do trust Dion Waiters to get me a bucket.

Like I said earlier, 44 rotation minutes opened up with Avery Bradley’s opt-out and Rondo’s injury. It’s far from ideal, but it does give the opportunity for Alex Caruso and Dion Waiters to get more playing time. The Lakers were already a great team without Dion and Caruso frustratingly not getting more minutes. They have the potential to get even better if these guys deliver in the bubble.

Shake Milton PG Philadelphia 76ers: Maybe the most surprising and newsworthy development of the early-going of the bubble was the news that Shake Milton would be inserted into the starting lineup, moving Al Horford to the bench and, most importantly, shift Ben Simmons into the super-sized Draymond Green playmaking roll-man many hoped he’d be used as while Milton handles the ball. Early results looked promising before the season shut down. Milton was the most efficient playmaker running the pick and roll for Philly this season registering 0.88 points per possession. Milton really showed his skill set and potential as a three-level in his breakout performance against the Clippers before play was suspended. Philly surely had visions of Markelle Fultz becoming the scoring dynamo on the perimeter that could help mesh Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid’s games together; that duty was bestowed upon Jimmy Butler by default before he bolted to Miami. Shake Milton is the best they got now.

I was hoping for this move to activate the best version of Ben Simmons we could hope to see, but unfortunately, Simmons injured his left knee and will miss the entirety of the bubble season after only playing a handful of games. This just ratchets up the scrutiny and necessity placed upon Milton. Philadelphia still has enough talent to pull off an upset or two in the postseason as they look to shift the offense back to feeding Joel Embiid. But they still will need creation from the perimeter and Shake Milton is their best bet for it (though if Josh Richardson could continue to drop 34 points like he did against the Blazers, that would be cool!).

This is important because of the expectations heaped upon the Sixers headed into this season. They weren’t favorites but were a trendy pick to make the Finals. They were a shot away from being five minutes away from making the Eastern Conference Finals a year ago. They essentially chose Tobias Harris, Josh Richardson, and Al Horford over Jimmy Butler and JJ Redick last summer. Those contracts, alongside Simmons’ and Embiid’s are on the books for a while. This is essentially their team for the foreseeable future. Teams are already circling the Sixers like vultures in the sky or sharks in the water in the event one of the two stars hits the market. Does a lengthy postseason validate the notion the Sixers are better off without one of their stars? I personally don’t think you can properly evaluate this without one of them playing, but crazier things have happened before. The decisions made a year ago forced the Sixers into this position. Ideally, you’d like to avoid trading an All-NBA player. Hopefully, Shake Milton and crew won’t make them do so.

Michael Porter Jr. SF/PF Denver Nuggets: If there’s a concern with Denver’s sixth-best offense, it’s who is the one that’s going to just get them a bucket when the game slows down and Denver’s transition game is slowed down (the Nuggets are below average in effective field goal percentage late in the shot clock, per NBA.com). Nikola Jokic is great, but his primary read is to facilitate rather than get his. Jamal Murray can get hot, like he did at the end of his first game back against the Utah Jazz, but can also go colder than the ice planet of Hoth. Enter Michael Porter Jr. Michael Porter Jr. has the outlines of a three-level scorer already, though mostly that has come playing through Jokic as opposed to unlocking Porter Jr. as a ball-handler. He’s a strong cutter, quick riser coming off screens and dribble hand-offs, and a willing offensive rebounder and finisher with putbacks. He put all that together for a breakout 37 point performance against the Oklahoma City Thunder. He’s also a great stand-still shooter. For the season, Porter Jr. has shot 42.3% on catch-and-shoot jumpers on about two of such attempts per game, the second-best mark on the team amongst those who have played at least 30 games. That number has jumped up to 44.8% on more than double the attempts in the bubble!

If there’s a hold-up to get fully enamored with Porter Jr.’s game, however, it’s on defense. He just is flat bad there, no way around it. Granted, that can be expected for a young player in his first season, but that’s the reason why head coach Michael Malone has not yet unleashed him until he was forced to due to injuries and late arrivals amongst his players in the bubble. He shies away from contact and does not provide much, if any, resistance on the defensive end. Normally, I’d side against playing a defensive liability that much in the postseason, but I think the toothpaste is out of the tube on this one. Malone has to play Porter Jr. more. Denver is already in the middle of the pack defensively. They have alternative options in the event Porter Jr. struggles offensively. But his offense drastically raises the Nuggets’ ceiling. Even with his defensive limitations, he’s still been one of the most valuable players in the bubble, according to ESPN’s Kevin Pelton. It may take another year or so for the Nuggets to truly cement themselves as title contenders, but at least Michael Porter Jr. gives them a better shot.

Mike Budenholzer HC Milwaukee Bucks: The playoffs are all about adjustments. Opposing players and staffs have plenty of time to diagnose your strengths and flaws, what you do best and what needs improvements, so on, and so forth. Perhaps Mike Budenholzer gets too much of a bad wrap for the lack of adjustments he utilizes in playoff series; had Milwaukee not gotten cold against Toronto they likely had them beat after blowing a big lead in Game 3 to go up 3-0 on the eventual champions. On the other hand, once you get past Khris Middleton, the Bucks aren’t flush with as many knockdown three-point shooters as you think, and Toronto was able to take advantage of Milwaukee’s drop pick and roll coverage with Kawhi Leonard, Kyle Lowry, Pascal Siakam and Fred Van Vleet burying pull-up threes from beyond the arc. Budenholzer doubled down on his system, not only in that series but this season in general. Last season, Milwaukee gave up roughly 36 threes per game last season in both the regular season and the playoffs. This season? 38.6 threes a game. They’re very smart and selective about it too; obviously they’re not going to let Steph Curry fire at will, but, let’s say, for example, Aaron Gordon? Sure, take that shot, because if your shot isn’t firing, we’ll either live with you keep on firing or losing confidence and giving the ball up. It’s worked so far: they have the number one defense by a mile, were on a 70-win pace before Giannis got injured and the season abruptly ended, and have a net rating (+10.6) on par with the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors who won 73 games. The Bucks should be resounding favorites… yet the belief around teams they’ll likely face in the playoffs is not one of gloom and doom, but optimism the Bucks can be beaten. I believe they are the best team in the East. They should make it to the Finals. Obviously Giannis needs to bring an extra scoring punch that isn’t just him moving through people. But plenty will hinge on whether Budenholzer can get the most out of a team that is hitting its apex in the regular season when it counts the most. A lot is on the line, both this season and the years to come after.

Robert Williams III C Boston Celtics: The Celtics essentially have six starters. Brad Wanamaker is a solid guard to eat up 10-15 minutes. But all but Daniel Theis are guards or wings. They need more help down low. Daniel Theis can’t play the entire game. We all know Enes Kanter is not the answer, but maybe Time Lord is. He brings an added element to the Celtics on both sides of the floor. Though their primary players are strong and powerful drivers, sometimes it’s easier to just dunk the damn ball, and Robert Williams brings that vertical element to the Celtics’ offense. His potential as a rim protector is stuff Enes Kanter can only dream of being. It’s a small sample size, but Boston has been world-beaters when Robert Williams is on the floor. Rotations shrink, but Boston still needs one or two players to step in the frontcourt to help them navigate the gauntlet of big men (Joel Embiid, Al Horford, Marc Gasol, the Lopez twins, Bam Adebayo, Anthony Davis, Montrezl Harrell) they likely will have to face in the postseason. Williams can help buy Brad Stevens some time.

PJ Tucker PF/C Houston Rockets: I wrote about Houston briefly in my previous iteration of this column before the season ended, highlighting how the move to dislodge Clint Capela from the starting lineup helped give the Rockets’ offense, most notably Russell Westbrook’s offense, the tune-up it needed for it to, wait for it, lift-off (I’ll show myself out). However, it did come at a cost. From February 1st on, the Rockets ranked dead last in defensive rebounding percentage. What good is a defensive stop if you can’t finish off the possession and give teams another chance that they capitalize on? As the game slows down in the postseason, cleaning the glass becomes of utter importance, especially for a team that likes to run like Houston does, ranking fourth in the league in pace on the season, per NBA.com. That becomes a gift and a curse for the Rockets because their transition defense is quite porous. Houston allows the fifth-most points per possession in transition in the entire league, trailing only defensive stalwarts like the San Antonio Spurs, New York Knicks, New Orleans Pelicans, and Cleveland Cavaliers. Not only are they sloppy matching up, but they’re also just flat slow and bad getting back on defense. Just watch this play: by the time Toronto corrals the rebound, Pascal Siakam trails literally everybody on the floor, with three Rockets at least somewhat back on defense, yet no one accounts for him and he strolls right down the floor for the easiest dunk he’s ever had in the league. Don’t worry, Houston made this type of defense routine for them. This isn’t just PJ Tucker’s responsibility, but he’s highlighted because he is now the Rockets’ last line of defense and a leader on the team. He HAS to get more effort out of his team defensively, most notably his stars, James Harden and Russell Westbrook. Maybe it might not matter and Houston bends the math so far in their favor they shoot their way to an upset or two in the Western Conference. But until I see progress from them defensively, I’m not going to take them seriously as title contenders.

Bam Adebayo PF/C Miami Heat: I’m not sure Miami is the most dangerous team outside of the top three teams in the Eastern Conference (if they had another playmaker or two with north-south zip to go alongside Jimmy Butler and Goran Dragic, then it could get interesting), but what they do have is an antidote for Giannis Antetokounmpo. When Bam is on the floor with Giannis, Giannis’ numbers drop off the face of the earth compared to earth-shattering numbers Giannis has made the norm. Giannis has echoed Fetti Wap when Bam has shared the floor with him, shooting 17-38 from the field. 44.7% from the field is a far cry from the 54.7% mark Giannis set in the regular season. The film checks out too: Bam is one of the few guys in the league who is not only shifty enough to stick with Giannis but strong enough to not get muscled through. The idea of Giannis plus spacing typically works because the opponent doesn’t have anybody who can stay in front of the Greek Freak. But when you have a guy who can do that and make Milwaukee change course offensively? That could be a game-changer, especially if Budenholzer can’t adjust like what was noted previously. The Bucks are tied for the fifth-best offense in the NBA, scoring 112.3 points per 100 possessions; when Bam Adebayo is on the floor with Giannis, that number falls to 89.1 points. The Heat took both games the Bucks this season, though one of them was back in October. I still think Milwaukee would beat the Heat in a series should they meet in the postseason. However, I got a gut-feeling this is a matchup the Bucks would hope to avoid if they could, largely because of Bam Adebayo (I didn’t even get into Bam’s offensive game either).

COVID-19: The biggest variable of them all. It’s one thing that the NBA is re-starting the season; it’s another if they can finish it. As COVID-19 is surging across the country, most notably in the state and area the league is residing in Florida, can the league keep it out of the bubble? So far it has worked, as the NBA recently announced no players in the bubble have tested positive for the virus for the third consecutive week. The NBA has to keep the virus out for the league to continue, even if it means quarantining Lou Williams for getting wings named after him (an incredible flex, if I may add) or suggesting to Alex Caruso not to attend his sister’s wedding because it does not follow proper protocols. However, it could also not be the NBA’s choice to shut down. If the virus is still surging and Florida hospitals continue to get overrun by the virus, at what point does public perception turn on the NBA for hoarding tests that the public needs more? It isn’t an impossible outcome; it’s one part of what held the NBA back from returning sooner. At the end of the day: the reason they are in the bubble is because of the virus. If it infiltrates the bubble, then this whole experiment is in jeopardy (just ask the Miami Marlins how tenuous this can be). That means not only do NBA players have to do their job and follow proper protocols (I’m talking to you, Dwight Howard), but we as fans and American citizens have to as well to help flatten the curve. If we want our sports, we all have to do our part.

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Unlikely Mentorship

If you told Chris Paul and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander about a year and a month ago neither probably would’ve believed they’d be teammates in the season to come. However, when it comes to free agency, it’s always wise to expect the unexpected. It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, the epic summer of 2019 met its apex when Kawhi Leonard essentially forced the Los Angeles Clippers to trade for Paul George. I remember absorbing the wisdom of Larry David through his fantastic and hilarious show ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ when I was preposterously met with the Woj bomb conveying the news. No, the Los Angeles Lakers weren’t acquiring Kawhi Leonard; he was forming a squad to take down LeBron James and Anthony Davis instead. Fuck me indeed.

But lost in the shuffle of all that hullabaloo was how Oklahoma City Thunder GM Sam Presti called Kawhi’s bluff. He made the Clippers give up everything: a myriad of picks, solid player Danilo Gallinari and budding star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Presti doubled on hoarding for the future, trading face-of-the-franchise Russell Westbrook to take on, what was portrayed to be Chris Paul’s contract, and even more picks. The consensus was that the Thunder were going to continue to sell and blow this up; instead, those two newly-acquired guards made the team better.

Chris Paul supposedly lost it. His numbers were down (he averaged a career-low 15.6 points per game), but his on/off splits with James Harden told a different story. Without the pressure of *having* to win a title and seeking to show the world CP3’s still got it, he proved his doubters wrong this year in his second stint in Oklahoma City (the Hornets played a year in OKC after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina). Not only that, but Paul seemed to be having fun on the floor, for the first time in a long time. He looked sprier than in his last season in Houston, winning more in isolation situations and creating separation to get to his spot at the right elbow. While his efficiency, though improved, in isolation situations was about the same as it was a year ago, his efficiency in the pick-and-roll flourished in his new digs. In the 2018-19 season, Chris Paul was in the 59th percentile of ball-handlers in pick-and-roll situations, per NBA.com. Bryn Forbes was ahead of him! This year? The 94th percentile, generating the same number of points per possession (1.09) as the presumptive MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo. You could see how comfortable he was controlling a game and picking defenses apart while reading defenders like a book and adding more variety into his game as opposed to being pigeonholed into the iso-mode Rockets. That isn’t a knock; the Rockets almost won a title playing that way. But Paul and the Rockets needed a change, and Paul made the most of his before the season ended.

What made Paul’s season so unique and incredible was how great he was in the clutch. Among players with a usage rate of at least 25% in clutch situations (a five-point game within the last five minutes) Chris Paul ran laps around everybody. The distance between him and second place in Net Rating (ironically, James Harden) was roughly the same distance as the gap between second and eighth (Donovan Mitchell) place. As hasn’t always been the case in previous Thunder regimes, you just knew Chris Paul was going to the Thunder a great shot through his unrelenting savvy and ability to create for both himself and others. They don’t call him the Point God for a reason. People wondered, I’ll even throw myself in there, when, not if, Paul was going to get traded again. His contract was widely portrayed as a toxic albatross, incapable of returning value again. He only showed us up by returning back to the All-Star Game for the 10th time, throwing down an Alley-Oop and helping Team LeBron close the game out in the newly-installed Elam Ending format to the game that he helped implement into the game.

Some of the concerns were valid regarding Paul; he’s now 35 years old and has numerous knicks and knacks of injuries under his belt. Father time comes for everybody, point guards especially. It was cool to see Paul in that All-Star game when there’s a non-zero chance that it could be his last one. Though if his play is any indication, Father time will just have to wait another day. And even if it does come, that doesn’t mean the Thunder will be in trouble any time soon. They’ve got another guard waiting for his turn to take the franchise from under Paul’s wings.

There’s a reason why the Clippers were ‘heartbroken’ to include Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s name into the trade for Paul George: because he’s already a really good player. The Clippers believe so too, with Doc Rivers saying after Shai’s first matchup against the Clippers this season that he thinks Shai will be a superstar in the years to come. Though superstar is an incredible bar to hurdle, it isn’t hard to conclude that Gilgeous-Alexander will be a star.

What sticks out the most with Gilgeous-Alexander is his poise and patience. The poise was evident when he put on a 25 point performance on 9-15 shooting in the playoffs against the two-time defending champion, fully healthy Golden State Warriors. The patience comes from his play to match his complete all-around game. Gilgeous-Alexander rarely forces things on the floor. Whether he’s waiting for plays to develop or open spots on the floor to gracefully slide to, Gilgeous-Alexander is never in a rush with the ball in his midst. As the pick-and-roll ball-handler, Gilgeous-Alexander generated a healthy 0.97 points per possession, placing him in the 83rd percentile. He showed he can score from anywhere on the floor. He’s got a solid mid-range game to go when defenses take away his three-ball, where he can do damage as well (career 35.7% shooter from deep).

On top of that, Shai is versatile and uses his smarts to play both on and off the ball. Though Chris Paul is as unselfish a player as they come, the ball is in his hands quite a bit and you have to be able to adapt to that. Shai has done that. He reads the floor well when playing without the ball. If defenders deny Shai the ball he’s got the wherewithal to sneak backdoor and buy himself an easy dunk. He’s a great decision-maker too off-ball, attacking when given the room or keeping the ball humming around the horn to give up a good shot for an even better one. It sounds simple but plays like this aren’t always executed and Shai’s got it down pat.

But what I love most about Shai is his craft and ability to finesse with finesse. Explosiveness is not his strength nor is he the most fleet of foot, but he gets by in another ways. Usually, the phrase ‘knowing angles’ is solely associated with lefty hoopers, but it applies to Shai as well. He’s awesome at changing speeds to trick defenders while giving himself separation attacking the basket, which is just part of a tight handle package that allows him to get penetration into the line to either score or find open shooters. Gilgeous-Alexander doesn’t shy away from contact or attacking bigs either, as, despite the lack of explosion, he gets by through finishing off the same leg he shoots with, dragging bigs out to switch onto him on the perimeter and roasting them or burying his body into the body of the big as a shield to deter them from blocking the shot. He’s already got all the tricks in the world to his repertoire… and is only getting better.

We see mentorships all the time. Some work out great, like, say, Yoda and Luke Skywalker. Others, not so much, like George Costanza and Mr. Wilhelm. What is unique is not just how Chris Paul, the multi-time All-Star and future surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the young budding star, became teammates, but how well both have taken to the Jedi-Padawan relationship. If Chris Paul’s latest Instagram post celebrating Shai’s birthday is any indication, the two have really hit it off this season, with Paul reminding Shai and fans alike he was the one ‘who really put (Shai) on to game’ Chris Paul’s best days are behind him and Shai’s are ahead of him, but both are awesome players in their current form, especially when they hoop together, reminiscent of the Iron Man and Spider-Man tag-team in the MCU.

OKC was supposed to flounder into a rebuild after losing two All-NBA players a summer ago. Instead, both their present and future became as bright as the sun, and they have the afterthoughts of the big transactions of the summer to thank for that.

#Oklahoma City Thunder #Chris Paul #Shai Gilgeous-Alexander #NBA

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The 2020 Breakout Tight End

One of the most fun aspects of fantasy football is to find the diamond in the rough late in drafts or through the waiver wire to find the league-winning breakout player who helps catapult your team to the top. Not that it has been easy, but the tight end spot has been a bountiful source for these types of players, evidenced by Mark Andrews and Darren Waller last year, George Kittle the year before that, so on and so forth. However, for every Julius Thomas, there are more than a few Zach Sudfelds. It isn’t an exact science (nothing is, especially in fantasy football), but there is one player I believe can follow the path Kittle, Andrews and Waller blazed the last few seasons and help your team win a title. That player? Ian Thomas of the Carolina Panthers.

Granted, the sample size is not large by any stretch, but Thomas has shown glimpses of his tantalizing potential. Through his first two seasons, Thomas has gotten ten starts filling in for an injured Greg Olsen, and in those nine starts, he’s averaged roughly six targets, 40 yards and 7.81 half-PPR points per game. That average points per game mark would’ve left Ian Thomas as the TE12 on a per-game basis. Again, the sample size may be minuscule but bear in mind as well, the majority of these games came with a banged-up Cam Newton and a mediocre Kyle Allen at quarterback. Though those quarterbacks’ combined completion percentage was 64.5% (dump-offs to Christian McCaffrey help), neither Allen nor Cam (particularly Allen) was particularly great at giving their weapons targets to excel, for one reason or another. The Panthers moved on from both of those quarterbacks to sign Teddy Bridgewater (who has a career completion percentage of 65.2%) this offseason.

The signing of Teddy Bridgewater was portrayed as a boost for the value of Christian McCaffrey and wide receiver DJ Moore, but it is good news for Ian Thomas as well given Bridgewater’s preference to hit for singles as opposed to swing for the fences a la Jameis Winston. According to Pro Football Focus, among those qualified, Teddy’s actual average depth of target was the lowest at 6.1 yards downfield. In his two previous seasons as a starter back in Minnesota, his average depth of target was 7.9 and 7.5 yards downfield, respectively. That reluctance to push the ball downfield means more short-to-intermediate passes from Teddy, which would include the tight end position. In 2019, from filling in for Drew Brees in the Saints’ Week 2 matchup against the Rams until their game against Jacksonville in Week 6, tight end Jared Cook garnished a solid 14% of passes from Teddy. In 2015 in Minnesota, Kyle Rudolph saw 15.88% of passes from Bridgewater, and the year prior, in the five games those two shared the field, Rudolph held onto a 15% target share. So to recap: in the 26 games Teddy Bridgewater has started with a starting-caliber tight end, those tight ends have seen roughly 15% of the passes Teddy’s thrown. Though a 15% target share doesn’t seem like a lot, it is ahead of the mark Jason Witten set on his way to finishing 10th among tight ends in targets (13.92%) and in the ballpark of guys like Hunter Henry (17.63%) and Dallas Goedert (15.42%). The rest of Carolina’s tight ends behind Thomas have been in the league since 2016 and have only seen 11 targets between them and one touchdown reception, which came from the arm of… Christian McCaffrey (sorry, I just wanted an excuse to post this because teams should design plays that allow running backs throw more, but that’s a discussion for another day). Ian Thomas is due for a healthy amount of targets for a tight end.

What also helps Thomas is the fact that Carolina will likely need to throw to catch up. Carolina’s defense ranked 25th in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric, and that was before losing starting cornerback James Bradberry and defensive tackle Gerald McCoy to free agency alongside star linebacker and team captain Luke Kuechly to retirement, which in part led to Carolina throwing the ball 633 times, the second-most in the NFL behind the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. If Carolina has to throw it that many times again, and Ian Thomas gets 15% of that pie, then he’d wind up with about 95 targets, which would’ve ranked 7th among tight ends in targets last season. Even if Carolina manages to improve as a defense and throw it just 573 times, which was the middle of the pack of the NFL last year and Thomas gets that 15% target share, he’d *still* rank in the top 10 of tight ends last year with roughly 86 targets, the same number Dallas Goedert had and finished 9th at the position with. If their attempts increase… well, you get the point. (Just a reminder: the other quarterbacks in the Carolina Panthers’ division consist of the likes of Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, and Drew Brees.)

Talent and opportunity determine fantasy value for players. It’s hard to get much better opportunity wise than what Ian Thomas is looking at this season. He’s the team’s starting tight end going into 2020 with indisputably more production than his contemporaries at the position, has a quarterback who doesn’t attempt to push it deep very often and looks to his tight ends enough to keep them relevant for fantasy purposes and a defense under construction. Luckily, Ian Thomas possesses the athletic profile and gifts to take advantage of the opportunity, with the ability to turn up the field after the catch and take one of Teddy’s dink-and-dunk passes to the house. Thomas’ ADP is negligible, beyond the top 25 amongst the tight end position on ESPN and as tight end 34 on Sleeper. Being an advocate of waiting at the position, I draft Thomas at the end of every single mock draft I do. I believe a breakout for Ian Thomas is coming. Why not take the shot with one of your last picks?

#Carolina Panthers #Ian Thomas #Teddy Bridgewater #NFL #Fantasy Football

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Cleveland Quandry

When the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted Darius Garland with the fifth pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, the pick was met with a mixed bag of skepticism due to fit and praise for taking the best player available. His rookie season was something of a similar note, looking like the crafty playmaking guard of today’s game at times but mostly looking like a player over his head against the best of the best, as most rookies are. His fit with the Cavs is questionable as well after they took Collin Sexton with the eighth pick of the 2018 draft with the pick acquired by Boston via Brooklyn in the rare lose-lose Kyrie Irving trade. After a (kinda) season, some of those concerns regarding the pairing dubbed ‘SexLand’ (I don’t make the nicknames don’t shoot the messenger here) are still there. Can both of these undersized guards make it work?

Well, if history is any indication, it’s going to be difficult. Seeing as Garland and Sexton both started more than half their games this year and possessed a usage rate above 20%, I looked through all the teams that made the conference finals from the 2010-11 season onward that had two guards start at least 35 games, own a usage rate above 20% and their heights both be 6’4” or below. I found two examples: the 2016-17 Boston Celtics (Isaiah Thomas and Avery Bradley) and the 2018-19 Portland Trail Blazers (Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum). Both of those teams would wind up losing within 5 games, respectively. One other team did meet the threshold, (the 2013-14 Oklahoma City Thunder) because Reggie Jackson started 36 games filling in for Russell Westbrook during that season, but still started fewer games than Thabo Sefolosha, who did not get much usage at all starting as a defensive specialist.

In the abbreviated 2019-20 season, seven teams met the threshold set earlier: the Cavs (Sexton and Garland), Hornets (Terry Rozier III and 2019-20 breakout Devonte’ Graham), Blazers (Lillard and McCollum), Kings (De’Aaron Fox and Buddy Hield, who would get benched for Bogdan Bogdanovic later in the season in a move that… actually worked?), Raptors, Jazz and Wizards. The Cavs and Hornets are bottom feeders, the Kings and Blazers are playoff hopefuls with a semi-decent chance to make it in DisneyWorld, the Raptors and Jazz are playoff teams, though the Jazz weren’t getting the Mike Conley we’ve become accustomed to in previous years before the quarantine and the Wizards are, well, the Wizards (I legitimately did not know Isaiah Thomas started 37 games for the Wizards this year.). Even here, the results are a mixed bag.

So can Collin Sexton and Darius Garland make it work and become a winning duo? I suppose it’s possible, but I need to see more to be convinced. Both Sexton and Garland have shown they can space the floor without the ball in their hands (Sexton shot 42.1% on catch-and-shoot threes, per NBA.com, while Garland shot 39.2% on shots of the variety. Sexton is a career 39.2% shooter from three on 4.2 attempts per 36 minutes; Garland hit 35.5% on 5.8 attempts from deep per 36 minutes.), which helps the fit offensively. In a pick-and-roll heavy-league where teams look to find players across the floor capable of creating a jump shot, these two can provide plenty of that. Darius Garland prefers to work his magic against switches through stepback threes. Sexton is an underrated, more well-rounded bucket-getter than Garland with a soft touch on floaters, athleticism to pounce upon driving lanes and attack the rim and matches that with a solid handle to create some space and fire away from the midrange and beyond. Sometimes, you’d see flashes of those two working together to create a symphony, providing glimmers of hope these two can figure it out as a duo. Sexton scored 22.7 points per 36 minutes while boasting a solid 51.7% effective field goal percentage and generated 0.90 points per possession while operating the pick-and-roll (65th percentile); both very good marks, especially for a second-year player. Garland’s endeavors were not as fruitful, however, though customary for a rookie guard who didn’t have much college experience. All in all, scoring is not the problem with this backcourt.

While there’s no disputing these two can get buckets, I’m a bit skeptical wondering what else these two can provide. Let’s start defensively. Sexton surely does play with effort on that end, half the battle, but you could see his body move faster than his brain as he attempts to compute what is happening on the floor. Though this bucket didn’t count, it didn’t count because Sexton got stuck attempting to navigate a Steven Adams screen. Though I imagine it wouldn’t be pleasant to get tussled with Poseidon’s less-successful brother Joeseidon, that was a sight Sexton made look far too routine. His backcourt in Garland wasn’t much better. His size already doesn’t do Garland many favors, but it compounds matters when you don’t bring the requisite fight to make up for that lack of size, especially against bigger guards, like here how Shai Gilgeous-Alexander steamrolls past him for an easy layup. It isn’t just bigger guards either; Chris Paul, sure he’s a sure-fire Hall of Famer, works Garland at ease for a bucket and a foul to go with it. Kyle Lowry and Fred Van Vleet can get away with their lack of size through smarts and tenacity; Sexton and Garland are miles away from that. To be fair, they’re only sophomores and rookies, respectively; on the other hand, they were two of the five worst point guards according to ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus-Minus metric. When Sexton and Garland share the floor, the Cavs’ defensive rating is 117.3 which would rank last in the league. Though the Cavs can suppress that some with more defensive help surrounding Sexton and Garland on the wing and in the paint (please draft Onyeka Okongwu!), it’s fair to wonder if these two can hold up defensively.

Playmaking is another aspect regarding these two that concerns me. Garland fared better than Sexton in this area, showing flashes of slick playmaking in between tight corridors. However, both he and Sexton had their issues reading the entire floor and being late with decisions. Both like to pound the ball and go for broke early in the clock as opposed to getting others involved. Neither were able to crack the top 50 in potential assists. Again, there is plenty of room for these two to improve upon and it is still super early for both of them in their NBA careers, but both have to improve in the area of playmaking and making their teammates better to fully maximize their talents.

I don’t normally dissuade myself or a team to take the best player available if that’s what they believe, even if the fit is tricky. NBA players are good enough to blend in with their surroundings, and Collin Sexton and Darius Garland have certain skills to coincide with each other. I’m not going to definitively declare these two cannot coexist, but they need to improve in areas like playmaking and defense to prove Koby Altmann and the Cavaliers right that these two can coexist. It took Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, lightyears ahead of where Sexton and Garland are currently, years to even make the conference finals, and when they did, they got swept. Cavs fans can look to them and Toronto as evidence this *can* work. I remain skeptical, however. Sexton and Garland have a lot of room to grow to get to that level. Both are intriguing players, but that neither are distinguishable defenders or playmakers exacerbates their size, or lack thereof, as teammates. Perhaps they can flourish together over time, but I’m not convinced quite yet.

#Cleveland Cavaliers #Collin Sexton #Darius Garland #NBA

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Rising Star, Part 1: Jonathan Isaac

Jonathan Isaac was on the verge of a breakout season this season. Unfortunately, injuries beset him yet again, a he was slated to miss the rest of what would’ve been the regular season before COVID-19 put a halt to all of that. Perhaps there’s a chance Isaac could return in his team’s hometown in Orlando at Walt-Disney World, but that doesn’t seem anything like a guarantee. However, just because he may or not return this summer doesn’t mean we can’t talk about him and his future promising prospects.

Offensively is not where he makes his mark, but it is worth noting he did improve in this regard. Orlando does not ask a lot of him from this end, as his 18.1% usage rate ranks seventh on a team whose offense ranked 24th in the league this season. Despite limited usage, Isaac’s numbers improved across the board, including a career-high 50.9% effective field-goal percentage. The majority of Isaac’s offensive usage came via spot-ups, where he scored on a porous 0.86 points per possession clip, per NBA.com, shooting about 33% on threes of the variety. Without a tight handle or bulky frame to create his own shot and being on a team lacking shooting across the board, Isaac will have to improve here to become less of a liability offensively.

However, Jonathan Isaac is still just 22 and won’t turn 23 until October. He’s got plenty of time to add more variety to his offensive game, which he showed in flashes. While a 41.9% effective field goal percentage on pull-up jump shots doesn’t exactly exude enthusiasm, it is still is an upgrade from Isaac’s mark on said shots during the 2018-19 season. Though Isaac was not very efficient scoring off the pick-and-roll, averaging 0.81 points per possessions in those situations, he at least showed some comfort and confidence stepping into open spots of space defenses bestowed upon him and firing when defenders duck under screens. Isaac has a lot of room to improve upon (like a career 142/149 assist/turnover ratio), but at least he showed progress on the offensive end.

Now, let’s get to the good stuff. Jonathan Isaac is a damn game-wrecker on the defensive end of the floor. According to ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus, in Isaac’s 32 games, he ranked 17th in the entire bleepin’ league in Defensive Real Plus-Minus. The only players listed as the same position as Isaac that placed ahead of him? Some guys named Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bam Adebayo, Kristaps Porzingis, and Jayson Tatum, surely you have heard of them. Orlando’s defense falls from being a top-three defense to being mediocre when Isaac isn’t on the floor. For those inclined at looking more traditional stats, Jonathan Isaac averaged 2.4 blocks and 1.6 steals per game, good for 4 stocks per game if you combine the two statistics. Though he didn’t play enough games/minutes to qualify due to his ankle injury on New Year’s Day, amongst those who did, there was only one other player to average at least two blocks per game and one steal per game: Anthony Davis. On top of that, Isaac averaged an additional four deflections per 36 minutes. As the great Larry David would say, that’s pretty, pretty, pretty good. Just about any way you slice it, the conclusion repeatedly states that Jonathan Isaac is a nightmare to score against.

The film, like the ball according to Rasheed Wallace, doesn’t lie. Though Isaac is not a ferocious leaper, he is very quick to go with his pterodactyl wings of arms and matches athletic gifts with terrific timing and instincts. Watch here as Isaac rotates over to force a snaking Chris Paul to dish the rock over to rookie Darius Bazley, who then attempts to kick the ball out after driving into the lane. ‘Attempts’ is the operative word here, as Isaac engulfs Bazley with all kinds of arms and ligaments and makes Bazley look like you or me trying to make the play. Later in that, Bazley went for seconds on Isaac looking for revenge. *Narrator voice:* It did not go well, nor does it for many other players who try to take Isaac off the bounce one v one. Opponents who tried Isaac in isolation situations scored a paltry 0.66 points per possession, placing him in the 90th percentile of all NBA players. While he wasn’t as potent in pick-and-roll situations, he was still fairly feisty defending those as well, allowing just 0.90 points per possession defending the roll man. He wasn’t as lethal defending ball-handlers in the pick-and-roll, ranking only in the 28th percentile of that category. Though the NBA is fading away from the post-up, Isaac’s slender frame rendered him being the victim of many brutes plowing through him, as he allowed 1.32 points per possession when teams posted him up. Bulking up could do Isaac favors and unlock more lineups with Isaac at the center spot (Isaac only played two minutes without at least one of Nikola Vucevic, Khem Birch, or Mo Bamba on the floor) and unleash his versatility and range defensively in full force.

It’s a shame injury has taken its toll on Jonathan Isaac early in his career, forcing him to miss 95 of a possible 229 games through his first three seasons because with health, perhaps more would be aware of how much potential Isaac oozes with. He surely seems on track to make an All-Defensive team and potentially could have made one this season. He’s set for an extension during this offseason of the unknown as the coronavirus still rampages through the world. Perhaps this could be an opportunity for Orlando to re-up Isaac on a value deal and allow him to cash in on a big payday before he takes his game up a notch and turns into a more well-rounded two-way player he’s shown flashes of being. The future is bright for Jonathan Isaac and his potential is through the roof. Hopefully, he can reach most, if not all, of it.

#Orlando Magic #Jonathan Isaac #NBA

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The James Conner Post-Hype Fantasy Sleeper Season

It is funny how the cycle works of fantasy players and analysts get hot and bothered about certain actual football players, then shun the exact player the next season. I am no exception to this phenomenon. I was not exactly enthused to buy this certain player at his price tag last season, but I am all about it for where he’s going next year. Because of this, let’s see if I can convince you all about a favorite post-hype sleeper of mine for 2020: James Conner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Last year, many were eager to buy Conner coming off of his 2018 breakout season where he ran for 973 yards in 13 games at a 4.5 yards-per-carry clip, racked up 497 yards through the air and found paydirt 13 times in those 13 games, finishing with 19.1 half PPR points per game, good for RB7 on the season on a per-game basis. To make matters even better, Conner was targeted 71 times and hauled in 55 of those targets, proving he can play on all three downs. That led to Conner’s ADP soaring up to 6.6 per Sleeper in the summer of 2019 after finishing at 150.1 in 2018 amidst Le’Veon Bell’s holdout. However, Conner’s constant injury struggles and the devolution at quarterback from Ben Roethlisberger to what Joe Budden would call ‘a two-pack of ass (Mason Rudolph and Devlin ‘Duck’ Hodges)’ did not allow the Steelers’ offense to flourish in 2019 as we have become accustomed to in previous seasons. In Conner’s breakout 2018 season, Pittsburgh boasted the sixth-best offense according to Football Outsider’s DVOA metric. In 2019? Pittsburgh ranked dead last. Using more simplistic counting stats, the Steelers offense in 2018 ranked fourth in yards per game and sixth in points per game. In 2019, the Steelers fell to 30th and 27th in those statistics, respectively. Yes, ass indeed.

Despite Pittsburgh’s offense falling into an abyss, Conner’s fantasy production was not affected all that much. Conner still put up 12.8 half PPR points per game, ranking 19th on a per-game basis. Sure, that is more than a touchdown-per-game dropoff from 2018, but a deeper look is worthwhile. Conner exited both Week 11 at Cleveland and Week 16 at the Jets in the second quarter. If you exclude those two games and look solely at games Conner played into the fourth quarter, Conner went on to average roughly 15.28 half PPR points per game, which would’ve squeezed Conner past Mark Ingram II and placed Conner as the RB8 on a per-game basis, despite a drop in Conner’s efficiency from 2018 (4.5 yards per carry; 9 yards per reception) to 2019 (4 yards per carry; 7.4 yards per reception), suggesting Conner has room to improve from an efficiency standpoint. On top of that, Conner has been consistent as the Steelers’ workhorse (more on this in a second). In 2018, Conner never finished outside of RB36 in a given week and only four of his 13 weeks were outside of the top 24 of the position (and two of those finishes were RB25 and RB26). Even in 2019, outside of the games Conner left early, just 1 of those 8 was outside of the top 36 and 3 were outside of the top 24 (but, again, there was an RB25 finish sprinkled in).

On top of all of this, Pittsburgh did not do much to bolster their running back group, only drafting Anthony McFarland Jr. out of Maryland, leading coach Mike Tomlin to proclaim that Conner will still be the featured runner out of the backfield. Asking if Conner will be able to hold up from the immense workload bestowed upon him (he’s had at least 15 touches in 14 of his 23 games since 2018) is another (fair) question, but this still seems like it’s Conner’s backfield. Even furthering Conner’s workload potential is the rise of the Steelers’ defense, which ranked third in DVOA last season. If the Steelers can get the lead and keep the lead, that allows Conner to gobble up more yards while churning down the clock. Oh, and Ben Roethlisberger will return this season, meaning the Pittsburgh offense can only go up compared to last season.

To recap: James Conner was great and a league-winning runner in 2018, which led to him owning a hefty price tag that he was able to deliver upon when healthy in 2019, but couldn’t stay on the field. Now in 2020, I’d argue his injury risk is baked into his ADP, where he is going at RB18 (31.3 overall) on Sleeper and RB21 (56.2 overall) on ESPN.com. I’d expect Conner to be drafted in most drafts somewhere in the middle of those two spots, and if you can get him there, he’s a bargain. If (when?) he gets hurt, you should be able to find a replacement. Is he a must-draft? Not necessarily. But if he (and Ben Roethlisberger, admittedly quite a few dominoes) stays healthy, you get what was a top ten pick last season & the production that comes with said price in the third-fifth round. What more could you want?

#JAmes Conner #Pittsburgh Steelers #Fantasy Football #NFL

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Forgotten Rookie

Before the NBA was interrupted by the devastating impact of the coronavirus, we were in the midst of two spectacular rookie campaigns. Zion Williamson looked every bit like the remix to Charles Barkley he was hyped to be. Ja Morant was well on his way to winning the rookie of the year and catapulting the Memphis Grizzlies back into the playoffs after the Grit N’ Grind era dismantled in front of their eyes. Many other rookies caught the eyes of the NBA faithful, such as Miami’s Tyler Herro and Kendrick Nunn, another Memphis rookie Brandon Clarke and a host of others. But coincidentally and surprisingly, the man selected behind Zion and Ja has gone under the radar, albeit for an appropriate reason. However, just because RJ Barrett’s rookie season was a bit underwhelming for the standard of a number three overall pick doesn’t mean we should dismiss Barrett going forward.

RJ Barrett started the season strong, shooting 47% from the field in October as he was dipping his toes in the treacherous NBA waters, but soon that flipped in the opposite direction, not shooting above 41% from the field again in a given month until March. Of course, it doesn’t help to play for a totally incompetent organization that not only does not surround a player like Barrett with shooters and players who don’t need the ball in their hands but does the exact opposite with the likes of Julius Randle and Elfrid Payton, but I digress. Seeing how circumstances were similar at Duke playing alongside Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish, and Tre Jones and how their offense would repeatedly get clogged in crucial spots, it’s amazing that an NBA team would double down on that type of personnel, but hey, we are talking about the Knicks here. After dishing Marcus Morris Sr. out of town, the Knicks only have four players who are shooting 35% from three or above, two being frequent observers from the bench in Damyean Dotson and Allonzo Trier, the other two being Bobby Portis and Wayne Ellington. With Barrett being more of a driver than a shooter, it’s easy to see how constantly bumping into bodies, whether friendly or the opposition could lead to inefficiency, but here we are.

That isn’t to say RJ Barrett is without flaws either. The Knicks’ defense fell off a cliff with Barrett on the floor, as is the case with most rookies, but he could project to be a decent defender at the least if he puts the effort in to go with his burly size and strength. Though a 32% clip from three isn’t terrible, it also has plenty of room to improve. Seeing how he shot 30.8% from deep while at Duke and only 66.5% from the free-throw line, improvement certainly isn’t guaranteed. Barrett could also stand to pass more instead of heave shots in traffic, another issue during his time at Duke. Though Barrett created 4.6 potential assists per game compared to just the 2.6 he actually accumulated this season in New York, 10.2% of his passes turned into assists, which is a solid number but can be better for a player with the playmaking chops Barrett has.

Barrett can be one of the better playmakers in the league if he allows it to be more of a focal point rather than go hero ball mode, which he reared its ugly head plenty at Duke. He’s got a great pick-and-roll partner in Mitchell Robinson to dance with and throw lobs to, which should get even more potent over time. He’s a bruiser of a driver (more on this in a second), allowing him to penetrate deep in the paint and find open teammates off of it as he does here to Taj Gibson, showcasing a nifty handle in the process. He’s got plenty of room to progress as a playmaker in the pick-and-roll, ranking only in the 24th percentile amongst ballhandlers, according to NBA.com, but the skillset is there to be a lethal playmaker to go along with his scoring prowess.

The main selling about Barrett’s game, however, is his ability to get buckets. Like I said earlier, he is a mean and powerful driver who doesn’t even need a full head of steam to get going as many players do. Watch him here ice this game against the Houston Rockets, letting precious seconds tick away before plowing over PJ Tucker of all people on an isolation possession to then proceed to lay the ball in graciously to seal the win for the Knicks. Nah, that wouldn’t be handy to have in the playoffs (stop laughing, the Knicks will get back in the playoffs one of these days… I think?) at all when possessions grind to a screeching halt. Barrett didn’t fare to kindly with his efficiency going iso-mode, but again, not all of that is his fault, especially when he shows flashes like that. Now, of course, teams will dare Barrett to beat them from deep and pack the paint (a decision made easier when the Knicks decided signing 50 power forwards in the summer was a good idea), but at least Barrett showed a willingness to not be Ben Simmons and try to make teams respect him from there, whether make or miss. 32% from three-point range isn’t going to get it done, but it is around where Luka Doncic has hovered around during his first couple of NBA seasons in Dallas (career 32.2% from three).

No, RJ Barrett did not have a season like Zion or Ja. He may not even make an All-Rookie team while the likes of Eric Paschall and Terence Davis II do (and will have deserved it). He had his fair share of struggles and has plenty of work to improve upon. But this also far from precludes Barrett from having a very good and productive NBA career. Perhaps the regime change to former agent Leon Rose will lead to Barrett being surrounded by a team more suited to take advantage of his strengths. I’m not even saying Barrett will be better than Zion Williamson or Ja Morant because that’s how I felt before the 2019 NBA Draft, but RJ Barrett nor his upside should be forgotten about because there is still a lot to work with here.

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Questions Regarding the NBA’s Return

Thank God that ESPN gifted us something riveting to watch on Sundays during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the form of ‘The Last Dance,’ the exhilarating ten-part documentary series regarding Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls. As fun as it was to watch, and as great as it is to curiously gaze upon the archival footage of the NBA’s yesteryears, it doesn’t quite match the feeling of watching live basketball from the present. That isn’t to say today’s game is better than any other era or vice versa, but that I really miss the NBA. I really want it back. As more and more states begin to open up (whether that’s the best and smartest option is a discussion for another day), optimism for a return to the hardwood abounds. But I still have my questions.

Part 1: The Logistics

I’ve got three questions regarding this aspect of the potential return of the NBA: 1) When will the NBA resume play? 2) Where will the NBA resume play? 3) How will the NBA resume play? It would seem prudent to allow every team to be able to enter their own facility before even thinking about a potential resumption of play (as of now, only 16 of 30 teams have opened facilities), and even with that, facilities have only opened in the form of individual players getting shots up with a coach or lifting weights. That’s it. It seems like a far way away from even being able to practice or conduct a mini training camp, let alone getting back to games. Before the games do take place, a training camp will take place. Would that take a month? More than that? Once that is over, where will the games take place? Will the NBA adopt the bubble idea and sequester the league in one or two locations, such as Orlando or Las Vegas? The Bundesliga (Germany’s predominant soccer league) had teams play in their own separate stadiums without fans. Is there a chance the NBA could pull that off? And once games do resume, will the NBA go straight to the postseason or finish off, at least a portion, of the regular season? The Los Angeles Lakers get paid on a per-game basis with their regional TV deal with Spectrum Sports-Net, but the overwhelming majority of NBA teams are required to reach 70 games for them to get the money from their regional sports network partners. Is the league going to allow teams to get to that threshold? Will the playoff structure be modified in any way, such as shortening series from best-of-7 to best-of-5? I feel like the first round of the playoffs should go back to a best-of-5, but that won’t happen for money purposes. Since they are in a time crunch of sorts, I think it would be prudent to go back to this format this postseason.

Part 2: The Ambiance

Is there any way we can get fans into the arenas virtually? Seeing as though the two most likely destinations for a ‘bubble’ style of seclusion are Las Vegas and Walt Disney World in Orlando, the gyms the players will be playing in will be fairly small, similar to the capacity of a mid-major college basketball program. The gathering will be intimate, meaning that instead of roars from the crowd we’ll likely hear a profound squeak of the shoes, pounding of the ball or clank off the rim. While that does leave room for juicy trash talk (seriously, don’t bleep that out, production teams. The world is on the edge, here. We can stomach a couple of ‘fuck yous!’ from the players or something of the sort), perhaps these games will feel more like awkward exhibitions rather than intense NBA playoff games (after watching the Bundesliga matches from this weekend, I can attest that those games felt more like the former rather than the latter). What if there was a way to get stands to hold cameras in front of the empty seats? Not only could this make games feel more normal, but also serves as an additional revenue stream the NBA desperately needs (more on this in a bit). Several media outlets have speculated that roughly 40% of the NBA’s revenue splits come from in-stadium services, such as ticket purchases, food, and drinks, in-arena store purchases, etc. While the NBA probably won’t be able to recoup all of that, maybe they can get sponsorship deals from smartphone suppliers such as Apple or Google or Samsung and video chat services like Skype or Zoom. It would be weird, but hey, they pulled it off for the NFL Draft. It seems like a win-win for all involved to me, at least.

Also, if these games are to be televised, where are the announcers going to be placed? They surely can’t be courtside, right? Same for other media personnel, such as reporters, camera people, photographers, etc. It would be less than optimal to scrunch them up along the stanchions (they’re already too close to the floor as it is). Would the announcers broadcast from a box suite? Would the media be spread out sporadically around the stands? Because it isn’t just the players the NBA needs to protect. Speaking of which...

Part 3: The Structure

How many players and coaches will choose to not play? While many players are not of the age where many have fallen from this insidious disease, many, like Larry Nance Jr. of the Cleveland Cavaliers, for one, have a pre-existing condition and, in the case of Nance, have expressed concern regarding the potential NBA return. How is the NBA going to handle players and coaching who elect not to play? Will they still get paid if they say no? How many coaches would even be allowed to make the trip from each team? Coaching staffs and their benches are about as big as the roster they’re inhibited to instruct. Does the amount of coaches allowed to come to games get cut, say, in half? Would teams be granted a special additional roster spot to fill ones vacated by players?

These are even the least of the NBA’s concerns. What if a player contracts the virus? Does the NBA shut down again? Does just the player who contracted the virus get quarantined for 14 days or just those who test positive? What if this happens in the crucible of an intense, close playoff series?

Part 4: The Risk

What is the risk of games resuming? Death. Not just for the players, but their families, the coaches, and their families and all the other workers that would be associated with this gathering. It seems a bit peculiar that the NBA would effectively blackball Chris Bosh for his own good and well-being for the sake of his safety rather than risk him dying on the floor via blood clots the same way Hank Gathers did in the NCAA Tournament for Loyola Marymount in the early 1990s but risk its constituents getting fatally sick. But drastic times call for drastic measures, I suppose. Remember the whole thing about the NBA’s expenses? Well, they’re losing a lot of it, so much so that they may be forced to function differently for the next year(s) after this one. The CBA was not designed to take this hit, meaning the players and owners will likely have to restructure and renegotiate the CBA, hopefully avoiding the mess the MLB is in right now. We’ve gone through some ways the NBA can recoup and possibly gain some revenue back, but they need to get back as much as they possibly can get back. But the risk is literally life or death.

Look, I want the league back as bad as anybody, but I go back and forth on whether the league should even return. I want it. I want my Lakers to win the championship this year. Shit, I want *someone* to win the championship this year. I don’t believe there would be an asterisk should a team win the championship this year with all the turmoil they’ve faced through this pandemic and the hard work they’ve put in over the course of the regular season before it came to a screeching halt. But safety has to be the overwhelming priority. If players feel queasy about coming back, they should be given the choice to not come back. The players and owners have to reach an agreement on a renegotiated CBA. States need to see progress regarding the status of its constituents shielding off the virus. Hopefully, a vaccine will come into existence and a vast majority of these concerns would be rendered mute. But until then, it is of the utmost importance that the CDC gives the league the go-ahead to resume and teams are able to gobble up testing kits with the public able to do so as well to avoid a PR hit. There is about no chance the NBA can resume until that happens, and even once that happens, it isn’t without risk.

If the NBA resumes again, I’ll be right there watching with the rest of us. But considering the risks and numerous questions I laid over the course of this piece, it begs one more question that I’m not sure how I or the league or anybody else can answer: is re-starting the league even worth it?

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The Coronavirus 2020 NBA Draft Prospect Binge Report

Remember when people looked forward to 2020 with actual optimism? That was fun while it lasted. Instead of joy and relief, this year has brought us tragedy after tragedy and now utter chaos. That is not typically how one would start an article about NBA Draft prospects, but I have managed to accomplish absolutely nothing but watch replays of college basketball games of NBA Draft prospects amidst this COVID-19 pandemic. There are much more serious things going on right now, but maybe you could use a distraction. So here goes nothing! Here are some takeaways from prospects I’ve watched during the season and now after the season got shut down.

Lottery:

Anthony Edwards SG Georgia: I don’t know if blame needs to be put on Edwards, the construction of his Georgia team or Tom Crean, but Edwards tended to float through games and settle for tough shots he shouldn’t need to rely upon given his athleticism and superhero frame for a college freshman. And then, all of a sudden, you’ll see him flip the switch and embark on ballistic streaks like this where he explodes and decides not to miss. He’s an elite shotmaker, whether it is contested or on the move or both. It felt like he had too much of a green light to shoot these and Edwards relied on these shots a bit too much, and that put a damper on his efficiency. He did get to the free-throw line 5.3 times per game, but with his ability to drive, that probably could improve as well. A nearly identical assist/turnover ratio needs improvement as well. However, while I did not see a frequent number of passes manipulating scrambling defenses, I did see Edwards make the correct pass at times when swarmed by help defense, both in transition and in the halfcourt. When engaged, Edwards can be a staunch defender as well, but that wasn’t always the case. Again, it didn’t help playing on a young team that was often, at best, a disorganized mess (seriously, that’s me being nice). But, ideally, you’d like to see a player of Edwards’ caliber carry his team to more wins than what Georgia accumulated this season. But the talent is overwhelming and *clearly* there. He should be the number one pick (at least among the crop of college basketball prospects), but both he and the team that drafts him has work to do to get the most out of that talent.

Isaac Okoro SF Auburn: Isaac Okoro just might be the best defensive player in the draft, certainly on the wing. I watched Mason Jones give Auburn fits en route to a 40 point performance, but when Bruce Pearl (finally) placed Okoro to take him out, he obliged as if he was Jason Bourne on the loose, shutting Jones down and allowing Auburn to escape Bud Walton Arena with a win. He’s big, long, tough, and athletic to stay in front of just about anybody. Offensively, he’s more of a work-in-progress but is a good slasher who can pass or finish off a straight-line drive and can play a little bit of pick and roll. He’s got to improve as a shooter (29% from the three-point line, 67% from the free-throw line) and as a ballhandler, but will be able to defend in the NBA from day one. At the very least, he’s Josh Okogie of the Minnesota Timberwolves. The floor for him as a player is very high because of his defense. If his offensive game improves, however, he can be much more though.

Tyrese Maxey PG/SG Kentucky: A more in-depth look at the Kentucky guard is coming soon. Spoiler alert: I like him. A LOT.

Onyeka Okongwu C USC: A deeper dive into the Trojan big man will arrive shortly.

Obi Toppin SF/PF Dayton: An in-depth look at Mr. Toppin is dropping soon.

Devin Vassell SF Florida State: A deeper dive on the Florida State wing will drop shortly.

Cole Anthony PG North Carolina: If Anthony Edwards played in a mess, then I don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to describe what this season’s North Carolina team was. Anthony got hurt, his team completely fell apart without him and had little to zero help on his team outside of Garrison Brooks. So yeah, not great by any means! As a result, he’d often dribble into waves of defenders and/or hoist up forced shots which took a sledgehammer to his efficiency. He showed a little bit of a post and midrange game, did his best to control the tempo of the game and run pick and roll when he actually had room to do so, but that was not the norm. He should be better with NBA caliber teammates and spacing surrounding him next season. He should still go in the mid-to-late lottery, but this wasn’t the season many had hoped to get from him this season.

1st Round:

Saddiq Bey SF Villanova: You want a 3-and-D guy? Enter Saddiq Bey. Bey shot 41.8% from three during his two years at Villanova. Bey can hit them on the move as well as standing still, off the dribble or catch-and-shoot. He can defend multiple positions, staying in front of quicker guards or guys his size as well. I wouldn’t recommend a steady diet of Bey putting on the ball on the deck as a primary option, but he can definitely go create his own shot as well, as he did here against Georgetown, piling up 33 points in the process. Bey won’t overwhelm with his athleticism, but he can get the job done well enough to be a threat. Villanova’s a program that routinely churns out quality NBA players, and I wouldn’t expect anything less when it comes to Saddiq Bey.

Kira Lewis Jr. PG Alabama: Kira Lewis Jr. could be one of the better values out of the guard spot this season. He’s arguably the fastest player in the draft, and likely has that distinction amongst guards. He’d use that to his advantage to get to the rim, and when defenders try to cut him off or go under screens he’s a good enough shooter to make defenses pay. It felt like his first instinct was to find open teammates before going for his own. Lewis would flash finesse finishes in the paint, another nifty counter to balance his speed, but felt like he’d more often struggle to finish those plays than not. He needs to improve on that and his turnovers, but if he can, there is a lot to work with here. As an 18-year-old sophomore, Lewis is young for his age too and already has two years of experience under his belt. He needs to develop though and go to a place with a track record of developing young talent. If that’s the case, he can be a big-time steal. I’m a fan.

Jaden McDaniels SF/PF Washington: Perhaps no player in this draft is more perplexing, enigmatic, or boom-bust than McDaniels. There are days like his game against UCLA where once he is dialed in, he’s a scoring menace and guards 1-5 defensively. There are other days where you don’t even notice he’s on the floor. He still is raw and needs some fine-tuning to his game, but the flashes of brilliance are so tantalizing. He has the tools to become the versatile positionless wing to wreak havoc across the floor, but he’s going to need to go to a spot who can get the most out of him. The situation is key in the NBA, and there might not be a player more dependent upon it than McDaniels. If he gets to the right spot, he could be the steal of the draft.

Isaiah Stewart C Washington: While there are some concerns about Jaden McDaniels’ motor, there shouldn’t be much regarding his teammate, Isaiah Stewart. Stewart came to play all season long, routinely gobbling up rebounds and bending the rim. He racked up a double-double in nearly half of his games (14 out of 32) during his freshman season in Seattle. Stewart is a brute force at 6’9” 250 pounds yet runs like a gazelle in transition nearly every chance he gets to do so. What I also like about Stewart is he has very good touch around the rim and can go to the post and finish in case of an emergency. He fits the mold of the Clint Capela-archetype of today’s bigs. Sitting in the middle of Washington’s 2-3 zone didn’t allow for much to see how Stewart defends on the perimeter, but more and more NBA teams have elected to trot out zone defenses in stretches anyway in an attempt to throw off their opponent by giving them a different puzzle to solve. There is some question as to how much these types of bigs can actually produce in playoff series, but Stewart has skill in his own right to not be solely dependent on others throwing lobs to him like Clint Capela or Jarrett Allen, who both were played off the floor for stretches in the postseason last year. He’ll help whoever drafts him.

Nico Mannion PG Arizona: I was a little disappointed watching Mannion. He’s a floor general who looks to pass and make his teammates better, things I value out of my point guards for sure but was expecting a little more given the hype before the season, and he didn’t seem to live up to it. To be fair, he did finish the season well, but he was inconsistent. He also did not have an open court to play under in the halfcourt (a Sean Miller special) and thrived in that type of environment, mostly in transition. He’s a fantastic passer who looks to throw the ball up the floor in transition and is unafraid to let it fly before the defense is set. Creating his own shot proved to be too daunting a task at times, however, and that led to both he and Arizona’s inconsistency (again, coaching didn’t do him many favors though). Mannion is and can be a good player in the league, but I’m not sure we’ll see the star he was hyped to be before heading to Tuscon.

Cassius Winston PG Michigan State: More on the Spartan floor general will come soon.

Patrick Williams SF/PF Florida State: A deeper dive on the other wing from Florida State will arrive soon.

Tre Jones PG Duke: The problem with Tre Jones during his freshman year at Durham was his shooting ability. He shot 26.2% from deep that year, but things changed fairly drastically this go-around. He bumped his three-point percentage up to 36.1% while holding his water from the free-throw line. It’s easy to compare him to his brother Tyus, but it also holds weight with Tre’s ability to defend. If his shooting holds true, I don’t see how he couldn’t produce and follow the same trajectory as his brother in the NBA.

Jahm’ius Ramsey SG Texas Tech: Youth is the rage when it comes to the NBA draft, and Ramsey has a lot of it, as he won’t turn 19 until June. When it comes to youth, Ramsey showed it for stretches at Texas Tech, sometimes losing track of his man defensively or driving with reckless abandon into traffic (an unfinished handle to blame for some of that). Working in Ramsey’s favor, however, is the fact he hit 60 of 141 threes, not all of the catch-and-shoot variety, with some tough contested looks like this one sprinkled in between. However, I’m not sure his shot is as potent as his three-point percentage suggests, as his line-drive release and free-throw percentage (64.1%) strays from his percentage from deep, but shooting well from deep surely can’t hurt Ramsey’s chances. I wouldn’t count on Ramsey becoming a plus creator with the ball in his hands as his handle needs more polish to tap more into that area of his game, but he has given glimpses he can do so in spurts. Maybe Ramsey could step into a rotation with his effort level, but his best-case situation would be going to a team touted for its development prowess in the first round to give some reps and experience before throwing him to the NBA fire.

Sleepers:

Immanuel Quickley SG Kentucky: More on the Kentucky guard will arrive shortly.

Mason Jones SG/SF Arkansas: More about the Arkansas guard will come soon.

Desmond Bane PG/SG TCU: Desmond Bane should be getting more love than he’s getting. He can reliably play both guard spots with his ability to cut and move without the ball and space the floor (he’s a career 43% shooter from distance from well over 500 attempts throughout his four seasons at TCU) and create offense for himself or for others with the ball in his hands. Not only does he have the game to toggle between either guard spot, but at 6’6” 215 pounds, he possesses the size to switch across the floor and make difficult for anybody he’s guarding. He isn’t quite the conductor that fellow senior draft-eligible prospect Cassius Winston is, but the difference between the two is negligible. Bane could end up being an absolute steal if he were to fall in the second round, which, quite frankly, shouldn’t happen.

Elijah Hughes SF Syracuse: For those eager to read more on the Syracuse wing, it will drop shortly.

Isaiah Joe SG Arkansas: Isaiah Joe is a bit of an enigma. A knee injury really bothered him over the second half of the season and the construction of his team forced him to almost exclusively shoot threes, hurting his percentage from the field (36.7%). His form is still splendid, however, and the release is quick enough to get shots off when others can’t. He can get his own shot off the bounce with a step-back and is a nice passer in space, but struggled to finish through contact. He did embrace on the defensive side, however, routinely stepping up to take charges. I think it would do Joe good to come back and get stronger, but his shooting should keep him in the NBA for a long time in a time where everyone is looking for guys who can shoot from beyond the three-point line.

Payton Pritchard PG/SG Oregon: Pritchard reminds me a lot of Fred Vanvleet. He’s tough, tenacious, will get after it defensively, and will not go down without a fight. Both possess handles good enough to get them where they want to go along with their strength to bruise through defenders. Get a big man on a switch and Pritchard can handle them no problem and bury shots from distance. Teams need reliable guards off the bench, and Pritchard has proven he can be that for whoever drafts him, whether through his stellar play in the Pac-12 tournament last season or stepping his game up again this season, averaging over 20 points a night with 46.8/41.5/82.1 shooting splits. He won’t go high, but I feel fairly certain he’s going to stick in the NBA for a long time.

Nick Richards C Kentucky: John Calipari doesn’t do a whole lot of three-and-dones, but the payoff for Richards finally came through this season. Even at the beginning of the year against Michigan State and Evansville, he sort of got pushed around, but that changed during the course of the season. He’s athletic, can move up and down the floor, is a lob threat, can operate out of the post, and showed good verticality in the paint defensively. He has glue for hands, catching nearly every pass that came to his direction, even in tight corridors. As the center position continues to be an area where value is found, Richards can be a value for teams in the second round.

Jalen Smith C Maryland and Xavier Tillman C Michigan State: I’m lumping these two together because both Smith and Tillman seem like good archetypes for the modern big man. Defend the rim, switch on the perimeter, roll to the rim, hit the occasional three (Smith shot 36.8% on 2.8 attempts this season), and rebound. Smith likes to slip screens and is a threat to score both rolling to the rim or hit catch-and-shoot threes. Smith showed flashes of making the right reads on the move as well when rolling to the rim but would force passes that weren’t there, in part leading to his paltry near 0.5 assist/turnover ratio, but that can improve. Tillman can make the same passes when rolling to the rim as well and is a solid, but not as explosive compared to Smith, finisher in his own right. While he isn’t quite the shooter Smith is, his 3 assists per game are more than quadruple Smith’s on about the same number of turnovers. For a team that needs help in its frontcourt defensively, Smith or Tillman would make for a more than fine selection in the late first or early second round.

Markus Howard PG Marquette: I watched his game against USC and was quickly reminded: this guy can get buckets. Now, I’m not sure what else he does, but he can score and is one of the better shooters in the draft. If you need a Quinn Cook on your bench who can come in and flip a game or two with three quick threes, then this is the guy for you late in the draft.

Ashton Hagans PG Kentucky: Hagans is the polar opposite of what Howard is. He’s not as renowned a shooter, but he is a hound defensively and is a physical finisher at the rim. He’s quick and really fast with the ball in his hands and knows how to run a team. The league is falling out of favor for guys who aren’t shooters, but his defense and savvy should be enough to, at the very least, get Hagans on an NBA bench somewhere, especially if there are teams out there who believe they can develop that jumper.

Kaleb Wesson C Ohio State & Vernon Carey Jr. C Duke: Wesson and Carey are the archetype centers that are falling out of favor in the NBA. While they have defensive limitations on the perimeter, both Wesson and Carey are skilled passers who can match both low-post brute force with three-point prowess (Wesson shot 38% on threes during his career at Ohio State. Carey hit the same percentage, albeit on a much smaller sample size of just 21 threes). Unfortunately, their time of conception was off a few years in terms of how the NBA values big men like them, diminishing their draft stock, but both have a shot of sticking in a rotation somewhere with their abilities to generate offense.

Skylar Mays PG/SG LSU: If you value versatility at your guard spot, Skylar Mays can be a very nice value in the draft. He boosted his efficiency up big time this year, shooting a career-high 49.1% from the field and 39.4% from three, allowing him to switch up and shift roles depending on what his team needed. He can affect the game and create offense both with and without the ball in his hands at the start of possessions. I could see him stick in the NBA for a long time.

Yves Pons SF/PF Tennessee: Pons is a monster athlete. He looks like a tight end out there. The man can actually fly. Seriously. Granted, that is against air, but that still doesn’t seem normal at all. He can get in a stance and defend guards and use his 6’6” 215-pound frame and athleticism to hang against bigger players. He even shot about 35% from three this season. It didn’t feel like Tennessee tapped into his athleticism enough, but an NBA team would be smart to and give him a chance to be a role player off the bench in the mold of a Derrick Jones Jr.

Cassius Stanley SF Duke: I’ll be honest, I didn’t think much of Stanley as an NBA prospect outside of his insane hops and wasn’t sure I’d sway off of that line of thinking. I was wrong. Going back to the hops though, the man literally has pogo-sticks for legs to fly across the hardwood, and no I’m not kidding. Get him running on the wing in transition and odds are he’ll bring the house down. Also, how’s this for an inbounds play? But, while Stanley is very much still a raw prospect, there is more than meets the eye than just aerial acrobatics. I was surprised to see he ended the season shooting 36% from deep and it bore out on the tape as he made defenses pay *enough* for making him beat them from distance. He’d use his freaky athleticism to slash to the rim and get to the free-throw line (3.6 free throw attempts per game). He’d benefit from a tighter handle and could use a better feel for the game (he nearly doubled his assist numbers with turnovers), but think he showed he *can be* more than just a dunker. He’s more than worth the shot in the second round.

Jordan Nwora SF Louisville: I wish Nwora was a little more consistent. I also wish he had more avenues towards production other than scoring. Nwora came on the scene last season with his scoring prowess and has coupled that with efficiency from deep (he shot 39% on over 450 threes during his three seasons at Louisville). Nwora’s defense and playmaking do not inspire a ton of confidence, but Nwora can serve as an instant offense energizer off the bench.

Aamir Simms PF/C Clemson: Simms’ name has not entered many NBA Draft discussions that I have heard/read, but that seems like a mistake to me. With requisite size (6’8” 240 pounds) and ample athleticism, Simms’ build suggests he is capable of handling the pounding of an NBA big man. His game does so as well. Passing is a strong suit of his game, as Simms can deliver nifty passes from all types of angles and areas along the floor. He can either finish or playmake a little in the dribble hand-off game and can also elevate in the open floor in the pick-and-roll. He’s a career 35% three-point shooter and owns essentially a neutral assist/turnover ratio (better than many other bigs in this class). He isn’t the biggest brute out there but uses every ounce of his frame to take the punishment from his opponent and hold his ground. Is Simms a star? Not exactly, but I could see him be a positive contributor off the bench and possibly work his way into being a starter a la Maxi Kleber has done with the Dallas Mavericks. Simms should not be ignored.

Kristian Doolittle SF Oklahoma: Kristian Doolittle deserves some more love, in my opinion. He’s 6’7”, 232 pounds, ideal size for the modern wing, with the versatility to guard multiple positions. Doolittle shot 37% from three during his four seasons at Norman, albeit on only 131 attempts, but still (he was solid from the free-throw line too, hitting at least 77.5% of his free-throws in three of four seasons). I see quite a bit of Dorian Finney-Smith, who has turned into quite the role player for the Dallas Mavericks, in Doolittle’s game. I could easily see Doolittle becoming a role player like Finney-Smith and becoming a very nice steal for whoever gives him a sh

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The 2020 NFL Draft Mancrush: Jonathan Taylor

Look, allow me to get this out in the open: being knowledgable about the intricacies of football is not exactly an area of expertise for me. While I may be known to toot my own horn when it comes to basketball expertise (which I am also not but at least learn and try to be), I simply fly too blindly when it comes to football. But who said not being an expert in certain subjects excludes from you voicing opinions on matters! That definitely never happens!

As part of a project, I was required to watch the Wisconsin Badgers duel against the Michigan Wolverines from the 2019 college football season. Four plays from said game stood out in particular enough to attempt to persuade the NFL about why Wisconsin running back Jonathan Taylor should be the first running back off the board in the upcoming 2019 NFL Draft.

Play 1: Something Out of Nothing

Wisconsin routinely churns out some of the better offensive linemen as they yearn to feast on the trenches, but not even they can win every battle. Luckily, Jonathan Taylor can make up for their shortcomings on given plays. Taylor gets met behind the line of scrimmage, but that effort proves to be fool-hearty on the part of the defense, as Taylor jukes the defender out of his shoes, bounces it outside & turns a negative yardage play into a first down. This wasn’t anything abnormal for Taylor, as he was one of the leaders in the department of getting contacted behind the line of scrimmage. However, this play proves even porous blocking isn’t enough to slow Taylor down.

Play 2: Made You Look

The last play was about Jonathan Taylor stepping up for his offensive line. This play, however, his line more than does its job, delivering acres of yards to gobble up. That isn’t what makes this play remarkable though. As Taylor is striding up the field, a safety tries to take him out, but, again, Taylor makes the defender look foolish. Taylor wiggles out of the tackle and churns out an additional five extra yards on top of the many his offensive line covered him for. Pretty much any running back in the NFL can get what is blocked. Not only can Jonathan Taylor’s vision point him where he needs to go, but he can go get even more on top of it.

Play 3: Catch These Hands

If there was a knock on Jonathan Taylor coming into this season, it was whether or not he could prove to be as lethal in the passing game as he is on the ground. This season may have answered some of those questions, as he more than doubled his career reception total at Wisconsin from 16 his first two seasons to 26 during his junior campaign. Not only does he make the reception here, but he corrals the pigskin cleanly while catching the ball outside his frame without losing steam, allowing Taylor to work his magic in open space to grind out extra yardage. He may not have been a frequent participant through the air, but that doesn’t mean he can’t produce in this aspect of the game.

Play 4: Homerun! (Sorry, wrong sport)

This play is fairly self-explanatory; Taylor turns on the jets to make himself at home in the end zone. It’s always nice when your running back can generate a score on one play, which Jonathan Taylor proved he possesses the athleticism to make that look routine. Sit back and chew on this: since 2014, the only running backs to weigh 225 pounds or more and run a 40-yard dash under 4.45 seconds is only two deep. Taylor is one of them; Saquon Barkley is the other. Per Graham Barfield, Taylor’s dash was the 15th-fasted weight-adjusted dash time in the history of the NFL Combine. Not bad, huh?

It was just one game, but it was another of many where Jonathan Taylor unleashed his dominance when he rushed for 23 carries, 203 yards and two touchdowns against the Michigan Wolverines while also hauling in one reception for five yards. What makes that performance even more ridiculous is the fact that Taylor only played 29 of a possible 76 running back snaps (that also doesn’t include the snaps played by fullbacks, who often shared the field with Taylor despite the fact he was more efficient without a fullback accompanying him in the backfield). While Wisconsin running backs’ track record has been spotty, and Wisconsin got more than a fair share of tread out of Taylor’s tires (he had 968 touches in three seasons in Madison), he showed he can more than handle it and match both freakish athleticism and natural talent with supreme production (he had 20 games of over 100+ yards, 11 games of over 200+ yards, and a game of 300+ yards to boot during his college career). I don’t know if Jonathan Taylor will end up being the first running back off the board, but I believe he should be.

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The 2019-20 Los Angeles Lakers Appreciation Post

Just the other day, as I hunkered down buried by blankets flipping through Bill Simmons’ ‘The Book of Basketball’ with the swipe of my finger on my Google tablet, it had me thinking about this NBA season that has been put on pause as if franchise mode from NBA 2K had come to life. He talked about ‘the secret’ to winning championships, a secret he learned from NBA legend Isiah Thomas. How the key to winning basketball games is not about basketball. How a team needs star players and to then be surrounded by players who not only fit those stars but accepted the roles designed for them. It was a quick and depressing reminder that this season’s Laker team had all of those ingredients, yet might not be able to have the opportunity to go hoist the golden Larry O’Brien trophy. And if they can’t, I wanted to take some time to thank and appreciate them for arguably the most fun Laker season I’ve ever experienced.

As last season’s team floundered from a chemistry perspective from paralyzing trade rumors, this year’s team seemingly made it their quest not to follow suit. Head honcho Rob Pelinka made it his mission to find veterans to fit the team this summer after acquiring Anthony Davis, and nailed it, adding the likes of Danny Green, Jared Dudley, Avery Bradley, Dwight Howard, and others to the mix. The team gelled instantly, despite dealing with plenty of turbulence from the start of the season with plenty more (sadly) coming along the way. Danny Green, a man who has been around the block plenty during his NBA career, said on Zach Lowe’s podcast that this year’s team has been the most fun he’s had off the court. Jared Dudley, another player who knows his way around the league, echoed similar sentiments. This team genuinely loved each other and played like it. It was infectious (maybe not the best word choice right now but hey it’s the best I got) and permeated all the way into my room whenever I’d watch the games. That wasn’t more evident than this play in January against the Detroit Pistons, where Alex Caruso gets a deflection, Kyle Kuzma recovers the loose ball then throws it back to Caruso for him to throw down another ruthless dunk. Yet, behind him, two future first-ballot Hall of Famers in LeBron James and Dwight Howard are flying right there with him to celebrate and bask in the joy with Caruso. It’s my favorite play of the entire season. It perfectly captured the fun and joy this team has playing together.

Yet, as fun as this team was to watch, they were just as good as they were fun. They were just beginning to peak as a team. Every night it seemed someone not named LeBron James or Anthony Davis (more on them in a second) would step up. After coming back from injury, Avery Bradley added offense, like his 24 point performance against the Clippers where he gave Patrick Beverley a taste of his own medicine, to his crippling on-ball defense, shooting 41.8% on catch-and-shoot threes since January first. Danny Green always brought his defense. While his jumper waxed and waned, it didn’t stop him from hitting big shots like this against Dallas in November. Dwight Howard went from un-signed in August to dominating MVP candidate Nikola Jokic in his own building and giving the Lakers numerous sparks like that off the bench. Alex Caruso was both an analytics darling and fan favorite, routinely giving the Lakers a boost off the bench as he did in that same game against the Nuggets that was highlighted when talking about Dwight. JaVale McGee was playing the best defense of his Lakers career that’s been 1.5 seasons long now. Though Rajon Rondo and Kyle Kuzma were enigmatic this season, they both showed out for some big performances, against Oklahoma City (without James, Davis, and Green) and at home against Boston.

And then there are the stars. Let’s start with Anthony Davis, who was absolutely sensational. He literally made greatness look routine. Some games, like his 40-20 masterpiece against the Memphis Grizzlies or dropping 41 points and 9 rebounds in his return to New Orleans, felt louder than others, but he was just as impactful regardless. His chemistry with LeBron was palpable and frightening from the beginning and seemed to get even more devastating as the season progressed. Perhaps, even more, frightening: since January 1st, Anthony Davis shot 40.5% from three on 3.3 attempts per game. Not only was he more comfortable taking those shots, but he was unafraid to fly in clutch moments, hitting some big shots from three to either seal games or keep the Lakers in it. Maybe it was confidence, maybe it was getting over the shoulder injury that nagged AD the first half of the year off a missed dunk against Charlotte, but regardless, he was already a devastating scorer without the three-ball, and he was just beginning to add that to his repertoire. And adding that would’ve meant Davis could exploit his abnormal handle to go with his extra-terrestrial frame and athleticism as he did here against Al Horford. Davis has never shot above 34% from three for a season in his career. The thought of Davis as a lethal weapon from all three levels of the floor is… yeah, absolutely terrifying.

We haven’t even begun to talk about AD’s defense. He added Defensive Player of the Year caliber defense to a hefty offensive stat line. It didn’t matter who Davis guarded. Have him run around defending guards or banging against bigs, he’d shut them down. When LeBron and Anthony Davis shared the floor without Rajon Rondo or another big man, the Lakers boasted a robust 17.6 Net Rating, per NBA.com, including a staggering defensive rating of 92.1 points per 100 possessions. For context, the Milwaukee Bucks’ league-best defensive rating was 101.6. The Lakers’ defense, when it wasn’t weighed down by inconsistent bench play, turned absolutely dominant because of Davis’ dexterity to cover any hole presented to him. On top of that, not only would Davis routinely stifle possessions but he’d bring the ball up and just do the damn thing by himself to generate easy offense for the Lakers. While the Lakers had a negative net rating with Davis on the floor this season, they were beginning to turn it around once he played without James on the floor with him. Over the course of the season, the Lakers had a -3.2 Net Rating without James while Davis was on the floor, but had a +6.6 Net Rating in 169 minutes from February 1st on in that exact scenario. It wasn’t always pretty but it did the job in big games late in the season, and Davis was the biggest reason why. Davis’ future regarding another contract has suddenly become a little cloudy as to when and how that extension will come because of the financial impact this hiatus will have on the league, but this season proved Davis was worth all the trouble to acquire him and will be worth every penny he gets in the future. He was undoubtedly dominant.

Davis was dominant, yet he still wasn’t even the best player on the team. That honor would belong to the King. Obviously, as a Lakers fan, I’d love nothing more than to win a championship and for LeBron to win MVP, but that award is likely Giannis’ to lose. However, had the season not been postponed, there was an avenue for LeBron to swipe the MVP from the Greek Freak’s clutches after the roll LeBron went on after the All-Star break. He began that spree with a 32 point, seven assist win against the Grizzlies, a near triple-double against the Celtics and this game-winning Kobe-esque fadeaway post jumper over Jaylen Brown, sonning Zion Williamson’s New Orleans Pelicans not once but twice, outplaying Giannis Antetokounmpo and accepting the challenge of guarding him to the tune of a 37-8-8 masterpiece and win over the first place Bucks, and ending the streak with this Klutch And-1 bucket to beat the Clippers. Had the Lakers managed to swipe the best record in the NBA from the Bucks (they were only three games behind the Bucks with Giannis on track to miss 1-2 weeks. I’m not going to use this space to make an MVP argument, but one could certainly have been made for LeBron had he maintained that pace. LeBron led the league in assists. He showed up defensively. A good portion of the team’s chemistry could be attributed to James and his leadership, both on and off the floor. He showed again he’s the best player in the NBA (in my opinion).

Everything that championship teams need, this year’s Lakers team showed time and time again that they have it. Whether this season was the best chance the Lakers had at winning a title with this group is debatable, but the window was there. Those windows are so precious in the NBA and could go in the blink of an eye. Yet, due to extremely unfortunate circumstances, that window this season may get shut for nothing that has to do with basketball. That is nowhere near the top of the list of priorities to deal with right now as a society, but the uncertainty regarding the immediate future of the NBA and its potential champion is really disappointing as a fan. I hope a cure can be cultivated soon to not only save the numerous that are sick right now but get our beloved NBA back up and running. If it can come back, then great. But if it doesn’t, I thought it’d be prudent to show some love and appreciation to the most fun Laker team since the 2010 Championship team, because they deserve it for spreading their love and joy to the millions of Lakers fans across the globe, myself included.

P.S.: I hope everyone is safe and well during this tumultuous time. We’ll get through it. But in the meantime: STAY THE FUCK AT HOME!

Ok, Take Care!

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