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Jaylin Williams Is the Modern-Day Center

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Steph Curry just won Finals MVP for the now once-again champion Golden State Warriors. Steph did just about everything imaginable on the hardwood, but he did not finish with the highest net rating during the Finals nor the highest plus-minus. No, this is not me trying to take away his Finals MVP more so than hyping up someone who did all the little things like setting tough screens, versatility defensively, and being able to keep the Golden State offensive machine humming. No, it wasn’t Andrew Wiggins either. Draymond Green and Klay Thompson did all those things too, but they didn’t finish first in those regards either. Of course, I’m talking about Kevon Looney.

Kevon Looney was +48 in 130 minutes during the NBA Finals. The Warriors boasted a +23.7 Net Rating when he was on the floor. Looney never did anything spectacular. He’s not a leaper, and you could see many players where lobs or layup attempts at the rim went begging due to his lack of athleticism. But Looney is solid in every area. He’s a good enough passer to capitalize on the advantages Steph and Golden State’s shooting provides him. If you try him 1v1 you’re probably not beating him. He held serve on the glass against Robert Williams III and Al Horford after wiping out Memphis and Dallas’ frontcourts devouring them with offensive rebounds. He knows where to be defensively protecting the rim.

Kevon Looney is just solid in so many areas. Luckily for other NBA teams who missed out on Looney in 2015 (though he is about to be a free agent), there’s a big man in the 2022 Draft who is built from a similar blueprint. That would be Arkansas’ Jaylin Williams.

Charging the Defense

Like Looney, Williams is not a vertical or explosive athlete. But he makes up for it by reading the game at a very high level. Defensively, that comes by positioning himself a step ahead of the offense. That’s how he was able to take 54 charges (as well as the block/charge rule being broken in college basketball).

You could argue some of those should be considered a block. Sometimes Williams would get blocks on plays he beats drivers to the rim but tried to get a charge instead of just contesting the shot. But there are plenty of clips of him shutting off drives or pick-and-rolls positioning himself just like that. That positioning helps him defend on the perimeter too. He finds the balance of not giving enough space to let shooters shoot while also not pressing them into blowing by him. His mobility allows him to cover a lot of ground.

Inverted Playmaking

Jaylin Williams is stout defensively, but he’s very polished offensively as well. Williams’ best skill is his passing. He averaged 2.9 career assists per 40-minutes compared to 2.3 turnovers, a fine number for a guard but a great mark for a center. His 13.3-percent assist percentage is well above the NBA average of roughly 11-percent. For added context, both of Williams’ playmaking numbers best the career playmaking numbers of Wisconsin guard Johnny Davis. Davis averaged 2.2 career assists per 40-minutes and an assist percentage of 12.5-percent. Getting guard-like passing out of your center allows for teams to open their offense and deploy that center in numerous ways to get easy looks.

That’s exactly what Arkansas head coach Eric Musselman did with Jaylin Williams. Sometimes, Williams would operate as the halfcourt fulcrum for Arkansas at the elbow while the rest of the players on the floor would look to spring a teammate free as a cutter. Williams had no problem finding those cutters. Sometimes, that meant finding someone like Justin Smith converging to the rim from the wing…

… Sometimes, Williams would find a cutter sliding from the baseline from the other side of the court, as he does here. Stanley Umude sets a flare screen off the ball on JD Notae’s man. Umude’s man doesn’t communicate with Notae’s man. By the time Notae’s man gets around Umude’s screen, Notae’s gone and Williams finds him to get Arkansas a layup.

That’s not the only way Jaylin Williams’ passing excels. In a pick and roll league, screeners need to be able to scan the floor for open shooters once the ballhandler is forced to get rid of the ball. Luckily, Williams shines there too. And here’s a good example of him doing exactly that. Third-team All-American JD Notae gets trapped so dumps it off to Williams. Williams, under control (he was great all year at staying under control on rolls and not barrelling into defenders for charges), waits until Au’Diese Toney slips to the rim as his man rotates over to Williams. Williams sees it and then slips it to Toney to get him a dunk.

Grounded Rolling

That composure on rolls feeds into Williams’ lack of explosion and overall skill in his game. He’s not going to beat defenses over the top as a lob threat like Anthony Davis or Giannis Antetokounmpo but he does have a soft touch on short rolls. If the defense rotates over and doesn’t leave shooters, Williams has no problem lofting a floater over the defender. The threat of scoring unlocks kick-outs for threes or dump-offs for dunks so this is an important shot to have as a center. Williams has it.

Jaylin Williams isn’t a lob threat but he can still punch it if he’s got a head of steam on short rolls too. Paolo Banchero needs no reminders. Devo Davis got Mark Williams to bite on a shot here. Davis bails out of the shot and dumps it to Williams as he embarks on the rim. Duke’s defense behind Mark Williams so Jaylin Williams went for the dunk and threw it down on Banchero’s head.

You can see Williams’ lack of explosion in traffic, however. Williams’ touch around the rim is good and knows how to use the rim and angles to find intricate finishes near the rim on rolls or camping at the dunker spot. But, can be discombobulated by longer and more athletic bigs. This is a good example. On the move, he can’t get by Auburn’s Walker Kessler. Instead, he gets enveloped by Kessler and blocked.

Shooting in Progress

Playmaking isn’t the only area Jaylin Williams can contribute offensively. Williams is not a great shooter but he’s capable. His 25.5-percent mark from deep may not reflect it but he has good touch around the rim (as shown above), looks comfortable shooting midrange jumpers, and boasts a career 73.1-percent percentage from the free-throw line. His confidence as a shooter has yet to follow him past the three-point line. He will turn down shots in search of something better even. Sometimes, something better never comes. Other times, Arkansas got a layup or a better look. You admire Williams’ selflessness but becoming a more confident shooter would serve him very well in the NBA. When he lets it fly the shot looks pretty solid leaving his hands. He needs to improve as a shooter but there’s at least something to work with there.

Conclusion

Jaylin Williams may not be a top-flight athlete. He’s not the best stretch five out there. But, a lot like Golden State’s Kevon Looney, he’s just solid. He’s a very smart, well-rounded player who excels at amplifying the players around and making winning plays. It’s hard to find bigs who can stay on the floor in a playoff setting but I have none of those concerns with Jaylin Williams. The NBA is going away from bigs but having one who can contribute in those settings is and will continue to be invaluable. I recently asked Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Wasserman where Jaylin Williams could go in the 2022 NBA Draft and he speculated Williams is more likely to last until the second round. 

I think that is likely with how the center position is valued in comparison to guards and wings. But, every team in the 20s could use additional center depth and this year’s center class is not overly deep. I could see one of the teams starting with the Spurs at 20 draft Jaylin Williams and looking to fill other positions with later picks or via free agency. If that does indeed happen, Williams is more than worthy. We do all of this to be the ones holding up the trophy when all is said and done. Why not draft someone who can give a team what one of the most reliable players on a great team gave to help win a championship?

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The Pelicans Can Be Next Season’s Suns or Hawks – But Have Some Work To Do First

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No one should be surprised that it was possible for teams led by Devin Booker and Trae Young could make the NBA Finals and Eastern Conference Finals one day, respectively. I don’t think many expected that to happen this previous season, however. But damn it, it did. After years of losing and struggling, brilliant draft maneuvering, sturdy head coaching hires, and slick moves to bring in established veterans to help lead the way, Suns GM James Jones and Hawks GM Travis Schlenk deserve tons of credit for building championship-competitive rosters that fit and maximize the strengths of their superstars. Though it is super hard for even grizzled star-studded teams to advance as far as these two teams did, let alone a team led by young studs, perhaps these two inspired others across the league to follow a similar path. Who could be the next Suns or Hawks?

A team that comes to mind is the New Orleans Pelicans. They already have two players that have been named to All-Star games in Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, tantalizing other young pieces surrounding them in Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart (should they be retained in restricted free agency), the rambunctious Nickeil Alexander-Walker (who played a brief stint with the Canadian National Team in their quest to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics), the speedy rookie Kira Lewis Jr., and the bouncy Jaxson Hayes. They have a treasure trove of picks too after they dealt Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday to Finals teams in successive seasons (ten first-round pics in the next seven drafts, to be exact). The Pelicans have the start of something special, but they need to clean up some aspects of their team first to get where they want to go eventually. 

Let’s start on the basketball side of things, they have to address their shooting woes. The Pelicans’ three-point shooting during the 2020-21 season was reminiscent of a stormtrooper. After they finished 26th in the entire league in three-point percentage. Advanced numbers don’t do the Pelicans many favors. The site bball-index.com tracks how great spacing a player is surrounded by. According to their data, neither Brandon Ingram nor Zion Williamson cracked above the 41st percentile for spacing around them. Just watch this play and see how many defenders are packed in the paint when New Orleans is trying to get their offense going. Luckily, Brandon Ingram is a supreme shot-maker and bailed the Pelicans out of this wretched possession, but these types of possessions were far too common and a nightly routine when Zion and Ingram were mostly surrounded by two complete non-shooting entities in Eric Bledsoe and Steven Adams. Despite this, Zion Williamson somehow managed to average 27 points a night while shooting 61% from the field and feasting at the rim, while Brandon Ingram put up a robust 46.6/38.1/87.8 shooting split on the season. The Pelicans’ priority has to be finding more shooting to make life easier on these two stars. It is wholly on the Pelicans’ Front Office (more on them in a bit) to get the shooting required for Zion and Ingram. It was neglected the last offseason and cannot be again.

Defense ailed the Pelicans for much of the 2020-21 season too. New, now former, head coach Stan Van Gundy noted the previous trends of top defenses canceling the paint in exchange for opposing teams to unleash from three at will, and decided to implement that strategy. Let’s just say it took some time for his new young players to get used to. Last season, the Pelicans allowed the fourth most amount of possessions by their opponents to conclude with a three-point shot, according to NBA.com. Those Pelicans opponents shot 38% on those threes, tied for the fifth-best (or worst, whichever way you want to look at it) mark in the league. Oftentimes, it felt like the Pelicans were either overdoing it with their strategy or were too young to properly execute it the way more experienced teams did by leaving certain shooters open and running off the more dangerous ones. Plenty of New Orleans defensive possessions ended like this: 

There were more defensive issues aside from their overall structure. Their stars just have to be better, plain and simple. Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram are capable of being very good defensive players, at least I think so. Zion looked every bit the part of a modern-day small-ball center at Duke, using his freakish athleticism to protect the rim while also staying in front of his man. We’ve seen glimpses of it in the NBA, but it has been far too fleeting. More times than not, unfortunately, possessions with Zion at center have tended to look like this. Oftentimes, he looks as if his feet are in quicksand, or he doesn’t put himself in the right positions to make the correct plays. Williamson only played 86 minutes all season long playing without another big man, according to NBA.com. He just wasn’t ready yet for that type of role. To be fair to Zion too, he played in a zone defense a lot while at Duke, hasn’t had a ton of top-notch coaching before enrolling at Duke, and big men tend to struggle defensively their first couple of seasons (look at none other than Deandre Ayton of the Phoenix Suns). Those growing pains will help Zion in the long run. He still is more than capable of being a devastating defensive force, in my opinion, but he needs to improve defensively to get there.

Brandon Ingram has to be better defensively too. We know he can be a positive defender from his days in Los Angeles, but he hasn’t brought that part of his game to New Orleans quite yet. Sure, you can still beat Ingram with bulk, but too many times Ingram lacked tenacity, focus, or feistiness on defense.

Ingram gets caught ball-watching and loses sight of his man in the corner (Andrew Wiggins). Two of his teammates are already up with Steph Curry, so he has to momentarily cover Draymond Green and Wiggins. However, Ingram is in no man’s land and doesn’t really guard either, letting Wiggins sneak along the baseline for a dunk. Ingram is way better than that. Until he and Zion catch up on that end of the floor, the Pelicans’ chances of competing will hover around where it is now. With the talent of those two players themselves, let alone the rest of the roster, the Pelicans should not be finishing with the eighth-worst defense in the NBA. Once the Pelicans’ defense catches up, then things could get serious in the near future.

The most important job the Pelicans need to do, however, is gain organizational stability. GM David Griffin has done a great job of hoarding draft picks for the future, but his moves and actions other than that have been less than stellar. Drafting a center with the eighth overall pick (Jaxson Hayes) in the 2019 NBA Draft didn’t feel like the best allocation of its value and only looks worse after De’Andre Hunter (who they could’ve had with the fourth pick of the draft as part of the Anthony Davis trade and was eventually flipped to Atlanta for the eighth and seventeenth picks), Rui Hachimura, Cam Reddish, Cam Johnson, and Tyler Herro, all of whom the Pelicans could have drafted and all but Hunter being drafted after the Hawks took Hayes, have had moments of brilliance in the postseason and fit the roster better than Hayes does. Griffin acquired George Hill in the Jrue Holiday trade, yet flipped the sharpshooting (career 38.1% three-point shooter) guard to Oklahoma City for plodding big man Steven Adams, then gave Adams a two-year, $35 million extension! This was disastrous on numerous levels. Adams does not look like the same athlete he was years ago defensively and makes life much more difficult for the Pelicans’ offense.

On top of all that, Adams eats up a ton of the Pelicans’ salary cap. He and Bledsoe combined to make over $35 million next season heading into this offseason. Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart are scheduled to be restricted free agents. Zion Williamson will be eligible for a contract extension after next season and Ingram is already on a max deal. Adams and Bledsoe both have contracts that bleed until the 2022-2023 season, though Bledsoe’s money that season is not guaranteed. Though Adams nor Bledsoe are in New Orleans’ long-term plans, they could potentially cost the Pelicans Ball, who likely will get a lucrative deal in restricted free agency, or some of the picks they acquired via the Lakers or the Bucks to try to get more cap space to improve the team around Zion and Ingram. There isn’t really anyone but Griffin to blame for not maneuvering that as cleanly as he did.

David Griffin also hasn’t been the best at maintaining relationships while in New Orleans, both from the player and coaching side of things. Months ago, JJ Redick blasted Griffin on his ‘The Old Man and the Three’ podcast for allegedly lying to Redick about sending Redick to somewhere he’d want to go that would be in close proximity to his family in New York after the trade deadline. Instead, he got shipped to Dallas. Granted, JJ Redick doesn’t have the luxury or leverage a star does, but this stuff matters a lot to players. It didn’t stop there with Griffin either. After firing Stan Van Gundy after hiring him less than a year ago, Van Gundy appeared on the ‘STUpodity’ podcast hosted by Stugotz of the ‘Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz.’ Among many notable grievances Van Gundy aired, the most notable was the fact that he flat-out said that he and the front office weren’t on the same page. That is inexcusable. Sure, some blame can be aimed at both sides, but I’d pin most of that onto Griffin. Griffin is a long-time, experienced general manager. He helped lead a team to a championship for Christ’s sake. He knows how to do this, but he has to be better more so than anyone in that organization to get the Pelicans where they want to go. He has to hire the right coach now for the second time in less than 365 days. He has to be more upfront with his players. He has to value shooting. If he doesn’t this video of Zion Williamson swooning over the lore of Madison Square Garden will loom over the Pelicans like a rain cloud. The Pelicans have pressure. It’s up to Griffin to shoo it away.

David Griffin has done a fine job remedying both fronts so far. The Pelicans recently hired former Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns assistant coach and 12 year NBA veteran Willie Green as his new head coach. With how he just helped the Suns recognize their renaissance run this year with a fairly young and inexperienced team, you’d think he knows what it takes to steer this franchise in the right direction. Griffin also executed one of the first trades of the offseason, dealing Steven Adams, Eric Bledsoe, the 10th and 40th pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, and a 2022 first-round pick from the Lakers (while placing a top ten protection over it) to the Memphis Grizzlies for Jonas Valanciunas and their 17th and 51st selections in the 2021 Draft. While the fit between Valanciunas and Zion seems clunky on both ends of the floor, he still represents a massive upgrade over Adams. Though trading that 2022 first and moving down from 10 to 17 is hardly ideal, it allows the Pelicans to possibly keep both Hart and Ball, or sign another point guard in Lonzo’s place should he walk (Kyle Lowry has long been rumored to be the Pelicans’ target, but Lowry may foil their plans by taking his talents to South Beach). Speaking of the 17th selection, drafting Virginia’s Trey Murphy III should immediately boost New Orleans’ shooting and spacing, as he shot 40.1% from deep during his three-year college career and 81.9% from the free-throw line. The Pelicans need to do more, but this offseason has gone off to a good start to finally get the Pelicans back into the playoffs.

With all that said, there is plenty to be excited about in New Orleans. They have two great young players and ample resources to improve the roster around them. There’s no reason to think the Pelicans can’t find the right supporting cast the same way the Suns and Hawks did. Those two teams proved is that one big and correct offseason can drastically change the outcome of a franchise. Let’s see if the Pelicans can follow in their footsteps and be the next team to surprise with a deep playoff run.

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2021 NBA Playoff Players to Watch Part 3: Deandre Ayton

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The 2020-21 NBA season has finally reached its conclusion. An exciting start, followed by a tumultuous and injury-riddled middle was then proceeded by a thrilling and exhilarating finish with the addition of the play-in format making every possible playoff seed worth more than it was in normal NBA seasons. With the playoffs underway, every year there are players who step up and help their teams reach the levels they ultimately want to achieve; an NBA championship. Unfortunately, only one team can win that, but that won’t stop the others from trying, so we’re going to run through some players throughout the week who will be of note in determining how these playoffs go down. We’re onto part three of our miniseries, this time touching up on Deandre Ayton of the Phoenix Suns.

The Suns have been a powerhouse all season long. They’ve got the NBA’s sixth-best offense and defense, a sure sign of this team’s contender status. They have an MVP candidate in Chris Paul, who surely won’t win it because of Nikola Jokic’s dominance in Denver, but Paul will definitely appear on ballots. Devin Booker is now a multiple-time All-Star. Players like Mikal Bridges, Cameron Payne, Cam Johnson, and Jevon Carter can bring a jolt any given night, while veterans like Jae Crowder and Dario Saric bring stability and sturdiness. Not a lot is missing from this Suns squad, but consistency from Ayton has been at times, but can’t be in the playoffs.

That isn’t to say Deandre Ayton has had a bad season by any means. He’s had a very good one, even if the stats don’t exactly bear it out. Nearly every individual statistic is down from a year ago except for field goal percentage, where Ayton is shooting a career-high 62.6% from the field. It pays well for bigs to play alongside Chris Paul. Ayton can do a little bit of everything offensively. As I mentioned earlier, playing with Chris Paul has done wonders as a roll-man and lob threat in the pick and roll, where Ayton has generated 1.39 points per possession, according to data derived from Synergy via NBA.com. That number ranks tied for the third-best mark in the entire NBA among players who have recorded at least 50 tracked possessions as the roll man. Ayton’s shooting touch hasn’t quite extended out to the three-point line, but he’s capable of hitting the occasional jumper. He’s a slick passer when operating from the mid-post out to the elbows. Ayton also is a got-damn force on the offensive glass. Boxing him out is a chore.

The same versatility applies to the defensive end of the floor. Deandre Ayton always was pretty frisky defending out on the perimeter dating back to his days at Arizona, and that has translated into the NBA. Phoenix can get away with Ayton guarding primary threats and force either a turnover or a tough shot. Where Ayton has really improved significantly is positioning himself manning down the paint in pick and roll coverages. This here is a great example. He sees Jimmy Butler attacking the rim but doesn’t commit too far towards Butler. Ayton commits *just enough* to make Butler dish the rock to his All-Star teammate Bam Adebayo, who has his shot swallowed by Ayton’s verticality at the rim. Deandre Ayton ranks fifth among all centers in ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus-Minus metric. Plays like that are a good reason why.

Deandre Ayton is capable of two-way dominance. The reason why I chose to highlight him is mostly whether or not Ayton actually puts all of these gifts he possesses together. Ayton has made many strides this season but will also fall under spells of action where he does not bring anywhere near the force he’s capable of providing in any given possession. Every possession matters in the postseason, something Deandre Ayton will learn soon enough. Sometimes he will lose track of his man defensively. Sometimes he gets beat off the bounce by a springy guard. We know he’s capable of shutting offenses dead in their tracks, but Ayton can get caught off guard at times or not play up to his capabilities. Phoenix’s defense this season has actually been better when Ayton has been OFF of the floor as opposed to when he’s been on it this season, according to NBA.com. Granted, Ayton this stat is sort of noisy starts games and often plays against better offensive talent as opposed to backup bigs Dario Saric and Frank Kaminsky, but I also wouldn’t totally write that off as nothing either.

Deandre Ayton not displaying the full capabilities of his force shows up mostly on the offensive end of the floor, however. Ayton’s defense will certainly be vital, but I think he will bring it on that end. He’ll have to step it up offensively, however. Playoff basketball is tough. It can get very physical. When you have a seven-foot, 250-pound mack-truck, that thing has to wear people down. Grind fouls, slow the game down, etc. That isn’t Deandre Ayton’s game at all. Yes, he’s a menace on the offensive glass, but he often bails defenders out on the post. This here is a good example. Deandre Ayton gets the smaller Jimmy Butler mismatched on the block. Now, Butler is a super-strong son of a gun in his own right, but Ayton should be able to move him back when he’s got nearly half a foot and 20 pounds on Butler. Instead, the exact opposite happens, and Ayton’s shot gets blocked from behind by Bam Adebayo. This happens a lot with Ayton. Even with a massive size advantage, Ayton looks to the post-fadeaway as opposed to running smaller dudes over. You’d think it’d be impossible for a skilled starting center to average less than three free throws a game, yet Deandre Ayton has managed to pull that feat off each of the first three seasons of his career! Ayton ranks in the 47th percentile in points per possession generated on a post-up, according to Synergy data via NBA.com (0.94 PPP). Last season he was even worse, finishing in the 21st percentile (0.78 PPP), dead last among players with at least 150 such possessions. At least in his rookie season, Ayton finished in the 75th percentile (1.03 PPP), showing he is capable of being effective and efficient down there. I’m not sure how he dropped off that far from his rookie season to now, but he’ll need to rectify that once the playoffs come along.

Deandre Ayton has come a long way from looking lost in his rookie season. He’s become a well-rounded versatile player on both ends of the floor. Getting a taste of the playoffs will only help in his trajectory as a basketball player. However, he still has his limitations, enough to make me skeptical of Phoenix’s chances of making a deep playoff run. It’ll be tough from the jump where they’ll be the lucky contestants standing in the way of either LeBron James and Anthony Davis’ Los Angeles Lakers or Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors. Some reward for the second seed! But even if the Suns flame out in the playoffs, even making it there for the first time in 11 years and winning 50 games in a shrunken season will already have made this year a success, and Ayton has been a big part of it. Hopefully, he puts all of his physical traits together and leads the Suns on a deep playoff run. If not, he’ll learn what he needs to improve upon to help Phoenix eventually get there.

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2021 NBA Playoff Players to Watch Part 1: Dennis Schröder

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The 2020-21 NBA season has finally reached its conclusion. An exciting start, followed by a tumultuous and injury-riddled middle was then proceeded by a thrilling and exhilarating finish with the addition of the play-in format making every possible playoff seed worth more than it was in normal NBA seasons. With the playoffs underway, every year some players step up and help their teams reach the levels they ultimately want to achieve; an NBA championship. Unfortunately, only one team can win that, but that won’t stop the others from trying, so we’re going to run through some players throughout the week who will be of note in determining how these playoffs go down. Part one of our miniseries will focus on Dennis Schröder of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Dennis Schröder was brought to the Lakers for one primary reason: to take pressure off of LeBron James while playing alongside him. Nobody could’ve reasonably expected Schröder to shoulder a gargantuan offensive load with both James and Anthony Davis injured for most of the regular season, but Schröder certainly had his moments, including a 25 point, 13 assist performance on the road against the Dallas Mavericks that served as one of the bigger games on the Lakers’ regular-season schedule. But Schröder has been a seamless fit when he has been able to play alongside his superstar teammates. The Lakers’ Net Rating is +12.4 when Schröder is on the court with James and Davis this season, according to NBA.com, a fantastic number. Though their Net Rating falls to -2.6 when both of those stars sit, the Lakers will likely stagger their stars in the postseason much like they did on their championship run a year ago. In either case, Schroder has and should continue to make it work. When Schröder is out there with LeBron and no Davis, the Lakers’ Net Rating sits at +5.8. Though the Lakers’ Net Rating when Schröder and Davis share the floor without LeBron is -4.3, Davis has only now played like the Anthony Davis we’ve been accustomed to seeing. That number is concerning, but I believe that will improve, and isn’t exactly all Schröder’s fault. While he’s been overtaxed as the alpha option for the Lakers’ offense, Dennis Schröder has been everything the Lakers could have reasonably expected from Schröder as the third option behind LeBron and Davis.

What appeals the most about Dennis Schröder’s offensive skillset is his ability to be a weapon both with and without the ball, critical with LeBron eating up most of the Lakers’ possessions and Anthony Davis receiving a similar load. Schroder is shooting 36.3% on catch-and-shoot threes this season, according to NBA.com. No one is going to mistake Schröder for Steph Curry, but that will earn the defense’s respect enough to make them pay if they cheat off of Schröder to help on James or Davis. That number could even bump up in the postseason once he’s catching pristine passes from LeBron. Last season, Schröder hit catch-and-shoot threes at a 41% clip while on the receiving end of another all-time facilitator in Chris Paul as a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Whether Schröder meets that mark of a year ago, stays where he’s been at this season or meets somewhere in the middle, it’s apparent that Schröder is a threat back there and will need to be accounted for.

But where Dennis Schröder’s bread gets buttered is in the pick and roll game, where he’s a threat to both score and create for others. When LeBron James was yearning for the Cavaliers to acquire another bleeping playmaker a few years ago, a player like Schröder is who he had in mind. Schröder is a very shifty and creative player. He’s very good at using his speed to get by his man and mixes it up very well with a patient and smooth floater or pull-up jumper to keep defenders off balance. Schröder is shooting a great 48.7% from the midrange this season, according to NBA.com. When Schröder can’t get to the rim, he’ll make you pay and keep defenses honest chucking at the elbows. Another way he keeps defenses honest is as a playmaker. While Schröder isn’t the greatest playmaker out there, Schröder is still a very good one, capable of bending defenses and manipulating defenders to find open shooters. When operating in duets with his big men, he routinely goes to the bounce pass while they’re on the move to serve the ball on a platter for them to finish the play. Dennis Schröder is averaging 0.87 points per possession as the pick-and-roll ball-handler over the course of 414 possessions, according to data accumulated by Synergy via NBA.com. While that mark only places him in the 55th percentile, we do have to account for LeBron and Davis both not being available for most of the season. Even still, that mark is better than that of any Laker from a year ago, not anything near the volume that Schröder has accumulated this season.

The Lakers didn’t just acquire Schröder for help on the offensive end, however. Schröder has fit like a glove defensively for a team that prides itself on that end of the floor. He almost always takes on the opposing teams’ best players, even if those guys are big, towering wings like the Kawhi Leonards of the world. That type of physicality Schröder can withstand was apparent at the end of a game in early January against the San Antonio Spurs. With less than 50 seconds to go, Schröder was matched up with the ever slept-on DeMar DeRozan. Despite Schröder’s size not doing him in any favors (DeRozan is 6’6” 220lbs; Schröder is 6’3” 172lbs), Schröder withstands the contact and forces DeRozan into a tough midrange fadeaway that he airballs. All of this came after he straight up swatted a Patty Mills jumper at the end of the shot clock a couple of possessions prior. The Lakers’ defense still sits at the top of the league despite prolonged absences from LeBron and Davis, and Schröder is a big reason why. 

The Lakers brought Dennis Schröder in to take pressure off of their two superstars on both ends of the floor. The context for his arrival only grew in importance after those two superstars got injured. Anthony Davis is just now rounding into form, as evidenced by consecutive 40 point explosions and grinding through a game against the New York Knicks after tweaking his groin. LeBron James only appeared in two games coming off of his high ankle sprain only to tweak that as well and miss more games. James has yet to return since. Dennis Schröder himself is heading into the postseason while missing time after being placed in the Health and Safety protocols on May 3rd. Schröder only returned for the last two games of the regular season against the Indiana Pacers and the New Orleans Pelicans. Maybe this could mess with his timing, but it also could be a blessing in disguise that Schröder had nearly two weeks to recover his body. But that doesn’t change the fact that Schröder is and will be very important in the Lakers’ hopes of repeating as NBA Champions for the third time in the new millennium. He’s already shown he’s been a great fit in the regular season with this crew; now he’s got to do it in the postseason. I like his chances of doing so, starting with the Golden State Warriors and the newly-minted play-in format, and helping the Lakers win ball games.

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The Impact and Ramifications of the Pandemic Season

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The NBA has generally done a good job enhancing its product and growing the game of basketball. The creation and execution of the bubble last October could not have gone more swimmingly to finish off the 2019-20 season. As a Laker fan especially, I could not be more thankful to see my team get crowned as champions, but the basketball was great all the way around. This season, however… has not gone as well. Then again, what else could you reasonably expect traveling from city to city to play basketball during a pandemic? The league is near the finish of its regular season, but I wonder if the juice was worth the squeeze. 

When the NBA announced that the 2020-21 regular season would begin on December 22nd, eyebrows were raised. The prior season had just concluded 71 days ago once the Lakers claimed the title. Though this season features 10 fewer games than that of a normal regular season, the NBA could not fit it into a normal NBA calendar with the Olympics at their heels in July after that got postponed a year because of the pandemic, so the NBA had to cram 72 games into roughly four and a half months. Keep in mind, a normal regular season is at least a month longer. Add to it a reduced training camp, and the result from games stacked on top of each other alongside restrictive health and safety protocols (until players opted to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, which I encourage anyone to receive if you haven’t already) has led to a diminished product. Typically I don’t buy into much rating talk with cord-cutting become a more viable option, but NBA ratings have been down 13% this season. NBA broadcasts being done from home is certainly a part of this, in my opinion, but also how daunting this season has been on the players has to be another. According to Chris Herring of Sports Illustrated, there have been a significant and nearly historic amount of blowouts this season, especially after the All-Star break. A staggering amount of regular season has just lacked any juice whatsoever. While that isn’t foreign to this season, in particular, the nature of this season has made these types of games more common.

A huge reason why more games have concluded in a blowout? The number of games missed. According to ManGamesLost.com’s Twitter account from a tweet posted on May 11th, just seven teams have lost players for fewer than 150 games. These tracked games missed are solely games missed due to injury, not because of COVID-19. However, in an article posted on February 12th, 2021, by injury guru and tracker Jeff Stotts of InStreetClothes.com, Stotts delivered this amazing nugget: ‘the total number of games lost for illness-related issues during the first 20 games of the 2020-21 season is four less than the five previous seasons combined. Nearly 90 percent of these games can be attributed to NBA players that have confirmed a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. Furthermore, these elevated totals do not include the over 150 games lost to players sitting out due to the NBA’s Health and Safety Protocols.’ Think about that; that was an article posted in February. This NBA season has lasted THREE MORE MONTHS since that article was published, yet multiple seasons’ worth of games missed due to an illness had taken place in the span of not even two months. Do you want to know why there has been a crap-ton of blowouts? Because just about everyone has missed time, one way or another. 

Just think about how many teams have had their season altered because of the nature of this season. None of the four conference finalists (Lakers, Celtics, Heat, Nuggets) from last season are above the fourth seed in their respective conferences. The Lakers built their team around LeBron James and Anthony Davis only for them to appear in 77 combined games. The Nuggets lost Jamal Murray to a torn ACL in perhaps the cruelest injury of this season. Miami is just now getting healthy after just about everyone from their Finals run missed time during the season. The Celtics are the exact opposite, with news that All-Star Jaylen Brown will miss the rest of the season the icing on the cake. No Celtics four-man pairing has played at least 300 minutes this season, according to NBA.com. Only three other teams can say the same: the Houston Rockets (who were forced to up-end their entire franchise), the Orlando Magic (who chose to up-end their entire franchise), and the Washington Wizards. The Celtics’ four best players (Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart) have appeared together in just 17 games over the course of only 292 minutes. It doesn’t stop there. The Brooklyn Nets’ Big 3 of Kevin Durant, James Harden have only played 186 minutes together in just seven games. The Minnesota Timberwolves’ three building blocks of the future (Karl-Anthony Towns, Anthony Edwards, D’Angelo Russell) have linked up for just 251 minutes over the course of 21 games this season. Multiple teams, including the San Antonio Spurs, Memphis Grizzlies, and Washington Wizards, teams currently in the play-in tournament, literally had to pause their season as if this was NBA2K because the coronavirus got so out of hand in their clubhouse, through no fault of their own. Could they be squarely in the playoff field had that not occurred? It’s tough to say, but maybe! Whatever the case may be, it’s hard to ignore how the contamination of this season has affected the actual product.

The product is one thing, but what concerns me the most is how these contaminated results of this season could affect the health and well-being of its players, coaches, and front office personnel. Another team hit hard by COVID-19 this season? The Toronto Raptors… who are not even playing in Toronto this season. They’re in Tampa Bay for Christ’s sake! After spending multiple months in Orlando in the bubble. Do you think their mental health hasn’t been challenged by this hellscape of a season? On top of that, as I said earlier, they had to deal with actually contracting the virus. Guard Fred VanVleet was very open in the complications he experienced fighting the virus. Celtics All-Star Jayson Tatum admitted to using an inhaler before games after his bout with COVID that he continues to suffer symptoms from. I’m not sure there will be a quote or soundbite that will be more noteworthy than Tatum’s admission here. One of the league’s brightest ascending stars that has already been to multiple Conference Finals, multiple All-Star games, and an All-NBA team (3rd team All-NBA in 2020) saying that COVID-19 is still affecting him so much so that he needs help to breathe properly to get back to that star level of production. Tatum most notably went through the wringer in February of 2021, averaging his typical 24 points per game, but doing so shooting less than 40% from the field and just 31.6% from deep. He has responded resoundingly since then, including a 60-point masterpiece against the San Antonio Spurs, but this was only after he said he started to use an inhaler before games. That his production could dip like that lets you know this virus can and has impacted the outcomes of these games. Luckily in Tatum’s case, he’s found a way to be productive in the midst of the virus, but there’s also a good chance this won’t be the last we see or learn about COVID-19 looming over the NBA and its games.

These are just a couple of examples, but surely there are more out there. What if Jayson Tatum has to deal with this for the rest of his career and that hinders his play? What if this was the Nuggets’ best chance at a title that got wiped away because of Jamal Murray’s injury? What if a rotation player who plays the role of a specialist for a team suddenly becomes less effective in the role the team needs from him after contracting the virus and finds himself out of the league entirely? Surely that can’t be out of the question.

Players suffering through injuries and COVID-19 infections have ramifications throughout the rest of the league as well. Odds were recently released for the next NBA Head Coach to be revoked of his duties. Uncoincidentally, many of the top favorites involved teams that have been dealt a tough hand in the age of COVID-19, with Indiana’s Nate Bjorkgren and Portland’s Terry Stotts most notably in the crossfire. If a team were to underwhelm in the playoffs, they could join the numerous teams outside of the postseason to shake up their roster or power structure. The Timberwolves already fired Head Coach Ryan Saunders. The Hawks firing Lloyd Pierce kind of saved their season, yet key addition Bogdan Bogdanovic and rising forwards De’Andre Hunter and Cam Reddish both got injured early in the season under Pierce’s watch. Maybe that move was a blessing in disguise with how well interim Head Coach Nate McMillan has done, but it also is plausible Pierce could have resurrected the team as well once he had a full squad to work with, yet he lost his job. More will follow, yet I don’t think it’s all that fair under these daunting circumstances.

That isn’t to say this season hasn’t given us something to celebrate. Nikola Jokic is having a historic season that should result in him winning the MVP. Steph Curry scorched the entire earth during the month of April. Russell Westbrook just broke the All-Time NBA record for Triple-Doubles accumulated over the course of a player’s career. We’ve still seen the greatness we’ve been accustomed to watching during an NBA regular season. It’s just been fewer and farther between with the variables of injuries and COVID-19 contaminating a lot of these games. That isn’t to say the NBA is out of the woods either. Someone could easily contract the virus during the playoffs and be forced to sit out the rest of a series potentially and really alter the results of this season. Let’s hope that it doesn’t.

The NBA had to go through with a regular season this season. There was too much money involved for there not to be one or have one with fewer games than the 72 we ultimately got. I’m thankful in the sense that bad or contaminated basketball is better than no basketball. I usually have no problem watching any kind of NBA basketball, but this season felt different. It felt off. Maybe it’s the many empty seats in the stands altering the viewing experience. More likely, it’s because the pandemic threw this NBA season off its axis from the start and it only continued to spiral downhill from there. But, we’re almost at the end, and the end of the regular season means the start of the postseason, with the NBA’s new play-in format being experimented with for the first time and likely not the last time. The NBA kept COVID-19 out of its playoffs once before; here’s hoping it can keep it out again this time around.

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The Play-In Is Working and Here to Stay

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Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic blasted the notion of the NBA’s newly-minted play-in system three weeks, adding that he ‘didn’t understand the idea of the play-in.’ Just last night, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James took that sentiment a step further, saying that whoever came up with the idea of the play-in ‘should be fired.’ While hilarious that these quotes came out only while the teams of those respective players were in danger of having to play in the play-in and confirming that there is a little bit of Stugotz in everybody, it does let us the viewers know that this idea is not exactly what you’d call popular amongst some players. Maybe you could quibble with the fact that this new system was introduced in a truncated 72 game season where games are stacked on top of each other like a house of cards. Fair. But these quotes also confirm that the play-in system is working and likely won’t be going anywhere any time soon.

For those unfamiliar with how this play-in system works, here’s a little debriefing. Teams seeded 1-6 in each conference are automatically berthed into the playoffs. Teams 7-8 play each other in a head-to-head with the winner of that game earning the 7 seed. Seeds 9-10 square off in a single-elimination game akin to the First Four of the NCAA Tournament. The loser goes home, and the winner faces the loser of the 7-8 matchup. The winner of that game earns the 8 seed, and the loser earns a vacation to Cancun if vacations are still a thing during the age of COVID-19.

This system is working for a myriad of reasons, one being the disincentive to tanking. While tanking is still going on (look no further than Oklahoma City’s 57 point loss to the Indiana Pacers during the weekend. Yes, you read that right. Fifty-seven.), it isn’t as rampant as we got accustomed to prior to the NBA adjusted the lottery odds in September of 2017 that took place for the 2018-19 season. Before the 2019 Draft Lottery, the Knicks, Cavaliers, Suns, and Bulls (in that order) finished with the four worst records in the NBA. With the lottery drawing for the top four picks, only one of those four bottom-feeders (at the time) picked inside the top four: the Knicks at the three spot, eventually selecting RJ Barrett (having a very good season, by the way!). The Pelicans and Grizzlies, tied for the 8th-worst record in the league, both jumped into the top two to select Zion Williamson and Ja Morant, while the Lakers got the fourth pick and used it to trade for Anthony Davis.

Because of this rule change, tanking became a little more arduous. It’s one thing to tank and be able to draft Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons; it’s another to tank for Coby White. Add this along with the chance to work your way into the playoffs, and tanking has suddenly become less en vogue than ever. Just look to those aforementioned teams in the Lakers and the Mavericks. The Lakers just lost back-to-back games to the Sacramento Kings and Toronto Raptors, neither of whom would even qualify for the play-in had the season ended today. The Mavericks have lost three games to the Kings in the span of two weeks. The Lakers lost to the Wizards on Wednesday, currently holders of the 10 seed in the East, but the Wizards dropped one to the Mavericks on Saturday in an absolute thriller. Would that game be as intense without both teams clearly playing for something at the end of the season? Who is to say.

Another reason the play-in is working is the built-in buffer for injuries or, particularly with this season, other absences. For example, Steph Curry of the Golden State has played in 56 of the Warriors’ 64 games this season. The Warriors are 1-7 in those games Steph has missed. Had Steph been healthy for the entirety of the Warriors’ season, their win percentage in games he has played multiplied over 64 games would put them at around 35 wins, one win behind the trio of the Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Lakers, and Portland Trail Blazers all tied for fifth in the West with 36 wins apiece. Instead, the Warriors are ninth in the West. Without the play-in, the Warriors would be out of the playoff field entirely at the moment (but only sit 0.5 games behind the Memphis Grizzlies). There are plenty of other examples of teams that have been ravaged by injuries or COVID-19 or both this season, too many to count. But the play-in gives them longer to get right and compete for a playoff berth.

Most importantly, though, what the play-in brings is added intrigue. For the reasons listed above, more teams are playing more high-stakes games. People want to see what happens at seeds 5-10 just as much as who finishes 1-4. I sure as hell know that as a Laker fan, I don’t want my team to play an extra game it doesn’t have to play, but it is a very real possibility that happens. Commissioner Adam Silver has always wanted to implement elements of European soccer into the NBA and may have found a way to do so in the play-in. While the play-in isn’t as dramatic as relegation in European leagues from the top league to the second division for the bottom three teams of said league, it adds that sort of element to the seedings of the regular season. It makes the regular season matter. Isn’t that we as viewers wanted? That all of these games actually serve a purpose and aren’t just placeholders for the playoffs come every April, or May in this case. Every game matters, or at least matters more now, and that’s a good thing.

The end of NBA seasons of years prior have mostly felt like a drag. Outside of the race for the 8th seed, there hasn’t been much intrigue. Most playoff matchups are locked in, most teams on the outside are tanking for the future. The new play-in system the NBA has added has mostly eradicated all of those problems. The more teams playing for something, the better. Though star players like LeBron and Luka have railed against it, the likelihood is that it isn’t going away any time soon. If it adds legitimate intrigue to the end of each season, then we should be looking at that as a good thing.

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