As we approach the end of the regular season, we can take a look at the players who have made the biggest leaps during the 2020-21 campaign.
As we approach the end of the regular season, we can take a look at the players who have made the biggest leaps during the 2020-21 campaign.
While there is already an award for the NBA’s Most Improved Player, with emerging stars Julius Randle and Jerami Grant the current favorites to take home the hardware, that trophy is typically given to players who have made a stride on offense.
But just as important, especially for championship contention, is defensive prowess. Players need to become two-way players in order to maximize their potential in the NBA.
After such a long offseason, where many had ample time to improve their games, there are several who stand out as those who have been able to make those leaps in 2020-21.
Below are some of the players around the league who have most improved their game on the defensive side of the floor since last season.
Note that players like Mike Conley, who have historically been very good defenders but had an atypically rough season last year, were not included in this exercise.
HoopsHype selects a starting five, along with a bench, for the 2020-21 season made up entirely of players we consider to be underrated.
With talk of which NBA players are the most underrated right making the rounds on social media this week, we thought it would be a good time to come up with our own All-Underrated Team for the 2020-21 season, both a starting five and an accompanying bench to go along with it.
In total, we picked 15 players at different positions who we believe still don’t get enough respect, be it from fans or the media at large.
Below, check out our All-Underrated Team for the 2020-21 NBA campaign.
HoopsHype looks at the numbers and film to determine how Blake Griffin can still help contenders in a secondary role.
After trying and failing to trade Blake Griffin for weeks, if not longer, the Detroit Pistons finally came to terms on a buyout with the six-time All-Star on Friday, according to multiple reports, opening the door for Griffin to hit unrestricted free agency and sign with whatever team he wants to.
Now, Griffin isn’t the player he was five years ago – he isn’t even the player he was two seasons ago, in his last All-Star campaign – but the almost 32-year-old still has value as a potential bench piece or spot starter on a contender.
For anyone doubting that, just look at the quality of the teams interested in Griffin, according to the New York Times’Marc Stein:
The Lakers, Clippers, Nets, Heat and Warriors are among the teams that have expressed interest in Blake Griffin when he becomes an unrestricted free agent, league sources say
The Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers, the Miami Heat, the Brooklyn Nets and the Golden State Warriors – all teams with huge aspirations this season, and all reported as being after Griffin’s signature as a free agent.
On the campaign, Griffin’s numbers in 2020-21 have been modest, to say the least: 12.3 points, 5.2 rebounds and 3.9 assists per contest on paltry shooting splits of 36.5/31.5/71.0 over 20 games. The catch-all analytics paint a similarly grim picture, as Griffin ranks 362nd in Value Over Replacement Player (-0.1) this season, 309th in Box Plus/Minus (-2.6) and 381st in Win Shares per 48 Minutes (0.026), almost unfathomable marks considering Griffin was an All-Star putting up almost 25 points nightly just two seasons ago.
And yet, big teams are still going to come hard after Griffin’s services. The question is: Why?
That answer could have partly to do with Griffin’s point-per-possession marks, which aren’t quite as ugly as his other marks in 2020-21.
Taking a look at Synergy Sports, we can see Griffin is still an ‘excellent’ point producer as a pick-and-roll ball-handler and a ‘very good’ scorer in transition and as the roll man in pick-and-roll sets. That type of versatile scoring is hard to find, particularly players who can produce as both the creator and finisher in all-important pick-and-roll sets, so crucial in the modern NBA.
Let’s take a look at each of those play types and Griffin’s ability to score out of them a little more closely.
Griffin’s most effective play type this season by far has been as the pick-and-roll ball-handler, unique for a traditional power forward.
Out of those sets, Griffin has posted 38 possessions and produced 43 points, good for a 1.132 point-per-possession (PPP) mark, which places him in the 93rd percentile league-wide, per Synergy, in what’s considered the ‘excellent’ range.
The minimal sample size needs to be taken into account, but just for fun, let’s look at what top forwards are posting in the same pick-and-roll ball-handler play type this season, according to Synergy: First-time All-Star Zion Williamson is right behind Griffin in PPP at 1.108, Kevin Durant is even further behind at 1.011 PPP while LeBron James is at 0.917 PPP on that play type this season.
Again, sample size must be taken into account here, as Griffin’s 38 possessions as the pick-and-roll ball-handler is less than half of the amount Williamson, Durant and James have this season, but either way, it’s impressive to see Griffin being so productive with the ball in his hands and a screener setting him up.
Here’s video proof of Griffin’s effectiveness this very season as the pick-and-roll ball-handler:
What’s more, in transition opportunities this season, Griffin has scored 20 points on 16 chances, good for 1.125 PPP, placing him in the 74th percentile in the NBA this year, per Synergy. Meanwhile, as the roll man, he’s produced 12 points on just 10 opportunities, a 1.2 PPP mark, one that puts him in the NBA’s 70th percentile.
Although the sample size for those two play types is tiny, the numbers, again, speak favorably of Griffin’s ability to produce in those kinds of looks, something that will appeal to contenders looking for frontcourt help this buyout season.
Additionally, the fact that Griffin is still finishing 61.2 percent of his shot attempts from within five feet of the basket, a higher clip than far more explosive wings in Aaron Gordon (59.0 percent) and Kelly Oubre Jr. (59.0 percent), or even than first-time All-Star power forward Julius Randle (57.6 percent), further indicates that Griffin likely has more left in the tank than his raw and advanced statistics would let on.
There’s also a matter of motivation with Griffin that must be factored in.
The guy is about to turn 32, has six All-Star and five All-NBA appearances under his belt and was playing on a Detroit team in the very early stages of a total rebuild. Not only that, but the Pistons’ top player this season, Jerami Grant, has spent over half his playing time this season playing Griffin’s most natural position of power forward, according to Basketball-Reference.
On a contending team with a more important role, who knows? Maybe Griffin is able to channel his 2018-19 form more often.
Even if Griffin never comes close to reaching those heights again, there’s little doubt he could be a huge help to a contender off the bench, especially making the minimum or part of some team’s mid-level exception.
He’s the exact type of low-risk, high-reward pickup that teams with title aspirations make every buyout season, who at times end up being game-changers.
Or maybe Griffin signs somewhere and is relegated to the bench for the entirety of the playoffs. Either way, it’d be a move well worth the risk for a contender, particularly at such a modest price tag.
For the latest Blake Griffin free agency news, click here.
HoopsHype examines the legacy of Hall-of-Famer Kevin Garnett, who is already being underrated in all-time great discussions.
Hall-of-Fame big man Kevin Garnett’s legacy is undeniably great.
He’s got a ring to his name. He made 15 All-Star appearances. He was an All-NBA player nine times. He could do a bit of everything on offense. He was a monster on the glass. And he’s one of the most intense defenders the sport has ever seen.
And yet it seems like The Big Ticket is already being underrated in discussions about all-time greats even though he only retired after the 2015-16 season.
Below, we break down why we think Garnett is underrated.
HoopsHype breaks down 12 players who are in line to have much-needed bounce-back seasons with their respective clubs.
For injury-related reasons or simply due to poor form, various big-name players suffered setbacks in production in 2019-20. Some of them didn’t play at all last season; others struggled to acclimate with new teams; and still, others suffered setbacks in their early-career journeys.
Regardless, that left us with a lot of very solid options as far as selecting potential candidates to have bounce-back seasons in 2020-21.
Below, we break down who we believe are the 12 best candidates to have much-needed comeback years.
The Los Angeles Lakers went off to an early, two-game series lead over the Denver Nuggets in the 2020 NBA Western Conference Finals.
The Los Angeles Lakers went off to an early, two-game series lead over the Denver Nuggets in the 2020 NBA Western Conference Finals.
One anomaly worth nothing thus far is how often Alex Caruso has guarded All-Star Nikola Jokic. The 6-foot-5 guard has been tasked with occasionally defending the 7-foot big. During the first two games of the series, Caruso has guarded Jokic for six possessions.
Many would assume that Jokic, who averaged 19.9 points per game in the regular season and 25.4 points per game in the playoffs, should have little trouble at all when the Lakers have sent Caruso on him.
However, that hasn’t really been the case.
Most of these possessions came in the second game of the series. In Game 1, Caruso was called for a foul against the big (he didn’t record any other defensive possessions that night against the big Serbian), one that most folks watching a replay of the action would suggest should have been against Jokic
Regardless, Caruso has been an irritant and on-ball pest who has not allowed Jokic to find his typical rhythm as a ballhandler. Below, watch the two players go at it, zoomed in and slowed down for your convenience.
Jokic is 1-for-3 (33.3 percent) when guarded by Caruso, per NBA.com, with the Nuggets’ star’s one bucket coming out of a pick-and-pop jump shot.
These opportunities have been few and far between when compared to his usual rate. Only two players (Orlando’s Nikola Vucevic and San Antonio’s LaMarcus Aldridge) recorded more pick-and-pop possessions during the regular season. Jokic averaged 1.9 possessions per game on these looks, per Synergy, yet recorded just one in the opening game of the series.
Overall, the way Caruso has made his impact shows on more than just field goal attempts. For example, watch the way that Caruso was able to contain Jokic in the first quarter of the second game.
Despite the height differential that Jokic had over Caruso, Denver wing Torrey Craig was unable to feed the big man in the high post for what should have been a mismatch bucket.
Then during the second quarter, Caruso came over as a help defender against Jokic. He left his man to join Dwight Howard for what proved to be a smart double-team against the All-Star.
This forced a turnover and a fastbreak opportunity for the Lakers. His defense helped his offense as the possession turned into a successful running dunk for Caruso on the other end of the court.
Later in the same half, he had another transition steal after a tipped pass intended for Jokic. He then went the entire length of the floor for a huge bucket.
This has become a trend considering that his steal percentage (2.0 percent) ranks in the 98th percentile among all combo guards in the playoffs, per Cleaning the Glass.
In fact, during postseason play thus far, the Lakers have recorded a turnover percentage that is 4.4 percent better when Caruso is on the floor compared to when he is not. According to Cleaning the Glass, that is the best mark among combo guards.
But the most unexpected moment between the two players came in the third quarter of the second game.
While he was being guarded by Caruso, Jokic had a post-up attempt on the right block after a dribble-move for a driving reverse lay-up from two feet.
Considering that Jokic was 257-of-358 (67.7 percent) from within five feet during the regular season, this was a wholly unexpected miss considering the undersized defender that was guarding him.
Why can’t anyone on the Nuggets deliver a pass to Jokic — or flash to the high post — when Caruso is fronting him?
One lesson learned is that Caruso should not be discounted or overlooked as a defender. He ranked Top 10 on Real Defensive Plus-Minus among shooting guards, per ESPN.
He currently boasts the third-most defensive win shares on his team during the playoffs, trailing only LeBron James and Anthony Davis. He also has the best block percentage (1.8 percent) among all non-bigs and wings during the postseason.
While it may not be a safe assumption that Caruso continues to be tasked with guarding Jokic, he has shown thus far that he has been up for the unique and unexpected challenge.
HoopsHype examines the legacy of future Hall-of-Famer Chris Paul, who is already being underrated in all-time great discussions.
When Chris Paul was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder last offseason, many expected him to get shipped to another team quickly since the Thunder appeared headed towards an immediate and complete rebuild.
That was the logical assumption, too, since Oklahoma City had just traded away Russell Westbrook, arguably the franchise’s most accomplished player ever, and Paul George, who finished third in the prior season’s MVP vote. (No, really.)
Little did we know the Thunder would actually improve upon their win percentage under Paul’s leadership and production, comfortably make the playoffs and push further than anyone expected them to before the season tipped off.
One could easily make the case that because we underrate Paul so much, we didn’t realize he might be able to singlehandedly make Oklahoma City a better team, despite what they lost from their roster last summer.
Below, more reasons why we think the future Hall-of-Famer is so underrated.
Despite lack of rings, he’s a beast in the playoffs…
In sports culture today, it has become all too common to criticize players if they never win a championship, even if they went above and beyond what was expected of them in the playoffs and it really wasn’t their fault.
This is true for Paul more than any other active player.
Paul’s postseason shortcomings – never making it to the Finals, only reaching the conference finals once, getting injured in huge playoff moments – are overstated, as the Wake Forest product is actually extremely productive in postseason competition, averaging 21 points, 8.2 assists and 2.1 steal over 108 playoff appearances.
Paul ranks 12th in career assist average in the playoffs and 10th in steals.
Even this year, in a hard-fought Game 7 defeat to the heavily favored Houston Rockets, a game that few even expected the Thunder to reach, Paul made history by becoming the oldest player to have a triple-double in a Game 7.
It is fair to knock Paul on his durability in the postseason, which became especially problematic in 2018 when his team at the time, the Rockets, had their best chance to take down the dynastic Golden State Warriors featuring Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry, taking a 3-2 series lead in the Western Conference Finals before losing the final two games of the series.
Nevertheless, Paul has always performed at an extremely high level in the postseason, he’s just very seldom had a championship-caliber team around him to help reach the top of the mountain. It’s just really difficult, if not borderline impossible, for an undersized point guard like Paul to be the best player on a title team.
He’s had an unreal sustained level of excellence…
Because of his size and injury history (nothing major, but he has missed a lot of time throughout his career with random knocks), not many expected Paul to be this good today, at 35 years of age.
And yet, Paul is coming off an All-Star campaign this season – in the Western Conference, no less – where he averaged 17.6 points and 6.7 assists and led a young-but-hungry Thunder team to a playoff appearance as the West’s No. 5 seed.
It was the 10th All-Star showing of Paul’s career, the first of which came in his age-22 season back in 2007-08. That’s a difference of 12 years between his first and latest All-Star campaign, proving just how incredible his longevity has been, especially when you factor in his physical shortcomings.
It must also be noted that Paul is the only player since 1983-84 to play at least 1,000 games and be a starter in every single one of them.
How’s that for longevity as a top-notch point guard?
He elevates teams like few others in history…
That’s not an opinion either, but a statistical fact, as, per our research, Paul has raised two teams’ winning percentages by an extreme margin.
During his time with the Los Angeles Clippers, Paul lifted the franchise’s win rate from a laughable 37.9 percent without him to 68.5 percent with him on the roster, an absolutely absurd feat. In fact, that 30.6 percent raise in win percentage was the highest among the players we researched.
What’s even crazier is that Paul actually made two appearances on the list, as Paul also raised the Hornets’ win percentage by 12.8 percent when he was on the team.
He may not have the rings to show for it, but there’s no doubt Paul is a winning player and has been for his entire career. You don’t make it to 12 playoffs in 15 seasons by accident.
This year was like a microcosm of Paul’s overall career, where he was the main reason his team was even in the playoffs and made it as far as they did. No, he didn’t win a title, but it was noteworthy and impressive nonetheless.
It was nothing new for Paul, either, as even in his New Orleans days early on in his career, he was dragging an often mediocre (at best) roster to the playoffs in the loaded Western Conference. For comparison’s sake, the star point guard qualified for the postseason three times during his time with the then-Hornets; Anthony Davis was only able to do that twice while in New Orleans.
He comes up big in key moments…
It may not necessarily always be with the final shot (though it has been in the past), but Paul is usually a force late in games with results hanging in the balance.
A perfect example of that came this season, where Paul led all players in total clutch scoring (defined as points produced when a game has fewer than five minutes left and a score is within five points) with 150 points, which he scored quite tidily on 52.2 percent shooting.
Without Paul’s ability to step up late in games this season, (the Thunder were tied for No. 1 in the league in games with clutch situations while leading the NBA in clutch wins), Oklahoma City wouldn’t have come close to making the playoffs.
There are also historical examples of Paul’s clutchness, the most memorable one taking place in Game 7 of the first round of the 2015 playoffs, where the 6-foot-1 ball-handler, with his team down by one, sank an unforgettable bank shot over Tim Duncan to send the Clippers to the second round of that year’s postseason.
Paul being able to get crucial buckets at his size against some of the NBA’s scariest behemoths is a testament to his greatness.
He’s got some truly wild statistics accumulated so far…
When you’ve been as great for as long as Paul has, you’re going to have some pretty ridiculous stats by your name in the record books.
For example, Paul, with 9,653 career assists and 2,233 career steals, ranks seventh in both categories historically in the NBA. That makes him one of just three players, along with Jason Kidd and John Stockton, i.e., two of the greatest point guards who ever lived, to rank in the Top 7 of both major categories.
What’s more, Paul’s 9.5 career assist average and 2.2 career steal average place him fourth and seventh historically in those two statistics respectively. He’s the only player ever to rank in the Top 7 in both of those stats, average-wise. That’s nuts.
Paul is also the only player in league history to lead the NBA in steals on six separate occasions (the No. 2 finishers in most times to lead the league in takeaways all merely did it three times), he was the youngest player to ever lead the NBA in assists (which he did at 22 years old while averaging 11.6 nightly), and one of just two players with multiple 20-point, 10-assist, 2-steal campaigns, along with Isiah Thomas.
Oh, and for good measure, he’s the fourth-leading rebounder in NBA history among players 6-foot-1 or shorter.
For Paul to be able to do that while being generously listed at that height without being a super explosive athlete like the Russell Westbrooks or Derrick Roses of his era, and while doing the majority of his damage efficiently in the midrange during a time where that shot is beyond frowned upon, is wild.
And it’s why he’s the ultimate floor general of his era, a no-doubt first-ballot Hall-of-Famer even if he never wins a title, and why we think he’s so underrated.
HoopsHype takes a look at the numbers to determine once and for all who’s the better shooter from super deep: Steph Curry or Dame Lillard?
On Inside the NBA on Tuesday night, Kenny ‘The Jet’ Smith made waves by insinuating that Portland Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard, arguably the hottest player on the planet right now, is a better shooter from super deep than former two-time league MVP Stephen Curry.
His exact words – as a highlight of Lillard draining a shot from 35 feet out against the L.A. Lakers played in the forefront – were: “I don’t think you can shoot as deep as him, Steph. I’ve got to see it when you get back.”
That got us to thinking: Who is truly the better shooter from super deep? Curry or Lillard?
Well, thankfully, because the NBA tracks stats for literally everything now, we’re able to answer that question, and it’s Lillard, though the results are somewhat close.
According to Basketball-Reference, for his career, Lillard has attempted 327 shots from at least 30 feet away from the basket, making 108 of them, good for a 33.7 percent success rate. In 2019-20 alone, however, that number sores up to an absurd 41.4 percent success rate on 133 such attempts, which is just absolutely preposterous.
100 seconds of @Dame_Lillard just hitting incredibly deep 3-pointers.
Curry, meanwhile, has attempted 332 shots from that distance for his career and made 85 of them, for an accuracy rate of 25.6 percent.
Curry and Lillard rank first and second respectively all-time in shot attempts from that deep, which makes sense considering the two dynamic shooters are the ones who popularized the deep three-pointer and have paved the way for younger players like Trae Young to pick up the mantle for the next generation of sharpshooters.
Speaking of Young, for his young career, he’s actually been more accurate than Lillard or Curry from at least 30 feet out, making 35.6 percent of his 174 attempts from that range.
Regardless, if we had to choose one player to take and make a shot from way beyond the arc today, it’d be Lillard, and the decision would be an easy one.
The numbers back that up, too.
Alberto de Roa contributed research to this report.
Suns All-Star Devin Booker is proving he’s not an empty stats guy anymore, playing some of his best basketball ever in the bubble.
It wasn’t that long ago that many – sometimes rightfully – questioned Devin Booker and whether he was an empty-stats player or one who made an actual impact on winning.
Looking back, the questions may have been unfair, especially considering Booker’s first campaign with the Phoenix Suns came when he was merely 19 years of age and the teams around him prior to this year were usually rather poorly put-together. Despite Booker’s personal successes early on in his career, the Suns didn’t win more than 24 games in any campaign before 2019-20.
Booker’s poor luck with Phoenix has been so bad, in fact, that in a research project we recently did, we found out that the talented scorer actually has the 19th-worst winning percentage in league history. As of July 31, he had won just 30.2 percent of his games with the Suns.
This season, however, has been different for Booker – and that’s especially been true since Phoenix’s stint in the bubble began, where the team has gone 3-0 and pulled within three games of the Memphis Grizzlies for the West’s final playoff spot.
In that stretch, Booker has been nothing short of spectacular, averaging 30.7 points, 4.0 rebounds and 5.3 assists while posting fiery 47.0/45.0/87.5 shooting splits. He’s being aggressive, refusing to settle for deep jumpers – but bombing away when he has to – and attacking the basket with aplomb.
His run of recent excellence was capped with this unreal game-winner against the Los Angeles Clippers…
…where Booker faked a pass, drove it left on four-time All-Defensive team member Paul George, one of the best wing stoppers in the game, into Kawhi Leonard, one of basketball’s best help defenders, spun back away from Leonard and nailed a falling fadeaway jumper over a picture-perfect contest by George.
Nothing but net.
Booker was so dominant in his outing against the Clippers, an elite team in their own right, that late in the contest, Los Angeles head coach Doc Rivers even started sending double-teams at the young 2-guard to try and get the ball out of his hands. Even that failed to slow Booker down.
Players around the Association immediately reacted to the enormous shot on Twitter, including fellow All-Stars, Bradley Beal and Trae Young:
It should say something that players have always seemed to have a higher opinion of Booker than many basketball analysts do, and that’s because they see how rarified Booker’s game is, with an unreal ability to score from all three levels with such smoothness.
While the media may see Booker’s place in various catch-all advanced metrics – and, granted, some of them are not very pretty, including his 57th-overall ranking in Box Plus/Minus and 53rd-overall ranking in Win Shares per 48 Minutes – players see a guy that can score from 30-feet away, or by stopping on a dime for neat pull-up jumpers or one who can put his shoulder into defenders and clear them out for brutish finishes down low:
Booker being surrounded by some average to above-average teammates at every position for the first time in his career seems to be giving the Kentucky product a sense of confidence on the court he hasn’t been able to have in years prior.
Phoenix’s best five-man lineup this season (minimum: 20 minutes together) features Booker, two guys who weren’t on the team last season in Ricky Rubio and Aron Baynes, a third who joined midway through last season in Kelly Oubre, and second-year forward Mikal Bridges.
There’s also Deandre Ayton, the former No. 1 overall pick who, despite an up-and-down start to his career, is really starting to come into his own lately too. In the bubble, Ayton is posting a 16.7/9.0/2.3 stat line while shooting 50 percent from three. If the big Bahamian can continue to space the floor and keep up this recent level of intensity, he could give Booker a very solid pick-and-roll/pick-and-pop partner, one with All-Star potential down the road.
Booker having teammates he can trust when he needs to get rid of the ball has really helped his efficiency and led to him seemingly take the next step in his development. We shouldn’t undersell Rubio’s importance to Booker’s progression, either, as his calming presence at point has given the Suns an invaluable floor general who can set up his explosive backcourt mate.
At the end of the day, this isn’t the first time that Booker has performed at a high level. He was an All-Star this season, after all. But it is the first time we’ve seen him do it this late in a campaign, where the outcomes are so much more important and a playoff berth hangs in the balance. It’d be Phoenix’s first playoff berth in 10 years.
So one could easily argue that these are by far the biggest games in Booker’s still-young NBA career. And the good news for Phoenix fans? He’s passing the test with flying colors.
You can follow Frank Urbina on Twitter: @FrankUrbina_.
Andrew Wiggins is playing the best basketball of his career. We break down his high level of play with stats and video.
In seasons prior, Minnesota Timberwolves swingman Andrew Wiggins commonly found himself near the bottom of lists ranking players in various advanced metrics.
Just last year, Wiggins finished the 2018-19 campaign sitting at 511th in Value Over Replacement Player (VORP), 178th in Box Plus/Minus (BPM) and 340th in Win Shares. What that means – and you can be assured, it’s impossible to spin those marks as anything but terrible – is that Wiggins was getting a lot of minutes and finishing a lot of possessions with the ball in his hands, but was extremely inefficient with his touches.
His raw averages last season – 18.1 points per game on 16.6 field-goal attempts nightly and 41.2/33.9/69.9 shooting splits – indicate the same: Wiggins was a very ineffective player.
But that seems to have changed this season, at least thus far.
The first glimpse we got of this newfound, confident and explosive version of Wiggins came on Oct. 27 when the Canadian forward exploded in the fourth quarter of a tight contest against the now 7-3 Miami Heat, finishing the outing with 25 points (16 of which came in the deciding quarter) on 50 percent shooting from the floor.
Still, though, Wiggins had flashed moments of brilliance before in his career, and they never translated to anything sustainable, so how were we supposed to know this time would be any different?
Well, if the last five games tell us anything, it’s that this time looks to be just that… different.
Over that span, Wiggins is averaging 31.6 points per game, to go with 5.0 rebounds, 6.0 assists (extremely noteworthy for a player with a 2.2-assist career average), 1.2 steals and 1.4 blocks per game (with just 1.6 turnovers, an absurdly low mark considering his usage rate). The advanced stats, those that were so cruel to the 24-year-old in the past, have changed their tune as well, placing Wiggins among the Top 60 players in the Association this season. That’s still not quite elite , but in comparison to his aforementioned marks from 2018-19, Wiggins ranking 42nd in VORP, 59th in BPM and 22nd in Win Shares (!) is pretty impressive.
When asked about Wiggins’ season thus far, Timberwolves assistant coach David Vanterpool told HoopsHype: “He has been incredible at trying to make his teammates better in every facet. He’s doing a great job with his defensive assignments, and he has been great facilitating for others on the offensive end. He’s a natural scorer so even his scoring, when it’s necessary, helps those around him. He’s playing at an All-Star level.”
Vanterpool isn’t lying; Wiggins looks like a different player as a distributor recently. The Canadian forward’s vision is night and day compared to previous years – he’s keeping his head up while driving and finding secondary and even tertiary options when he draws multiple defenders.
According to the NBA’s primary stats page, Wiggins is passing the ball over 35 times per night this season, a significant jump from his 26 nightly passes last season, and proof of a more well-rounded offensive player.
At the same time, Wiggins hasn’t made a leap this year solely because of his improved willingness and vision as a playmaker. He’s gotten much more effective at putting the ball in the bucket, too.
Per Synergy Sports, Wiggins ranks as a “very good” (82nd percentile) scorer in the halfcourt, producing a total of 1.07 points per possession (PPP) in such chances. That’s a better mark than professional bucket-getters like Devin Booker (1.03 PPP out of the halfcourt) and Trae Young (1.01 PPP), for the record. Last year, Wiggins scored a paltry 0.86 PPP out of the halfcourt, which placed him in the Association’s 27th percentile.
Part of the reason for Wiggins making this massive jump in effectiveness as a scorer is the fact that he’s attempting more three-pointers (6.5) than he ever has before at any point in his career. To make up the difference, the Wolves wing is taking way less long two-point jumpers these days, a shot he used to attempt with aplomb despite it’s well-documented inefficiency.
Coming into this season, Wiggins was taking 35.9 percent of his field-goal attempts for his career from between 10 feet away from the basket and the three-point line – over a third of his shots coming from this hellscape of efficient basketball. This year, however, that number is all the way down to 20.4 percent, a much more acceptable rate for a scorer such as Wiggins.
As a result of both the better shot selection and improved passing, the 24-year-old is producing 1.3 PPP in isolation situations (with passes included) this season, a mark healthy enough to rank as “excellent,” per Synergy, and to put him in the league’s 86th percentile, ahead of All-NBA-level talents like reigning league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo (1.07 PPP) and his own teammate Karl-Anthony Towns (1.0 PPP).
All in all, Wiggins’ development this season can be attributed to (much) better shot selection, improved playmaking chops, less floating in and out of games and more consistent effort on both ends of the floor.
There had never been any sort of dispute in regards to his otherworldly physical tools…
…but now that Wiggins is going all-out, full-throttle during his time on the floor, he’s able to shine much more brightly.
The jury is still out on whether this isn’t just an extended flash of hardwood brilliance or something sustainable, but considering the lack of red flags with his production (like fluky shooting marks, for example), there’s reason to believe this is real.
You can follow Frank Urbina on Twitter: @FrankUrbina_.
