With the Pelicans season officially over, we begin our look back at each individual player’s season and recap what we learned and where they stand with the Pelicans moving forward.
Overview
As things changed around the Pelicans last off-season, things stayed the same with Jahlil Okafor. A center who has yet to truly establish a role in the league after rocky times in Philadelphia, Okafor looked much the man Pelican fans saw from his first season in New Orleans in 2018-19.
That isn’t to say the player Okafor was this season wasn’t helpful. There are still few big men currently in the NBA that possess the array of moves Okafor has in the post offensively. On just 5.4 attempts per game, Okafor averaged 8.1 points per contest thanks to a career-best field goal percentage of 62.3%.
But an array of other factors, some in Okafor’s control and some not, forced him down the depth chart. His spot minutes grew thinner and thinner as the Pelicans got healthier, but is that the role for Okafor regardless of the team for his NBA career?
What was learned?
While the post-up is being quickly faded out of the modern NBA, Okafor is one of the few greats in the game. When single-covered in the post, Okafor feasted, finishing in the 84th percentile, per Synergy. On the left block while single covered, he was in the 96th percentile on 22 possessions. In 17 of those possessions, he faced up and drove baseline and scored 1.294 points per possession, ranking in the 100th percentile.
The problem is that post-derived offense, even at a high level from Okafor, is a largely inefficient form of offense. Overall in post-ups, Okafor was in the 63rd percentile and still managed less than one point per possession. He did show flashes as a productive player as a roll man (73rd percentile) and as a cutter (76th) but both came in limited sample sizes.
Specific to Okafor, the problems aren’t on the offensive end, though. Synergy ranks Okafor as a 21st percentile player defensively this season. The advanced numbers hardly paint a prettier picture as the team was five points better per 100 possessions defensively with Okafor off the court versus on it.
Further showcasing the inefficiency of the post-up offense, Okafor had a -10.1 net rating while the Pelicans had a 0.1 net rating with him off the court this season. Okafor has proven he can score in the post but in an NBA spreading the floor and speeding the game up, he’s being left in the dust.
What does the future hold?
After two seasons in New Orleans, it seems like a longshot Okafor comes back for a third as he enters unrestricted free agency. As noted earlier, Okafor played 20 times in the first 34 games as the team battled injuries. Once the team got healthy, he played just 10 times in the final 38 games.
In those final 10 games, though, the best of Okafor shined through. It was Okafor that carried the Pelicans for large stretches in an overtime win in Detroit in mid-January as he scored 25 points on 11-of-21 shooting.
In the right scenario, it’s not improbable that Okafor could be a backup center for a side with plenty of shooting and space to work. New Orleans, though, has a handful of bigs that will likely rank above him in the depth chart in Zion Williamson, Nicolo Melli and potentially Derrick Favors and won’t be able to offer that opportunity.
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