NBA on Grid

Hello everyone!

As you all know, I covered a team-based topic (on Toronto Raptors) previously. This time, I wanted to focus on a single player, named Giannis Antetokounmpo. I am very thankful for feedbacks I received on my previous post and some have asked to see more visuals. I understand that our generation is very busy and don’t have time to read 500 words blog post. I kept my words minimal this time and included more images, graphs and GIFs. Enjoy!

 

Those who watch NBA regularly probably have heard of the name, Giannis Antetokounmpo (I had to google again for correct spelling of his name). For those who don’t know who this player is, make sure you search him up because he is going to be one of the most talked about players in 5 years.

Assuming you know now that he is a POINT GUARD(!!) standing at 6 feet 11 inches in height and 7 feet 3 inches in wingspan, I would like to tell you my breakdown on him.

We can all agree that Giannis is a very versatile player who thrives in transition offense.

With his great length, he only needs two dribbles to run 90ft of the court length like this:

and when defender is in front of him, he takes a “gyro” step (Euro-step but he does giant steps with his incredible length, so it’s called gyro step):

Despite his recent success in transition offense, Giannis was surprisingly only 52nd percentile in transition around this time last year (measured in 2015 January) according to (http://www.brewhoop.com/2015/1/29/7934823/milwaukee-bucks-2015-advanced-stats-synergy-sports).

However, as of March 15 2016, he is 78.9th percentile in transition. Not only it is an impressive 27 percentile jump IN ONE YEAR(!!), but also Giannis is 4th in the league behind Lebron James(83.1), Kevin Durant(80.2), Klay Thompson(79.4) in transition.

 Note: PPP is Transition Points per possession / (Total Points per possession / Number of possession) which is used to measure percentile in the league.

Despite his great athleticism and physical tools, he is still a 21 year-old with many flaws. In order to be considered as a top 10 player in NBA, Giannis will need significant improvements on his 3 point shooting and isolation.

He is playing his 3rd season in NBA and as far as I could tell, he is still experimenting how he wants to evolve as a player.

For example, he took 117 3’s in his first season in NBA (100 3’s from top of the key):

but you can see Jason Kidd’s immediate impact on Giannis’s 3 point FG attempts when Kidds became the head coach of Milwaukee Bucks in 2014:

His 3 point shooting number plummeted and shot only 43 of them in 2014-15 season.

This season (2015-16), he has taken 69 of them and is on his way to shoot 84 of them.  So far, # of 3’s and shooting spots have been very volatile as he is taking more 3’s from corner spots this season as well (shot 12 corner 3’s on average past two seasons while he has taken 30 this year).

No matter what type of offense he plays in or who his coach is,  Giannis will need to sharpen his 3 point shooting skill. I’m not saying he needs to be a shooter at JJ Redick level, but he needs be better than 22% that he is shooting this year.

Take Lebron James for example:

As you can see from above, Lebron is not a good 3 point shooter (shooting around 30% this year), but he has an ability to knock it down time to time. It is in his arsenal that defenders still have to respect it and play a tigher defense on Lebron, which leads to Lebron’s more driving opportunities. Giannis, on the other hand, currently is a horrendous 3 point shooter (awful shooting at 22% this season) that every good defensive team in NBA sags off of him and dare him to shoot.

Another reason why his shooting is key to his success is that his isolation game is only at 54.5 percentile in NBA, ranked at 25th in the league behind players like Jahil Okafor!!

Note: PPP is Isolation Points per possession / (Total Points per possession / Number of possession) which is used to measure percentile in the league.

We can all agree that Isolation game is a key area that not only excites the crowd, but a MUST-HAVE aspect of superstar players nowadays. This brings back my point to improving his 3 point shooting. By increasing his 3 point shooting efficiency, Giannis will force defenders to guard him at a closer distance, which will provide Giannis more driving opportunity and will lead to more scoring off the Isolation, a key to becoming a superstar in NBA. (Think of it as a chain reaction: He improves shooting -> defender guards closely -> He can drive more -> Isolation improves -> his overall game improves)

No matter how good a player is, basketball is a team sport with 1 ball and 5 players on the court. Michael Jordan is perceived as the best basketball player in the history, but Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman were there to back him up. Lebron James is considered one of the all-time great as well, but many people don’t realize the impact of the teammates superstars share the court time with. Lebron is a very smart player who is extremely selective when it comes to choosing kinds of players he wants to be with on the floor.

Let’s take a look at Lebron and teammates that he shares the court time with.

As you noticed, in all of the most used lineups that he shares the floor time with has at least three 3 point shooters. (any 3 combination of JR Smith, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, Mattew Dellavedova)

On the other hand (as you can see below), Giannis has maybe one (Khris, Middleton) or at most two (Khris Middleton & OJ Mayo / Middleton & Bayless) 3 point shooters with him on the floor:

which gives him less room to break down the defence since he doesn’t have many teammates to kick out to. Knowing that his teammates are not 3 point shooters, opposing team can easily help out on Giannis’s drives as well.

Here is a direct comparison of 3 point FG% of teammates that Lebron and Giannis see the floor time with:

You can see much better 3 point shooters around Lebron on the floor. On top of that, Lebron surrounds himself with three of them at all times while Giannis has worse 3 point shooters around him and has only one or two shooters around him. Looking at the above graph, you can imagine how much easier it is for Lebron to play his Isolation game as defender has to stick to these 3 point shooters, which give Lebron more room to work with.

To get a better idea of this notion, I want you to take a look at assists made by Giannis (for the past 16 games when he played PG)  vs. assists made by Lebron James

As you can see, Lebron creates six 3 pointer attempts (looking at top 4 players that he passes to) and they make 2.6 out of them. On the other hand, Giannis creates only three 3 point attempts by his three teammates (looking at top 3 players that he passes to), which is a result of his teammates’ inability to shoot 3 pointers.

Call me Crazy, but I believe Giannis can be a top 10 player in the league.

I say “Can” because it will depend on his ability to maximize his efficiency with as well as his organization making effort to surround him with at least three 3 point shooters on the floor. His deficiency in some areas such as isolation will greatly improve once he has better shooters around him and has 3 pointers as his arsenal.

Thanks for reading and I would appreciate any sort of feedback!