[外電] Building the Brow
http://grantland.com/features/building-the-brow/
by Zach Lowe @ Grantlan
It’s telling that the comparisons have mostly stopped. When Anthony Davis
came into the league, with ridiculous arms and guard skills honed before a
late growth spurt, everyone rushed to find his NBA analogue.
Kevin Garnett was a popular choice. Comparisons with Tim Duncan dominated the
lead-up to Davis’s regular-season debut against San Antonio, even though
Duncan as a rookie was older and stouter and he had a back-to-the-basket game
that was historically great almost from the moment he entered the league.
Davis has murdered this parlor game. People around the league don’t know
what to make of him anymore. They are just terrified, especially after having
watched Davis average 30 points, 13.5 rebounds, and three blocks per game on
55 percent shooting over a 10-game stretch in March — a period during which
he turned 21 freaking years old. He’s already fourth overall in Player
Efficiency Rating, behind only LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Kevin Love.
His game has so many elements on both ends of the floor, it’s going to take
years for the Pelicans to figure out the optimal uses and roster construction
for him. It’s hard to decide what someone is best at when the answer might
be “everything.”
The race to surround him with the right talent, and to figure out his ideal
positional use, is already on. The Pelicans will have only limited cap
flexibility in each of the next two summers, and the Magic and Cavaliers can
testify about the fragile and fleeting chance of surrounding a true superstar
with the right pieces — especially since that superstar will likely take his
team out of the lottery.1
“He is going to be his own player,” says Monty Williams, the team’s coach.
“People try and think back to re-create another A.D., but he’s not like
anyone we’ve ever seen.”
“I’m not sure he reminds me of anyone now,” says Dirk Nowitzki. “In my 16
years, I’ve never seen anyone like him.”
The new parlor game is to compare isolated parts of Davis’s game to their
equivalents belonging to someone else. He’s so dangerous on the
pick-and-roll, capable of snagging insane lobs and catching and dunking from
the foul line without a dribble, that he sucks in defenders like Tyson
Chandler and Dwight Howard — only Davis is also a 79 percent foul shooter.
One opposing assistant coach says Davis is the first player since prime
Rasheed Wallace who is fast and long enough to help off Nowitzki on a
pick-and-pop, and then recover back to Nowitzki before the big German can
release his deadly jumper. Another assistant offered up the comparison to a
prime Cliff Robinson — a 6-foot-10 guy with elite outside-in ballhandling
skills, only Davis, of course, has more potential in almost every other facet.
And the Pelicans? They’re trying to mold Davis into some unholy amalgam of
Nowitzki, Hakeem Olajuwon, and whichever pick-and-roll smasher you prefer.
“He’s his own player,” says Kevin Hanson, the Pelicans’ player
development coach, who works closely with Davis. “He’s got some Dirk, some
KG, and some Hakeem. I don’t think we’re even going to see what he really
is for at least a couple of years.”
Those goals aren’t crazy. Davis has a ton to learn on both ends, but he’s
already so good that contemplating what he might become is an exercise in
fanciful imagination. It is Homer Simpson conjuring the Land of Chocolate.
LeBron’s decline is years away, but when it happens, I suspect we will have
hearty debates about whether Davis or Kevin Durant is the world’s best
player. There will likely be a day, during Durant’s mid-thirties, when Davis
ascends to the throne as the NBA’s undisputed top player. We haven’t seen a
big man with this kind of defensive potential enter the league since Howard.
Throw in efficient scoring from all over the floor and you’ve got a
league-altering monster.
The Offense
The Pelicans are building Davis’s offense piece by piece. They started with
his jump shot last summer, helping him raise his release point above his head
and make sure the ball comes off his right index finger, Hanson says.2 Davis
is stronger than he was a year ago, but he’s still skinny; and he doesn’t
have much of a back-to-the-basket game yet.
He’s quicker than almost every big man, so the Pelicans have encouraged him
to broaden his face-up game. This way he can either launch a midrange jumper
from the wing3 or drive to the basket. His first step draws heaps of fouls
from reaching bigs who can’t keep up.
The Pelicans are wary that this approach could become predictable. Davis
prefers to drive baseline, because there are fewer defenders that way and
less danger of running into contact, Hanson says. They’d like him to drive
toward the middle more, especially since doing so can draw the defense away
from the Pelicans’ shooters. “He’s just not comfortable yet taking that
initial hit in the middle,” Hanson says.
Having more shooters would help. Jrue Holiday is a solid 3-point shooter, but
he has been out since early January. Ryan Anderson might be the league’s
best 3-point-shooting power forward, but he’s missed almost the entire
season. Even at full health, the Pelicans have mostly started a small forward
who can’t shoot in Al-Farouq Aminu and a rotating collection of stiffs at
center who mostly just foul and get in Davis’s way. Toss in Tyreke Evans,
still a liability when he doesn’t have the ball, and Davis often struggles
just to navigate the floor. He has no path to the rim when defenses overload
on his rolls, as the Clippers do on this Evans-Davis pick-and-roll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wyDuoKne6Q
“What hurts him now,” Williams says, “is that we just don’t have guys who
can shoot. We have to add shooting. When we put more shooting around him, he
is going to be unguardable.” Davis mentions Anthony Morrow specifically as a
guy with whom he enjoys playing, precisely because defenders can’t leave
Morrow to crash down on his cuts.
The Pelicans envision Davis as the fulcrum of their offense in the mode of a
prime Dirk. They want Davis to get the ball in the center of the foul line,
face the defense, and operate from there with shooters around him.
The Mavs have always run a ton of pick-and-rolls for Nowitzki, and defenses
early in his career countered by switching defenders. That left a little guy
on him, but Nowitzki would continue rolling down the lane, where the second
big-man defender along the baseline would switch onto him — a second switch,
removing the size advantage the first one produced. Don Nelson and Avery
Johnson taught Nowitzki to counter by stopping his roll at the foul line,
trapping the little guy in a mismatch, Nowitzki says.
Nowitzki learned to do everything from that spot — shoot, drive, back down
into post-ups, and dish to shooters. That’s what the Pelicans want for
Davis. “We envision him being able to work from there similar to the way
Dirk does,” Hanson says.
The speed is there. Kosta Koufos and his ilk can only foul and/or pray:
http://i.minus.com/i8FSfA1LdVK1Q.gif
Davis so far is only comfortable using one-dribble moves. That single dribble
often isn’t enough to get him all the way to the rim, or even into layup
range, leaving him prone to the occasional awkward in-between shot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJP7coSt5A0
Davis’s body on these plays looks like it’s almost moving too fast — like
his feet are about to slide out from under him as he flings up these
floaters. But Davis practices those shots, and he has such great touch that
he can make them at rates a normal big couldn’t sniff. “He has the ability
to make awkward shots,” Williams says. “For us, it’s weird. But for him, it
’s natural. He’ll go left, jump off his left leg, and shoot it with his
right hand. You can’t name a big in the history of the league who has that
shot.”
His repertoire will be limited until he can nail the second and third
dribble, and mastering that is Plan A for Hanson this summer. Quicker power
forwards understand that if they can just slide with Davis for that one
dribble, or at least stay attached to him, they’ll be able to contest
whatever shot he’ll launch.4 About 94 percent of Davis’s shot attempts have
come after either zero dribble or one, per SportVU data provided to Grantland.
Davis is still uneasy with contact. The first dribble is an escape mechanism;
the second and third are bulldozers, and Davis just doesn’t have that in his
game yet, coaches in both New Orleans and elsewhere say. The second dribble
is also the countermove — the spin back in the other direction, say. “I’m
very long and lengthy,” Davis says, “so I can usually get to the basket in
one dribble. But if I can get to that second dribble, and get to my counters,
guys can’t slide with me. That’s going to be huge for me.”
He’ll also have to hone his passing skills, and the Pelicans are letting him
stretch a bit at the elbow, delivering dribble handoffs and searching out
cutters à la Joakim Noah. But Davis’s assist numbers are middling for an
offensive centerpiece, and passing on the move, with the defense in flux, is
a skill that comes only with experience. “Passing is something you can’t
really teach,” Hanson says.
The Defense
Davis will get all of this; he’s too good not to. It’s just going to take
some time. Same goes on the other side, where Davis projects as a regular
Defensive Player of the Year candidate. He’s a shot-blocking menace, even if
New Orleans’s overall numbers don’t reflect his impact yet. The Pelicans
are a bad defensive team, 25th in points allowed per possession, and that
number has barely moved regardless of whether Davis is on the floor or the
bench. Teams shoot more often, and more accurately, in the restricted area
when Davis is on the court, per NBA.com.
It’s unclear if those numbers really say anything about Davis. Injuries have
decimated New Orleans and removed a strong defender from the point of attack
in Holiday. The other pieces brought in to defend either don’t do it well
(the centers) or can’t shoot well enough to earn consistent playing time.
The roster is young, and young teams are generally bad.
Davis has also spent about 70 percent of his time at power forward, and smart
defenses will take him away from the rim by involving his man in a
pick-and-roll high on the floor. He’s also had to chase around a lot of
stretch power forwards, including Paul Pierce and Dorell Wright in recent
games, and like a lot of young big men, he’s had trouble balancing perimeter
defense with rim protection instincts. “But that’s beneficial for me,”
Davis says. “I love that challenge. I loved guarding Paul Pierce.”
The nuances of NBA defense are hard. Pick-and-roll ball handlers blow by
Davis surprisingly often5 when the Pelicans have him drop back to contain
those ball handlers near the foul line. He has a tendency to turn his body
almost completely sideways, parallel to the sideline, giving ball handlers an
obvious driving lane:
http://i.minus.com/ijlU0lMwhEh11.gif
Sometimes he’ll get caught in no-man’s-land, between dropping back and
jumping out hard at a ball handler:
http://i.minus.com/iVxWqO5M9OoNw.gif
The Pelicans are aggressive defensively, and Williams asks his players to
help and rotate around the floor more than most teams. Davis occasionally has
trouble making those reads on the fly, leaving the next pass open.
Those are blips in the learning process. The dude is going to be a destroyer.
He already blocks shots no one else approaches. He gets 3-point shooters on
flying closeouts. He comes from off your television screen to nail a poor,
unsuspecting spot-up shooter in transition. He’ll even tip unblockable shots
one-on-one in the post. “He actually blocked one or two of my jumpers,”
Nowitzki says. “That doesn’t happen very often.”
He terrifies ball handlers, and his long arms allow him to correct initial
positioning mistakes. A typical example:
http://i.minus.com/i2ncuVoxsPbez.gif
New Orleans errs in letting Dennis Schroder get to the middle on this side
pick-and-roll, theoretically opening up both a path to the rim and a lane for
Schroder to hit Paul Millsap on the roll. But Davis’s length in both
directions spooks Schroder into taking the easiest and least efficient out.
Opposing teams have shot just 48 percent on shots near the basket when Davis
is near both the shooter and the rim — a solid number, though a bit behind
the very stingiest this season, per NBA.com.6
He’s alert, and getting smarter every day. He notices things on film the
coaches don’t, Hanson says. “He’s so smart,” Hanson says. “He’ll see
something else in the clip I didn’t see, and say something like, ‘Hey,
Austin [Rivers] has to get through that screen up there.’ And I’ll say, ‘
Hey, A.D., we’re not really talking about Austin right now.’”
Kelvin Sampson, Houston’s lead assistant, watched tape of the Pelicans
defending side pick-and-rolls with some decoy action taking place on the
other side of the floor. He wanted to see how Davis reacts when he’s not
directly involved in the pick-and-roll — when he’s guarding the team’s
other big man along the baseline: Would he fall for the decoy action and get
distracted, or would he monitor the pick-and-roll and be ready to offer help
near the basket?
Davis was ready, every time. “Most young guys just gravitate toward their
man,” Sampson says. “But he was ready. His biggest strength is going to be
that he has no weaknesses.”
The potential is there for Davis to be sort of a super–Chris Bosh — an
undersize center who can stretch the floor, but, unlike Bosh, also offer
elite rim protection. The Pellies have Anderson locked into a four-year
contract, and though they’ve experimented in tiny doses with playing
Anderson at small forward, he’s clearly a big man. He unlocks a lot of
Williams’s offense, and opens driving lanes for the team’s guards.
The Pelicans have struggled horribly on defense when Davis and Anderson play
together, but they’ve also scored at rates well above what the league’s
best offenses produce. As Davis and the team mature, it’s appealing to see
these guys as their own version of Miami — a smaller team that overwhelms
with speed and shooting, and does just enough on defense to survive.
That won’t work every night, of course. Davis just isn’t big enough to
check Marc Gasol, or even Robin Lopez. He weighs 225 pounds now, and Williams
expects him to max out around 240 or so. But everything is a matter of
resource allotment for a team close to the cap. The ideal center for Davis
would offer bulk and rim protection on defense, and be versatile enough
offensively to stay out of his way regardless of which element — the
pick-and-roll, posting up, driving — Davis happens to be emphasizing that
night.
Those guys are rare, and they’re generally taken. The Pelicans had a
reasonable facsimile of one in Lopez, but they dealt him to open up cap space
for Evans. The three-headed center they’ve deployed since Jason Smith’s
injury just hasn’t been good enough, though the team has hope that Alexis
Ajinca might work well around Davis.
Even if that ideal center were available, the Pelicans don’t have the
resources to get him. They’re slated to have about $5 million or so in cap
space in each of the next two summers, a small enough amount that they may
just choose to stay over the cap and use the full midlevel exception.7 They
owe Philly a first-round pick that will likely change hands this June, and
the Evans and Eric Gordon contracts will be very hard to trade; Evans, of
course, is on fire right now as a starter.
New Orleans won’t have real cap flexibility until the summer of 2016, when
Gordon’s contract expires. Davis will probably be a free-agent draw by then,
but he’ll also be starting his second contract in the 2016-17 season, which
means the Pelicans will be well into the “on the clock” phase in convincing
him to stay for a third deal.
If you can’t find that ideal center, at some point you have to decide
between force-feeding lineups with Davis at power forward or leaning more
toward smaller groups that will destroy teams offensively. Sometimes you just
have to play your five best guys. Williams will use both sorts of lineups
regardless, but right now, he says he leans toward Davis-Anderson as a rare
pairing.
“I don’t think [Davis] is ever going to be a center,” Williams says. “I
think he’s a power forward who will sometimes play center.” Davis says he
doesn’t care about the positional designation, and that Anderson is strong
enough to defend some low-post centers.
Some of the caution is about preserving Davis’s body. A lot of the bulkier
centers who might bully Davis can’t actually score in the post; Davis could
guard them fine, despite the size disadvantage. But that would take its toll.
Perhaps New Orleans, when it becomes a playoff team, can slot Davis at center
more often in the postseason.
The Pelicans will need a lot of wings to play that way; Miami can play small
only because it gets rim protection from LeBron and Dwyane Wade. Aminu is the
only New Orleans wing who can offer that, and he’s a free agent. So is
Darius Miller, and Morrow will probably decline his player option. We still
haven’t really seen if Holiday, Evans, and Gordon can work together, though
Evans’s killer play of late as the undisputed lead dog suggests he needs the
ball and good spacing to live up to his contract. Rivers has shown signs,
particularly on defense, but to describe his play as “uneven” would be
generous.
The Pelicans have time to sort out the roster, but only limited flexibility.
But they have the most important ingredient in building a championship
roster: a true blue superstar. The Brow has arrived.
--
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