Kiwi Steve in the NBA #3: Mischievous Stat Lines
The benchmark has shifted for Steven Adams. We were treated to some exaggerated excellence in the first week of the season as Adams averaged 11 points, 10.6 rebounds, and 3.2 assists across the first five games. Since then... he’s only scored in the double figures once, let alone maintaining an average up in that range. In fact more recently he’s lucky if he even gets halfway there.
The kiwi mainstream media has a fetish with double-doubles, presumably because they’re just an easy summation. Makes it sound like he had a great game without having to take into account any of the context of his buckets and boards. Well, they’re shit outta luck these days because he only had one DD in the first twenty games. Nah, that first week was a bit of a smokescreen. That was the Grizzlies still figuring out how their new centre fits into the system. That was a Grizzlies team before Dillon Brooks returned from injury. Before Desmond Bane took a huge leap forward as a versatile scorer.
This is what you need to know: Steven Adams’ scoring is irrelevant. His minutes have fluctuated from 18 to 36 but the role is the same no matter how long he’s out there for. This dude is not there to score. They’re not gonna run offensive plays for him. He will still get second chance attempts, and there’ll be the odd post-up, maybe even a sneaky pick and roll if he’s been a good boy. But his value to this team on offence is without the ball in hand – it’s the screens and the box outs, when he rolls to the rim off a pick it’s normally as a rebounder. The exception is with those high post set ups where he becomes a passer and has been racking up the assists the whole way through but it’s rare that you’ll see him put the ball on the deck and attack the rim from those ones.
Therefore a good game for Steven Adams is getting close to that Draymond Green territory of stat line. Not as extreme obviously because Green is arguably the most influential defensive player of the last decade-plus with a truly unique skill set for his position. Green once had a 4-point triple double for crying out loud. But that’s the whole point here. Adams is still rebounding like a king. He’s still on pace for a career high in assists. It’s only the scoring that’s not being a factor. Any given game, imagine a basic stat line of 4 PTS / 8 REB / 3 AST as the line between a good game and a not so good game.
So Where Has The Scoring Gone?
1) There Never Was Any Scoring, Nor Was There Meant To Be
Preseason doesn’t mean jack and the first week of the season we’ve established to be a bit of an outlier. Okay, so with that in mind consider why they traded for Steven Adams in the first place. The comparison between him and Jonas Valanciunas is a funky one right now – maybe a topic for a future piece. JV’s three-point shooting was way overblown when he was first acquired by New Orleans. He shot 36.8% last season which is lovely except that only came on 57 totals attempts, less than one per game. But fair play to the big fella because this season he’s absolutely exploded. Currently at 48.4% whilst hoofing up 2.6 of them per night, highlighted by a 7/8 evening with 39 total points against the LA Clippers recently. That’s madness.
Valanciunas’ total shot attempts have also gone up from 12.0 per game to 14.2 per game. This is for a Pelicans team without the injured Zion Williamson so things may change drastically when (/if) ZW makes his return... but still. Valanciunas is a highly skilled offensive player who can score reliably from the post and now has a gun of a three-pointer among his weaponry. Adams is not a versatile scorer. He’s worse in the post than JV and doesn’t shoot jumpers. It’s not even remotely close right now when you compare them like that.
But that was the whole point. Adams is taking fewer than five shots per game for the Grizzlies. That’s seven additional shots that the starting centre isn’t taking which now get to be distributed between the other dudes on the roster. Case and point...
| 20-21 FGA | 21-22 FGA | Diff | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ja Morant | 15.2 | 18.8 | 3.6 |
| Desmond Bane | 7.3 | 12.9 | 5.6 |
| Jaren Jackson Jr | 11.4 | 12.8 | 1.4 |
| Dillon Brooks | 15.4 | 16.1 | 0.7 |
| De'Anthony Melton | 7.6 | 9.7 | 2.1 |
| Kyle Anderson | 9.5 | 7.3 | -2.2 |
Keep in mind that Dillon Brooks has missed the first 13 games of this term and that Jaren Jackson Jr only played only 11 games last season. Other than that the message is clear. It’s not about whether you’d rather Valanciunas shooting than Adams shooting... it’s whether you’d rather have Morant or Bane shooting than Valanciunas. They got a centre who would deliberately required fewer touches in order to allow their young guards and wings to flourish. The biggest beneficiary being Desmond Bane, the second year player, who got elevated to the starters while Brooks was out and has exploded offensively. 16 points a night from that dude. Lots of other options competing for shots and Adams has no dramas deferring.
Also on the topic of Valanciunas, the one stat that everybody seems to miss is this one...
Memphis Grizzlies: 12-10 (currently fifth in the West)
New Orleans Pelicans: 6-18 (currently fourteenth in the West)
2) Adams’ Biggest Value Is Off The Ball
Already went into this last time with what he does as a screener, so read this is you want a deeper low down. What Adams does so well for the Grizzlies, for any team, is he gets offensive rebounds, he sets mean screens, and he boxes out. Things that make others around him better. His high screen game is massive for how this team likes to operate and he’s already got a connection with a number of different ball-handlers. Ja Morant, obviously. But Desmond Bane gets a lot of free spacing out of him too, among others.
Because that’s what we’re talking about with screens. You don’t have to be a three-point shooter to provide spacing on the court. A good screen gives you a cheeky pocket to shoot from and that cheeky pocket is all you need if you’ve got a reliable pull-up. Which most of these fellas do.
We haven’t seen much in the way of lob passes and low post feeds towards Adams. That feels deliberate. It allows him to concentrate on going after the boards and bagging those extra possessions. It doesn’t have to be that way and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to try and establish that presence down low early on like the Thunder used to do with him but so it goes. The exception to the rule is that they do get those dribble hand-offs going with guards dropping it off to him up high and that’s where most of his assists come from making plays out of that set position. But that’s not a shooting position, y’know? That set up is there to create more shots for other players same as the rest of it.
And now because this took a couple hours to put together the other week and also it reinforces the point here’s the supercut of his screens from the two games against Denver a wee while back...
3) Let’s Be Honest, Steve-O Has Missed Some Clangers
These things are earned too. If you want more shot opportunities you kinda gotta prove you deserve them and that ain’t really the case here. While his free throw shooting seems to have steadied at a tidy 70% or so, dipping from his initial 15/15 beginnings but steadying out, his field goal percentage is currently at the lowest mark since he was a rookie. And this is without expanding his range at all... unless you count the free throws. Right now 26.4% of his total points have come from free throws.
Adams is shooting at 50.5% having been fluctuating around the 60% mark for the majority of his career. Fewer attempts overall means that the misses do take a bigger chunk out of that than otherwise but some of the ones that he has missed have been very ungood. A small sampler of close range clangers from the lad...
Granted, one thing about these misses is that Steven Adams is fantastic at getting the ball back for his own offensive rebounds which effectively cancels out the miss. Sometimes it almost looks better if he misses the first tipped put-back just so that he can tally up another board in the process, lol. But yeah he’s botched a few.
He’s also had quite a few blocked which feels like it might be a reflection of how teams play against him the Grizzlies. Getting bodies in the paint, seeing as that’s where this team does a lot of damage. They lead the league in points in the paint (54.4/gm) despite the fact that their starting centre has been off form in that area. Of course, that’s because most of those points are coming from dudes like Ja Morant, hurtling past Adams screens and getting to the rim to finish. Another bit of evidence to the ‘value is off the ball’ idea, there. The ol’ shot chart for Steve-o doesn’t look fantastic at the moment.
All of this adds up to the same idea we started with: Steven Adams’ points don’t matter. It sounds counter-intuitive but he’s not there to score, at least not the way things are going right now. Look for the rebounds and assists, pay attention to how well he’s facilitating for teammates with his screen game, but whether he has 2 points or 20 is all window dressing so long as the team wins.
Catching Up With Some Old Mates
How’s this for a catch-up with the former team, the Grizzlies hosting the Thunder and giving them a whupping for the absolute ages...
The largest margin of victory in NBA history. There has never been a bigger margin of victory in any National Basketball Association game. God damn.
Now, in fairness the Thunder are tanking very hard right now. That’s why they traded Steven Adams in the first place a year and a half ago and they’re still sticking hard to that strategy despite boasting a haul of everybody else’s draft picks too. Their best player is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and he missed this game with a concussion. Josh Giddey didn’t play either. Memphis were also without Ja Morant who still has a week or two on the sidelines to go with a muscle injury but that’s beside the point. OKC are tanking. Memphis are not. Thus things like this happen.
Memphis were up by 15 points after one quarter and then scored 40+ in each of the remaining three. Their bench had a field day with all but one of them scoring in double figures. Adams had to settle for 9 points, 8 rebounds, and 2 assists in his 21 minutes but he’s not complaining. His +/- was a stunning +39 and he still had three teammates with better marks.
That’s a valuable stat for Steve, whose plus/minus has been a weird one this season. First 22 games he’s had eight of at least +9, seven in which he was -9 or worse, and seven in between the two. Since that stat relates directly to scoring it’s no shocker to see that with he’s +9 or better the Grizz are 6-2, when he’s -9 or worse the Grizz are 1-6, and the in betweens have them at 5-3. It does feel like maybe he fluctuates more than others on the roster but generally his numbers reflect the team’s efforts. They’re 9-2 when Adams’ plus/minus is in the positives and 3-8 when it’s even or in the negatives.
Anyway, back to the task at hand... Adams was sort of the last man standing when they traded him. He did have a few buddies still there but not many. Lu Dort, Darius Bazley, and Mike Muscala all played. SGA would have played but for injury. Yet that’s about it for Steve-o crossover players as the Thunder have otherwise cleared the deck. Must have been like visiting your old high school years down the line and everything’s changed.
Mandatory Viewing
Any extended Steven Adams interview counts under the Mandatory Viewing category and this one certainly didn’t disappoint. Old mate had plenty to say about his cultured musical tastes, his love of behind the scenes work, his dream dinner guests... all them things. It’s a quality watch.
Needless to say the quotes were aggregated in a hurry... though preeeeetty sure he said ‘vat’ here, right? As in the tank thing that the milk goes into to be collected. Not the vet, why would you go to the vet to get your milk? Pretty sure most farmers are capable of milking their own cows without having to call in medical professionals. Americans, aye?
Another Victim
Barnes did try get a bit of revenge soon after. A runaway bucket where he held up to stare down Steven Adams first. Adams didn’t care. Barnes looked like a bit of a dick and had the commentators talking about the rookie mistake of showing off and risking an easy two points. His coach said he didn’t care as long as he made the basket. Bit weird... maybe he was still shaken up from the screen.
SLAM DUNKS
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