Kiwi Steve in the NBA #1: Screeners
We are now a couple of weeks into the new NBA season. The dust has settled. The trends are emerging. The cream is already rising to the top. The sample sizes aren’t quite so small. This was a rare kind of offseason for Steven Adams as for the first time in a couple of years he didn’t get traded. He got to turn up to work on day one of preseason with the same locker and unlike his last year in Oklahoma City all his mates were still there too. Hell, he even signed a new contract – well and truly entrenched as part of the Memphis Grizzlies core moving forwards into what they hope will be a window of championship contention.
On the one hand that means less for us to learn as there’s natural continuity from season to season. It’s all kinda the same. On the other hand that makes diving a little deeper even more exciting as we get to see which aspects of Adams’ game are the ones that the Grizzlies really want to emphasise. We know what he brings to the table. But which of those dishes are the Grizz salivating over most?
The answer to that is already pretty obvious: the man sets a wicked screen. Sure, offensive rebounds. Sure, off-court leadership. Sure, defensive solidity. Sure, sneakily amazing passing for his position. Sure, jump balls and hustle plays and all those other little one-percenters. But Steve-o is here to win games and NBA teams tend to win games when their best players play their best ball. Ja Morant is the Grizz’s best player. What did Ja Morant do better than any guard in recent history last season? Scoring in the paint. What’s a sure-fire way to get him into those situations? Steven Adams and his screen game.
Ja Morant x The Screens
Writing this just prior to the Spurs game, Steven Adams is not the NBA’s leader in screen assists per game. His first ten outings served up 5.6 per game, meaning Rudy Gobert (5.8) and Bam Adebayo (5.7) slightly edged him. They’re each doing that in at least seven more minutes per game though so switch to the per-36 numbers and yer boy is miles ahead. A rate of 7.8 screen for every 36 minutes played, across 258 minutes, and needless to say that’s the best of anyone with at least 100 mins of service.
Of course a screen without a ball-handler is nothing but a minor case of aggravated assault. It’s the bloke who takes advantage of the screen that makes the screen so valuable. If Steven Adams is setting the screen then more often than not the man with the ball is Ja Morant and that combination has been existing in a golden light to start the new season.
A big deal was made about Ja Morant’s paint-scoring last season. As it ought to be when you’ve got a point guard leading the league in points in the paint. Something almost unheard of by guards in recent years. He only played 57 games due to injuries which is one less than the minimum for scoring title eligibility so read into that what you will. This is a more specific category within overall scoring but it’s worth mentioning that limitation. Still, Ja Morant scored 16.6 points in the paint in 2021-22. Next was Nikola Jokic with 16.2 (74 games). Then Giannis Antetokounmpo with 15.9 (67 games) and LeBron James was fourth with 14.3 (56 games). Get that into ya.
Ja’s down a bit on that rate this season, sitting at 13.8 PITP. That remains a top ten mark but it’s a notable, if slight, dip. Could be that the absence of Jaren Jackson Jr to begin the season is playing into that. Not to mention defences being more alert to what his specific threats are. Also his overall shooting percentage has also dipped slightly while his three-point shooting has taken a huge leap in efficiency which spreads out his scoring options. Dude was a 34.4% three-point shooter last season and that was a career high. His first ten games of this season he pinged ‘em at 45.7%. He’s not scoring as many in the paint as before because he doesn’t need to.
However when he does get to the paint, Steven Adams usually has something to do with it. Probably helps him out with some of those three-pointers too. Perimeter screens. Easy mahi.
Looking in terms of points via drives though... guess where Ja Morant ranks after the first couple weeks of the season? First, naturally. 15.9 points from drives. Slightly ahead of Luka Doncic. Ja Morant is so fast that he doesn’t need someone screening for him in order to get downhill towards the basket. Even from a standing start, no dramas. The man is lightning. But if you happen to have the best screener in the business, and you yourself are already one of the best drivers in the business... why not combine forces and create something unstoppable?
This is from BasketballNews.com: “Morant is nearly impossible to deal with in his own right; his blend of speed, ball-handling, leaping ability and body control is frankly unfair. With an oak tree like Steven Adams clearing a runway, there really isn’t much you can do with him.
Among bigs who have set at least 75 on-ball picks, nobody has done a better job of laying down the law than Adams, connecting on 83.8% of his screens, per Second Spectrum. The Grizzlies have generated 1.04 points per possession (PPP) on trips featuring a Morant-Adams ball screen, one of the better marks in the league among high-volume pairings. That value extends off the ball, with his partnership with Desmond Bane being especially fruitful (1.24 PPP). Oh, he’s generated contact on 75% of those screens too. Adams may not get many buckets off his rolls, but he makes the Grizzlies better. Keep it up, big fella.”
Those numbers are about ten days old now but the themes remain undisturbed. That idea of ‘generat[ing] contact’ from screens is a funky one. Think of what that means: running into some of the biggest bodies on the planet several times per game. Some fellas have garnered reputations for cutting corners with those duties (*cough* Anthony Davis *cough*) whereas Funaki has gone in the opposite direction. When he sets a screen, he’s not going through the motion. He’s seeking contact. He wants to take that hit, knowing that if he’s ready for it then he’ll probably come off better than the other guy.
This is a decent example of what that all looks like...
Or how about two screens for the price of one?
Another factor to consider is that no teammate shared the court with Ja Morant more last season than Steven Adams. 1291 minutes with both of them out there at once. That’s actually pretty wild because Morant played roughly seven minutes more per game than Adams did. There were teammates who played a lot more yet Adams was the most common foil for Morant – Adams out there for 68.3% of JM’s total minutes. Desmond Bane was next at 63.5%. JJJ third at 55.8%.
One thing that tells you is that Adams didn’t play much with the second unit. Okay, fair enough. But the same thing has been true this season as well – in fact that percentage rises to 70.4% of Morant’s minutes and that’s in a ten-game sample size that includes one which Adams didn’t even play. The Grizzlies have a 122.6 Offensive Rating with Adams out there compared to 108.4 when he sits. Who do you reckon benefits from that the most? Because we already know that Steve-o ain’t scoring those points.
This from NBARotations.info tells the story nicely. See how closely matched the rotation minutes have been for Morant and Adams so far...
Keep in mind that Ja Morant and Steven Adams did not play a single second together in the Golden State Warriors playoffs series. When Adams returned from covid, Morant got injured. They didn’t overlap at all.
These lads are a pairing. They are a combination. Comrades in arms. And you know what? It goes deeper than screens and drives. When Ja needs a towel, Ja gets a towel. There is a hierarchy at work here, people...
Sorry ‘bout it, John Konchar.
Who Likes Rebounds?
Bro, that’s amazing. Such an incredible rebounder. What’s your secret!?!
The Road Is Paved With Pain
There is one problem with Steven Adams playing the way that he does and that’s the physical toll that he can suffer as a consequence. He’s battling for rebounds, he’s setting mad screens, he’s boxing out against some of the largest human beings on the planet... there are a lot of bumps and bruises that follow that kinda mahi.
Back when Adams played for the OKC Thunder there was an undercurrent belief amongst fans and media that he was often not at his best by the playoffs due to the accumulated injuries that he gathered up during the season. It’s also the case that he played well over thirty minutes per game in some of those seasons. 2016-17 he was at a shade under thirty, 29.9 mpg. That was the year after the run to the Western Conference Finals (where they lost in seven games to the Golden State Warriors). The following year that rose to 32.7 mpg, then up to 33.4 in 2018-19. Russell Westbrook left after that term and he’s since settled into a much healthier groove of around 26 minutes per game ever since.
With the Grizzlies we sometimes see him up around thirties but it depends on the situation. We also see him down in the low twenties sometimes such as when the team wins big and he gets to rest the entire fourth quarter. It’s not a heap of fun when you’re wanting to see him get another stint to pad out his box scores but those rested fourth quarters do help keep him fresh for the more important nights.
Fatigue is something you can manage like that. Annoyingly there are other pesky work hazards that he faces which take their toll as well, and already this season he’s been subjected to a few. Dunno if you saw the Knicks game opening night when Derrick Rose threw a pass so wild it hit Steven Adams on the face as he was walking towards the scorer’s table to check back into the game? Because that happened...
Everyone saw the funny side of that instance. Mostly because it was genuinely quite funny. Less humourous was the instance very early in overtime when Adams challenged Julius Randle and drew the call which fouled Randle out of the game. Great courage from Adams to get into that position... but it cost him. He took a blow to the face which saw him immediately leave the game. The lads got the job done without him but one game in and we’d already seen him suffer a contact injury.
Not sure if it was related or not, though it very well might have been, but Adams found himself on the injury report a week or two later with ‘jaw soreness’ which saw him leave a game against the Utah Jazz early and had him in doubt for their next match (though he still played). Before that he’d limped out of Memphis’ last preseason game with a leg injury and was also reported to be dealing with some neck soreness. Preseason is preseason so those knocks were probably just precautionary... but there’s no doubting that he hurt his ankle pretty badly against the Washington Wizards a couple games ago.
Adams stepped on the foot of Kristaps Porzingis and that did the damage. He checked out of the game in the third quarter with the Grizz leading by 15 points. He might not have returned at all had Memphis not then blown that lead completely, turning this into some Steven Adams Mana material as he checked back in with the sore ankle midway through the fourth quarter and swiftly set about restoring his team to the pathway of victory...
The Grizzlies led 60-45 when Adams went to the locker room about a minute into the third quarter. When he checked back in there was 7:21 left in the game and the Wizards led 87-85. He played the rest of the game and Memphis won it 103-97. Don’t think he wasn’t breathing in the big ones though, man’s just got team-first pain tolerance is all...
The big fella did sit out the next game against the Boston Celtics. Memphis lost that one. But he was back for the win against San Antonio two days later – in which the Grizz won a bit of an overtime shootout with Steven Adams logging a season-best-equalling 19 rebounds, including 10 offensive bad boys. Second time in three games played that he’s had 10 offensive rebounds - something he only did once last term despite leading the entire NBA in all three major OReb categories (total, per game & percentage).
We play on.
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