Getting The Lads All Together

Something very consequential happened between the first Kiwi Steve write-up and this second one: Jaren Jackson Jr returned to the basketball court. JJJ missed the first 14 games of the season as he recovered from offseason foot surgery but was back in there for a trip to face the New Orleans Pelicans... only shooting 3/14 in an 11-point defeat but then of course he was gonna have some dust to shake off. Dude then scored 25 points with 12 rebounds in a win over OKC next up so nothing to worry about. Naturally he also immediately picked up where he left off with his highlight-reel blocks. Glad to have the big man back.

Only worry for the Grizzlies is that by the time Jackson was cleared to play, Desmond Bane had gone down with a toe injury that’s expected to keep him out for up to three weeks (he’s missed seven games as it stands). Then Ja Morant rolled his ankle in that Thunder game, needing assistance just to get off the court. Word was that he was week to week with a sprain. As it happened, he defied all expectations to heal himself almost at will and returned after only missing one game. Dunno if you realise this but that dude is built different.

Still, all these injuries have had an effect as the Grizz have stumbled to a few losses recently. That’s okay, it’s all part of the grind of a long season, but it does get at a deeper story. If you think of the top strength Memphis starting five of Morant, Bane, Brooks, Jackson, Adams... well, that unit hasn’t logged a single minute together this season. Gotta go back to the first round of the last playoffs for that to be the case (where it was uncharacteristically dominated, leading to Adams getting benched). Dillon Brooks missed some time at the start of the term. Steven Adams also sat out of a loss to Boston with that jaw soreness. All five of them have had injuries and at no stage have they all been available at once.

Barring anything new we’re as close to that possibility as we have been for a long time. Just waiting on Desmond Bane, who is already back doing some individual shooting practice. And when it does happen it’ll be a rarity. Because if you cast your mind into the past you’ll remember that Dillon Brooks missed a large chunk of the start of last season and Ja Morant missed 25 games within it. That top strength starting five hasn’t played a single minute together this season... they actually only played 108:50 together last season as well.

Those 108:50 mins were immense, outscoring opponents by 25 points per hundred possessions (to go with a massive rebounding advantage). And yet despite that the ten games that they started together saw the team log a losing record of 4-6... not sure what’s up there. The four wins were all offensive monsters in which they scored 120+ so maybe the stats were blown out by the damage done on the good days. Could also suggest that Taylor Jenkins didn’t lean into this crew with enough minutes together when they were available. Which, admittedly, wasn’t often enough. In an 82 game season, the ones with the peak starting line-up were games number: 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 32, 33, 69, 71, 81.

As mentioned, that line-up then got torched by the Timberwolves in the playoffs across a further 12:26 mins, outscored by 28.6/100poss. A lot of that was down to the Steven Adams vs Karl-Anthony Towns match-up which led to Adams getting benched and while he was out he also contracted covid which prevented him from going straight back in against the Golden State Warriors. There also seemed to be some reluctance on the part of his coach to reinstate him (though post-covid conditioning was probably the main factor) but when Adams finally did return he was brilliant the rest of the way even in a losing cause. Yet by that time Ja Morant had been injured, ending his series without ever having shared the floor with Adams vs GSW. Obviously that also meant the top five never played together in that playoff series.

Last season the Grizzlies used 17 different starting line-ups and the peak one was only the fourth most common... although the rest of the top five most common units all still had four out of five blokes. That’s the most encouraging factor here. Including playoffs, the Morant/Bane/Brooks/JJJ/Adams combo has only started 12 out of 114 games. They’ve only played 121:16 out of a total of 5502 minutes which adds up to around 2.2% of all court time. However they’ve spent a massive amount of time with most of that line-up together as the injuries have been pretty evenly spread out. Plus the non-Adams quartet all had the year before to build their combinations too. The meal’s been cooked. The table is set. Just waiting for the last guest to show up before we can dine.

This season they’ve already used seven different starting line-ups. Within that, the set of Adams/Aldama/Brooks/Bane/Morant has won all seven games they’ve started which is pretty nuts for a team hovering only a couple wins above that .500 record. It was only the most recent win over the Knicks that brought another starting line-up to a third win overall (Morant/Konchar/Brooks/JJJ/Adams – 3-2 overall).

That tells you something valuable. All five of the main crew are guaranteed starters if they’re available so if one is missing, then that means the depth of the bench is shrunk as everybody moves up one spot. The lack of their ideal starting five is an issue but when rolling with 4 of 5 they’ve still been pretty handy. This is a team that won 80% of the 25 regular season games that its best player Ja Morant missed last term. It’s when two or more of those blokes are missing that things really get frisky.

• When all five Grizzlies starters are in the line-up, since the start of the 2021-22 season, Memphis has a 4-8 record (inc. 0-2 in the playoffs), with none of those games occurring this season... yet.

• When four of the five Grizzlies starters are in the line-up across that span (which we can refer to as The Steven Adams Era), Memphis has a 61-28 record. That includes a 6-5 record in the last playoffs and a 10-2 record this current season.

• When two or more of those ideal Grizzlies starters are missing, Memphis only has a 13-12 record. They were 0-1 in that situation last playoffs and are 2-6 so far this season when this is the case.

What do you know, aye? When a team’s best players aren’t there they seem to perform worse. And when they are there, they’re better. Yep, seems to hold up to common logic.

Nothing Free About These Throws

Steven Adams has never been very good from the free throw line. There have been some sneaky stretches where everything has clicked and he’s convinced folks that a corner had been turned. Those sneaky stretches have always turned out to be outliers. The most notable was probably last season when he made his first fifteen free throws in a row for the Memphis Grizzlies plus there was also a season with OKC when he had a crazy good start with his free throws. Both times he eventually trailed back off again.

He’s always been bad... but this season has been something else entirely. The word ‘bad’ does not do it justice. Adams is clanking them as often as he ever has in his career, it’s been tragic stuff. Like, we’re talking the worst free throw shooter in the entire NBA kinda territory here.

There was a six-game stretch recently in which he made 3/22 from the line, dipping his season FT percentage all the way down to 23.4%. The most recent two games have helped that slightly including 4/9 from the line against the Knicks. That’s still bang average but by his recent standards it was an improvement. As it stands he’s shooting 27.6%. Across the entire NBA he’s the only bloke with more than ten attempts who is converting at less than 40%... and Steve-o ain’t even close to that mark. He’d have to make his next 12 free throws in a row just to get up to 40%.

Adams is on pace to shoot around 220 free throws this season, give or take a few. Could get higher if other teams latch on and start deliberately hacking at him more often. In the recorded history of the National Basketball League the worst FT% ever witnessed by a player with at least 200 attempts in an 82 game season... was Ben Wallace in 2000-01 who converted at 33.6%. There are only five men who’ve gone sub-40% meeting that criteria: Wallace (x2), Andre Drummond (x3), Clint Capela, Wilt Chamberlain, and DeAndre Jordan (x2).

Adams’ career-worst figure was 44.4% during his New Orleans Pelicans season, which only came from 135 attempts due to the pando hiatus (he played 58 games). Across his entire career he’s a 54% free throw shooter which is pretty bad for an NBA player, though admittedly big men tend to struggle a lot more with those fellas. This current season is more than twice as bad as his usual badness. The consolation is that he has a history of getting streaky with it so he could shoot 70% across December, that’s not out of the question.

He’s been failing the eye test too. His shooting form has looked wonky, almost tossing them up one-handed. Granted, in the Knicks game most recently it did appear like he was getting back to a more traditional action which would make sense since you can guarantee he’s been working on this with his coaches lately. They’ve noticed. They can see what’s up. Particularly assistant coach Darko Rajakovic who previously worked with Adams at the Oklahoma City Thunder where he had some unconventional methods to get him going from the charity stripe.

Bit more on Coach Darko from this article from the start of last season. Rajakovic was instrumental in the Grizzlies unlocking the passing and playmaking ability of Adams after he arrived in Memphis and given that previous connection he was probably also pivotal in them trading for Adams in the first place. Hopefully Coach Darko’s been hitting the heavy bag at the gym because we’ve surely reached the stage where the gut punches need to make a comeback.

Then again, missed free throws can sometimes be a weapon...

Soul-Cleansing Stats

Yes indeed. With 2471 offensive rebounds at the time of writing he now sits at 49 overall in NBA history. Active players ahead of him are Dwight Howard (4151 – 7th), Andre Drummond (3292 – 22nd), DeAndre Jordan (3025 – 30th), and LaMarcus Aldridge (2776 – 38th). Considering that Adams is bagging around five ORebs per game it’s possible he cracks the top forty by the end of this season. Moses Malone has the overall record with 6731 of the bad boys... incredibly that is more than 2000 boards ahead of Robert Parish in second.

Meanwhile a quick check in on a few favourite stat yarns...

Sure enough he’s bossing the scene in screen assists. Curiously he’s not doing the same with box outs this term, sitting ninth overall in the total ranks but outside the top ten in average per game and per 36-mins.

However he’s miles out in front as an offensive rebounder once again. You already knew that but it’s still fun to look at the stats. Per games? Adams has 4.9 and Clint Capela is second with 4.2. Totals? Adams has 93 of the suckers and second is Jakob Poeltl way back on 77 offensive boards. And needless to say offensive rebound percentage? Adams is first grabbing 16.1% ORebs with Nick Richards second at 14.1%. Andre Drummond is ahead of him with 18.8% but he’s not playing enough minutes to qualify. That’s going by the NBA website, by the way. These things can fluctuate by sources and Basketball Reference have him even more dominant...

A quarter of the way through the season and his offensive rebounding triple crown is looking solid for a repeat as none of the categories are even close.

Nipple Pinching

The NBA is one of the most closely scrutinised sporting leagues on the planet and every now and then one of its many incidents happens to involve Steven Adams. There was one of those recently when it was alleged that Steve-o had called San Antonio Spurs rookie Jeremy Sochan a “dirty little bastard”.

What exactly happened to inspire such words? What context were they delivered in? How were those words received? Mate, we’re just gonna have to take a little journey of exploration here.

It began with a yarn in the San Antonio Express News following Memphis’ 124-122 overtime win against the Spurs. Here’s what was written...

In a crumpled heap at the base of an AT&T Center basket stanchion, the mountain of a man chosen three times as the toughest player in the NBA took his time getting up. Onlookers gasped. Nobody was used to seeing Steven Adams this way. Could this 6-foot-11, stone-jawed, long-haired CGI rendering of a warrior giant really be hurt? And who was it that dared to fling him to the floor like a wadded-up pair of khakis?

When Adams finally climbed to his feet Wednesday night, he glared at the offender. Then, in his unmistakable New Zealand accent, he had a few words for Spurs rookie Jeremy Sochan. “Dirty little (expletive),” Adams said, per an enthusiastic recounting of the incident by Spurs forward Keldon Johnson.

If this was intended as an insult, Sochan did not take it as such. “I think he and I talk the same lingo,” Sochan said in the Cockney accent he owes to his English upbringing.

Jeremy Sochan was the ninth overall pick in the last draft, a 19 year old power forward out of Baylor who has been an instant starter under Gregg Popovich. Really fun player. He was born in the United States but is half-Polish (on his mother’s side, which is also where the name Sochan comes from) and was raised in England. Though, typical Americans, he doesn’t actually have a Cockney accent. Most of his time was spent in Southampton.

Anyway, the play that they’re referring to was this one...

Bit of a dirty one, to be honest. Adams had already grabbed one offensive rebound in the possession and Sochan wasn’t wanting to see him get another, hooking his arm and then sending him into the stanchion. Good strength from Sochan, tbf. Adams stayed down a few seconds then bounced back up and continued. The play was called a common foul, reviewed for a possible flagrant, then remained as a common foul. And Keldon Johnson (#3) was right there in ear shot of anything that Adams may have said when he got up.

However that wasn’t Adams’ recollection of the event. He claimed that the “dirty little bastard” call came later in the game. On the final play in which he was involved, in fact. Memphis were trying to protect a small lead and so had their best free throw shooters on (sorry, Steve). Ja Morant went to the line and missed the first, keeping it a one-point game. Adams checked in to take care of the rebound in case he missed the second. Morant made the second, Spurs went down the other end and missed their last shot after a timeout in which Adams was subbed out again (best on-ball defenders in play knowing that there was only time for one shot so rebounding was irrelevant). Here’s what Steve-o recalled...

The ol’ pinching of the nips trick, aye? Dirty little bastard. See if you can spot the goings-on in here...

Thanksgiving, Shmanksgiving

Those yarns got a fair amount of focus across the aggregators in Aotearoa and beyond. Steven Adams has Hot Take About Thanksgiving Food... CLICK!CLICK!CLICK! Weird how some quotes take off and others don’t. The dude serves up quotable goal every time he’s asked a question but okay, so it goes.

Worth mentioning exactly why he was being asked about turkey though. This was at a community function that the team organised in which they boxed up means for a hundred needy families in the region. Chipping in and making a difference around the holidays. Big respect.

Steven Adams to WREG: “We represent the city like, you know, it’s not necessarily a duty. It’s just how our way of, like, giving back. I mean, we genuinely want to do this because, like, the fans give so much man. They support us, and make everything really, really good for us.”

Fashion Station

SLAM DUNKS

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