Kiwi Steve in the NBA #12: Running With The Wolves
The Memphis Grizzlies booked their second seed with five games to go but then had to test the capacity of their patience before they could find out who they’d play. Second seed being second seed, it required a play-in game to determine that one. The Minnesota Timberwolves against the Los Angeles Clippers, who served up a pretty fascinating game to decide who advanced.
In a back and forth game, things seemed to have swung in the Clippers’ favour when Karl-Anthony Towns fouled out for Minny midway through the fourth quarter. Towns is obviously the bloke who’d be going head to head with Steven Adams for that opening tip-off in any prospective series and he struggled badly against the Clippers. It wasn’t just the fouls either – he shot 0/7 in the first half. Tough day at the office for that bloke, the Wolves’ only All Star, but luckily future All Star Anthony Edwards had himself a blinder and former Clipper Patrick Beverley had a planet-sized chip on his shoulder. Add in some D’Angelo Russell and there ya go.
As soon as Towns fouled out, the Wolves went on a 16-2 run to take the lead and then some clutch shooting and defence helped them close it out for the 109-104 win. Massive celebrations. Patrick Beverley was yelling at Clips execs about how they should have paid him what he asked for and then he jumped onto the scorer’s table and threw his jersey into the crowd and then he started crying and went and hugged his mum. The whole thing was a thrill and that’s without even mentioning that the game had earlier been postponed briefly after a woman tried to glue herself to the court in a protest. Yup, that happened.
Meaning that we’ve officially got ourselves a Memphis Grizzlies vs Minnesota Timberwolves first round match-up. Love that. Come on. So many storylines here, with two really fun young teams from outside the usual coastal powerhouse franchises going head to head. You’ve got Ja Morant seeking to make a statement in the postseason, same as his bros Jackson and Bane. It could also be a spotlight for Edwards while Towns has only ever won one playoff game before.
Then there’s Patrick Beverley. One of the NBA’s ultimate heel players, he was very briefly a Grizzly in the last offseason. Memphis had already traded for Steven Adams and as part of that deal they also landed Eric Bledsoe who was quickly traded to the Clippers... for a package including Beverley. They then flipped Beverley to the Wolves for not very much (they were trying to free up space for their young guards not the other way around) but he was around long enough for an iconic ‘that aged quickly’ tweet...
We’ve all been tapping our feet impatiently for months now just waiting for a chance to see what this Grizzlies team can do in the playoffs. Now we’re finally about to find out.
The Tale of the Tape
Okay so let’s cast our minds back to the regular season that was. The Grizzlies and Wolves met four times and split the series 2-2 with the home team winning all four. The Grizz won 125-118 at home in game #10 of the season but were smoked 138-95 in game #16. But that was back within the 9-10 start before the Grizz flipped the switch (going 47-16 ever since) so not sure how much you can really draw from those two.
Memphis then won 116-108 in mid-January whilst Steven Adams was in the covid protocols. Then they went down 119-114 in February, Ja Morant struggling shooting 7/25 for 20 points while Jackson and Bane also shot 40% or less from the field. That Morant thing wasn’t an outlier either, he played all four games against Minny and shot a combined 33.8% from the field which was his worst mark against any team this season. Patrick Beverley is an immense defender, in case you forgot. Finding ways to get Ja his points is going to be crucial... key factor in there being Steven Adams’ screen game. Which Patrick Beverley can certainly speak on given that he was firmly acquainted with it in a playoff series of yore...
The Grizzlies are not a particularly sizzling team of shooters (three-point king Des Bane aside). Their percentages are only mid-table in general, instead it’s the rugged fundamental stuff that they thrive upon. Transitioning defence into offence. They get second chance points, they get points off turnovers, they get fastbreak points, they get points in the paint. The only one of those factors in which they weren’t first in the NBA as a team this season was points off turnovers... which coincidentally the Timberwolves led (Memphis were fifth).
We know this Grizz team can play some mean defence. Really well coached, full buy-in from players, they don’t take plays off... all them good things. And they’re going to have to be because here are what the Wolves’ three top scorers did against them this season...
Game 1: Towns 25pts / Edwards 27pts / Russell 30pts
Game 2: Towns 21pts / Edwards 23pts / Russell 28pts
Game 3: Towns 25pts / Edwards 30pts / Russell 29pts
Game 4: Towns 22pts / Edwards 5pts / Russell 37pts
That’s a big concern. The Wolves do not have as deep of a roster as the Grizz but they get great value from their main dudes and with the exception of that lone 1/11 shooting night from Edwards they’ve all been super consistent against this exact opponent. But Memphis does have a rather useful retort: Dillon Brooks did not play in any of those games.
Brooks is like Beverley in that he’s an absolute menace. Not just a lock-down defender but also a trash-talker. Add him into a line-up that also includes Jaren Jackson Jr – two legit All-NBA Defensive Team players (though Brooks didn’t play enough to be in that convo this particular season) – and suddenly there are a lot of things you can do schematically. DeAnthony Melton has great defensive length. Steven Adams is a wonderful defender within his favoured turf (less so when asked to go outside his skill set, which is why he has had problems with stretch-bigs in the past... such as KAT). Gonna be really interesting to see how that goes down.
Plenty more tactical wrinkles we could look into but it’s the Steven Adams angle that you’re here for so let’s stick to that. One of the things that the Clippers did really well against Towns (not just in the play-in but all season) was they switched up their coverage on him. Different guys, showing different things. Nic Batum on the perimeter, Ivica Zubac in the paint. The Grizzlies have a similarly switchable roster though if you want to shut down KAT then the best option is not Adams but JJJ. Now, that either keeps Adams in his bag patrolling the paint, boxing out, rebounding, and protecting the rim. Or it means that they sub him out entirely and have Jackson play the five. It could go either way.
But coach Taylor Jenkins is surely going to at least try and assert his team’s physical dominance with Steve-o because Minnesota are not going to be able to stick with the dual-big Jackson/Adams thing. Too big too strong. Plus Adams has been a crucial player within their offence and they won’t want to part with that in a hurry. Many of his assists come from off-boards, kicking it back out, but even more come from those elbow touch sets. It’s a situation that’s really effective for them and is easy to manufacture within their halfcourt stuff.
Only the most recent game really counts as any kind of reflection as to how Adams will play against this Timberwolves squad. In it he scored 6 points (2/6 FG, 2/4 FT) with 12 rebounds (6 OReb) and 5 assists. Solid numbers there, to be fair. He was a -7 on the court in a 5-point loss though he only played five mins in the fourth quarter (out of 27 overall). D’Angelo Russell scored 23 points in that fourth quarter so probs wanna do something about that next time around, aye? Everyone’s talking about Edwards, KAT, and Beverley right now but D-Russ could be the biggest worry.
Things change quickly over the course of a playoff series though and regular season yarns don’t always apply. A favourable match-up in one game can become a weakness in the next with a couple minor tweaks and everything is always up in the air over a seven-game series. The Grizzlies had the second best record in the NBA for a reason.
Not to get ahead of ourselves here or anything, but just so you know the bracket means that should the Grizzlies progress to the second round then they’ll take on the winner of the Golden State Warriors vs Denver Nuggets match-up which, quite frankly, would also be a belter series. These match-ups are immense. How good are the NBA Playoffs, man?
Steve-o & The Chuckster
It is with a deep soul-borne pain that it must be reported that Steven Adams did not, in fact, reach that milestone. Charles Barkley remains the only man to have logged 350 offensive rebounds and 250 assists in the same season (and he did it five times). Steven Adams got there with the assists but fell one short in the boards. One more cheeky offensive rebound. So close. Didn’t help that he sat out two of the last five games entirely after the Grizzlies locked up that second seed, nor that he’s barely played a fourth quarter in months.
Nor did it help that he averaged around 27 minutes per game this year while Charles Barkley’s five years there averaged out at around 39mpg. That’s an entire full quarter more that Chuck was getting back then. His total minutes tallies from those seasons were, in chronological order: 2952, 2740, 3170, 3088 & 3085. Steven Adams just did what he did in 1999 total minutes. Yet Adams was ONE MEASLY OFFENSIVE REBOUND shy. Ah well. That’s what you get with a player who is not motivated by stats in any way whatsoever. He’s still the only other member of the 349/250 club even if that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Aaaanyway, the end of the regular season means the crystallisation of the season’s stats. No more ups and downs and additions and trends. Them suckers are set in stone now and thus we can confirm the inevitable: that Steven Adams lead the league in all three major Offensive Rebound measurements.
Most Total Offensive Rebounds in 2021-22
Most Offensive Rebounds Per Game in 2021-22
Highest Offensive Rebound Percentage in 2021-22
What more is there to say on that? Steven Adams is the best offensive rebounder in the NBA. He’s always been one of the best but now he is the undisputed champion of the off boards.
Tips had 37 separate games with at least five off rebs. The next best was 28 games (by Capela, Poetl & Robinson). 27 of those games he got 6+, second was Mitchell Robinson with 19. Shift it to 7+ and Adams did that 20 times this season. Robinson was next at 13. Adams also had 12 games with 8+ which is one ahead of Robinson, nobody else had more than four such games.
One weird note: having been keeping track of that percentage mark for ages in the hope that he could go top ten all-time... in the end he dropped off the list entirely. The automatic StatMuse mark is 2000 minutes played to qualify and Adams once again was one short. 1999 minutes total. He comes in at tenth equal with a 17.9% mark if you drop the minutes benchmark to include him though that’s a slippery slope because you don’t have to drop it much further to start finding other guys who surpass him.
However those are mostly all old dudes so Adams still put up the second best OREB% of anyone since the new millennium. Andre Drummond in 2014-15 with 18.3% rules the roost. That’s for anyone with at least 1500 minutes too so no sneaky convenient stuff, don’t worry about that. Probably should say that Andre Drummond had an 18.0% figure this season across his 76ers & Nets mahi (significantly higher since he joined the Nets) but only played 1437 minutes. That’s just in the interest of full transparency.
Overall Adams averaged 10.0 total rebounds per game which is the first time he’s hit double figures in that category. His points per game were down at 6.9 which is the fewest since his rookie season but he also had a career high in assists with 3.4 per game. One at his lowest mark since year one, the other two career-bests lol.
Moving on now, here’s one for ya directly from the teamfolk themselves...
Steven Adams was actually second to Rudy Gobert in screen assists per game. 6.3 versus 5.5 so a fairly significant difference... coming around because Gobert plays five additional minutes per game on average than Funaki. Gobert also played fewer games though hence Adams is ahead in the totals. Plus Adams takes care of him on the screen assists per 36 mins for an NBA lead. Get that into ya. Might well have been a little higher too had Ja Morant not missed as many games as he did.
An excellent NBA Playoffs drinking game would be to knock one back any time you see Adams log a screen assist – note that screen assists are a separate stat to regular assists too so the best screen assister in the comp also having a career high in regular assists is really something, dude.
But wait there’s more. Dig some Box Out yarns (click to enlarge)...
Mitchell Robinson is a real pest here, the same bloke who was hanging with him in a lot of the offensive rebounding stats. Two great rebounders who also box out excessively? Yeah, that’s not a coincidence. Especially when you split those box outs from end to end. Steven Adams leads the league with 135 offensive box outs with the next best being Jonas Valanciunas way back on 94. Miles ahead. One major reason why he’s so good with offensive boards is that he puts in the effort to get them.
Also Adams only gets 60.8% of his box out rebounds. His team, meanwhile, get 94.9% of them. There are guys with much better numbers on both counts but that’s because they don’t box out as often. Someone like Andre Drummond for example. His team gets 96% of his box out boards but 84% of those are his alone. He boxes out when he thinks he can get the rebound. Adams boxes out to stop the other team from getting it, whether it falls his way or not.
Obviously his assists are contextual being a centre and all that. But if we shrink that to assists from the elbow position then Adams leads the whole damned league with 73 of them, just under one per game. Second place was Nikola Jokic and if you’re the only centre beating Nikola Jokic at something then you’re doing alright.
But wait there’s more. One more stat in which Steven Adams is the Big Bossman: Jump Balls.
Steven Adams won 71 out of 92 jump balls for a 77.17% success rate. Only two other players even won 50 jump balls (Joel Embiid 60 & Nikola Jokic 52) and neither of them are within reach of Adams’ winning percentage. In fact there was not a player in the NBA this season who challenged for more than 10 jump balls who had a better success rate than Adams... who also won the most jump balls by a large margin. Damn, man. Stat ‘em up.
Let us not forget that he had a 13-game opening tip winning streak earlier on in the campaign.
THE SCHEDULE
vs MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES, Sunday at 7.30am (NZT)
vs MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES, Wednesday TBD (NZT)
at MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES, Friday 11.30am (NZT)
at MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES, Sunday TBD (NZT)
vs MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES, Wednesday TBD (NZT)
at MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES, Saturday TBD (NZT)
vs MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES, Monday TBD (NZT)
SLAM DUNKS
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