Throughout the course of the NBA Playoffs,The Athletic’s NBA Data Analyst, Seth Partnow, will provide his expertise to analyze the things that stand out most to him from the previous day’s slate. You can find hisAnalytical Lookarounds here.
Nikola Jokic is different. Some would even call him a bad ‘you know what.’
Just last week, I posited that certain players not succeeding as “alpha” scorers is much more frequently a question of skill, not will. In Denver’s playoff run, Jokic is proving to be an exception to that general rule. His 26.6 usage rate from the regular season has jumped to 29.8 over this playoff run, including a very alpha-like indeed 31.6 through six games of the Western Conference semifinals.
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There is a particular team-building conundrum that affects teams led by a certain type of player. Over the weekend, Kenny Smith referenced David Robinson and Kevin Garnett as archetypes for this problem: an undeniably great player, but for whom the greatest attribute isn’t offensive shot creation. While in Jokic’s case, his otherworldly playmaking takes the place of Garnett’s and Robinson’s defensive dominance, the knock on him at times has been a lack of aggression in creating his own shot — in some ways like a center version of Steve Nash.
In Round 1, Utah, tried to take advantage of Jokic’s egalitarian tendencies by keeping Rudy Gobert close to the basket in a drop coverage scheme. Especially over the first four games of the series, the strategy paid some dividends: though Jokic was effective scoring the ball, his playmaking dropped off considerably from his regular season playmaking usage of 16.0 percent to 11.9 percent for the series. Meanwhile his reluctance as a shooter became evident, allowing Gobert to “stay home” as much as possible.
A quick aside.
One of the major ways in which detailed player tracking data enhanced basketball analysis has been the ability to examine situational decision making. For example, it is possible to develop a profile of what might be called “shooting aggression” for each player. By examining the nature of their catches — where on the floor, when on the shot clock, with what kind of defensive attention and pressure — how does their shot volume compare with other similar performers? Of course, this sort of analysis requires the good stuff, the detailed frame-by-frame tracking data that is (to some degree) proprietary to teams.
One can find repositories containing some raw tracking data without much trouble if one looks, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the faint of heart, as a single game produces around 800,000 data points to be sifted through.
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Even without that level of granularity, publicly available data does allow for some degree of examination of this kind of decision making. For example, one of the reasons the Heat represented a tough matchup for Milwaukee’s defense was that Miami’s cadre of shooters was collectively among the more aggressive in the game. Collectively, the Heat were tops in the league at both taking and making contested catch-and-shoot 3s, defining a “contest” as a shot taken with a defender within six feet of the shooter at the release:
This strongly suggested Miami shooters would be very difficult for Milwaukee to effectively run off the arc, which turned out to play a large role in Miami’s upset five-game victory. While we can’t determine the degree to which the Heat’s volume of attempts has resulted from either their players’ greater propensity to shoot or their scheme creating more “potentially shootable catches,” it’s almost certainly a combination of both and at the very least suggests Erik Spoelstra is aware that these are shots his team should seek and runs their offense accordingly.
Now, back to Jokic.
Over his career, he has been a surprisingly reluctant 3-point shooter. Especially for someone who is as involved in the offensive flow and plays at the top of the floor as much as he does, he has never actually taken that many 3-pointers. He averaged 5.4 3FGA/100 this season, 177th among qualifying players and 12th among qualifyingcenters per Basketball Reference. Meanwhile he shot only 31.4 percent, dropping his career average to 33.8 from beyond the arc.
By all rights, he should be both more prolific and accurate from long range. He initiates much of Denver’s offense from the top of the floor and sets a large number of ball screens in pick-and-pop situations, which gives him plenty of opportunities to let it fly. And on the accuracy front, he has hit 82.6 percent of his career free throws and 44.6 percent of his long two-point jumpers, both typically excellent indicators of a player who can take an extra step or two out with some proficiency.
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But Jokic has often preferred to pass, dribble into a handoff or postup or simply do something else with the ball. By one simple measure of shot aggression, the percentage of 3-point attempts which were contested, Jokic ranks 103rd of 165 players with at least 1000 3FGA since tracking data became available for every game in 2013-14. This sandwiches him neatly between two probing point guards in Mike Conley Jr. and Jrue Holiday. A chucker he has never been.
This changed heading into Game 5 against Utah. After only 6.4 percent of his overall shot attempts had been contested 3-pointers in the first four contests, this jumped to 14.4 percent for the final three contests, a trend that has only continued into the series against the Clippers, where 18.8 percent of his attempts have been contested 3s.
It is not so much that these are good shots in and of themselves, it’s that he is ready, willing and able to shoot the ball when it finds him beyond the arc. By taking these contested and semi-contested attempts, he is ensuring he’s certain to take the open ones too. While declaring this the cause of his elevated shooting accuracy in the series is a bit too simplistic, and 44.1 percent is almost certainly not sustainable if he continues to do this, the fact that he is shooting as a first rather than last option can’t hurt!
Clippers’ defenders know they have to run at him hardor he’s launching:
And if you do close hard he might shoot anyway:
Only not too hard because remains the best playmaking big of this and perhaps any era:
As suggested by the last clip, the effect goes beyond even his own shooting. Not only has he managed to maintain his elevated scoring usage from the Utah series, but also he has returned his playmaking usage to 15.2, much closer to his regular season rate. Simply by becoming more willing to shoot the shots that are there, Jokic (along with the threat of Jamal Murray’s penetration and shotmaking) has left the Clippers’ defense chasing shadows for the bulk of Denver’s second half runs in each of the last two games. There is no more “stunt-and-recover” at Jokic touches, which means the defense is in full rotation, allowing for open shots, driving lanes and cutting angles for Denver’s whole team.
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Unlike Gobert who was able to maintain his interior presence, both Ivica Zubac and Montrezl Harrell have contested shots at the rim at far lower rates (6.5 percentage points lower for Zubac and 5.0 points lower for Harrell) than during the season. If these runs feel like avalanches as they are happening, the defense being one pass behind the play is a big reason why.
Of course, taking more 3-pointers is only one way in which Jokic is showing increased offensive aggression, but it is indicative of one of the ways he has been playing like the kind of bucket-getting offensive leader almost required of players to be anointed into the “best player on a championship contender” tier of performers.*
Editor’s Note: *Yes, that is a tease. Watch this space prior to the NBA Finals.
(Photo: Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)
Seth Partnow provides NBA and basketball analytics for The Athletic. He resides in Milwaukee and was formerly the Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks. Follow Seth on Twitter @sethpartnow
