A dynasty is hoping to re-emerge. An All-Star is even more refined than before. And a rookie is honing the fundamentals at a rapid rate.
Let’s open up the notebook to run through three NBA trends that have caught my eye over the past week:
The Warriors, free-throw lovers
The return of Jonathan Kuminga means the new-look Golden State Warriors can lean even more into their identity change.
The Warriors have dominated after acquiring Jimmy Butler a month and a half ago. They’re 16-3 since the trade deadline, tied for the best record in the NBA, and the only team in the top five of both points scored per possession and points allowed per possession over that time.
What appeared to be a dud at the end of the Stephen Curry era has turned into a heated race between the Warriors, Minnesota Timberwolves and LA Clippers for sixth place, the final spot to avoid the Play-In Tournament. And the Warriors’ hot streak has come in a fashion no one could have predicted at the start of the season.
A team that relied on Curry and his jumper for the first few months of the schedule now has more physical ways to score — because few squads are getting to the free-throw line like Golden State is today. The return of Kuminga, who missed two months with an ankle injury, will only strengthen a once-again high-powered offense.
Butler doesn’t just give the Warriors an extra primary facilitator, someone who allows Curry to scamper around more off-ball screens than he could in the early part of the season when he had to create more with the basketball. He also provides a necessary downhill threat.
Prior to the Butler trade, the Warriors were 27th in fouls drawn per possession. But Butler, who barrels to the rim as if he were a 350-pound bodybuilder, understands how to create contact. Since his arrival from Miami, the Warriors rank fourth.
Butler is a free-throw fiend, as is Kuminga. Golden State is about to live at the line.
The Warriors offense is not the same — and not just because the end result is more commonly a desperate defender hacking someone trying to score.
Butler’s presence means Curry can inspire nervous breakdowns inside defenses, which have no choice but to follow him around pick after pick. Since the Butler trade, Curry has sprinted around more off-ball screens than any NBA player — even more than he normally does, and it’s not close. Curry has used 416 off-ball screens since the trade deadline, according to data-tracking site Second Spectrum. Devin Booker, who is in second place, is 100 behind him.
The Warriors are forcing opponents into more decisions. And the more decisions a defense has to make, the more opportunities it has for a gaffe. That’s when Butler can attack.
Sometimes, Curry doesn’t even need a screen. He doesn’t touch the basketball on the below play, an isolation for Butler, but look at how history’s greatest shooter uses his reputation to help his co-star. Butler creates a mismatch in transition when Toronto Raptors center Jakob Poeltl has to pick him up to halt a fast break. Once the Warriors spread out, Curry cuts to the hoop, pulling his defender, Ochai Agbaji, into the paint.
As Butler takes off to the left, Curry veers away from the basket. Agbaji turns around to follow the guard to the corner, facing his back to Butler and removing any help on a drive.
Butler gets two free throws out of it.
Butler is one of 18 NBA players with at least 100 isolations since his trade to the Warriors, who have scored a dominant 121.7 points per 100 possessions on those isos, best in the league over this period. He’s experiencing double-teams 6 1/2 times less on his isolations with the Warriors — part of the Curry effect — than he did last season with the Heat, according to Second Spectrum. And he’s not just looking to score or get to the line, though that’s been a common occurrence.
Because of all the movement around Butler, his teammates are succeeding on these plays, too. Nearly one in five of his Warriors isolations have ended in an assist, by far the highest rate in the NBA over this time.
In his five games since returning from injury, Kuminga has gotten to the line almost nine times per 36 minutes. He was one of the league’s premier foul-drawers before it, the one Warrior who could find freebies. He’s in the 99th percentile of fouls drawn per touch, according to Second Spectrum.
For now, he comes off the bench, which means the Warriors can enter attack mode whether Butler is on the court or not.
This team isn’t playing like the dynasty ones with Curry and Kevin Durant, but it may not matter. The Warriors are a wrecking ball, and on top of physical defense, they have renovated their offense.
A new king of the post
The post-up is not dead; it’s just evolved.
Objectives from the low post are not the same today as they were when maestros like Shaquille O’Neal would bully victims for dunks. Every once in a while, a giant will defy the math. For someone like Nikola Jokić or Karl-Anthony Towns, posting up with the intention of scoring is worth it.
But now, there is a modern way to dominate with a back to the basket: Post up someone smaller, force a double-team, then use that second defender to flip the basketball to the perimeter and create open, stand-still 3s.
There isn’t a guard better at this than the Cade Cunningham.
The Detroit Pistons All-Star is an oversized point guard, standing at 6-foot-6, which helps him see over defenses while running pick-and-rolls or flashing cross-court passes. It also means that whichever guard is stuck on him to begin games has to deal with his physicality. Cunningham loves pushing defenders to the left block, then rolling over his left shoulder to flick a right-handed hook shot, which goes in enough to justify it.
For the first time in Cunningham’s career, he actually has shooters around him, and that lends him the space to try these moves in the paint. But that’s not where his post prowess ends. In his fourth professional season, Cunningham is also reading defenses better than ever.
Cunningham almost looks like an old-school big man on a play from earlier this week (see below), posting up his primary defender, New Orleans Pelicans wing Bruce Brown, and not getting as deep into the paint as he wants before tossing the basketball back out to the perimeter. Once he re-establishes his footing, the Pistons go back to him against Brown.
But watch Cunningham’s process. He’s slow and not looking to score, instead attempting to move the four defenders who aren’t his direct assignment. As he receives the entry pass from teammate Tobias Harris, Pels center Yves Missi drifts toward him. Missi is comfortable leaving his man, Pistons center Jalen Duren, who isn’t a threat outside the paint. But Missi’s presence doesn’t deter Cunningham, who’s focused on potential shooters nowhere near him.
Once Pelicans firecracker Jose Alvarado, who is guarding Tim Hardaway Jr., one of Detroit’s best marksmen, dips into the lane, Cunningham gobbles up the opportunity. He takes a dribble to the middle. Duren makes a clever cut to the basket, which pulls Alvarado over to help, and the passing lane to Hardaway opens for an easy 3-pointer.
Only 24 players have ended plays on 100 or more post-ups this season. Cunningham is one of them. And he’s been unique. Not only is he the NBA’s most efficient performer in those situations, but the Pistons score an unthinkable 128.6 points per 100 possessions off his post-ups, according to Second Spectrum. He’s also handling them in a one-of-a-kind way: No one passes out of the post more than Cunningham. Twenty-three percent of his post-ups finish in assists, also the highest figure in the league.
The Pistons are manufacturing victories and making a push for home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs after winning a combined 31 games over the previous two seasons. And they are fine tuning basketball’s nuances in the process.
The box-out Most Improved Player
If the NBA got especially geeky and created an award for Most Improved Individual Skill, a rookie would be at the forefront of the conversation.
No one has made a bigger leap as a rebounder from the start of the season to now than Missi. The Pelicans first-year center struggled at summer league, started to show promise at the beginning of the season and now carves out space for himself better than an introvert.
If you’re a healthy-minded human living outside of Louisiana, you probably stopped watching the Pelicans months ago. But that’s when Missi began to adjust.
The Pels, up and down the organization, have boasted all season about Missi’s brain: He is an ace at retaining information from coaches, management and whomever else approaches with advice. A coach will tell him an opponent’s tendency, and he will execute on it for a game. Someone will tell Missi his footwork was off on a particular play, and they won’t witness the same mistake again.
Over the first half of the season, Missi actually averaged more rebounds per game than he has lately, but that isn’t the point. Missi in November was chasing missed shots as if the goal of the sport was for him to recover the basketball. The reality is, it’s for the Pelicans to do so.
Now, the 6-foot-11 center is carving out space as well as any other big man. He’s getting low and blocking out opponents. He may not end up with the rebound, but one of five Pelicans is more likely to snag it than any opponent.
Before Jan. 26, the Pelicans were a better defensive-rebounding team with Missi off the court. Since then, they are superior while he is in the game.
And here’s where the learning curve, the type the Pelicans have been bragging about since autumn, shows a tangible effect: Second Spectrum has a series of statistics that tracks box-out quality. There are box-out opportunities, which are what they sound like. There are successful box-outs (again, self-explanatory), failed box-outs (which are when players try to box opponents out but fail to do so) and missed box-outs (when a player should box someone out but doesn’t bother to do so).
Before Jan. 26, Missi’s missed box-out rate was 22.3 percent, an unimpressive 45th out of 52 qualifying big men. Since, that number has shrunk by more than three times to 7.1 percent, not just the second-best figure amongst all NBA bigs but runner-up in the league amongst all 278 qualifying players.
Missi has gone from someone who didn’t know how to get between an opponent and the hoop to being one of the best in the league at it. And he fixed it midway into his first season.
Over the past two games, Missi has matched up with two of the NBA’s fiercest glass gluttons: the Pistons’ Jalen Duren and the Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert. He’s given up just one offensive board to each. Duren rushed in from the perimeter to grab a missed 3-pointer. And the Gobert one only happened because Missi rose three feet into the air to swat a Gobert layup back into the 7-footer’s own face, which technically counts as a rebound. That’s it.
People may not be watching the Pels anymore. On the rare occasions they do, it might be because of Zion Williamson’s crazed run since returning from injury, putting up stats on a single night some players hope to compile over two or three games. But Missi, the No. 21 pick in last year’s draft, is rapidly improving, too. The Pelicans may have found a gem.
(Photo of Cade Cunningham: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
