Around the Arc: DeRozan Joins the Kings & A Conversation About Post-Ups

Quick discussion & analysis on DeRozan trade to the Kings & a conversation on the analytics of post ups

Hi, & welcome to Around the Arc. A semi-regular thoughts and discussion about anything that is going around the league whether it’s trades or free agency right now or anything I found interesting enough to just talk about. Here, I’ll be looking further into what’s happened and provide that extra context, analysis, and stats, and simply dig a bit deeper into what’s happened.

DeRozan Joins the Kings

So, the Kings made a splash-ish? They ended up trading Harrison Barnes, Chris Duarte, and 2 second-round picks for DeMar DeRozan. My immediate thought is that I like this for the Kings. They needed to do something to get better.

After their emergence in 2022, this year was a bit underwhelming in comparison. In 2022, they were 8th in net rating with +2.4. This year that dropped to 19th with +0.8. Their offense once was 1st with 119.7 and that dropped to 14th with 116.9. The good news was that the defense did improve from 25th(117.3) to 18th(116.1). But without that league-leading offense, they weren’t able to get those wins and missed the playoffs. Even if you look at only the minutes with both De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis, they were still only +3.0 with a 118.9 ORTG, which would rank 6th.

I think there are questions of fit and also by how much does this improve the Kings because of what DeRozan will bring, but overall this still should be a significant upgrade over what they currently had on offense.

Outside of Fox, who in that starting lineup was going to create something? With both Fox and Sabonis on:

• Keegan Murray: 77% of his 2s assisted & 97% of his 3s

• Harrison Barnes: 61% & 97%

• Kevin Huerter: 85% & 99%

• Malik Monk: 54% & 89%

• Sabonis: 60% & 60%

Out of anyone who had at least 100 2FGA, Fox was the only one lower than 50%. They needed a creator. DeRozan will certainly help that.

In his last three seasons, he’s been averaging 25.5 points per 75 possession on 58.9% TS. In that same span, he’s also shooting:

• 69.5% within 3ft

• 49.3% 3–10ft

• 50.1% 10–16ft

• 44.3% 16–3pt

He’s a bucket from anywhere on the court. This is where he’ll certainly help, especially in the minutes without Fox. DeRozan is still one of those offensive stars who can carry a significant load. He’s one of the best foul drawers in the league with a .412 free throw rate in the last three years. He also averages over 10 free throws per 100 in that span too. Elite foul drawing, tough shot-making, good rim finishing, mid-range, and above-average passing are great for floor-raising offenses.

These are his passing skills being compared to other on-ball players.

This will be needed for the Kings. In 1013 minutes with Sabonis on, but no Fox, they were -4.0 with 115.0 ORTG. This is where I see this trade as a huge win for them.

Though I’m usually not a fan of players that are high usage with an inefficient shot diet because elite players need an efficient shot diet. There isn’t a way around that in 2024.

Although he has been efficient, mainly with his elite foul drawing, but in that span, he also has a 51.7% eFG, which isn’t ideal and that’s partly because over 55% of his shots come beyond 10ft inside the arc. This season, almost 45% of his shots were pull-up 2s where he shot 46.5%. His attempts per game were tied with Kevin Durant.

This is where the fit questions come up because the Kings also have Fox who likes to take those same shots. He takes over 5.2 attempts(compared to DeRozan’s 7.6). How will that work now? Though with Fox, almost half of his overall pull-ups are also 3s. There may be more ways to work around it.

I also don’t think there’s a better environment for it to work out. DeRozan has been cooking these last three years in Chicago. Where they had negative spacing with one of the lowest 3pt volumes in the league. The Kings are the complete opposite. They ranked third in attempts, third in 3pt rate, and 16th in accuracy. This should be a much, much better context to experiment and to make this work.

And seeing how Fox has been used with a similar shot diet in ways such as off-handoffs or in spot up opportunities, I wonder how that will translate with DeRozan.

The Bulls were a very heavy PNR team with them ranking third in frequency. Kings were 28th. On the other hand, the Kings lead the league in handoff frequency with 10.2%, but the Bulls were last with 2.4%. How will that balance look like? Will they become more a PNR or isolation team with DeRozan doing what he does or is it more going to be DeRozan being used differently by adapting his game?

The offense should be fun. All of these questions and how they should experiment will definitely be fun to watch and see how they’ll attempt to figure it out because the upside can be there.

The bigger question will be the defense. Who will even be the best defender here? How will they close on defense? I feel like that has too many holes, considering they weren’t even an average defense this year and they’re getting one of the worse defenders.

Overall, I don’t see this as a risky move. It’s an okay move to get better in the short term, even if not by that much. But when you’re a team that didn’t make the playoffs, and took a step back, then you can’t be picky. Getting DeRozan, even with all the questions, should help them make their path to the playoffs much easier.

Post Up Conversation

I’ve been seeing some tweets about the traditional “power forward” and post-ups. That’s been seen as something that the analytics have taken out of the game. I’ve seen people say that’s the reason why we don’t see players like Al Jefferson or Zach Randolph anymore. And I think that’s 100% true.

Analytics have taken out a high volume of post-ups being used but for good reasons.

As far as the public data goes(2015–16), 6 teams used 10 possessions of post-ups or more(or 5 teams used over 10% of their total possessions as a post up), but not a single one averaged at least 1.00 points per possession — there actually was just one team that averaged exactly that and that was the Thunder. Compare that to this year, the Nuggets have the highest frequency at 7.8% — that would’ve ranked 13th in 2016.

But when looking at the efficiency, that has improved drastically. The Celtics lead the league with 1.13. 10 teams average at least 1.00. The lowest is the Cavaliers with 0.83, but even that in 2016 would still be 18th.

There was absolutely zero reasons for teams to prioritize such an offense. And looking at individual players:

That applies to them too. Look at the amount of player having at least 3 possessions per game on post-ups have dropped and also their efficiency. It’s basically cut by half, but the efficiency still is getting better. Despite half the frequency of players averaging that many possessions, they still have double the amount of players shooting over 50%.

But going back to the tweets that I’ve been seeing analytics killed it for no reason or there needs to re-emergence of post-ups. I think the answer to that isn’t as simple as yes or no.

To me, the league in general going away from such offense & the huge decline in players taking up so many possessions as a post-up was objectively a very good idea. There shouldn’t ever be a need for any play type or action or particular shot that is that inefficient, especially in 2024(or even in those days too).

This also isn’t an argument against having post-up skills in general. I think that is a completely separate issue that has to do with youth development, philosophies, and many other factors. That’s also a point that I’d agree 100% that it is, in fact, an issue. Every young player needs to develop all skills, regardless of position. A post-up game should be a necessary skill to have in your bag. That is part of the fundamentals to me. But the conversation here is more about post-ups being used at the NBA level with ready-made players, though the former point is the reason why this has happened in the first place.

I don’t think the analytics had something against post-up and players that were primarily back-to-the-basket guys. But that isn’t an efficient offense in any way you put it at a high volume.

This isn’t specific to post-ups. It’s a thing for every other action or shot that would be inefficient. If in a weird hypothetical, every player regresses as a 3pt shooter where the best of the best only shoot 25%, then 3pt shooting would also become inefficient shots that you’d go away from.

Teams started to realize that this wasn’t an effective offensive strategy because why would it be? On average, players shot below 50% on those looks, even though they were closer to the rim. Most of those players shooting that poorly wouldn’t and shouldn’t warrant extra defenders coming to help, so it wouldn’t open up anything else. And I’d say on average, a typical big man isn’t able to make high-level reads to exploit any help that does come.

Combine all of that and there’s less reasons to run post ups at a high volume. Because of all that, there shouldn’t ever be a world where I’d be seeing Jonas Valanciunas in 2024 taking around 5 shots a game shooting even 50%, especially in 2024, when there are better alternative because that’s also an important factor.

What are you taking away to run more post ups? Are you replacing plays that would be shots at the rim? Trips to the line? Shots in the corner? Because those shots generate on average, roughly, 1.20 points per shot. For a post up to do that, someone would have to shoot around 60%, which is unlikely in most cases to do at a high enough volume. So, you’re asking teams to willingly take worse shots because what? Being diverse for the sake of being diverse even if it results in a lot poorer shots?

Now, being diverse is a needed, great thing to have for the offense(that’s kind of why I do actually think some teams should look to use the post more), but that’s only if you’re good at it. Being good at many different things is what would make teams versatile offensively, but the most obvious issue is that players aren’t good at it to warrant it.

That’s the simple fix in bringing back post ups. You, as a player want to post up more? Get better at it. Not only as a scorer, though, you need to be a better passer too.

Teams will use something that is efficient or will generate easy looks elsewhere in other ways. Say hello to Nikola Jokic. The Nuggets can run a lot of post ups with him because a) he will score at will in many ways efficiently and b) it doesn’t always have to end with him scoring. But what big is capable to even score in the mid to high 50% and be at least an above average passer?

That’s the only way that I could see post ups come back because if it the other choice is to bring back your big bigs to take up 3–5 possessions per game on subpar efficiency is hurting the team. There may be sprinkles here and there to get your big a touch, settle in, kill clock, or just throw something different. But until it results in more efficient looks being generated, there shouldn’t be a reason why it needs to go any further than that.

Now, the league is trending in the right way. Teams have begun to be a lot more efficient and have started to use it in the right ways to make them more versatile, and as a result, more dangerous with more weapons. Take the Celtics who have:

• Kristaps Porzingis: 1.30 points per possession, 62.3% eFG on 3.2 poss(19% of his poss)

• Jayson Tatum: 1.09, 52% on 2.5(10%)

• Jaylen Brown: 1.05, 56%, on 2.0(9%)

For comparison, those 3 in 2016 would rank 1st, 3rd, 4th amongst players with at least 2 possessions.

There is now more space for teams to go into post ups. The environment to go back and start using post ups is way more friendly for it. The stars back then such as Dirk Nowitzki or LaMarcus Aldridge would probably thrive even more if they had this much space.

I also feel the shift has gone to more wings or even guards being used in post ups a lot more and I think their passing ability plays a big part. As mentioned earlier, you don’t want to end each post up scoring through it because it’s very likely that the player will only shoot 50–55%, which won’t be ideal. But those players also tend to be better passers than your bigs. So, now teams are able to cook better in a post up, draw more defenses or force longer rotations, and now it’s being run through wings(or bigs that can pass) and now you have the offense flowing, defense in rotations, and you can get even easier shots.

That’s how I see post ups being used properly and not Zach Randolph throwing up 6 baby hooks that go in the worse rate as a typical pull up 2pt. That should never come back to this league.

But the general use of a post up and having those skills, it is needed and this is the perfect time and place to be used more and for young players to look and develop.

Around the Arc!

To finish up, here are some quick thoughts about anything that has been going around the league whether it’s news, scores, highlights, specific plays, posts, articles, or tweets that I found interesting

I saw this tweet:

It’s simply about the most accurate pull up shooters from 3pt on high volume. That got me thinking about pull up 3pt shooting in general and the guards that take more pull up 2s than 3s.

This is one of the things that irks me a lot because why are you doing that, especially if said guard is also good at 3pt shooting off the dribble. If a player is capable of being a 35% or better shooter off the dribble, then if he’s a pull up threat, he shouldn’t have more 2s than 3s.

A pull up 3pt stress the defenses a lot more than a pull up 2pt. That opens up a lot more for the offenses. And one simple reason for that is simply math. A 35.0% 3pt shooter is scoring 1.05 points per shot. For a 2pt shooter to have equivalent points per shot, he’d have to shoot 52.5%.

This year, 30 players took 2 PU 3pt and also shot 35% or better. 19 players that took 3 PU 3pt shot 35% or better. 11 players that took 4 PU 3pt shot 35% or better. Now, looking at 2pt shooting, only 9 players that took just 1 PU 2pt shot 52% or better. 43 players took 2 PU 2pt that also shot 45%.

It is trending that way where guards do prioritise the 3pt shot, but there are still a handful of guards that are stuck in those ways and that does limit their impact.

We also had some unprecedented news! Jalen Brunson took a potential pay-cut for guaranteed money that could be made up in the future and that caused some commotion on my timeline about it.

I don’t see how there can be anything negative about this. He prioritised 100% security right now over a potential extension in the next off-season. Yes, that number does look a lot smaller. He is also losing out on 37.1m total across the next three seasons, which is still pretty significant pay-cut and one that is likely to help the Knicks a lot more.