Freelance Friday: Livin’ Lavine-a Loca

Freelance Friday is a semi-regular series where we solicit readers to submit their own analysis in an effort to encourage people to get their analytics on. This week’s submission comes from Joseph Gill. Joseph is a native of Minnesota who used to play ball, now just obsesses over it. You can find him on Twitter or at Canis Hoopus. His submission looks at how much more likely Zach LaVine is to succeed in any role other than as a point guard.

Zach LaVine’s on-again, off-again move to the starting shooting guard in Minnesota might have him poised to break out sooner than many expect. LaVine certainly had one of the more turbulent season of any rookie in the NBA last year. The peaks were fantastic: he finished 5th among rookies in PPG, 2nd in APG, and his 37-point game against Golden State was the rookie-high. But, the lows were deep, and often prolonged. His assist-to-turnover ratio was an abysmal 1.43, he looked utterly lost on defense at almost all times, and finished dead last in the league in WAR and 3rd from the bottom in NetRtg among qualified players. 

Many of LaVine’s weren’t completely of his own making. It wasn’t his fault the Wolves tried converting him from a shooting guard to a point guard. Despite receiving 3 DNP-CD’s in the first 4 games of the year, after starter Ricky Rubio went down in the 5th game of the season, it wasn’t long before Zach was playing 30 minutes a night. It also wasn’t his fault the Timberwolves were ravaged by injuries.

To discuss LaVine’s numbers in a vacuum would be misleading. While advanced statistics try to account for different team situations and normalize all players’ outputs, that task becomes almost impossible on outlier teams like the Timberwolves. Out of the opening night starters, only fellow rookie Andrew Wiggins was able to play more than 50 games for the Wolves. Instead of being able to rely on vets Kevin Martin, NIkola Pekovic, or Thad Young for scoring, or Rubio to create good looks for others, the Wolves were left with a slew of role players and young guys for much of the year.  Playing big minutes alongside non-creators such as Chase Budinger, Gorgui Dieng, and Anthony Bennett, left LaVine the responsibility shoulder a massive portion of the scoring and creating burden, well before he was ready to do so.

It’s easy to explain why LaVine’s defensive metrics are so awful: He played on the worst defensive team in the league last year, playing in front of many of the worst rim protectors in the league with Thad Young (61.2% FG% allowed at the rim),Gorgui Dieng (55.7%), Nikola Pekovic (56.7%) and Justin Hamilton (57.3%) “patrolling” the paint for much of the season. While LaVine’s own defense wasn’t blameless, a good defensive center or power forward can help erase guards’ mistakes. Further LaVine wasn’t only playing point guard for the first time, he was guarding point guards for the first time, adding additional complications.

Offensively a closer look at Lavine’s on/off splits us revealing. First, with ROY Andrew Wiggins:

When LaVine shared the floor with Wiggins last year, LaVine took a backseat and slid into a more natural role of complementary scorer. This change allowed him to  spot up for more catch-and-shoot jumpers, and take fewer pull-ups. Despite his overall rocky efficiency numbers, LaVine was surprisingly good in catch-and-shoot situations. His eFG% of 58.1% ranked him in the 84.4th percentile for all NBA players who played at least 50 games and took one spot-up jumper a game, and was 2nd among rookies last season. Sadly as effective as he was in catch-and-shoot situations, he was equally bad off the dribble. His pull-up jumper eFG% of 35.0% was in the 22.3th percentile. Explosive athletes who can also shoot from the outside have great value, and LaVine has the early look of one. That’s a tough role to fill when for much of the year, the closest thing to a distributor that he played with were Wiggins and Thad Young.

Worse yet, he was completely unable to cash in on playing with Rubio, who provided a big lift to other Timberwolves wing scorers:

However, LaVine was able to play with a semblance of an actual point guard for some time during the end of the season in Lorenzo Brown. When Brown ran the point, the Wolves, and Zach, were both noticeably better:

When LaVine was drafted with the 13th pick, he came with the knowledge that he was very raw and likely a multi-year project. When he was baptised by fire in the absence of Rubio, he played like it too. It took until around January until he showing signs of life, and March until he really started taking off. From March 15th onward, LaVine put up averages of 18.7/4.9/5.3 on 43.6/39.0/85.9 splits. This pop coincided exactly with the day that Brown entered the Wolves regular rotation, and 9 of those 18 games came against playoff teams (Brown would play over 80% of his minutes on the Wolves last season during this stretch of games).

With LaVine taking his place alongside Rubio as the Wolves starting shooting guard, he falls into a great situation for a still developing project. Veterans Andre Miller and rookie Tyus Jones are also pass first point guards who will be looking to hit LaVine with ready-made shots from the perimeter and in transition. With Karl Anthony-Towns and a healthy Kevin garnett looking to make an impact in rim protection, LaVine’s defensive numbers will also improve. It’s all but assured that Zach LaVine will not have a repeat of his early-season struggles last year, because by moving him to shooting guard and off the ball, the Timberwolves are making a concerted effort to play towards his strengths, and not his weaknesses.