The Next Generation: Zach LaVine

Every season the draft brings a fresh infusion of talent to the NBA. In theory this is an even, steady process. In practice, hindsight and historical perspective show that there are borders and boundaries — talent doesn’t just arrive in the NBA, it arrives in generational waves. Sometimes we can’t see these aesthetic dividing lines for decades, sometimes you simply can’t miss them.

The present day NBA appears to be on the cusp of welcoming a remarkable new generation to its forefront — players who are not just incredible but incredibly unique. Players who will not just excel but transform the roles and responsibilities of basketball players as we understand them. Over the course of this week, The Step Back will be examining many of the players who could figure prominently in The Next Generation. Not every player we turn our attention to is destined to be a star, but all could play a role in defining the future of the NBA. Read the whole series here.

The Next Generation: Zach LaVine

Zach LaVine burst onto the scene as a high-flying dunker who forecasted as an old-school shooting guard who could get buckets and do very little else. However, he’s developed into an above-average secondary ball-handler and somebody on whom the Timberwolves can rely to make plays for himself and others. LaVine has also improved his shooting every year of his career while maintaining a low-20s usage rate as he makes smarter decisions about his shot selection. His defense still hasn’t quite come around, even with the addition of Tom Thibodeau in the offseason, but his offensive acumen keeps him on the floor for Minnesota.

In the first two years of his career, LaVine was given a lengthy leash to play in the pick-and-roll by Flip Saunders and Sam Mitchell, much to the chagrin of Timberwolves fans, who saw those possessions as complete throwaways. For the most part, they were; Minnesota scored just 0.807 points per possession on LaVine pick-and-rolls in his rookie season and 0.853 points per possession in 2015-16, aided by the arrival of Karl-Anthony Towns.

However, the team’s patience has paid off; LaVine has taken another leap in his third season, as the Wolves scored 0.907 points per possession on his pick-and-rolls before his injury in early February, good for the 49^th percentile across the league. He’s still in the bottom half, but many of the players above him are point guards, not wings who also are terrors in transition and shooting the lights out from beyond the arc. A few wings who are close in pick-and-roll rankings this year are Evan Fournier, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Oladipo, Wesley Matthews and James Johnson. Of that list, only Matthews gives his team a similar level of shot-making from beyond the arc as LaVine. It may have been ugly early on, but LaVine has continuously improved his game and now sports an offensive profile commensurate with some of the better wings in the league.

Read More: Giannis Antetokounmpo is a point guard from the future

His improvement in the pick-and-roll game has been immense for the Timberwolves, but his most important skill is his ability to spread the floor in a Minnesota offense which tends to get congested when Ricky Rubio, Andrew Wiggins and Gorgui Dieng are all on the floor together. LaVine knocks down catch-and-shoot spot up jumpers with regularity, scoring 1.304 points per possession, better than 86 percent of the NBA. The Wolves don’t just stick him in the corner to make shots either, they’ll run a few plays per game designed solely to get him an open 3-pointer, usually on the move, and he knocks them down.

The Timberwolves run plays for LaVine in every situation, whether it’s in the course of their normal half-court offense or on sideline or baseline out-of-bounds plays. The most basic set they run for him is a screen-the-screener action which relies on the defense paying attention to Towns in the post before realizing he’s just the decoy as LaVine’s 3-pointer drops through the net.

In the halfcourt, Rubio will dribble toward one side of the floor as LaVine sets a screen for Towns to come to the block on that side. Rubio can look for Towns if he’s open, but more often than not, the defense will react to Towns and LaVine sneaks out behind Dieng’s screen to the top of the key for a wide open jumper. This same principle works when they run it on the baseline; the defense collapses in on Towns and leaves LaVine open. Take another look at the second play in the clip above and watch Omer Asik, who is guarding Dieng — as LaVine sets the screen for Towns, he sinks back a half-step into the paint, naturally reacting to the most potent threat. Asik isn’t the quickest defender in the world, so even just a half step backward allows LaVine to make the open jumper as he curls around Dieng.

Another play Thibodeau likes to run for LaVine is a HORNS set finishing with him racing through an elevator screen toward the top of the key:

LaVine begins this play in the corner and comes up toward the top of the key after the point guard enters the ball into the elbow on LaVine’s side of the floor. It looks as though LaVine is getting a standard down screen from the point guard, but he curls around it and sets a screen himself for the point guard to pop to the wing. LaVine then cuts through toward the other side of the floor, lulling his defender into a false sense of security thinking his portion of the play is complete. Once LaVine gets under the basket, however, he sprints toward the top of the key, cutting between the two big men at the elbows, who close the elevator doors behind him, leaving his defender on the wrong floor and leaving LaVine wide open for 3.

LaVine has graduated past being a standstill shooter, which opens up the Timberwolves’ playbook for all sorts of fun stuff usually run by guys like Klay Thompson, J.J. Redick and Kyle Korver. LaVine isn’t quite on their level as a shooter, but Minnesota will give him one or two opportunities each game to show he can knock down these difficult shots.

LaVine’s other calling card is getting out in the open floor and showing off his otherworldly athleticism that boosted him to back-to-back Dunk Contest victories. Once he gets up to full speed, there’s nobody in the league who can stay with him to stop him from rising up and throwing down. Even a defender does get in front of him, he will just jump over him and make a poster for NBA.com’s top play of the night.

LaVine leaks out in transition on almost every opportunity, mostly eschewing any responsibility on the glass to do so. His 14.3 percent contested rebound percentage ranks 118th out of 126 guards who have played at least 40 games this season, but the Timberwolves aren’t any worse on the glass while he’s out there versus when he sits. Minnesota’s starting unit, when LaVine is healthy, plays two bigs in Dieng and Towns, so it’s not as imperative he crash down on the defensive glass, which opens up the Wolves’ transition game.

For all of LaVine’s offensive gifts, he’s almost just as much of a negative on the defensive end. Despite his slender build, he doesn’t have the same ability as other guys his size to slither through screens. His raw athleticism compensates for his lack of focus in certain situations; he’ll stand straight up and use that athleticism to recover, but if he would consistently be in a crouch, he could absolutely smother opposing guards. Other times, he has the opposite problem; he’ll get so focused on stopping an initial action he will jump too far out of position and allow his guy to cut the other direction.

On top of sometimes losing his man around the perimeter, he has a propensity to leave the floor on pump fakes and make other little mistakes. Often he closes out to a guy’s weak side, allowing him to drive with his strong hand or does not break down into a defensive stance early enough and throwing a last-ditch wraparound steal attempt as his guy flies by him.

When a team has multiple quality ball handlers in the backcourt, they go at LaVine with impunity, putting him in pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll to take advantage of his weaknesses. In late January, the Phoenix Suns used Devin Booker to go at LaVine as many times as they could down the stretch and came within a Wiggins’ jumper of beating the Wolves.

To LaVine’s credit, he’s a solid late-game isolation defender. When he’s locked in, all his athleticism comes out in full force:

With one minute left in a two-point game, Wade goes to work on the right side of the floor, but LaVine sticks with him at every turn and forces a terrible contested 3. Forty seconds later, with the Wolves leading by four, LaVine blocked Wade at the rim to ice the game for Minnesota.

If he can put more strings of plays together like he did at the end of the Bulls game, then he’ll truly elevate himself to the top tier of the league as he gets into his prime. He won’t have the opportunity to add anything specific to his game this summer as he recovers from tearing his ACL, and the fear of a significant knee injury zapping some of LaVine’s athleticism is real.

At his level, a small step backward in athleticism could have a major impact on his game, especially on those massive transition dunks. If he’s able to come back to 100 percent of the Zach LaVine we saw this year, he might find himself quickly rising up the free agency rankings in the summer of 2018, when his rookie contract expires.