The Next Generation: Brandon Ingram

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: Brandon Ingram

Whatever he is and will ultimately become as a basketball player, I think we can all agree that Brandon Ingram is not Kevin Durant. Both because those one-to-one pre-draft comparisons are fundamentally and stupidly oversimplified and because no player’s basketball fingerprint is a match for any others.

Durant and Ingram were repeatedly linked pre-draft, primarily because of the least useful of all scouting criteria — aesthetics. These two long skinny dudes moved in similar ways, had sexy jump shots, and scored a bunch of points. There were some overlapping arches and whorls in each player’s functional application of basketball skills, for sure, but if Ingram had been two inches shorter or a dopey looking white guy, no one would have been comparing him to Durant.

We are nearing the end of a profoundly bad rookie season for Ingram. Most rookies are ineffective but he has been especially so, albeit in a quiet, simmering sort of way. His Box Plus-Minus, a box score based estimate of a player’s net impact per 100 possessions, currently stands at -4.5 — the eighth-worst mark of the 3-point era by a rookie to play at least 1800 minutes.

Read More: Next Generation — Anthony Davis’ skill set has come full circle

In an exceedingly weird and disappointing season for rookies, very little national attention has been paid to Ingram’s struggles. He has played a ton of minutes for the Lakers, nearly 200 more minutes than any other rookie, but there has been precious little hand-wringing about the struggles of the No. 2 overall pick. I would imagine that’s because, as ugly as the numbers have been, it’s mostly about one number — his shooting percentage.

Through 64 games, Ingram is shooting 37.7 percent from the field and 30.1 percent on 3-pointers. Those are frighteningly bad percentages for someone who was billed as one of the best shooters in this rookie class. They also seem so terrible, given his aesthetics and previous track record, that they almost have to get better. I mean, there is not way he’s really this bad a shooter, right? There’s no way last season’s 41.0 percent on 195 3-point attempts at Duke was the fluke?

Those shooting percentages stick out even more when you hold Ingram up against the rookie season of Durant — who was also bad as a rookie but more in the range of expectation with a BPM of -1.4. Sift through several statistical characteristics and Durant and Ingram are almost indistinguishable — free throw rate, assist percentage, rebound rate, turnover percentage. Durant generated  a few more blocks and steals, took a lot more shots and a lot fewer 3-pointers. He also made a lot more shots — a 51.9 true shooting percentage compared to Ingram’s 45.9.

For those who choose to die on the hill of the Ingram-Durant comparison, the perceived unreliability of his shooting percentages must provide some solace. To those poor souls, I would argue that the disconnect that has manifested in this aesthetic comparison is actually the most fascinating thing about Ingram and his potential.

Durant began his career, as No. 1 picks often do, on a very bad team. He brought with him elite scoring potential and the Seattle SuperSonics leaned into it desperately. That roster was stacked with low-usage role players like Nick Collison, Earl Watson and Kurt Thomas and that environment shaped the early part of Durant’s development. There wasn’t much of an offensive framework so Durant became the framework.

Over the past few seasons, we have seen Durant really evolve out of that primary scoring role. As Russell Westbrook blossomed, Durant fleshed out his offensive tool box with secondary skills. Last season, he took a step forward defensively on that has become a giant leap this year. He is often overlooked in the discussion of two-way wings but Durant is one of just six small forwards this season with a Real Plus-Minus of +1.00 or greater on both sides of the ball — LeBron James, Trevor Ariza, Otto Porter, Jimmy Butler and Giannis Antetokounmpo are the other five.

The potential to become this Kevin Durant is far more interesting than how much a young Ingram looked like a young Durant. Compare rookies from the past five seasons to Ingram’s thresholds in block percentage, defensive rebound percentage, turnover percentage, and assist percentage and you get Karl-Anthony Towns, Nikola Jokic, and Michael Kidd-Gilchist. (Also Ryan Kelly, so
¯\_(ツ)_/¯). The point is, for whatever was assumed about Ingram’s developmental path, he looks far more ready to leap into the role of norm-bending swiss army knife than he does of offensive focal point. Some of that is the circumstance of the Lakers this year, and the presence of ball-handlers/dominators like Lou Williams, D’Angelo Russell, Nick Young, and Julius Randle. But maybe whatever captured our imaginations in those Durant-Ingram comparisons was not what we thought it was.

In a classic essay on This American Life, John Hodgman explored the idea of flight and invisibility and what a hypothetical choice between those two super powers revealed about a person’s psyche. In the end, Hodgman transposed an inward and outward dichotomy — flight is for the confident and the secure, invisibility is for those who prefer to be hidden and private — but that the real issue was more tangled.

"In the end, it’s not a question of what kind of person flies and what kind of person fades. We all do both. Perhaps that’s why, when I put the choice to myself, I’m hopelessly, completely stuck. At the heart of this decision, the question I really don’t want to face, is this. Who do you want to be, the person you hope to be, or the person you fear you actually are? Don’t rush into it. Think it over. Which would you choose?"

Ingram has athletic super powers at his disposal. He’s been clumsy this year, alternately indecisive and overly reckless, but we haven’t seen anything that precludes the idea of him becoming an enormously impactful player. Getting that jumper to start falling, whether by physical or psychological tweaking, or simply waiting for mean regression to rear its welcome head, has to be priority number one. But this season, and the context of the Lakers, also seems to present Ingram with an enormous choice about what type of player he would like to be.

The Durant comparison was a lazy shorthand at the time of the draft but it has become a miraculously apt template for thinking about Brandon Ingram and his future. What super powers does he choose to develop and pursue? Does he need to fly, to see and be seen? Or does he have the resolute confidence and trust to fade into the background, to become a complement?

Maybe a bit of both?