Nylon Calculus: What Nikola Mirotic brings to the Pelicans

After the devastating, season-ending injury suffered by DeMarcus Cousins, the New Orleans Pelicans found themselves with a massive frontcourt void amid a competitive playoff hunt. They took a significant step toward filling it yesterday. In exchange for Omer Asik, Tony Allen, Jameer Nelson and a 2018 protected first-round pick, they acquired Chicago Bulls forward Nikola Mirotic and a second-round pick.

This trade doesn’t address every need that Cousins’s absence has created. After all, the All-Star center is among the league leaders in minutes, rebounds (especially on the defensive end) and usage rate while compiling 7 assists per 100 possessions, one of the highest averages for a player of his size this season. Mirotic can’t absorb such a load, but he can backfill a critical Cousins contribution as the franchise pursues another big man like Greg Monroe.

In the following chart, we get a snapshot of a player’s offensive production, broken down by play-type. The plots are ordered from highest to lowest frequency, so the first panel shows the foremost way that an individual attempts to score. As we can see, spot-up shots make up the top play type for Cousins.

Cousins is involved in spot-up action about 20 percent of the time. That amounts to a little over 5 possessions per game, which leads the NBA alongside shooters like Robert Covington and Kyle Kuzma. Although Cousins produces just 1 point per possession, the volume that he, E’Twaun Moore, Darius Miller and Jrue Holiday provide is enough to thrust the Pelicans toward the top of the league in frequency.

Cousins’s spot-ups reflect a multi-year trend toward increased 3-point shooting. This season, over a third of his shots are behind the arc, and he paces the Pelicans with 6 attempts a game. He makes just 35 percent of them, but the spacing that he generates (especially when he shares the floor with Anthony Davis) presents issues for opposing defenses.

This is where the Bulls trade comes in. Mirotic currently ranks among the most productive spot-up shooters leaguewide, scoring roughly 1.4 points per possession on over 25 percent frequency.

Granted, the sample size is small (under 100 total possessions in 25 games). But, even if we look at all of the publicly available play-type data, Mirotic’s production still looks favorable. Over the past three seasons, which encompasses 701 possessions as of this writing, he’s averaged 1.10 points per possession — a mark that places him in the top quartile among shooters with at least 400 spot-ups.

Of course, 3-point shooting is the main driver of Mirotic’s efficiency here. More than half of his shots have come from downtown, and he’s hit 42 percent of them thus far this season. His three-year time horizon is similarly impressive. On close to 900 attempts, he’s made 38 percent of his 3-pointers — a top-15 rate among high-volume forwards, right around what Kevin Love has yielded.

Altogether, Mirotic’s 3-point shooting has a significant impact. According to the “Stretch” metric developed by fellow Nylon Calculus contributor Jacob Goldstein, his performances are above the 90th percentile. This estimate takes into account the 3-pointers that he’s making relative to the average player of similar size, position and role. It’s one reason why his team’s offensive rating has been consistently better when he’s on the court, as compared to when he’s on the bench, and why his offensive Real Plus-Minus (both in the single-season and the multi-season forms) is in the positive.

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There are certainly limitations to Mirotic’s game. Still, in the one action where Cousins’s activity has been high, Mirotic has a chance to make a dent. Hopefully, the Pelicans can find other solutions where lingering issues remain.