Is Jordan Bell the Warriors’ center of the future?

Over the past several seasons, the Golden State Warriors have preferred to play the matchups with their centers. Head coach Steve Kerr has been fairly open about this preference, noting that each of the players the team has employed has given them a bit of a different look, allowing the team to trot out speed centers who work as rim-rocking dive men, physical centers who absorb a pounding on the block, athletic centers who ramp up the pressure on defense, and, well, David West.

“We’ve played center by committee ever since I’ve been here,” Kerr told me last season. “We’ve got a lot of different looks with our centers. Different skill sets. Different sizes. Different speeds. It kind of depends on matchups.”

Players as diverse as Andrew Bogut, Festus Ezeli, Zaza Pachulia, JaVale McGee, and Kevon Looney have manned the pivot for Kerr over the years. Kerr has preferred the physicality of first Bogut and then Pachulia in the starting lineup, for the most part; but last season he rotated through different starters a bit more often. Pachulia’s midseason injury necessitated going in a different direction, but Kerr continued to shake things up even when Pachulia returned. In the playoffs, McGee started 12 games, Looney started five, and the Warriors used Draymond Green as the nominal center for the other four.

He will not have quite as many options during the upcoming season — at least not in terms of skill-set diversity. Until DeMarcus Cousins comes back from his torn Achilles, the Warriors have three options at center: Looney, Damian Jones, and Jordan Bell. (It’s obviously possible the Warriors turn to Cousins as their starter anyway once he returns due to his immense talent, but he’s almost surely not going to be with the team beyond next season given his contract situation.)

Jones has played 174 regular-season minutes during his two years in the league, and just eight minutes in the playoffs. He’s a solid rebounder, an excellent finisher around the rim, and a good shot-blocker, but it’s difficult to see Kerr trusting him with too much responsibility given his inexperience, especially considering his seeming lack of additional offensive skills outside the immediate area of the rim.

Looney has taken over a more sizable role with each passing season, and got nearly as much playing time during last season’s playoff run than his first two seasons combined. He’s become a good — if still somewhat flawed — defender, capable of using his lateral mobility to cut off driving lanes in certain situations but struggling when switched onto an elite ball-handler, such as when James Harden repeatedly fried him during last year’s conference finals series. Looney is also a good, and occasionally canny, screener, and he’s very good on the offensive glass — something that is not necessarily true of many other players on the Warriors.

He’s done very well finishing around the basket on a helping of mostly incredibly-easy looks, but he does not have much range outside the paint. His lack of stretch often leads opposing defenses to ignore him, which can occasionally cause problems; but the Warriors turned it against defenses during the playoffs by having Stephen Curry or Klay Thompson throw Looney the ball, then sprint directly at him in order to get an immediate dribble hand-off before the defender who was ignoring Looney could recover out to the shooter. Looney’s almost total inability to make a play for others with the ball in his hands is an important weakness that could prove more problematic during the season: his 71 assists over the past two seasons rank 338th out of the 374 players who have played at least 1,000 minutes during that time. (108 of those 374 players are averaging south of 2 assists per 36 minutes during that time. Looney is one of them.)

All of this is why the idea scenario for the Warriors involves Bell grabbing a firm hold of the starting center gig before Cousins even has a chance to make it back onto the floor. It was Bell who got the first crack at the gig when Pachulia went down a year ago. He looked like he might run away with it for a minute, only to then get injured himself. By the time he returned, Looney and McGee had earned too much of Kerr’s trust to be excised from the rotation entirely.

Unlike Jones, Bell has actually gotten on the floor for extended run during both the regular season and playoffs, earning at least a modicum of Kerr’s trust. Like Looney, he has defensive mobility to burn, which makes him a strong fit in Golden State’s aggressive switch-and-trap defensive system. Bell takes a few more chances than Looney, which has made him a slightly better defensive playmaker, averaging 1.6 steals and 2.5 blocks per 36 minutes. Bell also averaged 3.0 deflections, 1.2 loose-ball recoveries, and 17.2 shot-challenges per 36, each of those figures ranking in the top-20 among centers who played at least 500 minutes last season, per Second Spectrum data on NBA.com. Bell also had by far the best rim-protection numbers on the Warriors last season, with opponents shooting only 51.9 percent from the field when he was within five feet of both the shooter and the basket. That was the third-best mark among 90 players who challenged at least three shots per game.

Bell combines those defensive attributes with strong playmaking instincts on offense as well. You might recall Bell catching a pass from Curry in the corner, then giving it right back to Steph with a between-the-legs drop-off that created a wide-open corner 3:

Bell averaged a fantastic 4.5 assists per 36 minutes as a rookie, and that number does not look all that inflated. He was a very good passer at Oregon, as well. He has a tendency to get a bit too fancy with things on occasion, but so do half the other guys on the Warriors. His turnover issues last season can be chalked up to his being an over-exuberant rookie; there is a school of thought that high-turnover rookies have a lot of room for growth as passers anyway, and considering 31 of his 51 turnovers last season were of the “bad pass” variety, per Basketball-Reference, that seems to check out.

The combined passing skill of Bell and Draymond Green in the frontcourt could cause a whole lot of problems for opposing defenses. It’s been a couple years since they had another frontcourt passer as good as Bell, back when Bogut was the team’s starting center. West was a strong elbow-facilitator but did not have quite the passing diversity Bell appears to have in his arsenal. Add in his athleticism and ability to serve as a pogo-stick type dive man on screen and rolls, and he could very well be the most well-rounded center option this version of the team has had, if he reaches his potential. His season-long per 36 minutes averages of 11.7 points, 9.2 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 1.6 steals, and 2.5 blocks practically scream “Draymond 2.0,” after all.

Of course, Draymond is one of a kind, and the chances of Bell actually becoming Draymond 2.0 have to be described as quite low, even if the outlines of a similar skill set are present. Even if he does not reach that level, however, Bell can still be quite a useful player. It’s all about reining in his worst impulses without taking away what makes him such a unique player.

Bell clearly frustrated Kerr at times last season with his penchant for gambling, fouling issues, and bouts with over-aggressiveness. The gambles are something he can get away with at times due to the sheer talent of his teammates, but doing it too often throws a kink in the finely-tuned machine that’s been running along smoothly for the past four years. The fouling issue is, well, an issue that needs to be rectified. If you can’t stay on the floor, you can’t contribute. And trying to make the greatest play possible every trip down the floor is just not necessary when you have the type of talented teammates Bell has.

But the instincts that result in Bell’s weaknesses are also part of what could make him a special player. Gambling on defense can result in steals and blocks, and easy points going the other way. Fouls are often the result of physicality and attempts to alter the trajectory of shots near the rim. And ramping up defensive pressure forces turnovers, while adventurous passing can create open looks where one might not have thought they would exist.

The key is finding the right balance. If Bell can just do that, he becomes a much more valuable player. If he can do it while not losing any ground in other areas, he becomes a strong starting option. And if he can do it while adding even more skill, look out. He took only 52 shots outside the restricted area last season, for example, and while he did well on those attempts (including 10 of 21 shooting from mid-range), it’s tough to trust such a small sample size. Being able to consistently hit from 15 to 18 feet out would necessitate his being guarded outside the paint, creating even more problems for opposing defenses. Extending his range out to the 3-point line is likely too much to ask for next season (he was 0 of 4 from deep last year) but he showed during summer league that it’s not out of the realm of possibility he can get to that range at some point.

The question is whether Bell can prove himself valuable enough in other areas before that time comes, that the Warriors consider him an essential part of their future and decide they need to do what it takes to keep him around long term. They’ve been cycling through centers for a while there is merit in the idea that they can just keep doing that moving forward and not miss a beat. They found Bell in the second round, after all. Looney was a late first-rounder and guys like McGee and West were veteran’s minimum signings. It’s not difficult to envision veteran centers lining up for the chance to compete for a ring over the next few seasons.

But Bell is still just 23 years old, and if they re-sign him when his contract expires after next season they’ll likely be locking in the entirety of his prime. That’s something they haven’t had the chance to do yet with this core group of players. Signing Kevin Durant necessitated sending Bogut packing. And they’ve gone with the rotation since that point. The Warriors obviously have other players who will take priority over Bell, and that could make him gettable on the market. But if he can make the strides this season that his skill set suggests are possible, then he might just be too good to let walk.

Illustrations for this article were provided by Elliot Gerard. Check out the rest of the Stepmoji series here.