Catch some of this Big Dwight Powell Energy

When Dwight Powell shoots most of his shots at the rim, he’s a pretty good player. When he doesn’t, he’s pretty mediocre. It sounds simple, but in a way it’s its simplicity that’s so remarkable. For Dwight Powell, it’s that simple. That’s how simple it is! That!

I first noticed this a year or two ago when doing a deep dive into why Powell, a lightly-regarded throw-in for Dallas in the Rajon Rondo trade suddenly looked like a very valuable offensive rotation piece. At the time, despite the fact that Powell was 23 years old, research was all most of us had. Drafted in the second round of the 2014 Draft by Charlotte, traded to Cleveland a few months later, traded to Boston two months later, and to Dallas a fourth time — seven months since he’d been drafted — he’d been in a total of five NBA games and shot a total of five shots. Four of which he made!

But for Dallas, at least initially, he failed to make a splash. He shot 43.5 percent from the floor over the rest of 2014-15, and got it up only to 49.3 percent in 2015-16. Not bad for most players, but not great for a big man who doesn’t do much else. In 2016-17 it was 51.5 percent. Not too bad! And then last year, 2017-18, he shot nearly 60 percent from the floor. Now, I’m not going to do any research or make any kind of effort, but I think you’ll agree — that kind of improvement is totally unprecedented.

But what was it that Mr. Powell was doing differently? I looked into it as assiduously as I could, by pulling up Basketball-Reference and making computer noises with my mouth (beeps and boops, mostly). In 2015-16, when he was a sub-50 percent shooter, and 2016-17 when he’d just inched over the 50s horizon, he shoot roughly between 44 and 47 percent of his shots from within three feet of the basket, 10 percent from 3-10 feet, and a whopping 35 percent and 40 percent from beyond 16 feet. In 2017-18, when he suddenly became a 60 percent scorer, he turned that frown upside down by turning his game upside down. He shot 55 percent of his shots within three feet and a total of 70 percent within 10, while shooting only about 27 percent from beyond 16. His mid-range game especially decreased, dropping from 25 percent to 10 percent. More or less. That was good, and he was good. We all felt good.

This year, in 2018-19, Dwight Powell for some reason decided to have his whole career in one season. In October he shot 71 percent. Hooray! In November, it was 56 percent. We’ll take it! Then, in December, it was 48.8 percent. Hmmm, not so good. What happened? Well, you guessed it. It’s true, he’s gone from averaging 82 percent of his shots at the rim in October — and 87 percent in November — to 71 percent in December, but you would take that, would you not? Meanwhile, his shots from 3-10 feet out are way up (11 percent in December compared to 4 percent in November), with increasingly poor results, and he went from shooting seven 3-pointers in October (canning 14.3 percent), to shooting 18 3-pointers in November (22.2 percent), to 23 three-pointers (13 percent) in December.

I bring this up only because I’m in awe. In many respects, Dwight Powell is the most powerful man in the universe. By virtue of his own choices, he could become one of the most efficient scorers in the NBA, or choose not to be, as he pleases. Most of us just have that second choice.  To be literally really good, literally whenever you don’t shoot from more than three feet away, to enjoy that success, then to turn your back on it — that, my friend, is Big Dwight Energy.