The most interesting players in the NBA’s Pacific Division

With the 2019-20 NBA season less than a month away, we’re exploring the most interesting players for each team in the Pacific Division.

We’re now less than a month away from the start of the 2019-20 NBA season. Coming off one of the most interesting offseasons in recent memory, it feels like an appropriate time to dig into the situations surrounding some of the most interesting players in the league.

With that in mind, over the next few days, we’re going division by division and spotlighting the most interesting player on each team. Note that some teams will have more than one player if the situations are similar enough, but they’ll all get their appropriate shine.

We’ve covered the Atlantic, Central, and Southeast divisions, and below we continue on with the Pacific.

D’Angelo Russell, Golden State Warriors

We know what we’re getting from Stephen Curry. Assuming he reports to camp in shape instead of deciding that he can just lose 25 pounds in March again, we largely know what we’re getting from Draymond Green. With Klay Thompson out for much of the season and with the drop-off from the two remaining stars to the rest of the rotation now larger than ever, the Warriors are going to need a lot from D’Angelo Russell.

Lucky for them, he’s in about as good a position to succeed as possible. Just about anybody that plays with Curry and Green tends to be gifted a ton of open looks from the perimeter. Russell should be able to capitalize by knocking down more catch-and-shoots than he’s ever been fed before; and he should also be free to blow past on-the-move defenders who have had to change direction two or three times in a matter of seconds thanks to the exploits of Golden State’s primary stars.

Russell should also be able to help ease the ball-handling burden on those two players, who have had to shoulder almost all of the playmaking responsibility for the majority of this championship era. His ability to work as the primary ball-handler allows Curry to spend his requisite time off the ball, leveraging his gravity to create openings for the role players who desperately need space in order to find their offense. Russell’s assist rate has been spiking with each passing season, and while it should tick down a bit this year due to sharing the floor with playmakers who are more talented than he is, but he should slide neatly into a CJ McCollum-esque role as Curry’s backcourt partner and primary backup.

The Warriors may not want to break up the Curry-Green partnership and that will likely leave Russell as the guy playing in bench-heavy units. That makes it easier for him to get his scoring opportunities, but given the talent level of some of the Warriors’ ancillary players, he may find it difficult to buoy the offense on his own. The Warriors have historically crashed on offense when Curry hits the bench. Any help Russell can provide in those minutes would be huge.

Landry Shamet and Ivica Zubac, LA Clippers

Both Landry Shamet and Ivica Zubac were major contributors to the post-deadline version of the Clippers that somewhat surprisingly maintained playoff positioning and put a mild scare into the Warriors in the first round of the postseason. Assuming the Clippers plan on bringing both Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell off the bench again, these two will likely remain in the starting lineup alongside Patrick Beverley and the newly-acquired star duo of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

Shamet is a picture-perfect role player for a star-laden team, and he showed that last season in both Philly and Los Angeles. His shooting will be key to maintaining proper spacing; but perhaps more importantly, he’s going to have to step up his defense. He was a pretty strong negative force on that end last season, and while the Clippers should be able to cover him at times, opponents will be looking to target him in order to avoid going directly at Beverley, Leonard or George.

Zubac posted strong rim-protection numbers last season, but he looked completely lost during the Clippers’ first-round loss to Golden State. It got to the point that Doc Rivers could barely justify keeping him on the floor. As one of the primary back-line stoppers on a team that is expecting to make a run at the Finals, he’s got to be more consistent in his timing, rotations and communication. That’s a tall task for such a young player — especially one without much experience as a regular starter.

How this duo handles the increase in pressure and responsibility on the less glamorous side of the floor will be fascinating to watch. If they don’t seem up to the job, it may motivate the Clippers to either make a trade or decide that they need to get Harrell, Moe Harkless or JaMychal Green into the starting lineup.

All of the non-LeBron and Davis Guys, Los Angeles Lakers

LeBron James and Anthony Davis are good enough to ensure the Lakers get to the playoffs this time around, provided they both stay healthy. But what they get from everybody else will determine if they can actually do real damage there.

Ricky Rubio and Dario Saric, Phoenix Suns

Phoenix pulled off the strangest series of moves of the offseason in order to land these guys, apparently with the idea that they will help Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton hit the next level and thus help the Suns achieve something resembling “competent NBA team” status. Count me among the skeptics.

Ricky Rubio is surely an upgrade over the cast of characters the Suns had playing point guard last season; but he’s yet to become the transformational offensive force many expected him to be when he was still a floppy-haired prospect in Spain. Rubio has been a greater contributor to his team’s defense than offense for a while now, and that fact was driven home by his expectedly sharp drop-off in outside shooting after a blip of nailing 35 percent of his 3s the year before. There were a couple seasons where the Timberwolves were significantly better offensively with Rubio on the floor than off, but those seasons are more than exception than the rule. His effect has been relatively muted for the majority of his career.

Rubio is still among the better guards in the league at getting his hands on passes; but after leading the league in steal rate in three of his first five seasons, he has been merely average in that area over the past three years. That’ll happen as you get into your late-20s anyway, but especially when you’ve suffered several injuries during the course of your career. And anyway, the degree of impact a point guard can have on a team’s defense is relatively limited, so there probably should not have been any expectation that he’d boost the Suns’ chances of attaining competence on defense.

Dario Saric was brought in as part of the series of moves where the Suns sent T.J. Warren packing, perhaps because they want to pay an even larger contract to a player who has probably around the same amount of impact on his team’s ability to win. Or something. I don’t know. The less thought we put into moves the Suns make, the better. Anyway, Dario is in a contract year and the Suns moved down five spots in the draft to take him on, so they’re presumably going to want to keep him. Have fun.

Marvin Bagley III, Sacramento Kings

Two years ago, De’Aaron Fox was one of the worst rotation players in the league. But he showed a lot of flashes that presaged the jump he made last season, one that saw him become one of the league’s best young point guards. Fox’s speed and vision stood out even while he was making mistakes as a rookie, and his willingness to take shots that didn’t go down foreshadowed the shooting improvement we saw from him last year. Coupled with an improved ability to read defenses and more feistiness of his own when defending, it took Fox up several levels.

Marvin Bagley’s rookie season was considerably better than Fox’s. He made the All-Rookie First Team, averaging 14.9 points and 7.6 rebounds per game while playing just 25.3 minutes per game and almost exclusively coming off the bench. He showed deft touch around the rim, decent range on his jumper, and the ability to make plays from the elbows and the block. He stepped into the league and immediately held his own on the glass on both ends of the floor, and showed an ability to generate both easy baskets and free throws. He’s also extremely agile, and his willingness to run the floor makes him a strong fit for a team led by Fox.

It’s difficult to see Bagley taking quite as big a Year 2 leap as Fox did, if only because that would mean he suddenly became something like a 20-10 guy, and that’s just extremely rare anywhere in the league these days. But slight improvements are somewhere between possible and probable, and if he makes them in the right areas, that could go a long way toward not just helping the Kings in their presumptive playoff push, but building their foundation for the future.

Bagley was willing to let it fly from deep on occasion last season, but converted only 31 percent of the time. If he gets into the mid-30s, he has to be respected out there, and that frees things up for him to make his way toward the rim. If he can begin seeing passing lanes while he’s on the move instead of just when he’s stationary, that makes his teammates live threats, which means a boost for the Kings’ lagging half-court offense. Improving his feel for help defense means he can spend more time at center, and the Kings can get more athletic and switchy defenders on the floor in front of him, and load the floor with shooting as well.

These are not easy improvements to make. It takes time for young players to master the intricacies of defense and to see multiple layers of help on the other end. Becoming an average or better 3-point shooter when your range to this point has extended out to 20 feet at best is a process, not something that just happens. But Bagley exceeded reasonable expectations as a rookie. If he can do it again, the Kings become much more interesting.