Deconstructed is an irregular column series that takes a player apart, examining the base elements that make them what they are. Check out the entire project at A Unified Theory of Basketball.
The first time I ever saw Paolo Banchero, it was in this highlight mix. As high school hype tapes go, this one is fairly benign — no thumping hip-hop, just the natural sounds of a half-empty gym as background for the basketball. The passes are crisp, the dunks thunderous, the jumpers silky smooth. But the most lasting impression is of his overwhelming size and strength. Banchero is indisputably skilled, but he also looks like a varsity high schooler playing against sixth-graders.
First impressions have a way of locking in quickly, and that's where I've always started with Banchero — the skills of a wing, in the body of a traditional power forward and all applied with overwhelming brute force. Lamar Odom ... but if he had loved the weight room and was constantly angry about life, the universe and everything.
It shouldn't really be a surprise that Banchero doesn't look quite as big or overwhelming against NBA athletes. But, in watching him pull-up, slide past contact or drift behind the 3-point line, I can't help but feel Banchero is missing an essential part of his basketball id.
Paolo Banchero could play like a Greek God
Every individual matchup is a problem to be solved, and every player has different tools at their disposable.
You're dribbling the ball up court against a moderately passive, retreating defense. A high screen from a teammate generates a switch and suddenly the problem becomes a slightly bigger, slower defender, hesitant to overcommit, with a pocket of space in front of you and driving lanes to both sides.
Do you take the space he's offering and use your shooting touch for a feathery jumper from the top of the key? Do you try to leverage a quickness advantage and blow-by to your right hand? Try to lull him to sleep with a crossover or two, use your advanced handle and a change of speed to lose him completely by going left? Maybe slow-play the advantage altogether, wait to suck in an extra defender and kick it to an open teammate in the corner? Or maybe just treat him like the traffic cone he is and power through his chest for a two-handed dunk?
Let's see what happens when we go with option No. 5.
I think we can all agree that was the right decision.
But far too often, Banchero seems to find himself lost in complexity, drifting through the first four options, and the myriad other possibilities afforded by his considerable skill set. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But when the only tool you have is a DeWalt 20V MAX XR Cordless Brushless 3-Speed Oscillating Multi Tool with 32 different blades and attachments, you can kind of lose track of what it is you're trying to accomplish.
It's a testament to just how good Banchero is that, despite often eschewing the simplest option, he still averaged 25.9 points per game on a 55.1 true shooting percentage last season. He took nearly twice as many pull-up jumpers as shots off drives, despite not being an elite jump shooter, and, again, managed reasonably efficient high-volume scoring.
For years, there was endless hand-wringing about Giannis Antetokounmpo's 3-point shooting — how he could improve, how good was good enough, the ways in which it limited him and his team. All that conversation is over; not because he became a shooter, and not because his poor shooting became the definitive barrier for him and the Bucks. The rest of the league tried to build a wall in front of him, and he still won a title by playing bully ball and blasting his way through it.
No one worries about Giannis' jumper anymore, it's accepted that he is what he is at this point — a player who solves problems exactly the opposite way as Banchero. Giannis doesn't beat anyone with complex dribble moves. He doesn't use space to score from distance. He chews it up with speed and length, an endless array of straight-line drives counting on his strength to get him through the defense and his passing to bail him out if he can't.
In a perfect world, Giannis could threaten the defense in multiple ways from anywhere on the floor — he'd be able to shoot like Banchero, and do more with small movements in tight spaces. But a more realistic player development scenario is the choice in front of Banchero, keeping all that razzle-dazzle in his offensive tool box, but using it a little less in favor of his big-ass sledgehammer. Imagine a version of him who used his skill in support of his physical power, instead of the opposite. A Banchero who got to the line 10+ times a game like Giannis, who turned a few more pull-up jumpers into punishing drives. A Banchero who saw every game as a chance to earn his Beast Mode Merit Badge.
That's a Banchero who can't be stopped, schemed for or game-planned into irrelevance across a seven-game playoff series. That's the fully realized Banchero, turning the NBA Finals into a Tough Mudder and dragging the Magic to a title.
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Paolo Banchero and the triple threat
We are in a renaissance for sharp-passing big men — Nikola Jokić is the standard-bearer, but he's far from the only artist. Şengün and Sabonis, Zubac and Hartenstein, Poeltl and Wembanyama. The biggest bodies with the softest touch, flipping no-looks from the low post, bending bounce passes around defenders to cutting wings from the elbow.
Paolo Banchero doesn't get included in that group, not for lack of skill or vision but because of geography. A lot of his touches start beyond the 3-point line — Tobias Harris, Jaylen Brown and Bobby Portis averaged more post touches per game last season. Jusuf Nurkic, Guerschon Yabusele and his teammate Franz Wagner had more elbow touches per game. His combination of speed and strength can be devastating starting at the arc, as we covered in the first section. But it works just as well from the elbow in.
Basketball fans inevitably build a schema for player archetypes with the stars of their youth and, having come of age in the mid-90s, I can't help but think about Chris Webber when I look at Banchero.
Basketball-Reference marks them with nearly identical measurements, but it goes well beyond that — the vision, the combination of bulk and fleet feet, the silky jumper with definitive range, the athleticism to snatch success from the jaws of failure on a broken play, or turn a ho-hum fastbreak into something remarkable.
Webber was dominant from the elbow. His jumper was money from 18 feet. His handle was incredibly advanced for a big man of his era, and his combination of agility, bulk and touch created infinite scoring variations for his face-up drives. And his rare vision and passing creativity made the four other players on the floor into must-guard scoring threats whenever the ball was in his hands.
Webber had the skills of a guard but played big because that was what the era demanded. I don't know if he could have been a reliable 3-point shooter — he only attempted 50 or more in five of his 15 seasons. But if he was entering the NBA right now, he'd probably get plenty of chances to handle the ball 25 feet from the basket and figure it out. And if Banchero entered the NBA 30 years ago, he would rarely, if ever, be allowed to venture beyond the elbow.
And there may be a nugget of insight in there, an advantage to be leveraged for Banchero in the present day. His pull-up jumper is much better from 15 feet than from 23. There are infinitely more passing angles available from the center of the floor than from outside the shell of the defense. He's already so tough to defend on the drive, having him start two steps closer to the basket only makes things easier.
The Magic made moves to address their shooting and floor-spacing this offseason. A lot rests on the enormous shoulders of Desmond Bane and Jalen Suggs, Anthony Black, Franz Wagner, Jonathan Isaac and company need to make 3s both for the points and for the ways in which that should tug on defenders and create space inside the arc. Space that's just waiting to be used by a big body who can dribble, pass and shoot.
Like Webber, Banchero is a unique combination of size, speed and skill. He can play from outside in but, like Webber, he may ultimately be able to affect the game more from the inside out.
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A small ball center
What people remember most about the Kevin Durant stint in Golden State is the titles and the interpersonal drama. What most people don't remember (maybe because it's not that interesting to anyone but me) is how much time he spent in Golden State playing as a nominal center. They had a number of traditional bigs on the roster for those three seasons — David West, Zaza Pachulia, Anderson Varejao, Andrew Bogut, Javale McGee, DeMarcus Cousins, Kevon Looney, Damian Jones, Jordan Bell. But Durant played 1205 minutes across three seasons, about 17 percent of his total time in a Warriors uniform, without any of them.
You can argue about whether Durant was actually playing center when he was sharing the court with Draymond Green as the only other big, but that argument is pedantic and beside the point. Green, was more likely to be defending in space with Durant as the backline rim-protector. He blocked 119 shots in his second season in Golden State, a career-high. His other two seasons with the Warriors were his third- and fifth-best in terms of total blocks, and he had more blocks than Green over the same stretch by a decent margin.
Everyone sacrificed to make those Warriors teams as dominant as they were, but Durant's sacrifices came almost entirely at the defensive end of the floor. On offense, he played to his strengths. On defense, he played out of position, bigger than he ever had before, and his ability to make that role work elevated the vaunted Death Lineup to a new level.
If things go well for the Magic this season, Bane, Wagner, Suggs and Banchero are going to be on the court together a lot. Orlando has three very solid big man options to round out that group in Wendell Carter Jr., Mo Wagner and Goga Bitadze. But they also have a lot of other intriguing options — the length and playmaking of Anthony Black, the mistake-free facilitation of Tyus Jones, the matchup-busting defense of Jonathan Isaac. Any of the young trio of Jett Howard, Jase Richardson or Tristan da Silva could turn out to be the complementary shooter and creator their bench needs on the wing.
The point is, while the Magic have an enviable big man rotation, they also have a lot of incentive to mess around with small ball lineups that feature Banchero at center. Last year, he played exactly 176 minutes without Carter, Bitadze or Mo Wagner on the court — a small sample, but the Magic were dominant, outscoring opponents by 12.5 points per 100 possessions. And that's without Bane, who was acquired this summer to fix a lot of their floor-spacing issues.
The Magic are counting on Bane to really change the offensive dynamic, but playing small and getting another shooter on the court, especially Jones, who hit 41.4 percent of his 3s last season, is a tool they should use more. It's a way to shift matchups, bust intractable defensive problems, and manifest the versatility every contender will need at some point. And it really only works if Banchero is willing to embrace that role as the defensive backstop.
He's never been much of a shot-blocker, and a good portion of his 28 blocks last season were just glorified steals, reach-ins that knocked the ball loose as an opponent was bringing the ball from his waist to his shoulders in preparation to shoot. But he doesn't need to be Victor Wembanyama, skying to stop every shot. He just needs to be an impediment willing to bang long enough to make an opponent fold, surrender the initiative and tacitly admit how much they fear the Paolo Banchero Magic.