The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution
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The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution

A weekly roundup of observations, questions, and predictions from Michael Pina's NBA notebook.

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving (Happy Thanksgiving!), The Outlet Pass has arrived one day earlier than normal this week. Enjoy!


1. In Honor of Thanksgiving, Here’s a Fake Trade We Can All Be Thankful For

Cleveland gets: Marc Gasol
Memphis gets: Brooklyn’s first-round pick in 2018, Tristan Thompson, and Iman Shumpert

When Gasol first signed his five-year $110 million deal nearly two and half years ago, popular thought was father time would tarnish it sooner than later. This was something the Memphis Grizzlies had to do, even while fully understanding the odds-on risk attached. (A broken foot suffered the following February increased the likelihood of it being a sunk cost.)

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Instead, at 33 years old and in his 10th season, with a new coach, overhauled system, and personal submission to the three-point line, Gasol is still kicking as a borderline All-Star, albeit one whose crater-sized impact in Memphis isn’t as expansive as it used to be.

According to Synergy Sports, Gasol is currently the least efficient player in the league when he gets double-teamed in the post. Some of this is thanks to a small sample size, diminishing athleticism and curbed quickness, but his surrounding personnel deserves a smidge of blame, too. Even though some of their shooting percentages are up, opposing teams are still open to doubling off Chandler Parsons, Tyreke Evans, James Ennis, Dillon Brooks, and the rest of Memphis’ roster.

A move to Cleveland would do freaking wonders for Gasol’s one-on-one game. The attention LeBron James demands is unrivaled, and picturing those two surrounded by three dead-eye snipers—like Kyle Korver, J.R. Smith, Kevin Love, healthy Isaiah Thomas, or Jae Crowder—is a daydream. James has never played with someone like Gasol: A pass-first center who can space the floor, anchor an excellent defense, and singlehandedly create open threes on the weakside when he goes to work on the block.

And just think about the lineups Ty Lue could utilize with LeBron on the bench. Gasol and Love, by themselves, could become the NBA’s mightiest frontcourt tandem this side of New Orleans. Gasol helps in a likely Finals rematch against the Golden State Warriors in a way very few players can. He’s a savant on both ends.

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The risk in trading a lottery pick for any player who can opt out of his contract in 2019, let alone a declining 33-year-old who plays the league’s least attractive position and would have to sacrifice a whole bunch of touches overnight, is an obvious risk—even if said pick is owned by a Brooklyn Nets squad that figures to finish with the sixth or seventh worst record and not the first or second.

But let’s play out one possible scenario if they don’t make a seismic trade: Cleveland adds a borderline-washed-up buyout candidate, loses in the Eastern Conference Finals or Finals, lands the sixth pick, watches LeBron leave in free agency, and is bad forever. If surrendering the Brooklyn pick for someone like Gasol is possible, then convincing James to stay is the right move.

Meanwhile, Memphis should do this in a heartbeat. Injuries around the Western Conference are keeping their playoff odds on a respirator, but Mike Conley’s weary Achilles tendon isn’t really allowing them to make up much ground. They’ve lost five in a row and eight of their last ten, with an offense that ranks 22nd despite them never, ever turning the ball over.

The smart long-term play here is to squeeze as much as they can get for Gasol, then rebuild around two lottery picks, with one potentially landing in the top five, in a five-player draft. They can also move on from Thompson and maybe even get a late first-rounder for his service as well. Memphis already has its own top-eight-protected first-round pick headed to Boston in 2019 (which becomes unprotected in 2021), so the best time to replenish their roster with high-upside youth is today.

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2. Victor Oladipo…

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…has more points than Anthony Davis, Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Karl-Anthony Towns, John Wall, and…Russell Westbrook. The Indiana Pacers have had a top-10 offense all year long despite not having Myles Turner (the dude everyone expected to be their best player) for seven games. Oladipo deserves a statue.

3. It’s Time to Expand Kelly Oubre Jr.’s Role

The Wizards are an obscenely dominant basketball team when John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, and Kelly Oubre Jr. share the floor, outscoring opponents by 22 points per 100 possessions. This makes sense. Three of those players are on a max contract and the fourth is a 21-year-old southpaw who’s shooting 47 percent from above the break.

Washington knows what it has with its three best players, but Oubre Jr.’s growth is the variable worth watching. Right now he’s still raw and able to impact games with his athleticism, energy, and length. But knowing the ball ultimately starts in Wall or Beal’s hands—particularly throughout the postseason—it’s worth wondering what type of developmental path Washington should try and set their moldable Sixth Man on.

Oubre Jr. has only run a handful of pick-and-rolls this season, and, to nobody’s surprise, whenever he does dribble off a screen and try to make a play his timing and vision are both a little off.

Despite a leap in playing time, his assist to usage ratio is still near the bottom at his position (and down from where it was last season). He averages as many potential assists per game as DeAndre Jordan—fewer than Steven Adams and Tyson Chandler—and his 20.9 passes per game are fifth fewest in the entire league among all players who average at least 25 minutes.

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This doesn’t make him selfish. Oubre Jr. is happy and willing to swing the ball and forfeit his own good shot so a teammate can have a better one. His job is to finish plays instead of start them, but given Washington’s routine bench struggles, it’d be a godsend if Oubre Jr. could quickly grow to become a reliable secondary or primary ball-handler when Wall and Beal both rest.

If the organization’s plan is to win with this foursome leading the way, the Wizards would be wrong to clone another Porter instead of encouraging Oubre Jr. to become a more versatile offensive weapon. In about eight fewer minutes per game, he touches the ball less than Jeff Green. It isn’t too early to diversify Oubre Jr.’s responsibilities. When you’re a good team that knows it’ll make the playoffs, that’s exactly what the regular season is for.

4. Everyone is Surprised by Portland’s Secret Weapon Except LeBron James

Last week, the Portland Trail Blazers decided to turn back the hands of time by deploying Jusuf Nurkic and Caleb Swanigan in their starting lineup. The mammoth-sized duo was a predictable disaster, clogging up driving lanes for C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard, preventing either big from having as much room to operate in the post, and creating at least one mismatch on the defensive end that could be exploited by a more modernized frontcourt.

Despite going 2-1 during this week-long experiment—that was partly induced by injuries elsewhere on the roster—Portland consistently found itself in a hole from the jump, causing Blazers head coach Terry Stotts to start the third quarter of last Wednesday’s win over the Orlando Magic with Pat Connaughton, instead of Swanigan, on the court—a game-saving halftime adjustment. (Stotts’s final straw came two nights later when the Blazers scored 82 points in a very bad loss against the Sacramento Kings. Noah Vonleh has started at the four since.)

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The buried lede here is that while Portland struggled to score trotting out two slow frontcourt players who don’t complement one another in any way, what they discovered during this same stretch is a three-guard unit that could be their secret weapon.

Lillard and McCollum are an obvious staple that create myriad headaches for the opposition. Throw Shabazz Napier into the mix and it’s pandemonium. The trio only played 20 minutes last season, but in 38 minutes this year they’ve blitzed opponents by 38 points per 100 possessions.

Last summer, Evan Turner was paid a handsome sum to be the ball-handler who could enable Portland’s two franchise guards to work off the ball, decimate opponents off screens and rouse panic by setting paralyzing picks for each other on the weakside. He can still do that, especially from the block when backing down smaller defenders. But replace Turner with Napier and install a versatile wing like Mo Harkless or Al-Farouq Aminu at the four, and all of a sudden the court becomes a hornet’s nest.

The offensive upside is clear: three ball handlers who can shoot, drive, and pass, constantly racing around to kick dirt in your eyes, is hard to slow down. But so far (small-sample-size alert!) they’ve also been able to hold their own on the defensive end, in part because Napier plays like an unswattable mosquito whose hands and feet never stop moving.

But there are limits to being “frisky” when you aren’t catching an opponent off guard, and some of their success is because Napier’s three-point percentage is actively burning a hole in the ozone layer. That doesn’t mean this speedy triad should be demoted or even stuffed in glass as a “Break-in-Case-of-Emergency” axe. Stotts should ride this unique group as long as he can, knowing few teams have the personnel to match up with it on both ends.

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5. Jimmy Butler is Sacrificing Too Much

The Timberwolves are not the NBA’s most disappointing team. Since November 1st, they own a top-10 defense, and for the whole season they’re outscoring opponents by 6.8 points per 100 possessions when Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson share the floor. But this team, at 10-7, feels disappointing.

They’ve yet to find a way to synchronize their overwhelming talent in a way that accentuates each individual’s skill-set, and startling losses against the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons (a game they should’ve won, considering they were home, with a day of rest, against a team that’d just dropped two in a row) have been the result.

Given his contract situation, past performance, and high expectations, Butler’s struggle to look like himself is probably the team’s largest concern. Nobody should’ve expected a fluid overnight fit, but 15 games into his seventh season, the three-time All-Star has yet to find any rhythm in a system he’s already familiar with. Sacrifice is wonderful and necessary, but the degree to which Butler has altered his role to appease Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Jeff Teague is a little excessive.



What’s best for him is probably also best for the Timberwolves. Instead, watching him play he looks out of rhythm, like he doesn’t know when to hunt and when to be passive. The degree of difficulty in some of Butler’s scoring situations has been higher than it should be, too, given the influx of talent by his side. Last year, 17.1 percent of Butler’s shots were hoisted when the shot clock was “late” or “very late,” according to NBA.com. This year, that’s up to 25.9 percent. He has more catch-and-shoot opportunities, which sounds nice but has never been his strength.

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According to Synergy Sports, Butler’s possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler are down 11 percent from last season. What was once a tool he used to carve defenses up has been more of a dull blade.

Butler’s usage is down, he’s touching the ball 11 fewer times per game, his turnover rate is at a career high, and his free-throw rate is at a career low. That last point is crucial. What initially elevated Butler to an elite level was his ability to draw contact and live at the line. Last season, he was fouled on 20.1 percent of his shots, which ranked in the 98th percentile among all wings. That percentage is currently half what it was. (A plethora of pull-up twos are acceptable when you live at the free-throw line; he’s not quite Tobias Harris, but trending in that direction.)

So much of this is because Minnesota’s roster simply isn’t conducive for a slash-first-ask-questions-later bulldog like Butler. His drives to the basket are now more complicated than Catherine Zeta-Jones vs. one million lasers, in large part because defenses are ready and willing to help off a majority of his teammates.

There are few in-house alterations that can make life easier for Butler, but he hardly ever plays with Nemanja Bjelica (who, ho-hum, is the most accurate three-point shooter in the league right now); in the 52 minutes they’ve shared the floor Minnesota has obliterated everything. (General side note: Gibson has been awesome but Gorgui Dieng and Shabazz Muhammad have not—play Bjelica more often Thibs!)

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There’s no need to panic in Minnesota. But youth, lack of shooting, and non-existent depth at the wing are concerns they’ll have to navigate the rest of the season. Putting the ball in Butler’s hands more often won’t solve them, but Jamal Crawford, Teague, and Wiggins should not have a higher usage rate than he does.

Among all players who’ve seen the floor for about the same or fewer minutes than Butler this season, Evan Fournier, Jayson Tatum, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jeremy Lamb, Will Barton, and Bojan Bogdanovic have all scored more points. Something needs to change.

6. Toronto’s Offense Is Official

Despite struggles in the clutch, which reflect a reversion back to the isolation-heavy, late-shot-clock-heaving approach that hurts them so much when it matters most, Toronto’s offense is quietly morphing into an unselfish monster.

Last season, the Raptors ranked dead last in assist rate. (They were 28th in November during the 2016-17 season.) This year, they’re up to 14th, with 17 more passes per game. They’re 14th in pace (up from 22nd last season), shooting way fewer long twos and a lot more threes. Paths to the rim are wider and open more frequently. The result? They rank fourth in offense and third in effective field goal percentage.

It’s growth in real time, partly due to the infusion of youth from guys like OG Anunoby (the most underrated rookie in an abnormally loaded class), Fred VanVleet (whose name I thought was “Van Fleet” for about two years), Delon Wright (who just dislocated his shoulder), and a few others.

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Toronto’s two lynch pins are doing their part and C.J. Miles is flashing Ryan Anderson-esque range. The ball moves better when DeMar DeRozan isn’t on the floor, but that’s also when their offensive rating drops to its lowest point. Probably because the guy’s footwork makes it look like he’s hovering two inches above the court at all times.

DeRozan jacked up three shots beyond the arc in the opening minutes of Sunday’s win against the Wall-less Wizards. While still low, his three-point rate is exactly double what it was last season. They aren't perfect, but Toronto's evolutionary shot profile makes them the second-best team in the Eastern Conference.

7. Orlando Treats the Three-Point Line With Too Much Reverence

The Magic should shine on defense. They have athletes who excel at key positions and a coach who’s known for extracting brick-wall execution from much less physical ability.

But after a hot start shooting the ball, Orlando’s defense has become one of the league’s 10 worst. Part of that’s due to injuries up and down the roster, and high usage big men—like Nikola Vucevic—who have known limitations. But a bit of their struggle can be explained by an aggressive “stay home!” attitude towards the three-point line.

Orlando’s defenders, as twitchy as most of them are, have been directed to form a permanent fence at the arc. They don’t allow swing passes to open threats on the weakside and aim to make outside shooters feel claustrophobic. According to Cleaning The Glass, Orlando holds its opponents to a 27 percent three-point rate, which is second-lowest in the league. And from there, the strategy of always being in position to contest outside shots has worked pretty well, with opponents only making 34.5 percent of their threes (though that’s likely a bit more happenstance than strategic ingenuity).

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On the surface, this is a rousing success! But in reality it’s like they’re hermetically sealing a body part that actually needs reconstructive surgery. Here’s an example:

At the top, Aaron Gordon does a good job keeping Joe Ingles from getting to the middle of the floor, leaping up and forcing him left. But as the Australian swingman drives towards Vucevic, neither Elfrid Payton nor Evan Fournier pinch in to tag the rolling Derrick Favors. Instead, they treat Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell like they’re Splash Brothers when, actually, they're Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell. Favors snatches Ingles’s pocket pass and finishes with an easy dunk.

The moral of the story: Personnel matters. It’s great that the Magic are executing their coach’s scheme and denying three-point attempts en mass in a league that’s filled with teams that are obsessed with that exact shot, but nothing will ever be more efficient than a layup, and nobody is allowing more of those than the Magic.

8. The Willie Cauley-Stein Bandwagon Has Plenty of Room

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I will forever believe that Willie Cauley-Stein is a useful, if not good, basketball player. He’s my personal equivalent to how a specific segment of NBA Twitter once felt (feels?) about Anthony Randolph. If Cauley-Stein was, like, seven percent more confident and nine percent more aggressive, with a point guard who draws attention, manipulates back-line rotations, and can shoot, he’d be Steven Adams.

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Cauley-Stein actually made a three last week, too, and is one of a few centers who’s defended Joel Embiid without much help and not been steamrolled in the process. I want nothing more than to see him develop outside of Sacramento, not sharing the court with Zach Randolph and Kosta Koufos. Is that too much to ask?

9. You Can’t Help But Respect Carmelo Anthony’s Commitment to Being Carmelo Anthony

Before clarifying is words and backtracking from the belief that he, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook need to be more selfish in order for the Oklahoma City Thunder to find offensive nirvana, Carmelo Anthony concluded that he and his two All-Star teammates are instinctive players who need to be more instinctive.

Even though his instincts have been wrong for quite some time, that’s a perfectly fine thing to believe. But if I played for the Thunder and read this quote, I'd refrain from ever passing him the ball. On top of a defensive demeanor that exudes the same amount of energy and attention I used to display on Thanksgiving morning throughout my early 20’s*, Anthony’s assist to usage ratio is only higher than nine percent of fellow forwards around the NBA. He could wear wide receiver gloves sprayed with stickum for an entire quarter and nobody would notice the difference.

*The below isn’t a great reflection of Oklahoma City’s collective effort, but Anthony somehow manages to make everyone else look like they're hustling their ass off. He airballs a jumper and then backpedals to midcourt as the rest of his teammates turn to run.

Salute.

10. Donovan Mitchell’s Audaciousness Is Inspiring

The Utah Jazz are in a sad place, but, on the bright side, they also have Donovan Mitchell, a fearless firecracker with more responsibilities on his plate than any rookie on a decent team should. Just look at this wraparound pass to Rodney Hood, the finishing touch on Utah’s execution of a Hammer action.

Freeze the clip at the exact moment the ball leaves his fingertips. Even though Mitchell knows Hood is about to (probably) spring free in the corner, it still must feel a little scary to sidearm a ball the length of the baseline towards empty space. It arrives a little low, but that's nitpicking. This was hard and he made it look easy.

Most of the 21-year-old’s offensive numbers are dreadful, but bold, trustworthy traits seen in sequences like this are enough to convince me the Jazz have a keeper.