A Very In-Depth Criticism of Porzingis

Yesterday, Mad Max posted a topic on players you’re not as high on as others and that just made me do this deep dive into Kristaps Porzingis that I’d being looking into for some time.  Everybody’s has been calling him a knockdown shooter, in the mold of an athletic Dirk Nowitzki, but his production says otherwise. Overall, he has glaring holes in his games that is needed in the stretch-four player.

Here’s some of his stats in prominent league seasons and international tournaments. 

2013 FIBA Europe U-18 Championship (17 Y/O): In nine games on 29.3 MPG with the Latvian U-18 squad, he’s got 11.6 PPG fine 44.7% from the field on 11.4 attempts but poor 18.7% from the 3PT line on 1.8 attempts and 69.2% on 1.4 FTA. I’ll shine on his bright spots as well as he grabbed 10.0 RPG, although only 6.7 on the defensive glass. Has 0.4 APG to 1.4 TPG, very much a consistent theme throughout his game and probably the dagger in the reason why I don’t rate him as high. On a high note though, probably he’s most impressive feat was the 4.9 BPG and 1.1 SPG he got while only have 3.1 PF throughout the tournament.

Now looking at European league stats are a bit tricky since there are multiple levels of competitions that players can face and the fact that most professional youth players do not get contributing minutes early on in their careers since they’re playing against mature-bodied men. Looking at trends of other players, it’s seems that top level professional teenage players start to get real contributing minutes at 19 years old or the equivalent of a college sophomore. Also, it’s best to look at a per 36 or per 40 numbers instead of there actual minutes to see if they’re progressing in the time that they’re on the court.

I’m not going to include his 2012-13 season with Sevilla since he only played 47 minutes in seven games and is an incredibly small sample size. However, here are his 2013-14 and 2014-15 season stats for both the harder Liga ACB competition and the lesser Eurocup league competition.

2013-14 Sevilla in Liga ACB (18 Y/O): He actually got real standout minutes a year earlier than most at his level with 14.9 MPG in 32 games. Looking at per 36 on Basketball-Reference, he’s got 16.2 PPG on 47.6% from the field on 14.4 attempts but only shot a modest 33.3% from the 3PT line on 3.6 attempts and poor 60.7 on 2.1 FTA. Only grabbed 6.6 RPG, which is far too pedestrian for someone with his athleticism. Staying consistent with overall theme of poor assist-to-turnover ratio and assist rates with only 0.8 APG to 2.0 TPG. Good 2.3 BPG and 1.4 SPG but with a terrible 6.3 PF.

2014-15 Sevilla in Liga ACB (19 Y/O): 21.7 MPG in 34 games. Looking at per 36, he’s got 17.8 PPG on 47.1% from the field on 14.2 attempts but again, a below-average 31.3% from the 3PT line on 3.9 attempts. Although, he did shot better from the line with 77.4% on a much improved and solid for his age 4.1 FTA. Improved as a rebounder as well but still only average at 8.0 RPG. Also, got worse with his assist-to-turnover with 0.7 APG to 2.2 TPG. Blocks came down to only a modest 1.6 BPG but still good 1.5 SPG with an improved but still poor 4.8 PF.

Now looking at his first significant minutes in the lesser competitive but intercontinental league of the Eurocup.

2014-15 Sevilla in Eurocup (19 Y/O): 20.9 MPG in 16 games. Looking at per 36 again, he’s scoring 20.0 PPG with 55.6% from the field on 13.5 attempts while shooting a very impressive 45.9% from the 3PT line in 4.0 attempts but a below-average 70.7% on 4.4 FTA, suggesting that he’s shot might be flukey. He’s rebounding is even worse in the Eurocup with 7.1 RPG and while he’s improved his passing at 1.3 APG, he’s turnovers have risen to 2.8 TPG. Also, 2.0 BPG and 1.6 SPG while having a good 3.5 PF.

Also, here a link to some advanced stats on RealGm.com and DraftExpress. 

Even looking at his physical attributes, I think he’s frame is too thin and the equilibrium or center of gravity of his body is too high. I’ve often described his athleticism as being athletic for his height at 7’1 but not so much for his position at power forward. Also, I mentioned this on a post about Thon Maker on how there is a "teetering point" when it comes to pairing size, athleticism and skills and I think his skills in shooting and passing do not mitigate the wonkiness in how I think his athleticism will work in the half-court. I’ve also said this about Harrison Barnes’s open-court/half-court athleticism, that he’s more of an explosive athlete when he’s in the open court or has an open lane with no ones in front of him but only looks merely above average in the half-court due to lack of ball-skills and the same is true for Porzingis. Also, watching six of his games this season, all in Liga ACB competition, and he’s ball-handling is nothing more but straight line drives and slashes to the rim. There isn’t a lot of tremendous burst in the half-court with his first step and no change of gears or change of direction with the ball while lacking dribble moves. Statistically, everything shows that he probably won’t rebound well when looking at other Euro comparisons and once thrown into even tougher competition with equally athletic NBA players. And I’ve already pointed out his shooting percentage, with him only having one impressive 3PT shooting numbers in an inferior second-level intercontinental league in the Eurocup, not even mentioning that FIBA-designed courts have shorter 3PT line. I also I prescribe to ESPN’s Kevin Pelton’s theory that FT% is more indicative if you’re an elite shooter or not, more so than 3P%. I also believe in ESPN’s Coach David Thorpe’s theory that it’s more problematic for a player who shoots with a nice form and mechanics, which Porzingis has, and still doesn’t make them at a nice clip because it’s hard to improve if it looks like you’re doing everything right.

Also, I was laughing when reading the Grantland piece on him last week from Danny Chau that really pointed out all of his flaws but ends on having hope that he’ll end up being a dynamic NBA player and I’m just like you have to see him as he is.

One of the topics Chau mentioned was the fact that he had an assist percentage of 5.21 this season in Liga ACB/Eurocup league combined, which would have one of the 25 worst figures in the NBA this season. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress mentioned a similar fact with him only dishing out one assist for every 44 minutes and concluding the most damning thing about him that this is not ideal for a stretch-4 that teams may hope to run a significant amount of offense through on the perimeter. Passing and ball-movement to shift defenses into being unbalanced is becoming the most important compenent to an NBA teams’ offense. Grantland’s Zach Lowe was pointing this out in a recent Kevin Love post that’s up on their site now as well as a Draymond Green post that frequently mentions the multiple skills needed at the four. Lowe mentioned the shift from stretch-fours into playmaking fours. 

A few executives have dumped the term “stretch 4” altogether and replaced it with “playmaking 4” — a term I’m officially stealing right now. Shooting is nice, but it’s not enough anymore as defenses get smarter, faster, and more flexible working within the loosened rules. Spot-up guys have to be able to catch the ball, pump-fake a defender rushing out at them, drive into the lane, and make some sort of play. If they can’t manage that, a possession dies with them.

He also mentions that because defense are switching bigs onto point guards in the pick-and-roll leaving the smaller defender on these forwards and it’s those who can not only shoot, but post-up these smaller defenders on them and once again, not only just try to score but try to create the right play if the defense overloads in the paint to pass out to the open man like Boris Diaw and Draymond Green can do and I don’t think Porzingis, who lacks strength and any post moves, can do that.

Guys like Ryan Anderson, Ersan Ilyasova, and Channing Frye are more multidimensional, but they aren’t as lethal as they were two or three years ago, and they can only thrive in specific environments. If they had better post games, they could beat up smaller defenders and force opponents into uncomfortable readjustments. But they can’t — at least not consistently. 

And another article talking about what front offices and coaches are looking for in players to combat the post-Thibodeau defense shift of the NBA. 

• Passing. This is the one that came up over and over in conversations with coaches and executives. Passing is obviously a good thing, and always has been. But the people running teams increasingly value above-average passing at every position, and express a deeper distaste for players — again, at any position — who are either unwilling passers or just don’t show a sophisticated understanding of passing, timing, angles, and reading layers of defense. “Passing is just becoming so, so important,” Boylan says. “If you want to be a good offensive team, you have to have good passers.”

On top of all of this. The teams that are in the running for Porzingis don’t seem like the perfect fits. I don’t think there is enough spacing on the Magic to help him learn how to create as the defense will just pack it in and Scott Skiles is probably not just going to give him minutes outright. The Kings and Knicks just seem like volatile places right now for someone as physically raw as Porzingis and D’Alessandro just left the Kings today. The Pistons and Nuggets seem better off with wings. It’s not like Dirk Nowitzki, who has a coach and GM in Don Nelson that desperately wanted him and traded for him in the 1998 NBA Draft, he’s literally is the ideal Nellie Ball big man, ended up with one of the first forward-thinking owners in Mark Cuban that valued his skills and didn’t try to change him and was matched with Steve Nash and Michael Finley. Even Pau Gasol was very much wanted by the Grizzlies in the 2001 NBA Draft that they traded Shareef Abdur-Rahim and contributed money into his buyout because he was only going to come over if he was a top five pick and got paired with a well NBA-ready fellow rookie in Shane Battier with a brilliant passer in Jason Williams.

I just went through a slew of guys in Basketball-Reference Euro pages, as well as FIBA competition pages, and compared his numbers at the same age to either athletic or mobile Euro bigs like Nikola Mirotic, Jan Vesely, Omri Casspi,  Ersan Ilyasova, Andrea Bargnani, Tiago Splitter and Andres Nocioni to African-Euro imports like Clint Capela and Serge Ibaka to some franchise or All-NBA Euro players in Dirk Nowitzki’s DJK Wurzburg stats and Pau Gasol’s Barcelona stats and Marc Gasol’s Barcelona and Girona stats. They all show he’s productive and I’m not saying he’ll be worse to any of the above but his stats and profile doesn’t indicate that he’ll be franchise changing like Dirk Nowitzki or Pau Gasol.