PART 5 – HAYWARD VIA SYNERGY SPORTS

Here is Gordon Hayward via Synergy Sports. Synergy Sports labels every possession as a type of play be it a post up, spot up, hand off, etc. The label is based upon how the play ends. If you make a pass to create a play it is not registered under the player who made the pass.

Overall, Gordon had a very good offensive year. As a 2nd year player to rank 96th in ppp (pts per possession) is strong. He struggled early in the year with his shot or these numbers would be considerably higher.

The numbers on his spot up shooting should improve in the coming years. Hitting just 38% of his spot ups and 35% of the spot ups from three.

What jumps out is nothing is elite. He is not a very good isolation player yet (34.6% score rate and 29%) shooting. His pick and roll play is really hampered by the turnovers (30% of possessions on the pick and roll) as well as he didn’t hit any three’s off a pick and roll where he stepped behind the pick and nailed the shot. If he can develop this it would be a game changer. Coming off screens for catch and shots or drives he is only ok. Despite his size he wasn’t used at all as a post up player.

Where Gordon is at his best is in transition where he had 13 and 1’s this year and scored on 68% of the chances.

Without being elite in any area Gordon was still significantly above average offensively and much improved from his rookie year.

Surprisingly, Hayward overall production his 2nd year was not up a great deal from his rookie year. The drop in 3 pt shooting from 47% to 33% hurt his overall performance. Yet, if you dig in a little you see some marked improvement.

Compared to his rookie year he improved from 26% score rate on isolations to 35%. Transition jumped from 54% score rate to 68%.

Switching to the defensive side of the ball

These are very surprising to me. Everything I have seen tells me Hayward is a strong defender, opposing coaches discuss it and our own coaches believe it. However, the numbers don’t treat him well at all.

My instinct is to dismiss this as Synergy struggling to understand defense, since if a defender stymies someone and he passes out to a shooter it doesn’t get registered. It only gets registered if the player takes the shot. However, it is worth seeing what it says and see if we can learn anything.

Gordon’s big issue is player hit 42% of three’s when he is guarding them. 44% of those on spot ups. He needs to put a focus on this area of his defense.

His size does come into play when players are trying to post him up as he allowed just 33% shooting on post ups. He is also very good when guarding players off the screen.

The areas of struggle are defending the isolations, the ball handler on the pick and roll and protecting the three.

The good news is he is considerably better than a year ago when he allowed 1.06 ppp and this year just .97. He had a similar issue a year ago on the three’s allowing 40% of all three’s.

Hayward’s biggest area of improvement was in the post where a year ago he allowed 53% shooting.

PART 4 – SHOOTING POSITIONS ON THE FLOOR
Consistency is not a strong point for Gordon Hayward in his career after two years. His splits vary greatly from month to month and as you can see his shooting has varied as well based on location on the floor year to year.

I think the collection of two years is a good guess on where his career averages fall. Some important things jump out here from a year ago. He was on the floor twice as much and got two times as many shots at the rim, a bit more than two times as many three’s and was able to decrease his 16 to 23 footer shot.

The amount of his three point shots assisted is worth noting, 100%. His rookie year was 97%. Gordon is league average on the 16 to 23 footer at 38% and below league average on the 10 to 15 footer. The pull up jumper in the mid range is the next step for his game.

Hayward’s 65% at the rim is above the league average. It is the same rate as Paul Pierce, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Joe Johnson and Monta Ellis.

Hayward took 2.7 shots a game at the rim. Wingplayers who took at least 2.7 shot a game at the rim only Manu, LeBron, Durant, Afflalo, Mbah a Moute, Kobe, Wade, Marion, Batum and Ellis were better.

Gordon Hayward and Nichols Batum have very similar shooting numbers.

Gordon only took 41 of his three’s as corner three’s. All of these numbers are heading in the correct direction.

BREAPART 3- GORDON HAYWARD YEAR VIA CIRCUMSTANCES
This is the look at Gordon Hayward via circumstances, home v. road, good teams v. bad teams, east v. west and time period of the game.
Here are the observations
• Gordon was far better on the road than home this year. His Locke offensive ranking was 15.9 on road and just 6.9 at home. He shot 48% on road and 43% at home, he went to the line more on the road and he turned the ball over a great deal less at 11.7% of his possessions rather than the 15.7% he did at hime.

• He was at his best against the division and as were most of the Jazz better against the East than the West

• He played equally against above .500 teams and below .500

• He ignited post all-star break and had a Locke offensive ranking of 20.0. This makes him one of the top wing players in the NBA. Post all-star break he went to the line more and he shot a higher percentage but he didn’t use more possessions for threes.

• Gordon’s Locke offensive ranking by month were -2.8 in January; 9 in Feb; 13.8 in March and an unreal 31.0 in April. 31 in April is other wordl. He did the ultimate he increased his percentage of possessions shooting a three but didn’t stop going to the line. He used 26.7% of his possessions to shot a three and 13.4% to go the line. If both of those increased slightly next year he will be golden.

• In March and April he used 12 scoring opportunities a game up from 9 earlier and was far better in how he used them.

• According to stats inc Gordon was much better offensively when starting as a guard than as a forward. Guard his Locke offensive ranking was a 19.7 as a forward just 5.6.

• Gordon is not a late game player yet. Shooting just 37% in the 4th quarter hitting only 5 of 25 from three. He did hit 81% of his 4th quarter free throws. In the clutch he shot just 38% and hit just 3 of 12 from three. He did nail 40 of 49 free throws. In late and close (final 2 mins) he was just 3 of 11 and 1 of 3 from three.

• He played best against Boston, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Milwaukee, Orland, Philly and Phoenix. He struggled against Charlotte, Clippers and Lakers, OKC and Spurs.

PART 2 – COMPARED TO THE LEAGUE
Let’s start with Locke Offensive Ranking. The Locke offensive ranking accounts for efficient use of an individual possession and the ability to get a shot off and use a possession. The league average this year was 6.55 down from the regular 10. Traditionally the best players are over 20 and this year only 4 players exceeded 40 (Manu, Durant, Harden and LeBron).

Here is a graph of the players above and below Gordon Hayward this season. For perspective Gerald Green was 12th best wing player in the Locke offensive ranking. Gordon was 23rd.

GORDON COMPARED VIA LOCKE OFFENSIVE RANKING

You will notice almost all of these wing players used more of their possessions to shot that three than Gordon. In addition, Jack % is the amount of time in between possessions used and Gordon is one of the lowest with Kyle Korver, Kawhi Leonard and Raja Bell.

The most important number in the above graph is % of possessions that Gordon goes to the free throw line. He is in the elite of this grouping and as that grows he will become better and better.

For a wing player Gordon using 12.8% of his possessions to go to the free throw line is the 9th best in the NBA.

TOP WING PLAYERS IN NBA VIA % OF POSSESSIONS TO FREE THROW LINE

Nice to see Alec Burks in that list of players.

In addition, despite an overall poor shooting year Hayward ranked 21st of wing players in True Shooting % and pts per scoring opportunity. This graph shows the players similar to his performance.

HAYWARD VIA PTS PER SCORING OPPORTUNITY

This is where Gordon needs to take the next step. This group has a nice names in it but the group above is the elite group of the NBA wing players.

Finally, this last graph shows the players in the NBA who used 20% of their possession on 3 pt shots (Hayward was 19.9) and still were able to go the line in at least 13% (Hayward was 12.8) of their possessions. The two most efficient ways to score

Gordon Hayward is the third of our season in review pieces for Locked on Jazz. We will analyze each player in 7 parts
Part 1: Year Compared to Career
Part 2: Compared to the league
Part 3: Year via circumstances
Part 4: Shooting positions on the foor
Part 5: Synergy Sports
Part 6: His impact on the floor and what line-ups worked with him on the floor
Part 7: Comparative to history

The entire second year class of players struggled to start the year after missing the summer league and training camp due to the lockout. With a year’s experience of how the league works and what a full season really entails these players were unable to advance their skills in a structured environment. In turn, most of the player s had step back years instead of step forward years.

Traditionally, players make a subtle improvement year 1 to year 2 and then explode year 2 to year 3. With big men it can be year 3 to year 4. With Gordon this season we saw the beginning of the year 2 to 3 jump with his March and April performance.

Hayward seems to be on the road to following the correct trends. Realize all league numbers were down around 15% or more, so this is a very healthy jump in the Locke offensive ranking from a 5.8 to 10.4. 10.4 is well above the league average this season.
The reasons for the improvement in ranking are largely based on his possessions used. He is beginning to figure out how to get a shot and where to get a shot from in the NBA game. He goes to the line considerably more and as we will look at later 12.8% of his possessions at the line is really good. The drop in turnovers is also an expected sign. As Kevin Pelton explained in a podcast this year, a higher turnover rate as a rookie is a good thing.

He is a rare player that is at nearly 20% of his possessions as a three and over 12% from the line. He will likely increase in both next year and he gets into rare territory with that.

In other categories his assist rate improved greatly however, he is still a insufficient rebounder. A rebounding rate of 6.5% of the rebounds is one of the lowest of small forwards in the NBA.

Part 1 – Year to Year

Part 2 – Compared to rest of NBA

Part 3 – By Circumstances

Part 4 – Shooting from Locations

Part 5 – Millsap via Synergy Sports

Part 6 – How Jazz are with Millsap on the floor

Part 7 – Comparative players in history

Part 1 – Year to Year Career

Part 2 – Compared to rest of NBA

Part 3 – By Situations

Part 4 – Shooting position on the floor

Part 5 – Synergy Sports

Part 6 – How Jazz were with Jefferson on the floor

Part 7- Comparable Season in NBA history

PART 7 – PAUL MILLSAP – COMPARATIVE TO HISTORY
This was one of the more interesting searches I have done. Picking the stats I think are most important to who Paul is I searched for players since 1990 who have averaged between 17 and 20 pts per 36 minutes, 9 or more rebounds per 36 minutes and 1.5 steals or more per 35 minutes.

Sorted by basketball-reference win share the names that are closest to Paul are a 34 year old Kevin Garnett in 10-11, Kenyon Martin in 03-04, Tom Gugliotta in 93-94 and Chris Gatling in 91-92. The top of this list was Shawn Marion in his Phoenix days and Shawn Kemp in his best Seattle days.

Marion is an interesting parallel. Could Millsap become Marion? In Phoenix Marion was a prolific three point shooter with Steve Nash shooting nearly 300 a season and Paul isn’t going to do that anytime soon. However, in many other ways they may be similar players. The other comps were all true power forwards like Weber, Garnett and Kemp and they all came in a bit stronger across the board than Millsap.

The summary I would have from this comp is that Paul is simply a notch below the elite players that were aforementioned, but does a unique set of skills on the floor. The comps to a Kenyon Martin post injury, Tom Gugliotta before he became solely a stand still shooter and Chris Gatling are probably fair.

For your laugh of the day here is the basketball reference similarity score to Paul Millsap for his career via win shares.