While that was no longer true by the end of the season, it wasn’t due to Bradley’s improvement. Basketball Index Founder Tim/Cranjis McBasketball noted in February that Bradley’s O-LEBRON was a half-point worse than the infamously porous Trae Young’s D-LEBRON. The effect of Bradley’s sharpshooting was hampered by the almost exclusively wide-open nature of his attempts, limiting the gravitational pull the threat of him scoring from beyond the arc should have theoretically created.Īs a poor ball-handler, floor-reader, and playmaker, Bradley’s overall offensive impact according to LEBRON graded out as an F. Despite shooting almost 40% from downtown this season, Avery Bradley’s package of offensive offerings was arguably the most detrimental to his team’s production in the entire NBA this season, especially given how often he was on the floor. Still, his lack of verticality in the paint and on the boards dragged down his overall defensive value to a D per the Basketball Index’s LEBRON impact metric.īradley’s other nickname according to Basketball-Reference, “Poison,” would have been a perfect descriptor for his offensive impact this season. The Basketball Index’s holistic assessment was a bit kinder than the raw data or eye test, assigning Bradley’s overall perimeter defense a C+ due to his 99th percentile matchup difficulty, ability to create deflections, and navigate screens. But Bradley’s statistical peers - small guards either unseasoned youngsters or overcooked NBA-elders - indicate that, despite coaches continuing to favor him in their rotations, his presence among the league’s weakest deterrents of clean looks is no fluke.Īlso, as a big-time ball-watcher, Bradley’s attentiveness to his man would often wane as soon as they gave up the rock, leading to far too frequent back-cuts and blown rotations. For example, opponents shot better than their own average when guarded by Defensive Player of the Year Finalist Mikal Bridges. Granted, there is some margin for error in opponent shooting variance. Opponents shot 7.5 percentage points better from the field when guarded by Bradley, the fourth-worst mark in the entire NBA (among players who appeared in more than 50 games). Without a high-quality rim protector at the team’s disposal for the majority of the season, Avery Bradley’s defensive game functioned more like a police escort than a PIT maneuver. However, he might as well have been “Matador” or “Turnstile,” as his addiction to over-pressuring ball-handlers combined with the erosion of his peak athleticism created wide-open driving lanes for the crafty scoring guards he was typically matched up against.īradley’s ground-bound hyperactive on-ball defense worked best in 2019-20, when the Lakers’ twin tower lineups could capably thwart any attack Bradley steered towards the rim. On Basketball-Reference, Avery Bradley’s first listed nickname is “Spiderman,” likely for his wide and low stance and aggressive pressuring on defense. And for the latter two, actually off the team. Augustin, Kent Bazemore, DeAndre Jordan, and Rajon Rondo had worse point differentials, three of whom finished the season entirely out of the rotation. While my hopes for improvement by osmosis did manifest to an extent, Frank Vogel continued to deploy Bradley as a regular fixture in starting and closing lineups long after the expiration of that particular benefit.ĭespite playing the seventh-most minutes of any Laker this season (1384), Bradley ran up the team’s fifth-worst on/off point-differential of anyone on the roster with at least 100 minutes played (-3.6). In that way, I thought that he served an early-season utility as a tone-setter for the Lakers’ perimeter players with lesser defensive reputations. On the 15th spot: “I think that’s why he’s here.” /Gozc2x5DJe- Anthony Slater October 4, 2021Ī member of the 2019-20 title team, Bradley played in 49 games, starting 44, before commendably bowing out of an opportunity to play in the bubble due to his desire to protect his six-year-old son with a history of respiratory illness from the raging global pandemic of which we knew very little about at the time.īradley began his second Laker stint on the bench, but quickly ascended to a starting role after just a handful of lackluster defensive performances by the poor-fitting and hamstrung group that the team debuted with.īradley’s early-season defensive effort shone in contrast to the generally dispirited night-to-night efforts on that end of the floor summoned by the Lakers’ veteran-laden cast. Everyone asks who is the toughest defenders you’ve had, he’s the first guy that comes to mind.”
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