Touch – that indefinable quality that boils down to the basic act of accounting for how much force and arc are needed to put a ball in a net from any given point – is, obviously, crucial to basketball.
Stephen Curry, of the Golden State Warriors, has as near to perfect touch as may have ever been seen in the game.
Andris Biedrins, a Latvian who played with the Warriors for nine seasons from 2004-13, may have had some of the worst touch in recent history. He led the league in field goal percentage at 21 thanks to his finishing near the rim (it doesn’t take much touch to dunk), and his career was over by 27 in part for his inability to do anything at all away from the hoop.
Biedrins vividly underscored an often bizarre reality for many NBA big men – professionals of the game who, tasked with the basic basketball act of shooting, are genuinely less capable than the average guy off the street.
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In one of the more interesting developments of the young NBA season, though, a 7ft 3in compatriot of Biedrins’s, rookie Kristaps Porzingis of the New York Knicks, is looking like he has excellent touch.
This was evident last Wednesday night when 20-year-old Porzingis hit a buzzer-beating, game-winning three for New York against the Charlotte Hornets. Well, nearly.
The Knicks ran a simple inbounds play to their young centre with just .6 seconds left, down two. The team entrusted him with their one chance and he drained the shot from well past the three-point line, delivering the win – or what would have been the win, had the ball just left the tips of his freakishly long fingers in time. The shot was waved off by officials, the most microscopic of margins undoing him and the Knicks on this occasion.
But those freakishly long fingers which just barely held Porzingis back on Wednesday are serving him well overall. Through ten games he is scoring 11.5 points per game, grabbing nearly nine rebounds and blocking just over a shot per contest.
His percentages are not anything impressive yet – his field goal percentage is just 39.8 overall and from three he is only shooting 21.4 per cent. But his shot chart speaks to his ambitions; 57.4 per cent of his shots have come from outside the key, which, while not quite Nowitzki-an, puts him closer to Al Horford (53.8 per cent) than DeAndre Jordan (1.8 per cent).
He has managed, despite his inefficiency, to be a net plus for the Knicks, who are scoring about an extra point and a half per 100 possessions when he is on the floor than when he is off, as he helps draw attention outside and create space. The Knicks have been able to attempt over five more shots per 100 possessions when he is on the court despite playing at roughly the same pace, in fact, thanks largely to his threatening influence and offensive rebounding. Porzingis is pulling down 13.3 per cent of offensive boards, comparable to the best at his position, and his raw total, 3.3 per game, ranks fifth among centres.
No other player on the Knicks, besides the pace-pushing Sasha Vujacic, has such a pronounced on-floor effect.
And Porzingis, for what it is worth, also looks the court-dynamics-influencing part of a young Dirk – his collection of turnaround jumpers, fadeaways, close-to-the-basket floaters and standup mid-range jumpers demand attention and suggest a creative scoring sense that will only become harder and harder to defend as he gets more comfortable in the league.
There are still things Porzingis needs to greatly improve: his footwork can be ghastly, as he plods around the paint. That is understandable from a 7ft 3in stick like the Latvian, but he needs to get at least a little more fluid to have a chance of being a productive inside scorer. He has yet to show any passing skill, his miniscule 4.4 per cent assist percentage indicative of a player not yet adept at playing a part in a flowing offence. And, glaringly, those shooting percentages will need spikes.
But the Knicks have started a capable 4-6 with their giant young centre playing a major role, and that has to be considered promising. They were pretty widely pilloried for taking what was seen as a project in Porzingis with the fourth pick in the draft, and instead he has been productive from the get-go and looked even complimentary to Carmelo Anthony, who was reportedly unhappy with the selection
There is a long way to go yet for Porzingis, but the touch appears there. And countless bygone big men can attest that the touch can make up quite a significant part of the battle.
jraymond@thenational.ae
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