What makes Jahlil Okafor captivating?
If you strip away the Philadelphia 76ers big man’s frills, the draft status, the points, he’s kind of a modern basketball misfit. He’s a 6ft 11in centre who can’t defend inside, doesn’t rebound well and has about half the range required of the stretch-big-men of the future like, say, Kristaps Porzingis.
Jahlil Okafor is, if you want to be particularly harsh, a bit of a basketball anachronism.
Twenty years ago an able post-scorer coming off a rookie season at 20 years old that saw him score 17.5 points a game on better than 50 per cent shooting would assumed to be destined at least for a few all-star games. Today, though, it just doesn’t really mean as much as, say, Okafor’s minus-16.6 net rating (worst on the 76ers) or his minus-5.28 real plus-minus figure by ESPN (worst among centres).
By advanced metrics, Okafor was darn near irredeemably bad last season.
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And yet, he did score those points, and he does have that draft status. His offensive skills inside are real and intriguing, and he showed real improvement with his shot in particular as the season wore on. He was the third overall pick in the draft a year ago for a reason.
It’s just, can that reason be totally justified in today’s NBA? Even in the best case scenarios of his development, can a player of his skill-set, however prolific, be a significant figure in an effectively functioning modern offence?
It’s an important question because Okafor, as a primarily post operator in a three-point shooter’s world, could be a bellwether for the archetype itself. He has more range than mountainous finishers like Andre Drummond and DeAndre Jordan, but he’s never going to be a Porzingis or Dirk Nowitzki-style marksman. He can dribble and pass ably. It’s enough variety in a package as such that you can squint and see an offensive centrepiece, the kind without a real contemporary example in the NBA. The kind that, say, Tim Duncan once was.
And it’s interesting that the Boston Celtics, one of the league’s more analytically minded clubs, reportedly are willing to look past Okafor’s horrendous analytical profile as of yet and show interest in trading for him. Maybe they’re squinting, and seeing something that’s broadly been missed.
Okafor does do many things well. Scoring over 17 points a game, even on a historically bad team like last year’s 76ers, requires real skill of some sort. He has good hands and can catch a pass. He’s slippery under the rim, and he’s eager to bump around inside, creating little pockets of space with his hips for close finishes, though it too often doesn’t quite work and he’ll still force an ugly attempt.
He's got better than average dribble-drive ability, many times starting out at the three-point line and barrelling to the rim – though, again, if he runs into someone who can stop him, it results in some awkward desperation flailing. He has a nifty little push shot that he's comfortable with from around six to eight feet. His longer jumpers don't look all that terrible and have genuinely, seriously improved (consider: he shot 24.4, 27.5 and 43.8 per cent in the three zones just outside the nearest one to the rim before January 1, according to NBA.com/stats; he shot 41.7, 51.2 and 45.0 per cent from those some areas over the last two months of his season before he hurt his knee.)
And he can spin excellently. It's a remarkably effective tool of his, the little hooks and floaters and up-and-under lay-ups he creates out of his incredibly quick twisting action. His footwork can be equally swift. He has a soft touch at the rim and can finish comfortably most times, he's agile, he can run the floor.
That’s how he scores. He shows real, impressive offensive qualities already as a young big man. But there are issues. He forces awkward and unsuccessful finishes way, way too often when his move runs into well-placed defensive positioning. Despite his size, he’s not an especially strong player, unable to overwhelm big bodies down low and soft on his screens. He’s not as threatening backing down from the blocks as he thinks he is or as he should be at his size.
He can be kind of in love with his dribble-drive, even though, to be clear, he’s only good at it for a big man. The guy isn’t Russell Westbrook.
And, well, his shot, for all its improvement, still isn't great. He just can't even really take a credible attempt from beyond 15 feet. He has decent form but the end result so often is just strained. Brick-y.
Here’s the big thing: He really is a terrible defender. He doesn’t deter much of anything inside. He’s shockingly soft and he doesn’t have the long arms or instincts of a shot-blocker.
Okafor is not going to survive in the NBA as a centre on the defensive spectrum.
He might have to look to a player like LaMarcus Aldridge for inspiration. With his footwork and size, he should be able to learn to neutralise stretch-fours and otherwise hound the perimeter, a skill that will be increasingly useful in the three-point-tilting NBA. If he can just learn to cover a bit inside for a real rim protector, he can become passable. But that rim-protector will need to be able to shoot from distance, or his team will need three really significant three-point threats, otherwise they’ll never have the spacing to let Okafor be any useful, really.
That was part of the problem last year in Philadelphia, and in part why the Sixers seemed to play so much better when they stopped pairing him with the interior-bound Nerlens Noel on the court. There needs to be space in the middle for Okafor to utilise his ability to put the ball on the floor and snake around in the middle, and only credible three-point shooting threats create that sort of space.
If they think they can teach him to shoot and defend in a kind of stretch-ish four/five hybrid role, the Celtics might be on to something. Okafor should probably scrap a lot of the backing-down ISO stuff in his repertoire. He may love it, but he’s not even that good at it and it has little use in a good NBA offence in 2016.
But the inside push-shots and up-and-unders, his catch-and-finish ability, the dribble-drive stuff and an improved shot could just maybe make him a crucial part of a floor-spacing offence. There's a yin and yang to three-point heavy offences, and when you don't have threats who can command attention in the post it's far easier for good defences to smother the perimeter, as the Golden State Warriors have learned at times in the post-season.
It would be neat if there’s still a prominent place in the NBA for a player like Okafor. Despite how awful his first season generally was, he gave hints that there could be and that he could occupy it. It is fun to watch him operate.
Getting traded to the Celtics, where he could learn his ideal kind of role from a player who has perfected it over the years, Al Horford, would be a good start.
If it doesn’t happen, and he stays in Philadelphia and stalls or otherwise flames out elsewhere, it will be another sad signal of the big man’s waning importance in basketball.
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