Whether we’re watching casually or carefully analyzing a game it can be easy to miss the little things like this because they’re more or less constant. We notice things that are out of the ordinary, like a DeMar DeRozan three pointer or Jonas Valanciunas hitting a cutter while posting up, and things that happen on almost every possession tend to fly under the radar even if they have a great impact on the outcome of the game. This is just a quick-hitter to highlight one of these little things and it’s importance to the Toronto Raptors.
The concept of gravity is very simple: it’s attraction. In basketball, “gravity” refers to the way that an offensive player attracts defenders, drawing them to him when he either has the ball or is a threat to receive the ball, forcing odd man situations elsewhere on the floor. It’s the reason that big men who can catch on the move and finish are highly sought after and why seemingly limited players like Tyson Chandler and Deandre Jordan are usually among the more valuable offensive players on their teams. Jordan’s value was on display when Blake Griffin injured himself and the Clippers relied on his gravity to free shooters for Chris Paul to pass to. It’s one of those things that’s so simple it often gets overlooked. We see the ball-handler and the shooter he ends up passing to because we’re always watching the ball but we often miss or neglect to pay attention to just how the shooter got open in the first place.
Valanciunas is one of the most important offensive players on the Raptors and a lot of that is because of his gravitational pull.. All big man draw defenders to some degree as the roll man but Valanciunas is gifted with the firm grip and soft hands that make him a nightmare to handle if even the smallest passing lane opens up to him in the paint. Luis Scola’s below the rim game, Bismack Biyombo’s stone hands and Patrick Patterson’s weak screens just don’t have the same effect. Look at the way the Bulls are defending this high pick and roll:
DeRozan isn’t exactly Steph Curry from deep but he’s become proficient enough on those corner threes that you don’t want to leave him open. Fortunately for the Raptors that’s the lesser of two evils for the Bulls, who need Pau Gasol to steer Kyle Lowry away from the rim but can’t risk Lowry slipping any pass through to the rolling Valanciunas.
Valanciunas’ gravity is even more apparent here:
The Bulls are forced to commit a cardinal defensive sin and help off a proficient shooter from one pass away just to keep the ball out of Valanciunas’ hands. That should be an easy pass to Patterson, who has ample time to shoot or the opportunity to attack a close out.
Pick and rolls with Bismack Biyombo often look very different because teams are not as intent on keeping the ball out of his hands:
If this was a pick and roll with Valanciunas you would either have Ellis in the paint to deter the pass, leaving the then-unproven Norman Powell open in the corner, or Lavoy Allen would sink down further leaving Patterson open. Teams are okay with these passes to Biyombo because there is a good chance that even if the pass to him is a good one he’ll bobble it.
You can see the impact of Valanciunas’ gravity in the Raptors shooting numbers. The team as a whole shoots 35.9% from deep when Valanciunas is on the bench and 38.9% when he is on the floor. Studies of three point shooting have found that changes in percentages can be almost entirely random, but if you look at the numbers on a player by player basis you see that almost everybody who has played a significant amount of minutes for the Raptors this year shoots better from deep with Valanciunas on the floor:
Sample size is obviously an issue when we’re talking about lineups or on/off splits but Patterson, DeRozan and Powell all see double digit increases in their three point percentages while the higher volume Terrence Ross and Kyle Lowry see smaller increases. Luis Scola and Cory Joseph are the only players with notable decreases in three point percentage when playing with Valanciunas, which is good because it’s yet another reason to break up the Valanciunas-Scola pairing and never let them see the court together ever again.
This is also one of the things that may keep Bismack Biyombo from seeing the large payday that many seem to expect in the coming offseason. Large sums of money are generally reserved for guys who have a positive impact on both ends or whose positive impact on one end is more than offset by a negative impact on the other but Biyombo’s inability to catch has solidified his spot as an energy guy who does enough that he won’t kill your team but isn’t quite good enough to lift them up either. On defense he’s got almost everything that centers like Jordan and Chandler have but offensively he lacks the gravity that has made them high impact players on that end and that might keep him in the bottom tier of NBA center salaries.
