Jordan Hill Continues to Improve His Game

Because I'm never finished ripping on Mike D'Antoni and his decision to not play Jordan Hill more than 20 minutes a game, I figured today would be a good day to dissect Jordan Hill's game and how Hill has improved from below average player, to leading the team in PER.

As we all know already, Hill is an extraordinary rebounder; he possesses the strength and fundamentals to successfully box out the NBA's best rebounding big men. It's no coincidence that Hill is averaging 13.5 rebounds per 36 minutes and currently has a 19.7% Total Rebound Percentage, making him 6th in the NBA behind Andre Drummond, DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard, Andrew Bogut and DeMarcus Cousins. Hill isn't a very good defensive rebounder, only having a 23.1% Defensive Rebound Percentage, which does not rank within the Top-20, however Hill is an elite offensive rebounder, coming in 2nd on the Offensive Rebound Percentage with a whopping 16.3%, only behind Drummond. Hill has always been a great rebounding presence since joining the Lakers; this would be his lowest Total Rebound Percentage with the team, as he has had over 20% in both of the last two seasons with the Lakers. Hill would certainly help clean up the Lakers rebounding woes, seeing as how the team is dead last in opponent rebounding.

Defensively, he plays with energy and his rotations are usually on time; he isn't the biggest shot blocker though, only averaging 0.8 per game (1.3 per 36 minutes). He knows his limitations well, however, and won't over commit to the ball handler, thus not giving up rebounding position. He is second on the Lakers in Defensive Win Shares behind Pau Gasol, despite the lack of playing time and his Defensive Rating of 106 is 5th on the Lakers. Hill is a solid man-to-man defender as well, staying close with this defensive assignments and contesting as many shots as possible, though this has led to some foul trouble in the past. His foul troubles is his only knock, as he averages 4.3 fouls per 36 minutes.

Of course, what makes Hill so good is his vastly improved offense. Here's the shot charts for this year:

Hill's skill set does not go in line with D'Antoni's coaching game plan, as Hill isn't a very good shooter at all; he can't stretch the floor and is entirely an inside player. He is a very good finisher around the rim, shooting an above league average 61.78% at the rim; for reference, the NBA's three best centers, Dwight Howard, DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis, all have a worse percentage at the rim than Hill. He is an excellent finisher in the pick and roll and is effective in this role; 80 of his 134 made shots have been assisted, the vast majority of those at the rim. The problem with Hill's offensive game being his ineffective jump shot, which limits him to only pick and rolls and not pick and pops, making him a bit easier to cover than, say, Pau Gasol, who can do both. Similarly, Hill isn't the type of player to carry your offense, and isn't a straight up isolation type player, though he has shown massive improvement in his back-to-the-basket game. Hill is shooting a combined 30 for 53 in hook shots, good for a 56.6%, which is elite level of efficiency.

When we couple his finishing ability with his incredible offensive rebounding numbers, we can see why Hill's Offensive Rating is easily the best on the Lakers at an astonishing 119. For reference, LeBron James, the NBA's best player, has an offensive rating of 122. This isn't to say Hill is on James' level, but he certainly gives the Lakers a major boost when he's on the court. As much as Mike D'Antoni wants to disagree, you can't look at the numbers and say otherwise.

The Lakers Have Not Been Rebounding At All

I can't say the Lakers have been a disappointment this season; between all of the injuries to their best players and Mike D'Antoni's insistence on not placing Pau Gasol in a position where he can succeed, I think the Lakers are actually doing better than their preseason expectations. In fact, through 30 games, I expected something closer to 10 wins than 15 wins. The Lakers currently sit at 13-17 and are somehow only 4 games behind the Dallas Mavericks for the 8th seed in a brutal Western Conference, and it's not hard to see why: they aren't rebounding this year. Or scoring, or playing defense, but that's for another post entirely.

D'Antoni, has insisted on playing smaller ball lineups, often times having Wesley Johnson and Shawne Williams split time at power forward, which would be fine if Williams wasn't such a bad player. And if you think I'm being harsh on Williams, an 8.6 PER says otherwise. The Lakers are currently 14th in rebounding, averaging 42.7 rebounds per game, a far cry from last season, when they were ranked 4th with 45 rebounds per game. Of course, it doesn't help that last years' rebounding leader, Dwight Howard, went to Houston; for as much hate as Howard received for his free throw shooting and limited low post moves, he was still an elite rebounder and defensive player. These numbers aren't much of a problem; being ranked 14th isn't the worst thing in the world, however the Lakers have been giving up an astronomical amount of opponent rebounds, giving up 47.7 rebounds per game, good for 29th. This becomes an even bigger problem when you take into account the Lakers defensive rebound woes; they are giving up the 2nd most offensive rebounds in the league with a whopping 12.8 per game. It's no wonder the Lakers are giving up averages of 47.5 points in the paint (28th) and 14.7 second chance points (27th). And, in case you missed it, the Lakers lost to the Jazz on Friday by giving up an offensive rebound and put back to Derrick Favors.

More often than not, teams will need to rebound to be successful; it's no coincidence the league's top teams also tend to be in the Top 10 in rebounding. There are exceptions, of course, like the 8-21 Philadelphia 76ers being 7th in rebounds, or the defending champion (and 23-7) Miami Heat being dead last in rebounds with 36.5 (!) per game. You can get away with not rebounding when you have LeBron James on your team. The Lakers do not have a player who can bail them out and will have to wait for another while until the return of Kobe Bryant to see whether or not he can still be that player. In the meantime, the Lakers absolutely need to make use of their fundamentals; you can't commit mistake after mistake and expect to win with this roster, especially when you have Bryant and Steve Blake on the shelf for 6 more weeks, Steve Nash out indefinitely and Pau Gasol dealing with an upper respiratory infection.

What can the Lakers do? For starters, play Jordan Hill more than 20 minutes a game. Hill averages 13.6 rebounds per 36 minutes and is ranked 17th in PER with an astonishing 22.06 PER. Hill currently ranks ahead of Blake Griffin, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Tim Duncan, and John Wall in PER, just to name a few. Hill is up to a .207 WS/48, which is crossing into elite territory; for reference, Dwight Howard and DeMarcus Cousins are largely considered the NBA's two best centers and they don't measure up to Hill's WS/48; Howard has a .183 WS/48 and Cousins has a .163 WS/48. Obviously, these two players are completely different to Hill, who has a limited offensive skill set, but does convert 58.5% of his shots and rarely takes a bad shot. Cousins and Howard can be counted on to consistently score in the low post, while Hill is a bit of a wild card, sometimes looking very good and sometimes having some cringe worthy moments. Nonetheless, Hill is an elite rebounding presence and would help the team's rebounding woes almost immediately.

D'Antoni can also consider benching Shawne Williams and going with a bigger lineup with Chris Kaman and Ryan Kelly. Kaman is averaging over 11 rebounds per 36 minutes and gives the Lakers some size they have sorely lacked. Kelly isn't all that good of a rebounder, the stretch 4 out of Duke can shoot the lights out from beyond the arch, however and stands at 6'11''. Both of them provide more value than Williams, who is only making 31% of his three point attempts, which is kind of the only reason he's supposed to be out there. The Lakers can't be fixed in one day; this roster is a mess between the injuries and D'Antoni's coaching philosophy going against his best players' abilities, but they do have the personnel to help diminish those problems and make them more competitive. I only hope D'Antoni can tweak his coaching style around his players, otherwise, this is going to be the worst season in recent Lakers' history.

Jordan Hill and Steve Blake Are Having Career Years

Enough cannot be said about the play of Jordan Hill. Hill, the 8th overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft by the New York Knicks, has always been a force on the boards, averaging an impressive 11.2 rebounds per 36 minutes of play time. Unluckily for him, Mike D'Antoni, who was his coach with the Knicks, benched him early on in the season before ultimately trading him to the Houston Rockets during the middle of the season.

After another season of only getting 15 minutes a game, despite superb rebounding numbers, Hill was traded to the Lakers for Derek Fisher and a 2014 first round pick. Unfortunately, Hill has dealt with numerous injuries through out his career, but he was finally given a chance this year and the results have been better than expected. Hill's per 36 numbers this season? 17.9 points per game, 14.5 rebounds per game. In 20.9 minutes per game, Hill has put up a line of 10.4 points per game and 8.4 rebounds per game. Still want to bench him, Mike? Hill has been worth 1.3 Win Shares through 12 games, which is roughly the same amount he was worth last year in 29 games. His WS/48 is up to an astonishing .248 which is Kobe Bryant level of production, just completely dominating on the boards and playing very good defensively. He currently has a PER of 25.2, which is among the elite of the NBA, currently ranked 6th among players with 10 or more games played. Here's the short list of elite talent that ranks above Hill in PER: LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Kevin Love, Kevin Durant and Chris Paul.  Of course, this type of production is likely not sustainable for the season, but it is nice to see Hill make the most of his opportunity and he has been enormous for a Laker team that desperately needed a solid big man to play next to Pau Gasol. 

Steve Blake has been rejuvenated playing under Mike D'Antoni. Coming off of his best season ever as a pro last year, he earned a B+ in Hack-a-Shaq's end of the season player reviews. 

"Ultimately, Blake had a big impact on Lakers' basketball, providing a calming presence and quality play in substitution for Steve Nash, either off the bench or starting in place of him (Blake finished with 13 starts on the year). Much like Nash, Blake shot the ball exceptionally well, placing 7th on the Lakers' highest shooting percentage from three point land for a season. In short, Steve Blake redeemed himself for his disappointing seasons with the Lakers and missing the biggest shot of his life, while earning his final season of his contract with the Lakers."

Somehow, Blake has been better than ever and has managed to improve upon last season, as he has upped his scoring average to 9.8 points per game, while nearly doubling his assists per game, currently at an excellent 7.3 (he finished Sunday's game with a whopping 16 assists). Blake has been everything the Lakers have needed and more at the point guard position, doing everything from pick and rolls, to playing excellent defense, to hitting three point shots, including a game winning one over the Dwight Howard led Rockets. 

I don't know about you, but I'm very excited to see what he brings to the table when Kobe Bryant finally returns. If Blake can, at the very least, keep hitting three pointers at this pace (currently shooting 46.4% from deep), the Lakers can be an extremely dangerous squad, with great offensive production at nearly every position. 

The More Things Change, the More Things Stay the Same

This has been the whole Lakers' team mentality during this run, save for Nash.

The Lakers have been seemingly cursed this season as they have lost 40 games of injury to their starters alone, but it was usually in balanced fashion, as in one perimeter player and one post player is out. Not for this stretch, as everybody over 6’10’’ not named Robert Sacre is injured right now (Pau Gasol with a concussion, Dwight Howard with a torn labrum, Steve Blake with a torn abdomen and Jordan Hill with loose fragments in his hip which will require season ending surgery). The Lakers are going with the smallest ball possible, as they have had stretches where Metta World Peace and Earl Clark/Antawn Jamison are playing center and power forward and this is a bigger problem than turnovers and bad shots combined. The positive news here is Clark’s and Hill’s Per 36 numbers are nearly identical, the only difference really being how physical Hill is compared to Clark, though Clark is far more versatile, as he can slide to the outside and defense perimeter players (like he did on Wednesday vs. the Spurs, as he took on Manu Ginobili).

Let’s get one thing straight: Defense wins championships. No team has a chance of winning it all if they allow 105+ points per game. It’s the reason why the D’Antoni-Steve Nash led Phoenix Suns never made it past the Western Conference Finals. The Lakers have some excellent man to man defenders with World Peace, Kobe Bryant and Howard but the team’s lack of defensive fundamentals is seriously disturbing; nobody on the team rotates to help the help defender, and on occasions, nobody rotates to help the initial defender. This is the cause of the uncontested shots most opposing teams have in or around the paint. The Lakers lack of trust in each other this late into the season is something to seriously be concerned about and it makes me question whether this team can ever make a deep post season run. D’Antoni may have fixed the offense, or better said, D’Antoni made it easier for Nash to fix the offense (103.2 PPG, good for 4^th in the league) as the Princeton wasn’t a system apt for Nash but D’Antoni hasn’t been preaching defense at all this season, save for the rare occasions when an opposing team makes an early run, only to have D’Antoni call a time out to get everybody organized. The Lakers defense is among the bottom of the league, as they surprisingly don’t allow more points than they score despite their 15-21 record. The Lakers allow 101.7 points per game, good for 26^th in the league, and that’s something that’s not even close to cutting it in this league. The one constant though out NBA history has been: the team that plays defense usually ends up winning it all. It doesn’t matter how offensively oriented the league has become; defense is still the most important aspect of the game.

I am hopefully Howard’s injury won’t keep him out for long, and Los Angeles can get back to having somebody back there to protect the rim, as having World Peace and Jamison back there made for a lot of easy layups and in the paint, uncontested jumpers. Howard’s presence alone is a huge difference maker (reference the last time LA played OKC), as guys generally change their shots as to try not to get swatted into the 10^th row. And while Gasol may be softer than marshmallows, he still provides some defensive value as his length is still there to help contest shots (though I still insist on trading him while he has value, especially now that Earl Clark as made a name for himself and Artest is reverting to last year’s horrid form). The Lakers are very fixable because of the talent the team has, but it won’t get done until the team itself does some serious soul searching and starts to work hard on the defensive end.

As an end note, kudos to Howard about a month ago for calling Kobe on his free safety style defense. Bryant told him not to do it again; Howard said he would do it again if Kobe didn’t rotate. It takes some serious guts to tell Kobe what to do on his own team, definitely the make of a Franchise Player.