game's about a bucket*

or: dyson daniels and the misunderstood definition of offensive value

i don’t know whether it’s rational, but i’ve always had a very specific fear of being “the only one who knows the truth”, for lack of a better term. it’s even popped up in nightmares for me over the years, in various ways—whether it’s being accused of something i didn’t do, not being able to prove someone else’s wrongdoings, or less seriously, going insane when everyone is suddenly calling my dog mark (crucially, my dog is female, and not named mark). there’s not much more terrifying to me than the concept of being completely incapable of communicating something you know to be the truth.

this past saturday, as i was inexplicably destroying my back by spending 8 hours sitting on an uncomfortable couch in the name of playoff basketball (i did not get my steps in that weekend), i felt that dread creep its way in. i was, as you do, scrolling twitter throughout the game during breaks, and i found myself in disbelief at just how much dyson daniels slander i was seeing pop up on my timeline.

of course, i can’t say it’s particularly surprising, as this has been an ongoing theme with discussions around daniels, specifically this season, largely due to his absurd drop to 19% from three… but my goodness, some of the words i saw tossed dyson’s way over the course of the game were baffling to me. spending most of the evening thinking “dang, it’s been a really good dyson daniels game”, going online to see words like liability, detrimental, terrible, and unplayable thrown around was jarring. all this, i imagine, is largely a response to daniels missing a handful of open threes over the course of the game—which, sure, you’d rather basketball players hit their open shots… but daniels was quite firmly an offensive positive for the hawks in game 1, the same way he has been all season, due to everything he is able to provide outside of the three-ball (and scoring the ball himself, at large).

but these takes were so loud and so plentiful that they even had me questioning myself, so much so that i went back to re-watch the game and see if i was hallucinating—i was not. daniels was massively impactful all night offensively, generating tons of great looks with excellent screening on and off the ball, and fantastic passing, both in the halfcourt and in transition, as per usual. just in the first quarter, dyson daniels was directly responsible through screening, passing, or scoring for 17 of atlanta’s 21 points scored while he was on the floor. not too bad for an apparent offensive negative. he ended up as just a -3 in an 11 point loss, and while most will point to his defense as the only reason why, the reality is that the team’s offensive rating was 12.4 points better with him on the floor.

take a look at this play from the game in question, where daniels sets a good hard screen on brunson, granting alexander-walker the space to split through the defense, which forces josh hart to collapse on the drive, and allows alexander-walker to kick it to johnson at the top of the arc for the wide open three:

that’s a play that never comes to fruition if not for daniels’ screening, and doesn’t show up in the box score for him at all since he never touched the ball.

take a look at this possession from the second quarter of the same game:

this one doesn’t result in a bucket, but daniels magnificently works to create three separate quality looks in one possession. first, getting open at the basket off the slip, which johnson unfortunately doesn’t spot in time. then, clocking that hart and brunson are looking to double, slips out again and gets position in the paint. when faced with the choice between going at his defender to the basket or finding a pass, he makes the excellent play of utilizing a quick pass fake to kuminga to freeze gueye’s defender, and ensure a wide open three for gueye. a great look—he just missed it, so no box score points for mr. daniels. dyson daniels’ offensive game is predicated on these kinds of plays.

and look, i’m not arguing that the lack of a three-ball isn’t a negative for daniels—but most seem to want to point to him missing his jumpers as the bulk of it, which i’m just not sure is the case. to me, the shooting woes show up loudest when dyson’s not shooting the ball at all: parked in the corner and uninvolved in the play, where a good shooter would be providing spacing, daniels’ presence instead often allows his defender to help off of him to crowd the paint on drives. undeniably, in these instances, daniels makes the offensive game harder for his teammates—but a very important thing to note is that (especially by virtue of all of their rotation bigs having some level of three-ball) he’s nearly always on the court with three to four players who have to at least be respected from beyond the arc. on top of that, daniels is often used as a point guard, despite showing up in the box score as a wing, meaning he’s often involved in actions on the ball (and with his screening talent, he’s also often involved in actions off the ball). the roster around him, as well as his offensive skillset outside of the shooting, combine to make the lack of a jumper pretty workable.

this is perfectly supported by all metrics, such as epm, which grades dyson daniels out as a 71st percentile offensive player, or darko offensive dpm, which has him at 74th percentile. take a look at the on/off numbers and you’ll see just the same: the team’s offensive rating was 4.5 points better this season with dyson daniels on the floor.

there’s just a lot more to a modern nba offense than who puts the ball in the cup. hell, a lot of the time, the player who is most impactful on a play is not even the guy who put the ball in the basket, but the one who created the advantage for the scorer. there are several examples of players like this currently in the nba, but perhaps the most extreme example would be derrick white.

derrick white is a bit of a hot button topic in certain circles (jaylen brown mvp voters look away), but what is undeniable is that he is currently the poster boy of offensive impact that doesn’t involve scoring. while we’ve all heard of and have no problem dubbing white as one of the best shot blocking and rim protecting guards the league has ever seen—the struggle for many is to understand how derrick white can possibly be so offensively impactful despite shooting career lows from every spot on the floor this year. the common adage is that the nba is a make or miss league—and this is true, just misapplied. it’s not just about whether any individual player makes or misses a shot, but much more critically, whether they can put their team—themselves or another—in the best position possible to make that shot.

white is simply a wizard at reading the defense with or without the ball in his hands, with supercomputer processing speed, he’s always making the right play at the right time. one of the best advantage creators the league has to offer, but it goes unheralded because it’s often off-ball or a secondary assist rather than one that gets recorded. this is what allows white to boast such striking playmaking stats—though they don’t look particularly impressive if you just look at his assist number, which sits at 5.4 per game this season. deeper than that, though, white averages 14.0 potential assists per 100 possessions, which is good for 94th percentile in the entire nba. further in, white also pretty much never turns the ball over when passing it, sitting at 91st percentile in the league on passing turnover rate, and acts as a stellar turnover suppressor, 98th percentile in otov, or, the rate at which his team turns the ball over while he’s on the court. all of this, mind you, is with derrick white sporting the highest on-ball percentage of his career, at 31.4% (96th percentile). he averages the most touches per game, as well as the most total touch time, on the celtics’ roster, and yet, turns the ball over the least among their ballhandlers.

all of this is why, despite his poor shooting numbers, the celtics’ offensive rating is better with white on the floor this season. it’s also why white is a part of 8 of the celtics’ 10 best offensive 4-man lineups this season, too. really—white is a perfect microcosm of this celtics team: a group that sits at a relatively pedestrian 13th in true shooting percentage but still manages to flaunt the 2nd best offensive rating in the entire nba.

i could go on—there are a number of players in the league whose offensive box score numbers at a glance do not wow, but for one reason or another, outside of the box score, are critical to their team’s offense. one of the more obvious but still underrated means of accomplishing such a feat is offensive rebounding (something that is also a key for daniels and white, which i failed to mention). it often goes unrecognized just how valuable being a stellar offensive rebounder is to your team’s offense—you’re generating an entire extra possession for your team after a miss. not much more valuable than that.

donovan clingan is an exemplar of this impact: he logged a relatively unimpressive looking 12 points and 2 assists per game on just 59th percentile efficiency for bigs this season. yet, the blazers’ offensive rating was a sizeable 3.7 points better with him on the floor, and he grades out as a +1.9 offensive epm (90th percentile). this is largely off the strengths of his offensive rebounding ability, as clingan led the league in offensive rebounds per game at a staggering 4.5, and was 98th percentile in offensive rebound percentage (percent of rebounds he recovered on offense) at 17.1%. think about it—clingan recovered about a sixth of his team’s misses while he was on the court, resulting in an extra crack at the basket. if that’s not offensive value, i don’t know what is.

there’s many players that fit a similar mould: moussa diabate, paul reed, luka garza, steven adams—even mitchell robinson, a guy who has no offensive game that isn’t catching the ball within 5 feet of the basket and dunking it, someone teams deploy “hack-a-mitch” against because he shoots an abysmal 41% at the line, still nets out to being a 58th percentile offensive player sheerly off the back of his offensive rebounding talent. and, although it’s more well-known, the understanding of the true value of players whose worth lies chiefly in their playmaking skill is also lacking. take lamelo ball for example, who, this season, averaged 20 points and 7 assists per game on just 54.6% true shooting. the raw numbers don’t pop, but still yet, lamelo ranked 98th percentile in offensive epm, and the hornets were a jaw-dropping 13.1 points better offensively when he was on the floor—the highest of such figures in the entire nba. by a country mile, it was the most impactful season of lamelo’s career. this, all due to ball’s tremendous ability to read the floor, create advantages, and make the right play.

to me, offense in basketball is much like architecture—sure, the construction workers who put it together do commendable work, just like the one who puts the ball in the basket, but that building doesn’t go up without the architects, the engineers, the planners—the people who shape it long before that first brick is ever laid.