Desmond Bane, Sneaky MIP Candidate?
Visualizing Desmond Bane's improvement from his rookie year
The Memphis Grizzlies have been the talk of the town in the past few weeks with a 11 game winning streak that came to an end last Friday to the Mavs. This streak has put them at the top of the Western conference as they are comfortably in the top 4 and have recently usurped the Utah Jazz in the standings, which has pundits talking about whether the Grizzlies are now contenders.
While that question may be hard to answer, one of the biggest reasons for their breakout season is the internal improvement of their players and one name that stood out to me in particular this year was Desmond Bane. From the eye test alone, I could tell he was getting the ball more often and doing more with it off the dribble, so I ended up taking a look at the numbers to see how well he has been playing.
If we look at just his per game stats during the regular season, we already see a significant change in volume as Bane has nearly doubled his FG, 3P, and FT attempts. With that increase in volume, it’s no surprise that his points per game has gone from 9.2 to 17.5! If there wasn’t a taboo against voting for 2nd year players for MIP, Bane would definitely be a frontrunner.
Though this table shows Bane has certainly improved, it doesn’t really say how he has improved aside from playing more minutes and taking more shots. Let’s see if his advanced stats paint a different picture.
From his advanced stats, we can see that Bane’s efficiency has dropped off a bit by 1.1% TS, but that’s expected with his usage increasing by 6.8%. Otherwise, not much really stands out here besides the increase in both Offensive Win Shares (OWS) and Offensive Box Plus Minus (OBPM). It’s clear then that Bane is having a larger contribution on the offensive end of the floor, so let’s glean from other sources to better see how.
Pulling tracking data from the NBA’s website, we can see the number of drives and types of jump shots that Bane takes every season. Comparing his rookie year to now, it is quite evident that Bane has taken a large jump in pull up jumpers with 3.6 more attempts per game. Comparatively, his catch & shoot attempts have only increased by 1.4.
This can also be visualized through Bane’s shot chart. Below on the right, we see that Bane has gotten more efficient all over the floor and has taken more shots in the midrange, evidence that Bane has been pulling up more often this year and especially from the left elbow. Overall, Bane has been much better than league average all around the arc this year and with more drives, he has taken a larger share of attempts at the rim.
Since we can see that Bane has been driving to the rim more and taking more pull up jumpers, let’s take a look at the actions Bane has been running to get his shots. Below we can see that there is a stark contrast in how frequently and efficiently he runs a certain action this year. Bane’s most efficient playtype starts in the top left of the circular bar chart and the bars go counter-clockwise, sorted by points per possession in descending order. How often he runs that action is shown by the color with red being the most ran and yellow being the least. Previously, Bane’s best scoring action was through spotting up on the perimeter, as 41.4% of his actions came from spot-up shooting. He was pretty good at it too, scoring at 1.2 PPP, but now we can see that Bane only spots up 23.5% of the time this year with about the same PPP.
Additionally, you can tell that Bane didn’t have too much diversity during his rookie year as over 60% of his actions came from spot-up shooting or transition. Now Bane has a more balanced diet of actions, as though spot-up shooting and transition plays still account for the most (at 46.7%), Bane now also runs plays using handoffs, off screens, and as a ball handler in the pick & roll over 40% of the time when he only ran those plays under 25% of the time last year. It’s clear that Bane has diversified the ways he can score this year and this has led to his growth as a scorer, which has benefited the Grizzlies greatly on offense this year.
While Ja1 has been getting most of the media attention for the Grizzlies’ rise (and rightfully so), Bane’s improvement this year should definitely be highlighted as now teams have to account for him in more ways than just his spot-up shooting. I’m guessing that if teams haven’t been already, they will need to put Bane higher up on the scouting report.
Bonus chart! Ja’s Playtype Comparison in the last 2 years. There aren’t any drastic changes like with Bane’s chart, but Ja has gotten more efficient, with his isolation plays going up to 1.077 PPP from 0.894 PPP a year ago.
Great in-depth post! What software do you use to make the radar plots?