tsherkin wrote:This isn't hard to answer.
His regular season play is a lot worse than how he's played during the playoffs. And when you look at his playoff metrics, they reflect the large difference in quality of play. When you're a high-volume scorer who is a negative TSAdd kind of guy, you tend not to do that well in overall numbers. When you're a +5.5% rTS guy in the playoffs, things look a little different. He's also shooting over 90% at the line so far in the postseason, and was under 84% in his first season as an 80%+ FT shooter in the RS.
He isn't the playmaker or rebounder we see from Luka, but he's a considerably better defender and he's been a monster in 3 straight playoff series. We'll see what happens in the second round, but like, he's been a beast. He's night and day on offense during the postseason to date in his career. In the RS, he's a bleh volume scorer under league-average efficiency, more exciting than high-impact. And then the playoffs start and he does this.
Yeah all of this.
Behind the numbers is the fact that Ant still has holes (or at least inconsistencies) in his game.
Both his scoring tools and his playmaking have improved, but he has a bit of a one track mind and has a hard time flipping the switch from score to pass. If you look at his pick & roll possessions this year, he almost never makes the quick read to hit an open roll man, or the open spacer.
Arguably the 2 most valuable shots the T-Wolves offense can generate, are an open (above the break) 3 for Towns, or a high pass/lob for a Rudy Gobert dunk. With the ball in Ant's hands (due to the fear of his driving and pull up counter), the offenses consistently generates those exact opportunities. Ant doesn't hit them though. He'll take the pull up instead of the lob to Rudy, and he'll drive to the basket while Towns stands alone at the top of the paint. Ant does some amazing playmaking, but it usually happens when he's completely sucked the defense towards him. He can create big playmaking windows, but he consistently misses the small ones.
So you've got a guy who consistently turns really easy offense (dunks and open 3s) into difficult offense (pull ups and drives into the teeth of the defense). Not hard to imagine why its visible in impact metrics and scoring efficiency. Guys like Luka and SGA have another layer with the ball in their hands where they're consistently creating something easy.
The encouraging thing is that this is something with a decent likelihood of improvement. Making quicker reads is something players accomplish with film study and reps.