Watching the playoffs over the past several years, it’s become increasingly evident that teams are working diligently to key on the discernable weaknesses of their opponents. Non-shooters get ignored. Shooters who can’t dribble and/or finish get run off the line. Smaller players get bullied. Lumbering bigs are forced to guard in space. A well-rounded skill set has never been more important.
Given that, it’s hard not to reconsider the stock of Arizona’s Pelle Larsson. The senior wing out of Arizona has always done a little bit of everything. Watching the tape, he finds a variety of ways to keep defenses off balance. He’s effective in important areas on the court and he makes good decisions. Defensively, his strength and feel help keep him above board. However, the subtle nature of his game often understates the productive funk that he brings to the table. Today, we’re going to give Pelle Larsson some NBA Draft love, because there’s a real chance that his wide-ranging skill set allows him to climb during the pre-draft process.
Keeping Them Honest
One of the easiest ways for a wing to stay on the floor offensively is to space the floor, and Pelle Larsson can do that. He made 42.6% of his threes this past season and 39.7% of his threes over the course of his four-year college career. His right-handed stroke looks repeatable time after time. He’s also shown a bit of variety as far as how he can get into his shot. He knows how to relocate into defensive holes, he can move into his shot off screens or in transition, and he’s comfortable pulling up when given space (44.0% on 25 off-the-dribble threes this past season). His mechanics, consistency, and productivity allow him to draw hard closeouts.
My one gripe with Larsson here is that I wish he were a bit more assertive with his shot. He only took 5.4 threes per 100 possessions this season, and I can’t think of a better shooter who took that few. He can be a little too passive and a little too slow going into his motion, and he’ll want to clean that up during the pre-draft process. Still, opponents respect Larsson because they know he’s a knockdown guy when he pulls the trigger. It’s also tough to blame Larsson for wanting to go inside, because he’s one heck of a downhill player, too.
Making Them Pay
If opponents aren’t careful when they close out on Pelle Larsson, he will make them pay. One tool at his disposal is his excellent pump fake. He’s able to bring it really high and get opponents to bite on it before starting his attack. From there, Larsson’s first step does him a lot of favors. While he’s not the twitchiest athlete in many respects, he’s actually very good at exploding out of a complete standstill into his drive. Once he gets going, his strength makes it difficult to knock off his line. At the rim, Larsson can show some bounce off one foot or convert using his touch. In particular, he has a unique gift when it comes to arcing the ball over the top of big rim protectors near the cup. Even better, contact doesn’t bother him one bit. He remains coordinated even when someone bumps into him in mid-air.
Larsson’s jolty stop-start first step, power, and touch enable him to put a lot of pressure on the rim relative to his position. This year, 36.6% of his halfcourt shots came at the basket, and he made an impressive 57% of them. My one knit to pick is that I wish he was more willing to go to his left hand at the cup. Even still, he’s effective. While he’s sometimes mistakenly classified as a shooter, Larsson is a real deal rim pressure guy. Arizona’s coaching staff recognized this, often utilizing him as a screener who they would short-roll. Better yet, Larsson is an excellent passer on his way to the rim.
Pelle Larsson’s head is always up. He knows how to take his time, play methodically, and find openings when operating out of a ball screen. He recognizes his own gravity as a driver and will spray it out to open shooters if a perimeter defender abandons their assignment. Going downhill, he does a great job of reading the last level of the defense. When the rim protector comes out too far, Larsson is always ready to dump it to his big man in the dunker spot. If his big man gets behind their defender as a roller, he’ll throw him an accurate lob. His pass placement is typically on point. When he’s spotting up, he’ll routinely make sharp extra passes. My favorite element of his distribution, though, is that he does a tremendous job of looking off his dishes. That extra layer of trickery further misshapes defenses and makes the rotations even more difficult. Larsson ended the year with a 20.1 AST% while averaging 3.7 APG to only 1.9 TOV.
In totality, Larsson has an incredibly intriguing offensive profile. Playoff performers need to be able to dribble, pass, and shoot. Larsson can do all of that. I ran a BartTorvik on wing-sized players from high-major conferences who scored, shot threes, and distributed the ball at a level similar to Larsson over the past 10 years. The results were rather encouraging.
Showing No Weakness
Larsson’s well-rounded productivity insulates him on the offensive end. Still, come playoff time, NBA teams are looking to sniff out any weakness possible. I have some concerns with Larsson on the defensive end of the floor. That said, I wouldn’t throw in the towel. Larsson has some great moments on that end of the floor, and much of it has to do with his physical strength and how well he can leverage it.
Larsson’s truly a stout defender. He plays with a level of discipline that prevents him from biting on misdirection and he does a great job of taking away the angles a player is seeking to attack. He loves to throw his chest on his opponent, and when he does, they have a hard time shaking him loose. His ability to stay vertical shows up when he helps around the basket. Smaller players like Mark Sears can find themselves swallowed up by his smothering technique and bigger dudes like Grant Nelson can still struggle to get to their spots against him. While his career 1.7 STL% and 1.1 BLK% may not fly off the page, Larsson knows what he’s doing out there. Add in his physicality and strength, and he’s able to hold his own.
He’s not without his limitations here. His feet aren’t the quickest and he has a hard time recovering when he does get shaken. Too often, he’ll be flat-footed when guarding the ball. Those are technical elements of his defensive game that will need to be fine-tuned at the next level. He’ll need to improve his lateral agility and balance. But with that being said, Larsson’s tenacity and smashmouth tactics should keep him in the game. Per Hoop-Explorer, Arizona’s defensive net rating against Top 100 teams was better when Larsson was on the floor, and his DBPM of 3.3 is no joke. He’s proven to be a capable part of a defensive system.
