The Science of Aaron Gordon
Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:56 pm
Aaron Gordon is a darling among a handful of NBA media members for some of his advanced stats, athleticism, and character. Zach Lowe once wrote, "he's like a superhero learning to harness his powers in the first 30 minutes of the movie." That quote has always stuck with me. The hope is that his relentless effort and athleticism will consolidate into an all-star talent. However, those same media heads have expressed a ton of hesitation with the transition to small forward.
Danny Chau of The Ringer wrote an excellent piece on Aaron Gordon and his transition to small forward. Chau makes a great argument for while the stats don't necessarily predict Gordon's success at the 3, he's such an anomaly athletically compared to his peers that it might just work and be worth a shot.
Chau visited the famous P3 in Santa Barbara and interviews Dr. Marcus Elliot who further explains how exceptional Gordon is athletically and what data they have that predict him to fit in decently on the perimeter. There's also a bit in there on how predictable Gordon's stress fracture in his rookie year based on data collected pre-draft that showed his "landing" needed improvement.
I've quoted most of the sports science stuff below, but click the link to read the whole thing; some really interesting stories in there and cool quotes from Gordon. https://theringer.com/orlando-magic-aaron-gordon-small-forward-36df66a13320#.7fy9ip340
I've fallen in line with Chau's reasoning as well. While the stats themselves don't bode well for Gordon, I'm willing and open to the idea of Gordon making this transition given his athletic gifts and IQ. I really liked his comparison to Russell Westbrook; there's a raging, athletic monster in Gordon somewhere. He'll probably have his share of mistakes, but he needs a coach that will believe in him and give him the freedom to be himself on the court. The potential good could outweigh those short-comings he may exhibit.
Danny Chau of The Ringer wrote an excellent piece on Aaron Gordon and his transition to small forward. Chau makes a great argument for while the stats don't necessarily predict Gordon's success at the 3, he's such an anomaly athletically compared to his peers that it might just work and be worth a shot.
Chau visited the famous P3 in Santa Barbara and interviews Dr. Marcus Elliot who further explains how exceptional Gordon is athletically and what data they have that predict him to fit in decently on the perimeter. There's also a bit in there on how predictable Gordon's stress fracture in his rookie year based on data collected pre-draft that showed his "landing" needed improvement.
I've quoted most of the sports science stuff below, but click the link to read the whole thing; some really interesting stories in there and cool quotes from Gordon. https://theringer.com/orlando-magic-aaron-gordon-small-forward-36df66a13320#.7fy9ip340
Gordon first visited P3 in Santa Barbara in advance of the 2014 NBA draft combine. As they ran their tests, founder Marcus Elliott, a Harvard-trained physician, found himself surprised by the data. “He was already a really nice athlete, so I don’t want to tell you that we built him into an athlete,” Elliott told me. “[But] he was more of an athlete than I expected him to be, honestly.”
Gordon was as impressive laterally as he was vertically. They found that he had virtually no limitations in his movement skills, which is exceedingly rare in a player Gordon’s size. “We have a few of those guys, [and] they’re all very successful in the NBA,” Elliott said. “We haven’t assessed any of these big guys that have amazing movement skills that haven’t been really successful in the NBA. And what that says to me is, if you’re a big man and you’re an amazing mover in all planes, you can have a career in the NBA, regardless of your skill set.”
Elliott and his staff of biomechanical engineers monitor what they call jump diversity, the ability to jump in lots of different environments very successfully, whether that means jumping very high or very quickly, jumping out in space, or jumping in tight confines. “It’s unusual to have a guy that has as much jump diversity as Aaron,” Elliott said.
It’s an impressive physical gift that manifests itself even in mundane situations. Here, against the Sixers in February, Gordon takes the ball coast to coast and botches an easy basket, but jumps three additional times in the span of two seconds around a crowd of defenders to follow his own miss.
“In his jump movements, the amount of force he creates is consistently at least a standard deviation above the norm,” Elliott said. “He creates a ton of what we call concentric force. That’s like when his muscles are stretched and they need to shorten.” Like a rubber band, Gordon clarified.
As you’d expect, Gordon’s problem was never his ability to jump; Elliott was more concerned about how he was landing. During their predraft testing, Elliott noticed some asymmetry in his landing mechanics. He was overloading his left side. In their initial report of Gordon, under “Needs Improvement” was his ground interaction, and how his landings affected him at the foot and ankle level. They let Gordon know, but he was dubious. I can **** hit my head on the rim, Gordon thought. Don’t talk to me about a mechanics problem.
Two weeks into his rookie season, he had a stress fracture in his left foot.
“There’s this hidden code behind sports that people haven’t really exposed before,” Elliott said. “If you understand the code, a lot of the outcomes don’t surprise you. They’ve telegraphed themselves to you.”
Gordon returned to the court in mid-January of 2015, and played 47 games total in his rookie campaign. The week the season ended, he was back in Santa Barbara. He was the first NBA player the P3 staff worked out that offseason.
“When all arrows were pointing towards [the mechanical issues we’d identified], I think — he already believed in what we did, but it gave him a lot more belief,” Elliott said. “It gave him a reality check on how fragile and fickle an NBA career is, and how quickly things can go south on you. And so he comes back, he has a great offseason with us. He almost completely normalizes his mechanics on [his landing], so the mechanics that were really worrisome are not worrisome now.”
Much of my conversation with Elliott revolved around Gordon’s athleticism as an outlier for a big man, but when I note that Gordon was being repositioned, the tenor of our conversation didn’t change much at all. Gordon is an awe-inspiring athlete, regardless of position, and much of his tests reflect his capacity to play a more laterally-oriented game. “When we think about perimeter play, we mostly think about ability to create lateral force, ability to defend on the perimeter, to move in lateral planes in short movements,” Elliott said. “And it’s pretty much impossible to be a great perimeter defender unless you can create significant lateral force. And we have pretty much zero examples of guys who are amazing perimeter defenders but can’t create a lot of force.
“At P3 we have learned, unequivocally, that vertical and lateral movement are very separate systems, and that knowing that an athlete can jump high doesn’t predict how well he will move laterally and vice versa. A.G., it turns out, is very good at both.”
Gordon was wholly capable of switching on screens and defending out at the 3-point line in his first two seasons; having to defend the opposing team’s best wing scorer this year won’t be anything new to him. He not only has the size advantage, but for the most part, his speed also allows him to maintain positioning. “The most important thing to keep track of with smaller players is when they come off of down screens or pin-downs, or flare screens,” Gordon said. “Smaller players are good at getting low and getting around screens. As a bigger defender, I just need to get lower, and get my hips lower and my shoulders lower than the screener’s hips. And if I do that, then I can stay with the guards, and it’s just going to be a rough night for them.”
For being 6-foot-9, Gordon is exceptional at using his hips to generate lateral force. His hip abduction velocity (which correlates with lateral speed) approaches the 80th percentile for all NBA athletes, according to P3 data. But perhaps most astonishing is Gordon’s performance in P3’s open-stimulus-response test, where an athlete stands in a set, ready position and responds to a ball being dropped to the left or right of him by moving as quickly as he can 1 meter in the direction of the ball. The results showed that Gordon generates more lateral force in the stimulus-response test than in a 1-meter slide in a premeditated direction. That is to say: Gordon is quicker and more explosive when he has no idea which direction he has to react to than when he does know.
“It’s a very good sign for defenders,” Elliott said.
I've fallen in line with Chau's reasoning as well. While the stats themselves don't bode well for Gordon, I'm willing and open to the idea of Gordon making this transition given his athletic gifts and IQ. I really liked his comparison to Russell Westbrook; there's a raging, athletic monster in Gordon somewhere. He'll probably have his share of mistakes, but he needs a coach that will believe in him and give him the freedom to be himself on the court. The potential good could outweigh those short-comings he may exhibit.
