RealGM

ChuckChilly wrote:Too much cash and too many years. But I like what he will bring to the team.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker has a weird skill that's rare in the NBA

“At a young age, my uncle always said, ‘If you can do (something) with your right hand, you should be able to do it with your left.'"

A knowledgeable NBA fan knows the basics of prominent role players — they know Alexander-Walker is a quality defender, hits his open threes, and can handle the ball when called upon. But only when you watch a role player game after game do you pick up on their smallest tendencies, the little quirks in their game that make them unique.

For NAW, it's the fact that he's one of the most ambidextrous players in the NBA. 

He must have taken that quote from his uncle to heart because it's rare to see a player who's this good at passing with his left hand despite being a right-handed shooter. 

Every time he slithers to the left side of the court, he's looking to whip a one-handed lefty skip pass across the defense to find a teammate in the opposite corner. The precision and velocity on all his lefty skip passes is impressive to the degree that you nearly forget he's doing it all with his weak hand.

Sealab2024 wrote:So here's the nuts and bolts of it from a wolves fan. NAW is like 99th percentile at getting through screens. No idea how he does it, but he does... Consistently. What this means is if you put Nickeil on a primary ball handler their switch hunting ends because the defense isn't forced to switch, NAW just stays with his guy. This basically destroys the offensive game plan of like 95% of the league. They either have to work one on one with straight up match ups or defer to a secondary ball handler.

Now getting through screens is not for the feint of heart. It's all elbows to the ribs and knees to the thighs so it's tough to ask a guy to do that for 38 minutes a night, but it's a hell of a weapon to have in the arsenal. That he can definitely do things on offense is generally all gravy in the grand scheme of things because having NAW is really about causing absolute chaos on the defensive end.