Spoiler:
Continuing on Warren, my belief is that for him to be most effective and efficient, most of his touches need to be brief—they can be frequent, but they need to be brief, and the briefer the better. That is how Shawn Marion and Amar’e Stoudemire, for instance, improved their efficiency by playing with Steve Nash. Warren possesses better ball-handling ability than either of those players, but it is not his strength and, like Marion, his shooting form is somewhat awkward. Like Marion, Warren has this off-the-dribble floater that is fairly erratic, especially in traffic. But like Marion, Warren can excel as a runner and a cutter. Although he is not an explosive leaper, he possesses excellent body control, allowing him to receive a pass at high speeds and then hang in the air to square his shoulders and finish smoothly at the basket. Thus, despite being a below-the-rim player, Warren is an outstanding finisher. But although he shows flashes here and there, he is inefficient as a guy who creates his own offense. The longer his touches, and the more that he dribbles, the less effective that he becomes—he may enjoy a few good possessions in that regard in one game, like in Denver, but he will struggle to sustain that kind of play, hence his performance last night at home versus the Nuggets. He is too inconsistent in that area, and on a good team, Warren would rarely create his own offense.
And unfortunately, “analytics” may actually be diminishing Warren’s efficiency. The emphasis on the three-point shot has left Warren floating around the perimeter, and standing in the corner, too often. He should be in constant motion, especially along the baseline, cutting in the direction of the basket more than curling or floating outside. “Analytics” emphasizes the three-point shot, but here we may be seeing the danger of allowing “analytics” to generically predetermine a player rather than accounting for that player’s idiosyncrasies and individual nature. Indeed, “analytics” should be used to measure a player’s strengths and weaknesses and then discipline him in order to maximize his strengths and minimize his weaknesses, not to preset the player as if playing a video game or running some computer simulation. When the Suns won a league-best 62 games in ’92-’93, Cedric Ceballos led the league in field goal percentage at .576 (and posted a .612 True Shooting Percentage, sixth in the NBA); he did not accomplish that feat by floating on the perimeter, standing in the corner, shooting threes (he shot 0-2 on threes in 74 games that season), shooting many jumpers in general, or creating his own offense. Instead, he played to his strengths.
Now, one might say, “Yeah, but you want to space the floor and keep off-ball defenders honest,” but as I noted earlier, you can punish off-ball defenders by movement. This quotation from Charles Barkley in 2003, reflecting on the Suns’ NBA Finals team from ten years earlier, is revealing:
Cedric Ceballos all year was the player who never got the credit he deserved. For me, he was a godsend. He is going to get open. I loved passing to him out of double teams.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040416063825/http://www.nba.com/suns/history/azcentral_barkley_030622.html
Sure, concepts and contexts change, and today’s stars are accustomed to wide spacing, sideline-to-sideline. But Warren is almost being wasted right now. Two years ago, as a rookie, he shot .560 from the field on two-point field goal attempts, because he primarily shot the ball off fast break runs and off cuts—his strong suits. Now he is shooting .487 on two-point field goal attempts, which would be acceptable if he constituted a respectable three-point shooter or if he reached the free throw line a lot. Instead, he is shooting a pathetic .271 on threes in 1.7 attempts per game. He rarely reaches the free throw line (2.2 attempts per game), his assists-to-turnover ratio has not really improved, Warren is basically a “nothing” defender (even if he has improved from last year), and his rebounding is very modest, especially for a forward. When Phoenix used Warren as a “stretch four” down the stretch on Thursday night in Denver, with Chandler at center, the Nuggets ate the Suns alive on the boards. Thus, to be worthy of a significant role, he needs to be a hyper-efficient scorer. How valuable would Marion, for instance, have been if he had constituted a lackluster rebounder and defender who had the ball in his hands too often? And Ceballos, while not an elite rebounder like Marion, was a very good rebounder for a small forward, so he too made significant contributions in another area of the game. Warren is not like that—he is soft both as a defender and a rebounder, and he is a forgettable passer.
Of course, he is still young with room to improve, but he needs to play to his strengths, not according to a generic mold predetermined by broad-based “analytics.” For T.J. Warren shooting .457 from the field with a .505 True Shooting Percentage is simply not a valuable basketball player—and broad-based “analytics” are lowering those rates and his value.
I hope that Phoenix’s future starting front court will feature Bender and Chriss at forward, flanking Len at center. Indeed, there is a reason why I listed Warren behind Booker, Chriss, Bender, Len, and even Ulis in terms of players that I would prioritize for Phoenix moving forward. That is not to say that I do not want Warren on the team in the future, but the Suns need more size and length to improve defensively and on the glass. Chriss and Bender offer that potential, and they are better natural shooters—and three-point shooters—than Warren, anyway. One way or the other, Phoenix needs to recalibrate the way that Warren plays and resist turning him into something that he is not. He needs to be in constant motion off the basketball, or else he is about as valuable as Josh Childress was to the Suns. Indeed, the analogy right now for Warren is Childress—I still find the preposterous analogies to James Worthy and Clyde Drexler that some posters were once making to be amusing.
Now, Warren can be better than Childress, but not in his current mold.
