Los Angeles Lakers: Should JaVale McGee, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope be re-signed
JaVale McGee
JaVale is a devastating roll man after he sets a screen. According to synergy sports, he ranked 25th in the league in points per possession (PPP) as the finisher rolling to the rim, which is in the 88th percentile throughout the league.
The problem with McGee, though, was that he only attacked the rim at a 19% frequency, which is very low for a player of his skill level. JaVale only averaged 2.7 points per game as the roll man, good for 35th in the league, right behind Thomas Bryant (the ex-Laker), Dewayne Dedmon, Bobby Portis, and Andre Drummond.
The question is: Why does JaVale McGee roll to the rim so few times per game when he’s so good at it? The answer is simple; he doesn’t have a good motor, which leads to him taking many plays off during games and simply standing around on offense.
The last two seasons at Golden State he averaged 10 minutes per contest at the center position, not because he wasn’t talented enough to get into the game, but because he couldn’t play long stretches with energy.
The sad part about JaVale’s inability to play hard on offense in a consistent fashion is that it had a huge negative effect on the Lakers throughout the season. When a player of JaVale’s skill level rolls to the rim hard after every pick and roll, it opens up the offense for every player, leading to more driving lanes and more open shots from distance.
The Clippers finished the season with the 10th best offense in the NBA, but they had the 4th best offense by net raging during the 4th quarter, due largely to the way Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell played out of the pick and roll together.
Harrell had a worse PPP than JaVale at 1.30, but he attacked the rim out of the pick and rolls with much more frequency and effort than McGee, which led to him averaging 4.4 points per game after setting a screen (almost exclusively with Lou Williams).
One can only imagine what the Lakers 23rd rated offense would have looked like if JaVale had simply run at the rim with a purpose more often out of the pick and rolls with LeBron James.
If Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell were able to help the Clippers finish with the fourth best 4th quarter offense in the NBA, what could LeBron and JaVale accomplish if McGee had just played with a little more heart and effort?
JaVale McGee’s defense this past season can be described in a similar way to his offense: he showed a lack of effort.
JaVale McGee came in 19th place (out of 22 players) in Defensive Rating for the Lakers on the season at 109.7. That’s a bad look for any big in the league who doesn’t bring much to the table offensively.
One of the biggest reasons why JaVale struggled on defense was because he didn’t try very hard on the less glamorous side of the ball. He had the 4th slowest average defensive speed out of any regular rotation Lakers player this season at 3.87. Much of his dawdling came during transition defense when he would often sluggishly trot down the court while the other team’s players ran past him and scored.
JaVale was middling at best for the Purple and Gold when it came to many hustle stats this season. For example, he finished the year with an average of 1.8 deflections per game, which was 15th on the Lakers.
JaVale did lead the Lakers in blocks with an average of two per game. The problem with those swats is that they’re really the only thing McGee cared about on defense.
When he was guarding the rack, often times he needlessly left the man he was guarding to try and block shots by the opposing team’s guards that he had no shot of getting a hand on, but in the process of trying to get a highlight play, he’d leave his own man open for dunks off of easy passes.
It’s clear that JaVale McGee wants to continue to play for the Lakers next season because he said so a couple of weeks ago. Over the last ten games, he played much harder than he did for most of the season because he was auditioning for a spot on next year’s team.
During the final ten games of the season, he averaged 16 PPG, 11 RPG, and 2 BPG. The problem is that even though he’s been padding his stats in the hopes that whoever is running the Lakers next season only looks at his traditional box scores, he’s actually gotten slower on defense over the last ten games (3.76 defensive speed). He also has the second worst net rating for the Purple and Gold during that span at -3.5 +/-.
JaVale is a very talented player, but perhaps because of his asthma problem or possibly because he just doesn’t care much, he didn’t play with effort and a sense of purpose this year, so the Lakers should not re-sign JaVale McGee over the summer.