Warriors' season-in-review: the wings part 1 — Damion Lee and Kent Bazemore
Shot profiles, lineup stats, and a deep dives into Damion Lee and Kent Bazemore
In part 1 of our season-in-review for the Warriors’ wings, we’re going to look at Damion Lee and Kent Bazemore. In a few days, I’ll publish part 2, which will focus on Kelly Oubre Jr. and Andrew Wiggins.
Damion Lee grade: B
For the second time in his brief NBA career, Damion Lee was robbed of a chance to play in the playoffs. In 2019, Lee was left off the Warriors’ playoff roster while Damian Jones and Jacob Evans wasted valuable roster spots and the Warriors’ bench guards and wings wilted in the Finals. This season, Lee should have gotten the chance to play the most important minutes of his NBA career and make up for his inexcusable omission on the 2019 Warriors’ playoff roster.
Instead he became one of 6,000 or so of the hundreds of millions of Americans vaccinated against Covid-19 to get infected with the virus. Lee’s symptoms were so severe that he received a chest x-ray, which would seem to imply some serious shit going on in his lungs. Although Lee began practicing with the Warriors before they got eliminated in the play-in tournament, he was initially ruled out for the indefinite future upon his initial diagnosis.
I cannot stress how much of a bummer this was for Lee. To even make it to the NBA, Lee had to recover from two different ACL tears, fight for a spot in the G-League, go through 2-way contract fuckery with the Warriors for two seasons when he was clearly superior to several players on guaranteed contracts, and battle constant (and false) claims of nepotism because of his marriage to Steph Curry’s sister.
Make no mistake about it — Damion Lee is a good NBA player. He shoots at or above league average from pretty much every spot on the floor, he is a solid defender who rarely blows rotations, and the ball doesn’t stick to his hands. Lee knows his role and pretty much never deviates from it. After looking at his shooting splits, I found myself wondering what would happen if Lee hunted more of his own shots, but I don’t think he has the creation skills of, say, someone like Alec Burks. Still, I never felt particularly concerned when Damion Lee dribbled or drove to the hoop because... he’s a solid NBA player who rarely makes mistakes.
I will grant this, however, the few mistakes Lee has made in his career are brutal. I’m talking about the type of mistakes that light up my Twitter timeline for a good half hour. Last season, Lee was the subject of Twitter vitriol after he missed two clutch free throws, missed a three off an offensive rebound, turned the ball over, and fouled a Raptor player all in one sequence in a meaningless game — nevermind the fact that Lee scored 23 points in that game. This season, Damion Lee blew a potential game winning bucket against the Washington Wizards after inbounding the ball to Draymond Green on the sideline, setting a soft screen for a Steph Curry pindown, and cutting to the bucket and getting a pass from Green for an open layup only to... throw the ball away rather than take the layup.
Really, those are the only two glaring fuckups I can think of Damion Lee committing. Does he miss open shots sometimes? Sure. But Damion Lee is a bench player! If he hit the majority of his open shots, well, he’d be a starter in the NBA and that can be said for pretty much every bench player in the league. Really, I don’t think there’s much criticism to be made of Damion Lee. He’s a solid bench player who knows his role, which is to take open shots, move the ball, attack the occasional closeout, and work hard on the defensive end. If you’re expecting more of Lee and getting disappointed because he isn’t doing the things you want from a starting level NBA wing, then your beef is not with Lee, it’s with the Warriors’ front office who created a roster so light on starting level wings.
In an ideal world, Damion Lee is your second or third wing off the bench — an 8th to 10th man. It would be great to have a roster where you have three or four wings that are clearly superior to Lee, but you should be able to survive with Lee as your 8th man. That’s more or less the role that Lee played this year, although he was inexplicably removed from the rotation during the regrettable Nico Mannion backup point guard era. Of course, once Steve Kerr decided to chase wins again, Lee made his way back into the rotation and provided solid minutes, whether it was as a floor spacer in bench units or in closing lineups.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Warriors make it out of the play-in tournament if Damion Lee is healthy. It’s the 2019 Finals all over again — it’s not that Lee is an incredible player, but he’s that much better than the Alfonzo McKinnie or Mychal Mulder types who were thrust into fourth quarter minutes because of injuries and poor decision making from the Warriors’ front office. Barring dramatic changes to the Warriors’ roster, Lee should be on the team next year and I hope that he finally gets the chance he deserves to prove himself in the playoffs.
Damion Lee statistical profile (career bests bolded):
57 games played, 18.9 minutes a game, 6.5 points a game, 3.2 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 0.5 turnovers, 0.7 steals, 0.1 blocks, and 1.6 fouls.
46.7% FG, 39.7% 3P, 90.9% FT, 63.6 TS% (+6.2% league average TS), 60.8% EFG.
4.8 FGA, 3.4 3PA, 0.8 FTA.
BBREF: 121 ORTG, 111 DRTG, +0.9 +/- per 100 poss., 0.5 VORP, 1.19 WS/48, 12.8% USG.
NBA.com: 109.7 ORTG, 108.2 DRTG, +1.6 net rating, 12.7% USG.
+0.2 DIFF in non-garbage time (52nd percentile), 13th percentile usage, 89th percentile PSA, 36th percentile AST%, 68th percentile AST:Usg, 77th percentile TOV% among wing position.
As I tracked down the various metrics that comprise my makeshift statistical profiles, I kept comparing Damion Lee against Mychal Mulder (I actually copy and pasted Mulder’s profile in first and then changed the numbers so I could keep my structure intact) and was very amused by the similarities and differences in their statistical profiles. Lee and Mulder had essentially identical shot attempts and percentages, but Lee came out higher in TS% (boosted by his godly free throw percentage) and was favored by Cleaning the Glass’ non-garbage time filtered metrics. This tracks with my eyes — Lee is a better and more reliable player than Mulder and a superior defender.
Something that caught my eye that I haven’t put in my previous statistical profiles is Lee’s 2P%. Lee shot 63.8% on 2P attempts this year compared to 47.1% the year before, so it follows logically that his TS% and EFG% both jumped about 10 percentage points from last season. Of course, Lee’s role on this season’s playoff aspiring Warriors was very different from his role as an occasional lead guard on last season’s tanking Warriors, so his diet of shot attempts changed in accordance with his role. Last season, Lee took nearly 13 FG’s per 36 minutes, which went down to 9.1 attempts per 36 minutes. But last season, a little more than half of his shot attempts were 2P FG’s; this season, they accounted for less than 1/3 of his shot attempts.
Damion Lee’s performance in the play-in games: N/A
Restricted area: 79.3% on 29 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 63.6% on 33 attempts.
Mid-range: 36.8% on 19 attempts.
Left corner 3: 33.3% on 30 attempts.
Right corner 3: 54.5% on 33 attempts.
Above the break 3: 37.7% on 130 attempts.
Floaters: 61.2% on 31 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 71% on 38 attempts.
FGA% per total drives: 34.9%.
Assisted by: Brad Wanamaker (20), Steph Curry (15), Draymond Green and Kent Bazemore (13), Andrew Wiggins (12), Kevon Looney (11), Jordan Poole (10), Nico Mannion (9), Juan Toscano-Anderson (7), Eric Paschall (5), Kelly Oubre Jr. (2), James Wiseman (1).
Total FG’s assisted: 116
FGM% assisted: 92.1%
FGM% unassisted: 7.9%
Damion Lee’s shot profile is a delight. I’m in awe of his 61.2% on floaters and I’m also quite amused that he took more shots in the non-restricted area of the paint than he did in the actual restricted area. Last season, Lee took nearly three times as many shots in the non-restricted area of the paint (out of necessity) at a mere 39.1%. Check out also that Lee only shot the ball on 34.9% of his drives this year. Of his 106 total drives on the year, 69 of them (nice!) did not result in a shot attempt by Lee. Lee’s shot profile this year is one of a player who does not shoot the ball unless he’s damn sure the shot has a very good chance of going in.
To my earlier point, I don’t think that Damion Lee creating more shots for himself is necessarily a good thing, but it’s pretty clear that Lee is an excellent shot maker in a limited role. While his shot attempts per drive might seem a bit odd, I actually admire it — it’s a clear concession to the idea of passing up a good shot for a great one and it shows an understanding of the value of ball movement and the looks that result from paint penetration. Lee’s shot chart is an interesting example of what a role change can do for a player. Last season, Lee had to take and create more shots for himself and his efficiency was below league average, but as a floor spacer on a team with Steph fucking Curry, Lee was very efficient because he rarely strayed from his role.
As an added bonus that I’m now going to incorporate into my next write-ups, I’ve also included a visual shot chart from Positive Residual for Lee’s season. Their shot charts use a familiar visual in which blue is below league average, grey is league average, and red is above average.
The lineup stats!
I want to take a brief moment to shout out Rafael, a fellow member of Light Year’s Discord channel, who showed me how to use Cleaning the Glass’s non-garbage time numbers to filter for specific combos and specific players. I’m going to dabble in a bit of that, but let’s start with some notable five man combos that involve Damion Lee. Unfortunately, there’s an offensively high number of them to include Brad Wanamaker or Nico Mannion, so I’m only going to include a few of those to make a point and mostly take a look at lineups with predictive value for the future; i.e, ones with players expected to be on the roster next year such as Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green, Jordan Poole, and Kevon Looney.
Notable 5 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Wiggins/Paschall: +2.1 net rating (100 ORTG) in 192 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Paschall: -16.5 net rating (88.6 ORTG) in 79 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Oubre/Wiggins/Green: -11.9 net rating (118.2 ORTG) in 77 possessions.
Mannion/Poole/Lee/Oubre/Looney: +5.0 net rating (103.3 ORTG) in 60 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Paschall: +5.7 net rating (114.3 ORTG) in 56 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Looney: -10.2 net rating (95.9 ORTG) in 49 possessions.
Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Looney: -20 net rating (82.2 ORTG) in 45 possessions.
Curry/Poole/Lee/JTA/Green: +31.3 net rating (143.2 ORTG) in 44 possessions.
Curry/Mulder/Lee/Bazemore/Green: +30.7 net rating (142.1 ORTG) in 38 possessions.
Mannion/Lee/Wiggins/JTA/Wiseman: -22.1 net rating (97.4 ORTG) in 38 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins/Paschall/Wiseman: -28.9 net rating (71.1 ORTG) in 38 possessions.
Wanamaker/Mulder/Lee/Oubre/Paschall: -50 net rating (100 ORTG) in 35 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: +37.9 net rating (169 ORTG) in 29 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Wiggins/JTA/Green: +84.3 net rating (164.3 ORTG) in 28 possessions.
Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Wiggins/Looney: +59.8 (134.8 ORTG) in 23 possessions.
So again, I left out a fair amount of Wanamaker and Mannion led lineups that I doubt will get much playing time. But I left in some of the ones I found most interesting; early season bench lineups with Paschall at the 5, bench lineups where Mannion was paired with James Wiseman or Jordan Poole, and a few of the Wanamaker lineups I found most offensive to watch this season. You’ll note that there’s not that many positive lineups here and the ones I suspect you’ll be most curious about didn’t get that much run.
But look at some of those combos towards the bottom of the list! The only combos with three shooters — Curry/Poole/Lee and Curry/Mulder/Lee — were lethal offensively in a small sample size. The starting lineup that many Warriors fans begged for at the beginning of the season — Curry/Lee/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman — barely played, but had an absurd 169 ORTG. Another lineup we probably would have seen more towards the end of the year if not for Lee’s Covid-19 diagnosis — Lee in for Bazemore and JTA in for Looney — had an +84.3 net rating. Silly stuff.
My big takeaway from these combos is that Lee had the misfortune of being in some of Steve Kerr’s worst lineups and then missed out on the chance to play minutes in serious NBA lineups.
Notable 3 man combos (positive ones bolded):
I’m back to NBA.com’s lineup combos here because I don’t want to take an hour manually inputting every possible three man permutation into CTG.
Wanamaker/Lee/Paschall: -5.6 net rating (101.7 ORTG) in 339 minutes.
Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins: +1.2 net rating (101.2 ORTG) in 306 minutes.
Curry/Lee/Green: +11.2 net rating (123.5 ORTG) in 235 minutes.
Lee/Wiggins/Paschall: -4.5 net rating (100.2 ORTG) in 233 minutes.
Wanamaker/Bazemore/Lee: +6.7 net rating (103.6 ORTG) in 199 minutes.
Bazemore/Lee/Wiggins: +3.2 net rating (102 ORTG) in 188 minutes.
Curry/Lee/Oubre: -2.8 net rating (106.6 ORTG) in 173 minutes.
Bazemore/Lee/Paschall: +7.2 net rating (108.3 ORTG) in 166 minutes.
Curry/Lee/Wiggins: +6.1 net rating (118.7 ORTG) in 163 minutes.
Wanamaker/Lee/Oubre: -5.4 net rating (100 ORTG) in 161 minutes.
Lee/Wiggins/Green: +4.9 net rating (119.4 ORTG) in 155 minutes.
Lee/Wiggins/Oubre: -0.7 net rating (102 ORTG) in 151 minutes.
Lee/Oubre/Paschall: -17.2 net rating (98.1 ORTG) in 151 minutes.
Poole/Lee/Oubre: -2.4 net rating (96.5 ORTG) in 138 minutes.
Lee/Wiggins/Wiseman: -12.3 net rating (96.5 ORTG) in 106 minutes.
So you’ll notice that Steph Curry’s name only shows up three times in the above 5 man combos. Another thing that sticks out to me is that there are only three lineups in this list that had an ORTG that was above average. As much as I like Damion Lee, you can’t just insert him into a lineup with poor offensive players and expect he’ll solve your spacing issues because he’s not much of a creator. You’ll notice also at the bottom that James Wiseman finally shows up; I had to skip down to the 22nd most used to get to any combo involving Wiseman. I’m actually less interested in the lineups that made up the most played 3 man combos with Lee and far more interested in some of the combos below that I had to really fucking scroll to find (positive ones bolded):
23rd most used Lee combo Curry/Lee/Looney: +25.2 net rating (123.5 ORTG).
27th most used Lee combo Mulder/Lee/Paschall: +6.8 net rating (118.8 ORTG).
29th most used Lee combo Curry/Lee/Mulder: +17.4 net (121.7 ORTG).
34th most used Lee combo Curry/Lee/Wiseman: +4.6 net rating (119.1 ORTG).
41th most used Lee combo Poole/Lee/Green: +23.9 net rating (120.4 ORTG) in 61 minutes.
48th most used Lee combo Poole/Lee/Wiseman: +40.7 net rating (128.4 ORTG) in 50 minutes.
50th most used Lee combo Curry/Poole/Lee: +39.8 net rating (125.6 ORTG) in 47 minutes.
Turns out playing shooters together is a good thing! Who knew? As I do more of these write-ups I find myself getting more and more frustrated when my hunches turn out to be true. Lots of usable combos here that just didn’t get enough run because Steve Kerr simply didn’t coach well for the first 45 or so games of the season.
Notable 2 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Lee/Wiggins: +1.3 net rating (108.3 ORTG) in 574 minutes.
Wanamaker/Lee: -0.8 net rating (103.4 ORTG) in 475 minutes.
Lee/Oubre: -3.9 net rating (103.9 ORTG) in 452 minutes.
Lee/Bazemore: +1.4 net rating (104 ORTG) in 403 minutes.
Lee/Paschall: -6.7 net rating (103.7 ORTG) in 397 minutes.
Curry/Lee: +8.3 net rating (118.3 ORTG) in 387 minutes.
Poole/Lee: +4.9 net rating (107.9 ORTG) in 305 minutes.
Lee/Green: +11 net rating (120.5 ORTG) in 301 minutes.
Lee/Looney: +6.8 net rating (112.6 ORTG) in 234 minutes.
Lee/JTA: +5.6 net rating (109.9 ORTG) in 214 minutes.
Mulder/Lee: +6.9 net rating (115.5 ORTG) in 211 minutes.
Lee/Wiseman: +0.1 net rating (108.4 ORTG) in 203 minutes.
Lee/Mannion: -16.6 net rating (100 ORTG) in 138 minutes.
A trend we’ve seen in pretty much every list of 2 man combos: Oubre, Wanamaker, Paschall, and Wiseman have the Midas touch for bad net ratings. Some of this is probably exacerbated by those players being put in lineup combos that bring out the worst of each player, but at a certain point a trend isn’t just noise. I was curious about Lee’s positive net rating in a 2 man combo with James Wiseman, but after looking at Cleaning the Glass and filtering for non-garbage time 5 man units with both guys, it’s clear that NBA.com’s positive net rating in that combo is propped up by garbage time.
Lee and Wiseman shared most of their non-garbage time minutes in lineups with Wanamaker or Mannion running the point (-28.9 net rating for the Brad lineup and -22.1 for the Nico lineup). There are two positive Lee/Wiseman 5 man combos: the aforementioned Curry/Lee/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: +37.9 net rating (169 ORTG) in 29 possessions and Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Wiseman, which had a net of 5.7 (120 ORTG) in a mere 15 possessions.
What’s next for Damion Lee?
I’d be shocked if Damion Lee isn’t on the Warriors roster next year. Health permitting, he’ll probably play 10-15 minutes a game. He does, however, have a partial guarantee that Warriors have to decide on by July 15. Still, unless something wild happens in the offseason, Lee should be on the team and if Steve Kerr decides to coach the way he did the final 20 games of the season, Lee should get minutes with real NBA players. All those 5 man combos with Oubre, Paschall, and Wanamaker? God willing, Lee will never play meaningful minutes in such awful lineups ever again. Lee can and should play significant minutes next to Steph Curry, Jordan Poole, Draymond Green, and if he’s on the team next year, James Wiseman.
Lee is not a perfect NBA player, but he’s a useful one who can serve as a connective thread in lineups with high level and high IQ players like Curry and Green. Lee won’t siphon shots away from more deserving shooters, he won’t forget to set a screen for Steph Curry in the corner, and he won’t take unnecessary risks. If he’s open, he’ll shoot it. If he a defender closes out hard on him, he’ll drive and if he’s got a good look he’ll take a floater, which he’s likely to make, if not, he’ll swing the ball and force defenses to rotate again and that will give someone like Steph Curry or Klay Thompson or Jordan Poole another chance at moving into an open three point shot. Lee won’t kill you on defense, he’ll just keep rotating and hold his own.
In short, Lee is exactly the type of player you need on your bench to make a deep playoff run. Do you want him to play 25 minutes a game? Of course not, but he knows his role and he’s always ready and next year, he should be hungrier than ever for a chance to prove his worth in the playoffs.
Kent Bazemore: B
Sad as it may be to say, Kent Bazemore was probably the Warriors’ best offseason addition last summer. For all of his flaws, Bazemore is at the very least a credible NBA wing. He’s now been in the NBA for nearly ten years and in stints in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Portland, and Sacramento, he’s established himself as a good perimeter defender who can occasionally make open shots and (attempt to) create for himself. But there’s a reason Bazemore was willing to take a minimum deal to come to the Warriors and it’s not just his relationship with Steph Curry — he’s an inconsistent player whose shot comes and goes and he makes baffling fouls and turnovers.
In short, Bazemore is a bench player. There’s no shame in that! He’d be an excellent 8th man off of the bench, and if Klay Thompson hadn’t torn his Achilles tendon, that’s the exact role Bazemore would have played this year. But through a tragicomedy of poor coaching decisions and injuries, Bazemore became the Warriors’ starting shooting guard. And you know what? The Warriors were a better team with him starting than not. I’m open to the argument that Damion Lee or any number of wings available on the free agency market last summer — say, Alec Burks, Glenn Robinson III, Torrey Craig, Sterling Brown, or Wayne Ellington — would have been an upgrade on Kelly Oubre Jr. as the Warriors’ starting shooting guard, but it is, unfortunately, beyond dispute, that Kent Bazemore turned out to be one of the Warriors’ better wing options.
The rotation that Steve Kerr eventually settled into with Bazemore starting, Kelly Oubre Jr. off the bench as a 3/4, and Damion Lee and Andrew Wiggins splitting minutes at the 2/3, should have been more or less what the rotation looked like all season. But to start the season, Kent Bazemore was racking up garbage time and DNP’s while the Warriors gave Jordan Poole a brief and uneventful look as a bench shooting guard while Brad Wanamaker did... things. Bazemore’s absence in the rotation was striking — Steve Kerr places high value on defense, even in his bench units, and yet Bazemore was losing minutes to an out-of-position Jordan Poole and non-defender Mychal Mulder.
Draymond Green noticed this too. On December 30th, Draymond took to Instagram to comment on a post from the Golden State Warriors’ official Instagram account that showed Bazemore, who hadn’t played the night before, celebrating a teammate’s shot from the bench. Green commented, “Probably should be on the court doing them though.” Noted. The very next game Bazemore received real minutes and from that night on, Bazemore was a staple of the Warriors’ rotation.
On the whole, I’d argue that Bazemore was mostly a positive player, but I can’t talk about his season without talking about some of the egregious boners he’d make night in and night out that drove Warriors’ fans insane. The most obvious place to start are the fouls. Kent Bazemore averaged 4.3 fouls per 36 minutes this year, the second highest amount in his career. I couldn’t find a way to tally up which of those fouls were on three point shooters, but it sure felt like Bazemore would foul a three point shooter at least once a game in addition to committing reaching fouls and bumping drivers in the lane.
And then there are the dumb shots and turnovers. Bazemore took a lot more self-created shots and handled the ball a lot than I’d have liked this year. Kent Bazemore pull-up mid-range shots were a thing this year, and when Kelly Oubre Jr. missed time towards the end of the season, his spirit lived on through Bazemore, who seemed to take at least one ill-fated forray to the hoop every gae. You’d have hoped that would stop in the play-in games, but even then, Bazemore went rogue a few times. I will note though, that Bazemore did hit a few timely three point shots in those play-in games, particularly in the first half of the game against the Lakers. Those shots came mostly in the corner, where it felt like Bazemore rarely missed. Earlier in the year, he referred to his shots in the corner as “parking lot pimpin,” which is a funny way for Bazemore to admit that he was feasting on a diet of extremely easy and open shots.
To that point, Bazemore shot a career high from three point land this year (as did Andrew Wiggins), which does make me somewhat confident that plenty of merely competent NBA wings could hit similar percentages on that diet of shots. What matters is that for the most part, he hit his open shots, defended hard, and usually kept the ball moving. Despite his glaring flaws — not to mention his anti-vaccine views — Bazemore was mostly a positive player for the Warriors, especially when you consider what the Warriors paid for him.
As is the case with Damion Lee, if your complaints about Kent Bazemore are that he didn’t do the things you’d want a starting level wing to provide, then your beef is with the front office and not with Bazemore. Relative to his contract value, Bazemore probably deserves an A+. Although Bazemore drove me nuts at times this past season, he was pushed into a role that he should never have needed to play in the first place. In 17 games as a starter, Bazemore averaged 10.6 points a game, 5 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.5 blocks, and 1.6 turnovers on 46/43/65 splits. From a minimum contract guy, that’s an absolute steal. From your starting shooting guard, that’s merely fine.
Bazemore’s B grade comes because his performance needs to be viewed in context. If the Warriors had made it out of the play-in tournament because of Kent Bazemore’s contributions, I’d probably rate him a little higher, but even though he provided great value, he didn’t provide everything the Warriors needed this year. That is a big ask, but when I keep thinking about my ranking, I see no way I can justify B+ or A- grades for guys like Bazemore or Lee or Wiggins on a team that didn’t make the playoffs, even if those players performed above their projections.
Kent Bazemore statistical profile:
67 games played, 19.9 minutes a game, 7.2 points a game, 3.4 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.2 turnovers, 1.0 steals, 0.5 blocks, and 2.4 fouls.
44.9% FG, 40.8% 3P, 69.2% FT, 56.4 TS% (-0.8% league average TS), 54.5% EFG.
5.9 FGA, 2.7 3PA, 1.2 FTA.
BBREF: 101 ORTG, 108 DRTG, +6.7 +/- per 100 poss., 0.1 VORP, 0.65 WS/48, 16.3% USG.
NBA.com: 110.5 ORTG, 104.6 DRTG, +5.9 net rating, 15.9% USG.
+8.9 DIFF in non-garbage time (91st percentile), 46th percentile usage, 53rd percentile PSA, 58th percentile AST%, 59th percentile AST:Usg, 4th percentile TOV% among wing position.
-0.23 ORPM, -0.6 DRPM, -0.82 RPM (#215 rank of 534 players).
As seems to be the case in most of these write-ups I’m doing, I am most interested in the non-garbage time numbers crunched by Ben Falk’s Cleaning the Glass. Even though Bazemore has, um... 4th percentile turnover percentage, CTG’s differential numbers love Bazemore and are adamant that good things happened with Bazemore on the court. NBA.com and BBRef are in agreement that good things happened with Bazemore on the court, but I’m at a loss for how Bazemore tallied up a positive +/- per 100 possessions for BBRef despite having 101 ORTG and 108 DRTG.
I was also shocked to see that Bazemore’s TS% was below league average, but this makes sense when you factor in his low free throw percentage, which gives me flashbacks to the all 1/2 trips to the free throw line from Bazemore and Andrew Wiggins. You’ll notice also that despite shooting a higher 3P% than Damion Lee or Mychal Mulder, Bazemore’s EFG% was a good six points lower. This can be explained by Bazemore’s bigger portion of 2P FG attempts, which serve as a sobering reminder that Kent Bazemore went rogue a lot more than he should have this year.
Kent Bazemore’s performance in the play-in games:
May 19, 2021 vs. Lakers: 24:31 minutes, 10 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist, 5 steals, 0 blocks, 2 fouls, and 2 turnovers , 3/10 FG, 3/5 3P, 1/2 FT, 85 ORTG, 90 DRTG, 46% TS (-11.2 league average TS and -10.4 regular season TS), 45% EFG.
May 21, 2021 vs. Grizzlies: 25:30 minutes, 10 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals, 1 block, 0 turnovers, and 2 fouls, 4/12 FG, 1/5 3P, 1/4 FT, 88 ORTG, 106 DRTG, 36.3% TS (-20.9 league average TS and -20.1 regular season TS), 37.5% EFG.
Remember Kent Bazemore hitting open threes against the Lakers? Turns out those are the only shots he made that night, which actually tracks with my memory of him bricking a few drives to the hoop and missing other self created shots. But check out those 5 steals! Three of those came in the first half, when it felt like the Warriors had a good chance of beating the Lakers at Staples Center. Bazemore’s minutes were much worse against the Grizzlies. 1/4 from the free throw line and eight missed shots really hurts when you think about how close that game was. When you look at those numbers, it’s no wonder Jordan Poole played 25 straight minutes to close out the game. Again, in an ideal world, the Warriors wouldn’t have needed 25 minutes out of Kent Bazemore in an elimination game, but shit happened and the front office didn’t wipe its ass enough times this season.
Kent Bazemore’s shot profile:
Restricted area: 61.9% on 105 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 46.2% on 52 attempts.
Mid-range: 25.0% on 52 attempts.
Left corner 3: 42.1% on 57 attempts.
Right corner 3: 35.6% on 45 attempts.
Above the break 3: 42% on 81 attempts.
Floaters: 42.8% on 14 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 60.5% on 142 attempts.
FGA% per total drives: 33.7
Assisted by: Draymond Green (36), Steph Curry (32), Juan-Toscano Anderson and Andrew Wiggins (11), Damion Lee and Brad Wanamaker (9), Kevon Looney and Eric Paschall (7), Jordan Poole and Kelly Oubre Jr. (4), Nico Mannion (1).
Total FG’s assisted: 116
FGM% assisted: 74.4%
FGM% unassisted: 26.6%
Bazemore’s shot profile is a lot more varied than the other wings we’ve looked at so far, but that doesn’t register to me as a good thing. Take a look at Bazemore’s mid-range shots. He made 1/4 of those shots and cross-referencing with the pull-up numbers, it seems all 52 of his mid-range attempts this year were pull-ups. 69% of his mid-range makes this year (13 total) were unassisted, which is to practically every mid-range jumper Kent Bazemore took was a decision forced by Kent Bazemore. That’s not great.
Bazemore’s numbers on drives are also pretty rough. The only rotation players to have a lower FG% on drives than Bazemore are James Wiseman, Nico Mannion, Brad Wanamaker, Eric Paschall, and Kelly Oubre Jr., the five players who had the most negative impact on the Warriors this year. I was, however, surprised that so a little more than 2/3 of Bazemores’ drives did not end in him taking a shot. That doesn’t really track with what I remember, which is mostly that Bazemore’s drives to the hoop felt like they ended in a lot of bricks. If Bazemore is a Warrior next year, you would hope that he cools it on the mid-range shots and spontaneous drives to the hoop — it would make even less sense for Kent Bazemore to be creating his own shots on a (presumably) better roster.
Here’s Bazemore’s shot chart from Positive Residual:
The lineup stats!
Again, we’re going to use Cleaning the Glass for 5 man combos and then move onto NBA.com’s numbers for 3 and 2 man combos.
Notable 5 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +9.6 net rating (116.9 ORTG) in 563 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Wiggins/Paschall: +2.1 net rating (100 ORTG) in 192 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/JTA/Green: +3 net rating (115.5 ORTG) in 155 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman: -8.5 net rating (108.8 ORTG) in 102 possessions.
Curry/Mulder/Bazemore/JTA/Green: +27.6 net rating (143.4 ORTG) in 99 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/Green/Wiseman: +25 net rating (125 ORTG) in 96 possessions.
Poole/Bazemore/Wiggins/JTA/Looney: +8 net rating (97.6 ORTG) in 82 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/Wiggins/Green: +9.5 net rating (128.6 ORTG) in 63 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/Green/Looney: +19.2 net rating (114 ORTG) in 57 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Paschall: +5.7 net rating (114.3 ORTG) in 56 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/JTA/Green: +24.1 net rating (114.8 ORTG) in 54 possessions.
Curry/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Looney: -10.2 net rating (95.9 ORTG) in 49 possessions.
Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Looney: -20 net rating (82.2 ORTG) in 45 possessions.
Poole/Mulder/Bazemore/JTA/Looney: +43.3 net rating (150 ORTG) in 30 possessions.
Poole/Bazemore/Oubre/Wiggins/Looney: +57.3 (124 ORTG) in 25 possessions.
By and large, the non-garbage time 5 man combos with Bazemore came up positive. There’s some interesting stuff here and a fair amount of noise; there’s a positive lineup with Wiseman as well as a negative one and the only difference is that Kelly Oubre Jr. (?) is in the positive one, while Andrew Wiggins is in the negative one. I wouldn’t have guessed that a combo with Oubre, a lower IQ player than Wiggins, would perform better with Wiseman, but here we are. Most of the bench Bazemore lineups with Wanamaker or Poole have a below average ORTG, but I was really interested in the two Poole-led lineups at the end of the list and I’d have been curious to see if they’d have held up in a larger sample size.
Notable 3 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Bazemore/Green: +9.3 net rating (117.1 ORTG) in 681 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins/Green: +5.2 net rating (112.5 ORTG) in 511 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins: +6.4 net rating (115 ORTG) in 509 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Looney: +8.2 net rating (113.8 ORTG) in 416 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins/Looney; +8 net rating (111.2 ORTG) in 388 minutes.
Bazemore/Green/Looney: +11.2 net rating (114.9 ORTG) in 320 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre: +7 net rating (110 ORTG) in 222 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/JTA: -0.6 net rating (107 ORTG) in 207 minutes.
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore: +6.7 net rating (103.6 ORTG) in 199 minutes.
Bazemore/JTA/Green: +5.9 net rating (111.6 ORTG) in 193 minutes.
Bazemore/Lee/Wiggins: +3.2 net rating (102 ORTG) in 188 minutes.
Wanamaker/Bazemore/Paschall: +7.1 net rating (101.7 ORTG) in 173 minutes.
Bazemore/Lee/Paschall: +7.2 net rating (108.3 ORTG) in 166 minutes.
Bazemore/Oubre/Green: +21.2 net rating (115 ORTG) in 159 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins/JTA: +11.1 net rating (106.8 ORTG) in 159 minutes.
All of the top six most used 3 man combos with Kent Bazemore are variants on Steve Kerr’s final starting lineup of the year. The combos Bazemore is in with a few of the non-starters fare surprisingly well! They still struggle to score, but there might be something to the idea that the Warriors would have benefited from putting Bazemore in more lineups with the bench and shifting more minutes to Damion Lee with Steph Curry and Draymond Green.
Another thing I found interesting; Jordan Poole is nowhere to be found in the 15 most used 3 man combos, but scroll a little further and you’ll find +11.1 net rating (106.9 ORTG) for Poole/Bazemore/Looney, a +23.1 net rating (108.8 ORTG) for Poole/Bazemore/Wiggins, and a +9.1 net rating (109.4 ORTG) for Poole/Bazemore/JTA. Another weird thing, you’ll actually find Mannion/Bazemore combos before you actually find Curry/Poole/Bazemore. Given that the Curry/Poole 2 man combos was the Warriors’ best this year, I wanted to know how Bazemore fared next to them and the results are surprising; a -7.3 net rating (102 ORTG) in only 41 minutes.
Notable two man combos (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Bazemore: +7.3 net rating (115 ORTG) in 845 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins: +5.8 net rating (109.3 ORTG) in 789 minutes.
Bazemore/Green: +9 net rating (114.9 ORTG) in 761 minutes.
Bazemore/Looney: +6.5 net rating (110.4 ORTG) in 596 minutes.
Bazemore/Lee: +1.4 net rating (104 ORTG) in 403 minutes.
Bazemore/JTA: +4.1 net rating (106.7 ORTG) in 349 minutes.
Bazemore/Oubre; +7.1 net rating (109 ORTG) in 344 minutes.
Bazemore/Paschall: +7.2 net rating (105.5 ORTG) in 264 minutes.
Poole/Bazemore: +5.3 net rating (104.1 ORTG) in 262 minutes.
Wanamaker/Bazemore: +5 net rating (101.4 ORTG) in 245 minutes.
Bazemore/Mulder: +17.1 net rating (115.6 ORTG) in 205 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiseman: -0.9 net rating (104.6 ORTG) in 167 minutes.
Mannion/Bazemore: -20.4 net rating (99.4 ORTG) in 80 minutes.
Sorting by combos to play more than 10 minutes (excluding Alen Smailagic and other irrelevant players), Bazemore comes up positive with... pretty much everyone. He even manages to nearly get neutral with James Wiseman — quite the achievement! Nico Mannion’s -20.4 net rating with Bazemore is unsurprising and infuriating. But still, it’s pretty wild that Kent Bazemore — the man of fouled 3 point shooters and bricked mid-range shots and 4th percentile turnover percentage — was so malleable across the roster. Even when Bazemore combos didn’t score all that well, they defended well enough to be positive. All of that bodes well for Bazemore’s ability to shape shift on next year’s Warriors, should he be on the team.
What’s next for Kent Bazemore?
In a postseason podcast, Kent Bazemore told the Mercury News’ Wes Goldberg, “I want some stability, man,” and hinted that he’d prefer to sign a long term deal in free agency this summer. “It's my 10th year, man. I don't really have time for all the runnin' around and stuff,” Bazmore said. It’s within Bazemore’s rights to want a long term deal, but that might not make sense for the Warriors, especially if Bazemore wants a sizable chunk of the Warriors’ taxpayer MLE (projected to be about $6 million next season).
While it may be appealing for Bazemore to keep playing with his close friend in Steph Curry, he’s probably priced himself out of the Warriors’ price range for a long term deal. The Warriors could use some or all of the taxpayer MLE to sign Bazemore for up to three years, but I’d guess they’d be more likely to want to offer Bazemore a two year minimum deal. Minimum deals, per the CBA cannot exceed two years and taxpayer MLE deals cannot exceed three years.
With an obvious and stated need for veterans, playmakers, and a competent big man, the Warriors have few paths towards getting said players unless they trade their draft picks this offseason and/or James Wiseman. While I’d advocate for trading Wiseman and at least one of the Minnesota FRP (if it conveys) or the Warriors’ own FRP, writers like Ethan Sherwood Strauss of The Athletic have suggested that Warriors’ ownership is drawn to the idea of developing their own draft picks.
This leaves the Warriors in a bit of a bind in regards to Bazmore. He should not be an offseason priority for Bob Myers and company, but he’d be an unquestionably positive addition to a veteran team like the one the Warriors should roll out next season. But there’s plenty of other teams who should feel the same way. Last offseason, Bazemore fielded offers from various contending teams like the Brooklyn Nets, the Milwaukee Bucks, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Phoenix Suns, and the Los Angeles Clippers. Lesser teams like the Boston Celtics, the Charlotte Hornets, New York Knicks were also interested in Bazemore. You’d imagine that teams of that caliber — non-contenders with a need for competent wings to provide playoff depth — would be interested in Bazemore again this offseason. In the case of a team like the Knicks, they’ll have the cap space to make a multi-year offer to someone like Bazemore, whereas a team like the Milwaukee Bucks could still use another solid defensive wing and could see Bazemore as a solid bench piece.
All this is to say, the Warriors will have competition for Bazemore’s services this offseason and there’s no guarantee he comes back. I for one, will be happy if he does because he’ll certainly play less minutes and have less reason to go rogue. But if he doesn’t come back because he finds a good deal for his family, I’ll be happy for him. I’m mildly optimistic the Warriors could replace some of Bazemore’s production with the right FA signing or an NBA ready 2nd round draft pick ala Desmond Bane, but I’d still prefer to have Bazemore back because he is a proven commodity who defends well and hits open shots reliably in this Warriors’ ecosystem.
Part 2 of our season-in-review for the Warriors’ wings will be published on Saturday or Sunday!