Warriors' season-in-review: the bigs part 1 — Jordan Bell, Marquese Chriss, Alen Smailagic, and Eric Paschall
Lamenting the loss of Marquese Chriss, the hubris of the Alen Smailagic experiment, and unpacking Eric Paschall's regression.
In part 1 of our season-in-review for the Warriors’ bigs, I’m going to discuss Jordan Bell, Marquese Chriss, Alen Smailagic, and Eric Paschall. Later on in the week, we’ll take a look at the Warriors’ remaining bigs; James Wiseman, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Kevon Looney, and Draymond Green.
I initially planned on including my Wiseman review in this post. But as I started writing it, the words flowed out of me and I’m up to more than 3,000 words on Wiseman before even crunching numbers. Wiseman is one of the most important figures in the Warriors franchise and as such his rookie season deserves a lot of scrutiny because of what it means to the franchise’s short-term and long-term future.
After I complete my Wiseman post, I’ll move onto JTA, Looney, and Draymond. By the time that post is up, we should know the results of the NBA lottery. Once I do a write-up on the coaching staff and the Warriors’ front office, I’ll start digging into draft prospects in the Warriors’ projected draft range.
I’m quite excited to do my pre-draft content! I actually do not care to watch college basketball, so I’m curious to see how my assessments of players match up with experts and draftniks. I’ve got a pretty good sense of what my methodology will be and I think you all will be amused by how I go about this.
I also did some thinking about the grades I’ve already given out and I feel like I should revise some of them. As much as I liked Jordan Poole’s season, it seems ridiculous in retrospect to give him the same grade as Steph Curry. Likewise, my assertion that Wiggins was “just fine” with the Warriors warrants lower grade than a B and it also seems generous of me to give Brad Wanamaker a D unless I believe his bad year can be pinned entirely on Steve Kerr — it can’t — so I’m going to try and be a bit more critical moving forward and a little less emotionally attached to my grades.
Now, onto the bigs!
Jordan Bell: incomplete
In the halcyon days of his 2017-2018 rookie season, Jordan Bell received buzz in the Bay Area media as the Warriors’ potential long-term solution at the center spot. By game ___, Bell took the starting center spot from Zaza Pachulia. Bell’s defensive metrics were outstanding, he blocked shots at a high rate and switched capably onto perimeter players, showed some flashes of passing ability, and crushed dunks on PNR’s. Even after a mid-season ankle injury, Bell earned playoff minutes and gave the Warriors huge minutes in their WCF series against the Houston Rockets, whose offense revolved around hunting Bell, Kevon Looney, and Steph Curry on switches.
Two years later, Jordan Bell was out of a job. His sophomore season was marked by inconsistent minutes and spats with the Warriors’ coaching staff. Bell only played 25 minutes in the 2019 Finals and in the offseason signed a minimum deal with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who eventually traded him to the Houston Rockets, who traded him the next day to the Memphis Grizzlies. Bell played two games for the Grizzlies before getting waived. Before reuniting with the Warriors in May on a two-way deal, Bell had nominal stints with Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers, but did not play a single minute for either team. Bell spent most of the 2020-2021 season in the G-League before getting two 10-day contracts with the Washington Wizards.
Bell did pretty well in the G-League bubble and even shot the three a little bit, which is the type of skill set expansion that would serve him well in his bid to become a fulltime NBA player again. But Bell was explicitly signed as an emergency big for a playoff run — :( — and he played one entirely meaningless game for the Warriors. I’m not going to write too many more words or do any statistical analysis on Bell because he didn’t play meaningful minutes for the Warriors and he’s unlikely to be a Warrior next year.
What’s next for Jordan Bell?
In his one game with the Warriors, Bell demonstrated his familiarity with the Warriors’ offense, but the dribble handoffs and give-and-go’s he ran with Steph Curry just didn’t look the same when it was Jordan Poole receiving Bell screens. There’s an small chance Bell is a training camp body for the Warriors next season and I wouldn’t be opposed to that; on a team with better spacing, Bell can be useful offensively, especially with his affinity for slipping DHO’s and faking handoffs ala Juan Toscano-Anderson for open dunks. On top of that, Bell is a proven playoff level defender, but because he is a slight of frame 6’9 C without a reliable jumper, Bell will have to fight his way back to NBA relevance for a third summer in row.
Marquese Chriss: incomplete
After flaming out as a top 10 draft pick for the Phoenix Suns and getting tossed to the curb by the Houston Rockets and Cleveland Cavaliers, Marquese Chriss revived his NBA career with the Warriors last season. Chriss was drafted as a stretch 4 out of ____ and didn’t show the shooting or ball-handling skills needed to carve out a role for himself in the league, but he found a path to success with the Warriors a passing and rim running C. In his annual Luke Walton All-Stars column, Zach Lowe wrote this about Chriss’ training camp with the Warriors:
When the Warriors took a training camp flier on Chriss, they expected a shot-blocking menace with limited feel on offense. They had heard rumblings he could pout, and lose his temper. "What we got," Kerr said, "was the opposite of all that."
Golden State often plays through its big men, and it took one practice for Chriss to show he had more passing chops than Warriors brass knew. "We couldn't believe it," Kerr said.
I didn’t know much about Chriss before the Warriors picked him up, so I was pretty surprised by what I saw in his preseason debut last year. Chriss’ athleticism popped off of the screen, particularly on a small team whose most athletic wing was Glenn Robinson III, but the passing is what really opened my eyes. Watch this pass from Chriss’ preseason second game with the Warriors:
Chriss comes up the left elbow and receives an entry pass that he then, without hesitation, dumps back between his legs without looking to Steph Curry who dribbles into a mid-range jumper. Willie Cauley Stein, who was signed to dunk lobs as the Warriors’ starting center and was eventually shipped out to Dallas, struggled to figure out DHO sets and rarely found gaps in the defense where he could cut into a lob. Chriss showed all of that and then some in his first games as a Warrior. Not even Andrew Bogut had the gall to try DHO passes with the degree of difficulty you see in the above video. Chriss’ season with the Warriors was filled with passes like that. In his best moments, Chriss combined Andrew Bogut’s passing ability with Javale McGee’s vertical spacing for a truly terrible Warriors team.
Chriss made improvements as a defender over the court, looked fairly agile switching on the perimeter, and blocked his fair share of shots last season, but he still mangled occasional rotations or would fall asleep after an initial shot went up. On top of that, Chriss is 6’9, so he doesn’t have the size or strength to hang with bigs like Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid, or Nikola Jokic. Still, I thought that Chriss could be so good on offense next to Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green that the Warriors’ could live with merely competent defense at the C position. Chriss was excited for this too and Lowe says the reformed center was “thrilled at the prospect of passing to Curry and Thompson.”
But you all know what happened next; the Warriors drafted James Wiseman as their long-term C, Klay Thompson tore his Achilles tendon, and after an encouraging preseason where Chriss was shooting threes at a high volume on reasonable percentages, he broke his leg after only two games. Even after his injury, Chriss stuck around the team’s games and was an occasional presence on NBCS broadcasts, where he provided much needed respite from the constant whining and propagandizing from Bob Fitzgerald. But for the second time in his Warriors stint, Chriss was the victim of penny pinching and got traded to the San Antonio Spurs to save Warriors’ owner, Joe Lacob, about ____ in luxury tax penalties.
Again, we have such a small sample size with Chriss this season that it’s not really worth exploring the stats. Instead, I’m just going to post highlights of his best game as a Warrior last season right after the Warriors traded for Andrew Andrew Wiggins, some of his highlights from the preseason, and two videos showing every possession of his two games this year. You’ll see a player who, despite his flaws, would have been very useful to this Warriors team.
What’s next for Marquese Chriss?
Marquese Chriss will be fighting for his NBA career this offseason. Although Chriss performed well for the Warriors last year, he didn’t have any suitors after the Warriors cut him for salary purposes in January of 2020. Understandably, it would seem there was some skepticism that Chriss was really an NBA player — after all, he’d only put together two months of good play with a tanking Warriors team after busting as a top-10 draft pick in Phoenix and disappointing on a terrible Cleveland Cavaliers team. The Warriors signed Chriss to a guaranteed deal in ___ and he played well enough from then on that I think there may have been increased interest in him, but if he was a free agent in summer of 2020, I’m not sure he’d have gotten more than a minimum deal from another team.
Now coming off a broken leg, Chriss is pretty much in the same place as he was in summer of 2019. Instagram posts seem to indicate that Chriss has been working out in San Francisco in the last month and he looks healthy, but I don’t think that necessarily means he’ll be coming back to the Warriors. So long as James Wiseman is on the roster, the Warriors will be committed to developing him as their future C, or at least as a trade chip for a big name star. I like Marquese Chriss, he’s coming off a significant leg injury and has only really put together 6 months or so of good NBA basketball at the center position. I didn’t think it was responsible to go into the 2020-2021 season with a semi-project in Chriss, a rookie Wiseman, and an injury prone Kevon Looney as the Warriors’ only centers and I don’t think it would be responsible to do that next season either.
If Marquese Chriss is on the Warriors’ roster next season, it will almost certainly be because James Wiseman is not. I personally would be ok with that, provided Wiseman is traded for a veteran who is credibly the Warriors’ 4th or 5th best player and the Warriors pick up a veteran C in free agency. Provided that Chriss is healthy next season, he’ll be a better player than James Wiseman and his passing and floor spacing ability make him a great fit both with the starters and with bench lineups desperately in need of play-making and spacing.
Alen Smailagic: F
The Alen Smailagic experiment should have ended the day that James Wiseman was drafted by the Warriors. In his rookie season with the Warriors, Alen Smailagic had some amusing and mildly intriguing moments, but it was clear that whatever potential he had would need several years to fulfill; the Warriors do not have several years to wait around on a project C, muchless a short and unathletic one with a shaky jumpshot.
The Alen Smailagic origin story is one of hubris and nepotism. In ____, ___ Lacob found himself in a small gym in ___, Serbia, and became fixated on Smailagic, then a ___ year old playing in the ___ level of the Serbian ___ league. The Warriors maneuvered to get Smailagic into the G-League and in ___, he became the ___ youngest player in G-League history. I will grant this to Smailagic, and by extension, ___ Lacob; Smailagic performed decently in his first season in the G-League. Consider the context — Smailagic was a ___ year old who spoke minimal English and in his first stint playing professional basketball in the United States, he averaged ___ on ___ and racked up ___ WS/48.
Here’s a brief highlight video from Smailagic’s first year in the G-League.
In the first clip, Smailagic pump fakes on a closeout in the right corner and dusts his defender for a baseline dunk. Smailagic actually has a really good pump fake and it’s my suspicion that it’s his pump fake and occasional bursts of creativity in dribble hand off situations that caught ___ Lacob’s eye. Put yourself into ___ Lacob’s shoes; you want to make your mark on the NBA and for the team you work for (let’s forget for a second that __ Lacob got his job after ____ and ___) and prove your worth. In a small gym in Serbia, you find a young Serbian C with little basketball experience, a killer pump-fake, and an intriguing ability to make creative reads out of dribble-hand off sets.
Now imagine for a second how many points a C with a good pump fake and a knack for fooling defenders on dribble handoffs could score next to Steph Curry. Now imagine what that looks like if he gets his three point shot up to 37%+. Now imagine what that Serbian kid could look like physically with an NBA training regimen. Now imagine the adulation you’ll get for unearthing this gem, an unknown Serbian teenager who in your mind’s eye, is scoring 10-15 easy points a game playing off of Steph. Nobody will be able to question your worth anymore. You will no longer be remembered as Joe Lacob’s son by your peers — you’ll be the guy who found Alen Smailagic.
That fantasy is plenty of fun and I don’t blame __ Lacob for harboring it. But after bringing Smailagic to the G-League, the Santa Cruz Warriors management was unusually protective of Smailagic, to the point that other teams got suspicious about the Warriors’ intentions with him. The commonly held belief was that the Warriors didn’t want other organizations to get a good look at him and were hiding him in order to bring him into the NBA in the future. With that knowledge in mind, New Orleans Pelicans general manager, David Griffin, extracted three future 2nd round picks out of the Warriors for the 2nd round pick that was used on Smailagic. The saga of Smailagic became something of a joke in NBA circles, in large part because it seemed nobody outside of the Warriors organization actually thought he’d get drafted.
Even after Steph Curry broke his hand and the Warriors became an obvious lottery bound team, Steve Kerr was reluctant to play Smailagic in his rookie season. Smailagic spent most of 2019-2020 in the G-League with the Santa Cruz Warriors and didn’t make his Golden State Warriors debut until late December of 2019. Per Cleaning the Glass, Smailagic played only 116 minutes of non-garbage time last year and had a -3.3 net rating in those minutes. Smailagic had some moments; here’s another elite pump fake:
And then check this out; Smailagic has Dwight Howard in the post and dribbles up to the left wing as if to begin a DHO, only to fake the handoff and burn past Howard for a dunk. It’s actually quite an impressive moment of improvisation.
But in that same game, Smailagic made this play:
Therein lies the problem with Smailagic — the DHO creativity and pump fake mean almost nothing if he doesn’t have NBA athleticism. Smailagic struggled on defense (as most rookies do) and without NBA level athleticism or typical C size, he’s not a good fit as a switching defender or a rim protector in drop schemes. So if Smailagic can’t defend at the NBA level, he has to be a prodigious offensive talent. While his pump fake looked good in meaningless games, Smailagic didn’t face a single NBA defense in his rookie season that took last year’s Warriors team seriously.
NBA teams who want to win games scout their opponents and have game plans for players. If Alen Smailagic were to show up on a scouting report, it would point out that he’s a career 23% three point shooter in the G-League who only made 7/23 of the three point shots he’s taken in the NBA. No serious NBA team would tell its players to actually close out on an Alen Smailagic three point shot in a meaningful game, which renders the devastating power of his pump fake essentially worthless. Basically, for Smailagic to have an NBA career, he needs to be a very good 3 point shooter.
That’s more or less what Steve Kerr and the Warriors’ coaching staff must have said about Smailagic in exit interviews last summer. Unfortunately, the Warriors front office didn’t simply cut ties with Smailagic and then bring him back into their G-League program. Instead they drafted another project center in James Wiseman and invested time and energy into the herculean task of... turning Alen Smailagic into the next Davis Bertans. Seriously. In an article for the Mercury News (this was one of several articles written about Warriors’ attempt to turn Smailagic into an elite shooter), Wes Goldberg wrote these words:
The Warriors hope [Smailagic] can blossom into one of the league’s best floor-spacing big men.
In addition to going through a battery of shooting drills, Smailagic was shown film of players the Warriors think he could emulate such as Davis Bertans, Ersan Ilyasova and Moritz Wagner.
Of that group, Bertans suggests the highest ceiling. After coming off the bench for three years in San Antonio, Bertans averaged 15.4 points and 4.5 rebounds per game and made 42.4% of his 3-point shots with 8.7 attempts per game last season in Washington. Last month, Bertans, 28, signed a five-year, $80 million contract extension with the Wizards.
It is absurd to think that Alen Smailagic, a career 22.6% 3P and 64.8% FT shooter in the G-League, could ever come close to shooting 40%+ on volume from three point land. The Warriors’ didn’t have to send its PR people out into the wild pitching story ideas about Alen Smailagic’s summer workouts! They could have simply... just acted as if Smailagic a normal project/fringe NBA player rather than shine a spotlight on Smailagic. And yet, somebody in the Warriors organization thought it was a good idea not just to defend their investment in Smailagic, but actively talk up their futile efforts to turn Smailagic into one of the NBA’s best shooting big men.
Smailagic did not become an elite floor spacer this year. From training camp, it was very clear that Steve Kerr had no interest in playing Smailagic meaningful minutes. When asked about the Serbian’s future, Kerr said in typically diplomatic (and backhanded) fashion, “he's not a player you're gonna say, 'OK, he's really versatile defensively and we can have him guard multiple positions.' I don't look at him as that. I look at him more as a face-up five. I think that's gonna be his role ultimately in the NBA.”
At some point early on in the season, Smailagic, who was already DNP fodder to begin with, tore his meniscus and needed surgery on his knee. In the G-League bubble, Smailagic tried to shake off the rust from his injury and averaged... 7.5 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 1.5 assists on 52/15/67 splits in 17 minutes a game. In March, Connor LeTourneau of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article that seemed to mark the beginning of the end of Smailagic’s time with the Warriors. Check out this quote:
Santa Cruz Warriors head coach Kris Weems pulled aside Alen Smailagic after a game at the G League bubble last month to offer a simple directive: “You can’t try to score every time you touch the ball.”
More than 1 ½ years after Golden State moved up in the 2019 NBA draft to take him with the No. 39 pick, Smailagic still is struggling with basic basketball concepts. Few have proved more vexing than the idea that, to make his presence felt in games, he must do more than dunk.
Ouch. After a pretty meh showing in the bubble, Smailagic was recalled to the Warriors and continued to rack up DNP’s until Steve Kerr started him at the C on March 20 when Kevon Looney received a false positive on a COVID-19 test. Smailagic looked overmatched and got destroyed on defense and the Warriors lost a close game to the Memphis Grizzlies, in which Smailagic played 8 very bad minutes. It was the only time he played meaningful minutes this year and I was certain that this would be the last we saw of Smailagic. I actually thought that Kerr starting Smailagic might be a way of giving the front office the excuse they needed to finally cut ties with Smailagic.
Even before Marquese Chriss broke his leg, I was shocked that Smailagic was still on the roster when there was such a clear need for a veteran C. In the days after Chriss was announced out for the season, I kept waiting for the notification that Smailagic had been cut, but it never came. Somehow, Smailagic managed to stay on the roster all season despite the fact that he was never going to receive real minutes, even when the Warriors went on a run at the end of the season with an 8 man rotation and one healthy center. At any point in the season, the Warriors could have cut Smailagic and signed... pretty much anybody else in the NBA, but they didn’t.
There’s two likely explanations for Smailagic’s continued place on the roster this season; Joe Lacob was reluctant to pay more luxury tax penalties by cutting Smailagic and signing another player in his place, or the Lacob family didn’t want to look weak and bend to pressure from the more critical faction of their fanbase and get rid of their pet project. Neither example is acceptable to me. I understand that acquiring Kelly Oubre Jr. cost $80 million in luxury tax penalties and that this Warriors team has a historically high payroll, but if there was even a slight chance that cutting Smailagic and getting a useful free agent center like, say, Dwyane Dedmon (7.1 points, 5.4 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 1 block in 13 minutes a game for the Miami Heat) would get the Warriors into the playoffs, it would have been worth it.
Cheaping out on the back end of the roster cost the Warriors a playoff spot. You don’t think that the Warriors could have made up for the luxury tax costs of cutting Smailagic and picking up another player? Imagine how much the Warriors would have made in ticket sales from a single playoff series. Simply put, having Smailagic on the roster for an entire NBA season while Steph Curry was playing at an MVP level is an indictment on the Warriors organization. Having Smailagic waste a roster spot while Steph Curry played through a hairline fracture in his tailbone to drag the Warriors back into the playoff race is insulting and a clear indicator of misguided organizational priorities — frugality, pride, and the appearance of competence took precedence over putting together a roster with real NBA players.
While none of that is Smailagic’s fault, his performance and his presence on the Warriors’ roster symbolizes a bigger, systemic failure and for that he received an F. I won’t waste many more words on Smailagic other than to post the box score stats for his game against the Memphis Grizzlies and Cleaning the Glass’s lineup stats for his non-garbage time minutes.
Alen Smailagic’s performance in meaningful NBA minutes:
8:04 minutes, 3 points, 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 0 steals, 0 blocks, 0 turnovers, and 5 fouls, 1/5 FG, 1/4 3P, 0/0 FT, 30 TS%, 30% EFG, 58 ORTG, 117 DRTG.
5 fouls in 8 minutes. 5 fouls in 8 minutes. 5 fouls in 8 minutes. Remember this game when you think back to the 10 or so winnable games the Warriors blew. Win three or four of those games and you’re in the 6th seed and not at the mercy of the play-in tournament. 5 fouls in 8 minutes. 5 fouls in 8 minutes. 5 fouls in minutes. Here’s the film:
Alen Smailagic’s lone 5 man combo:
Poole/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Smailagic: -30.5 net rating (81.3 ORTG) in 16 possessions.
Great stuff.
What’s next for Alen Smailagic?
A return to Europe, apparently. Mercifully, Alen Smailagic’s contract is non-guaranteed for the next two seasons and the Warriors’ front office have apparently accepted that Smailagic is not an NBA player and do not plan to bring him back. Smailagic reportedly has two Serbian teams interested in him, one of which is actually in the Euroleague. Smailagic is only 20 years old, so it is theoretically possible he makes his way back to the NBA at some point. but for the foreseeable future, Alen Smailagic will be where he belongs — far away from an NBA roster.
Eric Paschall: C-
Last year’s tanking Warriors were only occasionally watchable, in large part because of Eric Paschall’s emergence. In the first weeks of the season, Steph Curry and Damion Lee broke their hands, D’Angelo Russell missed games with various minor injuries, and Paschall and other young players were thrust into larger than expected roles. Within a few games, it became very obvious that Eric Paschall was one of the Warriors’ better scorers. Through the first month of the season, Paschall averaged 17 points a game and had 6 games of 20+ points and two 30+ point performances.
When Paschall hit a rookie wall and NBA defenders adjusted to his bruising, chest-first isolation game. he racked up offensive fouls and had long stretches where he rarely looked to pass. The month of December and first two weeks of January were especially rough — Paschall had nagging injuries and went from averaging nearly 17 points on nearly 5 free throw attempts a game to 10 points on less than two free throw attempts a game. In his most stubborn moments, Paschall reminded me of another bruising, two foot jumper with a shaky three point shot of Warriors’ past; Corey Maggette.
Despite good efficiency and a godly free throw rate that dwarfs current day James Harden, Maggette was a negative impact player for most of his career. Maggette was a bowling ball with muscles who didn’t shoot well and didn’t have the vision to create for others. In the right circumstances, Maggette could be useful to a team, but he wasn’t a good off-ball player, which made it somewhat necessary to give Maggette a lot of possessions on-ball. Sound familiar? I think the Warriors’ coaching saw some of that tunnel vision in Paschall’s game as well and pushed him to distribute more. From Anthony Slater interview with Paschall:
Paschall only averaged 1.7 assists in the 50 games before the break. The coaches often felt he had blinders on and would power his way into double teams, collapsing the defense, but miss the open man. Then after the break, he arrived an entirely different distributor. It was like he had an epiphany. Paschall averaged 4.2 assists in the 10 games after the break. Before the season froze, he had six, five, eight, seven and six assists in his last five games.
That late season run made me a lot more excited about Paschall. Although he wouldn’t get that volume of isolation possessions on a healthy Warriors team, you could imagine Paschall isolating in bench lineups or when Steph Curry and Klay Thompson (alas) had long defenders on them. In an offseason interview with The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami, Steve Kerr said that Paschall had worked that summer on fixing the bizarre form on his jumpshot:
“The shot looks much more consistent to me — better arc, better release. He looks like he’s getting more comfortable with it.”
When Draymond Green missed the first games of the season recovering from COVID-19, Paschall started the first two games of the year. Look at Paschall’s jumper in this clip.
Looks better, right? He misses the shot, but Paschall’s legs aren’t kicking out and his release point looks more normal. Paschall’s form actually looked ok at the beginning of his rookie season as well. Look at this very normal shot.
But the normal form didn’t hold in his rookie season or this season and within a few games, Paschall reverted back to his dolphin kick, high release jumper. This is from the sixth game of this season:
Paschall’s return to form wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; on low volume, Paschall shot 33% from the three point line in the first month of the season and averaged 11.3 points in a little under 20 minutes a game. This was the best collection of games from Paschall’s sophomore season. After Marquese Chriss broke his leg, Eric Paschall became the Warriors’ backup center in bench lineups and feasted on slower big men in isolation. These bench lineups didn’t score all at a league average clip, but they held their own and even won a few games for the Warriors. A 19 point game in a Warriors’ comeback win in January was probably Paschall’s best game of the season. Check out this highlight clip and see how Paschall scores repeatedly on Montrezl Harrell and operates as a roll man in tight spaces.
But much like Paschall’s rookie season, minor injuries reduced his effectiveness. Paschall missed a pair of games in Dallas with knee soreness and he never looked fully healthy after that. Paschall is a 6’6, two foot jumper. If that guy is playing center for you, he has to be in peak physical condition to be effective. For much of the year, Paschall was limited physically and his performance suffered. Middingly efficient isolation scorers who don’t shoot the three have to provide value in other ways to stay on the court. Paschall was unable to do that.
Although he made some improvements as a defender this season, Paschall wasn’t a plus defensively. Paschall has shown plenty of strength and explosive athleticism in his two seasons with the Warriors, but that’s never translated into rebounds. Paschall averaged 6.0 rebounds per 36 minutes as a rookie and 6.6 boards per 36 in his sophomore season. That's a minor improvement, sure, but it’s an unacceptably low rate for someone who spent over 60% of their time at the C position.
As the season progressed, bench lineups with Paschall consistently failed to perform. Even with his hot start to the season, Paschall was one of the Warriors’ most negatively impactful players and the Warriors were better team in his absence. When Paschall came back from the league’s health and safety protocols in March, he found himself out of the rotation. Only a few games later, Paschall suffered a hip flexor in garbage time against the Toronto Raptors and was ruled out for at least two weeks. Paschall didn’t play another meaningful minute for the Warriors for the rest of the season. During that time, Juan Toscano-Anderson (finally) solidified himself as one of the Warriors’ five or six best players and a reliable closing time option. Barring something unexpected, JTA should receive the bulk of the backup power forward minutes next year, which leaves Paschall in limbo.
Eric Paschall’s statistical profile (career bests bolded):
40 games played, 17.4 minutes a game, 9.5points a game, 3.2 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 1.1 turnovers, 0.3 steals, 0.2 blocks, and 1.7 fouls.
49.7% FG, 33.3% 3P, 71.3% FT, 56.1 TS% (-1.1% league average TS), 53.3% EFG (-0.5 league average EFG).
7.5 FGA, 1.4 3PA, 2.4 FTA.
BBREF: 106 ORTG, 113 DRTG, -6.7 +/- per 100 poss., -0.2 VORP, 0.62 WS/48, 23.5% USG.
NBA.com: 103.7 ORTG, 110.5 DRTG, -6.8 net rating, 23.4% USG.
-13 DIFF in non-garbage time (5th percentile), 91st percentile usage, 37th percentile PSA, 70th percentile AST%, 35th percentile AST:Usg, 49th percentile TOV% among big position.
-0.31 ORPM, -1.12 DRPM, -1.43 RPM (#303 rank of 534 players).
It’s happened a few times now that the words I write about a player’s season are far more generous and kind than the numbers are. Paschall’s non-garbage time stats per Cleaning the Glass are brutal. I can’t argue with that, although I’m sympathetic to Paschall because he played through injuries this year and played lots of minutes with Kelly Oubre Jr. and James Wiseman (more on that later, as always).
Last year’s tanking Warriors were marginally better at scoring the ball with Paschall on the court and mind you, Jacob Evans and a still sucky Jordan Poole played heavy minutes, Eric Paschall started games at the small forward, and Omari Spellman and Marquese Chriss were a bench unit frontcourt that played significant minutes. This year’s Warriors were -9.3 points worse at scoring the ball with Paschall on the court. Knowing the numbers about the combinations of Warriors players that performed awful together, I’m not comfortable pinning the Warriors’ offensive struggles with Paschall on the court entirely on him.
Still, I’m not going to argue that Paschall should have been a positive player this year. Paschall’s success as a smallball 5 was probably unsustainable (it certainly was for his body) and until he shoots the three ball efficiently or at a respectable volume, Paschall is not an easy player to fit into lineups. Paschall shot 53.3% on 2PA this year, which isn’t bad considering his volume of mid-range shots (more on that later, too) but three point shots made up for less than 20% of his shots taken this year and he was below league average in TS%.
Earlier in the piece, I mentioned that Paschall is a terrible rebounder for his positional splits. I looked at BBRef’s charts and sorted by TREB% (“the portion of rebounds that a player collects out the total rebounds that are available while that player is on the court,” per Mavs Moneyball) and Paschall ranks #239 of 540. Here’s a screenshot to contextualize the other players who have a similar TREB%, but keep in mind how many minutes Paschall played at C.
The only other thing of note here for me is that Paschall’s three point shot improved some, but his volume per 36 minutes is identical to his rookie season. The Warriors needed Paschall to be a credible shooter and he wasn’t.
Eric Paschall’s performance in the play-in games: N/A
Eric Paschall’s shooting profile:
Restricted area: 64.5% on 107 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 38.3% on 60 attempts.
Mid-range: 49.4% on 77 attempts.
Left corner 3: 50% on 4 attempts.
Right corner 3: 33.3% on 9 attempts.
Above the break 3: 31.7% on 41 attempts.
Floaters: 57.4% on 14 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 48% on 100 attempts.
FGA% per total drives: 45.1%.
Assisted by: Brad Wanamaker (22), Stephen Curry (13), Kent Bazemore (12), Andrew Wiggins (8), Draymond Green (7), Jordan Poole, Damion Lee, and Kevon Looney (5), Kelly Oubre Jr. (4), Nico Mannion and Mychal Mulder (3), Marquese Chriss (1),
FGM% assisted: 56.7%
FGM% unassisted: 44.3%
Paschall increased his efficiency in the mid-range by a little more than 6 points compared to his rookie season. The volume on the year is low, but his efficiency in the mid-range is on par with players like Seth Curry and Joel Embiid and you’ll note that Paschall made over 50% of his pull-up 2PA’s this year. That should be useful, no? Paschall was a far more efficient in the mid-range than, say, Kent Bazemore and Kelly Oubre Jr., and yet, Paschall was a huge negative for the Warriors this year and he regressed in the restricted area. My theory is that his restricted area regression has to do with injuries and spacing-starved lineups Paschall played in. To test my hunch, I looked at Paschall’s shots last year, when the Warriors scored better with him on the court than off.
Paschall shot 68% in the restricted area in his rookie season and 42.6% in the non-restricted area paint on more than twice the attempts in both zones. I think that lines up with my hunch; a healthier Paschall who played in lineups with better shooting got easier looks near the bucket. Just to be sure, I checked Paschall’s drive FG% on last year’s Warrior and my hunch looks better; Paschall shot 48% on drives last year on about twice the attempts.
Now, for the shot chart from Positive Residual! In Paschall’s case I’m going to post his shot charts from both of his NBA seasons so you can see the difference.
Rookie Paschall:
Sophomore Paschall:
The lineup stats!
We’ll start with Cleaning the Glass’ non-garbage time lineups.
Notable 5 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Wiggins/Paschall: +2.1 net rating (100 ORTG) in 192 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Oubre/Wiggins/Paschall: -16.5 net rating (88.6 ORTG) in 79 possessions.
Wanamaker/Mulder/Lee/Wiggins/Paschall: -3.7 net rating (119.7 ORTG) in 61 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Paschall: +5.7 net rating (114.3 ORTG) in 56 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/Paschall/Wiseman: -35.9 net rating (90.9 ORTG) in 55 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins/JTA/Paschall: -11.8 net rating (92.2 ORTG) in 51 possessions.
Wanamaker/Poole/Lee/Oubre/Paschall: +7.6 net rating (93.9 ORTG) in 49 possessions.
Curry/Oubre/Wiggins/Paschall/Green: -7.5 net rating (100 ORTG) in 39 possessions.
Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins/Paschall/Wiseman: -28.9 net rating (71 ORTG) in 38 possessions.
Wanamaker/Mulder/Lee/Oubre/Paschall: -50 net rating (100 ORTG) in 35 possessions.
Wanamaker/Poole/Lee/Wiggins/Paschall: -46.7 net rating net rating (84.4 ORTG) in 32 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/Paschall/Looney: -31.3 net rating (93.8 ORTG) in 32 possessions.
Curry/Bazemore/Oubre/Wiggins/Paschall: +66.9 net rating (140 ORTG) in 25 possessions.
Curry/Mulder/Oubre/Paschall/Looney: -31.7 net rating (82.6 ORTG) in 23 possessions.
Curry/Mulder/Bazemore/Paschall/Looney: +77.3 net rating (163.6 ORTG) in 22 possessions.
All but one of Paschall’s positive lineups comes with him at the C and all but one of the negative lineups has one of Kelly Oubre Jr. or James Wiseman on the court. Out of curiosity, I decided to see how many lineups Paschall played in that didn’t have either Oubre or Wiseman. Here’s a screenshot.
Tiny sample sizes here, but Brad Wanamaker is in 5 of the 8 lineups Paschall played non-garbage time that didn’t include James Wiseman or Kelly Oubre Jr. Again, I don’t want to build a bench around Eric Paschall, but playing 85% of your non-garbage minutes with Oubre, Wiseman, or Wanamaker sucks.
Notable 3 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Wanamaker/Lee/Paschall: -7.6 net rating (101.7 ORTG) in 339 minutes.
Wanamaker/Wiggins/Paschall: -9.3 net net rating (93.8 ORTG) in 269 minutes.
Lee/Wiggins/Paschall: -4.5 net rating (100.2 ORTG) in 233 minutes.
Wanamaker/Bazemore/Paschall: +7.1 net rating (101.7 ORTG) in 173 minutes.
Lee/Bazemore/Paschall: +7.2 net rating (108.3 ORTG) in 166 minutes.
Lee/Oubre/Paschall: -17.2 net rating (98.1 ORTG) in 151 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins/Paschall: +3.9 net rating (99.3 ORTG) in 145 minutes.
Wanamaker/Oubre/Paschall: -20.1 net rating (113.4 ORTG) in 138 minutes.
Curry/Oubre/Paschall: -15.7 net rating (100.4 ORTG) in 119 minutes.
Wiggins/Oubre/Paschall: -18.5 net rating (90.2 ORTG) in 111 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Paschall: +4.8 net rating (117.1 ORTG) in 110 minutes.
Wanamaker/Mulder/Paschall: +6.3 net rating (117.7 ORTG) in 86 minutes.
Mulder/Lee/Paschall: +6.8 net rating (118.8 ORTG) in 82 minutes.
Wanamaker/Poole/Paschall: -23.3 net rating (87.2 ORTG) in 79 minutes.
Bazemore/Oubre/Paschall: -1.8 net rating (105.6 ORTG) in 75 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Paschall: +13.3 net rating (117 ORTG) in 74 minutes.
I notice two things here that I want to discuss; Kelly Oubre Jr. and Eric Paschall combos were awful, while Kent Bazemore and Eric Paschall combos were actually pretty decent. The three of them together almost pull off a positive net rating, which is impressive! In my post on Bazemore, he had positive 2 man combos with nearly every Warrior player and lots of positive 3 man combos with unexpected players, which led me to say that he should have been part of more bench lineups while Damion Lee spent more time with the starters. I think these numbers add some credence to that idea
These numbers also remind me that there was a time when bench units with Eric Paschall at the C were winning their minutes until Steve Kerr messed with his bench unit to accommodate a slumping Kelly Oubre Jr. Later in the season, Wiggins and Oubre and Paschall ended up in bench lineups together with Brad Wanamaker running the point, and that was a predictably awful experience. It also happens to be the 2nd most used 5 man combo for Paschall. Pain.
Notable 2 man combos (positive ones bolded):
Wanamaker/Paschall: -8.6 net rating (98.7 ORTG) in 417 minutes.
Lee/Paschall: -6.7 net rating (103.7 ORTG) in 397 minutes.
Wiggins/Paschall: -8.1 net rating (99.5 ORTG) in 391 minutes.
Oubre/Paschall: -20.8 net rating (95.2 ORTG) in 281 minutes.
Bazemore/Paschall: +7.2 net rating (105.5 ORTG) in 264 minutes.
Curry/Paschall: +1.4 net rating (116.3 ORTG) in 200 minutes.
Mulder/Paschall: +13.6 net rating (120.3 ORTG) in 172 minutes.
Poole/Paschall: -16.4 net rating (95.5 ORTG) in 164 minutes.
Paschall/Looney: -17.3 net rating (98.2 ORTG) in 103 minutes.
Paschall/Wiseman: -20.2 net rating (94.5 ORTG) in 102 minutes.
Mannion/Paschall: -3.8 net rating (106.1 ORTG) in 94 minutes.
JTA/Paschall: -6.1 net rating (95.7 ORTG) in 76 minutes.
Paschall/Green: +14 net rating (117.7 ORTG) in 72 minutes.
It’s still unsettling to see just how bad Oubre/Paschall were together and how many minutes they played. The positive ratings of Kent Bazemore and Draymond Green next to Eric Paschall are probably the most interesting numbers here. I’m mildly curious about how Paschall would have fared if he spent more time in the frontcourt with Draymond Green in Steph Curry led lineups, but I can’t make an argument for Paschall closing games over Jordan Poole, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Damion Lee, or Kevon Looney. I do, however, think that Kent Bazemore in place of Andrew Wiggins or Kelly Oubre Jr. in bench lineups with Eric Paschall would have helped the Warriors.
What’s next for Eric Paschall?
Paschall has one year left on his rookie contract with the Warriors, but he doesn’t have a clear path to consistent minutes right now. If James Wiseman is on the Warriors’ roster next year, he and Kevon Looney will probably get the bulk of the non-closing time minutes at the center spot, which is where Paschall played his best minutes last year. Paschall can be an effective isolation scorer and PNR roll man (his 1.23 PPP has him in the top 25% of players to get more than possession a game as the roll man), but at what cost?
Because Paschall can’t space the floor, he needs the ball in his hands to be maximized. If the Warriors had killer shooting up and down the bench, you could see how Paschall would be an unusual and interesting creator as a bullyball PF/C. As it currently stands, the Warriors will probably give minutes to Andrew Wiggins and/or James Wiseman in the second unit around Jordan Poole, Juan Toscano-Andreson and some combination of wings (and hopefully Klay Thompson). Eric Paschall does not fit in those lineups and there’s no sense in building the Warriors’ roster with his fit in mind. If Eric Paschall wants to play real minutes next year, he’ll have to make huge improvements to his jumpshot and be a credible floor spacer to make up for his various shortcomings.
Paschall can be a somewhat useful NBA player in the right circumstances, but it’s not clear he’ll find those circumstances in the Bay Area. Assuming the Warriors pick up a big wing who can moonlight at the 4, (think Andre Iguodala or Nic Batum) I think both parties would benefit from finding a trade for Paschall that returns the Warriors a guard or wing. I’m not totally opposed to Paschall’s return because it’s not out of the question he can provide emergency value as an isolation scorer, but he should not be in the Warriors’ rotation next year.