NBA Stock Market: Disputing the Unicorn Philosophy

It’s time to stop imbuing a cornucopia of players with fictional qualities and take a good hard look at the fact that the NBA has changed in the last few years.

In the past couple of years we have heard the “unicorn” narrative emerge in the annals of NBA history. Much like every other tired out media analogy, it started with one man and then slowly sprawled its reach across a variety of NBA bigs to cover a wide spectrum of abilities. We went from one, to two, to five, to eventually an array of bigs with wide-spread talents that are increasingly difficult to classify in a traditional sense. At some point, you have to take a good hard look and ask yourself: “am I really staring at a magical, one of a kind creature straight out of a LSD infused mythology or is it just a bronco with a spike growing out of its head?”

In the past few weeks we have seen a very consistent narrative emerge from New York City. It is one of Kristaps Porzingis, First of His Name, The Scourge of Whoever It Is Latvians Beef with, being a unicorn of his own right. Standing as tall as a three-story building with a very protruded fireplace and having the wingspan that is double that, Kristaps has demonstrated an innate ability to fulfil multiple roles for his team. He can defend, pass, put the ball on the floor, score from the post and bomb away threes.

While displays like that are more frequent and impressive, they are by no means unique in the modern make up of the NBA and how it requires it’s bigs to play. Don’t get me wrong, I have already sworn fealty to Lord Kristaps and plan to be at his side as pillages the Latvian country-side upon his retirement, but when it comes to the NBA he is hardly the only one pushing or expectations of what a human who’s put together as if someone took two humans and stapled them together should be able to do.

So far this season, Kristaps is shooting 41% from three and pulling down 7.1 rebounds en-route to just over 20 per game. Those are average stats (arguably 7.1 rebounds is low for someone who’s limbs look more like ropes) in a vacuum, but we can’t forget games like the one above where he literally does everything. Once again, however, that is not a unique proposition.

The NBA has had a big man transition ever since Kevin Garnett took the league by storm. In the past, these changes existed as microcosms such as Chris Bosh slowly extending his range to the three, or a number of bigs learning to put the ball on the floor. Recently however, the trend has exploded across the board. Remember that time when Anthony Davis was speaking to us in Morse Code if morse code was a NBA stat line and was basically spelling: H-E-L-P M-E?

Once again, across the board, Davis did just about everything for the Pelicans. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he drives all of his teammates home after the game, makes each of them dinner, tucks their kids in and drives around guarding their properties deep into the morning. Since entering the League, Davis has displayed not only fantastical feats of athleticism, but also stretched our imagination as to what someone who’s built like a Weapon X experiment on steroids should be able to do.

A point guard in high-school, Davis hit a growth spurt late, catapulting him into the rank of human/extra-terrestrial hybrids that we haven’t seen before. He is capable of handling the ball, taking opponents of the bounce, passing and banging down low. Part of the issue with Davis is that it’s difficult to place him either at centre or at power forward and even an idea of him playing small forward is generally met with the resounding “well, what’s the worst that could happen?” I don’t know. The world could explode.

This year, Davis is carrying a Pelicans shaped boulder on his shoulders and to do so, he has been required to carry out just about every basketball function known to men (and some that are not) in order to keep them in games. One huge knock on his “unicorn-ness” is that he has been shooting a dismal 28% from three, after showing flashes and going over 30% last year, but that could also be contributed to the fact that he’s playing alongside an actual tire fire.

It doesn’t stop at Davis however. Have you maybe heard of this guy?

Or this dude?

Both guys are stretching what it means to be a big in the NBA and how it should look. What’s scarier is that Embiid is doing it on a minutes restriction. Adjusted to PER 36, Joel’s stat line begins to read like a forewarning of the apocalypse: 28.6 points, 12.2 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 3.8 blocks and 50% from three. FIFTY. For someone who’s built like a commercial aircraft with a speed of a fighter jet.

Not only are these big men are expanding their offensive arsenal by learning to put the ball on the floor, they are facilitating offences in ways we’ve never seen before. Traditional NBA wisdom dictates that guards are generally responsible for handling the ball and distributing the possession as they see fit. The new breed of big creates a new kind of wrinkle in this as bigger humans are able to both handle the ball and facilitate for their teammates, just look at the Clippers and their ability to integrate the Blake Griffin/DeAndre Jordan pick and roll with devastating results.

We have an uptick in both assists for bigs (look at someone like Al Horford with 5.1 average per game) or threes (an unprecedented amount of bigs are averaging over or close to 40% from behind the arc this season) as they are being asked to do more on offence and defence. More importantly, the amoeba-like NBA transition has produced a generation of humongous humans who are capable of moving their feet, switching defensively and stepping out of their positional comfort zone to fit the new NBA mold.

Hold: Golden State Warriors — NBA Galactus

The Warriors are rolling now. They are putting the levers on other NBA teams and their shot chart (see above) basically looks like a green pasture during the early meadow months of the summer where all the birds chirp and the deer come out to play. Quietly, but surely, the Warriors crept away from their two initial defeats to the Spurs and to the Lakers (!!!) and have rattled off a variety of devastating wins. Yes, the Dubs haven’t really played anyone over .500, but at this point we can’t blame them for their schedule or overlook the fact that they are just BLOWING TEAMS OUT. The only way some of these could be more disrespectful is if we found out Draymond Green is taking the mother of the highest scorer of the opposite team to a seafood dinner post-game.

Still, until the Warriors start tuning out contender teams the same way they do NBA fodder, I am reticent to go a full buy out of the gate, given how the good teams are prepared for the coming apocalypse.

Buy: Everything Russell Westbrook

I think that when Russell Westbrook was a child a man approached him in the yard and told him that if he dunked the basketball hard enough the earth would reverse on its axis rotation and world hunger will be eliminated. Westbrook has been playing basketball in a manner that proves my theory ever since. Here he is reaching into Clint Capela’s geneology and exterminating generations worth of accomplishments (basically erasing the Capela’s from human history as anything other than victims of Russell Westbrook’s ire).

But more importantly he is doing a lot of other things. This season was always going to be akin to Russell Westbrook strapping himself into a sled, putting the rest of the Thunder into it and dragging them along to a potential 8th or 7th seed in the West. At the time of writing, Russell Westbrook is averaging a triple-double: 30.9 points, 10.4 rebounds, 11.3 assists. He is dragging the Thunder’s post-Durant remains with him wher-ever he goes and it just happens to be the most entertaining thing on this planet.

Hold: Andrew Wiggins — The Three Point Shooter

We are now a few years removed from the “Wiggins as Next LeBron” speculation and Wiggins is even not the most tantalizing prospect from his very own draft year. In the past, he has worked hard to exert his athletic dominance over the opposition and develop into a solid defender across the board. He did however lack the ball-handling skills and abilities to shoot from deep that could make him a true superstar. For the longest time, Wiggins was on a trajectory to be a very athletic, above-average system player.

This year, he came out with more ball handling duties than before, now that the Zach LaVine — Not a Point Guard experiment is over in Minnesota. He is also shooting his best career average from three, currently sitting at 39%, dipping under 40% due to two stinker performances before writing. Still, that is a career best for Wiggins and if he manages to maintain it, he can be a difficult player to stop. Shooting is teachable and while 39% is closer to what we can expect for the rest of the year, going above 40 is still not out of the realm of possibility. Just don’t be too quick to sign him up for the three-point contest.

Sell: Miami Heat Playoff Aspirations

The common wisdom says that Miami will figure it out. They still have Whiteside, who is one of the best defensive and rebounding assets in the League. A Wade-less Dragic is playing some of the better basketball we’ve seen him play and the team is getting the most out of guys like James Johnson, but something isn’t quite right in Miami. They still have trouble stretching the floor, and bogged down half-court sets aren’t the same without the surefire bailout of Dwayne Wade, the Human Euro-Step Mark 2.0.

In order for the Heat to get back into the conversation, someone on the roster of players they’ve chosen to retain this summer will need to take a leap. My money is on Justice Winslow, but he will need to work hard on his shot from range to even think about making an impact on any end of the floor. For now, the Heat are stuck in limbo for the first time under Riley’s tenure.

Sell: Cuban Not Rebuilding

Either Mark Cuban has the best poker face or he’s most definitely not rebuilding. The Mavs are objectively trash this season and I don’t think Rick Carlisle has any more magic dust left to sprinkle out the disastrous fire that has spread over Dallas. What’s more, I don’t think he has anyone to sprinkle it over. The Mavs aren’t in trouble, even trouble looked at this franchise and felt sorry for it.

The transition from the Nowitzki era was always going to be hard for this team, especially with their inability to lure marquee free agents. Even their Championship winning season felt more like a result of magical intervention (looks at Carlisle, opens mouth to speak, loses the ability to). For the last few years, Dallas has been a team swinging above it’s weight-category and somehow remaining competitive, leaving the rest of us waiting for the other shoe to drop. The other shoe is currently in free-fall past Earth’s core and is gaining exit velocity somewhere around the outer edge of Australia.

Hold: Blazers Magic

It seems to me that the Portland Trail Blazers are at a fundamental disagreement with defence as a core concept of basketball operations. This was the team that surprised everyone by not only making the playoffs, but also out of the first round (against a noticeably thin Clippers unit). Still, everyone was fairly bullish on the Blazers this year, in particular knowing the fact that Damian Lillard can at any time pour gasoline all over himself and set the arena on fire.

The problem is that they’ve also been playing porous defence. At 113.3, Portland has the worst defensive rating in the League and it’s not even by a particularly close margin. They seem unable to lock down anyone with any kind of definitive consistency and it has hurt them on numerous occasion. They’re currently sitting outside of the playoff picture and unless someone decides that it’s time to play some sort of defence, it’s hard to see them repeating last year’s gleaming success.