Kyrie Irving: An ISO King, He’s Good Other Places Too

Published in

The Unprofessionals

7 min readOct 20, 2017

After spending his first six seasons playing in Cleveland, the last three with BITW LeBron James, the NBA off-season ended with a bang when the Cleveland Cavaliers traded Kyrie Irving. Irving just after the NBA Draft requested a trade, and in August Cleveland granted it by moving him to Boston for a package that included Isaiah Thomas.

After starting 2015–16 injured, Kyrie started slowly and had a down year in many statistical categories. But, he was healthy for the 2016 NBA Finals and made the key shot, and the Cavaliers won their first NBA Title.

In 2016–17 Kyrie built on that 2016 Finals having career highs in points per game, field goal percentage, free throw percentage, minutes per game, shots made, shots attempted, PER, TS%, and near career highs in many other areas.

Isolation basketball is the disdain for “real basketball fans.” Just Google, “hate ISO basketball,” and reap the results. But, Grantland in 2015 put it perfectly, “Hero Ball Is Awful, Except When It Works, Because Then It’s The Best.”

In this age of enlightenment, “hero ball” has become an epithet. And no wonder. Numerous studies have found that iso offense is, because of its predictability, not as efficient as actions that involve motion — both of ball and players. Take away the element of surprise and eschew misdirection, and even the lamest of NBA defenses will look pretty good when given the time to set up.

Kyrie Irving is a sensational hero-ball/isolation basketball player, arguably the best in the NBA. Because of his lightning quick first step, shiftiness in and around the lane, and rapid dribble, Kyrie has a expert level ability to breakdown a defense all by himself.

Here’s a quick video of Kyrie putting on dribble displays and many lay-up finishes.

During 2016–17 Kyrie utilized ISO situations 21.4% of the time, which broke out to be 5.1 possessions per game, and he scored almost 50% of the time. Raw stats in ISO Kyrie scored 412 points on 317 shots. That computes to 1.12 PPP (points per possession) which put him in the 94.7 percentile of all the NBA.

Kyrie is better than almost every elite player in the NBA in ISO when you breakdown the numbers. His PPP is better than LeBron (0.97), Westbrook (0.94), Harden (0.97), Wall (0.81), CP3 (1.09), DeRozan (1.02), and Lillard (1.05). All of these players rank in the 70 percentile and higher with exception to John Wall, 46.4. All of them are in ISO more than 15% of the time as well.

The except one is Isaiah Thomas, 95.3 percentile. The difference between Thomas and Irving, Thomas had more than two times less ISO possessions per game (2.3). Although Thomas is a little better in effectiveness he has significantly less opportunities.

Here’s a collection of Kyrie working in the 2016–17 NBA Season in ISO situations. Kyrie shot his season average (47%) from the field, and his eFG% was 53.2% on ISO shots (season average 53.5).

SHOOTING

A major strength to Kyrie’s ability to go “hero” is his shooting. He’s either above league average shooter or at league average from everywhere on the floor, even in hard to make areas like just outside the restrict area.

Areas Kyrie is stellar in, 48.2% on catch and shoot 3’s, 46.8% from 3 when he doesn’t dribble, and 42.5% when he takes more than 7 dribbles. Area of improvement shooting the 3, pull ups. Although he shoots a respectable 35% on pull ups, he takes more here (3.5 per game) than spot ups (2.3). Kyrie also shoots 23.4% and 21.7% when he takes 1 dribble or 2 dribbles.

In comparison, Stephen Curry (BITW shooter), shoots 42% off 1 dribble and 45.5% off 2 dribbles. Kyrie is slightly better on catch and shoots (45.4 to 48.2) and is just 1.5% lower on pull-ups.

54.5% of his shots come from inside 15 feet, only 14.4% from the mid-range to long 2 area, and 30.7% come from 3-point.

PICK AND ROLL BALL HANDLER

The playtype that Kyrie Irving finds himself in the most often is pick and roll ball handler. With eight possessions per game, and at a 34% frequency, Irving scores out of this playtype one-third of his baskets. He’s in the 82.9 percentile and has a 0.96 PPP while shooting 46.5% from the field shooting 482 shots with a 50.7 eFG%.

Irving is a creative scorer in the pick and roll. His handle gives him a distinct advantage where he is able to dribble through narrow passages like mice that make it under doors when cats are in pursuit. This video is a good display of that ability.

82.9 percentile is a pretty high mark placing Kyrie in the Top 20% of the NBA but Kyrie ranks behind quite a bit of elite point guards in the NBA. Lowry (95.1), Isaiah Thomas (94.1), Lillard (93.4), Harden (92.7), Conley (92), and George Hill (91.6) are all in the 90 percentile. Eric Bledsoe (87.8), Jeff Teague (86.4), Kemba Walker (86.1), and CP3 (83.3) fall into the next group. Kyrie does shoot a little bit better than most of these guys, has less possessions, and like compared to Harden, he turns the ball over almost 10% less.

Pick and Roll Ball Handler sorted by PPG

Here’s more video of Irving scoring in pick and roll.

TRANSITION

Kyrie’s ability to finish at the rim helps him in transition situations although he’s just better than half the league placing in the 59 percentile. He does shoot 54% from the field and has a eFG% of 61% with a PPP of 1.14.

If Kyrie increased his PPP 0.04 range he’d be up 10 percentile, in the Stephen Curry (1.20 PPP), and Damian Lillard (1.18 PPP) area. Players just better than him are Isaiah Thomas (1.16) and CJ McCollum (1.14) and similar player is Lowry (1.13).

Here’s some video examples of Kyrie hitting 3’s in transition

And a few plays where Kyrie got all the way to the rim and scored.

SPOT-UPS

An area where you’d think Kyrie would have a bit of higher frequency is spot-ups, especially playing on team where LeBron is the primary playmaker. Kyrie averaged just 1.9 possessions per game, or 8% of his looks in spot-ups. In 2016–17 he scored 157 points on 54 made field goals giving him a PPP of 1.15. That landed him in the 84.6 percentile while shooting 42.9% from the field. The eFG% was 59.9% so Kyrie was shooting a lot of 3's.

Here’s a video example of Kyrie knocking down spot-ups

CUTS

Since Kyrie is an remarkable finisher he is a supremely talented finisher off cuts. He placed in the 96 percentile with a PPP of 1.59 while shooting 81.8% from the field. Downside, Irving only scores on cuts 2.3% of the time.

OFF SCREENS, POST-UPS, HANDOFFS

The Cavs didn’t use Kyrie much off screens but he’s relatively effective coming off screens. He had a PPP of 1.14 placing him the 85 percentile of the NBA. He shot 49.2% from the field and had eFG% of 58.5% while taking 65 shots.

He was a little better than CJ McCollum (179 shots), Gordon Hayward (139 shots), Otto Porter (80 shots), and Eric Gordon (82 shots). All these players took many more shots than Kyrie off screens.

This play VS the Knicks was a simple down screen for Kyrie to catch and shoot, 40.3% 3-point shooter from this part of the floor.

While researching Kyrie isolation scoring I found he was a pretty effective post-up scorer. Posting up isn’t somewhere you’d expect Kyrie to be a lot, but getting 0.98 PPP and ranking in the 78 percentile isn’t bad for a guard. Especially a rather small guard like Irving.

On handoffs Kyrie is in the 73 percentile and has a PPP of 1.01, a playtype he utilized just 5.5% of his total. While he compares well VS the league, he shot just 38% from the field with an eFG of 43.4%.

DIMES

Video of Kyrie’s debut with Boston for 2017–18

In his Celtics debut Kyrie scored in a number of playtypes (Played a lot of the 4th quarter as a 2-guard). First he came off screen while going toward the basket. Then Boston posted Kyrie up on the right side of the floor isolating him VS Derrick Rose. Kyrie then had two similar plays where he caught the ball off hand offs and became a pick and roll ball handler.

Second half scoring was a lot more off the ball. First he was found spotted up, and second a hand off in transition, both 3-pointers. The with Rozier running the offense the Celtics ran Kyrie off a screen for a 3-pointer.

The last play he scored on was another 3-pointer out of the HORNS set. With Kyrie at the elbow he came off a Marcs Smart screen and received a hand off from Aron Baynes. Again Kyrie fired away from three and knocked it down.