In Focus: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's offensive output

Right off the bat, I love SGA and I fully went aboard the train last season. For as fun as the Poku experience is and how much we can appreciate Giddey missing a lay up only to get a rebound and hit a perfectly placed no-look bounce pass, Gilgeous-Alexander has been the only guarantee of true competency as an engine for their offense - and he's been achieved far beyond that baseline.

Playing in isolation, Shai specialises in blowing by opponents. Employing a mix of a super explosive first step, which he uses seemingly out of a pure standstill position, and delightfully unorthodox timings to take off, the fact he goes off in between the usual beats means he catches defenders off-guard and mid-shifting their feet, as beautifully pointed out on a By Any Means Basketball video. He’s used his technique to leave even elite defensive pests like Thybulle behind him and beyond reach of recovery with considerable consistency. It’s small-guard like agility and feet swiftness but in a long-armed 6’6 frame.

But it’s hard to ignore that it’s been a bit of a step back for Shai this season, as he is lacking the “pop” factor he managed to attain last season despite playing in Oklahoma City. The raw numbers do not differ significantly - from 23.7/4.7/5.9 to 22.7/4.8/5.2 - but as one could guess, his efficiency being considerably down is the problem, end of story. But to get there let me take the long way round and as we dive into some stats, we take the 3 seasons in OKC. The first where he played alongside Chris Paul, and the most recent seasons where he’s been the main force of a pretty trash team. And since we mention the isolation play, we start there:

Isolation

Year	ISOs per game	Frequency of playtype	Poins Per Possession (PPP)	League-wide Percentile in PPP
2019-20	2.7	14.2%	1.00	80th
2020-21	5.0	22.7%	0.98	72nd
2021-22	7.7	32.4%	0.93	63rd

So, he’s not elite at it and the volume increase lowered his efficiency (as one would expect). But it’s very clear the increase in former is much more drastic than the decrease in the latter and he’s still very much above average in terms of outcomes even as he’s the only threat worth any attention for his team.

Looking now at pick and roll possessions:

Pick and Roll

Year	PnRs per game	Frequency of playtype	Poins Per Possession (PPP)	League-wide Percentile in PPP
2019-20	7.0	37.6%	0.96	79th
2020-21	9.9	44.8%	1.12	94th
2021-22	9.6	40.7%	0.92	71st

A considerable drop in pick and roll efficiency between last season and the current one is evident. Since Shai only takes 9% of his shots as long midrangers, we’ll leave those out of the conversation. This allows us to focus on shots in the paint and 3s as the main shots generated by his pick and rolls and isolations (which comprise over 70% of his playtime profile at the moment).

His drives to the basket have the following stats:

Drives

Year	Drives per game	PTS%	FG%	Pass%	AST%	TOV%	Foul%
2019-20	16.4	62%	48.9%	36.2%	8%	5.1%	9.2%
2020-21	25.2	52.1%	55.4%	48.4%	9.4%	5.6%	5.6%
2021-22	23.8	56.5%	48.7%	41.7%	7.3%	4.1%	8.8%

The decrease we see from last year to the current one in FG% is taking place despite him increasing his overall FG% at the rim getting a slight bump from 62% this year, per CleaningTheGlass. So what we are seeing with the data on drives ia how has shifted a bit to getting less to the rim and more towards shots in the paint outside the restricted area, having to rely on his quick-stop-into-a-short-jumper a bit too much, and making 9% less of his shots from this range. 

If we shift to the three point shot, you should consider wearing some sort of eye protection… on CTG, he went from 42% last season to 29% on the current one. Almost all of these are above the break pull ups (admittedly, the hardest kind) that he is just not making.

Pull Up 3s

Year	Pull Up 3s per game	% on Pull up 3s
2019-20	2.3	31.9%
2020-21	3.8	40.9%
2021-22	5.4	26.1%

This is an insane drop and very much a career low. He’s been a consistent mid-30s shooter above the break and got to the 40s last year. I believe he’s that more than whatever is going on this season and just getting back to an average percentage on these will ripple into improving the inside scoring a bit back up again, as dictate the trends of modern NBA spacing. But as it stands, his eFG% at TS% are at a career lows of 48.9% and 53.1% respectively - both landing in the 40th to 45th percentile league-wide for the season. Let us look at some of the best on number metrics currently available (and BPM lol) and see what they think of his offensive contributions:

Offensive One-Number Metrics

Year	O-BPM	O-RAPTOR	O-LEBRON	O-EPM
2019-20	1.3	1.6	1.08	1.3
2020-21	3.9	3.7	1.83	3.3
2021-22	2.1	2.2	1.99	2.1

Interesting that they all do see a dip in his performance this season compared to the last one, with the exception of BBall-Index’s LEBRON - arguably the most robust metric of these alongside EPM, where the latter differs from LEBRON by using tracking data. I do feel that the overall trend captures something the eye test confirms, as the inconsistency in his scoring this season has been noticeable.

To end, as we started, on a positive outlook: Shai is still a really, really good player. BBall-Index metrics have him as an estimated West All-Star, CraftedNBA compiles one number metrics and has him at the 84th percentile overall (92nd in offense only) and EPM still has his overall impact on the 88th percentile.

It’s also important to recognise that Shai is one of the most self-reliant shot creators in the NBA right now. Because of the surrounding talent, he is above the 90th percentile for guards in both amount of shots at the rim AND from 3 that are unassisted - the only player that has less shots assisted by percentage in the league is Luka Doncic. And you don’t have to look at many clips to see how though his attempts tend to be. We can look at overall difficulty of his shot profile by how high he ranks in shots per game preceded with 7 or more dribbles, according to NBA’s tracking data where, due to all that we just went over, his efficiency is considerably down this year:

Shots taken after 7 or more dribbles

Year	Attempts per game	League Rank in Attempts per game	eFG%	League Rank in eFG% (at least 100 FGA)
2019-20	3.2	#30	45.3%	#44 out of 65
2020-21	7.5	#5	53.1%	#18 out of 70
2021-22	8.4	#3	45.2%	#29 out of 35

He’s the only way this team can get a respectable offense during any stretch of minutes. They are 10.2 points per 100 better on offense when he’s out there (96th percentile for offensive on/off) and that increase comes almost entirely in half-court plays, where the rim pressure from his drives and his pick and rolls means they get a 4% increase in frequency of shots at the rim, a 7.6% increase in their efficiency and an overall increase of 5.3% in Free Throw Rate. That is another that gives me a lot of comfort: how reliable he is at generating free throws, currently being 6th in the league in attempts. 

Last year he was a NBA-geek dark horse for all star consideration and while it’s just hard for me to do so this time around, there is still a ton to love about one of the best young players in the game. There is still nothing more valuable than someone that can generate points at a good clip out of of nothing and SGA does just that.

(All 2021-22 stats are as of December 30th, 2021)