After a torn ACL erased what should have been his rookie season, Nerlens Noel had quite a journey in his first year playing in the NBA for the Philadelphia 76ers. Though he started off raw on both sides of the court (as one might expect), as the season progressed he sharpened up his defensive rotations and became not just an athletic defender with shot blocking abilities, but an excellent rim protector. By the end of the 2014-15 season, Noel was in the top 11 in Defensive Box Plus/Minus, Defensive Win Shares, Defensive Rating, blocks and steals. His offense, however, lagged behind.
If you wanted to be generous, you could say that Nerlens offensively was a pick-and-roll finisher at center à la Andre Drummond, Tyson Chandler or DeAndre Jordan, but Noel doesn’t have the bulk of any of them. He was a dunker, sure, and a good finisher at that — 66 percent within 3 feet of the basket — but he doesn’t have the bulk to finish through people, and he’s simply not the caliber of offensive rebounder that any of them are, which is the reason why all of them aren’t liabilities on the court, even without anything resembling a jump shot.
The 76ers won’t have Joel Embiid this season (again), but they still drafted Jahlil Okafor this offseason, and he’s a much more traditional center with a gifted back-to-the-basket game. He carries lots of question about defense, however, and an elite defender like Noel would go a long way toward covering up for Okafor’s growing pains on that end of the floor. But even though Okafor looks like he could contribute offensively, his game is all inside, which means if he’s to share the court with Noel, one of them will have to figure out a way to improve the 76ers’ spacing. This offseason, Noel is working to do just that, reports Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
At 6-foot-11 but only listed at 228 pounds (for comparison’s sake, LeBron James is listed at 250 and is 3 inches shorter, and Okafor is at 270), Noel is more physically suited to power forward than center, but he needs some semblance of a jump shot to play there. He’s working with shot coach John Carroll in Newport, Rhode Island (he says he wants to avoid the distractions of working out in Philly) to rebuild his form, which was all sorts of wrong last season:
The work has resulted in an adjustment to his shooting form. Noel slightly moved the placement of his right hand, which he uses to shoot. But the major change came in his left, or guide, hand.
In the past, Noel’s left hand dominated the ball, sitting on top or on the side of it when he shot.
“Just getting my left hand off the ball,” Noel said of the adjustment. “During the season, you can’t really work on it as much as you want to and fix the little things. It’s the season, you don’t want to mess with anything.”
That left hand was extremely problematic last season, as you can see from this compilation of all his 10-14 foot attempts courtesy of NBA.com. An essentially two-handed motion like that has a much lower ceiling of consistency than a more traditional one in which the right elbow is pointed at the basket. If he can correct that mechanical error, it will go a long way toward rounding out his game, and his career trajectory could look like another rim-protecting four — Serge Ibaka, who shot 28.9 percent from 10-14 feet in the 2011-12 season but improved to 53 percent from there this past season.
Ibaka didn’t step up to fill the void left by the injured Kevin Durant as much as people thought he might, but he’s still an incredibly valuable defensive piece who’s good enough offensively to justify starter’s minutes on a title contender. If Noel can follow Ibaka’s lead (or that of another power forward who improved his jumper to an asset in Blake Griffin), he could become a player akin to the Thunder big man but with additional length and athleticism.
More importantly, if Nerlens can actually pull it off, he will address one of the Sixers’ biggest long-term roster concerns — their crowded frontcourt. Who knows if they’ll actually ever get anything out of Embiid, but if they do, and Noel can change his game to fit at the four, all of a sudden what looked like a problem would turn into a potentially elite big man rotation. Then they could focus on finding some even league-average talent in the backcourt.
Pompey correctly points out that this is a long-term process — both Griffin and Ibaka took years to polish their jumpers to where they are now — but if any team has the patience to let it play out, it’s Sam Hinkie’s Sixers. They will certainly Trust the Process when it comes to evolving Noel’s game, and if it works, he could be an All Star.
(Via Philadelphia Inquirer)
