It's 2's Time
John Henry vs. the Steam Engine
For a dystopian decade (2015-2024, RIP), the entire league worked to replicate the three-point offensive efficiency first perfected by the Warriors’ Splash Brothers. Steph Curry built the spacing locomotive that tore through the entire NBA, as its competitors scrambled to catch up to Golden State's revolutionary three-point math. Only in Houston, where James Stepback Harden managed to streamline the three-or-guaranteed system (get a layup, get fouled, or jack a bomb), did the formula itself (3>2=TRUE) almost close the gap in talent between the peak Warriors and the field.
Other teams made lesser copies that dulled our senses with stubborn, familiar success. We were subjected to entire postseasons that hinged on the random three-point shooting of Anthony Davis and Jae Crowder. LeBron and KD already served as the templates for players like Luka and Cade taking the baton as heliocentric playmakers who had the size and skill needed for their franchise to channel every hope, dream, and possession through their hands (specifically, through their high-PnR actions in search of a shot at the arc or the rim). When Kobe’s biggest star devotee won the 2024 title while playing like the platonic ideal of Trevor Ariza, it felt like the math had won out for good.
The locomotive was well in motion, the two-pointer fading from memory in a cloud of steam. But Shai never stopped calling his number.
The Steel Driver
Since 2021-2022, the Thunder offense has featured the most common action in all of basketball: Shai driving.
Only Shai, Cade Cunningham, and Jalen Brunson have been top-five in drives taken over the last two seasons. Only Shai and Brunson have been top-five over the last four. Shai has been top-two for five straight seasons. He's in a class of his own.
This season, SGA once again paces the NBA in most per-possession and overall driving categories. He ranks first or second in nearly every driving outcome when compared to Cade, Luka Doncic, Brunson, Deni Avdija, and Devin Booker, the rest of the league’s most effective volume drivers.
Shai converts most of those drives into points, racking up two-point buckets like a big (9.18 2PM). His True Shooting percentage is within a half-point of the giants who lead the league in paint touches: Deandre Ayton, Jalen Duren, Zach Edey, and Jarrett Allen. And he's generated more than seventy additional made twos this season than frontcourt monsters like Alperen Sengun, Nikola Jokic, and Julius Randle.
But Shai doen't just attack and score an unusual amount. Where those drives end is even more abnormal: he shoots and scores the most of any isolation player in the league, but takes the bulk of his attempts from midrange. Among guards with over 50 games played, Shai ranks 85th in three-point attempts per game this season. Just 22.9% of his shot volume comes from three, and only 1.4% comes from dunks. Yet he still makes the math work.
There is an openness to the way he attacks, a willingness to keep an eye on every patch of hardwood left open by the defender(s) until he knows he’s penetrated or retreated to the best spot available from which to make his decisive action. As he recently put it, Shai can find the correct multiple-choice answer to any defender’s pop quiz: If you give him a straight line, he will take it. Go under, he'll fire from deep. Pull back and he'll drain the middy. Selling out to contest the shot? He’ll shake you and then bake your big at the hoop. And if you try to guard him with your shoulder after losing the first step, he will angle his way to the rim in ways you cannot legally recover from. Deal with it.
Whether he’s bee-lining, fading away, zig-zagging, or stepping through to an efficient shot, there’s no safe zone you can cede to Shai between the arc and the rim.
That's why Shai’s lethality in the midrange matters so much. A jumper is not the most ideal outcome for an SGA possession, but it’s the worst worst-case scenario defenses have had to live with in years. A clean release from Shai, anywhere, is now better than a 50/50 proposition. 54.4161525% to be exact, good for 1.088323049 points at a time.
If you only counted Shai’s midrange attempts—no layups, no threes, no free throws—he would still rank third in isolation points per possession in the NBA, trailing only Luka and Booker:
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