A complete statistical and film breakdown of new Knick Evan Fournier
The first major domino to fall in the Knicks’ offseason plans, Evan Fournier should offer a level of scoring versatility that New York sorely needed last year. What do the film and stats say about the Knicks’ new shooting guard’s potential impact on the team?
Let’s get straight to the point on this one. The New York Knicks signed Evan Fournier last week to a contract valued at $78 million over four seasons, with the last year being a full team option. Below will be a collection of five charts and graphs, along with eight videos, detailing who Evan Fournier is as an NBA player. Well, technically it is who Evan Fournier is as an NBA player through the perspective of Drew and Mo, who have their own biases and experiences that have shaped the way they understand NBA basketball. But enough relativism on a Knicks website. Here is the information that you all crave.
Shooting chart
Drew: Stat Muse may have developed an “interesting” personality on Twitter, but the website’s content is still pretty damn useful and visually appealing. You know what else is visually appealing? Evan Fournier’s career shooting chart.
Daryl Morey, if you are currently reading this, I’m going to need you to step away for a moment and calm down before continuing. Fournier has an ideal shot profile of a complimentary starting wing who is not the focal point of the offense. He is without question a very good 3-point shooter who finishes around the rim at effectively a league average rate. The rim percentage could obviously be better, but what really stands out to me is his left corner three percentage. Not only is it basically 44%, it is also the opposite corner of RJ Barrett’s preferred corner from last season. Just imagine the spacing the Knicks can get out of Horns actions by having Barrett and Fournier in the corners, Randle and Robinson at the elbows, and Walker running the point. So simple, yet so effective.
If you are looking to get some sort of idea of what this shot chart looks like in real life, Mo put together some videos of how Fournier likes to and can score. Here is Fournier attacking when a defender is closing out:
Do you guys remember the Courtney Lee days, where despite being a basically a 40% 3-point shooter, he would take two steps in after shedding the defender on a pump fake and take those awful long twos? I, unfortunately, still do, and I know you guys are mad as hell that I brought up painful memories. Fournier does not do that. He side-steps to remain behind the 3-point line. That’s why his shot chart is so pretty.
With that said, he will sometimes take those awful long twos, but he is creating enough separation to get a relatively clean shot up. I guess that counts for something?
I doubt we see Fournier taking those types of step-back, long twos on a regular basis. If — as the shot chart tells us — he did not do it that often in his career while predominantly playing for the Magic, we should not expect it with better spacing on this Knicks team. At the very least, if Fournier does have the ball in his hands late in the shot clock, he can get enough separation from anywhere to get a shot off. Even though it may be inefficient, it’s still a vital skill needed for this team.
More about shooting
This is where the fun really begins. I took the three-year totals of catch-and-shoot, pull-up, and off-screen shooting numbers of all players via NBA Stats and grouped them into “movement shooting” (pull-up and off-screen attempts) and “stationary shooting,” which actually just stayed as catch-and-shoot attempts. Below is a scatter plot of scoring efficiency (points per shot, or PPS) of high-volume shooters. The larger the circle, the more total field goal attempts the player took in this three-year sample:
The company Evan Fournier keeps with in terms of efficiency and volume in these two types of shots is preeeeetty, preeeeetty good. The differences between Fournier, Middleton, and George in these actions are hundredths of a point. Here are the figures:
Evan Fournier: 1.177 PPS catch-and-shoot, 1.018 PPS movement
Khris Middleton: 1.179 PPS catch-and-shoot, 1.049 PPS movement
Paul George: 1.199 PPS catch-and-shoot, 1.040 PPS movement
Fournier is obviously nowhere near as talented and skilled offensively as Middleton and George, but this type of production in the role Fournier is more than likely going to play for this Knicks team is what you want. Mo put together some clips for us detailing Fournier’s shooting abilities, and I am going to let Mo take it from here.
Mo: So what you get from Fournier is a guy who can make every type of three at a pretty good clip — to get back to the Hawks series, we all saw Reggie Bullock’s limitations get exposed badly. With Fournier, that’s not gonna happen, because he can put the ball on the floor, he can hit escape dribble threes, he can hit step-backs off screens — everything. So in a Knicks context, that’s gonna be a lot of fun and he is gonna benefit a lot from playing with Julius, RJ, and Kemba. I honestly won’t be surprised if his efficiency stays around 40% while also increasing the attempts.
Pick-and-roll abilities
Drew: Let’s get Mo back here to expand on Evan Fournier’s pick-and-roll abilities and see whether or not the numbers are going to agree with the film/Mo’s assessment.
Mo: So in my opinion, Fournier is a good PnR ball handler considering the context of both situations in Orlando and Boston. In Orlando, he never had league average spacing while also being defended by the best opposing defensive player night in and night out. In Boston, he was the fourth option and didn’t play a lot with an elite roll man a lot, so I honestly don’t know if he is better or worse than “good,“ but he can definitely run some second side action, and I absolutely love that in terms of the Knicks’ offense. Last year, New York’s offense was so predictable, and that got exposed badly in the playoffs, so I'm really looking forward to see how this turns out .
Drew: Alright, now that you have some film context, I’ll toss in my two cents then move into the data. Most of those shots out of the pick-and-roll were difficult for Fournier. Nikola Vucevic, though a talented offensive player, doesn’t appear to be the world’s greatest screener or roll threat. NBA Stats has pick-and-roll data going back to the 2015-16 season, and the highest percentile as a roll man scorer Vucevic reached was the 61st percentile — not that great, Bob.
So with the Magic’s best offensive player not being a high-end roll threat and generally clogging spacing, you’re going to more than likely get poorer efficiency for ball handlers in pick-and-roll actions. Below is a table of high-volume pick-and-roll guards over a three-year sample
The larger the square, the higher the volume, and the bluer the square, the more efficient the player is. And yes, I see Kemba Walker being the second-most efficient guard in pick-and-roll action while being fifth in volume.
Our new Frenchman is to the right of this chart and rather orange. Not very promising figures. This season will be a test for Fournier in the pick-and-roll. Will his efficiency improve with better spacing and offensive threats on the court compared to his time in Orlando and brief stint with the Celtics — where they have zero pick-and-roll big men — or is Fournier just not that efficient in this action and the Knicks should use him differently? I suspect an uptick in efficiency, but I’m going to pull a legendary Zach Lowe/Jonathan Macri hedge and say “let’s wait and see.”
If you’re saying to yourself right at this very moment, “Drew, what were Fournier’s passing numbers out of the pick-and-roll,” I am here to tell you that the NBA Stats do not track any form of passing in their (technically, Synergy’s) play type metrics. That is why we need to get Mo back in here and break down what he is seeing in the film regarding Fournier’s passing. Here is the video below of not only clips capturing passing out of the pick-and-roll, but overall shot creation for his teammates. Mo, take it over.
Mo: Fournier is not an advanced or a great passer, but that is totally OK, because he is a good to very good passer — he can hit the roll man, he has a pocket pass where he can hit the weak side corner, he can hit the strong side corner, he can manipulate defenses with his eyes. So, honestly, it wouldn’t shock me one bit if he played some point guard this season, because he has the passing chops for it. My only concern with his passing is his ability to throw some lobs, but that is due to not playing a lot with an elite rim runner like Mitchell Robinson (he and Robert Williams III only played 11 games together in Boston, including the playoffs).
Year-over-year RAPM values
Drew: Here is a nice little visual of year-over-year, single-season real adjusted plus-minus (RAPM) for a number of different shooting guards that include our buddy Evan Fournier:
Over the past five seasons, Fournier has had only two negative impact RAPM seasons, with one of them being back in 2016-17. He has consistently been a plus offensive player, but has not had the same consistent type of positive impact as a Khris Middleton, Devin Booker, or CJ McCollum.
The single-season RAPM numbers do not look too promising for Fournier, but that is to be expected to some degree given the teams he has played for. RAPM certainly does a much better job parsing out individual impact compared to regular plus-minus, but like any plus-minus stat, if the lineup/team is just not good, they are going to inherently have negative values no matter what. You basically need to be Karl-Anthony Towns on offense to rid the stink of your team and teammates.
RAPM as a metric is much more stable in larger samples, not single-season. That is not to say that single-season RAPM is useless, rather adding context about any adjusted plus-minus metric. This includes box score prior-based metrics like RPM, RAPTOR, and LEBRON. So will that change Fournier’s impact? Let’s go right into the next section.
Three-year RAPM
I took our small sample of shooting guards from the section above (sans Devin Booker and Alec Burks) and detailed their three-year RAPM values, with the season sample being the 2018-19 through 2020-21 seasons. You want to know who grades out preeeeetty, preeeeeetty good over this sample? Evan Fournier.
In terms of overall impact on the court, Fourner is second on this list and only behind Khris Middleton. As if we didn’t know this already, as talented as Demar DeRozan and Zach LaVine are on offense, they effectively give it all back on the defensive end. At least LaVine’s offensive impact over the collective three years is just enough to make him a plus player on the court.
Reggie Bullock is the only other “two-way” player in this small sample, which shouldn’t be surprising. With that said, you can see that Bullock just is not impacting the offensive side of the ball enough compared to Fournier. And despite being on some crappy teams over the years, Fournier’s defensive impact is not as bad as his potential(?) reputation is a defender. Those Steve Clifford Magic teams were well coached and competed on defense. The problem was that they were not as good on offense as they were on defense as a team, hence still putting up “minus” minutes.
Does the film match the numbers? Let’s bring back Mo to take us on our final Fournier film journey.
Mo: So with a player’s defensive reputation, it comes down to mostly what you last saw of him, and where most of the people reading this last saw Fournier was when he was getting picked out by James Harden, Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving in the playoffs. But that is three generational offensive talents! With defense, you have to look at the tools a player has to see if a jump can happen.
We all saw Andrew Wiggins play lockdown defense this past season when he was a traffic cone in Minnesota. Fournier doesn’t have the tools to make a jump like that, but he should be getting a Thibs bump from a below-average defender to a league-average defender. He is a smart nine-year vet with good feel for the game, so he knows where he is supposed to be off-ball; on-ball, he has good moments, and he has really bad moments. This is where the drop-off from Bullock will happen on defense, so RJ will have to step up and be the lockdown defender that he showed flashes of last season.
Final thoughts
Drew: I think we can actually keep this section rather brief. Evan Fournier is a good NBA player that is going to fill the Knicks’ biggest need of secondary and tertiary shot creation while being basically an average defensive player. Every player expected to be in the 10-man rotation outside of the centers can put the ball on the floor, make passes, and shoot. Opposing teams theoretically cannot hide any weaker guard and wing defenders on any Knick player, except Nerlens Noel in the playoffs, but we are not there just yet.
Since the Knicks do not have an offensive engine like Nikola Jokic, LeBron James, or Luka Doncic, they can’t afford to have a predominantly off-ball wing like Reggie Bullock on the roster. The Mavericks can, and don’t be surprised if Bullock remains productive and valuable. But the Knicks needed someone with more offensive diversity, and Evan Fournier was without question the best non-Kawhi wing available this free agency.
