The New Obi: What to expect from Toppin’s scoring as a pro power forward
Obi Toppin is unfortunately out with an early-season calf injury, but could be due back to the Knicks’ lineup sooner than later. When he comes back, what will his offensive diet consist of? Prez conflates Obi’s college numbers to his pro numbers to try to come to a hypothesis.
“He has a chance to be an explosive and versatile multi-level scorer, which would be a fine outcome from the eighth pick in a draft without clear top-end talent” - Seth Partnow
“His offensive game will have no issues translating to the NBA. Put him at the four or the five, have him in the pick-and-roll or spot-ups where he can shoot or drive and Toppin will succeed as a scorer.” - Sam Vecenie
“What separates him from the Aaron Gordons and Julius Randles of the world is that he is a play finisher and play maker — and he knows it.” - Me, don’t @ me
The prolific offensive production of Obadiah Toppin was covered ad nauseam pre-draft. It is, allegedly, a predestined fate unchangeable by the human hand.
However, an important part of that discussion has been absent from the conversation since he landed with the Knicks at No. 8: how, specifically, will his offense translate in the NBA, and, more importantly, how will his offense as a power forward for the New York Knicks?
What will change? What has potential to improve, or (gulp) worsen?
The shorthand of “he’s a great offensive prospect, and his great offense will translate” is likely not wrong per se, but it really minimizes the complicated task presented to Coach Thibodeau and to Obi himself as he begins his professional career. He will be playing a new role entirely in the NBA on both ends of the court, and has more on his plate in that respect than his fellow top ten picks.
Let’s break it down into a few particular questions:
How will he shoot?
Obi’s preseason was ice cold. Over three games he shot 1-11 from three, and 6-9 from the charity stripe. He did manage to hit 3-7 3-point attempts in the Knicks’ first regular season game before going down with a calf strain that he has yet to return from. Unfortunately for us fans who crave certainty and validation for our new favorites, he did nothing to resolve arguably the biggest question fans have of him: how will he shoot from three?
First, let’s cover what the indicators from college suggest:
He hit 70% from the free throw line and 39% from three on 2.5 attempts per game (a .212 3PR) as a stretch 5. That volume is a bit of an orange flag for his shooting prospects.
He hit 42.6% of his wide-open shots, but only 33.3% when guarded. That matches with the eye test of him hesitating unless he is more open, usually. Splits like that aren’t entirely unusual.
He was actually awful at pick-and-pop catch-and-shoot shots (11-36), despite being at around 45% on catch-and-shoot jumpers as a whole.
He only hit a few jumpers off the dribble, and only took a few. That’s not a part of his game right now.
He has touch around the rim on layups, hook shots, and floaters, which is anecdotally a good sign. Good shooters tend to have good touch.
Mechanically, he has what I like to call “easy form.” The distance part of 3-point shooting isn’t an issue for him. We already have seen Thibs spot him up a few feet behind the line rather than waiting right on it, and that isn’t a coincidence. Obi has a very smooth shot with a low release more often seen on guards like Immanuel Quickley or Tyrese Maxey. Easy form doesn’t always translate to accuracy, but it’s usually something you like to see.
On the other hand, his lower body mechanics can be cleaned up quite a bit, to me. His stance is a bit rigid and upright. He also doesn’t have the widest stance when he sets. Despite that, when he is sitting waiting for the pass to come from in front of him he is pretty solid mechanically.
When he’s popping, on the other hand, he tends to lack good footwork preparation compared to when he is otherwise catching and shooting — he doesn’t hop with two feet or have smooth 1-2 step pops into his shot. He often turns to catch it, then pivots one foot back toward the rim and shoots, making it more of a “catch-turn-step-shoot” than a smooth catch-and-shoot off of a pick.
Problematic, but not hard to fix. Contrast some of those pick-and-pops with this one from preseason, where he executes the shot-prep footwork flawlessly prior to the shot (don’t land on one foot after the shot, Obi!):
Lastly, in the realm of very anecdotal evidence — with the caveat that he is still figuring out his role as an NBA power forward (we will discuss more below) — we’ve seen him put up a .38 3PR over the preseason, far above the .21 3PR at Dayton.
I think the evidence on the whole points to him being at least a league average, passable volume stretch 4 off the bat, or at very minimum in a year or two. I don’t think he’ll ever be a movement shooter, but league average proficiency off the catch — including pick-and-pop — on solid volume is in play to me.
That begs one other question, though… what IS solid volume for a power forward from three anyway? Let’s look at some other power forward who aren’t considered TRUE stretch 4s like say, Davis Bertans or Kevin Love or Lauri Markannen:
Paul Millsap: .28
John Collins: .24
Marvin Bagley: .13
Christian Wood: .27
Michael Porter Jr: .38
Julius Randle: .23
Jerami Grant: .39
Larry Nance: .37
Jonathan Isaac: .28 in 2020, .44 in 2019
Aaron Gordon: .30-.39 depending which year
OAKAAK: Bobby Portis: .32 in NY, .33 in DC
Dario Saric: .44
So you see a wide range of 3-point rates here, most of which are much higher than the .21 he put up at Dayton. I suspect that because his role on NYK will involve lots of minutes playing with Mitch, he’ll have to space the floor more and therefore put up more threes. My anecdotal theory is increasing 3-point rate up to around ~.35 is pretty easy, and in play for Obi... but if you want to get it higher, that takes foregoing a lot more inside the arc shots and/or adding a greater variety of threes to the menu (off movement, off the dribble, and “4 point range”). If he doesn’t clean up his lower body, I would expect something like 35-36% with a .300 3-point rate in year one, but also wouldn’t be surprised if the rate was closer to .35. The first game of the regular season led to a staggering .583 3PR, but it’s hard to imagine that Obi is going to just be used as Steve Novak given his other athletic abilities on offense.
Where will Obi’s offense come from?
We covered his shooting in depth, but as we alluded to in the beginning, more threes isn’t the only change in role for Obi at the pro level. There are a number of reasons to believe his shot profile will change quite a bit from what we saw in college! Let’s work through some of my predictions regarding the aforementioned changes:
Less post-ups: Much different sources than in Dayton, that’s where. In college, 25% of his offense came from post-ups, a number that is likely to plummet in the NBA as he faces up with 4s and 5s much stronger and bigger than he is (contrasted with him being a center at a mid-major in college). Like most categories for him at Dayton, he was elite at post-ups in college and will face much stiffer physical competition in the NBA. Even the make in the video below isn’t ideal, and you can see how much harder it will be for him to rely on stuff like this:
He can still make them against bigger players sometimes because his touch is so good:
You don’t want to rely on that, though.
More face-ups: He will likely have to turn some of those would-be post-ups into more face-up buckets, Amar’e Stoudemire style. He doesn’t have Amar’e’s all-time-great explosive first step, so he’ll need to continue to develop his ball handling, strength, and footwork to get from 20 feet to five feet, where he can use his hops and his touch to score on guys. Fortunately, that’s not a crazy tall order at all! He doesn’t have to be hot sauce, and he’s plenty proficient taking a few simple dribbles and going for the kill:
Less rim rolls... for now: Another large chunk of his offense in college, also producing elite scoring numbers, was his roll game. It will be tougher for the Knicks to take advantage of his elite rim roller skills because Mitchell Robinson is even more elite, and will likely take precedence. When Mitch is not rolling, he’ll likely be near the rim (unless he finally gives us 3-point shooting), clogging up a theoretical Obi rim run. One answer to that is to try a Lob City situation every now and then, where Obi sets a high pick-and-roll, and he can use the combination of his explosiveness and his passing acumen to either attack the rim or throw a lob/dump-off to Mitch. If the Knicks ever get a backup 5 who can space the floor, he would more easily be able to utilize the rolls.
DEATH BY 1000 CUTS: At Dayton, 13% of Obi’s offense was cuts, and I suspect that will be considerably more in the NBA. His cutting ability might be the single biggest skill that popped in preseason... we saw him cut baseline for vicious dunks several times, and cut across the lane as well.
The Knicks were literally the WORST cutting team in the NBA by a significant margin last year. RJ Barrett was the only player who consistently bothered trying to cut, so this is a welcome change. As a 4 man for Thibs, Obi’ll have more opportunities to cut than he did at Dayton where he was either spotting up, rolling from the top of the 3-point line, or posting up on most possessions. He also won’t be the main focus of the defense, and we’ve already seen in preseason that him attacking a bent defense is a very, very good proposition.
More attacking bent defenses:
Self explanatory. He won’t be the number one (or even number two) option on this Knicks team. This will be his first time in a while being able to exploit lack of defensive attention, rather than excess attention. The clip above is a perfect example of the kind of opportunity that was rare at Dayton, but promises to be more frequent in the pros.
Despite Obi being lower on the totem pole, that doesn’t mean he can’t utilize his gravity, though — for example, I could see Thibs implementing some handoff actions like we see here:
In fact, the Knicks already run stuff like that with Julius, so it’s simple to swap out Obi and have shooters run around him and let him hand off or play action to the rack.
Transition… ???: At 18% of his offense in Dayton, this was a huge part of his scoring regimen. Accordingly, you hope the young Knicks get out and run to let him run amok. Self explanatory! Also, somewhat reliant on 1) defense and 2) New York’s point guard play... neither reliable propositions, even if we are feeling more optimistic in the wake of Quickley’s emergence as a possible point guard option and Elfrid Payton’s renaissance in the third and fourth games.
Beyond the arc: As we alluded to earlier, Obi’s is going to be relied on for spacing more than he was at Dayton because he will be playing the 4. His 3-point rate will almost certainly jump past .30, and if his efficiency mostly holds still around league average, as I expect it than this will be a pretty big source of offense for him, possibly enough to offset some of the decreases in post ups.
If he ends up undershooting (pun intended) what we expect from deep, then he almost certainly won’t be able to score a high volume of points given the expected changes in his shot diet.
So... what should we expect on the whole for scoring this year and in the future?
It’s hard to find a power forward who scores 20 a game off of purely play finishing in the NBA. That’s just how it goes. Even guys who we don’t consider shot creators who score in the high teens — think Bam Adebayo, Jaren Jackson Jr., Christian Wood, Montrezl Harrel — can bust off a face-up move when needed. Those guys aren’t big time volume scorers, and only JJJ takes a lot of threes (though Wood might this year in Houston).
I think Obi has a chance to be unique among the aforementioned mostly-finishers, because he has a chance to add face-up dribble scoring, post mismatch scoring, and legitimate shooting on top of his play finishing, and most of those other players don’t offer all three of those things. On top of that, in 2021 we really are leaving one of his biggest weapons on the table — his rim running. In the future, that should be easier to utilize too.
So, in short, even if he’s not pouring in volume scoring this year, I really do think there are a variety of ways Obi can get to efficient higher volume scoring without even getting better at any particular skill (ball handling, shooting, etc.).
High floor indeed!
