Lamar Stevens profile and Bulls quick preview

 Lamar Stevens has crept into the fringes of the Cavs regular rotation since Dean Wade’s injury, so let’s take a deeper look at him. Lamar is a positionless player, but not the good kind of positionless like Lebron who can play any position, but the bad kind of positionless player where you aren’t sure what to do with them.  A lot of this stems from his wingspan, a 6’9 span is nothing to sneeze at for a 6’6 player (6’5.75 at the combine without shoes) but it is on the short side, but his build and game play are more reminiscent of power forwards in the current NBA.  This puts him at a significant disadvantage at that position.  The shorter players in the league who play PF, PJ Tucker, PJ Washington etc, tend to have wingspans of at least 6’11, with Demar Derozen who is an anomaly and playing PF as a stylistic, not defensive, choice, is the only other one who comes in below 6’10 that I could find.  Lauri Markkanen’s 6’11 wingspan limits him as a PF as well.  

This is a substantial issue for Stevens who works hard on the defensive end, as PF is where Durant and Giannis spend much of their time, and your PF often ends up fighting with Cs for rebounds or picking them up in transition where his wingspan is at an even greater deficit.  What tools does he have to potentially overcome this?

First Lamar is a high level athlete even for the NBA, though not elite.  His lane agility time at the combine was not only the best for his year, but would have been the top mark in 5 of the last 10 combines, and the 2nd best in the other 5 which puts him with the 6th best time in the last 10 years.  His standinger vertical, at 35”, was 4th best in his year and on average would have been 3rd best (frequently tied) over the last 10 seasons.  His shuttle and ¾ sprint times are 14th and 16th for his year, and 2nd and 3rd among players listed as SF/PF or larger.  

He is capable of using this athleticism and effort to stay in front of NBA scorers, from summer league where he was forcing Jalen Green into long step back jumpers to the Cavs trip out to LA where he defended Paul George, Russell Westbrook, Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony.  While most Cavs fans will remember his disastrous misses right at the basket its worth reviewing this video here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc6DJ_wskoA

Showing his defensive strengths in that game.  Here you see the whole package of what he can do, and what he struggles to do.  He is able to stay in front of Westbrook a few times, hold his ground on Lebron post ups, get through and around screens and switch well.  On the other hand Lebron and Carmelo are able to get shots off over him due to his mediocre length.  

Offensively the NBA has been a huge shift for Stevens who was a lead scorer all four seasons at Penn State with a usage of 31%+ his last two years there while in the NBA he has been relegated to a sub 16% usage player who rarely creates his own shot.  There are good reasons for this, even in college he wasn’t an efficient scorer, unable to break 51% TS for his career and he ended those four seasons with 62 more turnovers than assists.  His ball handling and passing are simply not on an NBA level and they won’t ever be.  That leaves him searching for a complimentary off ball role, which is again tough because his outside shooting has been rough and he doesn’t have the size and length to be a consistent roll man.  His only plus skill on that end so far has been offensive rebounding, and he has hit 6 of 16 three point attempts so far this season.  

Positionally he is probably best suited for playing the 2-3 role as a player who can switch onto 4s and 1s sometimes.  Offensively this feels clunky for the half court offense but a SG that has a 7% offensive rebound rate (his mark so far this year) is a dangerous player within the Cavs big lineups.  Boxing out our bigs is already an issue for opposing teams and having a 2 that can cut between bigs and shoulder out guards is a potential liability for teams, and it has worked out this way so far this season.  Per Cleaningtheglass the Cavs have an oreb% of 32.8% in Stevens’ limited time on court which is well above the league leading mark of the Toronto Raptors of 27.5%.  

The big benefit here is not the extra offensive rebound every 100 possessions or so, but the difficulty teams will have in hiding their weakest defenders on Lamar in the corner.  Trying to do so is risking those extra possessions not just for Lamar but for the other bigs if guards are forced to box him aggressively and are unable to chip in against our actual big men.  If Stevens can do this and get at least his corner 3 percentage to hover in the mid 30s then we have a serious rotation piece to borderline starter on our hands.

Stevens, in particular, being a near starting caliber player would be a large win for the Cavs because his contract is for two more seasons after this one at less than $2 million a season.  Which, at a minimum, would give the Cavs some breathing room financially and in a best case scenario would allow them to take a large salary back in a trade without sacrificing a huge amount of depth.  

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Tonight’s game:  Vs Chicago Bulls

This is a game I feel very confident that the Cavs can take, and even should take.  Chicago is well ahead of them in the standings and has a better +/- but their net rating is heavily dependent on their top four guards/wings playing together.  When Lavine/Ball/Caruso/DDR are all on the floor the Bulls are +17/100, and they are neutral with three of them but either Ball or Caruso sitting and a large negative with DDR sitting and Ball/Caruso/DDR no Lavine is a big positive.  Overall they are close to neutral with only three of those four on the court so far this season and you don’t have to buy that DDR is the linchpin (though he might well be with his output thus far).  With Caruso also doubtful for tonight the strength of the Bulls should be greatly reduced.  

On the other side the Cavs have the size to cause the Bulls issues without having the slow footed bigs who can get exploited by multiple guard lineups.  They do still have TO issues and Chicago is strong in that regard though they are lead in steals by Caruso at 3.8 per 100 (Ball 2nd at 2.3) and he might not play.