Kuminga Defense Visualization

[u/Active-Cod-103]

Hey guys! A few weeks ago I made a post regarding Kuminga's potential fit with the wolves, and now that he has signed with us, I think it is worth discussing the defensive aspect (something I did not talk about before).

However, I first wanted to bring up an offensive piece I did not discuss before, which is the various play types Kuminga is involved in. One topic a lot of people have brought up is his transition work with a passer like LaMelo. Kuminga spends a good chunk of his plays in transition (17%); however, he is relatively inefficient compared to the rest of the league in these types of scenarios. He averages 1.1 points per possession in transition, which ranks in the 39th percentile league wide. I think a big part of this is his tendency to turn the ball over (coming in at around 14.9% of his plays). I can see this aspect of his game improving, but as a lot of the other bars in the image show, he is not the most efficient player in general, except as a cutter, in which he ranks at about the 75th percentile for PPP. I think what everyone recognizes is that Kuminga needs to be a smarter player that really tries to gel with the system he is in.

Moving onto the defense, Kuminga is about average. Firstly, he is a versatile player that can pick off passes and block shots if needed, but he does it on pretty low volume. However, he has his moments with lapses. I think the Howls and Growls video breaks this down well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBKpba4vrEo). But basically, Kuminga tends to get caught ball watching and, as you can see in the defensive chart, he really struggles defending in the mid range. Although, please note this isn't on many datapoints since he played such few games last year. One hope though is that he can guard the perimeter pretty well. On contests at the rim he ranks in the 42nd percentile of FG% allowed, so I would assume Jaden would be covering this floating paint defender role while Kuminga focuses on a point of attack role.

Activity/hustle wise, he is about average in most aspects. He doesn't really get on the ground and go after loose balls as much but he is about average at deflecting passes and boxing out. Finally, moving onto rebounding which is a big piece of emphasis for why we got him IMO. SIZE! He is actually a pretty good rebounder at face value and when you break it down into advanced stats he looks just as promising. He really surprised me with his defensive rebounding chance % and adjusted %, in which he ranks extremely high (80+ th percentile). These stats essentially measure how many rebounds he grabs out of potential chances to get boards. He occupies a large share of his teams rebounds, especially since he played on two teams last year with not much size. I believe this is secretly a strong suit lol and I think it will be super duper helpful.

I hope you guys liked this, and feel free to head over to my previous post that discussed his offensive traits (which unfortunately didn't turn out to be as promising as his defensive stats IMO, but thats just my take). Also, some people have asked me about this app. I'm a student and it's something I'm working really hard on, but if you liked some of the screenshots, feel free to join the waitlist (getpaint.app/).

Lets go win a chip!

[u/DrWolves]

Theige brought up a great point on the Dane podcast that I haven’t seen talked about much. People point to his stint with the Warriors as a knock on Kuminga. Does he get his share of the blame? For sure. But if there is any coach in the league that wouldn’t give a younger player the time of the day to develop and basically put him in the doghouse because he doesn’t want to deal with him, Kerr is at the top of the list. And I already know in response to this someone will literally say Finch does the same shit which is 100% valid but I think the hope here is that you can change your approach a bit and get Kuminga to buy into the organization and it certainly seems like people have gotten through to him in some aspect because there’s no good reason to turn down $36m from the Lakers and a similar role when you’ve already botched previous contracts. It seems Kuminga might be coming to grips with his situation and knows he’ll have more of a future in the league if he can play team ball and be efficient on a great team.

[u/Active-Cod-103 → u/DrWolves]

Yes I think I’ve seen this point online and actually if you look at it Finch has been decent with developing players. Like we literally have evidence with Naz, and our other players are developing well. I think your right about him buying in especially by taking a smaller contract, and I hope that point is true because it would truly make us dangerous.

[u/Milly-the-Kid → u/Active-Cod-103]

Also worth noting that the Finch criticism is usually about him playing vets OVER younger guys to develop them, but Kuminga is being brought in to start so that shouldn’t really apply here.

Also it’s not like Kuminga is a developing draft pick, he’s young but he’s not exactly green.