NBA Players Taking Serious Leaps This Season
NBA identities are perpetually changing.
That's not always a good thing—Father Time and his undefeated record wave hello—but when it is, it's phenomenal.
Nothing changes a fortune faster than a full-fledged breakout, and the following five players are using the 2023-24 season to orchestrate those exact spikes.
Scottie Barnes, Toronto Raptors
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Scottie Barnes turned heads in his first two seasons as a gap-filling glue guy, but his third-year ascension has him looking like a foundational talent.
If you want to know the reason the Raptors proactively traded away Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby in ways they didn't do with Fred VanVleet and Kyle Lowry in previous seasons, look no further than their belief in Barnes to serve as their franchise face.
"I don't know if [Barnes] is ready for that responsibility, but we have to put him in that position. That's our jobs," Raptors president Masai Ujiri told reporters. "We have to put him in a position to at least grow and start to see dividends of the work he is putting in, to become that kind of player."
Barnes is on the launching pad and should reach the galaxy of basketball stars in no time.
His all-purpose defense is as disruptive as ever, as he's one of only six players averaging at least 1.5 blocks and 1.0 steals. His offensive improvements are even more profound, as he's simultaneously upping his volume and improving his efficiency. His 20.3 points, 5.7 assists and 1.9 three-pointers are all personal-bests, and so are his 57.5 true shooting percentage, 19.7 player efficiency rating and 4.2 box plus/minus.
Honorable mentions: Jalen Duren, Detroit Pistons; Tyrese Haliburton, Indiana Pacers; Naz Reid, Minnesota Timberwolves; Jalen Williams, Oklahoma City Thunder
Jalen Johnson, Atlanta Hawks
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When Jalen Johnson steps between the lines, he immediately becomes a blur. That hasn't always been a good thing, though, as he had a tendency to play too fast for his own good, trying (and often failing) to find his rhythm at 2x speed while everyone else moved at a normal pace.
After (finally) trading John Collins this summer, Atlanta found an opening for Johnson and threw caution to the wind by empowering him with a green light to keep doing...well, everything. As fast as he could do it, too.
He hasn't slowed down—his average on-court speed of 4.34 miles per hour is the fastest of his career—but the game around him surely has. He is finding ways of making an impact on the fly, and considering he's a 6'9" athletic forward with handles, vision and improved shooting touch, his options are almost endless.
Traditional stats spell out his ascension most clearly. He nearly tripled his averages in points (from 5.6 to 15.5) and assists (1.2 to 3.2) while more than doubling his rebounds (4.0 to 8.2). Granted, a massive uptick in minutes (14.9 to 32.9) plays into that, but his shotmaking and table-setting have clearly leveled up. He's up to 1.23 points per shot attempt and a 13.9 assist percentage, both of which are 80th percentile marks or better among forwards.
"The more reps he plays, the more comfortable he's going to get," Trae Young told reporters. "It's just continue to get him more reps, more shots and more touches in the game. He'll continue to surprise even more people."
Johnson wasn't even a rotation regular for Atlanta this season; now he and Young are the Hawks' lone untouchables.
Tyrese Maxey, Philadelphia 76ers
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While this season has spawned no shortage of breakout ballers, the Most Improved Player award race may already be coming to a close.
Tyrese Maxey might just be too far ahead for anyone to catch up.
Whether due to the arrival of head coach Nick Nurse, the subtraction of James Harden or Maxey's own developmental progress, Philadelphia's primary guard has catapulted from solid third option to a spectacular co-star for reigning MVP Joel Embiid. Maxey may have previously produced some good moments, but he's never routinely rattled off great outings like this.
He is one of only five players averaging 25 points, six assists and three triples. Despite handling a heavier workload, he remains allergic to turnovers (6.6 assists against 1.6 giveaways). Philadelphia's offense fares a whopping 11.5 points better per 100 possessions when he's on the court, a 98th percentile mark across the Association. Overall, the Sixers are 8.8 points better per 100 possessions when he plays, an 88th percentile differential.
This isn't so much of a leap as it is jet propulsion to the top. At 23 years old, he's the second-best player on a team with legitimate title aspirations.
Alperen Şengün, Houston Rockets
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While the rest of the league scrambled to find a defensive answer for Nikola Jokić, Houston had a more creative solution: spawning its own version of the two-time MVP. Only the future knows whether Alperen Şengün will take a similar trek to the top, but the similarities between the two are so striking that the former is OK with wearing the "Baby Jokić" label for now.
That's absurdly high praise for anyone, let alone a 21-year-old averaging north of 30 minutes for the first time in his career. Yet Şengün has absolutely earned the moniker, as Jokić is one of the very few players capable of matching Şengün's across-the-board production. In fact, those two, Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Julius Randle are this season's only players averaging at least 21 points, nine rebounds and five assists.
"He's so skilled," Rockets guard Fred VanVleet said of Şengün, via ESPN's Tim Bontemps. "He's unguardable. He's got a thousand moves. He's learning the higher aspects of the game now that he's going to be a featured guy and probably be an All-Star this year."
Şengün had previously intrigued as a skilled scoring center, but this season has brought about a different, more impactful brand of domination. His 21.7 points, 9.2 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 1.2 steals are all career highs, and three of those categories—points, assists and steals—are all up on a per-minute basis from last season, too.
He looks like the next impossible-to-solve interior puzzle opposing defenses will have to contend with.
Coby White, Chicago Bulls
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Between injury issues, ongoing challenges with ill-fitting pieces and the threat of major roster changes always hanging over this team, Chicago's season could have gone to shambles at any moment. Coby White's ascension is both the biggest reason it didn't and the primary source of hope for this franchise moving forward.
To call him an unlikely savior moves beyond the realm of an understatement. His output had decreased each of the past two seasons, and when the Bulls signed Jevon Carter last offseason, that felt as clear a sign as any that they envisioned White settling into an instant-offense sixth-man role.
Yet, White surpassed Carter on the point guard pecking order before the regular season tipped and the No. 7 pick of the 2019 draft has since ascended to the top of the entire organization. He may not lead the team in floor time or touches just yet, but that feels inevitable given how much his game has already grown.
His scoring is way up (9.7 points to 18.8), but so are his connection rates from the field (44.3 to 45.7) and from three (37.2 to 39.2). He's never had a wider gap between his assist percentage (21.2) and turnover percentage (11.8). His 3.1 win shares already match the most of his career, and his 14.8 player efficiency rating and 58.4 true shooting percentage are both the best he's ever posted.
''You see teams game-planning for him, blitzing him, trying to get the ball out of his hands,'' DeMar DeRozan told reporters. ''It's a testament to his greatness that he's evolved into in the NBA, and it's an honor for me to be able to share the court with him.''
White's scoring punch is more powerful than ever, but the strides he's made as a creator, distributor and defender have been just as critical to his rise. His plus-9.8 net differential is a 90th percentile mark across the league. He is clearly a rising star and could crack full-fledged stardom at any time.
Statistics courtesy of Basketball Reference, Cleaning the Glass and NBA.com and current through games played on Jan. 28.
Zach Buckley covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on X, @ZachBuckleyNBA.
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