Top 5 NBA Players Whose Games Have Evolved the Most This Season
The NBA's Most Improved Player Award is always awkward, since we never actually define what constitutes "most improved."
Is it someone whose game has expanded notably? Is it a second- or third-year player who made a natural jump in his production, as most young guys do? Is it a player who merely started to play more minutes?
In some ways, the general process of judging player improvement is a bit warped. We see a guy's playing time go up and his mainstream numbers naturally increase, and everyone talks about how much better said player has become. But that's not always true.
Sometimes, it's just a case of getting more minutes and putting up the same per-minute production.
Well, the following guys have actually improved their games.
Some have done it statistically, playing the same way as always but doing it more effectively than ever before. Others have improved stylistically, adding new moves or positive traits that they never used in the past.
Find out which players improved their games the most in 2014-15.
Honorable Mentions
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Tobias Harris, Orlando Magic
Harris may be putting up similar superficial numbers to the ones he did last season, but boy, is he different. He has become a threat from three-point range, which has helped answer questions about his "tweener" status.
Brandon Jennings, Detroit Pistons
Jennings' last 16 games made him a serious threat to make the top five on this list before his season ended with a ruptured Achilles (and yes, that stretch did coincidentally start with the release of Josh Smith). The Pistons point guard averaged 19.8 points and 7.0 assists and led the Pistons to a 12-4 record to start the post-Smith era.
Courtney Lee, Memphis Grizzlies
This is not a drill! I repeat, this is not a drill! Courtney Lee is legitimately good. We're talking poor man's Kyle Korver good. And I mean that with no sarcasm, whatsoever. Lee's 48-46-85 shooting line is one of the most impressive around the league.
Derrick Favors, Utah Jazz
Favors' teammate, Gordon Hayward, could have made this list as well, but Hayward seems more like he's coming off a down season instead of monumentally improving his game. Favors' numbers, meanwhile, are all up under new coach Quin Snyder, and he's scoring like never before. He's learned how to become an enforcer on the defensive end, growing as a potential anchor for future Utah defenses. At only 23 years old, he's going to be a force in the league for a long time.
Marreese Speights, Golden State Warriors
Similarly to Lee, Speights is a veteran who hasn't actually added any moves to his game. He's still playing the same way. He's just become more effective in doing so, averaging 23.9 points and 10.3 rebounds per 36 minutes. His minutes total and the egregious amount of Warriors who could have been on this list keep him out of the top five.
5. Nikola Vucevic, Orlando Magic
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Vucevic has always been a beastly rebounder, but he has developed his offensive game significantly this year.
The Orlando Magic center is shooting and scoring more than ever, and he's still putting up the most efficient numbers of his career.
That stuff doesn't really happen. Usage and efficiency are supposed to have inverse relationships. When you start to put up more shots and take a bigger role within the offense, naturally, some of them will be more difficult. That is, unless you've improved in creating open shots, too.
Vucevic has become one of the top pick-and-pop centers in the league. He can consistently kill teams from out to 21 feet and has learned how to read defenses well enough to find space within them throughout a game.
That's how he gets open, which leads him to making all those shots. At 19.7 points per game, he's a shade away from joining the 20 and 10 club. (Only three players—Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins and LaMarcus Aldridge—are in that group this season.)
Slow-footed defense holds Vucevic back from being higher on this list, but the 24-year-old has proven he can be one of the offensive centerpieces around which a good team can build.
4. Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors
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Let's clear something up: Draymond Green isn't that improved from the past.
It's nice to talk about how Day Day has taken his game to another level under Steve Kerr and how much better he is now than he was last year, when he struggled to get off the bench in place of David Lee. However, Green's lack of minutes last season says more about the Golden State Warriors' questionable substitution rotations than it does about this season's should-be Defensive Player of the Year.
Green was always this good defensively—at least dating back to last year.
Go look at the Warriors' 2014 first-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers and see how Green pulverized Blake Griffin and Co. for seven games, even if his team did eventually lose in an exciting final contest. He guarded Griffin, Chris Paul, Matt Barnes and everyone else. His defensive versatility made the Clips about as uncomfortable as George Michael Bluth at a live screening of Les Cousins Dangereux.
Now that I've argued completely against the point I'm trying to make, let's talk about how Green has actually improved, shall we?
He's shooting threes now.
Green's percentage from long range isn't all that different, but he's making more contested shots, getting respect from defenders and spreading the floor as a power forward, which has helped the Warriors offense climb the ladder to become the NBA's best.
Stretching the floor is more about three-point respect from defenses than it is about accuracy. The previously mentioned Barnes, who is shooting 37.1 percent from beyond the arc this year, is the perfect example of that. Defenses still help off him all the time.
Green is now commanding more respect, and considering his skilled passing and ball-handling abilities for a power forward, it's taken his game to a new level.
3. Jimmy Butler, Chicago Bulls
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If this were written a month or so ago, Butler could have been No. 1 or 2 on this list, but he's fallen off just a tad since the calendar turned to 2015.
His percentages are substantially down over his past 15 games, though he's started to turn it on over the last four, going for 35, 22, 27 and then 18 points, respectively. He remains a changed player.
Butler was never a primary offensive option. Could he guard? Absolutely. But his three-point percentage fell to 28.3 percent last year, his third NBA season, and he lost the offensive assertiveness we saw at times during the 2013 playoffs.
Now, that's back…and more.
Like Vucevic, Butler is shooting more than ever and is doing it with wild efficiency. His 21.4 percent usage rate (percentage of possessions that end with the ball in his hands) isn't particularly high for a team's supposed best player, but when you're playing with guys like Derrick Rose and Pau Gasol, shot distribution is key. Butler sees that.
He can create out of the post for teammates. He can distribute off the dribble. And he's able to do those things because he's become a major scoring threat in such scenarios, averaging 20.6 points per game on the season.
Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau knows exactly how good Butler has become. It's why Butler leads the NBA in minutes, a Thibs signature if there ever were one. Now, we just have to hope the Bulls star isn't too tired come playoff time.
2. Klay Thompson, Golden State Warriors
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This seems fixed. So many Warriors are on this list. Actually, you know it's not fixed, because if it were, Harrison Barnes' name would be somewhere here, and it's not…until now.
So yeah, maybe this is fixed.
Either way, Klay Thompson deserves a spot here as much as anyone does.
Where could we even start with him?
How about the fact that a guy who's never had a PER at league average (15.0) now has one that's skyrocketed to 21.6? How about his improved ability to get to the free-throw line? How about the passing improvement and the decreased reliance on posting up every time a smaller guard defends him?
There's so much to talk about Thompson's offensive improvement, all culminating in a 60.4 percent true shooting percentage, easily the highest of his career.
There was always a small, stat-oriented faction of people who said the Warriors shooting guard was overrated. They claimed he was one of the NBA's best long-range shooters, but that draining threes was about all he could do on the offensive end—outside of occasional post-ups, which Mark Jackson loved so much.
But that's just not true anymore. Thompson is objectively one of the top three or four shooting guards in the league—along with Butler and James Harden—and he's helped carry his team to a dominant 40-9 record.
1. Anthony Davis, New Orleans Pelicans
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I know, I know. Putting Davis first is impossibly boring and so far from a bold statement that it's practically an italics one.
Anthony Davis is really good at basketball.
To the few of you who stuck around through an actual font joke, (1) you're good people, and (2) why would you do that to yourselves?
We're not talking about basketball in this slide. We just aren't. What is there to discuss with Davis?
Obviously, his scoring ability has shot through the roof in every way possible. He's shooting a ridiculous (and career-high) 74.6 percent at the rim, and he's doing it while becoming an elite shooter from mid-range for his position.
Davis made only 32 percent of his attempts from 16 feet out to the three-point line during his first two NBA seasons—well below league average, which is usually around 40 percent. This year, he's at 44 percent. Plus, he's hitting impossible—yes, impossible—double-clutch game-winners 30 feet from the hoop.
But yeah, we're not talking about basketball.
Clearly, the NBA's best young player isn't anywhere near done improving on offense. He can still become a better passer, ball-handler and creator. Meanwhile, you get the hint he's going to be stepping beyond the arc sooner rather than later.
Davis' defense is still mostly the same as a season ago, though he has honed in some of his overaggressive quirks. He remains an obvious net positive because of his shot blocking and general rim-protecting ability. He's done all this on the way to solidifying himself as one of the NBA's three best players (apologies to Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, James Harden and Russell Westbrook).
The 21-year-old is already the best at his position in the game. Can you imagine what he'll be like once he hits his prime?
Fred Katz averaged almost one point per game in fifth grade but maintains that his per-36-minute numbers were astonishing. Find more of his work on ESPN's TrueHoop Network at ClipperBlog.com. Follow him on Twitter at @FredKatz.
Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of Feb. 7 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
