What NBA scouts and stats say about Magic forward Jonathan Isaac’s future由asjkfj 发表在翻译团招工部 https://bbs.hupu.com/fyt-store
Editor’s note: This is the first piece in a weekly series examining the development of the Magic’s key young players.
ORLANDO, Fla. — You don’t need to be an NBA scout to pinpoint the exact moment early in the 2019-20 season when Jonathan Isaac made the transition from being an intriguing young player to a legitimate NBA All-Defensive team contender.
On Nov. 6 in Dallas, Magic coaches assigned the lanky 22-year-old to defend Kristaps Porzingis. Isaac blocked four of Porzingis’ shot attempts and held Porzingis to 4-of-14 shooting.
“Isaac’s very good and very improved,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said after the game. “Because he doesn’t necessarily have gaudy stats, he may not get in the running for Most Improved Player. But I’ll tell you what, top to bottom, I haven’t seen a guy that’s improved more than him in the last year. He’s a major factor at both ends. I love the way he plays.”
The night could have been remembered as a breakout performance for Isaac, but two things got in the way. The Magic lost by one point, and, even worse from the Magic’s perspective, Isaac on Jan. 1 suffered a severe left knee sprain and a medial bone contusion, almost certainly derailing his All-Defensive team chances in the process.
But make no mistake, Isaac’s defense made a significant impression on many league insiders.
“Before he got hurt, I thought he was the best defensive player in the league,” one NBA scout told The Athletic. “His ability to defend multiple positions, his size, his length, quickness, understanding of what was going on and how to guard people, recovery, instincts — I think he has a potential to be a premier defensive player in the league. I just think the sky’s the limit for him.”
Still, although Magic officials have said Isaac will make a full recovery, the 6-foot-11 power forward faces several pressing questions.
Will Isaac become durable enough to make a consistent impact in the years ahead? Though he clearly is a difference-maker on defense (when healthy), will he eventually develop into more than a complementary player on offense? And if his repertoire on offense does expand, just how high is his ceiling on that end of the floor?
These are critical questions to the Magic, who invested the No. 6 overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft to select Isaac over Louisville’s Donovan Mitchell, Kentucky’s Bam Adebayo and Wake Forest’s John Collins.
Orlando needs at least one of its young players — Isaac, 21-year-old point guard Markelle Fultz, 21-year-old center Mo Bamba and 24-year-old forward Aaron Gordon — to blossom into a perennial All-Star, but none of them are close to All-Star status at the moment.
Injuries limited Isaac to 27 games as a rookie during the 2017-18 season. After a promising second season in which he appeared in 75 games and helped the Magic reach the playoffs, he has played in 32 games this season.
“The durability remains a huge issue,” a second NBA scout said. “His scoring and shooting still is problematic. He’s not a No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 (option on offense), and that’s what they drafted him to be at sixth in the draft. He’s another guy who was somewhat over-drafted. He’s young and all that, but to me, you’ve got to have a scoring and shooting component.”
In 29.7 minutes per game this season, Isaac averaged 12.0 points on 46 percent shooting from the field and 33 percent 3-point shooting before his injury.
Isaac essentially served as the fifth offensive option in a starting lineup that, when everyone was healthy, also included Fultz, shooting guard Evan Fournier, Gordon and center Nikola Vucevic.
Despite Isaac’s relatively modest scoring average, he posted a significant uptick in his usage rate, the percentage of Magic possessions that he ended with a shot attempt, a trip to the free-throw line or a turnover. Excluding so-called garbage time and possessions projected to end with heaves toward the basket, the advanced analytics website Cleaning the Glass says Isaac’s usage rate rose from 15.1 percent as a second-year player (the 36th percentile among his fellow bigs) to 17.3 percent this season (the 65th percentile among bigs).
The jump in usage occurred even though coach Steve Clifford ran relatively few plays for Isaac. Indeed, many of Isaac’s scoring opportunities came as a direct result of the havoc he created on defense. According to Synergy Sports, 19.1 percent of the Magic possessions that Isaac ended occurred in transition. For comparison’s sake, 16.7 percent of the possessions that Gordon ended came in transition.
Here is a quintessential example of how Isaac’s keen anticipation and massive wingspan can generate easy offense. He recognized that Dallas’ J.J. Barea is about to pass to Porzingis and then batted the pass toward the backcourt, leading to a wide-open transition dunk.
A few weeks later in Indianapolis, Isaac intercepted this pass by Aaron Holiday and punctuated the sequence with a nifty layup.
In the Magic’s half-court offense, however, Isaac often recedes into the background. Opposing defenses tend to sag off him, betting he won’t hit his open shots. The video that follows provides an extreme example. Fultz used an Isaac screen to drive into the paint, then kicked the ball out to Isaac, who launched a clean 3-pointer that was far off-target.
“I think he’s playing the role they’ve asked him to play, which is take your spot-up shots,” the first NBA scout said. “They don’t call a lot of plays for him, so I think he’s just playing out of the flow. When he gets an opportunity, if he gets an open 3, he’ll take it. He’s not very aggressive. I don’t think his mindset is geared towards scoring yet, but I think a part of that is they have not really made it a priority to feature him. And part of that is he’s probably not ready yet.”
To be fair to Isaac, there have been exceptions: a 24-point game on Oct. 28 in Toronto in which he sank five of his seven 3s and the Nov. 23 game in Indianapolis in which he scored a career-high 25 points on 4-of-6 shooting beyond the arc. On rare nights like those, it’s easy to envision Isaac developing into an All-Star.
In this video, after Isaac already had made four 3s, the Pacers’ Domantas Sabonis had to account for Isaac’s long-range shooting. Knowing Sabonis at least would account for a perimeter jumper, Isaac put the ball on the floor, drove and pulled up to rattle in a 14-foot jumper.
Again, though, sequences like that one have been in relatively short supply for Isaac so far in his career.
“He’s not going to be able to be a great player in the NBA doing just what he does,” a third NBA scout said. “He has to put the ball on the floor … and see the floor. And he’s got to learn to make shots. He’s got to become a shot-maker. … That shot doesn’t look broken to me. It’s how much he’s going to work at it. You’ve seen guys in this league go from A to B pretty quickly because their shot got better.”
What went well
Isaac spent the 2019 offseason working on his body, adding weight and muscle through rigorous weight room work and a strictly supervised meal plan that was designed to help him add bulk. Isaac added 18 pounds of muscle by the time he tipped the scales at 227 pounds in mid-October.
The added weight did not diminish his agility or quickness.
“I’ve never seen anybody move like that,” teammate Terrence Ross said. “It’s like a giraffe moving like a lion.”
Ross was prophetic. In Orlando’s first 33 games, Isaac befuddled opponents with his defense.
On Oct. 26 in Atlanta, Isaac had a four-block game. Here, he employed his quick leaping ability and long arms to block a 15-foot jumper by Collins.
Later in the game, Isaac went straight up to smother a Collins drive to the hoop.
Isaac seems to revel in his growing reputation as a standout defender.
And while he still looks thin due to his tall frame, he does not shy away contact. Here, even though the Magic were trailing the Bucks by 28 points midway through the fourth quarter, Isaac took a charge on Milwaukee’s reigning freight train of an MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“In the last couple of years, he has made huge strides with how hard he plays,” said the third NBA scout. “I think the upside’s really, really big with him. I think the stability he’s experienced with Clifford and that staff and what they’re doing with him has been obvious.”
Isaac averaged 2.4 blocks and 1.6 steals per game this season.
According to Cleaning the Glass, he ranked in the 93rd percentile among fellow bigs in block percentage and in the 97th percentile among bigs in steal percentage. That’s rarefied air, and he did it largely without fouling; he committed a foul on 3.3 percent of defensive possessions, placing him in the 72nd percentile among bigs, per CTG.
Isaac’s defensive contributions are significant enough that a fourth NBA scout said Isaac can be an impactful, winning player even if his shooting never develops. In a worst-case scenario in which Isaac winds up scoring just 10 points per game in seasons ahead, the scout said Isaac still could become an NBA All-Defensive team player and be a critical asset for the Magic.
What needs work
Isaac’s shooting, of course, is the most obvious aspect of his game that requires improvement, as shown by his year-by-year 3-point percentages of 35 percent, 32 percent and 33 percent. But in 2019-20, he was more than capable on corner 3s, making 44 percent of his attempts. It’s everywhere else where he struggled.
If he adds a reliable 3-point shot above the break, it would open his perimeter shot-fake game, giving him an opportunity for more drives to the hoop and more pull-up jumpers.
In that sense, the NBA hiatus may have hampered his development significantly. As the Magic’s practice facility has been closed in recent weeks, he has been one of the few Magic players who has not had easy access to a basket.
Isaac also needs to add more power to his game and more muscle to his frame. Per Cleaning the Glass, Isaac made only 62 percent of his attempts at the rim this season; while that seems high, among bigs he ranked only in the 26th percentile.
And he needs to make all of these improvements while becoming more durable.
The future
Magic officials rave about Isaac’s work ethic, and one veteran Magic player recently said Isaac has started to become more vocal.
The franchise soon will face interesting decisions with Isaac. Will the team seek a contract extension with Isaac when the start of his fourth season approaches? Absent an extension, Isaac still would be on track to become a restricted free agent following the 2020-21 season, giving the Magic the right to match any offer Isaac would receive from another team.
And will Magic officials address the apparent redundancy between Isaac and Gordon? Both players are best suited to play power forward, according to the consensus around the league. Both also struggle as long-range shooters.
“I think he has to tweak his shot a little bit … and figure out where his points are going to come from,” the first NBA scout said of Isaac.
“But I think he also has to kind of switch gears in his mindset to be a lot more aggressive on that end. I think that’s where the Aaron Gordon dynamic kind of keeps him in that lane. I think at some point they’ve got to make a decision about how high they are on Isaac because I think as long as Gordon is there, Isaac’s going to fade to the background.”
Editor’s note: This is the first piece in a weekly series examining the development of the Magic’s key young players.
ORLANDO, Fla. — You don’t need to be an NBA scout to pinpoint the exact moment early in the 2019-20 season when Jonathan Isaac made the transition from being an intriguing young player to a legitimate NBA All-Defensive team contender.
On Nov. 6 in Dallas, Magic coaches assigned the lanky 22-year-old to defend Kristaps Porzingis. Isaac blocked four of Porzingis’ shot attempts and held Porzingis to 4-of-14 shooting.
“Isaac’s very good and very improved,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said after the game. “Because he doesn’t necessarily have gaudy stats, he may not get in the running for Most Improved Player. But I’ll tell you what, top to bottom, I haven’t seen a guy that’s improved more than him in the last year. He’s a major factor at both ends. I love the way he plays.”
The night could have been remembered as a breakout performance for Isaac, but two things got in the way. The Magic lost by one point, and, even worse from the Magic’s perspective, Isaac on Jan. 1 suffered a severe left knee sprain and a medial bone contusion, almost certainly derailing his All-Defensive team chances in the process.
But make no mistake, Isaac’s defense made a significant impression on many league insiders.
“Before he got hurt, I thought he was the best defensive player in the league,” one NBA scout told The Athletic. “His ability to defend multiple positions, his size, his length, quickness, understanding of what was going on and how to guard people, recovery, instincts — I think he has a potential to be a premier defensive player in the league. I just think the sky’s the limit for him.”
Still, although Magic officials have said Isaac will make a full recovery, the 6-foot-11 power forward faces several pressing questions.
Will Isaac become durable enough to make a consistent impact in the years ahead? Though he clearly is a difference-maker on defense (when healthy), will he eventually develop into more than a complementary player on offense? And if his repertoire on offense does expand, just how high is his ceiling on that end of the floor?
These are critical questions to the Magic, who invested the No. 6 overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft to select Isaac over Louisville’s Donovan Mitchell, Kentucky’s Bam Adebayo and Wake Forest’s John Collins.
Orlando needs at least one of its young players — Isaac, 21-year-old point guard Markelle Fultz, 21-year-old center Mo Bamba and 24-year-old forward Aaron Gordon — to blossom into a perennial All-Star, but none of them are close to All-Star status at the moment.
Injuries limited Isaac to 27 games as a rookie during the 2017-18 season. After a promising second season in which he appeared in 75 games and helped the Magic reach the playoffs, he has played in 32 games this season.
“The durability remains a huge issue,” a second NBA scout said. “His scoring and shooting still is problematic. He’s not a No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 (option on offense), and that’s what they drafted him to be at sixth in the draft. He’s another guy who was somewhat over-drafted. He’s young and all that, but to me, you’ve got to have a scoring and shooting component.”
In 29.7 minutes per game this season, Isaac averaged 12.0 points on 46 percent shooting from the field and 33 percent 3-point shooting before his injury.
Isaac essentially served as the fifth offensive option in a starting lineup that, when everyone was healthy, also included Fultz, shooting guard Evan Fournier, Gordon and center Nikola Vucevic.
Despite Isaac’s relatively modest scoring average, he posted a significant uptick in his usage rate, the percentage of Magic possessions that he ended with a shot attempt, a trip to the free-throw line or a turnover. Excluding so-called garbage time and possessions projected to end with heaves toward the basket, the advanced analytics website Cleaning the Glass says Isaac’s usage rate rose from 15.1 percent as a second-year player (the 36th percentile among his fellow bigs) to 17.3 percent this season (the 65th percentile among bigs).
The jump in usage occurred even though coach Steve Clifford ran relatively few plays for Isaac. Indeed, many of Isaac’s scoring opportunities came as a direct result of the havoc he created on defense. According to Synergy Sports, 19.1 percent of the Magic possessions that Isaac ended occurred in transition. For comparison’s sake, 16.7 percent of the possessions that Gordon ended came in transition.
Here is a quintessential example of how Isaac’s keen anticipation and massive wingspan can generate easy offense. He recognized that Dallas’ J.J. Barea is about to pass to Porzingis and then batted the pass toward the backcourt, leading to a wide-open transition dunk.
A few weeks later in Indianapolis, Isaac intercepted this pass by Aaron Holiday and punctuated the sequence with a nifty layup.
In the Magic’s half-court offense, however, Isaac often recedes into the background. Opposing defenses tend to sag off him, betting he won’t hit his open shots. The video that follows provides an extreme example. Fultz used an Isaac screen to drive into the paint, then kicked the ball out to Isaac, who launched a clean 3-pointer that was far off-target.
“I think he’s playing the role they’ve asked him to play, which is take your spot-up shots,” the first NBA scout said. “They don’t call a lot of plays for him, so I think he’s just playing out of the flow. When he gets an opportunity, if he gets an open 3, he’ll take it. He’s not very aggressive. I don’t think his mindset is geared towards scoring yet, but I think a part of that is they have not really made it a priority to feature him. And part of that is he’s probably not ready yet.”
To be fair to Isaac, there have been exceptions: a 24-point game on Oct. 28 in Toronto in which he sank five of his seven 3s and the Nov. 23 game in Indianapolis in which he scored a career-high 25 points on 4-of-6 shooting beyond the arc. On rare nights like those, it’s easy to envision Isaac developing into an All-Star.
In this video, after Isaac already had made four 3s, the Pacers’ Domantas Sabonis had to account for Isaac’s long-range shooting. Knowing Sabonis at least would account for a perimeter jumper, Isaac put the ball on the floor, drove and pulled up to rattle in a 14-foot jumper.
Again, though, sequences like that one have been in relatively short supply for Isaac so far in his career.
“He’s not going to be able to be a great player in the NBA doing just what he does,” a third NBA scout said. “He has to put the ball on the floor … and see the floor. And he’s got to learn to make shots. He’s got to become a shot-maker. … That shot doesn’t look broken to me. It’s how much he’s going to work at it. You’ve seen guys in this league go from A to B pretty quickly because their shot got better.”
What went well
Isaac spent the 2019 offseason working on his body, adding weight and muscle through rigorous weight room work and a strictly supervised meal plan that was designed to help him add bulk. Isaac added 18 pounds of muscle by the time he tipped the scales at 227 pounds in mid-October.
The added weight did not diminish his agility or quickness.
“I’ve never seen anybody move like that,” teammate Terrence Ross said. “It’s like a giraffe moving like a lion.”
Ross was prophetic. In Orlando’s first 33 games, Isaac befuddled opponents with his defense.
On Oct. 26 in Atlanta, Isaac had a four-block game. Here, he employed his quick leaping ability and long arms to block a 15-foot jumper by Collins.
Later in the game, Isaac went straight up to smother a Collins drive to the hoop.
Isaac seems to revel in his growing reputation as a standout defender.
And while he still looks thin due to his tall frame, he does not shy away contact. Here, even though the Magic were trailing the Bucks by 28 points midway through the fourth quarter, Isaac took a charge on Milwaukee’s reigning freight train of an MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“In the last couple of years, he has made huge strides with how hard he plays,” said the third NBA scout. “I think the upside’s really, really big with him. I think the stability he’s experienced with Clifford and that staff and what they’re doing with him has been obvious.”
Isaac averaged 2.4 blocks and 1.6 steals per game this season.
According to Cleaning the Glass, he ranked in the 93rd percentile among fellow bigs in block percentage and in the 97th percentile among bigs in steal percentage. That’s rarefied air, and he did it largely without fouling; he committed a foul on 3.3 percent of defensive possessions, placing him in the 72nd percentile among bigs, per CTG.
Isaac’s defensive contributions are significant enough that a fourth NBA scout said Isaac can be an impactful, winning player even if his shooting never develops. In a worst-case scenario in which Isaac winds up scoring just 10 points per game in seasons ahead, the scout said Isaac still could become an NBA All-Defensive team player and be a critical asset for the Magic.
What needs work
Isaac’s shooting, of course, is the most obvious aspect of his game that requires improvement, as shown by his year-by-year 3-point percentages of 35 percent, 32 percent and 33 percent. But in 2019-20, he was more than capable on corner 3s, making 44 percent of his attempts. It’s everywhere else where he struggled.
If he adds a reliable 3-point shot above the break, it would open his perimeter shot-fake game, giving him an opportunity for more drives to the hoop and more pull-up jumpers.
In that sense, the NBA hiatus may have hampered his development significantly. As the Magic’s practice facility has been closed in recent weeks, he has been one of the few Magic players who has not had easy access to a basket.
Isaac also needs to add more power to his game and more muscle to his frame. Per Cleaning the Glass, Isaac made only 62 percent of his attempts at the rim this season; while that seems high, among bigs he ranked only in the 26th percentile.
And he needs to make all of these improvements while becoming more durable.
The future
Magic officials rave about Isaac’s work ethic, and one veteran Magic player recently said Isaac has started to become more vocal.
The franchise soon will face interesting decisions with Isaac. Will the team seek a contract extension with Isaac when the start of his fourth season approaches? Absent an extension, Isaac still would be on track to become a restricted free agent following the 2020-21 season, giving the Magic the right to match any offer Isaac would receive from another team.
And will Magic officials address the apparent redundancy between Isaac and Gordon? Both players are best suited to play power forward, according to the consensus around the league. Both also struggle as long-range shooters.
“I think he has to tweak his shot a little bit … and figure out where his points are going to come from,” the first NBA scout said of Isaac.
“But I think he also has to kind of switch gears in his mindset to be a lot more aggressive on that end. I think that’s where the Aaron Gordon dynamic kind of keeps him in that lane. I think at some point they’ve got to make a decision about how high they are on Isaac because I think as long as Gordon is there, Isaac’s going to fade to the background.”
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