Nerlens Noel Has Quietly Improved

Nerlens Noel quietly improved his game for the Philadelphia 76ers over the 2015-16 season.

The 2015-16 Philadelphia 76ers team and organization has been full of drama and lost in the midst of all of that has been Nerlens Noel’s quiet progression in his second NBA season. Sometimes the stats don’t tell the whole story. Sometimes what’s in black and white isn’t always right. Sometimes you have to look deeper and give context to the black and white statistics. That’s the goal of this piece.

Statistically, Noel has gotten better per 36 minutes in many areas and has gotten worse in others. All of these changes were very small though and nothing major. Per 36 minutes Noel is averaging 2.2 more points, 0.5 more rebounds, 0.2 assists, 0.5 more free throw attempts, and the same amount of steals. He is shooting six percent better from the field than last year, his offensive rating went up three points, his offensive box plus-minus has gotten 1.1 points better, and his player efficiency rating went up 1.3 points.

As for the negative, per 36 minutes Noel has been fouling more this season, his blocks went down by 0.4, his free throw percentage went down by a percent, his defensive rating went down four points, his win shares per 48 minutes went down 0.008 points, his value over replacement players went down 0.3 points, and his defensive box plus-minus has decreased by 1.1 points.

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The reason I am not worried at all about the decrease in the statistics I just mentioned is because of one major detail. Noel had not been playing his natural position for the whole season until this past month or so. Noel went from playing center (his natural position) 94% of the time in his rookie season to playing it only 55% of the time in his second season.

This was a huge change for a player who has been playing center basically full time for all of his life. The fact that he improved in so many areas despite this major change shows how hard Noel works and that he’s becoming a better player. On the other hand, the fact that the numbers he was worse in from the year prior only decreased a very small amount despite playing power forward and not center is amazing as well.

If Noel had played center full-time this season like he did in his rookie year, we possibly could have been looking at a guy in the running for Most Improved Player of the Year. His individual statistics and comfort zone were thrown out the window for the better of the team and doing whatever head coach Brett Brown asked of him. The fact that Noel took it on the chin and didn’t complain about sacrificing his game is a trait all 76ers fans love about him. He was taken further away from his comfort zone (the rim) yet he still averaged nearly the same amount of blocks and still earned himself an elite defensive box plus-minus number.

While I think Joel Embiid and Jahlil Okafor are the big man tandem of the future, I’d still really love for Noel to be a key cog for the team off the bench. He has already proven to be an elite defender against starting lineups so imagine what he’d do to bench players. Noel along with Dario Saric would lead a devastating bench unit that would more than pick up the slack if the starters are having a bad game or would help keep the lead that the starters earned. Improvement isn’t always found in numbers. Improvement can be shown when you see how players react in different situations and Noel passed the test in my book.

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Coming off of the bench Noel could still play about 27 minutes a game if Coach Brown gets the rotations right and if Noel keeps improving, he could possibly become an all-star someday as a super sixth man.