Does Jahlil Okafor have the potential to become a future member of the hall of fame, make multiple All-Star games, an above average starting center, or a good scorer off the bench?
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, is a quote that could describe the divide among Philadelphia 76ers’ fans on the potential of Jahlil Okafor.
Some fans see a big man whose low post scoring could dominate the current NBA. These fans believe most NBA teams’ addiction to small ball and 3-point shooting, would leave them incapable of defending a big man with Okafor’s ability to score near the basket. Other fans see a center that would be great 30 years ago, but doesn’t play good enough defense to be a valuable player to a championship team in the current NBA. While I’m part of the group of fans that doesn’t view Okafor as a potentially great player and believes his negatives outweigh his positives, I wanted to find out if I was wrong.
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But how do you figure out the potential of a player after one season in the NBA? By comparing Okafor’s stats and usage percentage to players around the same age or playing the same position, it should show whether Okafor is on his way to becoming a great player the Sixers would be crazy to move or an average player that doesn’t have a major role on a Sixers’ team built around Ben Simmons.
Usage percentage is the amount of times a player is directly involved with the offense. For example, Nik Stauskas played 24.8 minutes per game for the Sixers last season, but had a usage percentage of 16.7 percent. Since Stauskas spends a lot of time standing behind the 3-point line, there would be several of times when he had no involvement with what the Sixers were doing on offense.
Looking at Okafor’s stats during his single season in college and the NBA, it’s clear that Okafor needs a big percentage of the offense to revolve around him to be effective. Okafor played 30.1 minutes per game at Duke with a usage percentage of 27.6 percent. He scored 17.3 points per game during his time at Duke.
In comparison, Ben Simmons played 34.9 minutes per game at LSU and had a usage percentage of 26.4 percent. He scored 19.2 points per game during his time at LSU. Brandon Ingram played 34.6 minutes per game at Duke and had a usage percentage of 25.6 percent. He scored 17.3 points per game during his time at Duke.
Okafor scored less or the same amount of points as the top two picks in the 2016 NBA Draft, but controlled the ball slightly more than both of them, so it’s not surprising the Sixers believed they had a better chance of trading Okafor for the third pick instead of the second.
Looking at last season’s rookie of the year Karl-Anthony Towns’ minutes per game and usage percentage compared to Okafor’s, explains why Town was selected before Okafor in the 2015 NBA Draft and had a better rookie season despite worse stats than Okafor in college. Towns played 21.1 minutes per game with a usage percentage of 23.7 percent. He averaged 10.3 points, 6.7 rebounds, 2.3 blocks, 1.1 assists, and 1.4 turnovers per game during his time at Kentucky. Okafor averaged 17.3 points, 8.5 rebounds, 1.4 blocks, 1.3 assists, and 2.5 turnovers per game during his time at Duke. Towns averaged 18.3 points, 10.5 rebounds, 1.7 blocks, 2 assists, and 2.2 turnovers per game with the Minnesota Timberwolves last season.
Okafor averaged 17.3 points, 7 rebounds, 1.4 blocks, 1.2 assists, and 2.3 turnover per game with the Sixers last season. Towns had better stats with a usage percentage of 24.9 percent, compared to Okafor’s usage percentage of 27.3 percent. While Towns’ 32 minutes per game was higher than Okafor’s 30 minutes per game last season, there’s no reason to believe Okafor could have seriously challenged Towns for rookie of the year, if Okafor stayed healthy and played all 82 games last season.
Philadelphia 76ers’ Hall of Famer Charles Barkley didn’t have a usage percentage comparable to Okafor’s rookie season until his fourth year in the NBA. A then 24-year-old Barkley had a usage percentage of 26.7 percent and averaged 28.3 points, 11.9 rebounds, and 3.2 assists per game during the 1987-88 season. While Okafor was five years younger than Barkley when they had similar usage percentage, any visions of Okafor being inducted into the Hall of Fame will likely have to stay in Okafor supporting Sixers’ fans dreams.
While usage percentage suggest Towns, Simmons, and Ingram are likely to become better players than Okafor, there is more to being a great-to-good NBA player than how much a player accounts for his team’s offense. For an NBA center, defense and rebounding are major factors as to whether that center becomes an amazing player. Having watched almost every game Okafor played for the Sixers last season, I thought his defense wasn’t good. It’s not just that Okafor lacked lateral quickness and consistent effort to be a good defender, but how the other team reacted to Okafor’s presence on the defensive side of the court.
Nerlens Noel doesn’t have to block a shot or grab a steal to have more of a defensive impact than Okafor, because players on the opposing team respect him as a shot blocker and attempt more mid-range jump shots than drives to the basket for an easy dunk or layup.
Once Okafor is left to defend the rim, any hope the Sixers have off forcing the offense into taking difficult shots or committing turnovers almost completely disappears. While this article from Derek Bodner is from early in the 2015-16 NBA season, the section on Noel and Okafor struggling to play together is the clearest example I’ve seen on the difference between Noel and Okafor’s effect on the Sixers’ defense.
Okafor’s lack of rebounding illuminats his issues on defense, because he is a bad defensive rebounder. Okafor averaged 4.7 defensive rebounds per game last season. Noel averaged 5.7 defensive rebounds per game in the 2014-15 season and 5.8 defensive rebounds per game last season. Kristaps Porzingis averaged 5.5 defensive rebounds per game. The 2015 NBA Draft’s 11th pick Myles Turner averaged 4.4 defensive rebounds while playing an average of 22.8 minutes per game. Noel, Porzingis, and Turner are all power forwards or centers that weigh at least 20 pounds less than the 275 pound Okafor, but manage to due a better job fighting for defensive rebounds.
Rebounds will likely keep Okafor from ever becoming a player that can average 20 points and 10 rebounds per game. Okafor played 38 games during his only season at Duke and grabbed at least 10 rebounds in 11 of them. He played in 53 games last season for the Sixers and grabbed at least 10 rebounds in 12 of them.
The point of this article isn’t to prove that Okafor is a bad player, because he isn’t, but to show that he isn’t an elite player yet or a player the Sixers should oppose trading.
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Okafor will likely become the next Greg Monroe or Enes Kanter, a good scoring center that could be the fourth option on a good team and could be a starter or sixth man. With all of the criticism I leveled at Okafor, the Boston Celtics likely used the pick they reportedly refused to trade for Okafor on a player of even lesser value. Jaylen Brown scored 14.6 points per game with a usage percentage of 31.4 percent, while playing 27.6 minutes per game, so the Celtics might still regret not trading for Okafor.