Kemba Walker has the Charlotte Hornets contending for homecourt advantage in the East while shooting career-high percentages and ranking among the league's very best in ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM).
Is his leap from good to great this season for real? Has Walker joined Stephen Curry, Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook as one of the best point guards in the NBA?
A history of inefficiency
Walker is on pace to achieve something rare in the NBA. The common path to stardom is a player's natural development within the first two to four years of his career, typically when promising talents blossom into marquee players. We see this often from high draft picks.
A player's role can also change so drastically, either by switching teams or from significant roster upheaval, that it results in inevitable improvement. James Harden's move from Oklahoma City to Houston is a recent example. However less frequent, these star turns are logical outputs from a series of evolving circumstances. They make sense.
And that's also what makes Walker's stellar season so fascinating. He's already in his sixth NBA season after being the No. 9 overall pick in the 2011 draft. He's also playing largely the same role on a roster that hasn't changed all that much.
Despite those static circumstances, early returns this season have Walker evolving from an inefficient, instant-offense guard like Monta Ellis into a legitimate All-Star candidate at the league's deepest position.
During the 2014-15 season, Walker was the Hornets' leading scorer, averaging 17.3 points per game (25th in the NBA). It was his third straight season averaging at least 17 PPG and 5.0 assists per game. The only other players to do that at the time are Stephen Curry, LeBron James, Harden, Kyrie Irving, Russell Westbrook, Damian Lillard and John Wall. Pretty good company.
Except that's not the whole story. Of the 64 players who averaged at least 15 PPG in the 2014-15 season, Walker ranked 63rd in field goal percentage. The three players immediately below him were Jamal Crawford, Brandon Jennings and Tony Wroten.
Inefficient shooting was just one component of Walker's overstated game. RPM had Walker ranked 214th in the NBA and in the same range as fellow guards Langston Galloway (207th) and Aaron Brooks (216th). His RPM of minus-1.03 means he actually subtracted about one point per 100 possessions on average when he was on the floor for the Hornets in 2014-15.
What's changed for Kemba?
Watch Walker this year, and you'll see a completely different player. While it's still early, meaning a fairly small and noisy sample size, he currently ranks 12th in RPM, one spot behind Steph Curry.
How unique is Walker's rise from outside the top 200 to near the top 10? About 30 players have climbed 200 spots from 2014-15 to 2016-17, but nearly all of them have been role players making moves from the end of the bench and into the rotation. Of the players currently ranked in the top 35 in RPM, Walker is the only one to rise at least 150 spots. Only five others -- Rodney Hood, Dwyane Wade, Nicolas Batum, Rudy Gay and Giannis Antetokounmpo -- have risen even 100 spots over that time. Among the game's best players, none has come as far as Walker has.
So how has he done it?
For starters, he's shooting it much better from pretty much everywhere. A career 40 percent shooter coming into this season, Walker is making a career-best 46.8 percent from the floor this season. Though he became a credible threat from beyond the 3-point line last season, he's once again improved from downtown, now shooting 41.3 percent.
Beyond simply 3-point percentages, the two biggest indicators that Walker is making defenses pay for playing off of him in ways he hasn't before are situational, specifically off spot-up shots and in pick-and-roll situations.
Entering this season, Walker was shooting 37 percent for his career on spot-up attempts, according to Synergy Sports. The only season in which he shot better than 40 percent on spot-ups was last year (41.4). Defenders guarding Walker off the ball could help off their man without getting burned. Only Marvin Williams attempted more spot-up shots for the Hornets last season.
In pick-and-roll situations, defenders could go under screens and dare Walker to beat them over the top. When defenders went under on pick-and-rolls, Walker shot just 41 percent for his career before this season, including 37 percent last year, per Synergy.
These numbers could regress, but so far Walker has shown dramatic improvement in both areas. Entering Wednesday, he's shooting 53 percent while spotting up and 47 percent as a pick-and-roll ball handler when defenders go under screens. That sudden prowess has, in turn, opened things up inside, an area where Walker has routinely struggled.
One of the knocks on Walker entering this season was his ability to finish around the basket. Despite coming off a career year in 2015-16, Walker's ability to make shots in the paint was an area where regression was a real possibility. But rather than regress -- and bolstered by his ability to now keep defenses honest -- Walker is doing it better than ever.
Over his first five seasons, he shot 47 percent inside the paint, far below the league average of 54 percent. He's now up to 58 percent this year while taking 6.8 shots per game inside the paint, up nearly a full attempt per game over his career average. Those factors, combine with his career-best 4.9 fouls drawn per game, have helped Walker's game flourish inside
Walker has done all of this while posting a career-high usage rate, which was expected with Jeremy Lin's departure in the offseason. He is also avoiding turnovers. Already one of the NBA's best, Walker has cut his turnover percentage to 7.6 percent, which would be a career low.
Add everything together, and Walker just might be the franchise player Charlotte has long coveted.
Looking at Charlotte's bigger picture, Walker currently has the Hornets with a 94 percent chance to make the playoffs according to ESPN's Basketball Power Index. In a fairly wide open Eastern Conference after the Cleveland Cavaliers, BPI gives the Hornets a punchers chance (23 percent) of securing home court in the first round, perhaps a critical element for a team that was blown out on the road in Miami in a Game 7 last season and hasn't been out of the first round since 2001-02.