When the Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks square off Monday night, it will be a reunion for four members of last year's Oklahoma City Thunder: Indiana's Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis and New York's Enes Kanter and Doug McDermott.
Both the Pacers (Paul George) and the Knicks (Carmelo Anthony) traded veteran All-Stars to the Thunder this summer in deals that seemed to signify the beginning of a rebuilding process for the two Eastern Conference teams. Yet seven weeks into the season, Indiana (12-11) and New York (11-11) have better records than Oklahoma City (10-12). And while that's largely due to the Thunder's unsustainable futility in close games, the Knicks and Pacers are battling for playoff spots in an unexpectedly loaded East.
Did Indiana and New York actually get the better of their trades with Oklahoma City? Let's look at how the players involved have performed.
Oladipo outplaying George?
Remarkably, Oladipo might have been the best player involved in the Pacers-Thunder trade so far this season.
Oladipo has thrived in a leading role, posting career highs in both usage rate (30.4 percent of Indiana's plays) and true shooting percentage (.586). As a result, Oladipo has produced 3.5 wins above replacement player (WARP), by my metric, so far this season, surpassing George's 3.2 WARP. While George holds the edge in ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM), both players rank in the league's top 20. And Oladipo holds the edge in Basketball-Reference.com's value over replacement player (VORP) metric, too.
Certainly, it's unusual for a player to both take on more offensive responsibility and become more efficient as Oladipo has thus far. The most common explanation is that the Pacers' offense better suits Oladipo than playing off the ball alongside MVP Russell Westbrook. It's undoubtedly true that Oladipo is handling the ball more this season -- his time of possession has increased about 60 percent, per Second Spectrum tracking on NBA.com/Stats -- while his spot-up opportunities are down about half in terms of the proportion of his plays they make up.
At the same time, Oladipo shot an effective 52.7 percent on spot-up opportunities (adjusted for the additional value of 3-point shots), per Synergy Sports tracking on NBA.com/Stats, last season as compared to 51.0 percent overall, so it wasn't apparent beforehand that fewer spot-ups would be a good thing.
Instead, I think Oladipo's improvement can be traced to his development shooting off the dribble. Already, Oladipo has made 24 pull-up 3-pointers, according to NBA.com/Stats, more than he made during the entire 2016-17 season (17). He's hitting them at a 47.1 percent clip, as compared to 32.3 percent beforehand, so this is an entirely new skill.
As I explained during the 2017 playoffs, pull-up 3s are valuable for not only the points they provide but also how they force defenses to change their pick-and-roll coverage. Indeed, Second Spectrum data shows defenders are going under Oladipo pick-and-rolls just 6.8 percent of the time this season as compared to 10.4 percent of the time last season. That additional defensive respect has helped Oladipo create 5.3 shots in the restricted area this year, up from 4.0 last season, according to NBA.com/Stats.
Sabonis thriving as center
The other player the Pacers got from the Thunder has also made dramatic strides. Second-year big man Domantas Sabonis has increased his field-goal percentage from 39.9 percent as a rookie to 53.6 percent so far this season, which would be one of the 20 largest improvements since the ABA-NBA merger by a player with at least 150 attempts both seasons.
In Sabonis' case, the explanation is simpler: He's playing the right position. Miscast as a stretch-big alongside Steven Adams in Oklahoma City, Sabonis shot just 32.1 percent from 3-point range. Those 3s made up almost a third of Sabonis' shot attempts last season; that's down to 6.5 percent so far in 2017-18.
Indiana has largely used Sabonis as a center and put him in the pick-and-roll, taking advantage of his incredible finishing. Sabonis is making 73.2 percent of his attempts inside three feet, per Basketball-Reference.com, and while that might come back to earth to some extent, it reflects the skill that made him a lottery pick.
There are two downsides to playing Sabonis at center. He isn't much of a rim protector, having blocked just seven shots all season. And the Pacers already have Myles Turner at center, which relegates Sabonis to a reserve role unless he can succeed at power forward. (Indiana has been more effective with either player alone than them together, via NBA.com/Stats.) Still, Sabonis looks like a useful rotation piece, and that wasn't clear after his inefficient rookie season with the Thunder.
Porzingis key to post-Melo Knicks
If you were designing a frontcourt partner for Enes Kanter in the lab, he'd probably look a lot like Kristaps Porzingis: capable of spacing the floor to give Kanter room to finish as well as helping him out with rim protection. Nobody in the NBA does both of those things better than Porzingis, so it's no surprise that Kanter shoots far more accurately (66.7 percent vs. 56.4 percent), and the Knicks are more successful (plus-2.6 net rating vs. minus-8.0, per NBA.com/Stats) when he plays with Porzingis.
Now, the Kanter-Porzingis partnership may not continue to be quite so effective. According to Second Spectrum data, Kanter's shot quality is little better when he plays with Porzingis, and overall the quantified quality of his shots this season is almost identical to his 2015-16 campaign in Oklahoma City -- when Kanter shot 57.6 percent as compared to his current 64.3 percent accuracy.
It's also true that a lot of centers could fill that role opposite Porzingis because of the latter's unique skills. That group probably includes New York backup Willy Hernangomez, who has been buried in the rotation behind Kanter and veteran Kyle O'Quinn after a strong rookie season. So Kanter may not be a huge upgrade for the Knicks.
The other player New York got (reserve forward Doug McDermott) is shooting a career-high 53.8 percent on 2-point attempts, but his value remains limited because of his defensive shortcomings. McDermott's minus-1.7 rating in RPM ranks 67th among small forwards.
In the long run, the most valuable piece the Knicks got from the Thunder might prove to be Chicago's 2018 second-round pick. With the Bulls a league-worst 3-18, that pick would be No. 31 overall if the season ended today.
Despite the pick, the most important aspect of trading Anthony for New York was the ability to turn over the reins of the offense to Porzingis, who has pushed his usage rate from 24.3 percent of the Knicks' plays to 34.2 percent -- second-highest in the league behind James Harden. Like Oladipo, Porzingis has managed to simultaneously improve his efficiency and his volume, confirming him as one of the league's best scorers.
New verdict: Indiana and New York did well with trades
I panned both the trades made with the Thunder this summer, grading the Pacers' return a D-minus and the Knicks' package a C-minus. It has quickly become clear I was wrong about both deals.
In Indiana's case, I felt Oladipo would be no more valuable than his $17 million salary over the next four years and that Sabonis was unlikely to contribute to winning after the poor start to his NBA career. While I don't think Oladipo's improvement could have been expected given his career to date, Sabonis being miscast in Oklahoma City was obvious at the time.
Based on what Oladipo has done so far, this trade has been an A-plus for Indiana. Still, we're still talking about a sample of 51 pull-up 3s, so I'm not ready to declare his development permanent yet. As a result, I'd probably go with something like a B-minus for the Pacers given what we know now. If he maintains it, however, Oladipo's contract will be more valuable than one season of George's services.
I don't know that I misjudged the players the Knicks got for Anthony so much as I underestimated the value of turning the page on the Melo era at MSG. Certainly, what New York got in return was better than simply buying Anthony out -- particularly given how promising the second-round pick from Chicago looked before the season. I would probably give the Knicks a straight B in regrading the trade.
So my new assessment is, far from being fleeced, the Knicks and Pacers did well to get what they did from the Thunder.