The Magic forward scored a career-high 50 positions on Monday night — the second 50-ball of the 2024-25 NBA season.
There's the vision test, and there's the amounts, and in between, there's a whole lot of debate.
It's a popular story, in the NBA and abroad: A player looks the part of a bona fide star, and maybe even produces brilliantly in particular statistical categories, but lagging performance in other, more systematic and apparently finer-tuned metrics leaves opened the question of just how much that player" contributes to" or "drives" winning. (" If he's a good hitter, why does n't he hit good"? )
Paolo Banchero has had that reputation for a while, with the exception of two professional seasons that charted a well-known course on the sun image. No. 1 get in the 2022 NBA Draft. Instant-offense 20-point scoring and no-doubt-about-it collection as Rookie of the Year. Across-the-board offensive upturn in his junior year, resulting in an All-Star smile and his first playoff appearance, driving the Orlando Magic up to the playoffs after a three-year dryness.
But as impressive as the 6-foot-10, 250-pound Duke company's raw creation was, his methods of arriving at it — range and 3-point runners accounting for more than 60 % of his field-goal efforts, despite him making fewer than 40 % of them — earned Banchero that most controversial of tags among players vying for modern fame: inadequate.
This integrated information is not applicable in your area.
Despite his bucket-getting, the Magic finished in the bottom 10 in points scored per hands in Banchero's initial two months, and they actually scored more goals with him off the floor next year. Among 65 eligible people to use at least 25 % of their team ' offensive property over the past two months, Banchero was tied for 62nd in successful field-goal portion, which accounts for 3-pointers being worth more than 2-pointers. ( Right alongside him? Russell Westbrook. ) That goes a long way toward explaining why so many advanced metrics — estimated plus-minus, LEBRON, DARKO, value over replacement player, win shares per 48 minutes, you name it — have pegged Paolo more as "pretty OK" than "premier operator", despite box-score stat lines that put him on par with the likes of young Michael, LeBron and Luka.
Sometimes, though, the space between the eye test and the numbers disappears, and when they start saying the same thing, there's no room for argument or misinterpretation, what's left is the truth, or something like it. And what happened on Monday night in Paolo Banchero's heart?
Banchero bulldozed the Pacers with panache and precision, scoring a career-high 50 points — the first 50-ball of this still toddling 2024-25 NBA season — on 16-for-26 shooting to lead Orlando to a 119-115 win. On his way to numerous history books entries, he also made a game-high 13 rebounds and providing nine assists in 40 minutes.
With his 37-point blitz through two quarters, Banchero became just the third player in the last 27 years to put up 35 points, five rebounds and five assists in a half, and tied Tracy McGrady for the highest-scoring half in Magic history, according to Justin Kubatko at Statitudes. By the time he'd finished, Banchero had become just the fourth Magic player ever to score 50, and only the fourth player ever to go for 50 and 10 before turning 22.
Even applying the stat-buff that is Playing Against the Pacers ' Defense, Banchero's performance was breathtaking. Not just that he scored 19 points on nine shots in the first quarter, added 18 more on eight attempts in the second, and recovered from a slow third with nine more on just three shots in the telltale fourth. It was, if you'll forgive some repetition, his means of arriving at it.
How Banchero Juggernauted through Pascal Siakam, Obi Toppin, Isaiah Jackson, Aaron Nesmith, Ben Sheppard and whoever else Rick Carlisle could think to send after him, those sledgehammer shoulders powering through all resistance without losing any momentum, always steaming forward. how he exploited the pull-up's drive, clinging to his own goals and resume, and how he played off the drive while maintaining a shot-making rhythm.
How he leveraged the extra help that Indiana sent, insufficiently and unsuccessfully, by making the easy pass to deliver nine assists, with seven producing 3-pointers, layups or dunks. How confidently he oversaw the proceedings, drawing 13 foul shots ( his final score would have been even more impressive if not for seven missed free throws ), accumulating 81 points, driving the charge that led to the kill shot, and demanding the attention that led to it...
What a game in Orlando! Anthony Black breaks the tie at 115 with a 3! Magic at the FT line with 9.5 remaining on NBA League Pass: https ://t.co/5o9gBCiWA7 pic. twitter.com/V3Qz2YenBO
— NBA ( @NBA ) October 29, 2024
...to seal yet another victory for a Magic team that opened the season with a stronger offense in place of the second-place defense from the previous year, as my colleague Morten Stig Jensen noted Monday.
Through four games, Orlando sits fourth in the NBA in points scored per possession outside of garbage time, according to Cleaning the Glass. That's a significant improvement over the previous season, which was largely due to the shifting of a lot of its midrange shot attempts, which coincidentally has been reflected in the early selection of its All-Stars.
The Magic's interior should be more open for what was already one of the league's most paint-pounding teams the more it launches from long range. In a related story, Banchero is taking a career-high share of his shots at the rim and drawing shooting fouls on more than a quarter of his shot attempts. The more he attacks the basket and the more help he draws, the more kickout feeds it opens up for Orlando's shooters— and while we probably ca n't expect Franz Wagner, Jalen Suggs, Anthony Black, Gary Harris and Mo Wagner to all keep shooting better than 40 % from 3-point range, some uptick in Orlando's overall shooting accuracy should help turn a bottom-10 offense into, at least, an average one, helmed by a Blake Griffin-sized freight train who can give it to you however you want it.
Magic teammate Cole Anthony stated to reporters earlier this year," I think people are still learning about him, which is mind-boggling to me." " … He's going to be a household name".
Hanging half-a-hundred one time does n't guarantee that. ( Shouts out to Malachi Flynn, Saddiq Bey, Terrence Ross and Corey Brewer, among others. ) However, if the Magic can combine this elite defense with this offensive improvement, they have a chance to make some real noise once they arrive. The dudes who lead teams like that wind up shining an order of magnitude brighter, replacing old eye-test-vs. the-numbers arguments with newfound agreement that a new superstar is born.
Copyright Notice:
Datavictory copyrights this specification. No part of this specification may be reproduced in any form or means, without the prior written consent of Datavictory.
Link:
