Portland Trail Blazers: 5 goals for Meyers Leonard in 2017-18

2. Average over 1.0 points per possession as the pick-and-roll man

Meyers Leonard’s desire to shoot from further out coupled with his mid-range issues greatly affected his pick-and-roll game. Leonard averaged 1.09 points per possession as the screen-setter in 2015-16. However, that dropped to 0.85 points per possession in 2016-17.

The pick-and-roll is incredibly crucial to the Blazers’ gameplan: 20.4 percent of their plays involved the pick-and-roll ball-handler, seventh-most in the NBA. Another 5.9 percent were for the pick-and-roll man, 24th-most in the league.

“PNR” plays also account for 43.4 percent of Lillard’s touches and 35.0 percent of C.J. McCollum‘s, the team’s two highest-usage players. The offense stagnates when opponents account for Lillard and McCollum on drives and the roller isn’t a viable scoring option.

Again, it’s hard to tell what the crux of Leonard’s mid-range struggles is. But his improvement in that area goes along with his improvement here. Leonard gets his second-most amount of touches (27.1 percent) off of this particular play type. He’s not very useful if he can’t produce in the second-most instances he’s called upon.