Los Angeles Lakers: Jordan Clarkson’s effectiveness in decreased minutes
Despite playing a career-low minutes per game, Jordan Clarkson is maintaining his scoring production with increased efficiency from the field.
Coming into the 2017-18 NBA season, the Los Angeles Lakers coaching staff and front office challenged Jordan Clarkson to contend, or even win, the Sixth Man of the Year award. The fourth-year guard has been a double-digit scorer in his two prior seasons mostly coming off the bench, but is having his best season yet this year, despite playing only 21.8 minutes per game.
It’s an interesting development to see Clarkson’s scoring average increase to 15.1 points per game while registering a career-low in minutes. It’s not often you see this kind of uptick in points when playing eight fewer minutes a night, but there are some stats that highlight this trend, starting with how often he is relied upon when he takes the floor.
To make up for his decreased minutes, Clarkson is leaned upon heavily when on the floor, and leads the Lakers by a reasonable margin with a 29.1 usage percentage. He’s taking 31.3 percent of the Lakers’ field goal attempts when he’s on the floor, which translates to him scoring 31.8 percent of the team’s points in his floor time. That’s a staggering yet sustainable number given the lack of guard scoring on the bench.
This high-usage has led to him taking relatively the same amount of shots per game (12.0 this season compared to 13.1 last season), but Clarkson is connecting on a career- high 48.7 percent of field goals, and 35.5 percent of 3-point shots (53.6 effective field goal percentage). His shot selection is improving, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s getting great looks from the field.
Last season, Clarkson attempted only 11.8 percent of his shots with 6+ feet between him and the closest defender. This season, that number is up to 19.2 percent. The extra space created by playing in a more spacious environment with stretch-4s and/or 5s at all times is helping his game and giving him easier shots than in past seasons.
There’s also a nine percent decrease in shots taken with defenders within very tight range (0-2 feet) from last season to this season. Clarkson will always be able to get his own shot or get to the rim on most defenders, but taking as many uncontested shots as possible is a great way to see your efficiency and productivity take a step forward as Clarkson has done.
It’s not just the quality of shots he’s taking that is making him a better offensive player this season. He’s holding onto the ball less, as his touch time of less than two seconds has gone from a 35.5 percent frequency to 41.3 percent this year.
He’s buying into the ball movement system head coach Luke Walton wants to establish, and is directly benefitting from the better looks created by constantly moving the ball.
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This is obviously a smaller sample size than a full 82-game season, but I’m encouraged with how productive Clarkson is being with fewer minutes. When you look at the quality of shots he’s taking and the lineups he’s playing in, there’s optimism these numbers are sustainable throughout a full season.