Portland Trail Blazers: Benefitting from an efficient Enes Kanter

Despite the Portland Trail Blazers being a mixed bag to start the season, they have benefitted from the efficiency of Enes Kanter.

Since being traded from the Boston Celtics, Enes Kanter looks so much more at home with the Portland Trail Blazers. Kanter was a member of the 2108-19 Blazers team that got all the way to the Western Conference Finals before signing as a free agent with the Boston Celtics that offseason.

Unfortunately for Kanter, due to his lack of defensive prowess, the Celtics played Daniel Theis as the starter. Kanter ended up only playing 16.9 minutes per game. He was still able to average 8.1 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 1.0 assists per game in that time.

This season Kanter has been able to step it up a notch. He is averaging 21.1 minutes per game coming off the bench and is almost averaging a double-double. His averages are 12.5 points and 9.2 rebounds per game.

Enes Kanter is playing to his strengths with the Portland Trail Blazers.

Enes Kanter is at his best when he is one out against a defender. It is very rare that he will not get a good shot up. With the floor spacing that the Blazers have on the floor at any time, Kanter is almost always one out.

He makes moves upon moves when in the low block and is very hard to stop. When he was with the Celtics, Kanter did not have the shooters around him to help space the floor when he was on with the second unit.

As a result, Kanter had to pass the ball back out more as more help defense came. This season Kanter has only given out one assist which would not be a good thing except that he is shooting the ball at a league-leading 68.2 percent from the floor.

Kanter is hovering around the paint either getting a pass from a teammate as his defender goes over to help, or getting the offensive rebound and the putback. Other teams know what Kanter likes to do but it is another thing to stop him.

Because he is able to stay at home on offense, Kanter is averaging 3.5 offensive rebounds per game, in just 21.1 minutes off the bench. This is a tremendous resource to be able to deploy to help out an offense if it is struggling.

He is officially eighth in the NBA in this metric but one of the players above him is Tony Bradley who has only played one game for the season. Kanter is converting those offensive rebounds into 5.5 second-chance points per game.

This is a huge difference in depth from last season where it was Hassan Whiteside starting with Caleb Swanigan backing him up due to all the injuries. Now the Blazers have their first choice center Jusuf Nurkic start being backed up by Kanter. The Blazers can even go deeper and put the athletic Harry Giles on the court

This is not going to happen while Kanter is collecting double-doubles, he now has three in six games, as well as scoring big like he did last game with 24 points. Once the Blazers develop the chemistry that only time can help, they are going to be incredibly hard to beat, especially with Kanter producing so well off the bench.