Brandon Ingram Discussion: He Is Who We Thought He Could Be

Good luck to BI, he's a great guy and a talented player. I'll watch some NOLA games for sure.

 

I made up a bunch of fake stats to put Brandon Ingram’s career into perspective and say goodbye.

Resiliency
Does the dude get on the court and stay on the court? (Out of 10.0)
Year 1: 8.5
Year 2: 7.7
Year 3: 7.2
Trend: I’d put my money on him being closer to that middle value next year. He has probably average starter Resiliency. This means he’ll be able to rack up minutes in a season, both in terms of total games and in minutes per game.

Fragility
What happens to the player under pressure?

In year 1, Ingram posted a scoring efficiency of 4.49 in Clutch (82game definition) – awful
In year 2, he was up to 5.73. Good.
In year 3, he pushed it to 5.83. Good.

Ingram is already a solid contributor in the Clutch, and he’s improving. Sometimes a player will become more of a volume shooter when he moves to a less talented situation or into a more prominent role. Watch what he does over the next two seasons to see where his career trajectory is – Kawhi, chucker, or low-key contributor (Tayshaun Prince) are all possibilities for him, in the clutch.

Scorer
Ingram’s scoring efficiency has increased each season, from 5.00 as a rookie to 5.89 to 6.18. Compare those numbers first of all to his clutch time stats and see that he does shrink a bit in clutch time. That could be a result of his role, or it could be that he’s a bit of a shrinking violet. The overall trend is incredibly promising, however, as 6.18 is already quite good, and he’ll be only 22 next season. He should hit 20 PPG next season. BTW, he was a 6.15 SCOFF player in college, so he’s already a more efficient NBA scorer.

Passing
Ingram’s passing was 2.55 as a rookie – and honestly that’s solid from a wing, especially from one playing a lot of SF. Then it soared to 3.13 in year 2. It was back down to 2.75 as he worked with the ball less, sometimes with a pure PG on the floor and sometimes with a ball dominant LeBron. He’s honestly very skilled with the ball. Several seasons ago, an article examined the stats that were most highly correlated with team wins. One of the key stats was Small Forward’s assists to turnover ratio. Ingram is good at that. As he looks to get his own shot and create more, pay attention to it going forward.

Hustle
Ingram’s hustle stat has been fairly consistent at 2.33, 2.44, and 2.16. None of them are bad numbers, but none of them are especially good. He doesn’t pick up as many steals as I thought he would, and he doesn’t block as many shots as I thought he would. At the same time, he doesn’t pick up a ton of fouls or turn it over much for how involved in the game he is.

Player Efficiency
Ingram’s positional efficiency was 51 as a rookie – not good. But for the past two seasons it was consistent at 70 and 69 (and it was 69 at Duke). That’s not bad, especially for a wing (wings who don’t score a ton struggle a bit to be efficient in this ranking system). Ingram has shown the ability to play two very different roles – a facilitating wing and an off-ball wing. He has massively changed his game in response to these different roles. Let’s look at how he changed his shot.

Shooting
Year 1: 402-294-621
Year 2: 470-390-681
Year 3: 497-330-662

These are FG, 3pt, and FT per thousand. The bad news is that Ingram is not the pure shooter many thought he was. He could turn things around, but I don’t know of any guys who shot below 70% on FTs for three straight seasons and became good FT shooters (If I were looking for some, I’d look to players who had surgery and missed long stretches, like Amare Stoudemire – he shot below 74% each of his first three seasons but became a 79% shooter over the next eight seasons).

The good news is that Ingram saw his 3s weren’t falling and cut down on them, exchanging them for more efficient shots. He was excellent at 3s in year 2, and he’s overall just a bit below the NBA average for his career. At the same time, his FG% has gone from absolutely dreadful (I think 40.2% is two standard deviations down from average) to average to above average.

Ingram has accomplished this increase in FG% largely by taking fewer jump shots and converting a higher percentage of close looks. This corresponds to an increase in strength and experience.

Year 1: 21% of his shots were close, and his eFG% was 48.6.
Year 2: 35% of his shots were close, and his eFG% was 53.0.
Year 3: 34% were close, and the eFG% was 55.1.

Scoring Punch
This measures TS% and PPG to give an effective SP, but then it looks at PP36 with TS% to give a possible top end of SP.

Year 1: 4.4 SP (not good), 5.5 TSP (not good)
Year 2: 8.6 SP (better), 9.3 TSP (better)
Year 3: 10.2 SP (solid), 10.8 TSP (good)

His scoring punch was third best on the team, 5/100th of a point behind Kuzma, and his TSP was sixth best, with James, Beasley, Zubac, McGee, and Kuzma ahead of him. He’s already a pretty explosive scorer, and he’s younger than all of those players. He’ll be more explosive than all of them except James.

Defense
Here are his counterpart stats per year per 48 minutes
Year 1: 21.5 points, 3.3 assists (2.5 TO), 5.8 rebounds, 53.5% eFG, PER of 14.6
Year 2: 20.0 points, 3.7 assists (2.3 TO), 7.2 rebounds, 49.5% eFG, PER of 13.1
Year 3: 20.5 points, 3.5 assists (2.1 TO), 10.4 rebounds, 50.8% eFG, PER of 15.3 (82games charted him at PF for most of his minutes this season)

His DRPM trends are…
Year 1: -2.93 (60th among 63 qualified SFs) (Den was +1.54)
Year 2: -0.28 (would have been 45th among 76 SFs)
Year 3: -0.54 (55th among 93 qualified SFs)

Ingram doesn’t always look good on defensive metrics, but his counterpart was better with him off the floor (16.4 vs. 14.6; 13.7 vs. 13.1; 15.6 vs. 15.3), which means he makes a positive defensive impact compared to other roster options. That's been consistent, and he's trended toward the middle of the pack over the last two seasons.

Career Thoughts
I don’t think it’s easy to find comparisons to Ingram. Durant could always shoot and score better than Ingram. He’s not scoring like guys like Blake Griffin and Bernard King, neither of whom were good shooters, at least early in their careers. Then again, he hasn’t been the main man on a team, and those guys were. He’s younger and more of a scorer than Ben Simmons. Gervin took a year to develop, but he was a 23 PPG scorer by age 21, and though he couldn’t shoot threes, he was a very good FT shooter. In the end, statistically, Xavier McDaniel might not be a bad figure to look at (don't cringe; take it with a grain of salt like the deadly accurate Randle to Boozer comparison).

Here are some thoughts on next season:
The role Ingram is playing will have a massive impact on his numbers, but good players find ways to make the roles suit their needs (and vice versa). They tend to thrive in whatever role they’re put in, and they tend to shape their roles to play to their strengths. Ingram could be in the neighborhood of 21.4 points, 5.0 assists, and 6.0 rebounds. The only stat I’d hedge on is assists, as it would require a career best effort. Is that good enough for an ASG?

It's better than a legacy pick like Wade, it's comparable to Beal and Kyrie (though their numbers were better). They're better than Klay's, and they're arguably better than LaMarcus Aldridge's. So, he'll have a shot. He'd be in much better shape in the East.

 

From “trash” to treasure

 

BI will be good...definitely not AD good but pretty good.

 

538 data...

Ingram was a 92.1m value, an up-and-comer. His value dropped to 87.0m.

 

This looks wrong on BI