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The Little Things Matter: A Robin Lopez Story

By Jake Shubert

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New York and Robin Lopez are seemingly incongruous. New York is a city of glitz and glam and Robin Lopez trumpets substance over style. New York is always the main attraction, the star of the show. Lopez… well, Lopez is more like Sideshow Bob.

Yet, what’s absent from the sweeping archetype that characterizes New York as glitz and glam rather than, to steal from Memphis, grit and grind, is that New York is mostly a place of laborious blue-collar workers. It’s why the Garden so adored Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley and Kurt Thomas and all of the other guys who worked hard to prioritize the whole over the individual. So, although many wept over Greg Monroe spurning the bright lights of the Big Apple for the fierce winter of Milwaukee, the proper response should have been to glance to the west and rejoice. For the last two years in Portland, Robin Lopez accepted an overtly secondary role alongside Damian Lillard and LaMarcus Aldridge with a simultaneous grace and vigor that propelled him to becoming one of the best unsung players in the NBA.

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Robin Lopez is not Greg Monroe, or LaMarcus Aldridge, or Kevin Love, or any of the other top-flight big men that were available in Free Agency. He is not a guy who can get you 20 points and 10 rebounds on any given night. Instead Lopez’s value emerges when looking at the little things, the advanced nuances of basketball that the traditional box score so systematically fails to grasp.

So, together, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why RoLo is (deservedly) making 54 million dollars over four years.

For starters, opponents shot 48% at the rim when attacking Lopez. That puts Lopez ahead of guys such as the ever-flaky DeAndre Jordan, Anthony Davis, LeBron James, Marc Gasol, and Joakim Noah. The Knicks last year were a sieve defensively and Lopez’s knack for successfully being the last line of defense should help significantly push the Knicks’ defense toward mediocrity (and that’s, like, a huge step forward!).

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One of the toughest parts about building a roster around Carmelo Anthony is that you need players who have the ability to eat but aren’t particularly shot hungry; guys who are willing to get feast when dinner is served. This was one of the (many) reasons that ‘Melo and Tyson Chandler were a fantastic duo at the 4/5 spot. Thankfully, Lopez is in the Chandler mold. Of all players who played at least 20 minutes per game last year, Lopez had the 16th least touches per game, possessing the rock only 28.5 times per game. I mean, for comparisons sake, Randy Foye, Tarik Black, and Hollis Thompson touched the ball more frequently. On that same note, Lopez proved to be decisive last year when he did get the ball form his Trailblazer teammates as evidenced by his 14th lowest time of possession ranking in the NBA.

So, it’s clear that Lopez isn’t shot hungry or ball dominant. But, despite the fact that RoLo didn’t even touch double figure totals in points per game last year, he still displayed a crafty, effective, and efficient feel for putting that orange ball through that dang hoop. Lopez’s .563 points per half court touch was 16th in the NBA last year, ahead of players like Al Jefferson, Klay Thompson, Dwight Howard, and Kevin Durant. Moreover, of all the players who took at least 3 “close” shots per game (NBA.com defines this as any shot taken by a player on a play where the initial touch originates 12 feet from the hoop or closer, excluding drives), Lopez ranked 16th with a field goal percentage of 63.8%. That number is even more impressive because the majority of the players slotted ahead of Lopez on this list are athletic bigs who throw down thunderous dunks on pick and rolls and alley-oops like DeAndre Jordan, Tyson Chandler, Anthony Davis, Rudy Gobert, and so on.

Apr 11, 2015; Portland, OR, USA; Portland Trail Blazers center Robin Lopez (42) goes up for a shot on Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert (27) and Utah Jazz forward Trevor Booker (33) during the first quarter of the game at Moda Center at the Rose Quarter. Mandatory Credit: Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports

So, Lopez can protect the rim, he can score a bit, and, ummmm, oh yeah! He’s also an awesome rebounder! Out of every NBA player who logged at least 20 minutes per game, Lopez 51.5 contesting rebound percentage ranked 5th. Also, LaMarcus Aldridge was a dramatically better rebounder when playing alongside Robin Lopez, giving further credence to the idea that CARMELO ANTHONY SHOULD PLAY POWER FORWARD NEXT YEAR. I’m sorry for yelling. You didn’t deserve that.

Lastly, let’s exalt Lopez’s defensive acumen. The former Blazers center held his opponents to 46% shooting last year. When those same players faced guys whose name wasn’t Robin Lopez, they shot 47.9%. That’s a differential of 1.9%! That’s awesome! To further unpack this idea, let’s focus on the areas where Lopez mostly protects (the rim and the paint) and ignore the areas where he’s normally covering up for someone else’s mistakes (like the three point line). When doing this we can see that Lopez’s opponents shoot 3.3% worse on two pointers when covered by Lopez and they shoot an astounding 5.3% worse against Lopez when the shooting distance is less than 10 feet.

The point of this exercise isn’t to say that Robin Lopez is a better rim-protector than Anthony Davis or a better scorer than Kevin Durant or anything crazy like that. Merely, it’s just to prove that Lopez’s game is an under-appreciated, multi-faceted, and effective commodity. Lopez can block shots, defend, rebound, and score a bit. He doesn’t need the ball to thrive, he’s willing to do the dirty work, and as an added bonus, he’s also a notoriously hard screener. Lopez is a great fit next to ‘Melo for the present and an incredibly easy player to build alongside in the future. He may not have been the big man we thought Gotham deserved when Free Agency first started, but he’s the big man we need right now. Shout out to Batman.

(All stats in this article were found on NBA.com)

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