Obi Toppin is suddenly one of the New York Knicks’ most valuable players
By Adam Kester
New York Knicks: Obi Toppin’s stock is rising
What’s the current perception of Obi Toppin? He’s a “sparkplug”. He’s a stretch-4 who is still a work in progress at being a stretch-4. He’s a high-flyer, but not much else?
In all honestly, it’s really difficult to figure out good player comparisons for Obi Toppin. I think for the high-end comparisons we usually go to guys like Blake Griffin and Amar’e Stoudemire, but even those don’t feel right.
One, it’s not really fair to Obi to compare him to perennial All-Stars. On the other hand, I don’t remember Stoudemire or Griffin being as ridiculously fast and relentless moving off-ball as Toppin. I can’t think of many power forwards who are.
We’ve been so focused on Toppin’s “next steps” as a player who can create his own offense, that sometimes, we don’t even realize how impactful he is without the ball in his hands.
Toppin has averaged 10.5 points in his last 4 games, with 12 points on 6/11 from the field in the team’s most recent game with the Lakers.
Some injuries to the New York Knicks’ frontcourt have cleared the way for increased minutes for Toppin. His recent play may have made this increased role more permanent.
It hasn’t just been his usual impact as a rim runner, he’s shown a lot of commitment to defense. Although he doesn’t have quite enough minutes played to be qualified, Toppin’s defensive box plus/minus, one of the more individual defensive metrics, would rank 37th among all NBA players and in the top 77% percentile.
Becoming an NBA defender takes time and Obi Toppin is starting to put it together. He has the length to recover on the perimeter, he’s quick on his rotations, and he finds himself in the right spot more often than not.
This doesn’t feel like a trend, this feels like a young player figuring out how they can maximize their strengths in the NBA.
I don’t think we understood how much we really needed Obi Toppin on this team.