Meet The NBA's Best and Worst Drivers
Zion "Freight Train" Williamson, Bennedict "Reckless Driver" Mathurin, and the ridiculousness of Luka Doncic
Like any professional, big-money sport, the NBA can be full of reckless drivers — and no, I’m not talking about on the road. In golf, you have, well, a literal driver, in American football you have running backs barrelling through the defense, and in basketball, you have guys who drive to the basket without abandon. It kind of comes with the whole NBA package.
Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the best “drivers” in the NBA this season, along with why what they do works so well. On the contrary, we will also look at some of the NBA’s worst drivers and what they should be doing.
To make this a little more objective, I’m using a metric that, while not exactly creative, does a good job of quantifying how good a player is at driving, so to speak. This is the short form of the story:
I’ve compiled every single shot attempt this season, including location, shot type, make/miss, and player names.
I then filtered out every single shot attempt except for ones that included the word “driving” (or similar terminology). This includes driving jumpers, layups, dunks, and so on and so forth.
I calculated each player’s Makes Per Drive (MPD) using [total makes/total drives]
I’ve put players into intervals of 100 driving shot attempts and found the worst and best in each interval based on MPD
Get it? It’s kind of like those little tracking devices that Progressive would have you put in your car so it could stalk your driving habits and start skyrocketing your insurance because you braked too hard — but I digress. Without further ado, a particularly reckless driver out of Indianapolis…
P.S. Yes, MPD is just a fancy shooting percentage metric. It sounds better, though.
P.P.S. This is different from the NBA’s driving field goal percentage metric, as MPD also considers driving jumpers from outside the lane.
Reckless Driver: Bennedict Mathurin (0.43 MPD)
Pacers’ shooting guard Bennedict Mathurin isn’t even 22 yet, so it’s not all that crazy to see him making some ill-advised decisions in the lane. And yet, Mathurin’s case has been especially bad this season.
Out of all players who have taken between 200-299 drives this season (of which the likes of Nikola Jokic, Kyrie Irving, and Donovan Mitchell lie), Mathurin ranks the worst in MPD, making his drives just 43% of the time. Part of this is due to the fact that when the explosive guard drives, he isn’t giving up the ball — and I’m not kidding.
Out of all players who drive at least 7 times per game (AKA, Mathurin’s mark or higher), the Pacers guard is 5th-lowest in passing percentage. Simply put, he’s always going to try to finish it, and it hasn’t exactly worked out perfectly.
When driving into the lane, Mathurin is always looking to make the shot through contact, usually to no avail:
Now, to be fair, this is a guy who can deliver posterizing dunks like he’s the postal service, but he just isn’t taking good shots at the rim.
In a way, it feels very similar to Jalen Green’s struggles (prior to his recent improvements) with attempting to finish at the rim with no rhyme or reason for his efforts. Here’s another case in which Mathurin attempts to complete a fancy finish, despite being faced with one of the NBA’s best rim protectors in Clint Capela:
So what is the solution for Mathurin? Seeing as most of his driving attempts are in fact in the lane, it’d be wise for him to develop a good floater. Currently, he shoots just 40% from the floater range (5 to 9 feet from the basket), while some of the NBA’s best finishers (Anthony Edwards, Kyrie Irving, Jalen Brunson, etc.) shoot well above 50%. Without a reliable floater, bigs will continue to drop back into the paint on drives, letting Mathurin attempt to finish through contact.
The youngin’ has phenomenal potential, though he needs to work out the usual youngin’ issues — inefficiency, poor decision-making, and, well, reckless driving.
School Zone Driver: Luka Doncic (0.66 MPD)
Before I begin, I do not mean this in any sort of derogatory way. That being said, Luka Doncic plays like he’s driving in a school zone — that is, slow, yet never crashes and is all too effective at making other people mad that he can drive so slow and yet score so much.
Out of all players who play at least 32 minutes per game (AKA, mostly stars and starters), Doncic ranks in the bottom 11 in offensive speed at just 4.15 miles per hour, well below the Devin Bookers and Steph Currys (Curries?) of the world. And yet, he is far and away the best player in MPD in the 300-399 attempts range. In my mind, I attribute two reasons to this (other than being insanely talented):
He can hit jumpers in movement better than 99% of players in the league
He has an incredible floater to keep defenses honest
The former has to do with how quickly he can stop on a dime to pull a jumper out of his back pocket. Watch this possession where he pump fakes, drives to the high post, and, without warning, rises up for a three. Despite him being pretty well-contested, he makes it anyway. This is a regular occurrence:
Strangely, this balance of slow speed and fast twitch is what makes Luka’s game thrive against even the stingiest of defenders. He messes up their rhythm with such ease that it almost seems unnatural.
As for his floater game, I could say the opposite of what I said about Mathurin and that would pretty much sum it up. Out of all those players that played 32 minutes per game or more, only Jokic ranks higher than Doncic in field goal percentage — and Doncic takes quadruple the number of attempts as the big man:
Nikola Jokic (2.6 drives per game, 67%)
Luka Doncic (8.1 drives per game, 61.4%)
Domantas Sabonis (2.3 drives per game, 61.3%)
On top of that, he shoots over 56% on floaters, which is second-best in the league (also behind Jokic). He simply slithers his way to the basket and somehow is able to consistently finish while stopping in his tracks like a highly skilled circus elephant:
Out of all the so-called drivers, Doncic is easily the most intriguing. Somehow, by going super slow and messing with his defenders’ rhythm, he’s leading the NBA in total points. He’s the kind of guy who drives oh-so-slowly and has a bumper sticker that says “Baby On Board”, but the baby is Devin Booker.
Hummer Driver: Zion Williamson (0.56 MPD)
Zion Williamson is the best driver in the 500+ attempts interval. He’s also simultaneously the worst driver. Actually, uh, he’s the only driver on the track.
Yes, the Pelicans freight train has taken nearly 600 driving shots this season, which is almost 100 more than the second-place driver, Tyrese Maxey. When you watch Zion play, you’d probably categorize him as a reckless driver. Yet, due to the fact that his bodily force is the equivalent of getting hit by a Mack truck, it doesn’t quite matter.
Now, while Zion is driving more than any other player in the league, it is important to note that he isn’t quite as elite in MPD as his pedigree might indicate. Giannis Antetokoumpo, who is arguably the most similar in driving style (if we are to call it that), has a 0.68 MPD compared to Zion’s 0.56, which is actually quite a significant jump. Doncic, Jokic, and even Zion’s teammate, Brandon Ingram, have better MPD scores than the big man in the Big Easy — though that shouldn’t discredit him in the slightest.
The reason it shouldn’t is because defenses know exactly what Zion is going to do every single time. And yet, they cannot stop him. He drives left on the majority of his drives, finishes with his left hand most of the time, and is, well, predictable. And, once again, it hasn’t mattered one bit. Additionally, what separates Zion from other big-barrelling guys like Giannis is this: he doesn’t actually dunk as much as you might assume — especially given the clip I chose above.
If you don’t watch a lot of Pelicans games, you likely think of Zion as the former Duke dunking machine, throwing down jams from near the free-throw line. He hasn’t lost that capability in the slightest, though he isn’t throwing it down near as much as some of his compatriots. For example, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, LeBron James, Amen Thompson (!), and Kelly Oubre Jr. (???) have all made more dunks this season than Zion has — that makes Williamson 38th in the league. In other words, Zion is driving to the basket with the intent to finish through contact, not dunk the ball. That effectively limits his MPD ceiling, and the fact he’s even above 0.50 is a marvel in and of itself.
Case in point, Zion goes for high-contact, (theoretically) low-percentage looks like these, yet he makes them all the same:
Playing against Zion is like playing against The Juggernaut — you just can’t stop him from breaking every big man in sight.
Honorary Good/Bad/Ugly Drivers
Yes, Giannis pretty much rules the MPD category — what else did you think? He’s like Zion, except older, wiser, and taller.
Christian Braun…sheesh. Not only is the Nuggets glue guy at the bottom of the MPD metric in the 100-199 attempt range, but he tries to make layups even when smothered by the defense quite a bit. Look, I love the guy, he plays hard, and will have a long NBA career most likely, but there’s way too much of this:
Nikola Jokic, slow as ever, is killing it in the MPD department. Honestly, there’s nothing he doesn’t do well, except for, possibly, acting like he cares about basketball — but that’s alright.
I’ll let Tyrese Maxey slide for now because he’s having to do a lot with Embiid out, but his numbers on drives are below average — he’s below 0.50 in MPD to boot. You tend to see a lot of point guards at the lower end of the MPD spectrum, but if you combine both Maxey’s attempt numbers and shooting percentages, you can give him a pass. Still needs to improve with Embiid out on occasion.
Paolo Banchero is in the same boat as Maxey but is in a more crucial situation on drives because he isn’t quite the shooter that Maxey is. Not quite a reckless driver, but one in need of a little more training — you can’t argue with his stats, though.
That’s it for today’s article! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s roundup and, as always, more content is on the way — and a mailbag may be in the near future…
Great article! What was your data source?
Why did I think this was about operating a motor vehicle when I saw the notification