1. The E'Twaun Moore-Anthony Davis floater game, and the 15 percenters
Moore might sport the league's silkiest floater, and Alvin Gentry makes it sing by pairing Moore and Davis in a two-man game with a very specific geographic alignment:
That is basically a high-speed wing pick-and-roll, with no other Pelican on the Moore-Davis side of the floor. Emptying that area creates a dilemma for defenses. Some help schemes would dictate a third defender slide in from that right wing to bump Davis. But no one is there.
Help duty should then fall to
Serge Ibaka, guarding
Julius Randle in the paint. But what if
Nikola Mirotic is in for Randle, and spotting up 30 feet away?
Moore and Davis have counters for every counter. Have Moore's man skitter under that pick, so Davis's defender can stay home? Moore is ready.
A switch leaves two mismatches:
Overplay the lob, and Davis can fade to the corner. There are no good answers, and that is because the simplest answer -- let Moore shoot what is normally a low-value floater -- is a bad one, too. Moore has hit an insane 58 percent of "short midrange" shots -- i.e., floaters -- after canning 53 percent last season, among the very best marks in the league,
per Cleaning The Glass.
The Moore-Davis dance has remarkably developed into a foundational block in New Orleans' half-court offense. They tortured Toronto with it until the Raptors assigned
Kawhi Leonard to Moore so they could switch without slipping into fatal mismatches. If Leonard is on Moore, a lesser defender has to take
Jrue Holiday. Another bad answer.
Moore has hit 49 percent from deep after finishing above 42 percent in two of the past three seasons. He can defend two and sometimes three positions. He is among many nondescript "pretty good" wings who get tagged as replaceable. You might be able to find something like 85 percent of Moore's production at a cheaper rate, though that is becoming less true as Moore improves and salaries rise.
Even so: That 15 percent is the difference between someone who can play in the playoffs, and someone who can't.