Quirky players worth your eyeballs

Airballed layups, inexplicable non-dunkers, full-length dives, havoc, and more!

With All-Star selections complete (sorry, Jalen Johnson and LaMelo Ball, I tried!), there’s been plenty of coverage of the league’s best and brightest.

But if you’re watching closely, there are fun players everywhere. They’re making plays and causing chaos in smaller markets, far from the national TV shine. Here are three I’ve particularly enjoyed watching of late.

[Note: I’m leaving this post free, because my upcoming trade grade stuff will be paywalled. If you want to be ahead of the curve, go ahead and become a paying subscriber here to unlock full access to those and all other past and future articles!]

Isaiah Collier, Utah Jazz

The Jazz’s rookie point guard, Isaiah Collier, is quite the viewing experience. He’s always doing something, be it good, bad, or baffling — he draws eyeballs like honey attracts bears. Three things, in particular, stand out.

1) First, we must discuss the passing. Collier is a fire hydrant with a first step. With those broad shoulders, he can smash his way into the paint at will, putting him in an optimal position to pick apart the defense.

He’s started in 11 of the last 13 games. In those 13 games, he’s passing on 50.7% of his 12.3 drives per game — the highest percentage of all 24 players driving at least that many times per game.

Even more impressively, Collier is generating 2.6 assists off his drives — the most in the league in absolute terms. Even guys like Darius Garland and Jalen Brunson, though they drive far more often, fall short.

He excels at getting to the rim and spraying out for corner threes, but he also possesses deft defensive manipulation. Watch him get to the paint and look off the creeping help defender to create space for a pretty dump-off to Kyle Filipowski:

Collier loves him a good bounce pass. Even in midair, he can put the perfect touch on a ball to a streaking teammate:

Collier is an assists machine in coach Will Hardy’s unique offensive system, which routinely maximizes players’ passing abilities. Over his last 13 matches, Collier has been in the top 10 for potential assists per game, so that’s good! (Don’t look at the turnover numbers; they might blind you. He’s a rookie point guard, alright?)

2) Less good, but no less interesting: Collier is one of the worst shotmissers I’ve ever seen. He airballs layups. If you’re wondering how it’s possible to airball a layup, well, here’s one example (and watch Walker Kessler’s reaction on the bench):

Like so many of its brethren, this open shot hits the backboard, then nothing else:

The crazy thing: Collier isn’t even a bad finisher by the numbers — 61% at the rim is more than respectable for a rookie point guard. He’s strong and quick, able to protect the ball with his body despite a very short wingspan. And in general, he makes his layups. So I don’t understand why his misfires miss so badly. I can’t call them clanks because they seemingly never draw iron!

Even Collier’s most notable made bucket of the season came in a frankly hilarious sequence of events. First, Collier waved off Collin Sexton when Sexton demanded the ball in the final seconds of a close game, but he took so long in doing so that he committed one of the most disgustingly avoidable eight-second violations you’ll ever see:

(I must note here that Sexton has the thirstiest hands I’ve seen since prime Dion Waiters. He is constantly clamoring for the ball, no matter where he is or who has it. Fair or not, I can’t help but flash back to those reports from years ago about his teammates [cough, *Kevin Love*, cough] calling him a ball hog when he was a rookie, though Sexton’s since become yet another Hardy passing success story.)

After that debacle led to overtime, Collier took matters into his own hands again, this time netting the game-winner:

The league as a whole is currently obsessed with these guard-guard fake handoff actions, but I can’t tell if this was a designed play or if Collier went rogue to prove himself after his costly mishap. Either way, I love it.

I’m less enamored with the jumper. Collier is an unspeakably poor jump-shooter at this point in his very young career. Per Basketball-Reference, he’s a combined 21-for-101 on shots taken outside of 10 feet. Obviously, that’s not a big sample size, but it’s still a bottom-decile figure.

Rookie point guards almost always struggle with their jumpers, so Collier will undoubtedly improve to some extent with time. He has nowhere to go but up.

3) Collier is a frequent practitioner of the after-shot poke. Whether you like this or not depends on how often in your life you’ve uttered the phrase, “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’!”

What do I mean? Collier will frequently and purposefully give three-point shooters a light tap on the arm or hand to mess with their follow-through. It’s subtle and usually occurs well after the shot so as not to draw the referee’s ire; whether it impacts the shot’s accuracy is questionable, but it sure does annoy his opponents!

This was the most blatant example I’ve seen. Watch as he flies past Trey Murphy and gives him a little love tap on the arm. Further replays showed that this was quite intentional:

I’ve seen him jab a little finger at a shooter’s tum-tum like he’s tickling the Pillsbury Doughboy, a classic playground move. Understandably, opponents don’t enjoy it nearly as much as I do.

Collier usually gets away with it, too. By my manual counting, he’s only been called for a trio of three-point fouls. He’ll get flagged more often as he develops a reputation, but it’s a funny quirk of his game right now.

Ben Sheppard, Indiana Pacers

If you’re unfamiliar with Ben Sheppard, we simply have to address the elephant you don’t even know is in the room. It’s problematic, and I can’t go on until we talk about it.

What is that crawling on this man’s face:

Don’t worry, Ben, I’m sure your mother thinks it’s handsome!

Let’s put the jokes aside, though, because I’m jealous I can’t grow a mustache there’s nothing funny about Sheppard’s impact on the court. I have a running list of notes for every NBA team, and a surprising amount of my Pacers’ file says things like “Ben Sheppard running like madman,” “Ben Sheppard diving all over the place,” and “Ben Sheppard f****** guys up on defense” (I’m a little looser with language in private than I am with you all).

Honestly, that pretty much sums it up. If you like hustlers, you’ll like Sheppard. He’s the guy sliding into home base here:

Sprinting around isn’t the only thing Sheppard can do. Despite a skinny 6’6”, 190-lb frame, he refuses to get pushed around in the post. Ballhandlers struggle to shake him, and screens only help so much. Watch him straight-up bully Khris Middleton:

Sheppard is more limited on the other end. He is putting up six triples per 36 minutes, a reasonable number, and canning them at 37% (although that has declined after a hot start), but stationary catch-and-shoots and running in transition are about all he does. There isn’t much on-ball juice currently.

That’s okay! A team with Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam, Bennedict Mathurin, and Andrew Nembhard has plenty of ballhandling. Sheppard’s job is to caulk the cracks. Shooting is one part; cutting is another, and that’s where I’d like Sheppard to expand his game. Per Synergy, he’s only finished ten possessions off a cut this entire season, well below average for his position. While that’s likely undercounting, it still proves he has plenty of room for growth. He has some finishing craft that pops in transition; he needs to find a way to translate this into the halfcourt.

One weird thing: the man refuses to dunk. He’s 6’6” and had a handful of dunks last year, and while he’s far from an elite vertical athlete, he certainly has chances. Is it a bit? I mean, look at this:

The man has zero dunks in 659 minutes this season; I have no explanation. (Two players taller than him have played more minutes with zero dunks this season, famous non-dunker Jalen Wilson and Cavs’ forward Georges Niang, who is nicknamed “The Minivan.”)

Despite the non-dunks, Sheppard has become a big part of the Pacers’ rotation. It’s clear he’s earned coach Rick Carlisle’s trust (who wouldn’t trust a face like that?), and he’s been part of the closing lineup many times this year.

Josh Okogie, Charlotte Hornets

I have no qualms about the current three-point revolution or how offense is played in today’s NBA. I’ve always enjoyed the league for what it is no matter what point in time we’re talking about, without getting caught up in fruitless backward-looking comparisons.

But my least favorite part about today’s game is that good NBA players who simply aren’t great at shooting are no longer considered good NBA players. It’s not even about accuracy, although that’s heavily correlated. If defenses know you’re a reluctant shooter from deep, they won’t guard you, and the cascading impact of that makes it almost impossible for non-shooting non-centers to play meaningful minutes on good teams.

Case in point: Josh Okogie. A career 30% three-point shooter on low volume, Okogie had been consigned to the end of the bench for a Phoenix team with perennial title aspirations. However, he sprang free when the Suns used him as salary ballast to acquire center Nick Richards, and Charlotte fans are all the richer for it.

He’s a tornado veering around the court chasing the ball. Kids first learning basketball are taught that mindlessly following the rock is bad; offenses can exploit such tendencies. But Okogie isn’t Blinky, mindlessly following a moving sphere. He sprints to where he knows the ball will be:

Okogie routinely posts some of his position’s best steal and block rates, but the defense, while solid, isn’t even Okogie’s calling card.

Okogie is the only sub-6’7” player in the league averaging at least four offensive rebounds per 100 possessions — and he’s 6’4”! When a teammate puts up a shot, Okogie, usually stationed in the corner, missiles to the ball. He has impeccable timing and a savant’s sense of how the ball will bounce. It doesn’t hurt that he’s often guarded by an opponent’s smallest and weakest defender:

I don’t know that Okogie will ever be a reliable offensive weapon (although he is an underrated passer with flair — he has a passion for dropping underhanded dimes). Still, there has to be room for someone with his sheer event-creation juice to contribute to winning basketball. We probably won’t see much of that in Charlotte in the near future, but at least we can see Okogie play at all.