Kemba is not the problem. He hasn’t been himself yet, but he still has graded out as a net positive on RAPTOR or a modest negative by RPM. BPM also has him right around average so far. Statistically, setting aside 2P%, he’s also been fine. His rebounding, passing, steals, 3P%, turnovers, etc. are all consistent with career norms. The average distance of his shots is also exactly the same as last year.
On 2s, Kemba is also, contrary to popular belief, finishing fine at the rim. What he’s not doing is getting there, and he’s also shooting poorly in the 10-three range, but that is likely just a sample size issues since his threes and FT are fine.
For his career, Kemba takes about 25% of his shots at the rim. Last year he was at 20%. This year 10%. He’s also taking 17% of his shots from 3-10 instead of his historical average of 10% and has seen upticks in long 2s. The result has been a lot of misses in traffic in the lane, shots Kemba, and this is important, has always been bad at. He’s .326 for his career from 3-10, was .273 last year, and is .250 this year. There’s an open question here on whether he’s taking those 3-10 shots because he can’t get to the rim or if he’s still just figuring it out. I also wonder how much our general flow issues are creating problems for him. Kemba seems like he’s been getting by his guy a lot to find a stacked lane and getting stuck. I’m not sure that’s an athleticism problem or an issue of the team needing more ball movement to create more open space, but I’d lean toward it being more the latter.
Put differently, I think people have rushed to judgment on Kemba. He might be entering a bad decline, but I see a lot more the same Kemba who struggled a bit to find his shooting touch but has also really struggled with the fact that our stagnant offense has let teams jam the lane. I’m still expecting him to be the guy who was a perennial all star the last 4 years once the team gets right.