Eric Paschall Is Pretty Good At Basketball
During the Warriors’ sixth-last game of the season (thus far), the Suns broadcast quoted Steve Kerr as saying that everyone would get the chance to handle the ball during that game. That might have seemed like an exaggeration, but once Kevon Looney received extensive opportunities to handle the ball on the perimeter, it became clear that Kerr wasn’t joking. One of the players who benefited greatly from the increase in on-ball reps was rookie Eric Paschall. Over the first 54 games of his season, he had averaged 1.7 assists per game (1.06 AST/TOV), but during the last six games, he increased that number greatly to 6 assists per game without committing more turnovers than before (4 AST/TOV). He recorded 4 or more assists 10 times this season, and six of them came in a row before the league went on hiatus. In this article, I’ll try to describe how well Paschall did as an on-ball creator, what his strengths and weaknesses are, and how he might fit into a Warriors team that includes Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.
Paschall has unique physical tools. Listed at 6’6" and 255lbs, he doesn’t look or play like most of his peers. He doesn’t possess the explosiveness or quickness of Zion Williamson or Charles Barkley and struggles to blow by other forwards in isolation, but he has an alternative. Instead of trying to go past his opponents, he uses brute strength to go straight through them, bullying his matchup right to the rim if necessary. According to Basketball-Reference, he’s converted 72.5% of his shots within three feet of the basket; a truly elite number for a perimeter player. Despite his limitations in terms of explosiveness, Paschall has also scored 0.982 PPP in 113 isolation shooting possessions, which ranks in the 72nd percentile according to Synergy. He also uses his physique to gather 1.8 offensive rebounds per 75 possessions and take smaller players into the post if he has the opportunity. In addition to the self-created scoring, he also excels as a cutter. Per Synergy, Paschall’s 82 cuts have resulted in 115 points (1.40 PPP/74th percentile).
Furthermore, he shows some flashes of an outside game as well. He’s only made 28.7% (37/129) of his threes thus far, but the Warriors seem to have identified the problem already. Paschall jumps very high on his shot and releases the ball in mid-air instead of on the way up. Seeing Paschall majestically dangle in the air before releasing the shot might look impressive, but the Warriors want him to work on more of a set shot, which he’s already been doing in pratice but not yet in games. All the other shooting indicators suggest that he could end up a decent-to-good three-point shooter: he’s shooting 77.4% from the line (76.5% in college), 42.2% from 10-16ft and 45.3% 16ft to the three-point line; impressive numbers. The improved understanding of efficiency in recent years has led to the elimination of midrange shots by bad shooters, but Paschall seems to be too good from there already to not let him shoot midrangers from time to time.
Paschall displayed solid but not spectacular playmaking ability in these six games. He failed to create many advantage situations on drives or in the pick-and-roll but managed to create open/easy shots by being patient and waiting for passing windows to open. His handle isn’t amazing by any stretch of imagination, but he occasionally uses very subtle ball manipulations, like a little in-and-out, to sway opponents in the wrong direction. In the pick-and-roll, he was quite effective hitting the roll-man with lobs if his man was at a disadvantage after the screen (due to Paschall’s strength, teams are often willing to switch their big onto him, which usually prevents these advantage situations from happening) and at hitting cutters out of the post or from the perimeter. Overall, he’s a decent playmaker with solid vision, but he could really benefit if he drew more defensive attention behind the three-point line because that would give him more advantage situations going downhill. The addition of Mychal Mulder definitely helped his assist numbers too. The talented play-finisher found himself on the receiving end of almost one quarter of Paschall’s assists during this six-game stretch.
Defensively, he did quite well in 1v1 situations, keeping forwards like Cam Johnson and even Pascal Siakam in front of him. His strength is really beneficial in those situations because he doesn’t get bumped off spots easily, which makes it hard to blow by him if you don’t have a significant speed-advantage (To give you an idea of how strong he is, Kyle Lowry(!) ran into him at high speed and bounced off like a tennis ball of the racket.) Everything besides man-to-man defense, however, wasn’t great. At times, he didn’t quite make the correct rotation. As the defender of the roll-man, he infrequently showed without actually putting much pressure on the ballhandler, which led to an open dunk every time. In some situations, he closed out with long strides at full speed, leaving him with no chance to recover if the offensive player did anything else than shoot immediately, and he was sporadically caught watching the ball too much. You would expect all of these attributes to improve in the future, but his current defensive ability was probably best described accurately by Nate Duncan on the Dunc’d On-Podcast: He won’t get you killed defensively.
Regarding his fit with the Warriors’ other stars, it is important to note that lineups with Paschall and Draymond on the floor together this season were outscored by 10.7 points per 100 possessions (398 minutes) according to pbpstats.com. Both are (currently) inadequate outside shooters and benefit from a spaced floor. Therefore, playing them together should be avoided as much possible, unless it’s a special lineup that includes a lot of shooting around them (e.g. Curry/Mulder/Thompson/Paschall/Green). The fit with Curry and Thompson seems much easier. Paschall should be able to find them when they’re open, can take over some ball-handling duties (especially when Curry is off the floor), and his isolation and inside-scoring-game should benefit from improved floor spacing. How much Paschall actually contributes next season depends a lot on how well the new shot drops, but he should at least be a solid complementary piece. While it’s impossible to predict what the Warriors roster will look like at the start of the 20/21-season, its depth already looks to be much less grim than that of the 18/19-roster, as the Curry-less lineups could include some combination of Thompson/Wiggins, Paschall, Lee, Poole, Mulder and a Top-5 pick in the 2020 Draft.
Finally, I’d like to say that Paschall won’t and shouldn’t feature on any Top-100 players list at the start of the 20/21 season, but he’s ridiculously fun to watch and I’d expect his highlights to be circulated (and his talent to be discussed) much more next season, since he’ll play on a good team that features one of the most exciting players in NBA history.
