Thunder fans are inherently in favor of players who do all the little things well. We love players who are gritty, are willing to grind defensively and don’t need the ball to be effective. As a result of this mindset, we are all predisposed to like a player like Andre Roberson. His value to the team is almost entirely encapsulated by those little things.
He defends, hustles and rebounds all while never needing (or wanting) a shot on offense. He is exactly the type of player we all want to like. However, after his second year in the league, the Oklahoma City Thunder have good reason to be concerned about his ability to contribute to the team long term.
Roberson does not need to be an offensive juggernaut to be effective. He will never be the team’s leading scorer and would be hard pressed to ever eclipse the status of offensive afterthought. Instead, his value to the team will always be his defense, hustle and rebounding.
The 6′ 7″ shooting guard uses his length and quickness to bother skilled opposing perimeter players and his incessant motor makes him a pest on that end of the floor. His advanced stats clearly illustrate that his defensive value is well above average. His defensive win share number is 1.6 and his defensive box plus/minus checks in at a very healthy 2.1. Roberson checks all of the defensive boxes you look for both in terms of advanced metrics and the eye test. There can be no doubt that he is a well above average perimeter defender.
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Unfortunately for the Colorado product, the game is played at both ends of the floor. In much the same way that Enes Kanter‘s defensive stats jump off the page at you in a horrible fashion, the same goes for Roberson’s offensive stats. Now we knew when we drafted him that we were not selecting the second coming of Kobe Bryant on that end of the floor. The Thunder front office was clearly planning to take immediate advantage of Roberson’s defensive skills while developing his offensive game to an acceptable level.
When taking a look at Roberson’s raw numbers you can see some seemingly positive signs in this department. He improved his three point shooting percentage almost 10 points (granted it was a leap from just 15 percent to 25 percent) and his scoring average increased from 1.9 to 3.4 ppg. These seem to be statistics that lend credence to the idea that Roberson is developing, however slightly, a better offensive game.
Unfortunately, the advanced stats do quite a bit to discredit this idea. His PER only went up by .1 from his rookie season and his true shooting percentage actually declined. What’s even more concerning to me, is that his overall rebounding rate declined significantly as a result of a big drop in his offensive rebound percentage.
These trends are very troubling if the Thunder want Roberson to develop into a starting shooting guard. His offensive game during his rookie season was nothing short of comical at times. Given his low starting point, a reasonable expectation would have been to see substantial gains across the board last year. As I’ve demonstrated here with these advanced stats, it’s highly questionable as to whether or not we saw any offensive development game from Roberson on the whole. For a player at Roberson’s age and experience level, we should have seen more.
It’s important to note that statistics aren’t everything. While they are a helpful tool in analyzing player contribution and development they don’t tell the whole story. In fairness to Roberson, he was working to diversify his game quite a big last season and that typically leads to inefficiencies. It’s not surprising to see that increased attention regarding his perimeter shot may have led to less attention paid to offensive rebounding for instance.
The eye test clearly shows that Roberson has made some offensive gains in spite of what the advanced stats say.
One is forced to ask two questions when analyzing Roberson. First, has he progressed quickly enough to keep him as a part of the Thunder’s long term plans? And secondly, can he develop his offensive game enough to be a starter at the two-guard?
Unfortunately for Roberson and the team, his offensive development hasn’t developed at a suitable level to feel much optimism on either of those two fronts. At this point in time, you must say that his ceiling in a Thunder uniform is as a defensive specialist off the bench, rather than the starting caliber two-way guard we were hoping for with our first-round pick.