Sacramento Kings take your best shot: Georgios Papagiannis
By Tyler Watts
A Royal Pain continues our take your best shot series with a look at where Georgios Papagiannis should fire his shots from on the NBA hardwood.
The Sacramento Kings drafted a young center from Greece named Georgios Papagiannis at pick 13 in the 2016 NBA Draft. Papagiannis’ name burst from the commissioner’s mouth before the likes of Skal Labissiere, Tyler Ulis, and Malcolm Brogdon. The selection created an expectation, and Big George has yet to live up to that billing.
Today, we examine the 20-year-old Papagiannis’ offensive abilities to determine where he takes his most efficient shot. Without further ado, let us roll right into it.
Papagiannis’ best shot
Georgios Papagiannis only logged 355 minutes on the NBA court last season. That would be a small sample size to draw from especially when considering much of that was in mop up duty, so I took a peek at his stats from G-League last season. In Reno, he played 739 minutes, so if we put the two data sets together, a nice sample size presents itself.
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I did not include the two shot charts because I thought it would look awkward one on top of the second, but you can find his NBA shot chart here and his G-League shot chart here to reference for yourself.
In both tables, nearly all Papagiannis’ shots come in four zones. The zones are the four closest to the basket with his preference being the restricted area, but he is not afraid to shoot from in the paint. His best shot is attacking the basket as he connects on 142 of 236 attempts from in close or just over 60%. He has less than 50 attempts from any other zone, so it would difficult to draw a strong statistical correlation. It also shows that Big George prefers getting to the rim to score.
Final Thoughts
Georgios Papagiannis plays like a traditional five and prefers to attack the basket to score. His traditional center tendencies are my worry for him. The league is changing to small ball and position-less basketball. Papagiannis could be left behind unless he begins scoring from at least the mid-range or proving he can be such a force on the low block the opposition is required to adjust to him. Both seem like stretches at this stage meaning Papagiannis will struggle to find minutes again this season. Here is to hoping for improvements from Big George.
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