This inaugural edition of Coach Spin’s Clipboard marks the start of a new weekly post on some of the more intriguing statistical and on-court observations from around the NBA. With a combination of Synergy data analysis and coaching expertise sprinkled in, the purpose is to unearth some gems floating around the league that might not otherwise be discussed in an online forum.

Seeking to combine the “what” that is often derived from statistics with the “how” or “why” that comes from film study, the Clipboard should be one of your first stops when seeking to understand the minutiae of the league.

J.J. the Table-Setter

Over the weekend, NBA.com’s statistician John Schuhmann tweeted one of his frequent updates for players that improve most among common statistical categories from one year to the next. Usually the list is littered with young players who are finally breaking into a regular rotation role, if not a prominent starting one. It should come as no surprise Kris Dunn leads with the biggest positive jump in points per game, or that Jaylen Brown is top five in points, rebounds and minutes increases. Opportunity is the biggest indicator of raw statistical production.

But one name catches the eye: Philadelphia 76ers shooting guard J.J. Redick has produced 2.2 more assists per game this season than he did last year with the Los Angeles Clippers. He’s doing so with only a slight uptick in playing time, and the per-36-minute statistics back that up, increasing from 1.8 in 2016-17 to 3.8 this year.

Shooters’ roles in transition, as well as the half-court, are to utilize themselves as threats, with a gravity-like force that sucks defenders towards them and opens up the rim. But Brett Brown and his Sixers haven’t pigeonholed Redick, and he’s become a fantastic playmaker as a result.

Surprisingly, Redick has 15 assists in transition this season—a high mark for a player who usually runs to the three-point line and provides spacing. Compare that to 17 all of last season with the Clippers, and you see just how big a boom this is for J.J. These aren’t just mundane passes, either:

Great shooters like Redick make everyone around them better just by existing and garnering attention. The NBA has evolved so that shooting is a bigger threat than ever before, and veterans who have been around the game long enough, like the Duke product, learn the ins and outs of just how to get others involved with their presence.

On an aside, Redick has been the absolute perfect signing for these post-Process Sixers: a fun, personable veteran who knows how to compete and win but meshes with the youngsters. He’s made such an unbelievable impact on and off the court for Philly. Say what you will about Bryan Colangelo, but he hit an absolute home run on this signing.

New Orleans’ Historic Duo

We knew the Boogie-and-Brow combination would be lethal; we just didn’t know how it would manifest itself.

Credit New Orleans Pelicans writer Justin Jett for unearthing this gem: Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins are on pace to be the first tandem in 20 years, and only the fifth since the NBA-ABA merger, to each average 20 points and 10 rebounds.

From a statistical standpoint, each kills two birds with one stone on the offensive end of the court. Cousins and Davis both average over two offensive rebounds per night, though they anchor a team that doesn’t crash the glass too much (22nd in offensive rebounding rate, and somehow fifth in pace despite playing two true posts).

It turns out that despite an insane number of chances on the offensive glass, Davis and Cousins are just wildly efficient on their put-back attempts. On “short” offensive rebounds, which Synergy defines as shots that fall within five feet of the basket, the two are a combined 59-of-74—yes, that’s 81 percent—from the floor.

Having both bigs on the floor has sparked the Pelicans offense because, well, both are there to clean up misses. Somehow this roster, which was outcasted for its lack of three-point shooting, is seventh in three-point percentage one-third of the way into the season. It also lets fly with knowledge that two brutish posts are waiting down low to collect any miss:

New Orleans is hovering around .500 and hard-capped, making midseason additions difficult. But for now, the Pelicans are making it work on the offensive end by abusing smaller teams inside and letting the perimeter players jack up threes, trusting their bigs to do the work inside.

Screen-Slippers

The NBA is a copycat league, so once the Golden State Warriors began to win with their small-ball lineups and effective switching schemes on defense, many other squads began to follow suit. With that has come the return to prominence of one of the easiest and most well-known counters to ball-screen switches: slipping the screen.

The idea is to catch the two defenders as they pass off the assignment to one another. There’s a split-second, just as the screen arrives, where both would be at the level of the ball to make sure at least one player is guarding it. Those same defenders start to anticipate that action and will cheat the process, jumping out from guarding the screener to picking up the ball. That leaves the screener wide open if he changes course and darts to the rim, momentarily unguarded.

Tyson Chandler of the Phoenix Suns is one of the best in the league at this, and he puts a ton of pressure on the rim because of the ferocity with which he rolls to the basket. Tyler Zeller is a perfect 6-of-6 on shots coming out of a slipped screen, per Synergy. Kristaps Porzingis leads the league with roughly one point per game coming out of a slip, which can be either a dart to the rim or popping the screen to the perimeter for a catch-and-shoot attempt.

Slips to the rim put much more pressure on the defense than slips in a pick-and-pop situation. It’s why the Oklahoma City Thunder’s offense has been so frustrating so far this season. Both Paul George and Carmelo Anthony are the two most frequent screen-slippers in the league. Synergy Sports tracking data has them doing so 82 and 71 percent of the time, respectively. But both frequently slip into the mid-range for possession-killing isolations.

The leverage of slipping a screen, especially against a switch or an aggressive hedge, is the application of pressure on the other three defenders who scramble to take away the rim. By popping to the wing predictably (George does it four of every five times he sets a ball screen) defenses aren’t forced to help, so it begs the question: What type of advantage is this slipped screen really creating?

One-Sided Mario

Tenants haven’t completely vacated the “Mario Hezonja deserves a shot” bandwagon, despite the Orlando Magic declining their team option for him following the season. The former No. 5 overall pick is only in his third NBA season, and still has plenty of ceiling to reach at only 22 years old. The guy is a solid three-point shooter (39 percent on the season) and has a good deal of vertical athleticism. Hezonja flashed his upside to the rest of the world this weekend, scoring 28 against the Detroit Pistons while going 8-of-12 from deep.

He was SCORCHING.

Yet I’m still hesitant to dive head-first into the Super Mario Reclamation Project. The streaky three-point shooting aside, Hezonja is incredibly predictable with his drives. Good three-point shooters who are fairly one-dimensional usually have the same thing written about them in scouting reports: Close out at them hard, run them off the three-point line and make them either score on the move or throw the ball around the gym trying to create for others.

Hezonja takes this to the next level, as defenses must add to their report that he’s not a threat when driving to his left. The Synergy profile (albeit a small-sample-size alert) indicates just as much. He’s scored on four of five possessions after a spot-up that he’s driven to his right this season. He’s 0-of-3 when going to his left, with a 40 percent turnover rate.

In general, Mario struggles to use his left off the bounce. During the Dec. 13th game against the Los Angeles Clippers, they cut off all drives to his right, forcing him to spin back left. The strategy resulted in two turnovers on nearly identical drives:

Head coach Frank Vogel has experimented with moving Hezonja to small-ball 4 roles and trying to find ways to alleviate his lack of playmaking for others. There’s a home for catch-and-shoot wings in the NBA, but the young forward must first prove he can take care of the ball and be a little more balanced with his offensive repertoire.

Atlanta’s New Signee

The Atlanta Hawks recently converted the contract of Tyler Cavanaugh from a two-way into a regular NBA deal, signing him until July 2019. They’re currently the worst team in the league by record and are battling without two of their best post players in Dewayne Dedmon and Mike Muscala. Those factors, along with the injury to rookie John Collins, have opened the door for Cavanaugh to get spot minutes in the Hawks rotation.

He’s seized that opportunity.

The stretch-forward for Atlanta has shot an outrageous 64.5 percent from inside the arc and better than 40 percent from deep. Per NBA Math’s TPA calculations, Cavanaugh is second in the Hawks in offensive points added (OPA) despite playing fewer than 300 minutes. The only rookies with a higher OPA score thus far: Jayson Tatum and O.G. Anunoby.

Heading into games on December 19, here's how all NBA rookies have fared in TPA throughout the 2017-18 season: pic.twitter.com/Yxu4LLewJS — NBA Math (@NBA_Math) December 19, 2017

Certainly the small sample size is in play here, and Cavanaugh’s shooting percentages will come back down to a more planetary level. But teams like the Hawks, in the midst of a rebuild they’d like to be as brief as possible, are all about finding guys who can provide an effective punch in the minutes they play. Cavanaugh has all the traits of a long-term NBA role player.

Lone Wolves

A big deal is being made about Minnesota Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau’s minutes allocation, and rightfully so. The team’s fourth-quarter performance is abysmal, its transition defense sits near the bottom of the league and the record in close games (4-6 in games decided in overtime or by four points and fewer) is worse than the overall 18-13 mark.

Throughout the course of a long season, the regular-season wins will become less important compared to avoiding fatigue or injury, and Thibs has always been criticized for the metrics that reflect his team’s fatigue.

Perhaps the biggest plight to their offense, though, is the team’s poor mark in isolations. Minnesota is currently 28th in the league in points per possession during one-on-one plays, which comprise nearly 9 percent of its offense. Only six teams run more isolations than the Wolves, and three of them (the Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Clippers and Cleveland Cavaliers) are among the top four in efficiency. Minnesota’s plight here is really putrid for the volume, as it scores less than 40 percent of the time in these types of sets.

The Wolves currently have a minus-10.1 net rating in the fourth quarter of games. Wowza is that unbecoming of a team currently seeded No. 4 in the Western Conference.

Blame the rotation. Blame the transition defense. Many culprits are in play.

But their isolation offense has been as stagnant as stagnant can be and makes it quite difficult for the offense to get a crunch-time bucket. A team that averages 22.6 assists per game—and only 4.5 in the fourth quarter—is certainly bound to struggle to mitigate its defensive woes in close contests.

All stats accurate as of December 19, 2017. Unless otherwise noted, statistics courtesy of Synergy Sports Tech, basketball-reference or NBA.com’s stats bureau.