Power Forward Thursdays: Where can TJ Leaf improve?

TJ Leaf hasn’t gotten much burn as a rookie so far. But he has shown that he can be a knockdown shooter. Where can the youngster improve to get more minutes going forward?

TJ Leaf’s NBA skills are emblematic of the way basketball is currently played. He’s a power forward because he’s 6’10”, not because he has the skills that a conventional power forward does. Far from it, actually.

A quick glance at the three-point percentage (for guys with more than 25 attempts) leaderboard shows Leaf placed third in the entire NBA. Already. As a rookie. That is what the Pacers front office saw in him on draft night. Teams now require power forwards, and even centers at times, to be able to hit the deep ball so the floor is more spaced for everyone else. Leaf is the perfect stencil for that type of player, knocking down nearly every other three-pointer he attempts.

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For his age, this is a stupendous feat. But the list of things Leaf does exceptionally well stops there. For his size, he isn’t particularly strong on the glass. As a play finisher, he rarely has the ball enough to make a quality pass. He is in his first season and doesn’t have a ton of muscle mass, so he is a sieve on defense.

All that matters. His three-point shooting is good enough, and his development is important enough, that he can occasionally be put on the floor with minimal consequences. But he’s going to have to play more eventually, the Pacers wouldn’t have drafted him in the first round were that not the case. In order for him to play more, he’s going to have to improve in some important areas of the game.

On the forefront of his needed offensive improvement is dribbling. TJ Leaf can dribble, obviously, he’s in the NBA. But he rarely does anything productive like beat a man off the dribble or create an opportunity for another Pacer. When he puts the ball on the floor, rarely do good things happen:

What dribbling would allow him to do is beat a guy off the catch who closes out hard on him. Look here as he takes a contested three instead of driving past the hard closeout into the open lane:

There is the occasional time where Leaf puts it on the floor and makes the right play. However, these rare moments usually produce a poor result, thanks to raw finishing skills off the bounce:

Those are two brutal misses from the same game that both could have been corrected if Leaf was a more refined ball-handler. It shows up on the stat sheet too. When TJ Leaf shoots off of 0 dribbles, he cans those shots 52.4 percent of the time. When he shoots after dribbling 3-6 times? That figure falls to 33.3 percent. He needs to be a stronger dribble to round out his offensive game. Combine it with his great shooting and solid passing and he would be a useful player.

On defense, TJ Leaf could be better at just about everything. A good start would be simply just staying in front of his man. Keeping up with the speed of the NBA game is challenging for any rookie, and Leaf is starting to learn, as he told me earlier this month.

But take a look at this clip of DJ Wilson just flying by him after starting behind the three-point line. Leaf had no chance and was already beaten by a full stride at the free throw line:

Leaf has a long way to go on that end of the floor. Staying in front is the first step, and he can’t do it at all. Even if he could, he isn’t strong enough to stop anyone when contact happens, but he would have a substantially better chance. That would be huge for his development and the Pacers defense in general.

Next: If the Pacers sign Aaron Gordon this summer, expect other big changes to follow

Truly, there is a long list of stuff that Leaf could improve in his game. However, these two things could help him substantially on both ends of the floor right now. Were he to gain the skills described, he could finally get more than 9.5 minutes per game. Let’s hope Leaf figure it all out.