NEW YORK β Aaron Gordon is not about to fall into your trap.
First of all, Gordon is 6 feet 9 inches tall, weighs 220 pounds and is as chiseled as a Rodin sculpture, so good luck trapping him in the first place. To quote βJaws,β youβre gonna need a bigger boat.
But weβre not even talking about trap defense here. Weβre talking about trap offense. As in, the trap a basketball player can fall in when he finally finds his shot.
Gordon has found his. Twice this season, his fourth in the NBA after one nearly magical year at Arizona, Gordon has gone off for 40-plus points. His newfound scoring prowess has become the talk of the NBA.
Itβs enough to make a guy trigger-happy. Trigger-ecstatic, even.
But Gordonβs got his guard up, even if opposing defenses havenβt had theirs.
βStatistics, thatβs for everybody else,β said Gordon, perched in his stall in the visitorβs locker room at Madison Square Garden on a recent Sunday night, after his Magic defeated the host Knicks, 105-100, their second win in three games after nine straight losses.
βThatβs not for me. Percentages, not for me. Analytics, not for me. Itβs for the fans, itβs for the coaches, for GMs. For everybody. Not me. Looking at your numbers, playing into that, thatβs undisciplined. It allows you to be complacent. Youβve still got to come out and recreate it, every single night.
βYouβre only as good as your last game, thatβs how I look at it.β
β’β’β’
Gordon seems distracted.
Still baby-faced and fresh, four years removed from his lone college basketball season β Arizonaβs Elite Eight run alongside Nick Johnson and T.J. McConnell in 2013-14 β Gordon scrolls through Instagram when another reporter walks up.
The reporter asks his question β about Orlandoβs fourth-quarter funk against the Knicks, who nearly came back from a deficit β and Gordon is still somewhere else.
βWait β I donβt believe youβre as good as your last game,β he says, correcting his earlier statement before turning back to the new reporter. βWait, what did you say?β
Heβs in his own head for a moment, lost.
Itβs just β¦ itβs just that he wants to make it clear that just because heβs found his shot doesnβt mean heβs suddenly going to become a gunner on par with Steph Curry.
His newfound confidence is just that, newly found.
Before this year, he shot β shield your eyes β 27 percent, 30 percent and 29 percent from 3-point range in his first three NBA seasons.
Flash forward to mid-November, and Gordon was leading the league from long-range, starting the season with 25 makes in 42 attempts. Heβs cooled off a bit since then β and now may have to sit out a few games after suffering a concussion in a loss to Denver on Friday night β but heβs still shooting 41 percent from behind the arc β but that is still leaps and bounds over his past performance.
And speaking of leaps and bounds, Gordon can still do so with the best of them. He is a two-time Slam Dunk Contest entrant, after all.
Only, heβs no longer just a dunker anymore.
βHis perimeter shooting is the biggest thing β itβs opened up a lot for him and teams have had to honor him and run at him,β Magic head coach Frank Vogel said. βWeβve encouraged him to become a 3-point shooter. He can do all the opportunistic things at the rim because of it.β
It seems he has the green light from his head coach, but one conversation with Gordon and it sounds like heβs stuck at a stale yellow.
βI look to be aggressive, but I take what the game gives me,β he said. βSome nights there are going to be explosions and some nights, not so much. I want to maintain ruthlessness. But the numbers game is a trap. I donβt play the numbers game. I play a different game.β
β’β’β’
On this night, against a Knicks team missing its two best players β power forward Kristaps Porzingis and shooting guard Tim Hardaway Jr. β Gordonβs shot is lost again.
Heβll score 10 points on 3-of-11 shooting, including 1 for 6 from 3-point range, a particularly disappointing showing given that with Porzingis out, Michael Beasley β nobodyβs idea of an all-world defender β draws Gordon as an assignment.
But heβll do a very many other Gordon-like things, which will draw rave reviews from his teammates. Heβll grab four rebounds, dish four assists, pick up two steals and play his typically feisty defense from the power forward spot that prompted the Magic to draft him at the No. 4 spot in the 2013-14 NBA Draft. Heβll play his game.
βHeβs got a chance to be one of the more complete players in the NBA,β his teammate, long-time NBA mainstay Arron Afflalo, will say after the win.
And Afflalo would know.
Later heβs asked how many fellows NBAers have squandered their natural gifts by not putting in the commensurate amount of work, and Afflalo shakes his head before saying, βThe work is the separation. A lot of the guys in this league are very talented, but over the years, itβs the guys who put in the consistent work who get the results.
βAnd Aaron is going to be a product of that.β
Afflalo, a former UCLA star, sees it on a daily basis, and even more, he sees it as the two sail through the heavens.
Afflalo sits next to Gordon on Orlandoβs team flights, and heβs seen his younger compatriot develop into what he describes as βa student of the game.β They pore over video together, discerning tendencies, picking out holes in their own games.
βHe wants to be great, man,β Afflalo said. βHe wants to be great.β
His teammates and coaches echo the sentiment.
βIβve been here since heβs got here, and Iβve seen him develop,β said center Nikola Vucevic, like Gordon and Afflalo, a former Pac-12 product from USC. βHeβs a completely different player than when he came into the league. Heβs been able to play at a slower pace, reads the defenses better, takes his time when he needs to go into a move.β
βHeβs been doing it for four years, and people donβt know that,β added Vogel, who took over as Orlandoβs head coach in 2016. βThe first three years, he had an injury to start the season, and when you donβt have September and October to really get your legs under you, youβre really playing uphill the rest of the way.
βThis is really the first season heβs started healthy, and that, with the cumulative effect of his work over the years, is paying off.β
β’β’β’
The proof is in the trajectory.
As a rookie β a season in which he missed 35 games, 32 of them because of a broken bone in his foot β Gordon averaged 5.2 points and 3.6 rebounds in 17 minutes per game.
In his second season, those numbers rose to 9.2 points and 6.5 rebounds in 24 minutes per game, with 37 starts.
Last year β which wouldβve been his senior year at Arizona if this were 1988 or something β Gordon improved to 12.7 points in 29 minutes per game.
This year through 24 games: 18.7 points and 8.3 rebounds in 34 minutes per game, of which heβs started all 24.
Itβs not lost on Gordon that his progression coincides with what wouldβve been his college career. Still just 22 years old, he could be a rookie out there, if the NBA Draft hadnβt become more about potential than production.
βItβs taken me a little bit of maturing,β he admits. βIt took me until the end of last year to realize the work you put in is the work you get out.
βI was 18 in the league, the youngest in my draft, and I got a head start. Iβve got four years into this league, so Iβve learned a little how it works. But Iβm still trying to figure it out.β
So much of the work heβs described has revolved around his shot.
Afflalo attests to the hours he puts in β βHe stays after games, stays after practice; he wants to be able to take and make the shots he gets in the game,β β and not just physically, but mentally.
βHeβs been doing a better job reading the game, seeing what the defense is giving him, and experience β and maturity β helps with that a lot,β Vucevic said. βIf you add the skillset, itβs much easier. Itβs good to see his work is paying off.β
The mental side of things is where Gordon has made, and will make, the most improvement. Not only by getting into the finer points of basketball, but by getting out of his own head.
βItβs a detachment,β Gordon said. βWhen you shoot the ball, you let it fly, and thatβs all you can do. Whether it goes in or not, who knows? I think itβs going in. I know itβs going in. Thatβs all I can do. Itβs a healthy detachment.β
A healthy detachment for Gordon, who is finally living up to the promise that Wildcat fans saw up-close-and-personal four years ago.
And an unhealthy thought for the rest of the NBA.
