Danny Avdia reacts to the Washington Wizards victory over the Boston Celtics (Washington Wizards official Twitter account)
In a few days, Danny Avdia's third year in the NBA will end.
Its summary should start from the end: it is here to stay.
Avdia is a legitimate rotation player in the best league in the world, he gets minutes not because of his potential but because of what he is currently contributing to a team that has tried to be competitive most of the season.
As in every season of Omri Caspi, also in every season of Avdia it is important to emphasize how much it is not obvious to be an NBA player.
There are about 300 rotation players in the league and they are the crème de la crème of the basketball players in the world, 300 out of tens or hundreds of thousands of professional players and millions more who tried to be, in one of the most popular sports in the world.
This is the league that pays the highest average salary, a salary that will only increase after a new broadcasting agreement that will arrive soon.
Being an NBA player for a long time is a huge achievement in itself and Avdia, unless something very unexpected happens, will be an NBA player for many more years.
Bottom line, he's still living the dream.
Avdia (Photo: GettyImages, G Fiume)
the good
The main reason Danny Avdia is a legitimate NBA player today is his personal defense.
While the offensive ability is characterized by instability that we will touch on later, the defense continues to be its anchor.
Already last season Danny positioned himself as a senior bodyguard, this year he improved several important nuances.
He passes blocks better, arrives ready for them, quickly returns to his player, understands when it is better to make a substitution.
His ability to prevent senior scorers from going up for a comfortable shot is one of the best in the league, many times they simply give up the shot and continue the attack.
It is difficult to measure personal protection and protection in general.
Many indices try to provide a single figure and even such a figure is not exhaustive.
The index that is considered one of the most reliable and comprehensive belongs to the BBALL INDEX website and is called the LeBron Defensive Index (yes, that's the name. LeBron as a rather forced acronym for a series of data that this index checks).
Among players who have played at least a thousand minutes, Avdia is ranked 32nd in the league in the LeBron defensive index.
Most of the players ranked ahead of him are interior players.
If you focus only on stoppers, on players whose main job is the personal protection of outfield players, he is ranked tenth.
Even in the index that examines the difficulty of the match-up, who guards the opponent's best players, Avdia ranks very high throughout the year.
Even if LeBron's defensive index is slightly lower than Paris, Avdia can be talked about with confidence as one of the 15-20 best personal guards in the NBA today.
And its meaning is even greater.
Some of the senior stoppers, like Alex Caruso who is ranked first among the outside players and fifth overall, are short players who mainly guard guards and will have difficulty focusing with tall and physical forwards.
Others are physical forwards who have trouble dealing with agile guards.
Avdia, on the other hand, can maintain four positions at a similar level of efficiency.
That makes him a versatile guard capable of taking on any opponent's top outside hitter in the league, which he did throughout the season.
He is also ideal for defending automatic substitutions, because no outfielder will feel against him in a miss-match that can be exploited.
Actually, not only foreign players.
Except for a limited list of senior centers with quality post play, a list that can probably be put in the palm of one hand, there will be no reason for the opponent to look specifically for the player Avdia is guarding even when it comes to an interior player.
Avdia also does a good job in the team parts of the defense.
He reads situations and understands the correct rotations, and when he is close to the basket he provides timely help, a good presence in the paint in relation to an outside player and a big help in the defensive rebound.
One of Danny's great advantages as an outside player who alternates with inside players is the ability to deal with the inside players on the rebound: close them, position themselves in front of them, manage to touch the ball or take a hard rebound.
In general, he is one of the best defensive rebounders in the league among the outside players, and this is another quiet and very important feature.
All the defensive abilities described so far take on a new importance in the playoffs.
Unfortunately, Danny is in a team that is currently unable to reach the playoffs, so he will not be able to show what he is capable of and we will not be able to test his abilities in a complete series against a team with two senior stars.
But we can be sure that these abilities do not escape the decision makers in the league.
Defensive players like him are something every team would like in their rotation, as long as they have something to contribute offensively or have the potential to develop into reasonable offensive players.
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To the full article
It can be declared with confidence: he is one of the 20 best personal guards in the NBA.
Avdia in defense (Photo: GettyImages, Mark Blinch)
the interesting
The offensive potential is there.
It is not yet visible in the numbers, in which there is only a slight improvement from last year, but yes, this season there were more games and more periods in which the offensive abilities could be identified since there are losses and sparks from abilities that are still developing.
Danny's outstanding offensive ability is his ability to pass.
He expresses it in diverse situations.
When he takes a defensive rebound he immediately tries to get Washington into a transition attack, he trusts his ability to make the right decision and almost always does.
Players who think quickly and have good morale can take advantage of a disorganized defense to create comfortable and quick shooting situations for their teammates, which is exactly what Avdia does several times each game.
Avdia is also a gifted passer during basket penetration.
He knows how to pass at every stage of the penetration and knows how to pass both inside, to a player who takes a position or cuts to the basket, and also outside to the shooters.
His timing is accurate and he thinks a step ahead to create the right delivery angles.
During organized attacks, he can function as a type of midfielder, identify an advantage created and move the ball there quickly.
In total, he is giving out 2.8 assists per game this year and 5 potential assists (his passes that turn into shots for the basket), nice numbers for a player who doesn't touch the ball much most of the time.
He ranks 34th among forwards in the league in potential assists.
Just scratching the offensive potential.
Avdia (Photo: GettyImages, Mike Stobe)
Regarding the delivery ability, it can be said that last year Danny showed flashes of it and this year he has already used it consistently.
This year the sparkles come in a colored finish.
Along with periods in which he has great difficulty throwing in crowding, which was also very noticeable last year, this year there are more and more moments in which Avdia feels more secure near the basket.
In such moments he moves inside with a speed that makes it very difficult to stop him, uses deceptions and small movements to improve a position for a shot and finishes well even difficult shots.
In the last two or three weeks, after Washington gave up on the season and let the stars rest, Avdia gets a chance to lead the ball and get to the basket more consistently.
There is no point in referring to the inflated numbers at this stage of the season, nor to the amount of losses, because this is exactly the opportunity for him to stretch the limit of his ability in a situation where the team does not want to win.
The statistic that may be important is the improvement in shooting percentages close to the basket.
In the first 69 games of the season, Avdia scored 66.7 percent under the basket, a rather low figure, and 24.7 percent from the far area of the paint, the floater range.
In the last seven games since Washington gave up the season, he has shot 72 percent from the basket and 57.1 percent from the floater.
The amount of shots from both ranges has also increased significantly.
During this time he learned to use his body to move guards and create space for himself to go up for a comfortable shot close to the basket.
If this is the start of a trend, if Avdia learns to finish effectively in the paint, it's a very important upgrade to his offensive game that will give him the confidence to get into those areas more.
The first data I will check next year is Danny's shooting data in the paint, both the quantity and the quality.
They are a more important measure than even the percentage of three-pointers.
Critical ability for further career.
Abadiah in color (Photo: GettyImages, Jess Rapfogel)
the bad
Dani Avdia's biggest problem this year was instability.
He moved between clusters of good and bad games, every time it seemed that he was already stabilizing, a new bad streak came.
Roughly speaking, this season can be divided into four bad and four good sets, with their lengths fairly evenly distributed.
In the bad times Avdia is a very insecure player when it comes to shooting the basket, both from outside and from inside the paint.
Sometimes he is passive and stuck in a corner, sometimes he forces shots and actions he doesn't need, sometimes he just doesn't hit.
Defenses learn over time to ignore him on days like this, which makes it difficult for Washington's offense to play.
In the good times he is a player who flows with the attack, makes the right decisions, positions himself in areas from which he can initiate, blocks strongly, moves decisively into the paint without the ball, looks confident in his shots.
The good news is that these fluctuations are natural for a young player.
This is a good time to mention that Avdia came to the league at a very young age and next season he will start when he is still 22 years old. He is younger, for example, than Keegan Murray, the fourth pick in the last draft, and only three months older than Jaylen Williams, one of the most prominent rookies this season.
Young players take time to get to know themselves and acclimate to the physical and mental strain of a full NBA season.
Danny's ability to provide four good squads with about 40 good games gives hope to believe that he will soon be able to provide such full seasons as well.
The bad news is that his swings are very extreme, even for young players in the NBA.
During the bad times he enters a loop that he has trouble getting out of, his confidence drops quickly.
While many players do learn to settle into a good capacity, many others fail to do so and remain unstable throughout their careers.
Avdia is in danger of becoming such a player.
It is difficult to analyze instability and what needs to be done to overcome it.
It is about an internal process of a player, the ability to control the way he gets on the floor and plays.
It is a physical and mental process, because the fatigue that leads to instability is both physical and mental.
There is no explanation for the question of why there are players who almost every night will play at roughly the same level and players who you cannot tell what we will get from them on a given night.
Does Abdia have the tools to carry out this internal process?
The only statistic we have is that he is highly motivated to improve, and this is the area in which he must improve to become a truly significant NBA player.
At the professional level, Avdia's most notable difficulty right now is the ability to create shooting situations for himself.
His one-on-one game is less good than expected, he has a lot of difficulty creating a space that allows him to shoot comfortably from half distance and most of the time also in the paint.
In recent weeks it is particularly noticeable because the ball is in his hand quite a bit and sometimes he is even the central ball carrier for the Wizards.
He usually starts a move to pass, and if a good passing option is not created he stalls.
Defenses learn this, don't bring help in front of him and then there are also fewer passing options.
If he does not learn to create shooting situations for himself, he will not be able to serve as a real ball carrier and will have to settle for a secondary role in the attack.
It's not bad, most players in the league are like that, but it lowers his ceiling.
What about shooting from three?
This year it depended a lot on the general fitness, in the bad times Avdia scored terrible percentages and in the good times reasonable.
The average remains weak, but in this case it can be hoped that if he learns to stabilize in general, the shooting will also stabilize at acceptable percentages.
With good delivery ability and a good enough color finish it will be enough, at least for now.
As long as he continues to improve in other offensive aspects, shooting should not be an acute problem.
Avdia Zork (Photo: GettyImages, Patrick Smith)
The group and the summer
The advantage of a team that does not qualify for the playoffs is that their summer is very long.
Avdia will now have three months of real rest before he is freed for national team duties.
Avdia likes to spend the summer improving his abilities, but maybe this time physical and mental rest will be more important that will allow him to arrive more mature for the next season.
There are always abilities that can be improved, but he has reached a stage where his abilities are enough to be an important NBA player, if he knows how to express them consistently.
The end of the third season is the stage when teams can offer their players a contract extension.
Will Washington offer Abdia a significant long-term contract?
We will probably know this only towards the end of the summer, because before then the Wizards will be busy building the squad for the upcoming season.
My bet is yes.
Washington needs quality defensemen near the stars and Danny has shown enough offensive potential to warrant a long-term bet on him.
He is the type of player that a team that gives up on them when they are young could very well regret it in the future.
The salary cap is expected to rise in the coming years, and contracts that seem high today will look more affordable in a few years, so teams should offer such contracts now.
A contract on the order of $60 million for four years, an average of $15 million per season, would not be considered high when its annual cost would be less than ten percent of the salary cap.
Rotational players in the NBA are going to be very rich in the coming years, and there is a high chance that Avdia will be one of the beneficiaries.
Will Avdia take an offer of this magnitude?
Here, too, my bet is yes.
This could be the contract that will fix him for life, and even if he can get more after a successful season it is not worth the risk.
He still has quite a bit to prove and he has already suffered one rather serious injury, another injury could make him a player who is afraid to bet on him.
Beyond that, if he develops into an important five player and his contract is considered comfortable there is also an advantage in this, it will make him more sought after in the coming years.
NBA rotation players are going to be very rich soon, and he could benefit big time.
Abdia (Photo: GettyImages, Patrick Smith)
Many would probably want Avdia to pass up an offer from Washington so as not to be stuck with this mediocre club.
But it's not easy to get rid of the team that selected you in the draft if they want you.
Danny is young enough to establish himself in the league and choose the right situations for him in another 4-5 years, when he will be 26-27 years old.
And things can always change.
Each team is two or three good moves away from becoming a top team, for details you can contact Sacramento.
Washington's future could take a turn in the coming months.
With the luck of the lottery she could get one of the first two picks in the draft with two extremely promising picks.
Later this summer Kristaps Porzingis and Kyle Kuzma will be able to opt out of their contracts and probably will, the question of whether and which of them will stay will be very important.
Avdia formed a good relationship with Porzingis and enjoyed the spacing he creates, while Kuzma's departure will free up minutes and shots for him and may also suit the team in terms of balance.
At the end of the summer we will be smarter about the situation Avdia is in and the extent of the club's trust in him.
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