Editor’s note: First of a series of analytic breakdowns of the Nuggets heading into the off-season. Today: Forward Danilo Gallinari
First thing’s first for Danilo Gallinari: He must get himself healthy.
His right ankle, which has damage to three ligaments, has not healed as quickly as he thought it would.
“I thought it would be about four weeks,” he said.
But it’ll end up being much longer.
His sore ankle, which caused him to miss the final 23 games, cut short the best season of his career. He does not, however, expect the ankle to be an issue when he starts preparation for Olympic qualifying with Italy late in the spring. Italy’s training camp begins on June 1.
Gallinari played 53 games — the second-lowest total of a full season in his career. When healthy he was the Nuggets go-to guy. He averaged a career-high 19.5 points per game.
It was his first go-around in that role, in which he faced the opposing teams’ best defender every night. It was an adjustment, and he played well, but not great. He shot just 41 percent from the field, though his three-point percentage (36.4) was solid. He also averaged 5.3 rebounds and 2.5 assists.
He was superb from the free throw, shooting 86.8 percent. Thirty-six percent of his points (7.08) came from the free-throw line, the highest percentage of any NBA player.
Offense: Aside from free throws, much of Gallinari’s offense came in isolation situations, 18.9 percent of his shot attempts. . To put that in perspective, only James Harden, Carmelo Anthony, Jamal Crawford, Julius Randle, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James used isolation plays more often than Gallinari.
Gallinari was also the safety net to almost any play coach Michael Malone called. When the initial run-throughs broke down, the Nuggets knew they could get him the ball and he’d usually get a shot up or get fouled. The good news is that Gallinari was one of the best in the league when up against the shot clock, taking a shot with fewer than four seconds left. He averaged .957 points on those possessions.
The bad news is that he played himself into a lot of the late shot clock situations by pulling the ball out and isolating instead of moving the ball.
Gallinari was one of the Nuggets’ best post-up players, scoring 1.11 points per possession, per Synergy stats, but he wasn’t utilized much in those actions. He had only 82 post-ups all season, shot 49 percent when posting up and went to the free-throw line another 28 percent of the time. That’s a lot of punch.
Gallinari was sixth in the NBA in transition points per possession (1.54) and had a good rate of return as the ball handler in screen-and-roll situations as well (1.26). Gallinari was as versatile on offense as most any player in the league.
But he shot only 41 percent, due mainly to poor jump shooting (35 percent). Half of his 476 jump shots were three-point shots.
Gallinari’s two most-used shot types were pull-ups and catch-and-shoot. But there was a big difference in the success rate of each of those shots. Gallo shot 40.2 percent on catch-and-shoot attempts, but just 29 percent on pull ups.
Defense/turnovers: Defensively, Gallinari has the most room to improve. He was best in isolation circumstances, and was in them nearly 15 percent of the time. Opponents averaged just .77 points per possession in isolation and shot just 37.5 percent against him. His length was his greatest asset there, because Gallo’s first instinct is always to give ground in order to not get beat to the rim.
However, Gallinari struggled in many other defensive areas, most notably in pick-and-roll. Whether he was guarding the ball handler (where opponents shot 47.4 percent), or the screener (where opponents shot 58.7 percent), he did not do well. He was easily screened in many instances, and late out to shooters as he, again, sank down in the lane and relied on his length to harass shooters.
As for turnovers, his 1.5 per game was one of the lowest marks of his career. But when he did give the ball away it was in one of two ways — the lost-ball turnover and the bad pass turnover. Most of Gallinari’s lost-ball miscues came when he tried to dribble through traffic. Many of those came when he posted up.
Overall, Gallinari had a very good season in a leading-actor role. He’ll hope to stay healthy through Olympic qualifying and then, if Team Italy makes it to Rio, in the Olympics. The Nuggets want Gallinari at full-strength for training camp.
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or @dempseypost
