Daniel Gafford Video Scouting Report
The second-year center Daniel Gafford has caught my eye in this young 2020–21 Chicago Bulls season. I’m not so sure as to why — Gafford played only insignificant minutes last season and was on pace to do the same this year if it weren’t for Thaddeus Young’s early absence followed by the recent injury of Lauri Markkanen — but nonetheless he has and so I have rewatched and graded each of the Daniel Gafford’s 203 defensive possessions in the 92 minutes he has played season-to-date (prior to the January 5th matchup against the Portland Trail Blazers). I also scouted all of his offensive possessions during this frame, but didn’t approach them as closely or with a grading system: I’m more interested in his defense. This was admittedly my first time watching raw game film for the sake of breaking down an individual player, so my analysis may be a bit rough around the edges, but that doesn’t mean that after this exercise I don’t feel that I’m likely one of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to Daniel Gafford’s performance in his first six games (he didn’t play against Golden State) of the 2020–21 NBA season.
Tracking
As this was my first time deliberately analyzing game film, I was only able to construct a simple grading/tracking system. I recorded each time an opposing player brought the ball over mid-court while Gafford was on the court as a defensive possession, and on each possession I assigned Gafford’s play one of three grades: “Good,” “Okay,” or “Bad.” My definitions for each of the three categories were as follows:
- A “Good” defensive possession was one in which Gafford made a play that I would not expect most NBA centers to make most of the time. An example of this might be a high-leaping block which other NBA centers might not be physically capable of, but more often I graded a defensive possession as “Good” when Gafford made a difficult read or a great rotation.
- The “Okay” grade was meant to encompass most possessions as ended up being the case. An “Okay” possession was one in which Gafford didn’t make any costly mistakes, nor did he go above and beyond. The “Okay” category also accounts for the plays which couldn’t fairly be assigned anywhere else, an example being a Denzel Valentine steal at the top of the key six seconds into the shot clock in which there was little time to evaluate Gafford’s defensive performance.
- A “Bad” possession was one in which I believed Gafford to have made a mistake that opened up an opportunity for the offense whether they took advantage of it or not. Missed rotations, missed box-outs, and most fouls committed by Gafford made up some of the plays to receive a “Bad” grade.
The following tables shows my results:
Needless to say, take these results with a grain of salt. The exact numbers and rates are somewhat meaningless without the context of how I would assign the same grades to another player, not to mention the categorization of these plays is inherently subjective and even I would likely have produced a somewhat different table had I watched film on another day. Regardless, there may be some valid trends within these numbers, and even if not I still learned a lot about Gafford’s defensive play from watching the film.
Hopefully not having fully invalidated my grading I will mention a couple things about the above table. Firstly, Gafford makes up for most of his bad plays with a good play, as shown by his 34-to-32 “Good”-“Bad” ratio, and two-thirds of the time he plays as I would expect an average NBA center to. Again, these numbers have no context so this is somewhat speculative to say, but this is a good sign for the young guy. Also, as somewhat apparent in the numbers, Gafford has already shown improvement from his first game of the season to his sixth, and generally the longer he stays in a game the better he seems to perform defensively.
The Good
There’s a lot of good to Gafford’s defense which makes me optimistic about his future as an interior force in the NBA. Gafford is already extremely adept at executing drop coverage, something Billy Donovan has introduced to the Bulls defense this season quite opposite from Boylen’s trap scheme employed during Gafford’s rookie campaign (I barely watched the Bulls last season so I can’t speak to Gafford’s performance under Boylen’s scheme). Drop coverage is a pick-and-roll defense meant to prevent interior shots and force the inefficient mid-range jumper. I generally like the drop coverage scheme, except against guys who can pull up from three with only a sliver of daylight, and similarly against guys who can turn an uncontested two into an efficient shot: just because the average two-point jumper is less efficient than layups and threes doesn’t mean uncontested mid-range jumpers taken by good shooters are bad shots by any means. Daniel Gafford, however, has executed drop coverage well against almost every pick-and-roll this season, the only guy to have really beaten him in this scheme being Trae Young with a couple uncontested jumpers from deep (Gafford didn’t play against Steph Curry’s Warriors who might have similarly caused trouble for him). Gafford has a keen ability to prevent ball-handlers from covering much distance before their defender gets over and around the screen thanks to Gafford’s intimidatingly tall frame and good positioning, and once the perimeter defender has recovered Gafford does an excellent job at preventing the interior pass or alley-oop. Gafford has even been able to grab a couple steals from guards wrongfully unfazed by the prospect of trying to take Gafford one-on-one inside the perimeter, check out these two steals he got on Russell Westbrook (unfortunately I am unable to embed these NBA.com videos on Medium):
When Gafford and his perimeter-counterpart do struggle to contain a pick-and-roll and an inside pass is made, Gafford has a great ability to recover and defend the opponent in the dunker’s spot. I think I saw him attempt this play four times and only fail to execute once, in which he was called for a shooting foul on Thomas Bryant that I thought could have slid as a clean block (Thomas Bryant was actually called for a technical foul arguing this Gafford block):
It’s no secret that Daniel Gafford also has a tremendous ability to block shots. Had he qualified (Gafford only played 609 minutes in 2019–20, short of the 1,500 minute qualifying mark), Gafford would have led the NBA in Block Percentage his rookie year, blocking 8.7% of opposing two-point field goal attempts while on the court compared to Hassan Whiteside’s league-leading 8.4%. Gafford’s block rate has been a bit lower this year, however not by a statistically significant margin and I can assure you that Gafford’s extreme leaping and shot-blocking abilities have by no means abandoned him. Gafford’s length also occasionally grants him the ability to interfere with passing lanes that most players would have no means to close.
One thing I love about Gafford is that he sprints back on defense every possession. While this should maybe be the expectation especially for young guys trying to prove themselves and earn minutes, not many guys do it and it’s definitely something Gafford deserves credit for. Twice this season the Bulls have turned the ball over on baseline inbounds passes intended for Gafford, but both times Gafford got back and stopped the fast break, even blocking a Domantas Sabonis layup on one (unfortunately the clip is not available on NBA.com). Gafford also has done a good job navigating the couple back-screens I have seen set on him at the elbow, which impressed me. Also, though Gafford was seldom posted-up on in the 203 possessions I watched, Daniel Gafford is a very competent one-on-one post defender.
The Bad
Sadly it’s not all positive for Daniel Gafford. I graded about one in six of Gafford’s defensive possessions as a “Bad” possession. I stand by my praise of Gafford’s drop coverage, but he got burned a couple times in the Atlanta game by Trae Young’s shooting as I mentioned earlier. This wasn’t necessarily Gafford’s fault, I’d say it was Billy Donovan’s if Gafford played these screens for Trae Young exactly as he was instructed to, and so I don’t consider this a significant knock to his pick-and-roll defense by any means. Gafford does struggle on the perimeter, though. He’s not out there much by good design, but I’ve identified two areas which he struggles with when stretched out to the arc. First, Gafford struggles to guard drives by quicker players from the perimeter. Because there is so much ground to cover between the three-point line and the rim, when faced with this situation Gafford wants to flip his hips to the direction of the driver in order to run parallel to the ball and block the shot at the rim. This becomes a problem when the ball-handler crosses over, forcing Gafford to flip his hips again and turn 180 degrees all while sprinting to the hoop. Again, Gafford isn’t put into this circumstance often and his sprint-and-block method can work, but he was beat badly by James Johnson leading to an and-one against Dallas:
Gafford can also get confused when matched up with a center capable of hitting the outside shot, and similarly he will occasionally miss a rotation to help the helper when that man is on the perimeter, as Gafford’s defensive focus is on the interior. In the Milwaukee game, Brook Lopez got off a couple open three-point attempts when matched up with Gafford:
Gafford also had a couple mental lapses, mostly in the first two games of the season, in which a defender would cut behind him without Gafford noticing. Generally, though, Gafford’s head is on a swivel.
Another concern for Gafford is that he can get bullied by stronger centers on the block. There aren’t too many guys in the league strong enough to overpower Gafford, but Robin Lopez is definitely one of them. That being said, Robin Lopez wasn’t able to take advantage of his size advantage every time he tried due to Gafford’s fundamentally soundness defending the post.
Gafford has always been somewhat of a poor defensive rebounder, which is surprising given his pogo-stick-like jumping ability. Watching film, this seemed attributable to a number of bad tendencies. Gafford does not do a great job of finding a body to box out, and though this didn’t often result in allowing offensive rebounds in the film, it’s definitely a bad habit and a culprit for his poor defensive rebounding. There were also a number of missed shots that Gafford didn’t snag because he just didn’t really seem to go for the ball as much as he should have. I thought Gafford let some guys contest rebounds that were his to lose, and this is really something he needs to work on given his potential on the defensive glass: it’s ridiculous that Gafford’s offensive rebound rate is almost equal to his defensive rebound rate.
Offense
Though the primary focus of this article and exercise was to examine Gafford’s defense, I couldn’t help but watch most of his offensive possessions this season as well. Anybody who has watched a Bulls game in which Daniel Gafford played (which would definitely include anyone reading this), knows that he is a high-flying pick-and-roller with a strong presence on the offensive glass and not much else. Gafford would’ve placed top-20 in offensive rebound rate had he qualified last year, just a bit behind Wendell Carter Jr. One thing that I noticed watching Gafford play was that he often was in a good, ready position on the offensive glass even when the ball didn’t bounce his way. My conclusion from watching Gafford play the offensive glass was that his offensive rebound rate can only go up from its already impressive level last year.
Though Gafford has absolutely zero shooting ability and took a total of one shot outside of eight feet last season (it was from 11 feet and he missed it — in fact none of his shot attempts were from outside the paint), he’s extremely efficient around the rim. Gafford can hammer it down when given any sort of lane, and has a surprisingly soft touch on contested shots in the restricted area. Dunks made up 45.5% of Gafford’s shot attempts last year, and he shot exactly 50% on non-dunks. He’s actually tried diversifying his shot selection this year by taking significantly more shots from the post as his average shot distance has increased from 1.8 feet last year to 4.8 feet so far this year, and 57% of his shots have come outside of three feet as opposed to only 17% last year. I do expect his shot selection going forward to be more reflective of last year’s than of this season’s selection so far, but I also don’t expect his shot selection to ever return to being as limited as it was last year. Gafford has also been phenomenal at drawing contact this season. Gafford has gotten to the line ten times on only 21 FGA, and having shot 65% from the line he’s achieved a True Shooting Percentage of 0.721. Only one player, Mitchell Robinson, had a TS% above 0.700 last year, and, had he qualified, Gafford would have finished third only behind Robinson and Rudy Gobert. Gafford will never be a volume scorer, but if he’s ever to earn a starting role he could definitely put up 15 PPG on league-leading efficiency. I don’t expect Gafford to ever develop a shot, but it would be nice if he could improve his passing slightly, as he’s somewhat of a vacuum upon receiving the ball inside. That being said, he doesn’t have a turnover problem, at least not this year.
In the first couple games of the 2020–21 season, I was disappointed by Gafford’s screen-setting ability, but that has already been corrected. In the early games, Gafford seemed to stay somewhat narrow on his screens and often set them on a spot rather than on a defender. He would also sometimes slip the screens a bit early despite there not being a lane for him to receive the ball in by slipping. These problems have largely already been corrected it seems, and I see Gafford as a good screen-setter most of the time and going forward.
Conclusion and Outlook
Do I think Daniel Gafford will ever be a star NBA center? No. But do I think he can be a solid starter one day? Yes, it’s definitely possible. He’s already at a solid foundation and only recently turned 22 years old. The league is moving in a way which doesn’t favor big men tied to the paint, but there’s definitely still a spot for strong interior defenders with interior scoring capabilities and there always will be. I actually think where Gafford needs to take his next step may be in defensive rebounding. Nonetheless, I hope to see the Bulls continue to utilize Gafford off the bench this year, even when Carter, Young, and Markkanen are all healthy; I think Gafford’s a guy worth trying to develop.
Though the process was tedious, I enjoyed rewatching parts of the Bulls’ young season in order to evaluate Gafford. I probably won’t be able to take the time to complete such an analysis for other players once I return to school, but I hope to replicate this exercise for Wendell Carter Jr. and/or others at some point.
