The most disappointing players in 2020 who will break out/bounce back in 2021
There’s something fascinating about players who exit a season having failed to meet the public’s expectations. They’re infuriating, but also strangely relatable in more alluring ways than a machine-like superstar ever could be. Who among us doesn’t know how it feels to let other people down?
In the NBA, disappointment materializes in different ways for different reasons. Some situations are straightforward while others are inexplicable. Maybe there was an unexpected injury or the sudden onset of father time, or a complementary teammate was traded, short-circuiting a role someone used to thrive in. It’s a fluid, ambiguous, performance-driven league. So often we never find the answers we’re looking for because they don’t exist. Progress is not linear or automatic, and the same melody that warbles through even the most impressive careers will inevitably get interrupted by a record scratch or two.
But there’s also half-cup-full good news: down years are almost always followed by an opportunity to make amends. This applies to every player who sputtered through the 2020 season that is written about below. Each one is positioned to bounce back in 2021/whenever regular season basketball is played again.
Marvin Bagley III
Context is everything, even when the introduction to your NBA career has been as rough as Marvin Bagley’s was. It’s not his fault the Sacramento Kings picked him ahead of Luka Doncic or even Jaren Jackson Jr. It’s also not fair to blame Bagley for breaking his thumb in the opener of his second season, then spraining his foot a couple months later. (When he reaggrevated that foot injury in late January, Bagley deactivated his social media accounts.)
Criticism is indeed warranted, though. When healthy, Bagley has not been efficient. He lacks an obvious position/role, doesn’t shoot threes, has as many blocks as assists, and remains a tad, shall we say, predictable with his left hand.
But it’s still too early to diagnose any firm limitations. The 21-year-old’s talent base is too extensive. To say nothing of his physical condition or confidence issues (almost every time he catches the ball on the wing his man begs him to shoot), it’s not easy to justify hype while learning the ropes of your adolescent NBA existence on one of the most dysfunctional organizations in professional sports.
Bagley has tried to plow his own lane in lineups that weren’t arranged to accentuate his strengths, already under two different coaches in two very different systems. That’s not easy, but riveting glimpses have already shined through the cracks; at some point Bagley will harness his absolute freak athleticism and blossom into the matchup nightmare he’s destined to be.
His second jump is second only to Zion Williamson’s, while his feet and wingspan were built to lock up taller guards and wings in isolation. If/when Luke Walton takes the seatbelt off this team and lets them run, Bagley and De’Aaron Fox will be a fireworks display in transition. He’ll eventually shoot more threes while continuing to take advantage of his size and length on quick duck-ins that highlight a soft touch few big men ever possess. There’s a monster lurking below the surface here. Even though his sophomore season was a total dud, do not sleep on a volcanic eruption in year three.
Mike Conley
Mike Conley was supposed to congeal a team that couldn’t overcome its own lack of individual playmakers in the playoffs every year. Instead Conley barely shot 40 percent from the field and struggled to define his place in an environment that was stylistically dissimilar from what he experienced in Memphis. Marc Gasol and Rudy Gobert are very different dance partners; Conley never found the right rhythm with Gobert, an awkward reality that chipped away at his confidence and gave birth to one too many over-thought floaters — a shot no point guard except Tyus Jones relied on more.
The Jazz are a good team, but worse on both ends with Conley on the floor. Their dominant starting lineup also had an identity crisis that nearly curdled as the season went along. Joe Ingles, Royce O’Neale, and Conley were yanked in and out of it despite the fact that Utah was 21-8 when their new point guard either came off the bench or didn’t play at all.
Now, it might be that Conley is simply on his way out. He’s a small 32-year-old weighed down by years of nagging injuries. But assuming Gobert and Donovan Mitchell are both in Utah next season, that doesn’t mean Conley can’t find comfort in a reduced role, running a second unit, finding myriad ways to contribute off the ball while expending more energy on defense.
The Jazz are smart. Going forward they won’t expect him to be the borderline all-star floor general they thought they were getting. Reducing Conley’s responsibilities could lessen any pressure he felt coming in as a marquee trade acquisition, now in a contract year, scrapping for the last payday of his career. In 2021, Conley also won’t be unfamiliar with his surroundings. If he lowers his usage and ups his efficiency while Mitchell makes another leap towards superstardom, the Jazz can still be one of the most feared teams in the Western Conference. Their ceiling drops a bit, but at least they know exactly what they have.
Dejounte Murray
Sometimes I wonder where the Spurs would be if Murray didn’t tear his ACL during a preseason game in 2018. The timing was brutal, an aborted takeoff that accelerated San Antonio’s decline. Think about what could’ve been.
Muray’s scene-stealing defensive anticipation at the tender age of 21 was worthy of genuflection. The way he popped his head over jostling big men to grab rebounds was game altering. Murray didn’t shoot threes, but would instead add colorful dimensions to a proud yet creaky team that needed the 98 mile per hour fastball he was all set to provide.
Single-handedly extending the Spurs’ era of prosperity was unlikely, but healthy Murray could’ve at least slowed their inevitable crawl towards extinction while clarifying their future. After he missed the entire 2018-19 season, the Spurs signed him to a four-year, $64 million extension anyway. What followed was an underwhelming, inconsistent campaign in which Murray only averaged 25 minutes per game on a mediocre squad that was outright bad with him on the court. Gregg Popovich treated Murray like Danny Green. The gloss was gone.
Meanwhile, I still have two feet pressed on the gas of Murray’s bandwagon. Whether the Spurs finally hit the reset button or trudge along with DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge for another year, my life savings are bet on Murray establishing himself as one of the better young guards in basketball. His jump shot came around this season (47 percent from the mid-range!) and my gut tells me all the struggle he endured over the past 19 months will only turn him into a more dangerous force than he’d otherwise be.
Aaron Gordon
An all-tantalizing first-teamer for at least the last four years, no player in the entire NBA does less with more than Gordon. Some of that’s on him, but not all of it; Gordon has struggled to find the right role while refusing to accept what the right role looks like. I go back to 2016 when Frank Vogel mistakenly said Gordon would be used like Paul George. That Magic team had structural limitations that were beyond Vogel’s control, but the statement placed Gordon’s career on a path of self-willed miscalculation.
He will never be an MVP candidate, max player, or someone who can singularly break down a set defense and create an efficient shot for his team. That’s all fine and less a criticism than an expression of reality. Gordon is not a bad player by any stretch, but for the second year in a row his PER, three-point rate, and scoring average were lower than the previous season. He jacked up 3.9 threes per game and made just 30.1 percent of them.
This is discouraging. But until Gordon’s body breaks down I will go to war believing he’ll have a signature playoff moment, be it a chasedown block, a fire drill possession where he scrambles onto four different players before stealing the ball, or a Cirque du Soleil-worthy open floor slam that seals a victory.
We have yet to see who Gordon can be on a track that can actualize his massive potential. If basketball gods do in fact exist, sooner than later we will. (Related: Can someone move him to Brooklyn for Spencer Dinwiddie already?)
Gary Harris
When in peak form, few are able to harass the opposing team’s most lethal perimeter threat like Harris. He’s a cat burglar with the instincts of a strong safety. Unfortunately, for the past couple years several muscles in his lower body have prevented Harris from merging those qualities with some of the explosive offensive production we saw earlier in his career.
I went in depth on Harris’ situation earlier this year, but TL;DR: injuries can’t alone absolve how bad he’s shot the ball. A lot of his struggle remains a mystery. That’s not good news, per se, but it also doesn’t close the door on Harris rediscovering who he once was.
Eric Gordon
Playing with Russell Westbrook is not like playing with Chris Paul. Eric Gordon had a ton of success with the latter partnership, but we’ve yet to really see him at his healthiest beside Westbrook. That’s a shame. The tidal wave of instant, unflinching Moreyball offense those two could generate at the same time more than justifies the team’s small-ball identity, where narrow canals have become gaping waterways; Houston posted a +10.7 net rating in the measly 93 possessions those three plus PJ Tucker and James Harden shared the floor. In my heart I believe that unit can stand nose-to-nose with anybody in the league during crunch time of a Game 7.
Of course, for that to happen Gordon would have to be the aggressive stud he was during last year’s playoffs and not the guy who shot 37 percent from the floor, 31 percent from behind the three-point line, and 54 percent at the rim in 34 games this season. Gordon missed about six weeks of action after having knee surgery in early November, and before the procedure his numbers were career-worst gutter sludge across the board. But none of his shooting numbers increased in the months after he came back, while lingering knee pain kept him in and out of the lineup.
The hope going forward is that an extended layoff will do his legs good and allow him to be 100 percent next year. Gordon is somehow only 31 years old, on the same timeline as Harden and Westbrook with a game that somehow doesn’t suck up the oxygen both all-stars require. In September he signed a $75 million extension that simultaneously made him a trade chip and someone worth holding onto — if for no other reason than Houston has enough talent to win a championship right now and Gordon’s seamless fit on both ends isn’t easily replaceable.
We live in an age of impatience, but if the Rockets are willing to stick with their current roster for at least 12 more months it could pay off in a big way. That calculation needs Gordon to resemble the Sixth Man of the Year winner he once was. Or even, at the very least, making more than 28 percent of the 5.8 catch-and-shoot threes he averaged this season. Bet on improvement. He scored 50 points on 22 shots (against the Jazz!) in January, then was hampered by recurring knee pain the rest of the year.
There’s plenty of great basketball left in Gordon, and nothing scarier than the day he, Harden, and Westbrook have an opportunity to thrive at the exact same time.