Heres something I didnt expect to see when I pulled up Nikola Pekovics page on Basketball Reference: in 2013-14, he improved his points-per-36-minutes, his PER, his true shooting percentage and his field goal percentage, and held just about every other category steady. Somehow I thought he had been a little worse this year than last. Maybe it only seems weird because of the price tag that comes along with those numbers. In 2012-13 he did it all for $4.8 million; in 2013-14 he made $12.1 million.
None of which is his fault, really. He was a gigantic value last year and worth the money this year, but early on it felt like things werent quite hitting for Pekovic. He seemed to struggle on bunnies around the hoop, plus seemed to struggle at the end of close games (which, see also all of the Timberwolves). At the time, I wondered how much of that could be attributed to the fact that his physical post game was predicated on a kind of feel and sense of force, mass and space that was hard to keep up in the offseason. He might, I reasoned, be the kind of player who has to play his way back into comfortability with the game each year.
Although his performance in the clutch remained a problem (he was 0-for-7 on shots where the Wolves were ahead or behind by 3 or fewer points in the last 30 seconds), Pekovic did improve over the course of the season, bringing his field goal percentage up to 58.6% in March (he was at 54.1% for the year). There was also the pleasant surprise of a reasonably effective jumpshot, although it was probably effective because no one expected it, like the Spanish Inquisition. (He was 6-for-13 (46.2%) from 1519 feet. But it felt like 100%.)
His individual defense seemed to take a step back from last year, but its hard to know exactly what was at the root of it because Peks defensive acumen is tied so tightly to team defense and not individual effort. In 2012-13, it seemed like there was a cohesive approach on the Wolves to drop the big man on pick-and-rolls and then fill the gaps. For whatever reason, that consistency seemed to disappear this season. Pek would drop but then other players would not always follow that move appropriately. (My personal theory is that it had to do with the departure of Bill Bayno, who did as much as anyone to work on and improve the frontcourt players during his time in Minnesota.) Whatever the reason, Pek was left exposed more often than not, and hes simply not a rim protector.
