Maybe one of the least assuming professional basketball players I’ve seen is Dave Twardzik, the 6’1 point guard of the championship 1977 Portland Trail Blazers. He played in the 1970s, sure, but he looked more like Hollywood’s idea of a high school varsity player than a league champion and ABA all-star — mildly athletic and definitely over 25. His highlights being available in grainy, sparse YouTube videos would be a shame if there were anything to see. My dad might get higher off the ground than Twardzik did on his layups. I am not sure he could dunk.
Those layups went in, though! Adjusting for seasonal league-wide averages, Dave Twardzik has several of the most efficient scoring seasons for a guard in league history. It is truly amazing — no three-point shot, 1960s-style dribbling, little vertical bounce, and he had games like this: 23 points on 8-of-9 from the floor, 7/7 from the line, six assists and three steals to blow out the title-bound 1980 Lakers by 21. Or a 28-point game on seven field goal attempts to beat Seattle by 30 in ‘77 (16/17 FTs!). A few things about his scoring: First, he was not a super high volume scorer — the highest scoring average he ever achieved was just over 15 a game in the 78/79 season. Second, and the key to his absurd scoring efficiency: he was incredible at getting to the line. Maybe that’s not palatable to some people. I tend to see it as more a skill than anything else. Either way, not many have drawn fouls like he did.
Free throw rate (FTr) measures the number of free throws a player shoots per every standard field goal attempt. James Harden, who developed an array of new techniques for generating three-point fouls, hit a FTr of .528 in his 2018 MVP year. Joel Embiid hit the deck after half his scoring attempts last year to achieve a FTr of .581. Shaq fouled out entire frontcourts in his 2000-01 campaign and reached an incredible FTr of .684. In Twardzik’s 4 NBA seasons? .660, .572, .785, and .640. When you can do that, it almost doesn’t matter how efficient you are from the field — you are going to put up some efficient scoring numbers. Twardzik making an outstanding 61 percent of his field goal attempts in the Blazers’ championship year, then, produced scoring efficiency 18 percent better than the league average, a figure 5 points ahead of Stephen Curry’s incandescent 2016 run and the best by a guard since the NBA-ABA merger.
Twardzik’s aggressive cutting and spacing were an excellent fit with a dominant post player like Bill Walton, the centerpiece of those Portland teams, but even with Walton out in 78/79 Twardzik maintained his incredible efficiency. If there was a gap in the opponent’s paint defense, he would be there, and a late rotation to contest him often meant contact and free throws. You have to be fearless at his height, and Twardzik was no exception — the nickname ‘Pinball’ was earned. Twardzik was a good enough shooter that open midrange shots were worth taking, but pull up jumpers weren’t an unnecessarily major part of his repertoire. Sturdy defense complemented Twardzik’s opportunistic scoring to ultimately make him a strong piece on high level, contending teams. With those measurables? Pretty darn good.
Leave a Reply