As a super athletic big man with a questionable jumper, Paolo Banchero was recently compared to former Detroit Pistons’ flame-out Josh Smith.
The comparison was made by Kirk Goldsberry on a recent episode of the Zach Lowe Show, who said,
“I’m going to raise the red flag over Paolo Banchero Island. This is such a key moment for him, and I hesitate to admit this — but at times, he reminds me of Josh Smith. He’s made just five of his 27 jump shots this year, and I’m not cherry-picking... He has a jump-shooting problem, and as the team’s most active scorer, that’s an issue. Some of the advanced numbers aren’t trending in the right direction, and this start to the season has cemented in my mind that he might not be improving at this key phase of his career.”
I don’t think he meant the Josh Smith comp as a compliment (Magic fans certainly didn’t take it that way), and it was unfortunate to see him catch some shrapnel here, but Smith is now mostly remembered for his time with the Pistons, when he couldn’t hit a jumper.
Smith was a player who spanned two eras of the NBA and wasn’t able to make the necessary adjustments, but that’s unlikely to happen to Banchero.
Josh Smith was better than you remember, but Paolo Banchero is not him
Both Banchero and Smith are big power forwards who are athletic and skilled, and both are players who struggle with their jump shots.
But Smith is probably better than you remember and was a very good player for years with the Atlanta Hawks before joining the Pistons on a bloated free-agent contract that was one of the worst the Pistons ever signed when you consider they already had two players in the front court who couldn’t shoot and they ended up waiving Smith almost immediately.
The Drummond, Monroe, Smith experiment was a predictable flop that symbolized the end of an era and the start of the NBA leaning more into 3-point shooting and perimeter play from big men. None of those players adjusted and weren’t long for the league, though Drummond lingered as a backup.
Banchero already shoots more 3-pointers than Smith ever did and makes a higher percentage of them, though he is well below league average. He’s also 22-years-old and was a former #1 pick, so he has a much higher ceiling than Smith even if he never becomes a good 3-point shooter.
That’s not to say Banchero doesn’t have troubling red flags, as he takes a lot of field goal attempts for a guy who is only a 44 percent shooter for his career. The big difference is that Banchero came into the league shooting jumpers and knows it’s the area he has to improve, where Smith was primarily a defender, slasher and transition player before being asked to change his game mid-career, which is far more difficult.
The Pistons hope Banchero’s shooting woes continue tonight (39.4 FG percentage on the season) and that Cade Cunningham (36 percent on the season) breaks out of his early funk. Banchero may be struggling, but it’s far too early to write him off by comparing him to a guy who was waived after 28 games.