Philadelphia 76ers: Matisse Thybulle can learn from Gary Payton II

Matisse Thybulle might just be the best perimeter defender in the NBA.

With long arms, ample recovery speed, and a mind that’s always evaluating, Thybulle’s a savvy on-ball defender, a switch-specialist who can hold his own 1-4, and the only player in the NBA who is averaging two steals and 1.4 blocks per game in under 26 minutes of action per game.

That’s the good news. The bad news? Thybulle might just be the worst offensive player in the NBA, which is really saying something, considering there are 475 players who have taken an NBA court so far this season.

While Thybulle’s stats may suggest that he’s taken a step forward offensively, as he’s averaging a career-high in points, field goal percentage, and two-point free throw percentage, teams have keyed in on the third-year winger’s inefficient outside shot, and have simply started to leave him open in favor of doubling up Joel Embiid in the paint before he even gets the ball. This has made Embiid’s life a whole lot harder, Tyrese Maxey‘s life a whole lot harder, and the Philadelphia 76ers‘ ability to dictate their own offensive gameplan tricky when Thybulle is in the game over Danny Green.

Inconvenient? Maybe so, but unless Doc Rivers starts to give Georges Niang some run at the three, or shift Furkan Korkmaz from the backcourt to the frontcourt while playing alongside guards like Maxey, Joe, or Seth Curry, what is the team really supposed to do? I mean, come on, Thybulle has the fourth-highest On-Off rating of any player on the team at +3.0, surely the stats can’t be wrong, right?

Well, if Thybulle continues to get the playoff Ben Simmons treatment while on the court with Joel Embiid or, heaven forbid, a non-shooting center like Andre Drummond, that rating will surely dip no matter how impressive his defensive numbers are.

*sigh* If only there was another player in the NBA with a similar offensive skill set that the Philadelphia 76ers could turn to in the hopes of keeping Matisse Thybulle’s defense on the court without suffering too much of a disadvantage on the offensive end? Fortunately, there is, and I would imagine the Washington state product has spent more than a few hours watching his Hall of Fame father play basketball for the now-defunct SuperSonics.

Matisse Thybulle needs to cut the Philadelphia 76ers some slack.

Gary Payton II is not a 3-and-D wing.

A collegiate point guard who, like Marcus Smith, didn’t do a whole lot of shooting at Oregon State, Payton bounced around the NBA for five years before landing a consistent role with the Golden State Warriors this season, as a non-shooting guard and defensive specialist.

Like Matisse Thybulle, Payton is a thief. While the 29-year-old backcourt defender plays roughly 10 fewer minutes per game than his fellow Washingtonian, he actually picks off passes at a higher clip than Thybulle, theoretically averaging .7 more steals per game via the Per 36 stat.

Sidebar: I know, I know, Per 36 is a loaded stat, and Payton may actually average the same 1.4 steals per game in 25 minutes as he does 15 minutes, but still, pretty impressive stuff.

Furthermore, according to FiveThirtyEight, Payton has the best defensive RAPTOR rating of any player in the NBA over the past nine seasons(!). Granted, Thybulle is no slouch in that regard either, as he currently ranks sixth overall in that same category, but his abilities as a defender aren’t quite setting all-time records like the Warriors’ 10th-most utilized player.

But that isn’t why Payton is succeeding in the NBA right now, not really, anyway. Payton has always been a good defender, but he just never got consistent enough on the offensive end of the court to remain a consistent minutes earner. No, the reason we’re in the middle of the Glove 2.0 era is that Payton has found ways to contribute on the offensive end of the court.

Allow me to share with you an excerpt of a piece from FanSided’s own Ian Levy on how Payton has found his niche offensively in 2021 (read the full piece here).

"Payton is shooting a somewhat respectable 35.7 percent from beyond the arc, albeit on just 14 total attempts, but 3-point shots are making up a smaller percentage of his shot attempts than at any point in his career. He hasn’t addressed his weakness so much as found a way around it. More than 60 percent of his offensive possessions this season have been used in transition or off cuts in the halfcourt and he’s also averaging 3.4 offensive rebounds per 100 possessions, about the same as Bam Adebayo or Montrezl Harrell. Just under 90 percent of his 2-point baskets have been assisted on and he’s only attempted one 2-pointer from outside the paint."

Alright, alright, alright; so how does that apply to Thybulle and the Philadelphia 76ers?

Well, like Payton, Thybulle is attempting more 2 point shots than at any point in his career thus far, taking just .2 fewer shots from within the arc than the former’s 2.6 attempts per game. Like Payton, Thybulle is making 70-plus percent of his shots from that range, but a key difference separating the duo is the volume of shots taken and where they are being attempted from.

You see, Payton takes 64.8 percent of his shots from within 10 feet of the basket, and he makes them at over an 80 percent clip. Thybulle, by contrast, takes only 50 percent of his shots from within 10 feet of the basket, and while he makes shots in the restricted area at an 82.1 percent clip, his shots from 3-10 sink down to 50 percent, and things only get less efficient from there.

But why? Could it be because Payton has experience on-ball as a point guard and is a better driver than Thybulle? Or could it be that the presence of Steph Curry taking some of the attention off of Payton?

It’s probably a bit of both, but also a concerted effort by Payton to find ways to contribute.

As Levy pointed out in his piece, Payton has been a serious beneficiary of the Warriors’ movement-heavy offense. He screens off-ball, flares out to the corner despite his reputation as a non-shooter, and, most importantly of all, cuts towards the basket when he’s open to go for a high-percentage shot under the basket instead of a lower-percentage clanker from beyond the arc. With Joel Embiid’s newfound pension for drawing double-teams, usually via 22’s defender, Thybulle routinely gets open looks on the wings, and could easily drive a few more into the paint for layups and/or benefit from some mid-range passes that make his lack of handles easier to hide.

Will Thybulle ever be able to garner the respect of opposing coaches enough to truly allow the Sixers to play five-on-five basketball? Probably not, but when Embiid and Thybulle only play 12.5 minutes together per game on the court together, turning a few missed 3 threes into just two made 2s could be the difference between a team averaging the 19th-most points per game league-wide and the ninth-most.

At this point, that sounds pretty darn, all things considered.

Matisse Thybulle will (probably) never become a lights out NBA 3 point shooter. At 24, the 20th overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft already has 3,288 NBA minutes under his belt, and his offensive game hasn’t shown too much development despite operating under two different head coaches in two different offensive schemes. In the grand scheme of things, that probably won’t be too detrimental to his career, as teams are forever in need of elite perimeter defenders, and pay pretty darn handsomely for that ability. But for the Philadelphia 76ers to take their game up a notch and keep him in Doc Rivers’ rotation on a non-situational basis moving forward, everyone involved really needs to find a way to score more points with Thybulle on the court than off it. For that to happen, maybe Daryl Morey should collect some tape from Gary Payton II in Golden State and send it down to the film room in time for the second quartile of the 2021-22 NBA season. Couldn’t hurt, right?