The Chicago Bulls’ Horace Grant had the best season of his career in 1991-92, averaging 14.2 PPG and 10.0 RPG while shooting a career-high 57.8% from the field. He was also one of only six players in the NBA that season to record at least 100 steals and 100 blocks.
On the surface, those numbers appear to be good but not great, yet he finished third in the NBA with 14.1 win shares, and his average of .237 win shares per 48 minutes was good for third as well.
Truth be told, I don’t believe Grant was a top-five player in the NBA that season, as I think the win shares system overrates low-usage, high-efficiency players like Grant. That said, I do believe Grant was a top-15 player, and considering he did not receive a single individual honor that season — All-Star, All-NBA, or All-Defensive — that’s not an opinion many would share.
Anyway, how did this happen? How did a player like Grant manage to contribute so much to the bottom line when his statistics, while good, are not especially eye-popping?
Let’s start with Grant’s offensive game. There are many things a player can do on offense to help his team, but the five most important skills are probably the following:
Make shots from the field.
Get to — and make shots from — the free throw line.
Minimize turnovers.
Create shots for others.
Extend possessions with offensive rebounds.
Let’s take a look at each of these categories and see how Grant fared (all rankings that follow will be among the 123 players who played at least 2,000 minutes during the 1991-92 season).
Make shots from the field
Grant’s effective field goal percentage was 57.8%, good for third in the league behind Buck Williams (60.4%) and Otis Thorpe (59.2%). Grant did not make a single 3-pointer that season, so this was accomplished the old-fashioned way: one 2-pointer at a time.
Get to — and make shots from — the free throw line
It’s obvious to see why making free throws is important, but simply getting to the free throw line is a valuable skill as well, as you benefit from getting your opponent in foul trouble. One way to simultaneously measure these things is to look at free throws made per 100 field goals attempted. Grant’s average of 10.7 was good for 30th place in the NBA, putting him in the top 25%.
Minimize turnovers
Grant turned the ball over just 10.6 times per 100 individual possessions*, the sixth-lowest rate in the NBA (and just one spot ahead of his twin brother, Harvey).
* The formula for individual possessions was developed by Dean Oliver. It takes into account most offensive statistics that can be found in the box score.
Here’s a fun fact: since the NBA began tracking individual turnovers in 1977-78, Grant is one of only four different players to record 100 or more steals, 100 or more blocks, and fewer than 100 turnovers in a season:
Ben Wallace (2001-02, 2002-03, 2004-05, 2005-06)
Horace Grant (1991-92)
Gerald Wallace (2005-06)
Anthony Davis (2014-15)
Create shots for others
Neither the quantitative nor the qualitative evidence suggests Grant was an adept playmaker. Grant assisted on an estimated 10.0% of his teammates’ made shots while he was on the court, placing him 83rd in the NBA.
Extend possessions with offensive rebounds
Grant grabbed an estimated 14.3% of all available offensive boards while he was on the floor. The only players who recorded a higher offensive rebound percentage are Dennis Rodman (18.1%) and Kevin Willis (14.7%), two elite rebounders who finished first and second, respectively, in rebounds per game that season.
What we have, then, is a player who:
was well above average in terms of scoring efficiency,
rarely turned the ball over, and
gave his team extra scoring opportunities by pounding the offensive boards.
That sounds pretty valuable, to me.
In fact, if you add it all up Grant produced an estimated 132.2 points per 100 possessions, the highest such figure in the NBA that season.
What about defense? That can be harder to measure, of course, but let’s look at the evidence we do have.
Team Defense
The Bulls finished fourth in the NBA in points allowed per 100 possessions. Grant averaged 35.3 MPG, the third-highest figure on the team behind Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and well ahead of the next-closest post player, Bill Cartwright (23.0 MPG).
Defensive Rebounding
Grant was a much better offensive rebounder, but he was no slouch on the defensive boards. Grant snagged an estimated 18.2 defensive rebounds per 100 opportunities, the 29th-highest rate in the league.
Steals
Grant averaged an estimated 1.78 steals per 100 opponent possessions, putting him in the top half of the league (60th). The only Bulls to record higher steal rates were Jordan and Pippen, both All-Defensive First Team selections.
Blocks
Grant blocked a career-high 131 shots, 35 more than his second-highest season total. Grant recorded an estimated 2.88 blocks per 100 opponent 2-point attempts, the league’s 14th-highest rate.
Personal Fouls
Grant committed just 2.47 fouls per 36 minutes, the 34th-lowest rate in the NBA. A majority of the players with better foul rates were guards; only four of them would be considered post players (i.e., power forwards or centers):
A.C. Green, 1.75
Moses Malone, 1.95
Armen Gilliam, 2.29
Charles Barkley, 2.45
Once again, we have the profile of a very valuable player, one who:
played major minutes on a team with a top-notch defense,
was solid on the defensive boards,
produced an above-average steal rate,
was one of the league’s top shot blockers, and
only committed a foul about once every 15 minutes.
With the caveat that individual defense is difficult to measure, Grant allowed an estimated 102.2 points per 100 defensive possessions, the sixth-best individual defensive rating in the NBA.
Putting it all together, Grant was the league’s most efficient offensive player — albeit one who did not carry a heavy offensive load — as well as one of the league’s most effective defensive players.
Despite the evidence laid out above, I know there are still going to be people who doubt that Grant was a top-15 player that season. Let me try to answer some of the arguments against him.
Grant was helped by playing alongside Jordan
Well, of course.
But two years later, when Jordan was shagging fly balls for the Birmingham Barons, Grant had what was probably his second-best season as a pro, as he earned his only All-Star selection and was named to the All-Defensive Second Team.
In short, Grant was a very good player with or without Jordan.
Grant did not carry a large offensive burden
That’s true; Grant used just 15.5% of his team’s offensive plays while he was on the floor, the league’s 12th-lowest usage rate (and well below the league average of 20%).
But let’s think about this another way: an average player would have needed about 1,246 plays to score the same number of points Grant did using 1,027 plays. In other words, Grant’s scoring volume was equal to that of a player with a much higher usage rate.
Grant is getting too much credit for defense
That’s possible, as it’s hard to disentangle a player’s individual defensive accomplishments from the team surrounding him.
But aside from the quantitative evidence, there is also some qualitative evidence that Grant was an excellent defender, as he was named to the All-Defensive Second Team four straight times starting with the 1992-93 season, and received votes for the All-Defensive teams in six other seasons.
I know there are going to be people who are onboard with me in believing Grant was a much better player than his basic statistics would suggest, and I also know there are going to be people who think I’m cuckoo for wasting over 1,000 words on this subject.
That said, I think there is one important thing to learn from all of this, and it’s something that applies to almost all athletes in team sports: players who can do many things well but lack a signature skill tend to be underrated, while players who have a signature skill but are not well-rounded tend to be overrated.
Horace Grant did a lot of things well.
Perhaps another argument in Grant’s favor: the Kobe and Shaq Laker’s best playoff run was ‘01, where Horace Grant was the starting PF. That was when they went 15-1 and swept the WC. The position that changed in all three of the three-peat years was the starting PF. (AC Green, Grant, Samaki Walker.) one could argue Grant brought the best out of Kobe and Shaq.