The next Ron Baker? Gregg Marshall thinks WSU’s Erik Stevenson is starting to show signs
Gregg Marshall is a calculated man, a coach who chooses his words carefully.
So when the Wichita State coach made the bold proclamation following the Shockers’ 70-47 victory over South Carolina in Cancun that sophomore guard Erik Stevenson “showed me signs of some Ron Baker,” it’s worth examining.
Stevenson was tremendous on Tuesday, piling up a game-high 19 points (all in the first half), eight rebounds, four assists and three steals. He was the game’s best player and was the driving force in helping WSU bury South Carolina in a 19-point halftime deficit.
When Marshall recruited Stevenson to WSU, he told the Lacey, Washington native he had the potential to be the program’s next Baker, who was an All-American at WSU and played in the NBA for three seasons. But the coach hadn’t publicly made the comparison until Tuesday, when Stevenson strung together yet another strong performance to start his sophomore season.
“I’ve heard that comparison before, but I’ve been hesitant to say it myself,” Marshall said in his postgame radio interview. “I would love for him to eventually become a pro and make a lot of money and handle his business as a big-time guy. And (Stevenson) is doing that now.”
Here’s how Stevenson’s game is beginning to mature and resemble Baker:
High basketball intelligence
There were many things that made Baker great as a Shocker. His high basketball intelligence was the foundation, though.
He could scan the floor, read player movements and see passing angles before they even developed. That skill cannot be coached. Players either have it or they don’t.
On top of that, Baker understand the art of passing. He knew how much zip to put on a pass. He knew the right time when to throw a bounce pass or a chest pass. He didn’t just throw passes in the general location of players; he pinpointed them to make the shot even easier for the scorer.
Stevenson owns both of these skills.
Stevenson showed flashes last season, but this season it’s evident he is processing the game at a much faster speed. He confirmed as much earlier this season.
“Last year everything was flying at me and I was kind of playing too fast at times,” Stevenson said. “This year it’s kind of like in slow motion. I know what Coach wants out of his motion offense and I know where our guys are going to be at certain times, so I can hit them at the right spot for the look.”
A specific area where Stevenson has actually surpassed Baker is with the overhead skip pass. It’s a risky pass, which is probably why Baker did not throw many, but Stevenson has used it to great success this season for the Shockers.
Usually it comes out against zone defenses when Stevenson can hold the ball high above his head on the wing, survey the defense, identify the weakness and whip a pass across the court to an open shooter.
He finds passing angles that no one else on WSU has been able to thread this season. There are passes that can crumble a defense, but they have to be on-time and on-target. Stevenson has proved capable of providing both.
“He has great vision,” Marshall said earlier this season. “I think he was probably a multi-sport athlete. He can really zip that ball to the intended receiver with some pace. Usually it’s on target. Sometimes he’s a little bit of a riverboat gambler, but he’s playing really well right now as long as he lets the game come to him.”
So how did Stevenson develop such a valuable skill? When asked earlier this season, Stevenson said his vision for finding the skip pass actually comes from being in that position as a spot-up shooter.
“When I’m that guy on the skip, I know I’m open on that,” Stevenson said. “So if I have the ball, then I know someone on the weak-side is open. The way they played defense, they collapsed in the paint and tried to take away the driving lanes. I know (that defender) is going to be on the weak-side block, so I have the ability to skip it to him hopefully for a knock-down jumper.”
Pick and roll passer
Marshall explained earlier this season on his radio show what made Baker and Fred VanVleet so good at passing out of the pick and roll.
“Those guys were able to use their eyes like a great quarterback and not stare down a receiver,” Marshall said. “They would look this way, knowing they were going to throw it back that way. But there’s not a lot of Fred VanVleet’s and Ron Baker’s out there.”
In this regard, Stevenson deserves mention in the same class. Already as a 20-year-old sophomore, Stevenson has the shown the ability this season to manipulate the defense with his eyes. Even with three point guards on the roster, Stevenson leads WSU with 22 assists on the season.
When he decides to dribble around the screen, he has a knack for knowing when to take the extra dribble to bend the defense even further and improve the passing angle, which allows him to hit the rolling big man for a basket. Or when he doesn’t take the screen, he’ll stay up top and direct his eyes to the wing to pull the defense in that direction only to whiz a pass over the recovering defender with his head turned into the hands of WSU’s rolling big for a dunk.
It’s uncanny to watch Baker and Stevenson operate in back-to-back clips. They use the same tricks and see the floor the same way.
They read the chess pieces on the board the same way. When the defense adjusted and sent a defender from the weak side to the paint to cover WSU’s rolling big man, Baker and Stevenson were experts in finding the open shooter on the weak side to make defenses pay.
Baker peaked as a pick-and-roll passer during his sophomore season when WSU finished 35-1. According to Synergy, WSU scored 1.18 points per possession on offense derived from Baker running the pick and roll, which ranked him in the 94th percentile. He was truly elite because he was scoring and assisting out of the action at an extremely high level.
But that was the only season in Baker’s career where he finished above “average” in Synergy’s logs in the pick and roll. The other three years, WSU didn’t score much with Baker passing out of the pick and roll.
While Stevenson struggled to score out of the pick and roll last season, he already flirted with elite numbers passing out of it last season. WSU scored 1.22 points per possession when Stevenson passed out of a pick and roll, which ranked in the 89th percentile. Through five games, WSU was scoring at 1.25 PPP on Stevenson’s passes out of the pick and roll.
Rebounding
Baker progressed in his career at WSU and became an excellent defensive rebounder for his position by the time he was a senior. He posted a 16.4% defensive rebounding rate, which was good for the fourth-best on WSU during the 2015-16 season.
In WSU’s program, several factors go into defensive rebounding and sometimes the number can be misleading. Marshall preaches to his big men to focus on boxing out and moving their guy out of the paint. That opens up space for the guards to come swooping in to secure the rebound, even though the bigs are the ones who are doing the majority of the work.
But there’s no denying that Stevenson has a knack for reading the ball off the rim and knowing when and where to swoop in for the rebound. He posted a 16.1% defensive rebounding rate as a freshman, which is basically where Baker finished his career.
Six games is a small sample size, but Stevenson’s defensive rebounding has taken a jump this season. He’s up to a 19.4% rate, which ranks third on WSU this season.
The numbers don’t necessarily prove that Stevenson is already a better rebounder than Baker, just that Stevenson is already taking on a larger load in rebounding responsibilities on his team. Again, many factors go into that. But there’s still something to be said for Stevenson’s ability to chase down rebounds and how valuable that is to WSU.
Three-point shooting
It’s not even a comparison right now between the two as three-point shooters.
Baker made 2.0 three-pointers per game for his career and was a 37% career three-point shooter. He never dipped below 35% shooting beyond the arc in a single season.
There’s no doubting Stevenson has a smooth stroke, but he still needs more shots to fall before he can be considered even close to Baker’s class as a spot-up shooter. Stevenson shot just 28% on threes last season and is shooting 23% on threes through six games this season.
Ignoring the percentages for a second, it’s hard to not see the similarities between the two in the way that they move without the basketball and spot up from beyond the arc. They both have a knack for relocating on the perimeter to make for an easier kick-out pass and also coming off screens in a ready-to-shoot position.
Again, Stevenson still has several levels to go before he becomes the all-around player that Baker was for the Shockers. Baker could defend, shoot and pass at a high level.
Stevenson isn’t there yet, but he’s also just played only his sixth game of his sophomore season. He has plenty of time to develop and so far the early signs have been encouraging.
This story was originally published November 27, 2019 at 5:09 AM.
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