Jalen Johnson is one of the best interior finishers in the game—right?
By the eye test, the young athletic finisher has been an unstoppable force all season long, getting downhill with ease, finding himself hanging on the rim far more often than his opponents would like. Unfortunately, as efficient as his restricted area buckets have been, his paint (non-restricted area) shots haven't followed suit.
Johnson ranks ninth worst in the entire NBA (min 200 FGA) on inside the paint shots that don't occur directly under the rim in the restricted area at a subpar 41.6 percent clip. Something has to change.
Jalen Johnson's otherwise-elite efficiency
If you didn't have a magnifying glass to Johnson's scoring, you might not see any problems at first glance. While he's not an elite isolation scorer, just about every other facet of his game is well-rounded.
Shooting 49/35/79 splits on extremely high volume isn't bad at all - in fact, it's only a 2.5 percent reduction in effective field goal percentage from Johnson's splits two years ago, where he shot nearly five fewer attempts per game.
Maintaining high efficiency while substantially increasing your offensive responsibilities should be praised—I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Jalen Johnson commanded All-NBA second or third team votes en masse in the very near future.
Johnson has been a stellar offensive force this season, there's no arguing it. That being said, the regular season is an entirely different beast from the NBA Playoffs.
In-between shots are amplified in the NBA Playoffs (for stars)
Remember the 2021 series with the very same opponent—the fourth-seeded New York Knicks? Trae Young picked this team apart game after game with a detailed three-level attack.
While Young's 3-point shot was incredibly streaky, he was always able to lean on his inside attack, as well as his patented float-game against larger, slower Knicks' defenders. If fans recall, it was a deadly eight-foot floater with 0.9 seconds on the clock that sealed the Hawks' miraculous road Game 1 victory in the series.
Johnson may be much, much larger than Young, and therefore able to take it directly to the rim with more power and consistency. However, this effect is dampened in the Playoffs against elite, physical defenses that know what shots to give, and what shots to take away—defenses like the New York Knicks, boasting the likes of OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, and Mitchell Robinson.
If Johnson is to lead the Hawks' offensive attack en route to a series victory against New York, he'll inevitably be denied the interior and/or have his shot leave his favor at some point in the series. At such a time, Atlanta will face a make or break moment—will Johnson be able to answer?
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