Jerami Grant has, predictably, regressed from his stellar season in Oklahoma City last year. What wasn’t predictable was the size of his regression; I thought he’d get a little worse without Russell Westbrook throwing him lobs (and stealing his rebounds), and I thought his near 40-percent three-point shooting was unsustainable (because of his 71 percent free throw shooting), but I didn’t expect this.
Maybe he just hasn’t figured out how to play with Nikola Jokic yet. Jokic is a different type of passing superstar than Westbrook, after all. Very different. But Jokic made it work well with Kenneth Faried, and Grant is kinda like a Faried who can shoot threes, so it should be easy, right?
Grant’s stats on a per-minute basis aren’t terrible, but the Nuggets aren’t very good when he’s on the floor and he’s not providing the spacing that his percentages from last year implied. Luckily the Nuggets main starting group is so good that the bench players can pretty much stand around and not even pretend to play basketball and the Nuggets will still win the majority of their games.
But at least he hasn’t regressed as far as his brother Jerian, who has regressed himself right into the G-League. Jerami has a ways to go before he has to back down there.