After several years of 71 games for four different teams in 5 seasons, this season, Payton has found his place as a significant player in the Golden State. This season, Payton stands at 7 points at an effective 67.8% and 36.4% for three in 17.4 minutes, with 3.4 rebounds and 1.4.
On defense, Payton usually retains the opponent’s most challenging player, with quite a few of them having a hard time scoring in front of him. Here are data from all the players who took six shots or more.
No player has scored on Payton more than four field goal baskets this season, and of those he has kept long enough (6 shots or more as mentioned), Jukic, with a 22-centimeter advantage (and also a bit of a belly) over Payton, is the only one who has succeeded Reach 50%. Overall, players guarded by Payton score 43.5% from the field, and there are better ones than him. Still, he maintains the opponent’s senior player in any position, unlike most relevant ones.
Golden State is the team that goes a long way on basket-cutting moves, with Payton’s amount of activities with 1.5 per game being a quarter of the actions he goes to, and he finishes them with an efficiency of 1.59 points per move at 81.8% from the field. Inoffensive mainly dedicated to the chins, only two guards in the top 50 in the league at these moves are far less effective than him in that.
Payton is known for his ability to run fast and finish, usually with a resounding dunk. By and large, Payton is a classic example of a player who throws threes in a catch-and-shoot or finishes in color. Of the 325 shots from the field that Peyton took this season, 203 were colored up to 10 feet from the basket, and 112 were threes in the catch-and-shoot, leaving only ten more shots for cases of no choice. Beyond that, only 46 of his shots did a bard hold the ball for more than 2 seconds.
Payton introduces this season some characteristics that can help him be an ideal sub-player for the Warriors in the playoffs as well. He combines excellent defense on a wide range of league stars, their different styles, with the ability to express himself without the ball on offense and be a target that will be difficult for rivals to systematically leave free, at least as long as he manages to keep the wrong percentages out of the arc.
