Maybe I’m just biased as a result of spending several years with the Grit ‘N’ Grind Grizzlies, but my travel-heavy Tour de NBA the last few weeks has left me pondering a question: Is the league undervaluing grit? Are we, as a league, so focused on the upside plays, the possibility that dart throws on guys with length and athleticism “figuring it out” will hit the bull’s eye one day, that we’re missing the hustlers getting results right in front of our eyes?
Call them gamers or grinders or whatever term you want to use for hard-playing, unheralded guys with a little bit of extra edge to them, but they certainly seem to be having a moment. Almost all of these guys were massively undervalued coming out of college, too.
Dillon Brooks is the most obvious example, inexplicably available to us in Memphis with the 45th pick in 2017. In his seventh season as a full-time starter, Brooks has been a culture-changer on the resurgent Phoenix Suns. (Not like we were towering geniuses, either — we took Ivan Rabb over him at pick 35!) The Detroit Pistons, meanwhile, have basically built an entire roster of high-effort guys and parlayed that into a spot at the top of the East standings.
As I traveled the last few weeks, I have noticed a common theme, and started talking to a few of the players who best fit this profile as I went. While much of the league siestas during a light NBA Cup week schedule, I thought it was a good time to share what I found.
Jamal Shead, point guard, Toronto
Before a recent game in Atlanta, I pulled aside one of Shead’s veteran teammates to give me a quick scouting report. “He is a pit bull” was the first item. Sounds promising for this purpose.
Shead is only 6-foot-1 but was the Defensive Player of the Year in two different conferences (his Houston Cougars team changed leagues in 2023-24, moving from the AAC to the Big 12), and won Big 12 Player of the Year in his final season playing for a team that relies on high-effort, suffocating defense. Like Brooks above, all that got him was the 45th selection in the relatively weak 2024 draft. An injury that kept him out of the combine and spring workouts likely didn’t help.
However, because of the Raptors’ plethora of injuries, including to Immanuel Quickley, Shead ended up getting plenty of floor time last year. He was able to show off his point-of-attack defense.
“(Defense) is something that we really, really took pride in at Houston,” Shead said. “We were the No. 1 defensive team for four years while I was there, and I think it’s just carried over. It’s just about playing hard and trying to keep that defensive intensity up.”
Shead has 12 steals in his last five games. A lot of them were him straight-up picking dribblers clean. Good dribblers, too. Just in that stretch, he got Deni Avdija, Austin Reaves, LaMelo Ball, Derrick White (twice!) and Jalen Brunson. Watch:
Overall, his 3.0 steal rate ranks ninth in the league.
Shead made an immediate impression with his defense and effort as a rookie, but in his second season, he’s become a rotation staple because of offensive improvements. His outside shooting (32.8 percent) remains a work in progress, but averaging five assists for every turnover will get you some leeway on the scoring front.
Before a recent game, Raptors coach Darko Rajaković credited Shead’s continued work on his left hand and shooting.
“Just going left and making reads,” Shead said of his offseason improvement, “It’s not always about scoring, it’s about if they’re trying to push me left or right in the ball screen, can I still make the read out of that?
“I’m understanding the pace of the game and how to really create for my teammates. … Impacting defense is what I’m going to do regardless, but I’m impacting offense this year a lot more too.”
Miles “Deuce” McBride, guard, New York
It’s the first quarter of a late-November Knicks game against Toronto, and the crowd stands up and roars “Deuuuuuuuuuuuce!” as McBride catches the ball at the 3-point line.
McBride made four 3s in the first five minutes, with the crowd roaring its approval, as the fan favorite helped New York rout Toronto.
“Man, it’s an amazing feeling,” said McBride of the chants from the Madison Square crowd — something that didn’t happen at West Virginia. “I don’t know who started it, but I appreciate it. It’s a great feeling to have that love here.”
The undersized 3-and-D guard is shooting 44.4 percent from 3 while contributing tough on-ball defense, after going mostly overlooked out of West Virginia.
“Honestly, it was tough not playing,” McBride said. “You know, I’ve leaned on God, I leaned on my friends, my family of course and … just worked. There’s really no secret recipe, it’s just working hard and keep covering everything you can do in the finite minutes, keep carving out a role, and now we’re here today.”
Knicks coach Mike Brown said the level of McBride’s shooting surprised him when he came to coach New York.
“Just a tough guy that is a two-way player that can score in bunches,” said Brown. “I didn’t know he could shoot it as well as he does. He’s a high-level shooter, and also his work ethnic is really high.
“Coaching against him is tough, he can defend, he can shoot, he’s got a (midrange) game. … He’s extremely athletic and is a great, great, great human being, I love being around the dude.”
A second-round pick by the Knicks (36th) in 2021, McBride got off to a rough start as a rookie — his handle wasn’t tight enough for full-time point guard duty, and, at 6-2, it was unclear how he’d fit in anywhere else. In his first two seasons, he posted player efficiency ratings of 6.1 and 8.4, playing just 1,132 total minutes. (The average PER is 15.0.)
That’s where his work as a shooter and doggedness as a defender kicked in. He also holds on to a long-simmering grudge.
“Absolutely, I think about it all the time — all the teams (that) passed up (on drafting him),” McBride said. “But like I said, it’s worked out.”
A football player in high school, McBride chose basketball but still brings a gridiron mentality with his physical defense.
“I want that to be one of the things I’m known for,” McBride said.
Embracing that and working on his shooting got him into a position to be an impact player on one of the league’s best teams. While he spent his first season at the end of New York’s bench, that was his focus.
“Making shots, that’s gonna keep you on the floor,” McBride said. “But playing defense is something I’ve always put first, making sure I get guys going with my defensive energy, and then coming in and making shots.”
Credit New York’s patience with him as well. Despite this rough first two years, the Knicks not only hung on to him, they extended his contract in December 2023. He’s proven one of the best values in the league since, on a descending-money deal that pays him $3.96 million in 2026-27 before he hits free agency. Presumably, he’s heading for a much higher tax bracket.
Zach Edey, center, Memphis
Oh, you think a giant can’t have that dog in him? Think again. My first tip that Edey, who might be wired differently was from another team executive who interviewed him before the 2024 draft, and told me Edey had a Zach Edey-sized chip on his shoulder from how low he was rated before that process started. In particular, I was told it burned him up that UConn’s Donovan Clingan — whom Edey scored 37 points against in an NCAA tournament game — went two picks ahead of him.
Talk to Edey about it and he won’t mention the Trail Blazers center by name, but he doesn’t exactly shy away from the idea that he uses that draft cycle — and the one before it that saw him return to college despite being National Player of the Year — as motivation, and that he didn’t get enough credit for his mobility because of his size.
“I always felt like that,” said Edey, who the Grizzlies announced will be out with a stress reaction in his left ankle on Thursday. He will be reevaluated in four weeks. “I had games against people who were drafted in front of me or the lottery talents or whatever in my first few years. I win the matchup and then they get drafted in the lottery and I go back to college.”
Edey has also worked on his mobility on the defensive end, especially during his rehab from an offseason foot injury, so that NBA teams’ biggest fear entering that draft — that he’d be isolated and exploited in space — wouldn’t be such a problem. In fact, he’s turned that on its head — now Edey is the problem for opponents. Memphis’s defense has been airtight in the 11 games since he returned.
Edey plays mostly drop coverages, but has proven capable when he has to step up on the perimeter. Watch here as he steps out to block a Kawhi Leonard 3-pointer; later in the same game, he closed off Leonard’s space on the perimeter and then stuffed his dunk attempt when Leonard tried to blow past him.
“I feel like I can move my feet better than people think I can, which always catches people off guard,” said Edey. “They get me out in space and on an island and they think it’s an easy match for them. I’ve always felt like I could do it, even before I got to the NBA. With Team Canada, (I’ve been) guarding Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander), guarding DB (Dillon Brooks), guarding RJ Barrett, all of them since I was young. It’s really helped the transition for me.”
Edey is usually soft-spoken about his game, but one thing that got him excited was the prospect of open-court glamour in a recent win over Dallas. This play — a steal! In the open court! — was a sign of the work he’s put in to improve his mobility, and one that had him briefly dreaming of potential highlights before he wisely pitched it back to a guard.
“Oh man, I was thinking about taking off!” he said. “But I gotta stay in my lane. I get my hands on the ball, I’m just going to get it to a guard and get down the floor.”
“I said before the first game that people are gonna be surprised about how much work our performance and medical staff and Zach have done during the rehab,” Grizzlies coach Tuomas Iisalo said of the play. “This was one of the focal points that Zach wanted to improve … and get more agile and faster, and the way he’s moving is opening up new affordances, like that steal.”
The results speak for themselves. The Grizzlies started 4-9 while Edey was on the shelf, completing his injury rehab. Since he returned, Memphis is 7-4, with no defeats by more than 10 points, despite Ja Morant missing all 11 games.
Meanwhile, Memphis’ defensive rating is a microscopic 94.5 in the minutes Edey has played — a 23.8-point improvement from their rating with him off the court. Small samples and all, but this is the diametrically opposite outcome from what many thought when he was crushing college competition at Purdue.
Peyton Watson, forward, Denver
We think about grit in terms of being the first one in the gym and diving on every loose ball. An unmentioned element: being a tapehead.
How do you defend against an NBA superstar? Well, it helps if you’ve been devouring all their clips since childhood. That was the case for Nuggets defensive ace Peyton Watson when he matched up against his idol, Houston’s Kevin Durant, two weeks ago. The 6-8 Watson guarded Durant all game and forced him into just 13 points (his second-lowest output of the season) on 5-for-15 shooting to key a crucial Nuggets win. Go through the tape and you’ll see 14 of Durant’s 15 attempts were jumpers, most of which came with Watson directly in his face.
“I feel like I’ve probably watched more KD film than anybody,” Watson said. “I know his game front to back, but he still put some moves on me tonight where I was like, ‘Whoa.’ … He’s so great. It’s hard to really game plan for him. He’s got so many facets to his game that are so polished, so it was just really a concerted group effort and then just me standing with 10 toes, standing my ground against him.”
Pressed into service as a starter because of injuries to Christian Braun and Aaron Gordon, Watson has played dramatically better than he did as a reserve. With Watson in that role, the Nuggets have won nine of 13.
The Houston game was a signature moment, even if the nine points Watson scored were a low ebb — he was coming off a 32-point game against the Pelicans and has averaged 14.4 points on 61.1 percent true shooting, which accounts for the value of 3s and free-throw attempts, as a starter.
As much as the offense has helped, Watson is out there to guard the opponents’ best player. His impact can be seen in the Nuggets’ 16.7-point differential between when he’s on the court and off it since joining the starting lineup for good in mid-November. Yes, that’s helped by playing with Nikola Jokić, but Watson’s on-off numbers are actually significantly better than Jokić’s, or that of any other Nugget.
That didn’t stop Watson from getting got, which is part of the drill when you’re checking elite offensive players every night. Durant missed the shot here, but first he drew oohs from the Houston crowd by jab-stepping Watson into outer space:
“Man, I was hoping nobody asked me (about the play),” Watson said with a laugh after the game. He then gave me a TED talk on his mentality when guarding a player of that level.
“But dude, he’s such a threat. I think that’s why you kind of have to react to every single one of his moves,” Watson said. “He jabbed me one way, he jabbed the other way, and I’m like, ‘All these are realistic. He could go that way. He could shoot it or he could go the other.’ I was just, in my head, trying to respect the threat that he is, but man, he is special.”
Selected with the 30th pick in the 2022 draft, the 23-year-old Watson and the Nuggets couldn’t agree on a contract extension before the season, which could set him up for a huge payday in the offseason — whether from Denver or, as a restricted free agent, from some other team.
Jordan Goodwin, shooting guard, Phoenix
Brooks isn’t the only scrapper on the surprising Suns’ roster. Phoenix coach Jordan Ott talked about leaning into each of his players’ “superpowers,” and in Goodwin’s case, that superpower is his ability to rebound at an elite level despite standing just 6-3, thanks to a motor that won’t stop.
“His super skill is going to the offensive glass,” said Ott. “So it just happens to be a part of our system. But even if it wasn’t, (we) allow him to do what he’s really good at — not only offensive rebounds, but deflections, any type of loose ball, just a hunger to get the basketball.”
Teammate Collin Gillespie, himself a dramatic story of an undrafted player succeeding in Phoenix this year, had another word for it.
“He’s crazy,” Gillespie said. “Kind of like Dillon, a little bit. Dillon’s a little crazier in the head, but Goodie is a dog out there. Just going to offensive glass, doing all the little things, diving on the floor, offensive rebounds. You love when guys like that are on your team. …”
Claimed off waivers from the Lakers this summer after he’d had an earlier stint with the Suns, this one has been much more successful for Goodwin — in part because the league is leaning more into offensive rebounding. The Suns are at the forefront of that.
In a 111-102 win over the Spurs in late November, Goodwin grabbed four offensive boards and 10 overall to lead Phoenix to the win, which was part of an insane eight-game stretch when he grabbed 25 offensive boards. (For context: Only 14 players in the entire league, all centers, average more than three offensive rebounds per game.)
“He has a knack for the basketball. He’s gonna find it one way or the other. It’s super impressive,” teammate Devin Booker said. “He’s always in the right place at the right time. He defends at a high level. He makes the hustle plays that we need.”
Goodwin’s rebounding numbers on the season are unfathomable for a player his size — his 9.8 percent offensive rebound rate is the best of any player shorter than 6-6 with at least 250 minutes played, putting him right between Wendell Carter, Jr. and Jarrett Allen on the league leaderboard.
“I think it’s more instinct,” Goodwin said, “and just my motor, just always crashing on every single shot to give myself a chance — and I’m not giving myself a chance if I don’t go. And also just hanging around a bit, especially with Mark (Williams) and Nick (Richards) also in there, they are always trying to tip the ball out. And I’m right there trying to clean it up.”
Undrafted out of St. Louis in 2021 despite leading the Atlantic 10 in rebounding his final two seasons, Goodwin has had to claw his way into the league — his rookie season in Washington consisted of six minutes over two games. After stints with four different teams, he seems to have found a home in the desert with a like-minded roster of hustlers: The Suns, despite leaning heavily on undersized lineups, are sixth in the league in offensive rebound rate.
Jabari Walker, power forward, Philadelphia
You’ve heard about 3-and-D guys, but what about 3-and-ORB guys?
Walker is becoming exactly that in Philadelphia, after a logjam of forwards in Portland left him on the free-agent market and the Sixers scooped him up on a two-way deal. He leads all players on two-way contracts in games played, having seen minutes in 22 of the Sixers’ 23 games and started five of them. He surely will be converted to a standard contact before long. As the 57th pick in the 2022 draft playing in his fourth pro season, he’s already soundly beaten the odds.
Listed at 6-7 — short for his position — Walker nonetheless punches above his weight on the glass, with a 14.1 percent rebound rate that is second on the team (only renowned glass-eater Andre Drummond, at 22.2 percent, exceeds him.)
“He’s just a bully, so physical, so strong,” teammate Paul George said. “He’s kind of a glue guy. He does a little bit of everything, spreads the floor, guards, rebounds. He does so much of the little dirty work.”
But there’s a method to the brute force, as Walker told me after I relayed George’s quote.
“It starts with physicality before the shot goes up, just being in the right position,” Walker said. “I’m not the most athletic guy, but I have good timing. So pinpointing where the ball is gonna be, trying to … get there before everybody else gets there … and just going up and getting it at the highest points you can. I think my dad (former NBA player Samaki Walker) kinda taught me how to do that at a young age, so I give a lot of credit to him.”
The other half of this, however, is Walker putting in the work to add the 3-pointer in the game. Sixers coach Nick Nurse has spoken to the media about encouraging Walker to shoot more, something Walker said has been happening behind the scenes as well. Nurse also said the Sixers’ internal charting indicates Walker is a good shooter and should be launching away, and they want him to do so.
“You’ve got to have the feel of meaningful games, just to get the confidence,” Nurse said.
As a low-usage player with fluctuating minutes, Walker has added some Jedi mind tricks to play on himself, allowing him to be ready to shoot no matter how short his stint might be. That includes off-day drills where he takes one 3-pointer from the corner, then goes and works on other things and then comes down and takes another one a few minutes later.
“I’m not gonna get that many of them, so I have to value each,” Walker said.
That was part of a long treatise on the perils of life as an NBA role player in his fourth season (“Honestly you gotta trick your mind. You gotta make yourself think you don’t care as much as you do.”) after his 10-point, 12-rebound double-double against Washington.
Since then he’s kept it going, putting up 18 points — including four 3s — in a recent win over Milwaukee. After a slow start from the perimeter, he’s ridden Nurse’s encouragement and his NFL kicker-style shooting drills to launch 18 3s in his last 72 minutes, making eight. That’s a veritable eruption for a guy who started 4 of 17 over his first 18 games.
If he continues on this pace, he’ll back up Nurse’s optimism, and become another positive story in what’s been a pleasantly surprising Sixers season given the limited contributions of George and Joel Embiid.
Moussa Diabaté, center, Charlotte
Look at the NBA’s leaders in offensive rebound rate, and you’ll see a bunch of behemoth centers who either stand over 7-feet, have brick wall physiques or both.
And then there is Diabaté, who started out as a small forward and played power forward at Michigan and in his first NBA years with the Clippers. Now he is making his mark as a hyperactive, board-crashing center with Charlotte.
Listed at 6-10 and 210 pounds — although Diabaté told me he’s up to “225 to 230” now — Diabaté would seem an unlikely candidate to sport a 19.0 percent offensive rebound rate. That rate is the highest of any player with at least 400 minutes played. Even if you lower the bar to 250, it’s topped by only two much bigger and broader players: Houston’s Steven Adams and New York’s Mitchell Robinson.
It took a while to build up to this point. A rail-thin forward at Michigan who showed good mobility, it seemed as if Diabaté’s best pathway to success would be as a tall 3-and-D perimeter player when the Clippers drafted him 43rd in 2022. But the “3” part never came around, and on a veteran Clippers team there wasn’t a lot of daylight for playing time — just 33 games and 259 minutes in two seasons.
Once he landed in Charlotte in 2024, injuries pressed Diabaté into service as an emergency center — a position he had barely played even at lower levels.
At that point, it became clear Diabaté’s bounce and energy were much more useful closer to the basket. Watch any Hornets game over the past two years, and, in the midst of what’s often been hard-to-watch basketball otherwise, you’re immediately struck by Diabaté flying around and corralling the torrent of missed shots coming off Hornets fingertips. He told me the rebounds are the result of his energy being harnessed in the right way.
“I really think that’s something that I always had, in the sense that I’ve always been somebody that had energy,” Diabaté said. “I think the offensive rebound is just an effect of my energy, if that makes sense.
“It’s not like I look for it specifically, like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m gonna get offensive rebounds.’ It’s more so, ‘OK, I gotta find a way to get going,’ or, ‘I just gotta play hard.’”
That same energy had also made him a vacuum cleaner on loose balls, even if it sometimes takes him two or three stabs to stick a fork in it, something his teammates rib him about.
“We give him crap about his hands,” teammate Kon Knueppel said. “He’ll drop a pass, but then he’ll go get an offensive rebound over three guys. His knack for the ball and just the shape he’s in, to be able to compete at that level is very, very impressive.”
Diabaté began last season on a two-way. Although promoted to a roster contract, he is still playing on a partially guaranteed, minimum deal this season and next. In terms of dollars per rebound, he’s been the best value in the league.
