Norman Powell’s historic Clippers season should culminate with Sixth Man of the Year

“I think it’s a no-brainer with the other guys that he plays with on the floor, playing with four Hall of Famers, and still being able to have the impact that he’s had,” AJ Diggs continued. “And I think as we look at past winners, there’s been years where he’s scored a ton of points off the bench, and he’s averaged more, but I think his impact for this team and what he brings is undeniable. It’s undeniable in terms of the impact.”

Let’s dive a little bit into those numbers behind Powell and his impact this season, shall we?

To start out, Norman Powell saw an average of 37.8 touches per game in his first season with the Clippers in 2021-22 and 35.9 touches per game in the 2022-23 season. Those numbers have dipped significantly to 27.4 touches per game this season having to play alongside Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden. No one in the league is averaging more points per game on fewer than 33 touches a night, and Powell is doing it *while coming off the bench.*

Once a primary creator and facilitator for the second-unit, Powell’s role has transformed into more of a play-finisher.

“I think the biggest difference is last year, I was one of the guys that we played through, especially coming off the bench,” Norman Powell told ClutchPoints in an exclusive interview. “I got a lot more play calls, a lot more opportunities to be the guy to create plays whether that’s scoring or finding my teammates. More actions for me this year, more of a complimentary role-player to [Paul George], to Kawhi, James, and Russ. When you have four Hall-of-Fame players, guys who’ve had teams built around them, franchises built around them for years, you’re a piece to try to help make it easier on them. So, more of a guy coming in and providing a scoring punch off the bench, being a guy to make plays off of them, this year, I think, more of a guy finishing plays on the back end of plays rather than a guy being an initiator.”

Coming off the bench as the team’s ‘Sixth Man’ presents its challenges no matter who you are or what team you play for. You’re essentially asked to jump into the middle of a game where guys have already found their rhythm and immediately find yours. It’s even tougher when you are the player teams are keying in on.

“He’s meant a lot to our team,” head coach Tyronn Lue explained to ClutchPoints. “I mean, just his productivity off the bench. When we need pop, when he scoring, or we’re in scoring droughts, he’s been huge. I got to go back and look at how many big shots he’s made throughout the course of this year for us to seal the win or to take the lead or tie the game up. And he’s shooting 55 percent from three in the corners and then I think in the fourth quarter, three point percentage is number one. Just what he’s been able to do scoring the basketball has been huge for us.”

Tyronn Lue is right on the money. Among players with at least 70 three-pointers attempted in the fourth quarter, Norman Powell shoots it at a league-best 48.3 percent clip. And Powell’s three-point shooting from the corners, which has been astronomically high all year, currently sits at 55.1 percent.

Here’s a look at Powell’s uber-efficient shot chart this season, highlighted by his above league average shooting from the corners.

“For him, the corner threes, I think that’s where his bread and butter is,” Clippers assistant head coach Shaun Fein, who works out with Powell every day, told ClutchPoints. “He’s always a danger every time he shoots the ball from the corner, and from anywhere on the perimeter, to be honest. He has the confidence to make all those shots, and he’s showing this year that he’s shooting 43%, 44% from three. And well above that, I think, from the corner.”

“You know, we like to joke about it, but I call him a corner boy,” AJ Diggs added. “Somebody that has to stand in the corner, wait for the basketball to come to you after all the rest of the action. And again, that’s just been a role that he’s had to thrive in, and I’m happy for him.”

With Norman Powell on the court, the Clippers have outscored their opponents by 224 points in 1,975 minutes this season. That’s the fourth best mark on the team behind only superstars Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, and James Harden. The Clippers outscore their opponents by 57 points in the 1,870 minutes he’s been off the floor this season, which shows just how much better they’ve been with him on versus off. When looking at the entire league, Powell is 52nd in total plus/minus this season — again, doing this almost entirely as a reserve.

The Clippers best five-man lineup this season has been, by far, the one featuring James Harden, Norman Powell, Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, and Ivica Zubac, clocking in at a team-best 18.4 net rating. Among lineups that have played at least 120 minutes this season, that LA Clippers’ five-man unit has the seventh best net-rating in the entire NBA. And that Clippers’ lineup is the only one in the top 20 that features a full-time reserve in Powell.

Powell’s offensive rating ranks fourth on the team at 118.2 when he’s ON the court versus 116.2 OFF while his net rating also ranks fourth on the team, outscoring opponents by 3.7 points per 100 possessions when he’s ON versus OFF. In both cases, those rank behind only Leonard, George, and Harden while also ranking ahead of Terance Mann and Ivica Zubac.

“You look at his plus-minus, you look at some of the numbers in the matrix in terms of how well the Clippers play when he’s on the floor with those other three or four All-Star, Hall of Fame players, and it’s a no-brainer,” Diggs continued. “And I don’t think anybody else — I watch other guys play and their roles for the most part as Sixth Men are a little bit different in terms of the amount of shots, the amount of touches that they’re getting. I think his level of efficiency speaks for itself.”

Norman Powell’s efficiency is another area of his game that needs to be touched on. By all accounts, Norman Powell had a fantastic 2022-23 season, his eighth in the NBA, averaging 17 points on 47.9 percent shooting from the field, 39.7 percent from three, and 81.2 percent from the free throw line. He finished fourth in Sixth Man of the Year voting.

This season, no player in the NBA is shooting 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from three, and 90 percent from the free throw line. However, Norman Powell and Phoenix Suns guard Grayson Allen are the only ones shooting at least 48 percent from the field, 43 percent from three, and 83 percent from the free throw line, and only one of them is doing it off the bench.

“I think it goes back to early in his career when he was the ninth or 10th guy, where you had to come in and your first shot determined how many minutes you were going to play,” Diggs told ClutchPoints. “And I think he’s taken a lot of that and he’s run with it to be able to go six or seven minutes without touching the ball, and then a big shot comes his way, and he’s always prepared. He’s always shot ready, and I think he’s a really good decision maker when he plays off the catch, whether that’s catch-and-drive, whether that’s catch-and-shoot, or whether that’s catch, shot-fake, let the guy fly by, and make an open three.

“Again goes back to efficiency. You’ll hear me always mention that with him, shooting 43 percent from three, almost 50 from the field, and close to 85 percent from the line. Close to 50, 40, 90, there are very few guys in the league that are able to do that, and I just think that that’s something that he puts in his mind, like, ‘I have to make the most of my opportunities versus worrying about the opportunities that I may not get.'”

In years past, Powell would use his craftiness to get to the free throw line as a way to get into a rhythm when checking in mid-game. With a very limited amount of time and touches to actually find a rhythm this season, Powell and trainer AJ Diggs have had to adjust some of their workouts.

In fact, after working with Powell for almost 12 years now, Diggs has needed to mix it up to keep a tireless worker like Norman Powell on his toes. Last year, there was a workout hours before a game where Powell went shooting around the perimeter, but only swishes counted, and they had to be made consecutively. After making five consecutive swishes from a single spot, Powell would be allowed to move on to the next.

Diggs, along with members of the Clippers coaching staff challenging him, wouldn’t count the shot with even the slightest appearance or sound of the ball touching the rim.

“There’s so many different challenges that we can give him in a workout,” AJ Diggs explained. “I mean, since he’s turned himself into such a good shooter, we have to find different ways to just re-jig his mind. Sometimes we’ll do bank-shots from certain angles. Sometimes it’ll be swishes [only]. Sometimes it’ll be high arcing shots. And to be quite honest, I stole it from Steph Curry. But just trying to find different ways to continue to challenge him. It’s kind of really like the key of it, right? I’ve been with him for nine years. We cannot keep doing the same drills over and over for nine years, or a player gets bored or he wants to do something different. So part of it is just the creativity, but also to challenge his mind too.”

“I love those challenges,” Norman Powell said with a smile when asked about it. “I love it because I love shooting.”

In one instance this season, Norman Powell hit a tough three-pointer while fading to his right out of bounds at the end of the third quarter. That didn’t just happen to go in.

“If you go back to the Laker game, that shot that he made over Austin Reaves to end the quarter, that’s not by accident. We’ve worked on that. If you go watch him and you get an opportunity to watch him finish his workout, every single day when he finishes his workout, that’s one of the shots that we have prescribed for him. Obviously, it was in a little bit of a different area, but the same type of shot.

“And for him, it’s just if there’s anything that he shoots in the game, we want to have worked on it, whether it’s a floater or one-legged floater going left across his body, whether it’s his patented running the hook going through the lane. We work on those shots so many times that it feels like second nature for him that he expects those shots to go in. And over the course of time, since I’ve been with him for so long, you’ve got to find different, and he’ll look at me like, ‘you want me to shoot this?’ And I’m like ‘Yeah, I want you to.’ So he’ll question some stuff and then he’ll do it in the game four or five games later and come back and be like, ‘oh, okay, that’s why you have me do it.’ And again, it’s just a lot of film work and stuff like that that we’re trying to, again, whatever he does in the game, we want to emulate that in the workout.”

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At age 30 and in his ninth year in the NBA, Norman Powell’s work ethic is unmatched. He’ll often find his own method of transportation to the team’s morning road shootarounds in order to get additional work in before the team’s scheduled shootaround begins. He’ll arrive to the practice facility almost 2 hours before scheduled practice start time in order to get his extra work in. During the offseason, Powell also tries to run three-a-days or even four-a-days starting at 6AM.

“I think just his work ethic [is incredible],” Tyronn Lue said of Norman Powell. “The work he puts in every single day, and we try to save him from himself, but he works out every single day. Like, he never takes days off. Him and AJ Diggs, they work. That’s what they do. When you have a guy that works that hard, you love to see him do well and play well and he’s going to play well. When you put that kind of work in, every single day just grinding every single day, you’re going to play well.”

Growing up in San Diego, California, Norman Powell was a huge fan of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant. It’s the reason he wears jersey No. 24. To this day, whether it’s a game or workout, Powell almost exclusively wears Kobe’s shoes.

Having won a championship alongside Bryant, Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue has unique insight into many of today’s players’ favorite player. And since both Lue and Powell spend their offseasons in Las Vegas, he’s been able to give his Sixth Man of the Year candidate a valuable look into Bryant.

“We both live in Vegas so he works out at six in the morning,” Lue said. “I told him about Kobe, if you want to go watch his workouts, you got to be in the doors at 4:30. He started his workouts at five. And so I think just taking on that mindset of just wanting to be great and working hard, he definitely picked that up.”

“I’m kind of old school,” Norman Powell added. “I’ve said it before, but growing up watching Kobe Bryant and just his commitment to the game, commitment to improvement, to being the best version of himself, having high standards, high expectations, and wanting to meet those standards. To be able to do that, you’ve got to put the work in. You’ve got to sacrifice and give everything if you want to be great and accomplish something special. That was my mindset since I was a little kid. I love the game of basketball and I commit myself to it and get the most out of it that I can and achieve everything that I can while playing.”

The result has been a career year for Norman Powell, who has to be kept out of the gym at times for his own good.

“There is no keeping him out of the gym,” Diggs laughed at the idea. “I mean, a perfect example is there was a road game that they played in the last couple years. They lost, and he texted me at 12:30AM, ‘Meet me at a gym as soon as we get back.’ He texted me at 12:30 at midnight. They didn’t get back to 1 or 2AM. He wanted to work out because he was unhappy with his play on the floor. There have been times where before the All Star break, he’s supposed to take a flight to go enjoy the break. He played a bad game. After the game and before his flight, we’re getting in the gym.

“He’s committed to wanting to be great. He’s committed to wanting to squeeze out every ounce of potential that he has, but it goes back to his consistency. It goes back to I don’t have to ask him. If I ask him if he’s working out? He laughs at me. He says, ‘you already know.’ This week off that they’re going to have before playoffs, we’re working out. Whether it’s off days or not, he’s committed to that, but he’s also been better with allowing people to tell him longevity, to take care of your body. So if it was a two-hour workout, maybe it’s an hour workout. So we’ve done some things to shorten the time frame that he’s got to be on the floor, but he’s going to be on the floor.”

Just last week, Powell reached 150 three-pointers in a season off the bench, setting a new Clippers franchise record. He’s also five three-pointers away from setting a new career-high three-pointers in a season.

For a player who came out of UCLA as a defender and slasher as an, ‘older, inconsistent decision maker,’ with a, ‘lack of a jump shot,’ Powell has done pretty well for himself in the NBA.

“Honestly, I think it’s amazing to be able to [set that franchise record], especially with all the doubt with me coming out of college and what the scouts were saying about me and my game and not having any more room to improve. I basically showed everything, the type of player that I can be coming out of college those four years.

“It added a fuel to the fire to show that I’m more than what I did in college and I’m more than the player that they think that I am. And I think it’s just a testament to my work ethic, my dedication, and my commitment to the game that I love. You can always improve, no matter if you stay four years or go out your first year. As long as you’re committed to getting better, committed to the game, putting in the work, the time, and the sacrifice, you can always improve.”

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Whether or not Norman Powell wins Sixth Man of the Year is out of his control at this stage. He’s done everything he could’ve, both for his team and to impress voters, proving how irreplaceable he is.

“I think he should be right up there,” Clippers coach Shaun Fein said. “I mean, he’s one of the most impactful guys coming off the bench in the league. And he’s proven it time and time again that his ability to help us close games and keep us at games, he’s got a great mentality for that coming off the bench. He just gives us an extra punch. I think he should be up there. And some other guys that have been mentioned for it this year as well. If he gets it, he’s well-deserving.”

“We’re in fourth place,” Tyronn Lue added. “I mean, guys in and out. And his productivity, shooting percentage, three point percentage, you got to get to the free throw line. I mean, then defensively, you’ve been really good for us, too, the second half of the season. So that’s huge as well.”