Victor Wembanyama and five other NBA players with a surprising skill

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Finishing at the rim

I don’t blame you if you haven’t watched much Wizards basketball lately, but there are always fun wrinkles to discover for any team. One of my favorite pieces of Wizards minutiae for a while has been how effectively Corey Kispert finishes at the rack.

Most fans only know Kispert as a long-range gunner. Kispert shot 39 percent from beyond the arc last year (excluding heaves) on heavy volume. But Kispert, like all the best shooters, knows how to warp gravity to open up driving and cutting lanes.

The former Gonzaga Bulldog has converted between 74 percent and 76 percent of his rim attempts in his three seasons, a top-decile mark for wings. And the sample size isn’t tiny (by our standards): a quarter of his shots are at the hoop, an average share, and he has accumulated more than 400 attempts (excluding fouls drawn). He was also an excellent finisher in college.

Kispert isn’t beating guys off the dribble in isolation. Instead, he works (and works hard) as an off-ball Energizer bunny, zooming around screens and hand-offs at full speed until a crack in the defense opens.

Kispert is better equipped to pry apart those creases than people realize, measuring 6-foot-6 without shoes and boasting a 38-inch vertical. He doesn’t dunk often, but when he does, he can reach thinner air, even in traffic, with surprising force:

Straight-line strength is Kispert’s calling card. If he gets a head of steam, he’ll shoulder smaller defenders out of the way – and sometimes larger ones, too. David “Big Body” Roddy certainly wasn’t expecting to be outmuscled by Kispert and his headband:

For special occasions, Kispert will dust off his dancing shoes:

Kispert’s game has grown in Washington, and last year proved that he has some still-untapped reservoirs of playmaking and off-the-bounce juice. His minutes per game jumped from 22 to 31 after new coach Brian Keefe took the reins, and his scoring rose from 11 to nearly 16 points per night. He put up even larger numbers once Keefe permanently instated him as a starter in early March.

Kispert is eligible for a contract extension, and the Wizards may want to keep him around to help space the floor for young prospects like Alex Sarr, Bilal Coulibaly, and Bub Carrington. At 25 years old, he’s hardly too old for their timeline. But then again, the Wizards just traded promising 23-year-old Deni Avdija for picks, and it’s easy to fantasize about what Kispert would look like in a better offensive ecosystem (if his defense can hold up). It might not be long before national audiences can see Kispert’s rack attacks for themselves.