Norman Powell On Breakout Season: Always Knew I’d Be ‘Getting Buckets Like Kobe’

Norman Powell has been one of the top surprises early in the 2024-25 NBA season. 

The 10-year veteran and 31-year-old shooting guard has long been known as a solid role player and more recently, one of the top sixth men in the league. 

After winning a championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019 as a key role player, Powell has since emerged as a scorer averaging nearly 20 points per game, finishing fourth in Sixth Man of the Year voting in each of the past couple of years.

However, this season has been different — he’s emerged as the Clippers’ leading scorer (23.7 points per game) ahead of three-time scoring champion James Harden, helping keep Los Angeles (16-12) afloat in the absence of Kawhi Leonard through the first quarter of the season.

The results have been surprising considering the Clippers are without their best player in Leonard and are coming off of an offseason in which they lost two of their key stars in Paul George and Russell Westbrook, but Powell has always believed in his ability to make an impact in the NBA.

“Yes, those were the expectations I had for myself,” Powell told Basketball Insiders. “Backstory I tell all the time when people talk about the vision for myself: my high school friend — who’s one of my best friends still to this day — we had a conversation during lunch and he asked me, ‘Do I really see myself playing in the NBA?’

“I told him, ‘Yes.’  He told me that he can see me making it and being on the end of somebody’s bench making a lot of money. I turned and looked at him and told him, ‘I’m not going to be at the end of nobody’s bench. I’m going to be in the league getting buckets like Kobe.'”

Understand The Grind😤 https://t.co/VMv9VVbCQM

— norman powell (@npowell2404) June 29, 2024

Powell believes that production should put him in the conversation for his first career All-Star game appearance.

“Individually, I want to be an All-Star,” Powell said. “That’s something that I’ve vocally said — probably got in trouble a few years back saying that, thinking that I’m aiming for a guy’s spot. This expectation is what I have for myself. I always saw myself as an All-Star player. This year, being selected as an All-Star is my individual goal.”

Powell made some headlines during Clippers media day when he referred to George’s departure as “addition by subtraction.” So far, he’s backed up those words by emerging as Los Angeles’ top scoring option. 

However, he downplays any beef between him and George, saying he hasn’t talked to him since he left for Philadelphia, but that they’ll “connect” at some point down the line.

“We haven’t talked since he left for Philly,” says Powell. “I don’t know if that’s the addition by subtraction thing, I’m sure we’ll connect somewhere down the line. From what I’ve seen, what he said about my comments and what I’ve said, there’s no beef or anything like that.”

The UCLA product also mentions that he didn’t talk to Westbrook until they matched up against the Denver Nuggets recently last Friday after they had matched up against each other a couple times earlier in the season.

Powell previously helped the Clippers knock off George’s Sixers in the one matchup they played against one another in a 110-98 victory back on Nov. 6. 

“Maybe we’ll just cut it up in the season,” says Powell of the next time the Clippers match up against George’s Sixers. “Russ didn’t say anything to me either until the last time we played him in Denver and we played him three other times and he didn’t say one word to me. So I don’t know if it’s a competition thing too.”

Powell Talks Early-Career Shot Adjustment

Powell’s career arc is a unique one considering he entered the league as an unheralded second-round draft pick back in 2015. After his draft rights were traded to the Toronto Raptors, Powell quickly emerged as a role player, averaging 5.6 points in 14.8 minutes per game.

However, five years into his career, his scoring averaged had blossomed to 16.0 points per game while routinely shooting around 40% from beyond the arc.

Through 21 games this season, Powell is converting on a blistering 48.5% of his shots — fifth in the NBA —  from beyond the arc with a 65% true shooting percentage, the 15th-best mark in the league. Not bad for a 6-foot-3 shooting guard who was once a bench player on the Raptors’ championship squad in 2019.

The adjustment came following the draft when his trainer told him that he was shooting on the way down and that he was jumping too high on his three-point shots.

“We changed a lot, especially when I first came out of the league,” Powell says of changes in his shooting technique. “My career average in college was like 29 or 30% from beyond the arc. I was much more of a slasher, driver, transition-type of player. Back in college, I used to shoot the ball way behind my head. We fixed my form on my three-point shots, I would shoot them like I was shooting a pull-up jumper. I would jump super high and I’d end up shooting on the way down. 

“Coming into the league, we changed how much I jumped,” Powell continues to say. “I do 3-point shooting without jumping at all. Taking that out and then we did a lot of form shooting, re-adjusting where my release point was. It was constantly repping that out every single day. Adjusting to those mechanics over the year you get used to it, adding little different moments to control your shot a little bit more and things like that. It’s just constant reps with the new mechanic and form and now it’s like clockwork.”

Powell On the Growth of His Game

The veteran guard says the biggest difference between the Powell of now compared to back in 2015 when he was drafted is he’s a lot “smarter” and “controlled.”

“He’s a lot smarter, he’s more controlled,” says Powell. “He actually thinks the game through instead of going out there and running a million miles an hour, trying to get it done. I think he’s more efficient with his time, more efficient with the process and the building blocks to go out there and play and perform.”

Powell highlights “recovery” as a big part of his routine as he enters the later stages of his career, something that was not even a thought when he was drafted at 22 years old back in 2015. Powell says he has a “red light bed” and a “hyperbaric chamber” in his house and that he does the “proper stretching” and needling in his off time in the summer.

As Powell continues to go through the best season of his career, he iterates that the key is winning another championship. Despite the Clippers’ low expectations entering the season in the aftermath of George and Westbrook’s departures, the 10-year guard isn’t expecting anything less. 

He stresses that the ultimate goal is to win a championship every year.

“That’s been my main goal,” says Powell of winning titles. “I’ve been fortunate to be on teams that have been championship contenders or playoff contenders. My main goal every year is to win a championship.”