NC State needs star DJ Burns, focal point of offense, to battle through fouls, fatigue
N.C. State wants to see a lot more of D.J. Burns this season, and that doesn’t mean Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts wants the ACC’s biggest man to gain any weight.
It’s just that without Terquavion Smith and Jarkel Joiner, Burns is going to be the focus of N.C. State’s entire offense this season, and while the Wolfpack could occasionally weather the storm when Burns was fatigued or in foul trouble a year ago, it’s less equipped to life live without him this time around.
“I may have the best back to the basket post guy,” Keatts said. “It’s so hard. He is tough. He’s lefty. He can score in different ways. You don’t get many assists off him, because he’ll catch it and dribble four or five times to be able to score the basket.”
When Burns was able to stay on the court, he could do what he did for 32 minutes at Wake Forest, taking 26 shots, scoring 31 points (even if he only got to the free-throw line eight times despite the number of times he went to the rim).
But N.C. State needed more than the 18 minutes it got from him in the first-round NCAA loss to Creighton, when Burns appeared to struggle with the altitude in Denver and got in early foul trouble against Blue Jays center Ryan Kalkbrenner, even if Keatts went sprinting onto the court to protest the questionable third. His presence, or lack thereof, was the difference in what ended up being a nine-point loss.
Burns played in only 57 percent of N.C. State’s season last year, compared to 72 percent for Duke’s Kyle Filipowski and North Carolina’s Armando Bacot. It’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, for Burns to get to that figure, but the Wolfpack needs him a lot closer to it – because his ability to create his own shot and find open teammates out of double teams is going to make him the focal point of the N.C. State offense.
There’s only so much that can be done about his fitness. His size is both a strength and a weakness, the source of the power that allows him to back down and work over much taller opponents, with the natural quickness of a much smaller player, but it’s still 275 pounds to carry up and down the court for a team that tries to get out into transition and run. That’s always going to be a work in progress.
It’s the fouling where N.C. State thinks it can make some headway. But while Keatts and his staff have worked with Burns to play defense more vertically and reach in less, and pleaded with the ACC not to officiate Burns differently because of his size and strength – and Keatts says Bacot faces the same problem – Burns knows, in the end, how much he’s on the court is entirely up to him. The flopping by opponents may be out of his control, but what he does on defense is not.
“We’ve been working on that, really walling up and not reaching as much to try to keep from fouling on defense,” Burns said. “We’ve made an emphasis on that this year.”
The prescription there is simple: Better decisions, better technique. Keatts said Burns reaches in on too many ball screens, because his hands are so good he thinks he can pickpocket a guard. The Wolfpack staff has also worked with Burns on getting in better position earlier in possessions, doing his work early on defense and standing his ground instead of grabbing for the ball.
As for the dramatic collapses at any whiff of contact from Burns as he backed defenders down, a frequent and blatant tactic teams that couldn’t defend Burns – and, in the case of flop-happy Clemson, teams that could – often used?
“It’s what you have to deal with,” Burns said. “It’s what comes with it. We’ve definitely made some changes, added some new moves to try and counter that. I know they will try to take a lot of charges, so they’ve been working on that.
Keatts spoke with ACC basketball czar Paul Brazeau and supervisor of officiating Bryan Kersey both during the season and over the summer to point out not only the large number of flops taken against Burns, but how players like Burns and Bacot are often penalized for being bigger and stronger than their opponents – and Burns especially is penalized for where he often catches the ball, drawing his defender out of the lane and backing down opponents from places far from the basket most big men only go to set screens.
“I think he gets clobbered, you know that,” Keatts said. “He plays through it. The biggest conversation we’ve had is, he catches the ball almost close to the 3-point line. You shouldn’t be able to have a closed elbow (in his back) while a guy’s there. Technically he’s a perimeter player at that time. Once he gets close to the block is when you can use your elbow. It got a little better at the end, but guys were doing this (a double arm bar) when he was out by the 3-point line when he’s supposed to be a guard.”
The same attributes that make Burns a difficult player to officiate make him a special player. Without the safety net of Smith and Joiner, two players who could create points out of nothing, N.C. State needs Burns to find a way to stay on the court – or at least do his part.
Some of this is within his control. Some of it is not. In either case, the thing N.C. State needs most from Burns this season is more of him.
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This story was originally published October 20, 2023 at 12:52 PM with the headline "NC State needs star DJ Burns, focal point of offense, to battle through fouls, fatigue."
