San Antonio @ Minnesota

[Sugarless]

Towns ranks 3rd and Wiggins ranks 12th in terms of RPM.

I hope you mean on the team, not on the league.

[LesGrossman]

OK. Game starts with two turnovers by Parker / Leonard due to defensive pressure. First score of the four you mentioned happened against garnett, not ricky (thought you watched the game? ) on a goaltend. Then RIcky drew a foul on hiim at the 7:10 mark making both free throws. Then the two aforementioned threes which you just give to Parker. The floater at 4:57 vs. Prince after Tay picked him up in transition. Just as i said, against Rubio no daylight, not a single score inside. Any more stuff you want to make up?

I didn't make anything up.
Parker is SCORING 10 POINTS.
And Rubio is NOT PUTTING UP A SINGLE SHOT.
They were even in the other stats.
Basketball is a TEAM GAME.
Rubio did not do his part in the opening stint.

I've observed this dynamic against the top half of the PGs in the league FAR TOO OFTEN.

As I said, Ricky DOMINATES the bottom half of PGs, but gets moderately to badly beaten by the top half.

If you're happy with that from your starter, fine.

In this modern age of team ball movement dominated basketball, I don't think it's a good fit. You need to be able to be a scoring threat and Rubio will never be that.

OK you go from stating numbers that i prove meaningless to generalizations. Then you make random claims that you cannot back up ("gets moderately to badly beaten"). OK then, i know a word for that but its kind of forbidden here but as i pointed out often, there seems to be a small but noisy group of people who were opposed to him being drafted and who will go out of their way to make claims like the above. Theres no other explanation for the obvious obsession with one of, if not the best player we have right now. It would make 1000x more sense to talk about SF options, PF misery but no, its just about one guy who has clearly the smallest share of responsibility for our losses. Guy even goes out of his way to stalk him on facebook just to complain about the content of his status updates? Come on. Am i the only one to think that is way creepy?

[Murphs56]

Since opening night, Ricky is shooting like 29% or something like that from the field. You don't need any other stat to tell you that's unacceptable

[NewWolvesOrder]

Since opening night, Ricky is shooting like 29% or something like that from the field. You don't need any other stat to tell you that's unacceptable

Yes, it's 30% and 33% including the LAL game. It's bad even by his standards and I think it should improve to upper 30s with time. Let's not forget that he's played on a bad wheel so far this season. I would say that most players shoot worse when they are dealing with injuries and improve as their health get better. It's pretty normal and standard. But sports fans always overreact.

[LesGrossman]

Since opening night, Ricky is shooting like 29% or something like that from the field. You don't need any other stat to tell you that's unacceptable

Thats so wrong on many levels. I recommend a good book covering misconception of statistics like the famous "thinking, fast and slow" to understand how meaningless % can be if you take a very small number of shots (many of which include end of quarter/shotclock heaves). If you hit 33% of 3 shots you "wasted" two posessions. TWO. (actually noone would expect 100% so if you hit two of three you have a great % and the difference to what Ricky actually hits is exactly ONE shot.) If you shoot 33% on 20 shots like kobe did you wasted nearly 14 shots. So the exact opposite of what you said is true: you absolutely need at least this other stat to understand wether this % is relevant at all or, as you claim, unacceptable.

I read posts like this , and then read arguments on GB about Cousins being a generator of "empty stats" and cant help but think that those players who play more for numbers than team success have a reason to do so because they will find their followers; people who will look at box score and %'s rather than eye test. I for one am really disguested when guys refuse to take the end of quarter attempt to protect their % but here we are discussing the value of Ricky by exactly that figure.

[LesGrossman]

Wow, watching Spurs - Houston on Spurs broadcast, pregame they really gave it to Wiggins showing his lack of defensive "interest" defending green. I usually held his defense pretty high, maybe i was wrong there...he really got lost on that elevator screen and didnt even attempt to go around. Anyone saw that?

[Note30]

Wow, watching Spurs - Houston on Spurs broadcast, pregame they really gave it to Wiggins showing his lack of defensive "interest" defending green. I usually held his defense pretty high, maybe i was wrong there...he really got lost on that elevator screen and didnt even attempt to go around. Anyone saw that?

His defense is really good in respect to the rest of the team, but honestly he's been getting lazy imo.

[Klomp]

Since opening night, Ricky is shooting like 29% or something like that from the field. You don't need any other stat to tell you that's unacceptable

Thats so wrong on many levels. I recommend a good book covering misconception of statistics like the famous "thinking, fast and slow" to understand how meaningless % can be if you take a very small number of shots (many of which include end of quarter/shotclock heaves). If you hit 33% of 3 shots you "wasted" two posessions. TWO. (actually noone would expect 100% so if you hit two of three you have a great % and the difference to what Ricky actually hits is exactly ONE shot.) If you shoot 33% on 20 shots like kobe did you wasted nearly 14 shots. So the exact opposite of what you said is true: you absolutely need at least this other stat to understand wether this % is relevant at all or, as you claim, unacceptable.

He's not taking only three shots per game though, it's more than double that. The last four games before SA he was a combined 8-35. Almost 9 shots a game and making only 2.

[Note30]

Since opening night, Ricky is shooting like 29% or something like that from the field. You don't need any other stat to tell you that's unacceptable

Thats so wrong on many levels. I recommend a good book covering misconception of statistics like the famous "thinking, fast and slow" to understand how meaningless % can be if you take a very small number of shots (many of which include end of quarter/shotclock heaves). If you hit 33% of 3 shots you "wasted" two posessions. TWO. (actually noone would expect 100% so if you hit two of three you have a great % and the difference to what Ricky actually hits is exactly ONE shot.) If you shoot 33% on 20 shots like kobe did you wasted nearly 14 shots. So the exact opposite of what you said is true: you absolutely need at least this other stat to understand wether this % is relevant at all or, as you claim, unacceptable.

He's not taking only three shots per game though, it's more than double that. The last four games before SA he was a combined 8-35. Almost 9 shots a game and making only 2.

He had to be able to make 4 out of those 9 to be at a decent clip. The problem is he shies away from contact as much as lavine did last year.

[LesGrossman]

Thats so wrong on many levels. I recommend a good book covering misconception of statistics like the famous "thinking, fast and slow" to understand how meaningless % can be if you take a very small number of shots (many of which include end of quarter/shotclock heaves). If you hit 33% of 3 shots you "wasted" two posessions. TWO. (actually noone would expect 100% so if you hit two of three you have a great % and the difference to what Ricky actually hits is exactly ONE shot.) If you shoot 33% on 20 shots like kobe did you wasted nearly 14 shots. So the exact opposite of what you said is true: you absolutely need at least this other stat to understand wether this % is relevant at all or, as you claim, unacceptable.

He's not taking only three shots per game though, it's more than double that. The last four games before SA he was a combined 8-35. Almost 9 shots a game and making only 2.

He had to be able to make 4 out of those 9 to be at a decent clip. The problem is he shies away from contact as much as lavine did last year.

...which means he is to blame for two empty posessions per game. Two. Thats probably less than Gorgui's or Wiggins' turnover rate alone (too lazy to look those up now). How does noone talk about the dumbfake travel turnover though and everyone is obsessed with the shooting of Ricky?

Besides that: 33% is NOT two of 9. And conveniently you leave out the San Antonio game, where he made 3 of 5 including one three. That sort of selective arguing is exactly what i keep talking about.

[AQuintus]

It's weird to me that people are getting so hung up on the deficiencies of our guys that are actually good (Rubio's shooting, Wiggin's rebounding) when we have much bigger problems that are much more clearly the cause of our poor play: Mitchell's horrible offensive system, Dieng's inability to defend (player's shoot 10.8% better than their average at the rim against him), Prince's complete lack of offense, Martin's complete lack of anything valuable at all, etc.

Rubio's shooting is an issue, but he still clearly helps way more than he hurts the team. That's much more than can be said about other guys, who are much more deserving of everyone's ire but don't get it for whatever reason.

[Worm Guts]

It's weird to me that people are getting so hung up on the deficiencies of our guys that are actually good (Rubio's shooting, Wiggin's rebounding) when we have much bigger problems that are much more clearly the cause of our poor play: Mitchell's horrible offensive system, Dieng's inability to defend (player's shoot 10.8% better than their average at the rim against him), Prince's complete lack of offense, Martin's complete lack of anything valuable at all, etc.

Rubio's shooting is an issue, but he still clearly helps way more than he hurts the team. That's much more than can be said about other guys, who are much more deserving of everyone's ire but don't get it for whatever reason.

I agree about Rubio, but with Wiggins there are some numbers that bother me. The low rebounding and steal numbers are something that shouldn't happen with Wiggins physical gifts, and the fact that Prince has positive on/off numbers despite having a PER of 5 is an indictment of the type of impact Wiggins and Muhammed are having.

[Klomp]

It's weird to me that people are getting so hung up on the deficiencies of our guys that are actually good (Rubio's shooting, Wiggin's rebounding) when we have much bigger problems that are much more clearly the cause of our poor play: Mitchell's horrible offensive system, Dieng's inability to defend (player's shoot 10.8% better than their average at the rim against him), Prince's complete lack of offense, Martin's complete lack of anything valuable at all, etc.

You say that, but then do the same thing on another of our guys who is actually good too in Gorgui Dieng.

[AQuintus]

You say that, but then do the same thing on another of our guys who is actually good too in Gorgui Dieng.

Dieng isn't good, though. He puts up some stats, but unlike Rubio and Wiggins (especially Rubio), his negatives clearly outweigh his positives, and he's a net negative for the team.

Rubio's overall contributions help the team more than his lack of shooting hurts it.

Dieng's lack of defense from the Center position hurts the team way more than his overall contributions help it. For shots less than 10 feet, Dieng allows the guy he is defending to shoot 69.2% (compared to their normal average of 58.4%). That's a huge problem.