Net Sentence wrote:Prokorov wrote:deron williams is a terrible player and no one on this site outside of maybe hello brooklyn wanted him gone before I did. im glad he is gone. but just because he is a backup level player at this point doesnt mean we wont miss his 3 point shooting. as both a percentage and volume 3 point shooter, williams was very good. if we had alot of big minute player who could shoot from 3, id feel more comfortable with it. we dont. ellington getting 10-15 minutes off the bench doesnt solve the shooting problem, especially if he is coming in for bargs/joe, guys who already can shoot
36.7% isnt very good, it's above average.
Prok is saying we shouldn't deny that we'll miss D-Will's 3pt shooting.
You say his 3pt% isn't that good, it's above average.
Your statement isn't addressing his point at all. If you wanted to show that Prok's belief about missing D-Will's 3pt shooting is wrong, you'd either need to show 1) that the PG who has replaced D-Will shoots the 3 better in similar situations or in a similar context than D-Will did OR 2) show that we're going to play a style which will make missing the average-level 3pt shooting of a player (who got Jack's amount of minutes last year) irrelevant.
However, you're not doing either of these options.
Last time I checked, shooting average from 3 is better than shooting below average or terrible from 3. In a league that prioritizes spacing the more players you have who are capable of hitting 3s is a good thing and you can only get away with it from your guards if they are so skilled in other facets of the game that their lack of 3pt shooting can be masked or not needed.
D-Will shot 36.7% from last season (87/237).
Shane Larkin shot 30.2% from 3 last season (35/116).
Jarrett Jack shot 26.7% from last season (39/146).
Unless Shane and Jack shoot markedly better from 3 this season, the PG position will have a worse 3pt % than last year. The threat of the 3 from the PG won't be as high as it was last year unless they improve. That's the bottom line.
You keep saying that we are worst collectively at PG with Jack/Larkin then DWill/Jack. That isnt necessarily so. Jack was better then DWill at PG last season and I was arguing with a couple of people just a few pages ago about it. They wanted stats to back up my assertion and I did. So if Jack > DWill then we upgraded the starting PG position because Jack will get more minutes. If you dont disagree with me that DWill is considered a replacement level player then DWill = Larkin since Larkin is also a replacement level player. That would make the Jack/Larkin pairing better then the DWIll/Jack pairing last year.
You've taken stats which you believe prove that Jack is a better individual player than D-Will. If you want to believe that, fine. I won't argue that.
But in order for the Jack/Larkin combo to be better than D-Will/Jack combo of last year, you should be going back to the stats, video, and cogent analysis to prove that the last, but biggest factor of whether Larkin is better than D-Will.
Instead, you don't do that.
You just say:
1) Jack > D-Will.
2) D-Will is a replacement-level player.
3) Larkin is a replacement-level player.
4) D-Will = Larkin
5) Therefore, Jack/Larkin > D-Will/Jack.
Again, point 1 is something I won't argue.
Point 2 is something you'd probably want to support with stats and analysis. But even if you don't want to do that, in order for your points 3 and 4 to be true, you actually need to prove it somehow.
You haven't done that. You're just using conjecture and saying. They're both equal. Not all replacement level PGs are the same. Some are a bit better than others. In order for you to make point 4, you'd need to prove that Larkin is just as good as D-Will.
You need to at least put up a theory that Larkin's PnR ability will give us something that we didn't have with D-Will and it will open up the offense better than anything D-Will did. Also, in spite of Larkin's lack of 3pt shooting, his ability to drive/penetrate is more valuable than D-Will's ability to shoot 3s at a better clip but not drive/penetrate.
That's what you have to do in order to make persuasive claims.
People think that I am arguing that Jack is a game changer, he is not. My argument is for those who blindly assume we will be worse then last season because they keep saying DWill is better then Jack. Last years team made the playoffs so I dont see why this years team cant as well considering we should expect similar if not better production from our PGs.
Who has said you believed Jack was a game-changer?
People aren't "blindly" believing we'll be worse than last season.
People are looking at a plethora of stats which show pretty damning lineup PPP data for Jack with just about all of his teammates vs. D-Will and it's not looking good.
People are looking at the past several years of Jack's career and noticing that despite the fact that he's a nice guy, teams are still letting him go because the numbers show that the TEAM has a worse scoring output with Jack on.
Even for those who forgo the D-Will vs. Jack argument and just focus on D-Will vs. Larkin see that Larkin didn't play that well and it was on a team that was tanking.
Now you can argue that all of these things occurred in a different situation/context. You can say that the present situation will be better suited for them than other situations were for them. And that's fine. Because we're just using logic regarding hypotheticals, no one can really prove 100% that the context wouldn't matter. I have ZERO problem with arguing this perspective.
What I do have a problem with is the cherry-picking and misleading logic to construe that everything is better in every single way. That's the problem that I have and it's something that you aren't doing.
Prokorov wrote:I've said before that I wasnt a big fan of Larkin but the more I delve into his game the more I like him.
- He was actually good at defending 3s and long 2pters(See link above). This has long been a weakness of the Nets and Larkin's elite athleticism allows him to close out and contest.
im not sure this sort of thing carries over. he was good closing out 2s/3s on other teams with other players with in those teams concepts. does he do that here?
did we not close out 2s/3s last year because of the lack of talent or because we were forced to help inside which prevented that. ive posted video after video since the time we got in brooklyn showing that our inability to defend the 3 point line is directly caused by our inability to defend the pick and roll. our wings and gaurds have to impeded the path of the rolling bigman because our bigs can not effectively trap, show, or recover on the pick and roll. this leaves the wing and corner 3s open. the only time we did defend the 3 well, was when KG was starting at center, and we did have a big who coudl defend the pick and roll and didnt have to help on the roll man so often and could rotate better.
now, that is not to say larkins athleticism wont help, but i dont think it has a major impact. im not sure it even has a minor impact, especially if he is only playing 10-15 minutes in a reserve roll.
It wasnt a lack of talent but a lack of effort. This all goes back to having your so called franchise player being a dog. Jack doesnt have to be an all star to gain respect from his teammates he just has to play hard. The PG is the guy who has to demand certain things from the other players from time to time and DWill didnt didnt earn that because he wasnt putting the work in himself. The "do as I say, not as I do" style of leadership DWill displayed tuned a lot of the players out. Jack is the opposite of that. One thing you will never question about Jack is if he is giving it his all. Jack commands a different amount of respect among the players and we have already seen that by what Steph Curry had to say about him.
As far as your PnR defense goes, I totally agree with you. That is why I like RHJ.
Prok challenges your claim of Larkin being a good closeout defender. He questions whether it carries over to the new situation of Larkin being on the Nets because those teams prioritized closing out on the perimeter and had other players who were capable of doing so.
He says he's done analysis and posted videos showing how an inability to defend the perimeter has also led to our inability to defend the PnR. He doubts Larkin will have a major impact on closing out because of the few minutes he will get and implies that Larkin all by himself won't change that dynamic for us.
You say our inability to guard the perimeter wasn't due to talent but due to a lack of effort.
Ok, that's your theory. It's not something that can be proved by stats since the knowledge of whether a player can give max effort but actively chooses to forego doing so cannot be measured. Therefore, as of this moment, it's just a theory based on feelings drawn from your eye-test observation. Ok, fine.
Then you start talking about how other players saw D-Will and figured "F it, I won't try either". Um...ok but is there proof of that?
Can you show us moments where other players looked at D-Will and then decided to not give effort?
Can you access the psyche of these players and know which ones actually tried with all of their might but still couldn't make a difference vs. the players who looked at D-Will and then actively decided not to give effort vs. the players who said I will give effort in spite of D-Will?
Then you say Jack is the type of player who demands the best out of players and will get guys to player harder.
Do we have evidence of players trying harder with Jack? Steph Curry said that Jack influenced him when he was on GSW a few years ago but does that mean the Nets players have another gear to go to that they actively refused to tap into when D-Will was around but will now do so with Jack being the leader?
It sounds nice but we don't know the temperament of each player in our locker room. It's something that I HOPE would happen but improved/better effort from everyone is not something that we can guarantee. Only the players on the team can go out and show it.
Prokorov wrote:- He is also a good mid range jump shooter (42.6%) like Jack is (43.6%). DWill only shot 36.3% on mid range jumpers. I think it is important for our ball handlers to be good at mid range shots because it means they are attacking with their dribble drive and opens the paint up for the roll man in PnR. You dont want the big defending the pick and roll to collapse back into the paint because he doesnt respect the ballhandlers ability to make that in between shot. Maybe this is why Hollins was so hot to sign Larkin. It should help Lopez out a lot.
honestly, one of, if not our biggest issue offensively is that we take too many mid range shots. we need more guys who can hit the 3, not more guys who can hit the 15-20 footer. teams would LOVE it if all we took was mid range shots at made them at 43%. We need more scoring at the rim, and more trips to the FT line. if larkin can do that great. but his mid range shooting doesnt say much about his ability to get to the rim.
larkin shot better at the rim last year then williams, and a higher percentage of his offense came at the rim. that is alot mroe encouraging to me then mid range shooting.
overall, it really doesnt matter. larkin does alot well. i think everyone like him. but it is still kind of a longshot that we both a) dont miss williams 3 point shooting and B) we arent the same or worse at the PG position this season
I see it different. If we force the big on a PnR to play up/switch onto whoever is handling the ball because they can make that mid range shot then it will lead to more open looks in the paint and to more FTs because we force more big vs small matchups inside and more small vs big matchups on the perimeter. This is why DWill had to go. No one respected him enough to switch. One of the biggest falsehoods spread on Nets fansites is that DWill was good in PnR.
per NBA.com as the PnR Ballhandler
Jack was much better then DWill as the PnR Ballhandler.
We scored 40.3% of the time and .81 Points/Possession when Jack handled the ball in PnR.
We scored 34% of the time and .72 Points/Possession when DWill handled the ball in PnR.
DWill also turned the ball over a lot more then Jack did as the PnR ballhandler: 20.9% / 16.5%
This off season is all about switching our style of play to suite Lopez. The PnR is going to be a staple of the offense this season. Jack and Larkin (excelled in PnR in college) are much better PnR players then DWill. We dont see the world through a coaches eyes so I will trust Hollins experience as to the type of player he wants (Jack,Larkin, Thad, Ellington).
For the most part I agree with this.
D-Will has steadily gone down in PnR ballhandling. I mean he's taken a major nosedive to the degree that it was extremely rare he'd beat his man off the dribble. I remember games where he'd do it once and I posted "Wow, I can probably count on my hands how many times D-Will has beaten his man off a PnR crossover and scored at the basket."
He really sucked in that regard.
We can only hope that Larkin is a better PnR in the NBA. It was his staple in college and while we've only seen some flashes in the NBA, he's really got to prove that he can still be effective at it on the NBA level. It was one of the main reasons he was drafted. If he can't use his skills to be an effective PnR ballhandler in the NBA, he'll have very little positive impact in the NBA because he's just too small to be a great man-to-man defender.
