Josh Giddey Thread 2.0

[Jcool0]

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/giddejo01/splits/2025

If you don't think he was playing awful, be my guest. I wouldn't even give him the MLE if his pre-all-star game performance was his norm.

He was contributing just not scoring:

Nov. - Jan: 7.2 rebounds, 6.8 assists, 1.2 steals

Feb. - April: 9.5 rebounds, 8.1 assists, 1.4 steals

PPG Nov - Jan: 11

PPG Feb - April: 20.2

Also:
Defending at a near bottom of league level
Well below average offensive efficiency
Low volume for a primary ball handler
Poor shooter
Poor at drawing fouls
Worse A/TO ratio

Yeah, he wasn't scoring, but things like his foul draw rate and three point percentage were much worse, so even in lower volume he was also much worse at everything he was trying to do. He was also defending much worse. If we get that version of Giddey after his new contract, it will be an albatross.

I'm not suggesting that Giddey is necessarily going to go back in time to the pre-Zach trade version of himself, but if he did it would be a disaster. It's certainly not a zero risk given the good version of Giddey was a remarkably short period of time against largely teams that were tanking.

I said scoring. Everything you said relates to that. Its hard to draw fouls if you aren't taking shots. His defense was fine all year.

[dougthonus]

I said scoring. Everything you said relates to that. Its hard to draw fouls if you aren't taking shots. His defense was fine all year.

If Giddey did this:
Same defense as end of year
Same A/TO ratio as end of year
Same efficiency on offense as end of year
Scoring volume of beginning of the year

That would describe "the only difference is scoring" to me, and I would have not said that player was awful at the beginning of the year.

The differences were defense, passing efficiency, scoring efficiency, and scoring volume. Of those, scoring volume is the least meaningful to me.

[MGB8]

I said scoring. Everything you said relates to that. Its hard to draw fouls if you aren't taking shots. His defense was fine all year.

If Giddey did this:
Same defense as end of year
Same A/TO ratio as end of year
Same efficiency on offense as end of year
Scoring volume of beginning of the year

That would describe "the only difference is scoring" to me, and I would have not said that player was awful at the beginning of the year.

The differences were defense, passing efficiency, scoring efficiency, and scoring volume. Of those, scoring volume is the least meaningful to me.

Fair. But watching him at the end of the year, nothing looked unsustainable - in particular on the defensive end but also on offense.

[dougthonus]

Fair. But watching him at the end of the year, nothing looked unsustainable - in particular on the defensive end but also on offense.

Surely you'd think his 46% from three is unsustainable I would imagine.

That aside, I wasn't really commenting about the sustainability or non-sustainability. I made a comment that he wasn't very good for the first 50 games of the season because I don't think he was. There are reasons to both be optimistic or pessimistic about the final 19 games being sustainable.