Newz wrote:ReasonablySober wrote:It seems like Billups is the go-to for people hoping Knight figures it out? Is there another example out there of a point guard (or primary ball handler if you'd rather not use that designation) that was incapable of running simple pick and rolls who all of the sudden figured it out five years into the league? Honest question. There could be fifty examples, I'm just having a hard time coming up with any.
Obviously Nash always had superior vision and PG skills to Knight... but it didn't really click for him until later in his career either. He went from being a backup, to a solid starter to maybe the best offensive PG in the history of the game.
My guess was that you aren't going to find many examples when it comes to elite or all-star level PGs. Most of the time those guys just kind of have that instinct in them from the get go. If you really went back and examined tape on some lesser players though I bet it has happened more often than just a couple of times.Like I said, I wouldn't want to bank on Knight turning into a star. I don't want to pay him like he's a franchise cornerstone. But if we could pay him somewhere between star player money and good bench player money... then I wouldn't mind keeping him around. Like I said earlier I think the ideal is when we run isolation plays we are giving the ball to Jabari or Giannis most of the time anyways.
I will say that I think Giannis has great potential as a roll/pop guy in pick situations though. Would be a shame if Knight never developed and we wasted that part of Giannis' game without having a guard who can really make the most out of it... though at the same time Knight would be an excellent sixth man and we could potentially just find a solid guard via the draft or free agency to run the offense.
maybe youll find this interesting since this article was just posted last week on espn insider
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/ ... loping-pgsNBA's late-developing PG trend
Conley, Lowry latest examples of teams needing to be patient with their PGs
Originally Published: January 29, 2015
By Kevin Pelton | ESPN Insider
After a slow start to his NBA career, Mike Conley has flourished at point guard for the Grizzlies.
Odds are Mike Conley of the Memphis Grizzlies won't be named an All-Star when reserves are announced Thursday on TNT's pregame show before a doubleheader that includes Conley's Grizzlies facing the Denver Nuggets. Still, the fact that Conley is a serious part of the conversation is remarkable given that as recently as four years ago, he was one of the league's weaker starting point guards.
Conley isn't the only late-developing point guard to start his career in Memphis. During his first season and a half, Conley was backed up by Kyle Lowry, who is now with the Toronto Raptors and will be making his first All-Star appearance at age 28. When Conley and Lowry played together, there was little indication either eventually would be among the NBA's top-10 point guards, let alone both of them. They're the two most obvious examples that point guards often take more time to fully form than players at other positions.
Slow, steady development
As Jonathan Abrams shared in last week's detailed Conley feature on Grantland, the Grizzlies traded Lowry to the Houston Rockets in large part to give the younger Conley an opportunity to play point guard full time. Back then, in 2009, there were doubts about the futures of both players. Lowry was a dogged defender who had yet to consistently shoot 3s or show the ability to run a team, while Conley took a back seat on offense to teammates Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo.
Lowry's breakthrough came in 2010-11, when he stepped into the Rockets' starting lineup in place of the injured Aaron Brooks and played well enough that Houston eventually traded Brooks. Lowry averaged 13.5 points and 6.7 assists in his first opportunity as a full-time starter. Yet Lowry was still seen more as a stopgap solution than a star when the Rockets traded him to the Raptors in summer 2012 in exchange for a first-round pick (which they later used as part of the package for James Harden). He battled Jose Calderon for minutes at the point during his first half-season in Toronto, winning the job by default when the Raptors dealt Calderon as part of a trade for his old teammate Gay.
Last season, Lowry's eighth in the NBA, was his first as a starter from beginning to end and the time he established himself as an elite point guard. Despite averaging 17.9 points and 7.4 assists per game and ranking among the league's top-10 players in win shares and wins above replacement player (WARP), Lowry was left off the All-Star team. A late push from Raptors fans to make Lowry a starter guaranteed he won't meet the same fate this year.
As the No. 4 overall pick in the 2007 draft, opportunity was never the issue for Conley: performance was. He took a step backward the season after Lowry was traded, and posted just 6.2 WARP in his first three campaigns. Yet Memphis saw enough potential to sign Conley to a widely criticized five-year, $40 million extension that has since proved one of the NBA's better bargains.
Conley made incremental progress in 2010-11, when the Grizzlies reached the playoffs and upset the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs in the opening round, and continued adding to his game as Memphis developed into one of the West's top teams. He has improved his scoring average in six of the seven seasons since his rookie campaign while growing more efficient as a scorer, culminating in 17.4 points a game in 2014-15.
When the year-by-year progress made by Conley and Lowry (measured by Win%, the per-minute version of WARP akin to PER) is put on the same chart by age, their paths look remarkably similar aside from Lowry's fluky rookie season (he played just 172 minutes before a broken wrist ended his season):
Late bloomers common among PGs
Conley and Lowry aren't unique among point guards in needing more time to reach their potential. Of the 39 players to enter the league since 2004-05 who have posted at least 10 WARP in a season (typically around the cutoff for All-Stars), 14 did so for the first time at age 25 or later. Six of those 14 late bloomers are point guards, including Conley and Lowry.
At age 28 by the conclusion of his first 10-WARP season (2013-14), Lowry is the second-oldest of the group, trailing only a former Grizzlies teammate: center Marc Gasol. The third-oldest player to break through with an All-Star performance is yet another point guard, Goran Dragic of the Phoenix Suns, with his 2013-14 season. Because Conley entered the league at age 20 and actually reached 10-plus WARP in 2012-13, his sixth season, he's not at the top of the list by age. But only Lowry (eighth season) and Andrew Bynum (seventh after entering the NBA out of high school) have taken more time to reach the 10-WARP level since entering the league in the past decade.
We should be able to add another point guard to the list this sesaon: Jeff Teague of the Atlanta Hawks, age 26 and in his sixth season, who likely will be chosen for his first All-Star Game and is on pace for 11.9 WARP.
There's an important lesson here for teams: Don't write off developing point guards too soon. Though some elite athletes are able to come into the league and dominate right away (Derrick Rose, John Wall and Russell Westbrook all reached 10 WARP before age 24), many players take longer to learn the NBA's most demanding position. Memphis benefited from betting on Conley, while for better or worse the Rockets lost out on Dragic and Lowry, both of whom were on their roster at the same time. Teams with young point guards should heed their example.
