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Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4

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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#21 » by ckchen » Mon Jul 15, 2019 5:23 pm

Ben wrote:As to your point about it being so very difficult to learn shooting, I would just offer the counter-examples of the many big men who have learned to be passable 3P shooters.
Al Horford is the first guy who came to mind, but there are many others like him.
In Horford's first five seasons, he attempted twelve 3-pointers and made three of them.
In his sixth season he attempted six 3pointers.
The first time he attempted double-digits in 3P shots was his seventh season, age 27. He shot 11 of them.
The next year, 36. So in his first eight seasons he was 21 of 65, or 32.3% on very low volume.

And for the next four years after that, up through last season, Horford took 200+ 3-pointers each season and averaged 37.1% over that high volume period.

If he were the only guy in that category, I would say it was just something bizarre. But he's not. Seems to me that it's not an impossible task if someone really wants to learn the skill. The thing about Ben Simmons is that up until now he hasn't seemed to want that. I have hopes that he's going to get better and more confident over the coming 3-4 years.


Obviously, it's not impossible or no one would bother. My point is just that it's probably harder than people seem to think it is. It's probably arguiable that a lot of these big men aren't "learning" how to shoot - just that they had never been asked to shoot the 3 earlier in their career and are finally putting in the reps to develop that skillset. The problem with using numbers based on low volume to mark improvement is just the fallibility of statistical analysis. Anything with a small enough volume is essentially meaningless. For all we know, had he take 200+ 3s even in those first 8 seasons, it ultimately would've trended closer to what he ended up averaging. Unfortunately, we will never know.

I'm not denying that repetition might lead to someone being more comfortable to take the 3 in games. Maybe that's Ben's problem, who knows, or maybe, he's just never had to do it, so he never has.

It seems highly unlikely, however that when you job is a guard in today's NBA that you don't understand that shooting 3s is a vital part of the skillset and you do absolutely nothing to try to improve that. This is their job, they devote 100% of their working day playing basketball, I refuse to believe that Ben or literally every guard in the NBA wouldn't be attempting to improve their 3 pt shot, if it was just as easy as repetition and a good shooting coach. Which is why I think ultimately, it's hard to improve than we might think, or literally everyone would be improving. If I had to guess, I would say it's probably a lot harder to "unlearn" how they already shoot and then have a new shooting form become more natural.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#22 » by Eyeamok » Mon Jul 15, 2019 6:53 pm

Skates wrote:
Eyeamok wrote:I must have missed the discussion. But did Jimmy Butler turn down a 5 year guaranteed deal to sign a 4 year deal with the Heat?



That seems to be Jimmy's story but it sounds more like the Sixers were offering more of a three year max as far as guaranteed money goes. Only the parties really know, but the I had a full five year max offer and turned it down rings a little hollow to me.


OK thanks. I just could not see Butler turning down 5 years of guaranteed money because he wanted your own team in Miami. Even though Kawhi has left by all accounts 80 million on the table with his last few moves. But Butler is not Kawhi.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#23 » by Eyeamok » Mon Jul 15, 2019 6:58 pm

ckchen wrote:
hookshot199 wrote:
Hard to say - he was an assistant. But the guy we had before, John Townsend, was a "renowned shooting coach" - and what did that get us exactly? To me, this just emphasizes that it's simply not that easy to teach someone how to shoot/improve their shooting.

https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/76ers/sixers-hire-former-spurs-assistant-cameron-hodges-player-development-coach


You can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Townsend could have been the best shooting coach in the world. But if Ben was not a willing participant then it does/did not matter. The chatter this off season is that he (Ben) is more receptive to being taught proper shooting mechanics than he was last off season. Let's hope so.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#24 » by Skates » Mon Jul 15, 2019 8:09 pm

Brand seems to be targeting and keeping high character guys who play defense. If he caves a little on the D side I would not be super surprised, but culture wise I don't see JR Smith remotely worth bringing in as a guy who can mess with your chemistry. Even cutting him quickly has it downsides, just say no to Smith.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#25 » by Ben » Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:44 pm

ckchen wrote:
Ben wrote:As to your point about it being so very difficult to learn shooting, I would just offer the counter-examples of the many big men who have learned to be passable 3P shooters.
Al Horford is the first guy who came to mind, but there are many others like him.
In Horford's first five seasons, he attempted twelve 3-pointers and made three of them.
In his sixth season he attempted six 3pointers.
The first time he attempted double-digits in 3P shots was his seventh season, age 27. He shot 11 of them.
The next year, 36. So in his first eight seasons he was 21 of 65, or 32.3% on very low volume.

And for the next four years after that, up through last season, Horford took 200+ 3-pointers each season and averaged 37.1% over that high volume period.

If he were the only guy in that category, I would say it was just something bizarre. But he's not. Seems to me that it's not an impossible task if someone really wants to learn the skill. The thing about Ben Simmons is that up until now he hasn't seemed to want that. I have hopes that he's going to get better and more confident over the coming 3-4 years.


Obviously, it's not impossible or no one would bother. My point is just that it's probably harder than people seem to think it is. It's probably arguiable that a lot of these big men aren't "learning" how to shoot - just that they had never been asked to shoot the 3 earlier in their career and are finally putting in the reps to develop that skillset. The problem with using numbers based on low volume to mark improvement is just the fallibility of statistical analysis. Anything with a small enough volume is essentially meaningless. For all we know, had he take 200+ 3s even in those first 8 seasons, it ultimately would've trended closer to what he ended up averaging. Unfortunately, we will never know.

I'm not denying that repetition might lead to someone being more comfortable to take the 3 in games. Maybe that's Ben's problem, who knows, or maybe, he's just never had to do it, so he never has.

It seems highly unlikely, however that when you job is a guard in today's NBA that you don't understand that shooting 3s is a vital part of the skillset and you do absolutely nothing to try to improve that. This is their job, they devote 100% of their working day playing basketball, I refuse to believe that Ben or literally every guard in the NBA wouldn't be attempting to improve their 3 pt shot, if it was just as easy as repetition and a good shooting coach. Which is why I think ultimately, it's hard to improve than we might think, or literally everyone would be improving. If I had to guess, I would say it's probably a lot harder to "unlearn" how they already shoot and then have a new shooting form become more natural.


The only thing I know for sure about learning to shoot NBA 3-pointers regularly is that I'll never do it. So please accept this in that non-expert spirit. But it's not quite as rare for guards to improve as you're guessing or implying. Thabo Sefalosha comes to mind, because I was really surprised recently when I checked out his stats and saw how strong of a 3P shooter he'd become since leaving the Bulls (which is about when I stopped following him closely). Thabo was supposed to be a long, 3-D guy who could also do a bit of everything. Only problem was, he couldn't shoot the 3 very well. For his first 6 seasons he shot 3 pointers at a 30.4% clip, significantly worse even than Nwaba, on pretty low volume (maybe around 2.3 three point attempts per 36 minutes).
All of a sudden, at age 27, he shot three pointers at a 43.7% rate, and the next season he shot 41.9% from deep.
Then he reverted closer to his earlier form, and had four seasons during which he averaged around 33% from 3P range. And then he averaged about 40% from 3P range over the past two seasons (pretty low minutes usage).

Average over the first 6 seasons: 30.3%
Average over the next 8 seasons: 37.4%

And of course it would have been a lot better for everyone had Thabo been able to shoot even 35% regularly from the start. He had to know that. And he's not a lazy guy. Seems likely to me that he just worked on it more as his athleticism declined a bit. But I don't know that for sure.

Jason Kidd shot 32.5% from 3P range over his first 10 seasons, and 36.9% from three over his latter 9 seasons (on higher volume).

These are significant improvements, and I promise you that I didn't go about discarding a lot of guys who didn't fit this pattern. Horford and then Dedmon for big men, and Thabo and then Kidd for guards, were the first guys for whom I did this checking. First guys who came to mind. I just figured out their percentages based on their 3PA and 3PM during those career stretches.

Take it as you will. To me it seems as if it's not that difficult to improve from 3, and not that rare, either. Oooh, Marcus Smart. I know he's one of those, too, although he only has one good 3P shooting season after one OK and three bad 3P seasons, so we can't yet know if it's an aberration. But it's easy to think of examples.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#26 » by ckchen » Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:02 pm

Ben wrote:The only thing I know for sure about learning to shoot NBA 3-pointers regularly is that I'll never do it. So please accept this in that non-expert spirit. But it's not quite as rare for guards to improve as you're guessing or implying. Thabo Sefalosha comes to mind, because I was really surprised recently when I checked out his stats and saw how strong of a 3P shooter he'd become since leaving the Bulls (which is about when I stopped following him closely). Thabo was supposed to be a long, 3-D guy who could also do a bit of everything. Only problem was, he couldn't shoot the 3 very well. For his first 6 seasons he shot 3 pointers at a 30.4% clip, significantly worse even than Nwaba, on pretty low volume (maybe around 2.3 three point attempts per 36 minutes).
All of a sudden, at age 27, he shot three pointers at a 43.7% rate, and the next season he shot 41.9% from deep.
Then he reverted closer to his earlier form, and had four seasons during which he averaged around 33% from 3P range. And then he averaged about 40% from 3P range over the past two seasons (pretty low minutes usage).

Average over the first 6 seasons: 30.3%
Average over the next 8 seasons: 37.4%

And of course it would have been a lot better for everyone had Thabo been able to shoot even 35% regularly from the start. He had to know that. And he's not a lazy guy. Seems likely to me that he just worked on it more as his athleticism declined a bit. But I don't know that for sure.

Jason Kidd shot 32.5% from 3P range over his first 10 seasons, and 36.9% from three over his latter 9 seasons (on higher volume).

These are significant improvements, and I promise you that I didn't go about discarding a lot of guys who didn't fit this pattern. Horford and then Dedmon for big men, and Thabo and then Kidd for guards, were the first guys for whom I did this checking. First guys who came to mind. I just figured out their percentages based on their 3PA and 3PM during those career stretches.

Take it as you will. To me it seems as if it's not that difficult to improve from 3, and not that rare, either. Oooh, Marcus Smart. I know he's one of those, too, although he only has one good 3P shooting season after one OK and three bad 3P seasons, so we can't yet know if it's an aberration. But it's easy to think of examples.


I'm sure these are all true, but again, I'm thinking this is more exception than rule. Like I said, I don't dispute that it CAN happen or no one would do it. I just don't think it happens as often as you seem to be implying. There are probably 200+ guards in the NBA every season, and they can't all be adequate 3 point shooters. If you can pull a handful of people who see marked improvement, I would still consider this rare. If you're using Kidd, as an example that was almost 2 decades ago. Again, if it was that easy, there would be dozens or more examples from every season. Even if you find a couple of examples each season, to me that just supports my theory that it's not actually that easy.

Again, I don't doubt that it can be done, but I think we (fandom in general) perpetuate this myth that "only if" (name your player) here would just work with a shooting coach he would (magically) become a better shooter. I just don't think it's that easy or you would see more improvement from more players more often, instead of people always pulling a 20 year Jason Kidd example out as someone who did it.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#27 » by FlyingArrow » Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:50 pm

I'm sure some people try and fail, but Brook Lopez, Rajon Rondo, Dedmon, and Blake.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#28 » by Tony Franciosa » Mon Jul 15, 2019 11:16 pm

Hard pass on JR Smith. Never forget.
Dude is a bum and dumb as rocks.

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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#29 » by mithrandir17 » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:42 am

Tony Franciosa wrote:Hard pass on JR Smith. Never forget.
Dude is a bum and dumb as rocks.

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JR was once GSW's greatest player.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#30 » by kriss73 » Tue Jul 16, 2019 1:55 pm

Did someone listen Brand on 975Mornings ?
I think he said something about Korver but I wasn't able to catch it.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#31 » by Kobblehead » Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:38 pm

Thornwell and Anderson are still the moves to make, IMO. It fits the M.O. of the offseason, too.

Mwaba would be a passable addition, but I think he'll be an offensive liability.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#32 » by ckchen » Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:50 pm

Kobblehead wrote:Thornwell and Anderson are still the moves to make, IMO. It fits the M.O. of the offseason, too.

Mwaba would be a passable addition, but I think he'll be an offensive liability.


Nwaba is gone anyway to brooklyn. I can't see them signing anyione like Thornwell or Anderson simply because the only depth we really have this point are Zhaire and Thybulle, even Shake at that wing spot. Korver at least provides a pure skill that can be used situationally. Guys like this SHOULD never see the floor so it seems like it would be a waste. If they sign anyone else besides Korver, it would probably be for a legitimate 3rd PG, even if it's more of a scoring PG like Burke. Maybe Jerian Grant or even Jeremy Lin.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#33 » by ckchen » Tue Jul 16, 2019 3:43 pm

kriss73 wrote:Did someone listen Brand on 975Mornings ?
I think he said something about Korver but I wasn't able to catch it.


He didn't say anything specifically, but mentioned that the team was looking at adding one or two players "who can space the floor like JJ Redick" and talking to them that hopefully they would be someone who the people of Philadelphia are "familiar with"

He seemed to imply that this Korver thing might actually happen without actually saying anything, because of course he cant'.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#34 » by Arsenal » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:02 pm

Kobblehead wrote:Thornwell and Anderson are still the moves to make, IMO. It fits the M.O. of the offseason, too.

Mwaba would be a passable addition, but I think he'll be an offensive liability.


Why would we give minutes to failed former wing prospects like Thornwell and Anderson when we could give those minutes to Smith and Thybulle instead?

No chance we sign those guys.

Like others have said, Korver is the guy who fills a need. Another PG like Burke or Lin would also fill a need.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#35 » by agiaco » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:05 pm

Nwaba signed with the nets two days ago.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#36 » by fl311 » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:07 pm

It's still about Korver and Sefalosha. They are 1a and 1b.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#37 » by Sixerscan » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:10 pm

fl311 wrote:It's still about Korver and Sefalosha. They are 1a and 1b.

Korver taking his time it seems. I guess there’s no rush from his perspective.
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#38 » by the_process » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:12 pm

Are the Sixers going to fill the 15th roster spot? Or are they just running 14 (assuming Korver or Sefalosha)?
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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#39 » by eagereyez » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:23 pm

Kobblehead wrote:Thornwell and Anderson are still the moves to make, IMO. It fits the M.O. of the offseason, too.

Mwaba would be a passable addition, but I think he'll be an offensive liability.
I'm down for Thornwell. He can become our new Stauskas.

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Re: Summer Free Agency 2019 Part 4 

Post#40 » by fl311 » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:32 pm

Sixerscan wrote:
fl311 wrote:It's still about Korver and Sefalosha. They are 1a and 1b.

Korver taking his time it seems. I guess there’s no rush from his perspective.


No real rush from either side right now.

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