spanishninja wrote:bwgood77 wrote:suns12345 wrote:
Mmmm, I don't know that I agree with that.
He is having a good year no doubt, but this is his first efficient season. Beal is leading the league in scoring and Steph and Dame have been doing it for years.
Booker's offensive game is more refined for me, but Lavine is no doubt a more lethal outside shooting threat and probably a more explosive scorer right at the moment (on a worse team though don't forget)
LaVine is actually having a better year than all of those. Of course his career isn't as good, but he's on fire this year.
He's the next Booker, but with the backing of a major media market in the East.
The last couple of years, Booker was more efficient overall, and much better from 2, but LaVine was better from 3...he was at around 37-38% while Book was at 32-35%....but the 2 pt% was significant to give Booker the better TS%..Booker also had 1-2 more assists, but more turnovers. LaVine was better at steals, blocks, etc, being the better athlete.
This year, though, LaVine has suddenly passed Booker from 2 at 58% (Book is still great at over 56%) but LaVine is shooting 44% from 3 (Book is better than usual from 3 at 38%, but not close there). So although Book has a nice TS% at almost 61%, LaVine is at 65.3%. He has passed him in assists too (though actually passed him in turnovers).
He's probably improved more defensively too, but that's not really what we should compare anyway...neither are very good.
Advanced #s pretty heavily favored Booker 2 years ago, but last year he wasn't too far ahead of LaVine, but this year LaVine is way ahead.
And of course he was picked as an all star, and I think the east was actually more competitive this year as better players overall were left out like Sabonis, Middleton, Bam, Butler, Harris as opposed to Booker, Conley, DeRozan..you could maybe throw Ingram in there and perhaps Fox or Ja but even SGA in the east has been better than those two.
It will be interesting to see if LaVine continues this. 44% from 3 doesn't seem sustainable but the 2pt% is probably more likely to stay. When Book jumped his 2pt% way up 2-3 years ago, it stuck.
The Bulls have a lot of good players. WCJ is starting to have good games. Markkanen is shooting 40% from 3...with the frontcourt rotation of Williams, Markkanen, Carter and a little bit of Thaddeus Young, that's solid.
Markkanen may be injured. He didn't play in the last one, so they started 3 guards, Williams and Carter Jr with Thaddeus Young off the bench.
They've won 3 in a row and 5 of 6. Basically the same record as the Hornets. They may not be a pushover.
