Revived wrote:bwgood77 wrote:RunDogGun wrote:It happens, he also threw one at Ayton's feet. Crowder got a steal that Ayton made happen with a deflection. I was hoping for a few less minutes for Book, but overall the scoring was pretty balanced. And after Booker's solid assists, three of the other starters had 5, 4, and 4 assists.
It's funny Revived said that though because I thought they had credited some of the bad passes to Ayton turnovers....
Perhaps they did, I’m not sure I didn’t see that Ayton had turnovers credited to him as well.
I saw Olson tweet that they credited Booker for it though
Yeah, Ayton may have gotten a hand on some but generally people need to learn to pass it high to Ayton. How often do you see him miss passes that are high, either just over everyone, alley oops, etc? Or straight passes to his chest? It has happened once or twice where Paul bullets a pass very hard and Ayton misses it which, you can blame Ayton but it's also a bit abnormal for the passes to be that fast so somewhat understandable.
Most all the ones that either don't get to him or are mishandled are in either heavy traffic or too low. So they get deflected or the defender or several defenders have just has much chance as grabbing it as Ayton. Then the low ones below his waist are obviously tougher being a 7 footer having to bend down like that.
EJ constantly says they need to pass it up high.
Anyway, Ayton surely is to blame for some and can do better but Booker can continue to clean up on his passes. Most passses to other guys outside of his one that are way off, are not in traffic at all.
You also rarely see a Bridges, CamJ, etc, pass be mishandled by Ayton. But Ayton (and Booker and even Paul) all have bad games.
Ayton was always talked about as having great hands, but that was more or less catching balls up high...not all these low passes. But then again, being such an elite scoring threat these days, he attracts way more gravity than anyone else, making it much harder to get the ball to him, requiring people to pass over the defense, but these can be tough too as they need to have the right touch and arc to get over people and either come down a bit near Ayton or just be in a place it is easier for him to grab than anyone else.
But generally if you can't get the ball cleanly to someone, you should get the turnover. If a ball is mishandled after having control, then it's on the guy.
One thing that Book also struggles with (ego or whatever) is when he makes a bad pass or mistake he doesn't indicate my bad..hit his chest, as if to indicate that, etc..but often blames the other guy which likely isn't good for morale or confidence...he doesn this to multiple people...Bridges I've seen it and others and Bridges is usually great at catching the ball unless it's just way off or Booker doesn't see a defender in place.
All in all Booker has improved in this regard. He just needs to pass more high passes over the D to Ayton and he had been doing some of those.
He tens to sometimes go back to trying to sometimes (especially with Ayton) only pass when he runs into trouble/traffic inside instead of planning the play or pass to Ayton earlier when he has more of a clear path to throw a high pass.
