dremill24 wrote:bwgood77 wrote:dremill24 wrote:
It was just a particularly painful effort. Shots go up all game and sometimes they go in, sometimes they dont so those types of things arent going to draw the same type type of reactions. When the ball falls into the hands of the biggest/strongest guy on the court and he fumbles around with it and gets it taken away by a guy half his size, thats the kind of result that is much more unexpected than a guy missing a shot. Ayton was far from the reason for the team's loss, and he's a great player, its just that this was a particularly bad play from him right at the end.
I can't disagree with that. He definitely should have gotten that one, but I also thought late game execeution was awful and lazy..wait until doubled, make bad passes, take terrible shots..nothing was fluid at all. It looked like the exact opposite of when Paul is playing down the stretch or even in recent games without him.
Yeah the last two minutes were terrible and infinitely more impactful to the loss than that one Ayton play (we also had 46 other minutes to
not play like ass too). The other part Im seeing is that play sorta feeds the concerns about Ayton and his agressiveness/functional strength/toughness. My take from most of the posts are just exacerbating that idea more than them blaming it for the loss.
I understand concerns about the aggressiveness, functional strength and toughness. We've seen all 3 at times, but not nearly most of the time. However, I do feel that if he was used as our primary scoring option or co-primary scoring option consistently in game plans, that would be a little different. Should it be? No, but I think that goes for any player who is used to and could be a star. I think if we were running plays for him and really going through him he would develop offensively much more quickly, and also be consistently much more aggressive on offense, and I think he would likely be more in the flow and show a little more strength and toughness.
Overall he is more of a finesse player though. When you see those huge 17-19 rebounding games it's also usually when he gets more than 20 pts, and I don't think that's a coincidenct. When he gets 8 shots and 12-15 points or whatever, you usually see fewer rebounds as well.
Guys should remain consistently vested but I think as Redick recently mentioned, not only is it a lot harder to get into the flow of your game when you don't know when you are going to play (not in Ayton's case here), I think it's much tougher to get into the flow of your game when you don't know when you are going to get the ball or how many shots to expect. Amare, for example, his game with Nash was the #1 option most all the time.
I am more concerned with the strength and toughness than the aggressiveness, though I guess with aggressiveness I'm thinking about offense. Primarily I'm not as concerned as others with that since he's so effiicent anyway. I do feel he could get better positioning down low sometimes, but the good thing is, even in the midrange, he is extremely efficient, much moreso than even Booker who is a great midrange scorer himself.
3-10 ft - Ayton 62%, Booker 45%
10-16 ft -Ayton 52%, Booker 45.7%
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/aytonde01/shooting/2022https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/bookede01/shooting/2022As for the toughness and strength, I think although he's shown it at times, particulalry in the playoff matching up with big names, I think he gets a little more flustered with double teams (which sometimes happens less in the playoffs going against bigger names) and part of it is age..I think players often utilize their strength more and play with more toughness as their career progresses.
For example, once again I'll use Booker since he's the one player who's been around more than a few years, I think he plays with much more toughness and uses strength than he did during his rookie deal.
I think most Cs on rookie deals or at the age of 23 don't play with a ton of toughness, but they develop later.
Some of the better bigs in this day don't play with a lot of toughness.
My biggest concern as of late is actually rebounding...but as others have mentioned I suspect it has to do with his injury and being able to jump.
But you will also see, when our whole team is vested in rebounding and it's not him going against 2 or 3 people where he more often has to try and tip it to himself because it is then harder to just grab it with more guys going against you, the whole team does better. We need at least 2 players crashing the boards, but 3 should be down there if possible to make sure more guys are properly boxed out. Every defensive player will be closer to the basket when a shot goes up, so they should not be letting multiple offensive guys get through.
The best rebounding teams end up with multiple guys having 7+ rebounds and not just one guy getting all of them. Teams average about 45 rebounds a game and the player who gets the most (in part because he doesn't switch and stays near the basket) is Gobert at 14.7, but only 3 guys get more than 12 a game.
Since injury, not only has his rebounding been significantly worse overall, but has probably been worse than at any time of his career.
But, overall, I think he will have some of these weaknesses, but he also has great strengths by probably being the most efficient (o if not, close to) efficient Cs (or even players) in the NBA and has the elite hook shot but also can score in multiple other ways and is extremely efficient out to 16 feet. I think within a year he will probably be able to shoot in the mid 30% range from 3 on higher volume (he is actually 35.7% from 3 this year on 14 shots).
I also see posts about him not contesting shots when he is great with this on all positions and although he doesn't get a lot of blocks, he makes shots tougher for everyone and often is right on them to where they can't get a good shot off and have to pass out. Sure, some guys, particularly smaller guards get by him, but no C is effective as switching or staying in front of any of those guys.
There are valid complaints about him but there are so many lazy ones as well.
