The-Power wrote:JMAC3 wrote:There is a reason that the best players in the game are the best scorers. Flat out. If you look at the 50 best scorers, like 40 of them are top 50 players.
While I agree that scoring ability is important, I'd contest that statement. If you define ‘best scorers’ as ‘those players that score the most’ you are getting a bit closer to that statement being true (still very much hyperbole) but that completely misses that the best players tend to get the most minutes and get the more opportunities with the ball in their hands (for which scoring ability is one reason, but certainly not the whole story). So naturally the scoring averages of the best players are going to be relatively higher even if other generally inferior players are better strictly at putting the ball in the basket.
I am talking about when you look at the top 50-100 guys. Majority of those guys are the most talented scorers. Yeah, maybe a guy scores 10-14 ppg simply from being on the court a lot but there really are no 20+ point scorers who aren't good at scoring the ball.
But instead of placing a premium on that because 85% of great players are great scorers, a lot of the time it is met with "Well Jordan Poole/Cam Thomas are great scorers, doesn't mean scoring matters..." Instead of using the information that is 85% accurate we would rather highlight the other 15% of guys to try and disprove its importance. No strategy is full proof, but instead we want to dissect 900 other things.
Example: Brandon Miller, dude averaged 20 ppg in SEC play as freshman and yet the majority of people were trying to figure out why he would fail as a scorer in the NBA instead of just taking the gigantic chance that he was going to be a really good scorer in NBA.