YogurtProducer wrote:everdiso wrote:Poeltl's not a guy you want to dump the ball down to late in the clock, but is definitely a guy that can make a play for himself or a teammate in that situation. Thanks both to his ability to score and his ability to pass.
Depite Norm's shooting, and despite his always affordable contract (very cheap compared to scoring comparables), he was a 15mpg a guy that year, and has bounced around the league as an undersized microwave scorer, quickly let go by every team after any time he got full starting minutes - and again, not moved on from due to price. He was a bit part on that 2019 team.
I mean, this was what you said:
just that this team is built differently - 5 legit starter caliber 30+mpg guys who can initiate, score, pass, and aren't defensive liabilities. We've never had this before iirc.
If your benchmark for initiating is Poeltl, your benchmark for passing is Barrett, your scoring benchmark is Poeltl, and defensive liability threshold is RJ/Ingram, then that means the 2019 team had just as many guys, if not more, who could do those things lol.
your're missing the point i think. that team had danny green as a starter, a guy who couldn't create shots or pass. . as for Barrett being a benchmark for passing - he had a 27.5ast% last year. Find out how many of those champ raps ever even came close to that mark.
you're confusing an argument about "built different" with an argument about better/worse, which isn't an argument i'm making. obviously that team was far better defensively and had an mvp calibre lead scorer. clearly a better team. But it was also a team with a bunch of non-shot creators who were pure spot up shooters offensively, with no shot creation or passing.
let me try to quantify things here:
[center]18-19 Raps ----> Current Raps with this year + last year stats
Kawhi (27) 34.0mpg, 30.3usg%, 60.6ts%, 16.4ast% ---> Ingram (28) 32.9mpg, 29.9usg%, 56.5ts%, 24.9ast%
Lowry (32) 34.0mpg, 19.6usg%, 56.2ts%, 34.8ast% ---> Scottie (24) 32.9mpg, 27.0usg%, 52.8ts%, 27.5ast%
Siakam (24) 31.9mpg, 20.8usg%, 62.8ts%, 14.6ast% ---> Barrett (25) 32.1mpg, 28.3usg%, 55.3ts%, 26.7ast%
Gasol (34) 24.9mpg, 16.3usg%, 56.5ts%, 21.2ast% ----> Quickley (26) 28.2mpg, 24.9usg%, 56.1ts%, 30.9ast%
Green (31) 27.7mpg, 14.1usg%, 63.2ts%, 7.7ast% ----> Poeltl (30) 29.2mpg, 18.4usg%, 64.2ts%, 14.5ast%[/center]
This illustrates the point - you're not going to be able to find any other raps team ever (or many other teams at all tbh) that has 5 starters all capable of playing fulltime starting minutes, who are able to put BOTH usg% and ast% that high. 4 starters are 25+ % in both categories. that's a rare thing, and something unique about how this specific team is built.
And sure you can say Poeltl is not a real shot creator, but he's a more efficient scorer on higher volume than either Gasol or Green there, while having an assist rate double Green's and not that far behind Gasol, and the same as Siakam.
and no, even in limited minutes, the bench guys weren't as versatile either
Ibaka (29) 27.2mpg, 22.9usg%, 58.2ts%, 7.7ast%
FVV (24) 27.5mpg, 17.9usg%, 53.9ts%, 23.9ast%
OG (21) 20.2mpg, 15.5usg%, 54.4ts%, 4.7ast%
Powell (25) 18.8mpg, 19.0usg%, 59.6ts%, 11.6ast%
Fred the only one who could create for teammates amongst this group, but at that point his own scoring was very limited other than bombing spot up 3pters.
And it's not a team style thing that is effecting the stats, becuase the raps bench guys have much less versatile stats lines too:
Dick (22) 28.8mpg, 21.0usg%, 54.6ts%, 8.7ast%
Agbaji (25) 26.8mpg, 14.5usg%, 59.8ts%, 7.8ast%
Shead (23) 19.4mpg, 18.5usg%, 50.1ts%, 30.2ast%
Mamu (26) 11.5mpg, 20.3usg%, 63.4ts%, 11.0ast%
and then in terms of talking about all-around 2-way play as fulltime starters, all of them have shown capable of putting up solid positive advanced metrics in full time starting duty and with actual legit offensive usage the past couple years. Even RJ. Meanwhile a guy like Norm was a big negative even in limited bench usage.
I was never arguing that this raps team is one of the best raps teams ever - just that they are built in a specific rare way. Also happens to be a way that i think should be specifically helpful in improving the individual players' weak spot - scoring efficiency - and end up making all the players look better than they have the past couple of years. So far this year the shooting efficiency looks great so early returns are good.
