tsherkin wrote:GLF wrote:I’m with you. Even though I know and agree that FG% is an archaic way to evaluate efficiency, I do think that this obsession some posters have with players having to be this uber efficient player without any nuance or context
Full stop. That isn't what is being said in this thread. There's been plenty of nuance and context, so let's not peddle outright lies.
What's being said in this thread is that we want him to be used properly and that we hope he can reach league-average efficiency. No where are people crying because he can't be "uber efficient."
It's not 1985. We have an understanding that inefficient volume scoring is generally not a good thing. Especially in the guy leading your team in shot volume. Yes, it can sometimes be relevant on a team with a complete dearth of offensive talent from a floor-raising perspective, like AI in Philly, but there are limits to what you can accomplish with that. And when you're inefficient not at 24+ FGA/g but under 17 FGA/g, then you're just scoring poorly. That's where RJ was at this year for us. Last year, a little different, because our roster was different and teams had to defend us a little differently. This year, he showed us a couple of things that weren't related to scoring, but were encouraging, like sucking less on D and passing a lot better.
Now, as discussed more than once ITT, we have a use-case for RJ where he looked reasonable, immediately after the trade. So, as has been discussed ITT, the hope is that we can get him back to that.
Meantime, as far as "impact" is concerned, RJ has exhibited only so much of it. Fairly little, as it happens. We know he can't floor-raise effectively. We know he can't handle significant offensive responsibility or effectively shoulder large shot volume. And so that's being discussed. And this thread started with the idea that we're still shopping him and Quick, so we're into discussing player value. And his is limited. He won't boot-strap a bad team, and he'd need to go to a team with some specific needs, with particular pieces in place so he can play a brand of game where he is worth his minutes and touches, which is difficult.
I just wish we mixed it up and spoke more on what players do well and not always focus on their flaws. It’s so much more fun. But that’s just me.
There is only so much to speak about. When discussing a given player's value, his strengths and weaknesses will both come up. When a player has significant weaknesses, they get a lot of air time when attempting to assess value. When you're coming off a season where the team's ORTG when RJ was on would have ranked 22nd in the league, and literally no stat likes him, you start thinking "where there's smoke, there's fire" with certain criticisms of RJ under certain use cases. It's essentially inescapable at this point. Like Scottie, he cannot be effectively deployed as a #1, and we were trying to do that. It failed.
But again, there has been a BUNCH of hopeful discussion centering around what he CAN do. Which, to be fair, is somewhat limited. He does get to the rim better than anyone else on the team, and he is a capable corner 3pt shooter. But he does require significant manipulation in order to be more than a replaceable asset to us. As his offensive load diminishes, we need his efficiency to rise, or we are wasting our time with him. So now we're into crunch time for him to show us that, assuming we deploy him in the one way where he seems to work out well.
The issue comes back to we can't just talk about a guy's strengths in a thread like this. We're shopping him because we need to be a lot better. If he was better, we wouldn't even be considering it, but we were putrid on O last year, even when he was healthy, because he's a limited guy. With BI incoming and Quick returning, the hope is that we can force a situation where he is optimized, but that also speaks to his limitations as a player. And those will come up again and again in conversation when we're trying to win, or when we're discussing trade value. It's not something we can avoid.
