bballsparkin wrote:Red_Claw wrote:He was always an above average passer but when you get the ball 7 times a game in 18 min/game and 3 of those attempts are offensive tip in attempts, getting the ball was a rarity so JV always looked to score.
Now that he's more of a focus offensively, he's doesn't feel the need to look for his shot everytime he gets the ball which leads to more assists.
True, he's always shown the ability to make nice passes. And perhaps had the team shared the ball more back then he would have been a more willing passer. Then again, had he passed the ball more often especially while in the post he might have got it back more often. Unlikely but who knows.
Yes and no. Think back to his years here, and when he got the ball in the post as you mention. He would
always pause a moment with the ball up, and look to see if there was a cutter or someone to pass to - even when he should have made a quick move he would pause instead - and then try to remember how many times he would actually have someone open to pass to, vs how many times they cleared and out gave him no choice but to ISO on his defender. The latter is what happened at least 80% of time, maybe more, when he got the ball in the post. He was able to create his own shot fairly well and was a good post/ISO scorer, but that was Demar's job in the offense more than it was his.
The simple fact is that he wasn't used as a playmaker and wasn't asked to be a passer. That wasn't his job. One can argue that if he showed better passing skills in games (occasionally did) or in practice (this we don't know) that it would have given the team more confidence to work to ball to him more with the goal of making him a passer, but the team chose to make Lowry and Derozan the playmakers and everyone else into shooters/scorers. We should have run more roll plays or hit cutters more, but these we're the primary skills of our ball handlers and for most of his years here, we could barely make a decent post entry pass, let along time a play to follow that pass with another one from JV. In the Casey+Demar era, Jonas' job was rebounder and garbageman first, anything else was gravy.
So it wasn't that he always looked for his own shot first and foremost, it's that it was his job to do so and the offense seldom gave him any other choice.
His passing in MEM has been better and more frequent, and that's because the Grizzlies were much more used to using their C in that fashion. Now they have Morant who is starting to realize that they can score well when he hits the roll guy more. As a PnR ballhandler he still isn't very efficient, much like Demar wasn't, but Ja's ceiling there is vastly higher so it makes sense to let things develop there between the two, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if JV ends up being the main guy to get Ja his assisted shots.
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