NatP4 wrote:How many point guards posted a 45% TS and a 3/2 A/TO ratio through their first 700 minutes in the NBA, and went on to become all star level players?
This is definitely a concern. Guards usually aren't taken this high in the draft and when they do, if they're not pretty good right away, it's often a problem. There are a whole lot of Brandon Knights, Dion Waiters, Markelle Fultzs of the league who looked bad pretty early and never really got much better.
There are a couple of examples of guys with rough starts that panned out pretty well:
De'Aaron Fox posted literally exactly these numbers early in his career. In his first 26 games (689 minutes) he posted a TS% of .451 and an A/TO ratio of 1.67 (exactly 3/2).
Kemba Walker posted a TS% of .460 and a 1.8 A/TO ratio over his first 750 minutes.
Darius Garland posted a TS% of .472 and an awful 1.1 A/TO ratio in his first 650 minutes.
None of these 3 guys made a massive improvement over the second half of their rookie season either. They just put in the work in the offseason and came back in the following season looking much better. The bottom line is: if a guy can get to the rim, it's probably not a good idea to give up on him too early.