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Should Smoove really keep shooting jumpers?

And there’s the rub with Smoove: He did put the time in over the summer. He hit the gym with Marietta’s Dion Glover and The Hoops Whisperer Idan Ravin for sessions. There was a heavy focus on tuning his jumper but Josh said Glover and Ravin mostly just shored up his confidence.

“I got a lot of reps up,” Josh said. “We would be in there for about an hour and 15 minutes. What I concentrate most on is stepping in to every jump shot and being confident in myself and not getting discouraged. I miss a couple, I get frustrated and get down on myself and then it’s second-guessing.”

No need for Smoove to do that when so many others are willing to do it for him. No doubt they’ve had good reason to do so considering the evidence but, again, perhaps it’s time to keep an open mind and see if he can keep this up. Josh certainly has looked better when he shoots them, and he’s taking more of them in catch-and-shoot rhythm rather than stopping and thinking about it, which seems to throw him off.

When L.D. keeps saying he isn’t strictly against Josh shooting jumpers and only had a problem with the timing of them, I figured it was just a tactical ploy. I assumed he wasn’t just coming out and saying “Smoove can’t shoot” because, knowing Smoove’s prideful streak, that could be the surest way to make him jack up even more bad shots.

But maybe L.D. was just quicker to see what the rest of us couldn’t.

“When you watch him shoot, he has a nice stroke,” Drew said. “He really does. His lower body is in sync with his upper body when he shoots the ball. He’s got good rotation on his follow-through. My whole thing with him is when he takes them. I don’t want them early in the clock, and I don’t want him camped out on the perimeter when it calls for him to dive to the basket and all of a sudden it swings around the perimeter and he’s out there.”