life_saver wrote:wolves_89 wrote:life_saver wrote:How is NAW's defense ?
He has the physical profile and athleticism to be a plus defender, and the advanced metrics mostly rate him as being above average. I'm really curious why a guy shooting 40% on 3s who seems like he should be a decent defender wasn't playing much in Utah.
yeah...I was also wondering the same. Maybe Jazz felt like his 3 pt shooting this year might be bit of a fluke and unsustainable as it's still a small sample and he didn't shoot well in previous seasons
He shot atrociously till he got regular minutes. When we were competing for the playoffs, it didn't make sense to disrupt our rotation for a player that needed significant development. With both he and THT our coaching staff acted as if they were rookies, i.e. that they needed to learn almost everything about how to play in the NBA because their coaching experience to that point had been so terrible. NAW looked bad to start this season, too, and all the players said the same thing "he is really talented, he just needs confidence." Usually, that means a player is terrible, but in this case it seemed to be true. I think he's going to be a solid backup point guard at some point in his career, maybe even now.
RE: shooting, I'm not sure if I have a ton of confidence, but when he started to get that role with Conley out he was hitting them. New Orleans fans seemed to think he was a good shooter. Last year it felt like he would never make a shot.
