garrick wrote:With the absence of Brogdon and Shaedon due to injuries Portland has been pretty much forced to go through DA for much of their offense and he's been playing pretty well by doing some of the stuff that us Suns fans have been wanting him to do for awhile now.
He's been driving to the rim and dunking lob passes and his mid range looks really good now compared to the beginning of the season. I don't know what his numbers are but it has to be like 20 and 12 or something post all star break compared to a career low 12ppg he was averaging before the all star break.
Like BW said I think for him it's all about confidence or a lack of it with Phoenix as was evident in last year's playoffs, with less shots to go around and him being a more primal part of the offense his recent numbers are what I expected of him to start the season.
I noticed early when they had Simons out, along with Scoot for a good chunk of games, that no one had got him the ball and every time Grant touched it, he had tunnel vision and I never saw him pass. I watched games here and there early, but not much since.
But I did notice when Scoot got back he started to develop great chemistry with Ayton. I haven't watched them in awhile though.
Looking at his %s by area, I'm surprised to see he is shooting 60% between 16 ft and the 3 pt line. That's by far his best from that range..his best years from there were a little over 46%, which, at the time, I thought was good. His assisted baskets are quite a bit lower than the last couple years too.
But back to his range improving, if he can develop a 3 pt shot, that will tremendously improve his value as a player. He still has big problems getting to the line. This may be his worst season in that respect, and he can't do much shot creation. It will be interesting to see if he has value after this contract.