Saberestar wrote:bwgood77 wrote:Saberestar wrote:It's not about his role, he can't carry an offense anymore.
I have been a fan of him for too many years and I know pretty well his game. I was excited about his acquisition but the truth is that he hasn't meet expectations. He was a relentless scorer and now he doesn't have the energy or the legs to do it.
He can’t create for him or his teammates consistently and that's why his shooting numbers and overall usage are down...it's not the other way.
But he is a Suns player yet so I would love to watch any type of improvement on his game.
I think he can create his own shot just fine and I think he is actually very good at getting to the rim, probably better than our other stars. However, sometimes his midrange game is on fire, and sometimes it's off. Same as Book this year actually.
I think one thing he tries too much which hurts his impact is he actually gets the ball in nice spots to Nurkic AND Plumlee...like as they are both rolling to the rim, but then the C messes it up and doesn't finish. While I think he may be theoretically either making the right play or at least what would normally be a good play to get someone involved, with these Cs, he should just finish himself.
But the guy, if he wasn't playing as a 3rd fiddle to Book and KD, would still be close to 25 ppg.
His shots are way down and he s still over 19ppg, and that is leaving a couple games early. I get he is disappointing often, but he still can score...most all players are pretty inconsistent except a guy like KD. And he has put a lot more effort on defense this year than in the past. I know he's an easy scapegoat for everyone but it's a little more complicated than that. Last year our team played really well when all 3 of them were playing, and went 34-18 after he came back from back issues. This year he is down a little bit on offense (though playing better D), but Book is down a lot on offense as well. And I think adding Tyus, even though he has been playing well, was probably something in hindsight, we didn't really need, and needed more defense than offensive initiation in the starting unit.
Back to not being able to carry the offense anymore. He could never carry the offense by himself on a good team. He could get to the 2nd round when playing with another solid player and decent cast like Booker could, but Booker obviously could never carry a team by himself either.
This is a team thing. And really, I think C is our weak spot. I do think both Beal and Book have off games. Book is the better overall player on offense, but his offense (at least shooting) is really down overall. And his defense is back kind of to where it was a few years ago.
He averages 17.8 ppg, 3.5 boards and 3.2 assists. 49/39/77
He is shooting 14.4 FGs per game and he doesn't go to the FTL, just 2.1 attempts per game.He has no burst to create space for his shooting and create advantages in offense like in the past, it's crystal clear for most basketball people.
He has had every opportunity to be "vintage Beal" here, in too many games we have missed KD or Book...but he can't do it anymore. Good player yet but VASTLY OVERPAID.
If he would be as good as you believe we wouldn't have any problem to trade him (or we wouldn't want to trade him) attaching a FRP or a few 2nds...but he has regressed and that makes his contract worse that it was one season and half ago.
His contract was terrible from the get go because he was one of the first with one of these mega deal max's at 35% of the cap or whatever. Most all those contracts are bad but they are given to the core 1 or 2 players...the problem was trading for it to be a 3rd wheel, where his impact wouldn't be nearly as high. But we were put in the terrible position when we traded for KD because with Book's pending max kicking in the following summer we were out of cap space, unable to add anything except what we could maybe get for Ayton, Paul and Shamet. Had we never traded for Beal we would be in a better position cap wise, and maybe have an additional role player from a MLE or something, but we would not be in a position to even trade for Butler at all unless we unloaded like Royce, Allen, Dunn, Nurkic or something like that to get up to that salary level leaving us no depth.
But yeah, he's not in his prime. Contract horrible, but he's not as bad of a player as many seem to make him out to be. The fit with two more PGs added though this year has made things difficult from a defensive standpoint.
I mean I know you watch but he was pretty close to vintage Beal against Philly, even off the bench, with 25/5/3/1/1 on 10/15 shooting and 3/6 from 3. This is just a couple games ago. He's had some very good stretches with a clunker here and there where he shot over 50 from the field and well from 3. His biggest problem has been staying on the court.
Sure he may not have the burst he did but he's played well outside of being hurt too often. Yes, inconsistent and bad games here and there but mostly pretty nice for a 3rd offensive guy.
December:
November:
So yeah, he misses games and has some off shooting nights, but he has been active defensively, averaging more steals than per game than since he was 27, in fewer minutes, and more blocks than ever. Of course he ties his shoes more often too.
But yeah, he doesn't have value because that contract is huge and teams typically don't trade for packages like that unless they think he can be their centerpiece, and yes, he's not a player that is the type of guy to be your offensive centerpiece on a contender.
One reason I hope we trade Book is because I think it might not be long before people feel the same way about him around the league, with all these young teams and their stars, especially with his shooting declining so drastically on the whole.
