earthtone wrote:Why would it take 'magic' for him to get back to his 2024 efficiency? He played his best off of Siakam and he'll have a similar threat in Ingram to draw defenders and provide him easier shots. He was also playing with a hand injury, so that being resolved should be worth a couple expected ticks in efficiency by itself.
Players becoming better shooters on their second contracts is incredibly common, and it's clear the org believes in Scottie's long term potential as a shooter. I think a return to his 2024 numbers is the goal for this season, and don't see any reason why it's out of reach
The idea that he's likely to become a 38%+ C+S 3pt shooter this year isn't very likely. He's been pretty crap at it in 3 out of 4 seasons, and the one injury-abbreviated season which highlighted two months of shooting should not really be the point of emphasis for him as a player. Scottie has strengths; shooting isn't one of them, and likely never will be. And the more we progress in building our team, the less important running shots to him becomes, which is a good thing.
YogurtProducer wrote:I mean, mid range IS killing him. It is the least efficient shot in basketball, so even if he is shooting +3.3% on those shots, he is still taking way to many of them at not a high enough rate for it to help his TS%.
But again, 2 FGA/g from 10-16 feet aren't really what's killing him. Getting him to cut down even further on 16+-footers is something to explore, but they're like 1.3 FGA/g, so they aren't THAT big a drag on him.
3pt shooting, at which he sucks, is a FAR bigger drain on his efficiency, especially coupled to him not getting to the rim much.
Now, we come back to his short game, and that we both agfree is a problem.
The 3's are bad as well - but last season his 3 just felt off; even in comparison to the rest of his career.
Looked a lot like his second seasons. Within 1%, in fact. And only a couple percent off his rookie season.
He shot a LOT more of his 3's off the dribble (his assisted 3 rate went from 91% to 73%).
No he didn't. What he did was take more unassisted 3s. But of the 4.3 3PA/g he took, 2.9 were with 0 dribbles. That's 1 less per game than the year before. He took 0.5 3PA/g in 2024 where he took 1, 2 or 7+ dribbles, and 0.4 with 3-6 dribbles.
(EDIT: Sorry, didn't finish this thought. That's 0.9 FGA/g off the dribble in 2024, compared to 1.5 in 2025.)
What actually happened is that he went from shooting 38.6% on 3s with no dribbles down to 28%.
That was of MUCH greater impact than taking 1 less shot with no dribbles every game.
That is the type of shot diet we need from him. He simply just is bad at creating his own shot. The sooner we have him focusing on being a connector, and just being more of an Aaron Gordon and less of a Luka Doncic the better.
Here we agree. He's considerably worse from the corner than Gordon, but that's at least an area where we can make him a tolerable shooter (below league average from that spot, but it could take him to 36% from 3 if he ONLY took those).
And yes, I think many people care way too much about his passing. I think it's the single biggest motivator for people to want Scottie on-ball more, and I don't think that's a smart idea at all. I think we need him to learn how to screen, hit the O-boards even more and just move without the ball, while forgetting about his passing too much. It puts too much pressure on him to be something he's not.
