Game 10: Pacers vs Hawks 01/11/12, 7:00 EST

[Wizop]

Just noticed Dahntay Jones took 5 shots in 5 minutes too.

Why are our worst players taking so many shoots? Not only our worst players but worst shooters.

matchups. Atlanta went to two small guards with the second unit often having Willie Green and Teague on the floor together. forget who it was but their three was also small when Joe Johnson was out of the game. against that lineup Dahntay and Lance and George Hill all had size advantages and took advantage of the situation as they should.

[Wizop]

[quote="frizzledizzle"He's definitely talented but he's young and can't really shoot. I'm okay with him driving but I'd rather him avoid taking a lot of jump shots until he gets better at it.[/quote]

Lance can shoot. yes, I know his stats before this game. consider this game a sort of mini-breakout. if he learns what shots to take and his teammates learn how to play with him, watch out. he's not ready to dominate the all stars of the league, but he's got a chance to be a killer second unit player this year and more later.

[frizzledizzle]

Lance can shoot. yes, I know his stats before this game[/b]. consider this game a sort of mini-breakout. if he learns what shots to take and his teammates learn how to play with him, watch out. he's not ready to dominate the all stars of the league, but he's got a chance to be a killer second unit player this year and more later.

Honestly, he really can't. I watched most of the Cincy games while he was there, do you know those stats too? 44%(not that great in college) from the field and 21% from three. He's a slasher that could only score in the paint. That doesn't mean he won't develop a jump shot but I disagree with your assessment that he can shoot. You're free to your opinion but you're not going to convince me otherwise. For now, he needs to avoid taking jumpers and concentrate on getting to the rim imo. That's why he made that crazy play under the basket, that's his game. He really doesn't need to be taking circus shots like that but that's definitely where he needs to be. I'm telling you, he couldn't shoot at Cincy. That's why the Cincy tried converting him from SG to PG and Indy is doing the same. He's just not a good shooter at the moment. Even from the free throw line he shot 66% percent in college and that's a wide open shot.

Just saying that there is a reason why two different teams have tried to convert him to something other than SG. You can say he causes match up problems for other teams being a 6'5 PG, which he does. But he also causes match up problems for his own team playing SG because he can't shoot. That's why he moved to PG, Dahntay moved to SF and Paul George learned to bury the 3 ball. Shooting guards need to be able to shoot. That's why the Bulls cut the more athletic and better defender Bogans and kept Kyle Korver who sucks in every facet of the game except for shooting.

Anyways... that's jmo. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree in this case. Again, I'm not saying Lance Stephenson can't become a good shooter but for now, I just haven't seen it.

[Boneman2]

One thing Lance did that was nice is he never went into prevent mode, he kept his foot on the accelerator.

Does Lance have a jump shot? Last night he did, but that hasn't always been the case. Besides, the bigger issue with him is can he be a distributive ball handler, because I don't believe his shot is consistent enough to warrant playing time as a SG. In short, if he is not a good 1, his career will be brief.

DC was clearly affected by all the hard fouls last night, often times he was on his back pleading for a call. Lance could carve out a larger role as an enforcer when teams are picking on DC, at the minimum. His style is abusive as a 1. When he penetrates the lane it reminds me of a gauntlet that he is physically capable of breaking through, unlike Collison or Price.

[frizzledizzle]

I really hope Stephenson finds his game and becomes something. More importantly, finds himself off the court. I hope he does well in all aspects and I hope that for all our players. Guess I just get sick of different people picking on this player or that player while building up others. They're all Pacers and unless they're just bad all the time, I see no reason to throw any of them under the bus. This is best team we've had in like 5 years? 7? I don't even know. All of my teams suck so it's just good to see one of them competing. Just seems like a lot of people are quick to attack someone when we didn't even have a winning record last year. This team is really good but definitely not great. I believe they could go all the way but I would never expect it. People around here have a lot of expectations for a team that was 37-45 in maybe the worst division in the NBA. I have high expectations too but I'm also a realist.

I go too far in my defense sometimes. For all players... people probably think I'm some Granger homer but that's really not the case. If someone is going to brag about one player while trashing another player, I'm probably going to defend the player being trashed and put down the player they're hyping up. In the end, I like all of our players, at least on this squad. Are any of them perfect? No. None of them are and people need to realize that. People compare us to the Hawks tenure of being middle of the pack but I think we have something better. Hawks are semi-star studded and in the past, played in a deeper conference. We have a bunch of blue collared guys playing in a conference dominated by the Heat and Bulls. We don't have Dirk, for now... but we have the same type of roster where everyone helps out. I think Granger could be Dirk. Don't shoot the messenger but the guy wants to be here, gives it his all and shows up in big time games.

Can we just stop throwing players under the bus? Let's just support the team as long as they want to be here and are winning. I really do want them all to do well. Especially the ones that want to be here. This isn't a place people are begging to come to. The morale seems to be high so ours should be too and we should help out by supporting them. Things won't always be rosy so let's enjoy what we have.

[daschysta]

Yeah, we were 37-45 last year, but under Frank we were over .500 in a relatively large sample size, and played the Conference Champs (reg season) as close as pretty much possible. 37-45 isn't indicative of the team we ended the year with last season.

This year we are legit, and have a chance to compete for a top 3-4-5 seed.

Look at the competition, we can compete on equal footing with NY, Philly, Orl and clearly ATL. Boston has rapidly regressed.

If anything you should be way more optimistic. We're 7-3 despite 2 of our top 3 players playing way, way below what we know they are capable of. Granger is bouncing back, and will continue to do so, and West will improve over the course of the year as his conditioning gets to where it should be. Hibbert is radically improved, and playing like an All-star C and we have great youth and depth at 4 positions, plus capspace coming up if we need to tweak anything.

We really have yet to play up to our potential, but have still been pretty darned good. You can see spurts of dominance in us, for quarters at a time, we should be incredibly excited for the future. Miami is tough, but we already were capable of giving chicago fits in the playoffs last year, and this team is way better than that one was.

[Wizop]

Anyways... that's jmo. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree in this case. Again, I'm not saying Lance Stephenson can't become a good shooter but for now, I just haven't seen it.

fair enough. I would have to admit I didn't see much of it either until last night. I also didn't see the slimmed down Lance until this year's draft night. it is clear to me that after last season the light went on and Lance realized he needed to work on his body and his game. he's supposedly under Clark Kellogg's wing. let's just agree that Lance hasn't been a good shooter and leave the question whether he's become one open for a while. last night was certainly the first night this year that he's found a shot. time will tell whether that was an aberration or the start of growth.