Post#145 » by tsherkin » Mon Dec 10, 2012 11:26 pm
This thread amuses me.
There's no way that Mayo is as good as Harden. There is a nearly 0% chance that he will continue to shoot over 50% from 3 on the season.
He's looking good, he's performing well and even after the regression that is surely coming, he will continue to perform well. We've known for years that, given the right context, Mayo could play well. Memphis' back court situation has been a little congested for a long time and they've had various challenges to go through. Mayo proved incapable of playing a conventional PG role and he's not proven himself to be worth the time as a volume scorer. He's got main value as a 6th Man or a third option kind of player.
He's not doing anything else at a level different from what he has since arriving in the league back in 08-09. Rebounding, defense, passing... all decent but unremarkable. Nothing elite in those categories. We've seen him shoot 36-38% for the previous 4 seasons (36.4% to 38.4%, specifically). In 2010, he had a 30-game run of shooting ~ 43.6% from 3, fairly divergent from his career and season-to-season averages, and a pretty good example of a player getting hot for a stretch and then cooling down. It's all part of jump shooting.
In Dallas, he's running a super-hot shooting streak that has defined him as a player on career-high shooting volume from 3. So let's say he drops down to 44.6% 3P. I'm using that number to correspond to a specific number of 3PM for the sake of neatness, but it's clearly arbitrary. That's still UBER-hot shooting from downtown, though, Ray Allen-in-Boston kind of shooting, and still maintaining career-high volume from that range.
He's managing 61.5% TS. His career average is 53.7% and he's never been higher than 55.1% (his only other season over 53.9%). Given that and the outlier percentage he's shooting from 3 on career-high volume, only an extreme homer would expect him to continue on as he is managing now. His current level, his FULL current level of performance is not sustainable. This will become painfully apparent soon enough. He's playing really well, but this is a shooting streak. He's got a good situation and plenty of opportunity, backed by a really good coach who has a team of journeymen and over-the-hill guys playing very well as a cohesive unit. The Mavs are a fairly pedestrian team in terms of taking care of the ball and fouls drawn, they are ABYSMAL on the offensive glass but doing very well in terms of their ability to make shots. They are, as a team, below average at either end of the floor and running a little ahead of their projected record. They made a couple of solid off-season signings and are clicking pretty well.
But it would be highly foolish to assume that Mayo will continue to play anything like this on the balance of the season, and it's just setting up for disappointment to believe otherwise. He's having a great year and he's in the situation he needs to be in order to flourish far more so than was the case in Memphis but better than Harden?
No, that's not accurate.
First of all, almost 59% of his baskets are assisted. This isn't a negative characterization, off-ball players are important because they mix well with the guys who use the ball. Neither style is preferable, only that the roster includes a mix, because you need both. Mayo is working well with the post guys and with Collison as a result. What else does he do besides spot up? e.g. what does he do which Klay Thompson doesn't?
Well, the three largest single proportions of his offense are from spot-ups, handling in the PnR and transition (minding that Dallas has the second-highest pace in the league at the moment).
Spotting up, he's managing 1.51 points per possession, because he's 30/47 from downtown in those sets (63.8% FG). That won't last, which is kind of the repeating theme of his performance. That's 20.6% of his offensive possessions right there.
Handling in the PnR represents another 20.9%. 0.79 points per possessions. Not that great. Low efficiency overall. 46th in the league, but that means he's worse than all of the other starting points in the league and posting what is a mediocre level of efficiency in an absolute sense. He turns the ball over 22.2% of the time in those sets, though that isn't unusual for that particular play. Given his weak scoring efficiency and playmaking out of that set, however, it makes him not at all valuable in that role. His handles? Not as good as Harden's. His playmaking? Not as good as Harden's. Harden is a noted PnR specialist and Mayo is a guy who has repeatedly come up short as a playmaking guard. This is why Mike Conley is still in Memphis and Mayo is now in Dallas; OJ is not a PG, he never has been, that skill set is not his strength. Fluid athletic ability (non-elite) and a really good set shooting ability are his tools. He's not Ray Allen, he's not Reggie Miller, you can't build around him as a primary scoring threat, but he is a valuable rotation player.
Transition. 1.23 points per possession. Pretty good, fairly well expected given the nature of the plays. He's shooting 41.7% from three in transition, which I'd expect to go down given that he's not Steve Nash and those are typically a little lower-percentage than other 3s (and not wise shots to begin with given the absence of offensive rebounders), but they are also OPEN shots, so I don't expect him to tail off THAT much here. Transition IS highly efficient and Mayo is most certainly good at hitting open shots, it's the reason he's in the NBA at all.
Off screens? He's actually been abominable. 2/7 from downtown, 0.65 points per possession overall, 33.3% FG, 17.6%... He's been wretched there. That's atypical, I'd expect that to improve some.
In any case, amusing to me is this characterization of Harden as a ball-stopper. This is some weird straw man Mayo supporters are erecting because they need SOMETHING to cover up the unsustainable nature of Mayo's offensive performance to date. Off-ball versus on-ball isn't a hard value difference, it's simply a differing approach to the game, each with its place. You definitively NEED both, because you need an initiator and someone who can work around that. This is the reason that Lebron and Wade struggled at first. This is the reason that Westbrook and Durant work well together, or Scottie and MJ (because they could both work on and off ball effectively). And so on and so forth throughout various dynamic pairs in league history.
Harden IS the offense. He proved well enough that he could fit into a larger, more talented offensive scheme when he was with the Thunder, so it is a laughable assertion to call him a ball-stopper and actually say it with a serious face. He's the primary initiator and point guard for the team, of COURSE he's on-ball. Mayo relies on Collison to do most of that stuff and works around the ball going into the post as well. Beyond that, he spams 3s in transition. That's not really the picture of a player who is a lot more versatile or valuable offensively than James "I'm floating Houston's entire bloody offense" Harden.
We can appreciate both players; Mayo is having a fine season and will continue to perform well even once he begins his inevitable regression. He might shoot as high as the 47-odd percent Novak shot in a similar role last season for the Knicks. Oh yes, that happened.
Steve Novak took 5.2 3PA/g for the Knicks and shot a league-best 47.2% from 3. He, like Mayo, did almost all of his work in transition and spotting up while others created the look. This doesn't make Novak MORE valuable than James Harden, it just makes him a specialist being used appropriately.
Perspective, and food for thought.
5-6 years ago people would have said Mcgrady > Dirk, now that would be a joke.
Turbo Zone
at the notion that anyone gives a crap about an unfounded assertion that he's getting 2-3 flop gifts, sorry his better attacking and ball-handling doesn't fit into your mavs homer worldview.
