KJandHondo35 wrote:ryaningf wrote:
Blowing a 3 on 1 fastbreak speaks to something else.
Versatility is his calling card. Versatile enough to play PG for sure, but I'm not seeing this PG mindset you speak about. I see an attacking mindset/skillset a la Westbrook and Rose.
(*Disclaimer: This post is mostly semantics, and I’m not sure you (ryaningf) were alluding to the fact Westy/Rose are not really PGs but, I’ve heard that from other places and I’m responding to that notion.)
I'm not sure we're having that debate but no I don't consider either player a PG. They can fake it well there in terms of putting up #s but I think their respective teams suffer offensively from having huge FGA #s coming from the same guy charged with running the offense.
Personally speaking I would have played both guys at SG and given them lots of isolation and P&R opportunities in the half court, and then used some kind of Patrick Beverly type as the PG next to them, somebody who can guard his position, hit spot up 3s, and bring up the ball and do other rudimentary PG things. I think I could have gotten the same raw #s out of both guys, but with improved efficiency, both for them as individuals but also for their respective offenses.
KJandHondo35 wrote:More importantly, are we really having the debate as to whether or not Westbrook and Rose are PGs? I mean, Rose won the MVP, Westbrook is considered a top 5 player in the league (arguable but most people have him in that group). I know from a traditionalist sense they look for their own shot before others which has not been the mold of PGs of the past. But, at the end of the day, you want the ball in their hands because they are extremely impactful and 90-95% of the time they make the right decision and put points on the board either from themselves or others. Like should we just can the term “Point-Guard” and go with “Primary-Ball-Handler” to get away from this “are Rose and Westbrook Point Guards?” question. Literally the only reason people still murmur this about Westbrook is he plays next to KD who is a generational scorer, but I guarantee that this is never a conversation if he was on any other team.
Like it just discounts their skill and the diversity of that skill. Westbrook averages 6.9 AST for his career (with two 8+ assist seasons), Rose averages 6.8 AST for his career (6.975 AST not counting those 10 games last season). Example, using
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingPass ... tOrder=DES (NBA.com Player tracking Passing Stats, Points created from AST) and their per game point totals we can get an idea of how many points per game each player is directly responsible for. Doing that for Westbrook and Rondo for last season (both down years so pretty comparable) Westbrook produces 38.2PPG and Rondo produces 34.7PPG.
Like this year I don’t see it really mattering where Smart plays his minutes, just get him on the court as much as possible and I think he will figure out where to fit. But in the future we are gonna say, “let’s get the ball in his hands as much as possible because good things happen 90% of the time”, at which point we will consider him the primary ball handler.
In general, I don't want my scorers burdened with any responsibility of deciding what plays to run or who to get involved in the offense--I want them thinking about one thing, "get buckets". Assists generated off the mindset are always welcomed, and expected, but they're out there to score, not run offense, initiate offense, bring the ball up, or stand weakside other guys get their's. No, they're finishers, not creators.
AAU has ushered in this era of having your best scorer play PG. My theory is that this is simply easier for AAU coaches, it takes less practice time and less teaching to just put the ball in the hands of your best player and let them do everything. What results long term, however, is a bunch of isolation basketball and a class of player that only knows how to play the game with the ball in their hands...which is fine if you're Kobe-like in your skill level, but if you're Marshon Brooks then you really ought to have learned how to be a functioning member of a true TEAM. So, we have this propagation of isolation basketball, multiple generations of ball players who never learn how to play off the ball (a problem I see amongst 18-25 year olds all the time), and a complete degradation of what makes basketball beautiful (playing as a team).
So, yeah, I want my scorers off the ball, I want them working on efficiency, not dribble drive moves to go thru defenses 1 on 5, and I want TEAMWORK to be accentuated, not thrwarted. Sure, they're going to get isolation opportunities when plays breakdown or when the shot clock gets low, sure they're going to get P&R reps, because these are things they do well, but I want those generated as a part of an offense and not as THE OFFENSE. An isolation attempt after ball and player movement is much harder to defend than one that comes from the top of the key with the defense set. A P&R action is much more difficult to shut down when it comes closer to the rim on the wing after the defense has been shifting and moving for 10 seconds than it is at the top of the key at the beginning of the possession. And that's the problem when you have your best isolation player at PG: you tend to just junk the offense a lot in the name of calling your own #. And then your teammates stand around flatfooted and start watching you instead of playing with you. And there are a lot of bad shots. Basically, you start to resemble the Thunder in the playoffs.
The leaks are real...the news is fake.
I'm just here for the memes.
