Prokorov wrote:because his numbers as a starter were better. im not saying jack was good, he stunk... but thats the point dwill got so bad he was a wors eoption then jack
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I often have difficultly squaring your historical assessments of the Nets roster with your general advocacy for "modern basketball."
Box score statistics cannot come close to representing the negative effect Jarret Jack had on the team. He was a ball hog and a poor decision-maker. Yes, he accumulated statistics through his ball dominance, but he routinely over-dribbled, made the wrong pass, and didn't even try on defense. Sure, Deron Williams had his injuries, mental issues, and difficultly finishing that season, but he was still fundamentally a high-IQ team player. Even when he wasn't getting assists, he was frequently getting "hockey assists" and, most importantly, keeping the ball moving. In many ways, Jack was the prototypical old school, isolation player that has come to define a dead era.
The lineup-data on Jarret Jack's 14-15 performance was damning; so much so that it was widely reported on. Here is a March article from the Post:
http://nypost.com/2015/03/09/the-overused-guard-whos-killing-an-array-of-nets-lineups/The data is impossible to argue: When Jack is on the court, the Nets are being outscored by 8.9 points per 100 possessions, according to NBA.com – the exact same rating the Timberwolves, one of the league’s worst teams, have for the entire season. Jack’s rating is by far the lowest of any of the team’s main rotation players.
With Jack on the bench, the Nets are outscoring teams by 3.4 points per 100 possessions – the same rating as the Raptors and Cavaliers, the No. 2 and 3 seeds in the East.
The individual lineup data isn’t any better. Among the Nets’ 25 most used two-man pairings, Jack is involved in the seven worst on a per possession standpoint. The two worst are Jack’s pairings with Brook Lopez and Deron Williams, each of which have the Nets being outscored by 11.7 points per 100 possessions – far worse than any of the NBA’s 30 teams.
Jack was one of those special breeds of players who made every single player around him worse. He dragged the entire team down with his isolation play, low BBIQ, tunnel vision, and lack of effort on defense. His surface statistics will not reflect this.
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But, let's say for the sake of argument, that this is a vast statistical conspiracy that means nothing. Let's just go on the surface statistics. Even then, your belief that Jack was better than Deron - and Hollins made the right call - is misplaced:
Deron Williams was benched on December 26th, 2014. Before that time he had a slash line of:
16.5 PPG/6.7 APG/2.6 TO on 54.6 % TS (35.5 MPG).
The narrative you and others have suggested over the years is that Deron Williams started out the season playing horribly and justifiably lost his role to Jack. Some have argued Deron Williams played better later in the year due to Hollins "toughening him up." All of this is nonsense.
Deron Williams played his best basketball at the start of the year as the Nets lone starting point guard. Those aren't All-Star numbers, but they are pretty damn solid, especially when considering we had a new coach who was "experimenting" like crazy with the roster.
And it's not like Jack had outplayed him up to the point of Deron's benching. Prior to the 26th of December, Jack had the following line, which I adjusted to Deron's minutes played:
13.5 PPG/4.8 APG/2.5 TO on 50.9%.
So not only did Deron play well to start that season, he was outplaying Jack at the time he got benched. Whether you think in hindsight Hollins was justified in benching Deron, I think any person has to admit that this decision reeked of favoritism. With any other coach this would be a serious accusation, but I hope we can all agree Lionel Hollins was the king of playing favorites. He chose Jack over Dwill not because Dwill was struggling or Jack was outplaying him, but because he liked Jack more. Many others scrubs would get similar treatments under Hollins' tenure. -------------
Once Deron was benched, things got objectively worse. Deron played the worst basketball of his career, having a FG% close to 30%. By any measure, the benching of Deron failed. Meanwhile, the starting lineup struggled to score points.
The Nets ultimately had a worse record with Jack as the lone starter than Deron as the lone starter. I'll add that later in the year when Dwill was reinserted into the starting lineup, he still played worse than he had for the first 2 months of the season. I attribute this to having to share ball-handling duties with Jack -
that's right, in case anyone forget, Lionel Hollins decided to go with a two point-guard lineup, starting both Jack and Dwill. The obvious problem with this was the same issue we had always had: instead of building our offense around our best play-maker (Deron), we had him play a glorified two-guard, who ran off screens and sat in a corner while Joe and Jack played hero ball. I seriously don't know how pundits expected Deron to be averaging 20 points and 10 assists when he was sharing ball-handling duties with isolation-heavy, ball dominant guys in Jack and Joe, just like the previous year with Pierce and Joe. Just atrocious team construction.
Anyway, just to recap:
- The lineup data on Jack was damning. It reflects something the boxscore doesn't - that he made all of his teammates worse.
- Even ignoring the lineup data on jack, Deron had superior statistics as a starter
- Hollins benching was further unjustified because:
a. Deron played his best basketball of the season BEFORE he was benched
b. Deron was outplaying Jack at the time he was benched
c. Deron played the worst basketball of his career coming off the bench
d. The team was terrible while Dwill (and Lopez) were benched
e. Hollins was very obviously playing favorites
. Pierce was a clown. Ball dominant players like him/Joe stopped our best player from running the offense because they were too lazy and selfish to be team-players and work off the ball.
