the_process wrote:ckchen wrote:the_process wrote:Gonna have to disagree with you on JA. He's touted for his defense, which looked average-at-best to me. And he's just outright bad offensively at this point. So yeah, there are some bags of balls out there that are more worthy of a roster spot. Hoping BC declines his 4th year option.
I mean this is exactly it. The numbers don't support this type of evaluation at all. "Outright bad" is definitely an exaggeration. He played only slighty above replacement level, but it was still above replacement level. At worst that's league average not worse than a "bag of balls" bad. His shooting was actually pretty good except for his terrible 3 pt shooting, which again can be reined in. Again, outside of 3 pt shooting, there's not that much that you can say about his offensive game that is really all that awful.
What does he do offensively? He shouldn't be shooting mid range jumpers and he can't shoot threes. On the break, he will almost always be the last option to get the ball. He's not very good at creating his own shot. I think the numbers are somewhat deceptive in his case. Unless you like inefficient offense?
Look, even if he only contributes offensively on dunks, layups, and putbacks, as long as he's a athletic, physical presence on the court and can jump and body up on guys, that's fine. This is a backup 3 we're talking about. The team is suddenly littered with SGs, so nobody should be expecting him to suddenly turn into a jump shooter. But if he leans into his strengths, he can be an effective, even if mostly defensive backup. It's mostly about whether he can adjust his mentality to that type of game.
