Karmaloop wrote:
Except he's not really doing anything different in New Orleans than he was doing in Los Angeles. Other than the volume in New Orleans, the numbers are fairly similar to that when he was in a Lakers' uniform.
Yeah...this is just factually incorrect. The way he shoots and where he shoots is different.
He shoots the 4th most 3 pointers in the league for a small forward. He has TRIPLED the amount of threes he is taking while also increasing his 3 point percentage. That isn’t incremental, that is night and day. He essentially went from shooting the 3 like Solomon Hill to shooting the 3 like Khris Middleton. That isn’t a small change, that is shooting like a different player.
I can’t think of another player that has improved that much from 3 (and from the free throw line) while increasing the amount of 3’s like that.
This completely changes the kind of player he can be. If Ingram was shooting 41 percent on 5 catch and shoot 3’s a game, the Dynamics of the Davis trade would be really different.
A player who shoots that well has to be guarded differently on the perimeter which opens up his floor game even more but also provides spacing for his teammates. The player he was from last year had value but would need the ball otherwise you could ignore him. You can’t say the same thing about him this year and that makes him a really different player.
Now I do think his assists rebounds and inside game resembles an incremental increase that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but the addition of the high volume, high efficiency catch and shoot 3 is what makes him so different.
For what it’s worth, Lonzo also really improved from 3, especially with the catch and shoot 3, where we went from 32 percent to 40 percent. He can also play off ball now which again substantially increases his value, especially in the crunch time, when he won’t have the ball in his hands as much.
Fred Vinson is one of the best skills coaches in the game. He has also helped Eric Gordon, Tyreke Evans, and Anthony Davis substantially with their shots.