Leslie Forman wrote:PaKii94 wrote:Leslie Forman wrote:Yes, this was an excuse people tried to bring up back then too. Since Doug was in the paint more, he won't get as many steals. He should get some more blocks though, right?
Kyle Korver had 23 blocks his senior year. Doug had 14. Total. After four years.
Doug just isn't athletic enough for the NBA. It was enough for him to play PF on a 2nd tier team in college. He had the fundementals/IQ to make it work at high usage.
Doug was actually fine from a purely tape measure athleticism standpoint. He wasn't good or anything, but plenty good enough to be a productive NBA player. It's not like Kyle Korver is any quicker or more explosive. It was a lack of basketball IQ and motor that was his downfall - he was a passenger in the game. Korver is incredibly active and aggressive in terms of movement. Doug just kinda stood around on offense and had no awareness on defense (hence the atrocious steal and block numbers even at the college level).
It's something common with white guys who shoot 3s - people assume these guys all have high basketball IQ. We see it right now with Markkanen - people think he's got good fundamentals and plays smart basketball when he's really got very poor basketball IQ. He also had terrible steal+block numbers in college. A 7-footer with his athleticism should not be averaging .5 blocks a game at that level.
Well, there's definitely something about guys who work to get open (Kobe, Jordan, Korver, Redick, Reggie, Rip, Klay, Curry), and guys who don't seem to realize it's a BIGGER part of the offensive game than anything else unless you have Kyrie's handles (Melo, Niko, Doug, Crawford, Zach)? I'll even knock Bulls era Jimmy Butler for that. He didn't have a problem off-the-ball as a defender, but he didn't exactly do much on offense when he didn't have the ball.
I just don't get how guys at the pro level with gifted shooting ability ... aren't swayed to work on that skill? I realize it's partially instinct/awareness, but it's also pure fundamentals, effort and training, which are totally teachable. Are these guys' agents telling them not to work on it, in favor of lobbying for the ball and hopelessly creating on low efficiency on a losing team? Wouldn't it raise their salary stock by $5-10m? Lauri and Zach are two examples of guys who IMO are not good enough with the ball to have 25%+ usage.