lilfishi22 wrote:Maybe it's hopeless but my hope with Ayton's mental aversion to contact/scoring in the paint when he's in the paint is the same with TJ Warren and his 3pt shot.
Most would remember, TJ didn't like shooting the 3 when he got into the NBA and while he had a solid sophomore season hitting 40% from 3 (on 1.5 3PA a game), instead of building off it, he went away from it for two whole seasons for whatever reason. Then all of a sudden in the offseason leading up to his 5th season, he put in the work and shot 42,000 three's in preparation for the upcoming season and he not only did he more than double his 3PA's (4.2 per game), he also raised his accuracy to well above 40%.
I thought Ayton made some progress offensively last season and I thought he'd build off that in the offseason. What I see instead is a regression. I just hope that it doesn't take until year 5 for him to figure out that hey, his scoring is not just valuable but we can actually be a really good team if he's looking for his shot.
Same thing happened to Mikal last season when they had tried to change his shot, and he had the hitch. TONS of people were complaining because he was hesitant to shoot the 3 and kept avoiding it and always driving. He started the season for the first few months playing like that until he fixed it...but still didn't shoot it nearly as much as he did this year, and still wasn't nearly as decisive as he is with it now.
Again, if you look back at a lot of bigs in their 3rd year, they didn't do much....didn't score as much, dunk as much, do as much, and it's probably tougher to bang inside with big guys when you are young..probably intimidating for a lot of guys when these experienced nba guys know what they can get away with.
A lot different than being a guard or wing and shooting a lot of jump shots.