darealjuice wrote:lilfishi22 wrote:darealjuice wrote:
I understand the thinking, but if it was that easy everyone would be a good shooter.
Those nuances should be nothing to an NBA player that went number one in the draft. Positioning, help awareness, basic ball handling, playing through contact is Basketball 101. He doesn't need a bunch of counters or advanced ball handling. Teams respect his mid-range jump shot enough. Being able to pump fake, jab step, take 2 strong dribbles, and dunk or lay it up is not an advanced skill, and he doesn't need much more than that.
I didn't say it was easy, I just meant there's a lot less thinking involved and it's really one skill that you have to work on. With the face up game, there's just more variables involved in whether to catch and go, jab step (once? twice?), left foot right foot, one dribble, two dribble, did my defender react? Where's the help? Where's the outlet? Then you have to work on your weak hand to make sure it's not a weakness. The face up game is usually not something many bigs players develop and of course, those that do become pretty good and the reason is because so much of it is to do with feel, awareness and vision - offensively, I don't think he has that.
Even if the process of 'am I open or not' is easy, there's much more to being a good shooter than that. Players rarely go from non-shooters to passable 3-point shooters, especially big men. I said it earlier, if teams don't respect him from the 3-point line and park his man in the paint, then it does us no good to have him stand out there. If you believe in him getting to that level then more power to you, but he's shot 33 3s in his career for a reason.
I'm not asking him to be an elite face-up player lol. I just want it to be an option in his game. I have no expectation for him to be Joel Embiid, KAT, AD, Jokic or anything like that, but he needs to be able to do more than pass it away, dribble hand-off on the perimeter with his back to the basket, or shoot a contested shot when he gets crowded from 15 feet. If he doesn't have the feel, awareness, and vision to do that, then what's his purpose out there besides catching lobs, shooting turnarounds in the post, and cleaning up the garbage? I don't see why it's more reasonable for him to become a 36% 3-point shooter than to learn how to dribble and play basketball, even if he's afraid of contact.
I did simplify down to that but I know it's more nuanced. I'm just saying there's a bunch of bigs in this league who have no business facing up because it's a facet of their game that they either never developed or never had a good feel of it but they ended up adding the 3PT shot because it just takes a ton of reps and you can more easily incorporate it into a modern offense ie you can give a guy developing their shot more opportunity to shoot that shot. In it's that last point that I think is also important because while it would be nice for Ayton to be able to put the ball on the floor to get a shot closer to the rim, those opportunities really do mess with offensive flow and you have to set up plays to allow him the space and opportunity for that. The 3PT shot from a big is so much easier to implement in an offense because the shot is a lot more open for bigs (tough to block) and the big being positioned out there opens up the floor for penetration for the other 4 guys on the team.
I think it's entirely reasonable for him to get to an average-ish level shooting the 3 mainly because I think his shot isn't broken. It needs tweaks but it isn't broken. If Robin Lopez can 33.3% from the 3 in his 12th season in the league after never taking more than 2 attempts for the majority of his career, I think Ayton can get to league average at some point in his career.
