Eric Bledsoe

Excuse my agenda again, but it amazes me that Bledsoe, Booker 'sophomore slump', Tucker, and Knight (didn't think he could get worse...but does) all playing worse this season, yet the one player actually improving this year is still seemingly taking the most flak amongst them all, or at least as much as Knight...

...sorry, but if Bledsoe's the 'best' Vet we got, we're in a rough spot.

TeamTragic · Post #370 » by **TeamTragic** » Sat Dec 3, 2016 11:05 pm

Bledsoe is getting better. I'm glad he is actually playing. However he needs better players on this team.

GMATCallahan · Post #371 » by **GMATCallahan** » Sun Dec 4, 2016 12:31 am

The irony is that the Suns would be much better off offensively with Isaiah Thomas, Ish Smith, and Goran Dragic, or at least two of the three.

If you examine the nature of Bledsoe's game, it is sort of halfway between Stephon Marbury's and Jason Kidd's, but his strengths are not as strong as either of those point guard's strengths and he is a significantly worse playmaker than both. He could be an excellent third guard on a contender, but he is not going to lead a team anywhere of note. Yes, Phoenix went 27-13 (.675, a 55-win pace per 82 games) in Bledsoe's 40 starts in '13-'14, but that success came alongside Dragic, who was enjoying a career year and constituting one of the best offensive guards in the NBA. Measuring individual value in the NBA is so context-dependent, which is what the media fails to acknowledge with all the frivolous MVP chatter. While Steve Nash was receiving MVP Awards with Phoenix, his old team, the Dallas Mavericks, was improving and ultimately reaching new heights without him. Yes, the Suns eventually surged in the spring of 1997 after the newly acquired Jason Kidd returned from his broken collarbone, going 14-4 (.778, a 64-win pace per 82 games) in his last 18 starts (out of 23 total) for Phoenix that year, but that success came with Kevin Johnson—quietly enjoying a historic season—starting alongside him. With Dallas over the previous two and a half years, Kidd directed below-average to poor offenses for lottery teams, helping lead the Mavericks to trade him.

Watch on YouTube

If the Suns are going as far as Bledsoe takes them, they are not going far at all. In the right context, Bledsoe can be a very valuable player, as we saw three years ago, but that goes for many NBA players. The list of guys who excel at milking efficiency out of offensive possessions, almost regardless of the system and surrounding personnel, is very short. Kevin Johnson and Steve Nash were two of the few, and even Nash needed the right contextual elements—in terms of spacing and shooters—in order to perform at a historic level (hence what happened during the brief Terry Porter reign).

Phoenix has no one—no one—remotely like that right now (outside of a hot streak or good game here or there), although Ulis could help if given the opportunity.

NavLDO · Post #372 » by **NavLDO** » Sun Dec 4, 2016 12:33 am

GoranTragic wrote:Bledsoe is getting better. I'm glad he is actually playing. However he needs better players on this team.

He does, but he also needs to allow them to make plays by providing the assists. But I do understand that there are 2 sides to that equation; the other player needs to complete that equation my making the shot on the assist...

TeamTragic · Post #373 » by **TeamTragic** » Sun Dec 4, 2016 1:58 am

NavLDO wrote:
GoranTragic wrote:Bledsoe is getting better. I'm glad he is actually playing. However he needs better players on this team.

He does, but he also needs to allow them to make plays by providing the assists. But I do understand that there are 2 sides to that equation; the other player needs to complete that equation my making the shot on the assist...

Booker playing poorly and being injured doesn't help. Maybe when Warren gets back into the lineup.

GMATCallahan · Post #374 » by **GMATCallahan** » Sun Dec 4, 2016 2:11 am

NavLDO wrote:He does, but he also needs to allow them to make plays by providing the assists. But I do understand that there are 2 sides to that equation; the other player needs to complete that equation my making the shot on the assist...

As you indicated earlier, the issue with Bledsoe is less his assists average and more his assists-to-turnover ratio—his decision-making, more or less. He is a good scorer off the drive with a jump shot that comes and goes, but he is a terribly inconsistent playmaker with little feel for how to open passing lanes. And his assists-to-turnover ratio this season so far (1.71:1.00) is slightly worse than it was the the last two seasons and barely better than in his first year in Phoenix (1.64:1.00). Statistically, almost across the board, he seems to have stagnated and reached the "he is what he is" stage as he is about to turn twenty-seven, and what he is happens to be inadequate for a major point guard. That is not to say that Bledsoe is a bad player by any stretch—he is not one—but if he is arguably a team's best offensive player, that team is likely to be bad.

I might even suggest that without the changing orientation of the point guard position, Bledsoe might not be a starting point guard. This change was epitomized by Game Seven of the 2016 NBA Finals when Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving combined—almost laughably—for 3 assists. Compare that output to Game Seven of the 1988 Western Conference Semifinals where John Stockton and Magic Johnson combined for 36 assists. Or consider this game between the Suns and Rockets at Houston on March 18, 1997. Phoenix's Jason Kidd and Kevin Johnson combined for 28 assists between the two of them, split almost right down the middle (15 and 13, respectively).

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1996&b=19970322&tm=hou

Afterwards in the Rockets' locker room, former Phoenix player (and future Phoenix broadcaster) Eddie Johnson was staring at the box score and saying that two players on the same team combining for 28 assists was virtually unheard of.

As I have stated before, Kevin Johnson became an elite three-point shooter that season (third in the NBA at .441 in 2.9 FGA per game), and late in the year, Phoenix's in-house reporter, Jeramie McPeek, asked him why he had become a three-point shooter almost overnight. (K.J. had actually started looking for the three a little more often the previous year, averaging 1.0 attempts per game and shooting a slightly above-average .368 in '95-'96, after never previously averaging as many as 0.60 attempts per contest.) Johnson stated that part of the reason why he had not shot threes in the past was because, as a point guard, he had feared that if he started shooting threes, in addition to the other ways that he could score, there would be too many possessions where he was not involving his teammates. In '96-'97, K.J. would rank third in the league in three-point field goal percentage while also placing third in assists per game (the first player in NBA history to rank in the top three in both categories in the same season, a feat later matched once by John Stockton and twice by Steve Nash), but the mentality tends to be so different nowadays. Currently, most of the leading point guards seem to look for the three-pointer before they look to set up a teammate, or about as often as they seek to set up a teammate, and Bledsoe is averaging 4.1 three-point field goal attempts this season, not far off his assists average (5.3) even though he is shooting .286 on threes and has never constituted a good three-point shooter over a large seasonal volume. (When Bledsoe attempted 272 threes two years ago, he shot just .324.) If you go back twenty-five years, certainly, most teams would have found Eric Bledsoe unacceptable as a starting point guard. Yet because the positional context has changed so much over the last two decades, many people still see him as an attractive starting point guard. A point guard needs to be a threat to score, and there is nothing wrong with a point guard being a scorer. But a point guard needs to score smartly, if you will.

garrick · Post #375 » by **garrick** » Sun Dec 4, 2016 10:47 am

I think part of the reason for KJ's elite 3pt shooting was they shortened the line that season.

You have to wonder if he utilized the three more during his career he would have been more durable as he was so injury prone with his hamstrings.

Fo-Real · Post #376 » by **Fo-Real** » Sun Dec 4, 2016 4:07 pm

I wish Bled was more demonstrative while on the court, he is too much strong silent type to be a true leader. You need one of your best players to also be the vocal leader on the court. Its hard to explain but one example during the Warriors game, Bled had it going, we fell behind and made some good defense plays and some great offensive plays to get back into it. Instead of him or anyone rallying the on the court, slapping asses, "come on guys, lets get this ****", "Don't let up", trying to keep the rooks on task and the team on point, we were silent and just fell flat again, the intensity sort of faded away. Kj, Nash, Marjerle, hell even Barkley were great for that, they lead the team and tried to keep the intensity up at all times. Bled, Book and Tj are all very quiet, strong silent types. Book talks trash to the other team, but is too young to be the on court leader. Some one has to have the authority to hold people accountable on the court for missed defensive rotations and being out of out of place on the offense and someone LACKING THE PROPER INTENSITY, not just letting others float through games like Len an Chris do often, and it has to be an on the court leader slash team star to do that, while background teachers and mentors like Duds, Chandler, and Pj reinforce the message, it has to be your star leader on the court to DRIVE THE DAMN BUS!!!

Fo-Real · Post #377 » by **Fo-Real** » Sun Dec 4, 2016 4:33 pm

This team needs to fight to get better on defense, someone needs to be the guy to say to the others, "Hey, stop this ****, D the **** up". Defense needs to be the focus of intensity, someone has to be the guy to not accept excuses as to why the others are not giving everything on D. We cant get stops to save our lives. There has to be an attitude change about the defensive end of the floor for this team, you put every bit of passion and intensity into you defense, and it will also be there on offense. It is an attitude that can be taught to a point, its better to instinctively have, but can also be taught, there is a mindset that someone MUST bring to the table for it to become infectious to the rest of the guys.

kennydorglas · Post #378 » by **kennydorglas** » Mon Dec 5, 2016 2:00 am

Yeah, I think Bledsoe needs to lead by example.
In some games he's just cruising all night long, not fighting thru screens and sagging off everybody.
We cant afford this.
He's our best offensive player now by RPM (+1) but he always was a analytics darling.

Pick up your game, man. This next class of PG's are stomping the door for any average PG now.

GMATCallahan · Post #379 » by **GMATCallahan** » Mon Dec 5, 2016 8:20 am

garrick wrote:I think part of the reason for KJ's elite 3pt shooting was they shortened the line that season.

If you want a fully comprehensive study of the matter, read on ...

The three-point arc was indeed shorter that season ('96-'97), at a uniform twenty-two feet instead of beginning at twenty-two feet in the corners and eventually reaching twenty-three feet, nine inches, at the top of the arc. However, the three-point arc was also shorter during the previous two seasons ('96-'97 represented the last year of what turned out to be three-year experiment at the shorter distance). Heading into the initial season of the shortened arc, '94-'95, Phoenix head coach Paul Westphal stated that he believed that Kevin Johnson would take and make more threes. After all, K.J. had shot .400 (6-15) on threes over his final 18 games of the '93-'94 season—the last eight of the regular season plus the ten playoff games. During one two-game stretch against the Rockets in the 1994 Western Conference Semifinals, at home in Games Three and Four when K.J. posted 38 points and 12 assists in consecutive games, he shot 3-5 (.600) on threes, and he made another shot with his feet on the line.

Actually, heading into Game Seven of that series, K.J. was 6-13 (.462) on threes over his previous 17 games before going 0-2 in the second half of that final game. In the third quarter, he missed something of a desperation three to try and beat the shot clock without his legs fully being under him, and then he missed a pull-up three from the right wing with about a minute to play. But he had played every second of the game (he would play the full 48:00, which when you consider the intensity of a Game Seven and all the games in a series leading up to it, is pretty wearying), and K.J. had injured his right elbow on Hakeem Olajuwon's shoulder blade a few minutes earlier, briefly bowling over in agony. (In a remarkable play, K.J., after just drawing a non-shooting foul where he had been virtually impaled on Olajuwon and crumpled to the ground like a rag doll, to the point where even a bunch of Rockets moved to help him up, went right back to the rim again. He got up extremely high, almost like he might try to dunk on Olajuwon again, as he had in Game Four, but at the last possible moment, he suddenly did a near-180 in the air and pitched the ball back to a cutting A.C. Green—Olajuwon's man—for a layup down the middle. While coming down from that high elevation, K.J. banged his elbow on Olajuwon's shoulder blade. There is almost no way that K.J. could have fully seen Green from where he was up in the air at the front of the rim, with Green cutting behind him—he must have used some combination of court awareness and peripheral vision to make that play.) At that time, K.J. had posted 23 points and 10 assists, shooting 9-19 from the field and 5-5 from the free throw line. Whether coincidence or not, he would miss his final three field goal attempts (the last being that three-pointer), finishing the game with 25 points and 11 assists after shooting 9-22 from the field and 7-7 from the free throw line. There was also a newspaper report later on that even if Phoenix had won the game and advanced to the Western Conference Finals, neither K.J. nor Charles Barkley would have been able to play in the opener against Utah. We will never know what would have happened had the Suns actually advanced, but clearly that elbow injury was not insignificant in the very short term, at least. (Barkley, by the way, later said that he would not have been able to play any more that season due to a pulled groin muscle suffered in the second half of Game Five that left him limping by the second half of Game Seven despite three cortisone injections in the days leading up the the game. A similar situation would occur with Barkley the following year.)

Anyway, that three-point sample size was very small, but then again, K.J. was just too good of a shooter. After that grueling series versus Houston, the Rockets' Mario Elie, looking ahead to the Western Conference Finals against the Jazz, said that he did not imagine that John Stockton could hit some of the same shots that K.J. had buried—that K.J. was a better shooter than Stockton. The Utah point guard was an established three-point shooter by that point, but K.J. possessed better shooting talent from almost anywhere on the floor. Thus Westphal's belief that K.J. would take and make more threes at the new, shortened distance the next season was certainly not unreasonable.

But in 47 games played during that '94-'95 regular season, K.J. only shot 4-26 (.154) on threes, averaging 0.553 attempts per contest. His average number of attempts was slightly lower than it had been in '89-'90 (0.554), ('90-'91 (0.57) and '91-'92 (0.59), and his percentage proved lower than it had been in '89-'90 (.195), '90-'91 (.205), and '91-'92 (.217). The new, shorter arc basically did nothing for him—K.J. showed no interest in establishing himself as a three-point shooter. He essentially attempted one three-pointer every two games, and naturally, as a point guard with a tiny volume, a disproportionate number of those attempts would have constituted half-court heaves at the ends of quarters or out-of-rhythm threes to try and beat shot clocks, often on broken plays. But in the 1995 Western Conference Semifinals versus Houston, K.J. shot .500 on threes—5-10—burying more treys in that seven-game series than he had in the entire regular season. During Game Four on NBC, Bill Walton noted that the Suns' coaches were continuing to encourage K.J. to shoot the three-point shot, and that one of his issues was that as someone who shot off the dribble so often, K.J.'s feet would often touch the line.

In the '95-'96 regular season opener at Anaheim against the Clippers, K.J. shot 3-3 on threes as he scored 39 points (his highest regular season scoring total after '93-'94). For the first time in his career, he did look for the three a little bit over the course of a year, attempting 57 in 56 games played and shooting .368 from behind the arc, a tick above the NBA average of .367 that season. But despite what that season opener may have portended, K.J. overall was still not that interested in being a three-point shooter—he did not need the shot, given that he was one of the best players ever at shooting off the dribble from seventeen-to-twenty-one feet and one of the best point guards ever at reaching the free throw line. And, again, he feared that shooting threes would take him away from creating for teammates.

Finally, in '96-'97, with former teammate Danny Ainge now his head coach, K.J. started incorporating the three-pointer as a regular part of his arsenal. Ainge was a big believer in the shot (and often one of its best practitioners during his playing career), and the Suns' trade for Jason Kidd on December 26, 1996, also encouraged K.J. to expand his range, knowing that he would now need to play off the basketball more. However, Kidd broke his collarbone in Vancouver in his first game as a Sun on December 28, a game that K.J. missed due to the flu. Thus K.J. and Kidd would not play together until February 14, 1997, and by that time, K.J. was shooting .443 on threes in 38 games—he would shoot .439 on threes in 32 games with Kidd that year, albeit in an increased volume, and finish at .441. And even over his last eight games prior to Phoenix trading for Kidd back in December, K.J. had shot .500 on threes in 1.3 attempts per contest. Overall, in his last 30 games prior to playing with Kidd, K.J. shot .469 on threes in 2.1 attempts per game. K.J. shot .520 on threes in 3.1 attempts per contest over his final eight games before playing with Kidd—he shot .578 from the field overall during those eight games, averaging 18.3 points on just 10.4 field goal attempts, along with 11.5 assists, 4.3 rebounds, and 1.8 steals. Gradually, K.J. increased his three-point volume further. With Kidd starting alongside him for the final 15 regular season games, K.J. averaged 5.1 three-point field goal attempts, shooting .442. Some of those threes were of the catch-and-shoot variety off passes from Kidd, but for the most part that season, K.J. just took many of the nineteen-to-twenty-one-foot pull-up jumpers that he routinely shot off the pick-and-roll, in transition, or on the fast break and turned them into twenty-two or twenty-three-foot shots behind the arc. Again, Ainge proved very influential in encouraging K.J. in this area, and Johnson managed to add the three-point shot in a major way while still averaging fewer field goal attempts per game (12.7) than Steve Nash would in his second and third years back in Phoenix in '05-'06 and '06-'07 (13.4 and 12.8, respectively).

Of course, with the NBA having already announced that it would return the three-point arc to its original distance the following season, '97-'98, in order to create less congestion in half-court situations, I—along with many others—feared whether K.J. could shoot threes at that level at the original distance—if he indeed came back and played, as he was planning to retire in the summer of 1997. The Suns coaxed K.J. back, and sure enough, his three-point shooting evaporated as he went just 4-26 on threes in 50 games played. Then again, it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions from that season's results.

First, the 4-26 in 50 games played in '97-'98 proved virtually identical to his three-point shooting in '94-'95 (4-26 in 47 games played), the first year of the shortened arc. Perhaps, with greater time, K.J. would have adjusted to the deeper arc if he was so inclined.

Second, K.J. actually shot 1-2 on threes in both of the first two games of the '97-'98 season—a small sample, but a mildly encouraging result. Through two games that year, he was averaging 19.0 points per game, albeit just 3.5 assists. But even though Ainge had helped coax K.J. back, the head coach now seemed intent on transitioning the Suns toward a twenty-four-year old Jason Kidd and a twenty-three-year old Steve Nash. K.J. often had the ball in his hands less now, serving as a decoy, and his minutes and role would fluctuate from game to game or within games, depending on the situation. The matter would be epitomized after the seventh game of the season, when K.J. dominated the Houston Rockets by scoring a game-high 30 points (12-16 FG, including 12-15 on two-point field goal attempts, and 6-6 from the free throw line) with 6 assists and a team-high 10 rebounds. (I viewed this game within the last month, by the way; K.J. buried his first seven field goal attempts, all jumpers, and his two driving layups were of the vintage variety.) Afterwards, Ainge stated, "Kevin was the best player on the court tonight. He came up huge when we needed him. It is good that we don't have to use KJ every game, but it is nice to have him there."

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1997&b=19971116&tm=PHO

Well, why would you not want to "use" a player like that in virtually every game?

The next game, at home against Minnesota, K.J. posted a game-high 27 points (10-18 FG, including 10-16 on two-point field goal attempts, and 7-9 from the free throw line) with a team-high 8 assists and a team-high 3 steals.

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1997&b=19971118&tm=PHO

But the Wolves blew out the the Suns in the fourth quarter, and Ainge responded by moving K.J. to the bench. In NBA history, has a player even been benched after playing that well over the previous two or three games, especially when he was a franchise icon with nearly ten full years of service to the team? (In the game before the victory over Houston, K.J. grabbed a team-high 13 rebounds, to go with 15 points and 7 assists, in Phoenix's quadruple-overtime victory at Portland, another game that I just viewed/studied for the second time in six-plus years.)

No matter, on a certain level—playing 32 minutes off the bench in the next game, K.J. was the best player on the floor in the fourth quarter when the Suns defeated Michael Jordan and the Bulls in Phoenix. In the fourth quarter, K.J. scored 10 points (4-4 FG, all on jumpers, and 2-2 FT) with 1 assist, 1 rebound, 1 blocked shot, 1 steal, and 0 turnovers to finish with 16 points on 5-7 FG and 6-6 FT, plus 5 rebounds. (I have viewed/studied this game twice in the last five years.) He proved similarly efficient and effective in the next game, a home win over New Jersey, where K.J. played 31 minutes off the bench and scored 10 points without missing a shot (2-2 FG, 6-6 FT), along with a game-high 8 assists, 6 rebounds, and just 2 turnovers. But two games later in New York, K.J. led the Suns in scoring in the first half with 6 points on 3-6 FG in 15 minutes off the bench, only to never see the court again in the second half. The Arizona Republic ran a story, by Bob Young, titled, "KJ Bites Tongue, Accepts Reduced Minutes."

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/124127726/

With his minutes dwindling and his opportunities, both to play and to have the ball in his hands while on the floor, in a state of fluctuation, K.J. probably did not feel comfortable experimenting with the deeper three-point arc. Moreover, as Ainge noted in that article, K.J.'s knees were sore early that season, and actually, after that loss at New York, K.J. started sitting out games due to what Phoenix's doctors deemed a case of tendinitis in his right knee.

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1997&b=19971202&tm=MIL

Several days later, Phoenix's doctors determined that K.J. actually needed arthroscopic surgery on the knee in order to remove a torn lateral meniscus and loose, degenerative cartilage. (I am not sure if this knee was the same one on which K.J. underwent an unpublicized Microfracture surgery following the 1991 season, but it may have been the same one, given how Microfracture creates a sort of "temporary" cartilage. K.J. never missed a game due to the Microfracture operation, even though it was apparently the NBA's first known procedure of that type.)

In '97-'98, K.J. ultimately missed 31 games in a row due to the knee (all of December 1997 and January 1998) and received just four more regular season starts the rest of the way (all in a row just after he turned thirty-two on March 4), even though he played very well in those starts, averaging 16.5 points, 7.0 assists, just 1.8 turnovers, a 4.0:1.0 assists-to-turnover ratio, a .512 field goal percentage, a .957 free throw percentage, and a .621 True Shooting Percentage in just 31.8 minutes per game as Phoenix won three times. Included were consecutive games with 19 points and 10 assists (and 1 turnover or less) and consecutive games with 9 free throws made.

But overall, add the reduced minutes, field goal attempts, and opportunities to the knee injury and surgery and the fact that after the first eight games of the season, K.J. usually came off the bench (meaning that he had to enter the game cold, which proved especially difficult for him given the mileage on his body, his history of injuries, and the knee issue), and Johnson naturally was not going to feel comfortable using his smaller volume of chances to experiment as a three-point shooter from the greater distance. With a more prominent role and a greater number of starts, minutes, shots, and ball-handling chances to work with, he might have tested himself at the newly restored arc a little bit more; we really will never know. But with everything that happened to him that season, the environment just was not conducive to a full-fledged chance.

More importantly, we will never know what the Suns could have ultimately been that year with K.J. playing a bigger role. In the 17 regular season games where he played at least 30 minutes, the Suns went 15-2 (.882). In his 12 starts, the Suns went 9-3 (.750), with K.J. averaging 35.4 minutes, 16.3 points, 6.2 assists, 3.7 rebounds, and a .600 True Shooting Percentage (the best measure of scoring efficiency). The points and especially assists were down by his standards (due primarily to reduced time with the ball), but in '97-'98, no one in the NBA averaged at least 16.0 points, 6.0 assists, and a .600 True Shooting Percentage—figures that K.J. achieved when he started. In '96-'97, only one played averaged at least 16.0 points/6.0 assists/.600: Kevin Johnson (who was actually over 20.0/9.0/.630, the only player ever to do so). In '95-'96, only two players averaged at least 16.0 points/6.0 assists/.600: Kevin Johnson and a peak Anfernee Hardaway.

That '97-'98 Phoenix team possessed five big men who were all really good defensively: John "Hot Rod" Williams, Mark Bryant, Antonio McDyess, Clifford Robinson, and Danny Manning. They could all defend in the post, they could all defend the pick-and-roll, they were largely interchangeable and capable of defending multiple positions, and they were all defensively active and engaged and on a string. Plus, they could all give you offense and some shooting ability as well (to varying degrees, of course). Overall, the '97-'98 Suns ranked sixth in the NBA in Defensive Rating (points allowed per possession), Phoenix's best ranking in eight years, and the Suns indeed won 56 games and finished fourth in the West, the club's best marks in three years. But the Suns potentially could have been so much more. Despite featuring the deepest roster in the NBA, the best collection of point guards in the league, and—over the course of the year—ten different players who had made an All-Star team, or would make an All-Star team, or had averaged at least 18.0 points per game in a season (none of them older than thirty-one or younger than twenty-three at the start of the year), Phoenix only finished twelfth in the NBA in Offensive Rating (points allowed per possession), just mildly above-average. Just as tellingly, the Suns had never finished lower than seventh in Offensive Rating in any of the previous nine seasons, no matter how many injuries they had sustained.

In other words, that Phoenix team should have been elite offensively to go along with its very strong defensive efficiency. The obvious factor here—the variable—was Kevin Johnson's role and playing time.

Excuse the tangent, but the ultimate point is that if K.J.'s role was no longer large enough to make the Suns elite offensively, it probably was not large enough for him to reestablish himself as a three-point shooter, either, given that he was never a shooting specialist along the lines of Steve Kerr.

garrick wrote:You have to wonder if he utilized the three more during his career he would have been more durable as he was so injury prone with his hamstrings.

K.J.'s fearless attacking style and explosive leaping ability meant that he was never going to be as durable as, say, John Stockton or Gary Payton, point guards who almost never missed games over the course of very long careers. However, despite suffering three hamstring pulls during his first five seasons, K.J. averaged 78.0 regular season games played during that span. He became especially injury-prone over the following four years not because of how he played (even if it cost him here and there), but because of a medical misdiagnosis and a "hidden" fluke injury that had nothing to do with him going to the basket or any kind of basketball play. It did have something to do with another basketball player, and it did occur on the court. See the last four posts in this thread:

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1401913&start=40

Finally, I will note that there was no inverse relationship with Kevin Johnson regarding three-point attempts and driving to the basket, if we loosely measure drives to the basket by free throw attempts per game (obviously an inexact yet roughly telling gauge, especially for a small guard who does not post up much and thus will usually draw fouls by driving). In '95-'96, when K.J. averaged 1.0 three-point field goal attempts per game (his first time ever averaging as many as 0.60 three-point field goal attempts), he also averaged 7.1 free throw attempts per game, his highest figure in four years. In '96-'97, when K.J. averaged 2.9 three-point field goal attempts per game and ranked third in the NBA in three-point field goal percentage, behind only Glen Rice and Steve Kerr, he also averaged 7.4 free throw attempts per game, his highest figure in six years, the third-highest seasonal average of his career, and the second-highest among all guards that season, behind only a second-year Jerry Stackhouse (who was obviously a much taller swingman). In '96-'97, even while becoming a full-fledged three-point marksman, K.J. averaged more free throw attempts per game than both Michael Jordan and Allen Iverson. That irony is part of what made Kevin Johnson's '96-'97 season so unique and historic, and it shows that K.J. was never going to use the three to reduce his drives to the hole. Instead, as I noted earlier, he traded in some of his longer two-point jumpers for threes. Most players—especially players raised on the three-point arc—are not that great at, say, the nineteen-foot jump-shot, or the twenty-one-foot jump-shot, which is why NBA coaches and statistical analysts working in front offices eventually influenced more and more players to shoot threes instead of those jump shots. Given the extra point at a conversion rate that was not dramatically less in most cases, the three became a much more profitable option—better bang for the buck and hence much of the reasoning behind today's NBA. Point guards such as Jason Kidd and Gary Payton, for instance, were not going to be that good at shooting any kind of outside jumper off the dribble, so there was some school of thought that you might as well have them shoot more threes to create greater scoring efficiency. Kevin Johnson, however, was outstanding at those nineteen-foot and twenty-one-foot jumpers—he could do things with them that most players just have not been able to do. For instance, see the 1:39-1:50 section of this highlight video:

Watch on YouTube

The clip is from this game in March 1994:

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1993&b=19940311&tm=MIA

K.J. is dribbling full-speed on the break, and then he circles back out, and then he starts going full-bore again, after his defender had momentarily relaxed and stood up straight. As soon as his caught-off-guard defender jumps back, K.J. instantly rises up to a great height and strokes the long two-point jumper like it was nothing—perfect balance, perfect form, and a whole scrum of players now has to change ends again. Very few guys could do that sort of thing at those kinds of speeds or changes of speeds. Guards such as Eric Bledsoe, Brandon Knight, and Leandro Barbosa possess great speed, but if they tried that type of shot in that sort of circumstance, they would probably be out of control and very unlikely to hit.

Kevin Johnson was not the best off-the-dribble shooter ever—that would be Stephen Curry, and then there is Mark Price and Steve Nash and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (at least in terms of talent in Abdul-Rauf's case) and maybe Jerry West, and then K.J. would be somewhere in the next group, probably. But he might have been the best ever at shooting off a hard, fluidly up-court, high-velocity dribble. Russell Westbrook does a lot of that, and his elevation and form are similar to K.J.'s, but he is not as smooth and not nearly as accurate outside of seventeen feet.

One of my favorite K.J. "scenes" came in the third quarter of winner-take-all Game Five of the 1997 Western Conference First Round at Seattle. (I went back and viewed this game a few times from 2006-2008.) With the Suns in the midst of a spectacular, if ultimately unsuccessful, third-quarter comeback, Rex Chapman set a screen on the Sonics' Hersey Hawkins, for K.J., on the right wing—just a little brush screen or rub screen to induce a switch. When Seattle's Detlef Schrempf realized that he was now switched onto K.J., he instantly started backpedaling to protect against the drive, like a man flailing in quicksand. As soon as K.J. saw that, he instantly rose up to shoot about a twenty-foot jumper, at which point Schrempf desperately started scrambling back in the other direction to try and contest the shot, again like a man flailing in quicksand. Smoothly as ever, K.J. quickly swished the shot. Marv Albert on the NBC telecast: "Kevin Johnson: yes." And some Sonic who was standing up in front of the Seattle bench on the left side immediately sat down. The whole scene played like the epitome of a basketball fait accompli.

GMATCallahan · Post #380 » by **GMATCallahan** » Tue Dec 6, 2016 6:48 am

GMATCallahan wrote:Actually, heading into Game Seven of that series, K.J. was 6-13 (.462) on threes over his previous 17 games before going 0-2 in the second half of that final game. In the third quarter, he missed something of a desperation three to try and beat the shot clock without his legs fully being under him, and then he missed a pull-up three from the right wing with about a minute to play. But he had played every second of the game (he would play the full 48:00, which when you consider the intensity of a Game Seven and all the games in a series leading up to it, is pretty wearying), and K.J. had injured his right elbow on Hakeem Olajuwon's shoulder blade a few minutes earlier, briefly bowling over in agony. (In a remarkable play, K.J., after just drawing a non-shooting foul where he had been virtually impaled on Olajuwon and crumpled to the ground like a rag doll, to the point where even a bunch of Rockets moved to help him up, went right back to the rim again. He got up extremely high, almost like he might try to dunk on Olajuwon again, as he had in Game Four, but at the last possible moment, he suddenly did a near-180 in the air and pitched the ball back to a cutting A.C. Green—Olajuwon's man—for a layup down the middle. While coming down from that high elevation, K.J. banged his elbow on Olajuwon's shoulder blade. There is almost no way that K.J. could have fully seen Green from where he was up in the air at the front of the rim, with Green cutting behind him—he must have used some combination of court awareness and peripheral vision to make that play.) At that time, K.J. had posted 23 points and 10 assists, shooting 9-19 from the field and 5-5 from the free throw line. Whether coincidence or not, he would miss his final three field goal attempts (the last being that three-pointer), finishing the game with 25 points and 11 assists after shooting 9-22 from the field and 7-7 from the free throw line. There was also a newspaper report later on that even if Phoenix had won the game and advanced to the Western Conference Finals, neither K.J. nor Charles Barkley would have been able to play in the opener against Utah. We will never know what would have happened had the Suns actually advanced, but clearly that elbow injury was not insignificant in the very short term, at least. (Barkley, by the way, later said that he would not have been able to play any more that season due to a pulled groin muscle suffered in the second half of Game Five that left him limping by the second half of Game Seven despite three cortisone injections in the days leading up the the game. A similar situation would occur with Barkley the following year.)

Kevin Johnson, clutching his elbow, doubled over in pain.

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/123150276/