HollowEarth wrote:tsherkin wrote:Tor_Raps wrote:
Wash your mouth. That dude was a beast and a true point forward. He'd be great in today's game.
No but for real, he was stank garbage as a scorer. Career 96 TS+ guy whose three best seasons were 102, 102 and 101 TS+. 50.4% TS on his career, five seasons under 50%. Yeah, he could do some other things around that, but he was a BAD scorer at the NBA level.
I guess this is both an indictment and a defense of Mashburn but on the Hornets the gameplan involved him taking tough shots. He put up a lot of long and contested 2 pointers. How many guys in the league today are getting plays drawn up for high post fadeaways? Maybe Kevin Durant?
Even by the late 1990s and early 2000s standards, Jamal Mashburn was an inefficient shooter. He took a lot of unnecessary off-balance turnaround jump shots, which killed his shooting percentages. Despite being a massive small forward (6-foot-8, 250 lbs.), Mashburn rarely used his size in the post to his advantage enough. I also thought Mashburn should have been a better rebounder (career average of 5.4 rebounds per game).
It seemed like the more Mashburn was part of the offensive game plan, the lower his shooting percentage was. His best shooting percentage was .451 in 1998-99 when he was the third option in Miami after Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway. Not coincidentally, it was one of the lowest scoring averages of his career (14.8 points per game). Then again, Mashburn only played 23 games that season so his field goal percentage likely would have deviated to his norm (he was a career .418 from the field).
Conversely, Mashburn shot .436 in his highest-scoring season full season (24.1 points per game, 1994-95 in Dallas), .422 in 2002-03 (21.6 ppg, New Orleans), .402 in 2001-02 (21.5 ppg, New Orleans), and .413 in 2000-01 (20.1 ppg, Charlotte). In all these instances, he was the No. 1 (Charlotte/New Orleans) or strong No. 2 option (Dallas, behind Jimmy Jackson).
As for comparing Mashburn's shooting numbers to Allen Iverson's, Iverson gets the nod because he's one of the few players in NBA history who consistently averaged 30 points per game. Mashburn typically topped out at the low 20s.