Stats don't tell you how often a player passes up a good shot do make a pass that results in nothing. Batum does this a lot when he should be scoring more.
Two questions: 1) Is Batum injured? 2) How is that injury affecting his play? If we could get an honest answer to these questions, it would make assessing him a lot easier.
I saw a thread on a Warriors board several weeks ago where someone suggested a Harrison (fucking) Barnes and either Richard Jefferson or Andris Biedrins (both expire after next season) for Batum trade. The general consensus was that they'd rather keep Barnes and take their chances with his development while letting those contracts expire. One person said something to the effect of "if we're going to roll out an underacheiving SF then I'd rather go with the 20 y/o making a few million a year". Ultimately thats probably the way I would lean. Batum would make our starting unit pretty godamn money from top to bottom, but thats a lot to pay for a guy 4th option you'll use as a role player. Barnes is no sure thing but you see enough flashes from him to be ok with rolling the dice on his development. Also the team is slated to have a ton coming off the books between those expirings, Bogut, Rush, etc. and could be in position to make a big move. No reason to trade that away with Barnes for a non-franchise changer.
Well I still think his play overseas and major log in minutes are really hampering his game. Players like Lillard and Aldridge already proved they can still produce good number consistently with heavy minutes. Matthews and batum haven't. I think if batum works in an offseason to heal and build a little upper body strength, then we find capable players to reduce his minutes; batum would be an awesome 3rd option. It pisses me off that he decided to play in France again. Makes me feel like he doesn't care about his lackluster game.
From oregon live. I will admit that I do love this side of him. Sometimes I think he just misses a couple shots and tells himself "well my shot isn't falling, so I gotta do the other things." It would be nice to at least try and be more assertive at the beginning of the quarter; then play the intangibles until the next.
I agree that he isn't aggressive enough with his shot. Seems like many times he isn't in a shooter's mentality out there on the court. He isn't having the best shooting year and I wonder if that is playing into it.
This is a good post. I taped the game and just watched it. Again we played really well when we went small. Even though Maynor did not shoot that well tonight, when he and Lillard were in together we played better because we had that extra passer/dribbler. Wes shot the ball great, but he is a catch and shoot guy. Below average passer and dribbler for a SG. But again very good 3 pt shooter. So my point is we really need Nic as a facilitator because we can't go small the whole game. There was one play late in the 4th where he was up top playing essentially PG and Lillard was on the wing. Play ended up with a Damian three. Now I agree with Mags that we need him to be more aggressive on offense. He needs to attack the basket. No question. So am I happy with his game? Not completely. But I am happy he is on the team. I think he, Lillard and Wes can compliment each other. He just needs to continue to get better/healthier.
