<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Dave Hopla is a self-professed shooting "guru" who makes some of his living delivering motivational speeches and now he's going to try to help the Raptors become better marksmen with his word and his deeds. The team has hired Hopla as a "basketball development consultant," which is a gussied-up title for shooting coach.</div> http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...93064&t=TS_Home Not that I think having this guy around is a bad thing but it seriously underscores how much of an idiot Mitchell is. The typical "we're not making shots" mentality of our coaching staff is carrying over to spending resources to validate their point. I think this is a little more complicated than how our players shoot !! Here's my clue why were missing shots: 1) Some guys on this team cant' freaking shoot. So when Mitchell starts bitching in the post game about guys not making open shots, we should all know better. Guys who are open ... are for a reason in most cases. I doubt the shooting coach is going to turn Fred Jones in to Reggie Miller in the middle of the season 2) We have no idea how to use our players effectively. Take Garbajosa for example, all we did with him for the first 5 games was have him jack up 3's from beyond the arc ... slightly outside of his range. Later, he steps in two feet and he's money 3) Sam Mitchell has the playbook of a below average high school coach. No wonder our guys are struggling when we can't produce effective plays to get them open.
So I guess he finally decided that "losing, because we're not making open shots" is not acceptable anymore. Honestly, I feel like Jose Calderon is a better in-game coach than Sam Mitchell. On the morning show on the Fan, some dude called in who apparently knows Hopla. He was raving about how this dude's like the greatest shooter in the world and can shoot like a hundred jumpshots and only miss 3 or 4. Apparently, we brought this guy in before so I'm a little skeptical about how much he can help. I just hope he gets Bargnani to get more power from his legs when he shoots and is able to extend the range of the rest of our Euro's. btw, In that same segment, Gord Stellick mentioned that a friend of his went to a courtside game and Roger Mason Jr. was hitting on his girlfriend. Mason apparantely made a ballboy give the girl his number, while she was with her boyfriend. That's like legendary pimp status.
Our Euro's definately need to extend their range. I still wonder why we can't use Jorge like we used Bonner in his first season before he started taking three's, where he would always hit that 20 foot jumper. It seems like such a simple adjustment, but Sam for some reason doesn't understand that. We definately need to tone down our three's. The Suns shoot a lot, but because or Marion and Amare's finishing, they're able to be efficient and get interior baskets on the pick and roll, and of course they have far superior shooters to us. Our actual best 3PT shooter, Mo is injured. Humphries seems like our only guy who is efficient rolling off the pick.
I've seen games where Garbajosa seemed like a very competent nba 3 pt shooter. And others where he struggled.
