Fabulous!!!!!! Yes Sir.. BRING ON THE PAAC!!!! Gonna PAAC your ass up and send you back home crying...! Your in the house of the PAAC! Honestly, I think a low post scorer also needs to rely on a true point guard of old. Another reason they aren't as efficient in today's game, is because PG's have also evolved into a hybrid guard and there are very few true PG's in comparison to the old days of the 80's and 90's. As much as a post player must know how to pass out and when, The PG must know when and where to get the ball into him. Some great great post up play??? UTAH. They would know. Night in, night out, of watching the ball go back and forth between Stockton and Malone until they timed it right against the defense and Malone could slip to the basket once getting the pass in the right spot. I remember watching that ball go back and fourth like 7 or 8 times in one play during the Drex playoff days.
talking about efficiency---among the bigs, it can really only get better. Small sample size warning... So far, in 517 minutes (86 of the 96 per game allotted to the 4/5 position) Plumlee, Davis, Vonleh and Leonard have combined to go 60-122, or 49%. Not stellar, in fact the same percentage that Tex/Lopez/Kaman did last year (in 83 of the 96 4/5 minutes) in many more attempts (17.1-34.8/g last year vs. 10-20.2/g this year). But let's break those numbers down: First, even though they're shooting way fewer shots per game, they're actually averaging more FTs/g than last year's crew (9.2 this year compared to 8.7 last year). So they're doing something that's getting them relatively efficient shots while drawing many more shooting fouls. Now, granted, they're only shooting 44% from FT , they're doing something right by getting to the line much more frequently on a per-shot basis, and slightly more on a per-minute basis. Second, check out this shot breakdown: 0-3': 26-39 (67%) 3-10': 21-37 (57%) 10-23': 10-19 (53%) 3pt: 3-27 (11%) Obviously 3-27 from 3 is not good, and I don't think anyone's thinking that's how it's going to be for the rest of the year. But we're taking 50% more threes than mid-range J's, and 4x as many shots in the paint as from mid-range. And even the mid-range we do take seem to be good shots, as they're shooting 53% on them (10-12% higher than every year Tex played for us...and higher than Dirk shot from mid-range in his MVP season). These guys (echoing a sentiment from the summer) just don't take bad shots! Everything good that they've done so far seems in line with their career progression and seems sustainable. The bad parts (<50% FT and 11% 3pt) seem only to be able to go up. Big-by-committee looks like an upgrade in efficiency, and by giving a bunch of Tex's midrange shots to be shots by CJ and Dame (drives and 3's), amazingly enough, team offensive efficiency is only slightly down from last year while TS% and eFG% are higher. Once a few 3's start to fall....watch out.
He might be comparing their TS% to the league average? The league TS% average is 53% Portland is ranked 5th so far as a team, despite their terrible FT shooting. They'd be #2 otherwise. https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/player-stat/ts-percentage Blazers have 5 players in the top 50 so far https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/player-stat/ts-percentage
Can you imagine if Plumlee and Davis could start hitting FT's at even a mid 60% range? Hopefully someone can help Plums figure out not to shoot FT's basically one-handed. Did he think Shaq doing that was a good thing?
Shaq is a punk for not taking Rick Barry's advice and tutelage on his underhanded free throw shot. Didn't Rick shoot something like 91%? Shaquille O'Neal could have had millions of kids shooting underhanded free throws.
