I can't remember who told me last night (I believe it was rhal) but Lillard is only hitting 30% of his shots around the rim? Wtf? Why is this happening? He's usually money down there. At least better than 30%. What I have noticed is he gets zero love when he drives. Teams are able to really hit him hard and get a no call. I think that's bullshit!
Lillard has a history of missing shots around the rim. It's really not his strength, unfortunately. This is an area he needs to improve on.
Ironically the one time he tried his floater last night, he should not have. It was almost from the free throw line. His pull up jumper would have been better in that situation. But I agree he needs to keep working on the floater because the drives to the basket have little touch once it touches the backboard.
The memo is out that the nba is allowing you to body Lillard when he has the ball. It's some bullshit, but he must overcome and force the nba to start giving him love.
I completely agree that the refs aren't calling the contact. He's still getting the rookie treatment.
Stop with the layups and go in hard for the dunk. I think he's realizing this... mostly out of frustration. Even if he misses the dunk, he's more likely to the get the foul call. Also, I think we sometimes forget that he's in his second year still. He definitely has spoiled us a bit with his play.
Lillard is only shooting 33% for two's on the year. He really needs to improve this. We have capable scorers on the team so if he wants to be more of a deadly floor spacer at the 3 point line he should let others initiate more of the teams offense. We are seeing the coaches do some of this with all the Batum pick and roles as well as Mo handling the ball. Lillard is a terrible defender so he really needs to be an efficient offensive players to help the team. His 3 point shooting has been excellent.
A lot of it I think is him looking to avoid contact contorting his body. Might ultimately be a good thing, instead of getting slammed to the ground 10 times a night, but doing that, more often than not, he's avoiding the defender, or making it look like he is, and thus the no-calls.
Oh look, Mags using statistics again before they've even played 10 games. :eyeroll: If he's still hitting 30% of his close-in shots 10-20 games from now then you can start to worry. Until and unless that comes to pass, these numbers don't really mean much ... yet.
well this was said at the beginning of the season by you…. Well it's 8 games in and I don't see Lillard increasing 30% to anything we can not be worried about. Weird that you would change concerns to fit the model of the season position?
Do eight games fall into the range I talked about? Ten would be the bare minimum sample size I'd look at for trends and even then I don't think I'd trust any correlations with that few games to rely on. Twenty or so games into the season and I think you can start to trust that the patterns you're seeing are real.
Did I just explain how you expect Lillard to somehow magically take 30% at the rim to a respectable level in 2 games?
He's at 39% currently. 16/41 at the rim. If he went 5 of 5 each of the next 2 games, he'd be over 50%. Unlikely? Sure. But wouldn't take magic.
Which underscores how small of a sample size we're dealing with ... which was my whole point all along.
It's very early and these shots will fall sooner than later. Just getting a lot of unlucky bounces. I just wish he would get a little star treatment when he gets contact.
Mags, buddy. Due respect, but you don't quite have this homer thing down. When small sample sizes make things look good for your team and players you bust out the stats like a pro. When small sample sizes make things look bad for your team and players you blurt out "small sample sizes!"
