He had the range, it was much more about the style of shots he was taking. Now, he is able to take a lot more set jumpers, which are always easier to knock down. With a good post threat in Dirk, he will get kick outs for open looks. Prior, he played primarily with wing players, Jackson and Mashburn, Jefferson and Carter. He would chuck from the perimiter, and on breaks. Part of the reason I would like him a lot here. In our system, his shot wouldn't crumble back down to low .300s. Well, most likely wouldn't.
You know I thought about this, and decided to go sniffing around. Here is the link to Mo Williams statistics. Pay close attention to his rookie year in Utah. http://www.nba.com/playerfile/maurice_williams/career_stats.html Now let's look at Bayless http://www.nba.com/playerfile/jerryd_bayless/career_stats.html Flat out scary to me how similar they are. Maybe if Jerryd goes into the gymn this summer, shoots 1000 jumpers from 18' out a day to fill out that part of the game, and gets his assist up to 5 per game (Not really that many IMO), he can be our version of Mo Williams.
In his last College year he had a .380 from 3 on 50 attempts. Granted - the college 3 is closer than the NBA 3 - but still - he does not seem like a hopeless shooter.
*raises hand* I've watched him a good handful of games this season. He caught my attention when he completely blew up at the end of his rookie year -- I knew Ramon would be a restricted free agent and wondered if he might be a good fit with the Blazers so I made it a point to watch about 15 Bucks games this year. My inexpert observations: -Good court vision, similar to Sergio, but not as fancy of a passer -Pretty good first step and has the ability to get into the lane (this is backed up by his very good draw foul rate of 15.7%). -Can hit a midrange jumper off the dribble out to about 15 feet, also likes runners and tear drops off of drives, but was very poor as a 3 point shooter and his shooting motion is a little off -- on the plus side, he seemed to recognize that he shouldn't be taking a lot of threes and attempted only 34 all year). Definitely looks to drive and dish or drive and finish first. (not surprisingly he took 44% of his shots at or near the hoop). -Mediocre (at best) defender, not quite as matador as Sergio, but didn't seem to show a real good feel for anything other than man defense and got rubbed off quite a few picks (probably the reason Skiles only played him 25ish minutes?) All in all, I think he'd be a great upside acquisition and because of the Gilbert Arenas provision in the CBA the max contract he could get would be about 50 million for 5 years with the first year being at the MLE, with escalating raises thereafter. If KP can get him I think he could be a really nice fit. The defense definitely needs work, but he at least possesses the other tools necessary to be a starting NBA point guard (drive the lane, find the open man, generate his own offense when needed.) Here's the advanced numbers for people that care: http://www.82games.com/0809/08MIL3.HTM Here's his gamelog for this season (hint: he got better when Ridnour went down with injury and his minutes increased): http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/gamelog?playerId=3231
The thing is, we could have gotten Mo Williams for hella cheap last year. Instead of getting a PG after the fact because he is good, why not take a flyer on a PG that in one or two years will be good if not great?
I'm excited about the possibility of Roy playing on the Olympic team and realizing he needs to play off the ball a little bit more too (or at least getting used to it). That and the departure of Steve Blake would significantly improve our team.
