In the starting lineup with Dame, Ant, Nurk, and Grant.......his role is not shooting. They all can't shoot or they won't get a rhythm. Last year we saw his role as a scorer and he was effective. Having said that we need a little more scoring from him moving forward. Not a huge amount, just a little more.
There’s nothing wrong with Hart. He’s carrying out CB’s mantra. With his heaviest minutes (9 games, 36.2 minutes), he’s playing the energizer and glue guy role; Grant is, too, but more needed scoring. When Payton gets on the court, the D gets pushed to another level. Roles gets sorted out. Hart scores more along the lines of 12-15 per game. It’s early.
there may be some things Hart is working thru. For his career he's averaged 4.1 three's a game; this season it's 1.6 and he's playing more minutes. His usage rate is at a career low as well but I'd be inclined to think a lot of this, maybe most of this, is design by Billups and Hart is just trying to fill the role his coach wants.
It's never a good "role" to turn down layups and open shots. He'll turn down a 3, attack the closeout, turn down the midrange, zoom into the paint with no one there, and then turn around, back to basket, and look for someone to pass the ball too. That is bad basketball.
well, using some 'it-doesn't-really-work-that-way' mathematical equations, what we can say, based upon this season, is that 4 players make game winning shots and do so at the following rates: Ant has a game-winner every 146 shots Grant has a game-winner every 123 shots Dame has a game-winner every 109 shots Hart has a game-winner every 66 shots but I can't determine if that means Hart doesn't shoot enough, should shoot less, or if he's in the Goldilocks Zone
"... the Basketball Gods, as they say, are on your side when you play the game the way (Josh Hart) does." -- Damian Lillard
https://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/2022/11/josh-hart-at-the-heart-of-trail-blazers-hot-start.html Hart, 27, said he recognizes that on a team with three prominent scorers such as Lillard (29.0 points per game), Anfernee Simons (22.4) and Jerami Grant (18.4), he must accept a different role to help the team. “When you want to win, you’ve got to sacrifice,” Hart said. “I would love to be out there shooting 10, 12, 13 shots per game, and doing stuff like that. But at the end of the day, if you want to win, guys are going to have to sacrifice. Guys have to play different roles to help the team.”
I think when everyone is healthy, Hart just needs to focus on attacking the rim (and he does that well) and shooting 3's from the corner. (which I believe he did extremely well last year) He does so many other things that scoring when we have a full squad healthy is not needed. But he does need about 8-10 shots a game.
Only things I can think is that he expends so much energy on defense and the boards as an undersized 3 that he basically recharges by doing nothing on the offensive end, he's specifically been told to only take certain shots under certain circumstances, or he thinks he's so inferior offensively to Dame, Ant, Grant and Nurk that he'd rather see them take tough shots than himself take easy ones. Of course, this doesn't explain deferring to Justise ....
