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Kyle Lowry and the Memphis Grizzlies

Discussion in 'Houston Rockets: Game Action & Roster Moves' started by ToyCen428, Apr 16, 2009.

  1. ToyCen428

    ToyCen428 Member

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    I was wondering, are the Grizzlies other PGs/SGs that much better then Lowry was to be getting the entire minutes of their games? If the Grizzlies had more guys as smart as he was on their team they'd be a playoff contender. Seems like I would've given away someone else other then Lowry. He's a keeper.
     
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  2. Depressio

    Depressio Contributing Member

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    Judging by Memphis' consistency of being a bottom-dwelling team in the standings, I wouldn't be so surprised that they made a terrible trade and are bad at evaluating talent.
     
  3. Ziggy

    Ziggy QUEEN ANON

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    They decided to invest their future in Conley. Its very similar to what NFL teams do with quarterbacks. Sometimes you have to make a tough decision and go with your high draft pick. Conley has more upside.
     
  4. Seven

    Seven Contributing Member

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    They also want Mayo to play the point.
     
  5. ringin08

    ringin08 Member

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    I wouldn't expect Memphis to continue to have a team too much longer with their current decision making ability.
     
  6. Shaud

    Shaud Member

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    Conley started playing pretty good down the stretch.

    Actually Lowry situation is just about the same here in terms of a guy starting over him that maybe should not be.

    I think all this will change next season when they both are able to battle it out in camp and preseason.
     
  7. jaybiddyforeal

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    im a huge lowry fan and followed him in memphis and now have converted to a rockets fan after the trade. (thank god, i couldn't stand watching such miserable basketball anymore haha). anyway, the grizz took lowry 24th overall in 06 and the only person standing in his way was the aging damon stoudamire. Lowry was very impressive in his first ten games and was poised to take over the starting pg job real soon before the freak collision with Ilgauskas that broke his wrist and knocked him out for the rest of the year. The organization had wanted to select a serviceable NBA ready 4 or 5 in the draft and had a great chance with the 2nd worst record and three top tier big men coming out in Oden, Horford, and Durant. However, the Grizzlies abysmal lottery luck stuck them with the fourth pick where they were pretty much forced into selecting Conley.

    Mike and Kyle battled it out everyday never knowing who was going to play what minutes on any given night. Despite Kyle outplaying Mike for most of the season, Mike was given the reigns mainly because of his high draft position. you cant just give up on the #4 overall pick the year after the draft, esp a pg usually takes 3-4 years to develop. A lot of people believed in order for Conely to succeed, Kyle needed to be traded so the team could fully be handed over to Mike. In addition, Mike was GM Chris Wallace's first real roster move with the Grizz so him shipping mike out wouldn't look good to the tiny, albeit dedicated Memphis fans. This made Kyle expendable and alot of teams saw his potential. 14 teams contacted Memphis at the deadline about lowry but most weren't willing to give up a young quality bench player or a first rounder. Thank Morey, hes a genius. Kyle was so undervalued in Memphis because nobody ever got to see him play. i posted this in another thread but im going to repost it here since this topic is mainly about Kyle...




    first off let me say im a total lowry homer. hes my favorite player in the league and has been my fav since i first saw him play for nova. anyway, there are a few things some of you guys have wrong about lowry. well maybe not wrong, but you haven't seen as much of kyle as i have so i guess ill call it misinformed.

    kyle is SUPER FAST. the fact that you have been watching brooks who is a little bit faster tends to make you believe kyle isn't exceptionally quick but thats a classic case of being so accustomed to something it becomes the norm. if brooks is the 3rd fastest pg* in the league, and kyle is 5th (hypothetical rankings), just because its a drop off, that doesnt mean kyle isn't a top notch speedster. did you see him chase down dirk last night from halfcourt when dirk was at the ft line?

    The box score is not suited for Kyle's games whatsoever. KL7 stats amongst pg's for individual defense (blocks and steals) are dead average, 1.0 stls and .25 blocks. This is because many of kyle's steals are ruled as an "out of bounds lost ball turnover" in the box score, and his blocks don't even get a mention. when players drive on lowry he'll slap down on the ball knocking it free, a lot of times off the driving players knee and it will fly out of bounds. lowry gets no credit for that play, its an out of bounds lost ball TO ( i know because i watch the game and the box score simultaneously. yeah im a loser so what). for blocks just go back to the new orleans game. posey was trying to backing kyle down from the corner. kyle didn't budge and posey turned and tried a fadeaway jumper. as posey brought the ball up to his head kyle swiped up at it and knocked it flying out of bounds. later in the game antonio daniels drove past kyle went for a teardrop and kyle smacked it out of bounds from behind. since both of these plays occurred before the actual shot was attempted, it doesn't even get mentioned in the box score. its as if it never happened. i can't even tell you how many times that occurs.

    another misconception about kyle's is hes a terrible three point shooter. not true. one day earlier in the season, around december, i went through every espn.com play by play of kyle's games to find out how many three's he thrown up from 30+ feet at the end of a quarter. i dont remember the exact number but it was somewhere around forty. since kyle has been coming off the bench his whole career, hes usually in for the end of the 1st, and 3rd quarters, and if hes playing well, he could be in for the end of the 2nd and 4th as well. i always noticed he would jack up at least 1 of these garbage threes every other game and i was pretty much right. anyway, out of those forty, plus lets say another 10-12 hes attempted since i did that check, hes only made one. that was that pull up two weeks ago against portland (i think). so take 50 threes off his attempted and his career totals go from 64/246 to 63/196 which puts him at 32.2%... not that bad. not great, but not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

    heres another interesting stat about kyle that i computed. look at his stats when he plays 30+ minutes:

    34 GP, 48.2 FG%, 14.2 PTS, 4.2 REB, 4.9 AST, 2.0 TO, 1.3 STL, 6.5 FTA

    tell me you don't like those numbers from a 3rd (essentially 2nd) year point guard.

    for everyone that still isn't buying into what im saying, if you need an "experts" opinion, look at these excerpts from hollinger's page before the season started.

    - "A hyperactive ball of energy who was essentially playing his first pro season, Lowry might have been an all-defense selection if anybody watched Grizzlies games"

    - "Lowry drew 47 offensive fouls, the fourth-most in the league; on a per-minute basis, the only perimeter player to draw more was the Lakers' Derek Fisher."

    - "Lowry's other defensive metrics were outstanding, too -- among point guards he was sixth in blocks per minute, 12th in steals and seventh in defensive rebound rate. Overall, the Grizzlies gave up 5.7 points fewer per 48 minutes with him on the court."

    - "He was much better on long 2s, making 44.8 percent"

    - "He led all point guards in free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt"

    - "Lowry is only 6-1, but has superb speed and quickness combined with incredible toughness; that combo is what makes him so willing to throw his body into the fray, draw charges, rebound and defend effectively."

    - " Lowry is good at advancing the ball in transition, throwing pinpoint alley-oops from midcourt and sending it ahead when shooters are free."

    - "Certainly other teams have interest, as he's already an elite defender and could become a quality offensive weapon"

    - "Fantasy owners should keep an eye on this guy because if he's traded some place where he'll start he's going to be gold in steals"


    okay, thats the end of me professing my man crush on kyle through the use of statistics. just let the man gets some PT!!!!
     
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  8. baller4life315

    baller4life315 Contributing Member

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    Lowry was just young and buried behind a former top five pick that they were essentially obligated to give heavy minutes to in Conley. Plus they had players like Damon Stoudamire, Chucky Atkins and what not that were all more experienced.
     
  9. ClutchCityReturns

    ClutchCityReturns Contributing Member

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    One question about taking Kyle's half court heaves into account...

    Wouldn't you have to do that for everyone in the league, thus bringing the leave average "true" 3pt % up and making Kyle's 32.3% even less impressive? Just a thought.
     
  10. REEKO_HTOWN

    REEKO_HTOWN I'm Rich Biiiiaaatch!

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  11. BucMan55

    BucMan55 Contributing Member

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    I too look forward to what this team will look like next season. So much turmoil the first half of the season yet the team was good enough to compete for the 2 seed thru the last week of the season?? Bringing the Blazers back down to earth sounds like a good idea for the time being though.
     
  12. archinkent

    archinkent Member

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    well they gave away gasol. giving away lowry is a no brainer
     
  13. BucMan55

    BucMan55 Contributing Member

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    I think he was saying that Kyle attempts an abnormally high number of these shots. If Kyle is at the top of the list for those type of shots then I dont see why not. I mean, if you are gauging his 3p% wouldnt you want to gauge the kind of shots you are expecting him to take??
     
  14. ccada

    ccada Contributing Member

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    I will never forgive them for that . . and even to a team in their own conference . .
     
  15. jaybiddyforeal

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    if you think about it, it doesn't really affect starters that much bc they arent in the game when these half court shots would be attempted.

    look at it this way

    1st quarter
    starters usually come out with 2 min left leaving bench players to throw up the half court shots

    2nd quarter
    starters only real chance at throwing up half courters

    3rd quarter
    same as the first quarter

    4th quarter
    if the game is a blowout, team with the ball will run the clock out in the final seconds. if the game is close, there is usually a timeout to advance the ball into the frontcourt.

    so, really the bench players always are the ones jacking up the half court shots.
     
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  16. ClutchCityReturns

    ClutchCityReturns Contributing Member

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    That makes sense, but one would have to look at other players in the league and get some kind of comparison. Right now all we know is how often Kyle shoots those end of quarter hail mary's. But we don't know how that compares to the rest of the league.

    I'm just saying there's not really enough info to draw a solid conclusion, but I do see the point.
     
  17. Asian Sensation

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    Thanks for the insight. Well done.
     
  18. jaybiddyforeal

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    your right im only basing this off of one player and "a feeling" that he chucks up alot more then most in the league. i think it had alot to do with the grizzlies awful D. they would give up a basket on the last possession of almost every quarter. so inbounding the ball with less then 2 seconds means kyle is jacking up a garbage 3 because he always receives the inbounds pass in the two quarters when half court shots are most likely to occur, always.
     
  19. Lugz504

    Lugz504 Member

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    Thanks for that JayBiddy! I actually hadn't thought about alot of those facts and was really interested reading that post. You sure you aren't one of many statisticians Morey hired?
     
  20. bugerking3

    bugerking3 Member

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    Very very very nice read.

    This is stuff morey looks at. Morey, that genius him, probably knew that his "true" steal avg was higher than the box score. He probably knew that his "true" 3 point % was higher than the box score because of the end of quarter launches that skew his numbers.
     

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