I don't see having an extra 2" as being a problem :grin: TJ is only 22 and still has lots of development to come. Maybe 2014/15 will be his breakout year!
Jones is 22 years old and is still building his confidence. He is above average already with a high true shooting percentage and PER rating. He will be in his prime for the next 5+ years and can be an excellent contributor to a championship team. No one could have guarded Aldridge in the playoffs last year, that was a truly anomalous performance by him.
Go research the height and weight of the majority of starting 4s in the NBA. You might be surprised they are not 7 feet tall like Aldridge and Duncan. Does Jones need to play better D? Yes..but size has nothing to do with it. D mo is 7 feet tall and he is no better.
How? With put backs? They have no offensive game to speak of. I get it. You don't watch much basketball.
I think TJones will have a very productive season next year. He did well considering it was his first time getting starters minutes. You could clearly see he was out there just trying to fit in. When he played with RGV, he played loose and natural. Getting boards and pushing the ball up court. I hope he plays more like that this year now that he knows he will be counted upon. Can't deny his handles and athleticism. His D will get better. IM SURE, he will remember what happened to him last year in the first round and he will want to make up for that. I'm looking forward to seeing his improvement.
What's annoying is that people think that if a player isn't a star, then the player is no good. I don't know what Jones will end up being, but he has already lived up to where he was drafted.
Jones is not undersized. He is under-skilled. Jones has the same standing reach as Al Horford and Joakim Noah as measured pre-draft and these two have managed to defend just fine. http://search.draftexpress.com/profile/Al-Horford-415/ http://search.draftexpress.com/profile/Joakim-Noah-589/ Jones has the issue that many inexperienced 21/22-year-old player in the NBA has: His ability to put up box-score numbers is well ahead of his ability to be helpful toward the team overall. A lot of times, young guys would put up good box score type stats but their adjusted plus/minus type numbers are not nearly as impressive. This is often true even for consensus future superstars like Anthony Davis, Carmelo Anthony, etc. in their first NBA seasons, let alone guys who are a level or two below them. This is why coaches often prefer vets to even talented young players when they are trying to win. He needs to learn to be at the right spots in the defense, be aware of what's going on both on offense and defense, make the right plays, etc. Some players learn faster than others, some never learn at all-- but most of the time players do get better and smarter as their career move forward if they are motivated to improve. We'll see how Jones works out.
In most re drafts of 2012 Jones is placed 5-7 behind Davis, Lillard, Drummond, and Beal; this from one of those articles: Quietly, Terrence Jones has piled up the fourth-most win shares among players drafted in 2012, according to Basketball-Reference. Though he's substantially behind the top tier comprised of Davis, Lillard and Drummond, his high-percentage offensive game and terrific rebounding rate combine to make him extremely valuable.
Under-skilled on D just like Love with better tools to improve as he would have just finished his senior season if he played 4 years of college ball. Instead he avg 12 and 7 as a starting PF on a 54 win team that was an offensive juggernaut in part because of his offensive versatility, ball handling/creativity, and off the ball movement. He is a good player now. If he gets better at team defensive awareness and develops a consistent effective 3 point shot, look out. He has the chance to be the dream stretch 4.
Terrence Jones is exceptional on offense and still trying to figure it out on defense. He has the athleticism to become very good on defense and as a player who is only 22 years old, it should be expected that he will improve. He is already a good shot blocker and has had games that he impacted with his defense. He has proven that he can play with and outplay many of the all-star PF's in the league, he just needs to do it on a consistent basis. As he matures he should become more consistent.
My concern with TJones is that he won't be a max effort guy so instead of improving with more time on the court, he might actually be exposed. I do think that he can improve his 3 pointer, he avg over one per game with just at .300, so he won't be Otis Thorpe in that department and if he puts in the time, who knows. Even Doc Rocket has commented on his 19-20 PER. Look at all the power forwards in the league that are at or more and it is pretty good company. Again, the motor could expose that stats to be fools gold.
You guys are dealing in minutia analyzing _ones' size, adding and subtracting an inch or a half-inch here or there. That's pointless. Doesn't change his play. Bottom line: He's mediocre without some serious skillset development. His best skill??? Probably the best or one of the best handles for a PF in the league. What does that get you??? How many teams need a PF that can handle the ball?? Do we need a PF that can handle the ball end-to-end? His next best skill? Finishing. But I can name 30 PFs that can finish. That's not a unique skill for a dude that is 6'9" tall. It's a product of his size and the fact that he's coordinated enough to catch the ball. Tyler Hansbrough gives you that. There is nothing else about T_ones' game that sticks out as an eye-catcher that would predicate us believing there is some hidden gem here. So, rather than focusing on all this pie-in-the-sky unrealistic hype and potential, we should consider the real possibilities of a regression of T_ones this summer...if he is indeed still with us and hasn't been traded. The problem is all the other teams have figured him out. They know he can't shoot a basketball, not even a little bit. So...unless he is spending all summer in the gym actually building himself an efficient accurate jump shot with the help of a shooting coach...if he comes back with the same can't-hit-the-ocean ump shot and McHale tries to put him back in the starting lineup the spacing issue on H&H are going to be even worse than last year as everybody will back off him and dare him to shoot the ball. Emergence? You'd better be worried about regression.
Those handles you just poo pooed is why he can have a broken jump shot and still space the floor for Harden and Howard. Also his off the ball movement either leads to a dunk or layup for himself or moves bodies so Harden and Howard have less defenders keyed in on them. There are more ways to space the floor than just shooting and Jones games is a perfect example. And btw those handles help him lead the break off of rebounds and allows someone else to make a play with the ball besides Harden. Poo poo all you want but it is no secret why the offense took off when he was inserted.
Youth is his issue. He is in constant motion on offense and tries to block every shot on defense, sometimes to his detriment. He does a good job guarding guards when they switch the pick and roll. His problem is team defense and defensive awareness off the ball, not effort.
Yes, he needs to move better without the ball and make better, quicker decisions when he has it. Too often, the ball seemed to stick with Jones when it got to him on offense. Jones needs to be shooting hundreds of 3's a day, particularly from the corners, and improve that aspect of his game. It would make a big difference with our spacing. He needs to make much better decisions on defense - proper rotations, not losing his man. Heck, I'm surprised we don't have several threads hammering his decisions at both ends of the court, considering how good he could be. However, putting aside elevated expectations, Jones has actually been quite good, at times exceptionally good, for being as young as he is. Sound familiar? Jones has a lot of room for improvement. Let's hope he steps up this season. The guy's young. TJones might make a Great Leap Forward and end the talk of replacing him as a starter with a veteran 4 who's consistent at both ends of the court. If he isn't moved, he'll remain a valuable part of the rotation, starting or off the bench.
A lot of that is going to be on the defensive coaching side IMO. The rockets desperately need a good defensive coach.
This is a fallacy. When he catches on the perimeter all his defender has to do is stay disciplined and fade back close to the paint area. It deters _ones' passes and it deters _ones' drives. _ones had a decent amount of success last season because some teams were unaware and were playing him as if he were floor spacer. But now even the poor teams that don't scout properly or have bad coaching have had a whole off season to watch video and analyze every player in the NBA for their strengths and weaknesses. Now...they can all play _ones the way Portland played him in the playoffs. Hit him in the mouth with a big that is bigger than he is offensively while at the same time funneling the ball to him defensively and fading away from him and helping on Dwight. _ones' having a handle is useless in that scenario. USELESS. _ones' off-the-ball movement if you will analyze is essentially trailing the pick-and-roll. As Harden dives into the low blocks and Dwight is down there and _ones' defender is packed down in there, _ones sneaks in from the weakside and typically finishes off the scrum from H&H. Is that a skill??? Well...it's a standard basketball play. A play that can be replicated by many, many players in the NBA. No, there really isn't. I suppose you could say _ones could space the floor by being the handler/playmaker out top working off a pick. But I haven't seen one inkling of McHale and this Rockets organization having that kind of confidence in _ones' decision making in the half-court to build the offense around him as a playmaker out top. Spacing is good shooting my friend. Can't get around it. The offense didn't "take off" in the playoffs. It was painfully obvious what was happening out there was exactly what we knew would happen. And that further validates my point about _ones. He was completely overmatched in the playoffs. Simply not big enough to battle with the opponents bigs and simply not a good enough shooter to force the opponent out of their double-big lineups. I hope T_ones is in a gym somewhere right now working his tail off and developing a go-to jump shot. I hope. I hope. I hope. But I have seen nothing in his game and in his work ethic that makes me think he is doing this. I think he is just another run-of-the-mill PFs that the league is watered down with. He'll likely play in the league for several years but never really be much more than a bench contributor basically just taking up minutes on a non-championship team or off the bench for a playoff team at best.
