I'm excited too. He's very versatile. I think he can probably play 3-5 effectively. I can't wait for training camp to start.
no he has a point. Jones is versatile and it showed in the Summer League. But he did not say he was a lesser Howard :grin:
i know; he just agreed with with badlee in another thread. Thought it was a lil fishy since nobody agrees with coach these days
Curious if these opinions changed after watching him in the summer league .... where again he shot ~50% , 9 boards and 18.2ppg usually scoring in the flow of the game. I watched each game and while they didnt run much for him or thru him , he filled up the stat sheet. Seemed to have a better bbiq than many gave credit for as well. As to the OP's question , I think he could play at the 3 under very specific circumstances .... But for the most part he's an NBA 4.
There has been some vacillation in my thoughts (and hopes) regarding Terrence. But not much. Even in these playoffs I was looking. Just curious did anybody else take note of the several plays where Terrence quickly dribbled down into the lane area about 7-8 feet and pulled up and nailed the short jumper while his defender continued to fade deeper to the rim waiting for Terrence to drive it all the way in? He took several of these type of shots and knocked them down. When I saw that...my heart jumped a beat...and I was once again HOPEFUL that this was the start of something special with him. 3 years into his career....still hoping that I've been all wrong about Terrence. But he didn't continue to do it and cause the defense to have to adjust. He went right away from it for whatever reason. Then I think it was game 4, maybe game 3, we got Jones and James in the pick and roll and Jones rolled to the rim, caught the pass, and creatively finished the layups in traffic. Had several of them right in a row. Once again.....my heart skipped a beat..and I hoped, hoped, hoped, that he was breaking out. Because we needed someone to perform at the 4 spot for us so badly in matching up with Green, etc. But alas, that was just another of those "moments" followed up by too many plays to count that offset those few good plays and once again buried Terrence's short positive input with a long negative input that made him a net negative for this team in the playoffs. As has been the case for me over the last 3 seasons....Terrence has continued to disappoint. Don't know what else to say here. Yes, I hoped. Yes, I even vacillated in Terrence's positive moments wanting there to be an upward trajectory to his career because of what it would mean to my team. But in my final analysis of Terrence....he's come up short....still. I was about 75% assured on my valuation of Terrence before last season's playoffs. After last season's playoffs I became about 90% baked in my opinion of him...still holding out hope for a change. I'm 99% baked now. I suppose he could become like DeMarre Carroll and somewhere down over the next 3-5 years figure out this game and his specialty skill within it. But guys like DeMarre developing late are just as rare as drafting superstars in the draft to begin with. It simply does not happen very often. Terrence, in my opinion, is a bit role player. He may knock around the league for a few seasons. And he may finally develop an outstanding individual skill that makes him of value in an NBA rotation somewhere. But right now, 3 years into his career, he hasn't developed any outstanding skill. None! And he's had 3 years to come up with one. Just one. But it just isn't there.
If you study his performances against non-lottery teams that are actually playing basketball and trying to win, his performance CONSISTENTLY tails off against them. There's 3 years of data out there now. You may find a game or 2 or 3 where he outperforms against a better team. A year ago, some people were pointing to his performances in the regular season against the Spurs for instance. But...in those games against the Spurs where we beat them last year, I think we went undefeated against them in the regular season, in those games their front line was always dinged up and they were not playing with their normal playoff rotation of bigs and perimeter players. But if you look overall at his numbers against teams that are competing to win over the last 3 years you will find that he CONSISTENTLY underperforms against those better teams. And that's just the offensive side of things. You have to watch the video to see what he looks like defensively against them. But you should have already seen enough of Terrence defensively in this year's playoffs and last year's playoffs to know what his defensive and rebounding performance is when he goes up against legit playoff/non-lottery teams. Nothing short of abysmal. I'm not saying these things to pile on. I'm saying these things because it is beyond time to move on from Terrence. How he weasled so much playing time and latitude out of McHale is beyond me. The only way I can explain it is he must be buds with James and/or Dwight and they told McHale they wanted him out there. I have no other explanation for how many chances McHale has given Terrence.
