I have no problem accepting that TJones legitimately beat out DMo last year and the year before for the starting spot. To argue otherwise would be ridiculous. Both were healthy and had virtually the same amount of time in the league to develop. TJones started, while DMo got very few minutes off the bench.......nobody was arguing otherwise back then. What has changed is that DMo went from virtually unplayable to a dominant post player and quality shooter from mid-November to mid-March, while TJones was mostly injured. The reason TJones is starting right now seems pretty obvious...he's healthy while DMo is recovering from back surgery. Using DMo's situation to somehow argue that TJones was "named" the starter for this season is looking at this discussion with blinders on. If you want to argue that TJones is the better player (and thus starter), be my guest, but I believe the argument for DMo is more compelling.
Like I said, you can draw plenty of conclusions off 4 off seasons, 4 preseasons, 3 regular seasons, and 2 post seasons. Or you can stick your head in the sand and ignore all that and keep looking forward to a "breakout". Terrence would not have started on either of those teams and he probably wouldn't have even been in the rotation. LOL. Thanks for adding that last part. That was funny. Funny thing is about 18 posts after you posted this....Batman Jones did just that. He iso'd on 10 games. Which is exactly what the majority of Terrence fans do. Which is the same thing I posted about in the fall of 2013 when I suggested we should trade Terrence while his trade value was peaking because he had had a good first month of the season. I can go find 10 games in just about any NBA player's career that has played in the league for 3 seasons and use that snapshot to prove they have untapped potential. Or I can look at the totality of what the player has done when given opportunity and evaluate how he has played overall. I choose to do the latter. And that's why I know what Terrence is. He is just another player that is not skilled enough, smart enough, or big enough to be a positive difference maker in the rotation of a championship team when he has to go up against legit playoff competition. Oh, he can throw up some crazy meaningless numbers against lottery teams. And occasionally when the circumstances are right and we go up against a playoff team that is coming off back-to-backs or has their bigs injured and out...he can throw up a silly stat line against them too. But when you put him in the trenches in a war he folds up. Because he is what he is. Just another player. I wished I felt that he could be a Brewer-type spark plug for us. But once again, it doesn't work come playoff time. You can stick him in a backup role and roll him out there against guys like Carl Landry that he can physically dominate. But even in a backup role he gets torched against playoff level teams. Witness the last 2 post seasons. Terrence has not been as good in the playoffs as any of Chalmers, Haslem, Splitter, Fisher have been. That's nonsense. He's been awful in the playoffs, one of the worst playoff performers on any playoff team over the last 2 post seasons. Not completely. Preseason games is simply an indicator. IF...a player comes out in preseason and throws up huge numbers WITH EFFICIENCY....THEN there is the possibility that they could be a good player. But that doesn't even pan out all the time. A solid piece for this team is a power forward who can either: 1. Shoot the 3-ball in volume with accuracy or 2. Play top-notch defense against opposing bigs or 3. Rebound his butt off Terrence does NONE of these things to a level that is even average for an NBA power forward. He is below average in these 3 critical areas, the areas we need our PF to be way above average in at least one of these. No. Rockets starters aren't even playing. Hahahahahahahahaha
I agree with you. And I have to ask for the millionth time, why the h*ll did we let Josh Smith go when he is the only non-superstar power forward out there who does all three of these things - not one of them - all three of these. Yes, pre-Rockets, he was not a tremendous 3 point shooter, but there aren't many power forwards who can shoot the three like Josh did with the Rockets. Look up the stats.
Terrence has played 128 regular season games. So roughly 1.5 regular seasons is what we are judging from. "Breakout" isn't what I'm suggesting. A slight improvement of his production prior to the rib injury would be huge.
And that's the fallacy basketball statistics. "Production" doesn't equate to winning. Except in some stats. Production when it comes to rebounding...if you look at rebounding percentage would be great. But...he doesn't need a slight improvement there. He needs to be vastly improved in the rebounding department. But simply having more subpar efficient production because of a minutes increase won't help a winning cause. And there's no way to measure "production" on the defensive end besides to watch the games and see how he adds or detracts from the overall team defense. And once again, in that area, he needs to vastly improve. Not slightly improve. Same thing with his 3 point shooting. Our PFs are left open to shoot the 3. Terrence lets off approximately 1 shot a game on average. He's left open out there around 5 times a games. So there needs to be be a huge production increase there. He's gotta take about 5 times more 3-point shots than he has taken in his career up to now...and he's gotta knock them down at a minimum of 35%. None of those things that are critical for our PF to give us are slight increases to production.
I don't know what all happened with Smoove. But I suspect it had to do with his role. I suspect Doc wined and dined him and told him he would be the first big off the bench. Maybe Morey told him the same thing. I don't know. But if I were Smith and I was looking at our team with Dwight/DMo/Capela and I was looking at the Clips with DeAndre/Blake/....nobody...then I'd probably favor the Clips based on role opportunity. I can't see any reason why Morey wouldn't have wanted to bring Smoove back. He was a huge key difference maker for us in the playoffs.
Give it up with this T-Jones hate bro, you're just posting drivel. Like I said it's insane to put a player in a box and expect him to be a certain type even though he excels at various other skills such as creating his own shot off dribble, cutting backdoor for easy alley-oop buckets, playing good help-side defense to get blocks, cleaning up misses with putbacks. Also he's capable of hitting the long ball (shot 35%) last yr. which is about league average and BETTER than most starting PF's in the league. I agree that he can improve on his man-to-man def. but he's already a better rebounder than D-Mo despite him being a 7 footer. To claim that D-Mo is MILES away better than T-Jones is purely an opinion and to claim otherwise is a fallacy, since their stats are much similar than what you make it seem. Fact is D-Mo before last season was an under-achiever and there were questions that he might never break out, yet he did. D-MO is a yr older than T-Jones yet you're ready to write T-Jones off before the season even starts, also we don't know how long it will take D-mo to recover from his back injury and if he can even play up to the level he did last season. I'm sorry to say but you just sound like a hypocrite.
I agree except for preferring the Clippers. He should be the first big off the bench here as well. And he would certainly have more minutes behind DMo & Dwight than Griffin & DeAndre. People seem convinced Josh left because of his role. That indicates Morey expressed some faith in TJones over Josh, which makes absolutely no sense to me.
I'm not tying Terrence to DMo or any other player. You evaluate each player individually. Good handle for a big? Sure, Terrence has got a good handle for a big. A skill that we don't need from our bigs. What we need from our bigs is defense, rebounding, and 3-point shooting. I don't care what skills a player is great at if it doesn't fit what we are doing. Oh, and by the way, you are greatly exaggerating how good of a shot creater, help side defender, finisher, cutter, off the dribble shooter, and three-point shooter Terrence is. He is average at best in all those categories and subpar in some of them.
and for the millionth time, understand that Josh himself decided to leave. He's not here anymore so let it go
that because its clear. what bigs does JS have to compete with after Blake and DJ. what bigs does he have to compete with here. Capella, TJ, Dmo, Dwight. should be pretty obvious
I mean this conversation of TJones vs. DMo has been argued how many millions of times, and I put out two posts making the observation that what we need is exactly what we let go (Josh Smith) and I am told to let it go???? Half of this board needs to let it go. But they don't have to, b/c that's a large part of what keeps this board going, it seems.
bballbreakdown had this video recently, about average stats for every NBA position. PF was the best at shooting 3s
You said he's had three regular seasons. That is inaccurate, and nothing you just said refutes that or disproves that. What stats say he sucks at rebounding? He simply needs to be average with Dwight. He averaged 9 rebounds per 36 minutes last two years. A slight improvement would be great. If you're just gonna say "TJones's defense sucks because it looks like it" then okay, but his defensive rating was very good the last two seasons. I agree, he needs to shoot more 3s. Coaching staff needs to be on him about this. His percentage has increased every season. He should shoot 3-4 a game though.
1. Shoot the 3-ball in volume with accuracy or 2. Play top-notch defense against opposing bigs or 3. Rebound his butt off With all due respect, Josh Smith can do none of those 3 things. That is simply the reality of it all. & please don't bring up the prime Atlanta-years Josh Smith, because yes, that Josh Smith could at least give you #2. But current Josh Smith, none of those. None of those last year, none of those this year.
