MKG is a pretty damn player, but I agree with OremLK. He's the type of player you want as ultimate glue guy. You want him in a Scottie Pippen role. Play shut down D. Put up points when needed. The trouble is that Charlotte lacks a Type A player. They have a lot of young players who can be really good 2nd option players; but no real 1st options. MKG would have been a better fit in Cleveland or Golden State and Charlotte would have been better off with a Lillard or Drummond as Orem points out. Actually, the perfect situation for everyone would have been MKG getting traded for Harden. Since Charlotte needed a primary option, and Harden was wasting his talent on OKC's bench. But, as a Rockets fan, I'm happy that didn't turn out
Its pretty obvious you need to update your ideas on basketball. How is it charlotte fault he can't shoot? If you can't shoot,get in the gym and work on your shooting. Clyde couldn't shoot when he came in and really neither could jordan,but hard work improves your game. The difference between paul george and iggy is the work george has been putting in with his shot. MKG never had a high ceiling coming out. He is a solid,all around player who lacks any special skills needed as a top tier player. This has 0 to do with charlotte and everything to do with mkg and his work ethic.
You're kidding me, right? MKG's work ethic?? His work ethic is already legendary. This is not about work ethic. It's about getting the right leadership and instruction. It wasn't Charlotte's fault that he couldn't shoot coming into the draft. It is Charlotte's fault that they have not helped him learn to shoot. 2 summers, 2 training camps, one regular season....and same shot. That is ridiculous. Kids have to be coached up. We sometimes forget, most of these guys coming in the league now are just kids. MKG was still a teenager for crying out loud. He don't know what to do on his own. He doesn't know how to practice perfectly. Sure, he's dedicated and a hard worker. I get all that. But he was just a kid when he was drafted and he's still a kid in a lot of ways. He just hasn't played the game long enough. Once again, that's not his fault. It is MKG's fault if he has resisted professional coaching to help him change his shot though. I'm reading rumors of that here. Didn't know that about him. I've never heard that he resisted coaching in any ways. But if it is true and I'm stressing if...then he needs a strong basketball mind to put him in his place and he should have had that from the get-go. Like I said, before they drafted that kid they should have secured his agreement to a coaching and mentorship program to revamp his jump shot. We're talking big money here. We're talking winning here. There's a lot riding on developing young talent. A truly professional organization should have all these things in place so they can make the most of the talent they are playing to win games for them. And if MKG resisted before the draft.....it would have all come out. That's another thing that good basketball people like Magic Johnson, Phil Jackson, Larry Bird, Red Auerbach and on down the line help kids understand. They are able to sell kids on what they need to do to improve. You just can't stick a kid in the gym and tell him to "go at it". You don't become a changed shooter by getting in the gym and throwing up the same stupid broken shot. You can only improve a very small increment if your mechanics are broke. MKG could get up a million reps with those shot mechanics and he will NEVER become even a 35% 3-point shooter. For MKG to ever become even an average jump shooter in this league his jumper is going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up. Mark Price knows it. Like I said....the process should have started as soon as MKG signed his contract. It didn't. You can criticize me all you want. Won't change the facts. His jumper sucks. It sucks this year. It sucked last year. It sucked the year before at Kentucky. And it sucked the year before that when he was in high school. And there's been plenty of time pass that Charlotte could have helped him already have changed mechanics and significantly improved results. They get an F in player development.
The problem is if MKG doesn't believe his jumper is bad. Those practice video of Bobcats practice, he's actually making a decent percentage even with the hitch, somebody from the Charlotte FO needs to hit him over the head with stats and video and show that he's a terrible in-game shooter and convince him that he needs to change. There's that vid of Mark Price advising MKG on what he should change in the flick and the wrist, and MKG basically just kept shooting the exact same shot with the hitch.
In a draft where everyone felt that 2-7 was a toss up -- where BPA doesn't really apply when "best" is indeterminate -- Lillard makes no sense for a team that drafted Kemba as a lottery pick the prior year and was banking that he was the face of the franchise. Drummond fell in the draft due to poor workouts and a questionable motor. Barnes had many question marks around his ability to get his own shot Beal & Waiters; my guess, if the Cats aren't making the trade of Maggette for Ben Gordon around the draft, Waiters actually is a Bobcat and instead of spending the year dealing PFs to eventually settle on McRoberts, they are playing musical SF instead. But again, with no clear BPA after Davis, why take a SG when you have four of them? Thomas Robinson seemed like the way they were heading and on paper, it made the most sense (while still holding Maggette and assuming Mullens could slide over to make room at the 4). They however apparently never were eyeing him but rather were fully focused on MKG. I think there were a huge number of folks stunned they didn't take Robinson .... in many ways, that he began life with the Kings, we might never know how much of his potential would have been realized. For the constant comments about how ignorant or Gerald Fordesque the Bobcats Front Office is, I tend to think they are much better run than they are given credit and their actions in the Rich Cho era make pretty good sense when taken in fully rather than in snapshots. The bends to suit a certain Larry Brown and make a first playoff appearance financially hamstrung the organization for years - this is the first year that they carry none of that baggage. And again basketballholic, they waited no off-seasons to begin to work on his shot. Dunlap & Co were working on his release last year in pre-season. He went from bad to horrific to consistent over the course of the year. This off-season, Mark Price began working w/ his footwork and I assume they are still living there. Simply because you haven't seen his upper body mechanics change from year end '13 to now doesn't mean they aren't working on his foundation.
Five seasons later and MKG is half a player. Defensive all-star. Offensive.....almost zero. The reverse Anderson. Player development is so crucial to an organization.
Some guys just can’t be developed in certain ways. Gotta have the ball in your crib. Trying to get an NBA ready jumper at 16-17 years old won’t cut it. If you don’t have the “touch”, you don’t have the touch.
I'm still shocked how Kawhi Leonard managed to transform from a poor to an elite shooter once he got to the league. Dude must have an insane work ethic. If he is indeed on that autist/introvert spectrum, the obsessive practicing to shoot probably didn't even require much of an effort. I remember reading Ray Allen had an obsessive compulsive disorder too.
It's half and half dude it is also on MKG to work on his game he was a no 2 lotto pick he was getting 5M a year. Look at the Cavs, they are 100% a joke franchise I doubt they hired a shooting coach to break down Lebron's shot and fix it. Lebron took inspiration from kobe when they played together in the Olympics and he hired his own team to work on his game. MKG could have done the same he couldve spent up to 1M getting himself a shooting coach and renting a gym.
Getting drafted is like going for a job interview even if MKG has no intention to fix his shot he will say yes lol be real. Royce White said so much BS during his interview even Morey believed him.
That's true. But when a guy is a rookie and he's getting his first money he's not thinking about that. It's up to the franchise to think about that for him, devise a fix, and get him committed to it BEFORE you draft him #2! It's a poorly run franchise that isn't a step ahead.
No, Mire Morey didn't believe him. Morey has been very clear it was a gamble he took. But he took the gamble because of Whites upside. MKG was/is very clearly a gym rat. He's a very hard worker. But they didn't hire Mark Price to help him until his second season. Then when Price left in 2015 his transcendent never cemented a relationship not a coaching program with MKG. Charlotte blew it here. MKG could still become a plus shooter down the road but his development offensively has been greatly r****ded by poor organizational planning and coaching. Not the right emphasis on player development. Sorry.
