KPJ: Can someone explain to me why he has become Clutchfans favorite whipping boy?

And they wonder why he shoots technical free throws. lmao.



If you find yourself thinking about why the rebuilding has failed few years from now on, just remember this post. That's why.

 

Look I get it our young guys are inefficient AF right now. Its not pretty most of the time and wanting smarter, BETTER basketball is fine, but context cant be lost in the waving of stat sheets. You cant take a guy with 100 games in his career and make a definitive statement about what he will be in his prime not with all the flux with the players on this team.

 

Disagree. Aren’t you the one talking about Jalen could be better than Harden? Better than Booker? If Jalen is still that kind of low efficiency player year 4 then we swung and missed badly on what we set out for. Harden and Booker were WELL beyond that level of player by then. We drafted him in the hopes that he’s a title contending teams #1 go to option. If you are still that bad at that age then the chances of that becoming a reality are essentially zero.

The league has become too efficient to prominently feature a player at that level of efficiency and expect to compete at the high end. Which again is why I continue to express my feelings about KPJ in his role. The more time that passes at such a low efficiency the less likely a player is ever going to get there.

 

When I think of extreme bust I think of Bennet or Kawme Brown.

Not a 25 ppg relatively inefficient scorer. Like I said, disappointing, but not a bust.

I guess we just have different definitions of "extreme bust".

 

Good player is a very general term. I would say he has the potential to be a good player under a good coach in the right role. But he desperately needs someone to draw boundaries for his game and tell him what benefits his game. Apparently, he can't understand what is good for his game.

 

It translates to about an extra shot a game which means a potential swing between L and W in 2 of our games thus far.

 

LMAO

 

The difference, aside from age, is what is shown at the high end and how that effects projections going forward.

Green has 11 games with above league average efficiency. ~57 TS%
KPJ has 8 games with above league average efficiency.

Six of those 11 games for Green are above 70 TS%
0 of those 8 games for KPJ are above 70 TS%

 

Yeah man I agree, I probably quoted the wrong person with that post, but I was agreeing with you. Anyone acting like Jalen is meaningfully more efficient than KPJ right now is crazy.

 

Now, keep in mind that his first yr with the Rockets he was with the Vipers and when he was called up, going off my estimation, I think he played may be 20 games at PG. Last yr. he played primarily PG and I think he missed games, as well as Jalen, Gordon, Wood, so basically his supporting cast was highly unsettled, until then final 15 games of the year, in which both he and Jalen showed promise coming into this yr

This yr, he has played 25 games, however with another supporting cast. He didnt play much with Sengun last yr, nor Gordon because he was in and out of the lineup and certainly not Jabari.

So when you say 3yrs, it's really not 3yrs! It's more like a season and a half, including this yr, playing with new players and players who have been in and out of the lineup, correct?

In addition, I'm not arguing one player against another but when you look at players like Jalen and Alpi for instance, they have been playing the SAME POSITION since they were 14 or 15, probably before then, although the competition level is different but certain things just come natural to them vs. a player like KPJ, where he is constantly learning and picking up the intricacies of the PG position.

Yes, KPJ has been in the league for 4yrs but ALL I'm saying is, his situation does not equate to Jaleen, Sengun and others.

 

We average 103.7 possessions were game with a -5 point something differential. There are actually going to be games where that admittedly small different will still actually make a difference between losing and winning. This is just purely talking bout scoring though. Bring in TOV% and that gap between contributing towards winning vs losing becomes a LOT wider.

 

Lol no it doesn't. For a guy who takes roughly ~20 shots a game, its the difference between 21.1 points and 20.85 points. It is negligible.

 

I guess before having any real game evidence, your definition of an extreme bust is more apt.

But after we saw what we saw from Green for the last half of last season, if by year 4 his overall average is still where it’s at now, that would be a very, very big disappointment.

 

Apparently the correlation is that it results in one more GUARANTEED shot per game that could swing the game results!

Who on our team among the guard room IS efficient? Garrison Mathews has a .627 TS -- why not build around him? (facetious question I know not trying to be intentionally dense). Would you say that big men have an easier time of enjoying sexier efficiency numbers due to the nature of the shot profiles?

 

You can't call it as 0.25 points difference given that you can't have less than a point in a game. It's either one extra shot or nothing.

 

Ok, but for the year Jalens TS is not what you would consider efficient right? I would agree if you say that Jalen is a more gifted scorer, but consistency seems to be lacking -- I wonder why?

 

Do you take any stock into late bloomers in the NBA?

 

My general rule here is that if you ARE efficient, then a lot of other stuff matters, but if you AREN'T efficient, then nothing else matters. There are some rare cases where inefficient players can be effective if they are elite at other things, but generally it's not the case. And especially not with scorers.

So yeah, if you are efficient, then it's time to do some further analysis and look at the nuances of your game and how you get your shots and all that stuff, and it should be obvious why you don't build around Garrison Matthews, like you mentioned. Same thing for bigs, like Clint Capela, again for obvious reasons. I think he had like a 65% TS or something like that because all he did was dunk the ball. So yeah, I'm not trying to eliminate all nuance, I think there's a ton of it so long as the player is at least average efficiency. But when you're below average, or well below average (lets say 4% below league average) then I would argue there's a lot less nuance. It's VERY hard to have a positive court impact as a low efficiency guy, and IMO impossible if your main role is scoring. People have done it with defense or playmaking, a guy like Ricky Rubio comes to mind, he was able to be a positive on the court while being a very inefficient scorer. But he was never a volume shooter. Draymond is another guy that comes to mind, elite defense and elite playmaking but can't score for ****.

In terms of our current team, to answer your question, the answer is KPJ and Jalen should be playing despite their efficiency issues. I believe that's our best option right now. Despite my disappointment in KPJ and his play/impact, he's still better than anything else we've got. I don't think there's any change that can be made that would improve the team, given our current roster. I guess Tyty for Nix is something I'm pushing for but that's unrelated to our starters, and kinda unrelated to this conversation.

 

Man, I appreciate the enthusiasm and you seem pretty sincere but thinking KPJ is facing a harder learning environment compared to Green and Sengun is just so out of proportion.

Sengun played inconsistent minutes, without speaking the language, with a very short leash from the coach and nothing designed to play to his strengths. Still he is improving massively. And he doesn't need someone to teach him that he needs to see pass it to the open guy, even it is not his primary duty or move the ball if he does not have a good shot available. KPJ, although this is primary part of his role, and has been trying to learn it for more than a year, still can't do it. Mastering the pnr is an intricacy, not passing to the open guy is not.

Tyty comes in and makes 5 assists and 0 turnovers instantly. The 5 assists that posters here showed as ability of playmaking for KPJ, when it came with 4 turnovers in triple the minutes. And Tyty is nobody now. He has no experience, no nba body, literally nothing. If he were struggling for a season, we would be okay with it. But he can do it, because we just lack basic playmaking so bad and we have so much talent out of that position.

 

Thats fair, but are you telling me that you know what either of our young guards will be at age 25 by what you see today? Is there no benefit of doubt available in the statistics community? Remove years in the league from the equation and focus on games played. How many games should it take to be able to make a definitive statement that Player X will not be a contributing member on a winning team based on his efficiency.