Nah, it's pretty abnormal for a shooter to go all season bricking so many open looks. We aren't talking I gotta create my own offense and shoot over people looks. We are talking you are getting butt naked wide open shots and bricking. I am chill. Just because I'm stating the obvious doesn't mean I'm not. None of the excuses you threw out have to do with missing so many wide open jumpers. If you mentioned having to adjust to a longer 3 point line we could maybe go with that for those shots, but he's that's not the only area he is struggling in on wide open looks. And if he was making his shots, no, he still wouldn't be one of the best rookies of all time. See guys like our very own Dream, Shaq, Magic (title), Bird (conf finals), Russell, Wilt for examples of the best rookies of all time. Guys who were instantly dominant in some aspect. That ain't Bari, in any aspect.
Kessler is also 21 and had 3 yrs of college exp. You are right Jabari has a long way to go thats cuz he is 19. Jabari is shooting like crap RN and will prob end up having an underwhelming season. So what? It doesnt change the fact he is still only 19 yrs old, has a 6'10 frame and can guard opponents 1-5 including best players in the league like Giannis or Tatum. His shooting has been crap but given his past as a sharpshooter its not exactly a stretch to think he will improve his jumper over time. It's so funny the ones trashing Jabari now are also the posters slobbering all over Mobley. Dude is just as bad offensively as Jabari, if we got him these poster would be rsgging on Mobley just as bad as they are doing to Jabari esp since we wouldnt have drafted Sengun if we got Mobley.
I've preached on this forum for years about the difference between shooting and range. Jabari, in college wasn't a good shooter, he just had range. No way a guy that size should shoots 42% from the field. Jordan and Kobe were good shooters, they just didn't have alot of range. Hakeem,Big Dave,Ewing,Garnett,and Duncan were good shooters, they didn't have the range of Jokic,Embiid, or Kat. Jabari isn't a good shooter and if he doesn't improve his handle, he'll have trouble being at least decent.
Mobley is as bad offensively as Jabari? Mobley has better numbers in almost every regard but 3pt shooting which Jabari is also terrible. Mobley's 55.2% shooting is not bad to me.
We are approaching #BeWell levels of copium in this thread. News flash: every draft bust was young with "potential". Plenty of time for Jabari to be a good player but based on what we've seen I suggest y'all start accepting there's a good chance we just drafted a less athletic but taller Ariza with the 3rd pick.
People pointing out Giannis as an example of superstars starting slow don't realise that he is the exception and not the norm. He could show out in season 2 or 3 and eventually become a perenial all star but the odds suggest that is not likely. Jalen who I don't rate that highly has elite traits but struggles to put everything together. I would say he has a much higher chance of becoming a star than Jabari.
This is just conjecture. I think you should demonstrate how you came to this conclusion. What kind of evidence did you compare him to? I bet you will find that at least half of PF's who ended up being good shooters shot poorly when they were 19 years old. People are so quick to brush under the rug that he's as young as you can possibly be in the NBA. He is the 6th youngest player in the NBA out of 450ish NBA players. Almost all young players shoot inconsistently. Almost all young teams shoot poorly. Almost all old teams shoot well. There are only a handful of 19 year olds who have ever taken 5.4 3PA per game. Further, practically everyone on the team is shooting poorly. There is a compounding systemic problem CLEARLY in effect. You can make up your own mind as to why, but it's no secret almost everyone on the roster is shooting below expectations. Still people go like "I know he's 19, BUT..." >> this is stupid. He is 19 is the biggest factor in this assessment. No buts about it.
Exception not the norm? Of the 24 Allstars this year, LeBron, Tatum, Luka, KD, Dame, Jrue were good in the rookie years. That's 6/24, just 25%. The rest were ok like Kyrie and Shai to bad like Lauri, Domas, Randle, PG, JJJ. Not saying Jabari is gonna be an all star but bad rookies eventually becoming good are not at all rare.
What do u attribute to our team shooting below expectations? The sengun offense hub in theory should have made us shoot better no?
The point I'm getting at is that most players who start as slow as Jabari do not end up being stars in the league. For every Paul George, there are a massive number that don't pan out. Also, looking at the all star roster, I'd say easily half of them were solid starters in their own right during their rookie seasons. Jabari would not getting major minutes at any team not contending for pick 1. Your definition of OK or bad is extremely harsh as well, Kyrie was rookie of the year. Lauri averaged 15 points at 43% shooting and JJJ averaged 13.8 points at 50% shooting.
I think it's a number of things but mainly it's a shortage of good offensive execution. When Sabonis, Jokic and Draymond run offense from the C position, there's an actual competent PG on the floor with them at all times and another one off the bench too. Further, the entire team is bought into sharing and moving the ball. Sengun is flashing incredible potential but he's not elite at asst/to ratio as your primary playmaker would be on a competitive team. He will become that soon (closer to 3:1 asst/to), but today he's the sophomore version of himself. The sophomore versions of Sabonis, Draymond and Jokic were not able to run a whole offense without any other playmaker either. So before Sengun took over the offense, we had things going mostly through KPJ and KPJ is not a good floor general. He's not generating any significant assists off 3pt shooters except to throw it to the guy next to him when he has nowhere to go. Then when KPJ is out and Sengun takes over, he doesn't have another competent PG on the floor with him so we need him to be an All-NBA type playmaker but in reality it's only fair that he turns it over a little too much at this age for an elite primary playmaker. Jalen to a lesser extent has also contributed to some shaky passing to 3pt shooters as he develops that skill. Tyty has the game for it but he's a rookie and shooting so damn poorly that it negates his PG play. There's one more factor I've thought about which is consistency/frequency of 3pa for our shooters. When there are so many mouths to feed in the starting line up, our shooters sometimes have no idea if they're getting 2 or 8 shots. Shooters know what they're getting on a nightly basis, it doesn't deviate this much from the average. It helps shooters stay sharp and it's a sign that everyone knows their role and knows the offense. Any over the hill PG like Rondo or Augustin would run the offense better than everyone on the team (except Sengun's best games) and those two can't make another NBA roster. Sengun is a bright spot but overall the playmaking on this roster is historically bad. I imagine that would impact %'s a lot.
Meanwhile: https://theathletic.com/4140648/2023/02/03/nba-rookie-rankings-keegan-murray-walker-kessler/ Jabari Smith Jr. drops because he is again in the midst of a prolonged shooting slump, having made just 20.3 percent of his 3s since Christmas. Smith hangs onto a spot here largely due to his defense, which is useful as a help defender. He’s one of nine rookies to have a positive defensive EPM rating, and he’s bizarrely highly rated by ESPN’s RPM metric as essentially a top-10 defensive forward in the NBA. But he’s on track to be historically inefficient for a top-three pick as a rookie and needs to get his shooting back on track to avoid that status.
His age and position have nada to do with constantly missing WIDE OPEN SHOTS, especially when one of the skills that got you drafted high was SHOOTING. If you want to say give him time, sure. But miss us with all these excuses for a player missing a bunch of his open looks. That’s BS, respectfully.
Mobley was/is a fantastic around the rim. No matter what he will get 15 points a game from out back, tip ins and lobs. Meanwhile it's a coin flip whether Jabari can even make a layup
I have a question here. I see Alpi sometimes getting frustrated with himself when he does something wrong...like when he has a turnover or a missed free throw. He also said it after a recent game, that he committed some BS turnovers. I know Jabari was mad when he didn't get picked number one. But has he ever publicly gotten mad at himself for making a mistake? Has Green? It's one thing to have a chip on your shoulder and use that for motivation and improvement, but isn't acknowledgment of one's own shortcomings another necessary ingredient of an improvement process? So far, neither Green's nor Jabari's minutes have really been reduced when each of them sucked. Neither have they been yanked. With Tari and Sengun and others, it seems like, one mistake, sit your ass down. Why the double standard by the coaches?
I dont regret the pick. Sengun and Banchero overlap too much. Banchero may be better than Sengun long term but I’m rolling with reality and Alpe. 6th youngest player in the league. Already a good defender and rebounder. Probably will end up closer to great at both. Still shooting free throws well. Smith is physically and mentally overwhelmed. Even his pro upbringing can only partially mitigate that. in regards to his shooting the biggest thing that I know this is that it seems like he is trying to tweak his form to get the ball out quicker. Much like with green, the shot tweak and then the physical growth and maturation is just making it hard to calibrate. I think Smith ending up at 19/9/3/2/2 a couple years down the line while being a top 15 defender is a lock. Id imagine thats with a 36% 3ball.
Just seems like you’re ignoring the information by arbitrarily calling it excuses. He is still a 19 year old PF and you should expect that he will miss lots of wide open looks especially in an offense where every shooter is affected.
His 3 point shooting was supposed to be a strength .... It hasn't been. I think patience is due here but I also believe you have to admit the poor shooting is concerning. Sub 40% overall, you expect guards to shoot better than that and 30% from deep on what have mostly been open / wide open looks leaves you wondering what the issue is. It would be different if he was taking contested shots but that's not the case. You'd like to charge it up to tired legs, but he's had the same struggles from the start of the season up to now ..... He's got to be an efficient shooter because offensively, he has little else - no post game and not much attacking the rim. He is nearly 80% as a FT shooter .... so, there's definitely reason to believe he'll get right eventually.
