The Rockets top 3pt shooters by percentage last year were FVV, Holiday, Jabari, Tari, Brooks. Due to Tari's injury and Holiday being a guard, the best 3pt shooting lineup Jalen played with was simply the Rockets starting lineup last year. If you want to say the Rockets should've had better shooters on the roster, that's not an Udoka issue that's a Stone issue. Also it's not like this will improve by much this year either. Given that the Rockets with bulk of the PG minutes last year, FVV+Holiday, shot really well from 3, and even Reed Sheppard taking Holiday/FVV's minutes is unlikely to improve on 39% 3pt shooting in his rookie year.
I don't think the name of the position matters at all. Derrick White is the best offensive team's shooting guard. He is the 4th in FGA among the starters. He is super efficient because he doesn't take many shots he's not good at. I know Boston's situation is completely different from the Rockets'. The point is, if a guy on your team shoots a lot of shots he's not good at making, then you aren't going to be a very good offensive team. It doesn't matter what position he plays.
I'm not talking about needing better shooters, although we did, and I'm happy we got a good one in Sheppard. I'm talking about shot distribution and shot selection. That's a big part the coach's responsibility.
Jalen Green is an anomaly then. Highest usage on the team so when he's on the floor he will have some type of high impact positive or negative just from he nature of his usage and poor individual scoring efficiency but yet has the second highest positive impact on team offensive efficiency per possession. Explain that. It traditionally doesn't make sense.
Crazy thing is if you took out Jalen completely from the 3 pt equation and remove his makes and takes from the team totals the overall team average does not change. This is where the "if we only had an average outside shooter" fallacy steps in assuming that replacing 600 attempts (a large amount of those self created) is easy without a shred of context applied. Shot diet and awareness need to change some part of it on Udoka, but mainly its on Jalen. He should get more action for corner 3's as that is the area where he demonstrates an average that is acceptable(?) -- 37% and he needs to get himself going before he launches aimlessly to start a game. He is a rhythm SCORER and getting to the line, working up a sweat getting some easy stuff in transition goes a long way to boosting that on court confidence. Udoka understands gravity and he knows that just having a guy like that on the court opens up a large portion of the offense for everyone else. Its not just an Iso-A-Thon like it used to be with Silas even though I still firmly believe that isolation scoring is the secret to the basketball universe when properly applied.
Ok, thats fair. But here's the thing. We got ONE starter who is an above average shooter. 1. Can we agree that cant continue? Can we agree it needs addressing? So which of these guys, who are below average shooters are we going to replace? Sengun? Not likely. Bari?, he is average at least. Dillon? Maybe. Green? Hmmm. So its down to Dillon or Green, right? Or, how about both?
1. I assume that the "positive impact" you refer to is one of those metrics that try to use a single number to capture everything. I don't put a lot of stock on a single metric like that. 2. Even if that metric can be trusted, it just shows that we didn't have a very good offensive team. Like my reply to another poster, I blame coaching as a big part of it. It's not just Jalen's fault. If having your second worse shooter shoot the second most shots is the second most positive impact of the team, then the offense must not be very good. Well, we ranked 20th. So there you are.
The starters and their team offensive efficiency on/off impact: Jalen Green: https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/4865/onoff#tab-team_efficiency 72nd percentile with +2.4 Alperen Sengun : https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/4879/onoff#tab-team_efficiency 54th percentile with +0.4 Jabari Smith Jr: https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/5092/onoff#tab-team_efficiency 28th percentile with -3.1 Fred Vanvleet: https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/3761/onoff#tab-team_efficiency 82nd percentile with +3.9 Dillon the Villain: https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/4258/onoff#tab-team_efficiency 58th percentile with +0.5
It's offensive efficiency or pts/possession. Offensive efficiency is pts per 100 possessions. On/off impacts have their flaws. Usually the flaws are less the closer two players situations are. For example two staters on the same team: on/off impact numbers like this have more relevance. One player a stater and another a bench player on the same team? Less relevance. Two players on two different teams. Even less relevance. But the manner in which I am using it is probably the most relevant use of on/off impact as it's comparing staters on the same team.
It's not so much about replacement, although I imagine if you replaced Green with Sheppard, the shooting would be better, but I doubt it will happen, not right away anyway. I am advocating better shot distribution and shot selection. Jabari needs to get more shots. I know it has something to do with personality. Some players are more shot-happy than others. It's up to coaching to design schemes to get the best out of his players.
Also there is a flaw here. Jalen Green isn't the second worst shooter here. You believe there exists a world where if Jalen Green doesn't exist then these players will fill the usage of Green in the same manner. Someone will have to take bail out shots. Someone has to navigate the pnr and make decisions on shooting over or under the screen. Green isn't the second worst shooter on the team. Sengun and Amen for example are worse shooters. They just play roles where they aren't taking the same shots. Also I'm fighting the claim that Jalen Green makes our offense worse. Jake. green is the least of our reasons why we have he twentieth ra ked offense and quite objectively I can say that.
Jalen Green is a guard. Jabari is a forward. Guards have more control on their volume of shots because they can do this thing called "dribbling". That means Bari will always have an inherent disadvantage in having high volume shots like Green. It has little to do with one player being "shot happy".
I understand team offensive efficiency. That's how you measure a team's offense. On/off impact has a lot of noise. That's what I was referring to. It has to do with replacement, teammates, and opponents that has nothing to do with the player himself. Look, Jalen clear has positive impact. The questions are: (1) does his positive out pace his negative; and (2) can his negative be minimized.
I'm just arguing against a claim that Jalen Green is the reason why our offense is relatively poor. That's all. Obviously the dude needs to improve to reach what he needs to be for this team if he wants to be here long term. And that's why I'm using Cleaning the Glass. Because they make attempts at removing the noise unlike bball ref.
So you believe every team's guards should shoot more than their forwards and centers because they can dribble better? I already pointed out that the Celtics backcourt took the least shots among the starters. And they were by far the best offensive team.
The bigs who usually have higher usage than the guards on their respective team are high level shot creators who are above average at their position at putting the ball on the floor. It's why Alpi's usage is high for a big. Because he can do that. Jabari can't and that will always limit his volume. Tatum is a SF with elite creation with the ball in his hands. He can dribble
Better coaching doesn't make bad shooters into good ones. It does two things: (1) make everybody's shots easier so even the bad shooters shoot better, and (2) design schemes that get the good shooters shoot more than bad shooters.
I agree with all of that. Better coaching can get guys open more, sure. But guys who are clanking wide open shots are unlikely to get appreciably better. The last part goes back to my first point. We only have 1 starter who is a good shooter.
Your logic is only true in pickup games like the summer league and the all star game. Players who can create will get more usage. But for an organized team focusing on winning, the main thing is to create the most efficient shots. Do you know why in the old days, a lot of high scoring players are centers who couldn't dribble a lick? Because they could score the most efficiently and the team made an concerted effort to get them the ball at the place they could score. In this era, they realized that the 3-ball is more efficient than pounding it in to the low post. But it still doesn't follow that whoever can create should shoot the most. Teams can still make effort to create shots for good 3pt shooters like Jabari. A lot of great creators like Nash, Kidd, and Paul don't shoot a lot. Nash and Paul are actually very good shooters. They get the ball to the right teammates.
