Rondo's problem is two-fold: 1. He has 2 primarily jump-shooting PFs playing the big spots most of the time as you correctly pointed out. Just a side note, I fully expect Jared Sullinger to play big minutes for them this season and be the primary low-post presence offensively with KG playing high post. That will tilt Rondo's numbers some. 2. Rondo doesn't look to score enough when he breaks down the defense. He did do better this last season. But he has a bad habit of overpassing, that is to say, getting deep into the defense and then passing out when he is standing at the rim with a wide-open layup. It got so bad at one point that defenses were actually bailing out of the paint when he penetrated as they tried to cover all the shooters. And he was still finding guys. Rondo is a great, great passer. He might be the best passer in the NBA. In my opinion, he is. But he does overdo it and sometimes he pushes the ball out for a jumper when he really should just lay it in the hole because he is so uncovered at the rim. He still needs to refine his decision-making just a little bit.
This season we'll see how good JLamb and D-Mo will be with their mid-range shooting. Lamb also has a 3-pt shot but probably would find it difficult to finish with contact at the rim. D-Mo doesn't have good percentage for his 3-point shot and he also is too light to play the block against burly defenders. So he would have to hone his mid-range shot and use his speed for fastbreaks.
If they give you the 18 footer, you'll have to take it because that means they are sagging off and you can't drive to the hoop. See, you have to show the defense you CAN hit the midrange in order to establish the spacing.
We don't really need mid-range jumpers from neither of the two. Drive and shoot in the paint is preferrable. Nor do we need DMo shoot 3's, unless it's wide open. Grabbing offensive rebound is preferrable with his size and agility.
The best offense is where you dunk the ball every time up the floor. So if you're playing on Rookie Mode and you can get any shot you want, you just dunk the ball every time. If you're playing on Pro Mode and you can't just dunk every time because the opposition plays some defense, you space the floor with distance shooting, preferably always three-pointers—because they create more space to attack the rim, by drawing defenders away from the paint, and they're worth 50% more. As it happens, the quirk of NBA floor dimensions are such that the corner three is the closest and easiest to make, so you try to get as many of them as possible. If you're playing in All-NBA mode (and real life) you take the best shot you can get. But you don't forget that the best shot is the dunk/layup and the next best shot is the three, of which the easiest to make is the corner three. You try to take tons of layups and corner threes but in the end, even the Spurs, who are obsessed with the corner three, take 7 a game (link) out of 95 possessions. If they could take ten more from the corner, they would.
Exactly!!! Fans need to realize good defense and efficiency in offense will win games. Westbrook and Carmelo are the worst first tier players in efficiency last year. The more shots they took, the more likely their teams would lose. The highest efficiecy shooting throughout history of NBA is/was made by centers--layups and dunks. Tyson Chandler had the highest efficiency last year and he couldn't shoot worth a lick from 5 feet beyond. Guess what? The more shots this terrible shooter takes, the more likely his team will win. In any given game, a team will take a certain number of shots. Those shots are pretty much fixed. If a team can somehow increase their efficiency by even 2-3 %, it could mean 4-5 games by the end of the season. Every shot counts especially in a close game.
The potential revenue that he brings in is overblown by the media and fans. Revenue sharing confirms that.
revenues brought in by Lin are overblown I agree. Eg, much hooha has been made about how many Lin jerseys were sold, but as you point out, that revenue is shared amongst all the teams. Linsanity was a cultural phenomenon that pulled in many fans and new audiences but the great majority of those people don't actually translate into revenue for the team. And the idea that Lin would bring more TV revenues isn't reflected in the limited number of nationally televised games that Houston is getting this upcoming season: Rockets have 2 games on ESPN, and 4 on NBATV. That's just 6 games. (Compare that the large-market Knicks, which will have 32 nationally televised games: 5 on ABC, 10 on ESPN, 10 on TNT, 7 on NBATV.) I don't know how the local TV market is split in the Texas Triangle; maybe someone can shed light on light. People often point to corporate sponsorship, especially Asian companies but AFAIK no one has any sense of how much that amounts to; it would be nice if a journalist actually did a story on that. In any case, if Lin were a huge and easy cash cow to milk, then why was Houston the only one that made an offer to Lin? (Well, part of that was probably due to other teams not wanting to tie up offer money to Lin in the free agency period because they thought the Knicks would match anything, but I think my general point still stands.) I suspect that many people, since they aren't analyzing the issue in detail, conflate the endorsement opportunities that Lin himself gets with actual sources of team revenue, when those are obviously two separate things. I think that whatever revenue, or that intangible thing called relevancy, the Houston FO thinks they were getting by signing Lin, their evaluation of Lin as a good player to build the team around was still the major reason for signing him. The business value of Lin cannot be separated from how he is evaluated as a player; a merely average player cannot become a cash cow.
