The worst shooting season in the history of the NBA/ABA

http://on.nba.com/1vionVS

His shot selection was fine

One of those 3's was on the quarter time buzzer, did you even watch the game?

 

We don't win that game without Smith. I'm sorry, were you saying something?

 

Worse than Kobe?

 

Yea if we aren't on the right track right now, then I would love to see when he does get on the right track... But in all seriousness it is something that concerns me, but lat night's 21 fga was much more about matchups, and Harden feeding it to him while slashing than anything. He had 2 bad shots compared to 19 good ones. I'll take that any day.

 

no, and apparently he hasn't been reading all the other Josh Smith threads where this stat is being discussed multiple places.

/merge

 

when bad shooting comes up, i always blame depth perception.

 

Cherry pick much? I have two points.

2014-2015 isn't even half-way over and his other 10 seasons suggests that he is a more efficient scorer than that number suggests. We are not talking Ricky Rubio who has never had a season shooting over 40 percent.

My second point is that Josh Smith is an elite defensive player, who is a well above average rebound, shot blocker, and passer. Career wise(before Detroit), he was also an elite finisher an the rim.

 

Regression to the mean.

If no one in history has ever shot as bad as Josh Smith did in the first 28 games this season, then chances are that he won't, either, during the course of an entire season. His TS% probably still won't be any good, but it's likely to be similar to the 50% TS% that he got in Atlanta rather than the 42% that he got this year or even the 46% that he got last season when he was asked to play SF next to two big guys with no shooting range. Maybe even significantly better than 50% TS% if the team finds a way to get him better shots.

The thing is, with all the things he does outside of scoring, Smith is plenty valuable even as a 50% true shooting guy. Morey was ready to live with that in 2013 when Smith was a free agent before he accepted an offer to go to Detroit. He just can't be at much lower than that.

 

Why are people so set on pushing this agenda?


Root for your TEAM!

 

There were about 3-4 shots I didn't like.

1) contested drive on Gasol.
2) Mid range jumper at the top of the key
3) turnaround jumper at the left elbow (he made this)
4) 3 from the left wing (airball)

The 4 above were bad, and he needs to learn to rely on the offense to generate better shots.The other 17 attempts were good shots. One to two misses were fouls that should have been called.

It tells you something that he's not a very good shooter yet he was completely indispensable yesterday.

 

Josh Smith was stuck playing the perimeter in Detroit with Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe clogging the interior. PF has been Smith's best position for a long time. When the Pistons signed him in 2013, I was sure Monroe was going to be traded because that front line obviously wouldn't work. When SVG took control this summer, I thought he would be smart enough to realize it. Maybe there is a virus in Detroit that wipes out common sense.

Now he's playing his natural position, didn't come here with a large salary, doesn't have huge expectations on scoring and is on a team with a clear philosophy and purpose that is ready for a championship run. Josh Smith can now focus on doing what he does best: Virtually everything except shooting jumpers.

Is this so hard to understand? Clearly some of you have no clue what Josh Smith was before Detroit. He was an excellent basketball player that does a lot of things very well.

 

Shouldn't the fact that he is in his 11th season and has never shot this poorly before along with the fact that we're only 1/3 into the season signal reason for optimism that this is anomaly rather than what you're attempting to suggest? The law of averages would seem to suggest that we've already seen the worst of Josh Smith and he is due for some very good games. That will be my expectation until I'm given reason to think otherwise.

 

Wow, I can believe Darnell Murray missed this. He just wasted Tariq Black and 2 million dollars. We need to fire him because he didn't do his research on basketball-reference.com

 

Last season was also under a specific negative condition-- playing SF next to 2 bigs who can't shoot-- plus no good floor spacer at the guards, either.

I am hopeful he can get above .500 TS%. The one worry that I had was whether he's lost too much athleticism (ESPN noted that Smith had very few dunks this year in Detroit), but at least judging by last night he's still got plenty of explosiveness left. And he's doing a lot of positive things outside of shooting, too. Despite the 9-21 FG shooting, Smith was a big positive. What makes him valuable is he can have inefficient shooting nights and still be a net positive for his team.

 

If you want to analyze the shot at this way, you will probably hate 80-90% of the shots Harden took.

Most of the shot Harden took were contested or with high degree of difficulties.

Even with the above 4 bad shots you mentioned :

1. the long 2 at the top of the key is a open good rythem shot, and it was in and out.

2. the turnaround at the left elbow is not that bad of shot considering he is a lefty.

3. the airball 3 was passing around by everyone standing outside of the arc when the shot clock was near the end.


Its so unfair for people to judge whether he took 21 shots are good or bad.

You have to look at the game and see if his teammates are playing good when he was on the floor and how much he contributed.

Harden had some 4-20 games also but the Rockets won't won those games without him.