It's more difficult than you think hitting close around those stats for a 4th year player. Tatum scored 26 points on 21 FGs but only grabbed 7 rebounds and nabbed 4 assists. Cousins, 23 pts on 17 FGs/ 12 rebounds but 3 assists and 3 t.os. One category always falls short. Sabonis gets snubbed because statsmuse doesn't like rounding up at 18.5. I'll give him the 19 points.
Forget the assists and rebounds, what I'm liking right now is his FG%. Over the last 4 games he's shooting 67%. The playmaking and rebounding has been consistent, but for whatever reason he's been missing a ton of makeable shots this season. Right now he looks significantly more comfortable and is getting them to actually fall like he did last season. Hopefully it's not just a blip and he can maintain it. His whole arsenal seems to open up more when he's actually making the shots around the rim. If Thompson is out for a while we're really gonna have to lean on him for playmaking.
Let's look at one of the GOATs, Lebron. He averaged 27.3 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 6 assists in year 4. Incredible stats, yet even as big and great a rebounder Lebron is, he has never averaged 10 rebounds per game in a single season his entire career. His best rebound numbers were 8.6 in year 15, which is incredibly high for a perimeter player. It's going to be hard to find another player that averaged at least (or more) of what Sengun is averaging in all 3 categories. Now, overall they might even average better in 2 out of 3 stats, but not all 3 other than those already listed by their 4th year. For example, Tim Duncan in year 4 averaged 22.2 points, 12.2 rebounds and 3 assists per game. It's the combination of high assists and rebounds that makes it hard to achieve, not so much the points although 19 points per game is really high, and that's why Sengun is special.
Also, this kind of reasoning goes both ways. Sengun did not achieve Lebron's averages and Lebron did not achieve Sengun's averages.
Yeah, his FT% is not great yet, but he is better than Duncan's year 4 FT% of 61.8. Let's not even bring up Shaq. At least Duncan raised that bad boy up to Sengun percentage in the later years of his career.
100%. Lebron is top 5 all time in the NBA, at the least. Of course if goes both ways. He is not likely to ever achieve Lebron status. That being said, it does show his numbers are pretty darn good for a 4th year player. Currently he has more points and assists than year 4 Domatas Sabonis, but less rebounds. All this shows is that Sengun is a great player, not an all time great (yet *fingers crossed*) like Jokic and the others mentioned. The vitriol so-called Rockets fans throw at Sengun for nothing less than perfect games is ridiculous and out of hand on this forum.
There are a few aspects to it. Let's look at the best 4 man combinations filtered at 100 min per game. The first 4 of them have a net rating greater than 20. It shows that these sample sizes are too small (unless you believe that they are sustainable) and there is no way the 4 man line ups that played a lot of minutes can compete with them. When you set it to 200, you see that there are 4 man lineup that played over 400 minutes. I will compare them first. F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. HOU 28 506 111.1 102.1 9.0 59.6 1.98 17.0 31.6 74.3 51.9 0.1 49.9 53.9 100.11 53.9 J. Green - A. Sengun - T. Eason - A. Thompson HOU 32 218 120.9 113.0 7.9 57.3 2.27 18.6 35.3 67.0 50.9 0.1 57.3 60.1 102.10 54.5 F. VanVleet - J. Green - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. HOU 32 518 113.5 107.5 6.0 55.4 1.92 16.4 35.1 74.6 53.9 0.1 50.8 54.3 99.15 52.0 F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - A. Sengun - A. Thompson HOU 32 352 112.7 107.0 5.8 60.3 2.07 17.6 28.0 66.5 46.5 0.1 53.0 56.7 99.49 52.0 D. Brooks - J. Green - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. HOU 38 555 109.3 103.7 5.6 53.1 1.61 15.3 32.9 76.6 53.9 0.1 50.0 53.9 100.27 51.8 J. Green - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson HOU 28 220 113.1 109.3 3.8 44.8 1.53 13.4 42.2 78.1 59.3 0.1 50.0 53.4 99.18 50.6 F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - J. Green - J. Smith Jr. HOU 28 477 108.3 104.8 3.6 54.4 1.64 15.4 31.0 73.0 51.0 0.1 49.3 53.3 99.88 50.2 D. Brooks - J. Green - A. Sengun - A. Thompson HOU 45 568 114.4 112.3 2.1 56.2 2.07 17.3 30.3 68.1 48.6 0.1 53.5 56.4 99.30 50.2 F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - J. Green - A. Sengun HOU 41 755 111.4 109.6 1.8 56.3 1.83 16.5 30.0 72.1 49.7 0.1 50.9 54.7 99.85 49.1 D. Brooks - J. Green - A. Sengun - T. Eason HOU 31 215 117.3 116.5 0.9 57.7 1.95 18.7 32.7 66.4 49.9 0.1 59.0 60.9 103.76 51.2 F. VanVleet - J. Green - A. Sengun - A. Thompson HOU 33 347 114.0 119.0 -5.0 54.1 1.88 There are 6 of them and 5 of them are combinations of the original starting 5, which played 416 minutes together. So the differences between them are decided by the remaining minutes. If you look at those, the first is 90 minutes (506-416), the smallest is 51, 3 about 100 minutes and the largest is 339 minutes. Only the last one is enough to get any stabilization of stats and those minutes are also combinations of 3-4 minute 5 man lineups. So I don't see this comparison very meaningful. Also the last one, which is missing jabari, played those extra minutes in another part of the season, when sengun was low performing etc. so it is hard to compare to the other ones and decide that this is Jabari's impact for example.Or although the first 4 man does not include jalen green, he actually played 416 minutes of that 506. It is misleading not to see his name. A similar reasoning will apply to the other ones. I hope this is enough to make my point.
He also now joins Jokic and the unibrow with most fouls drawn per game (5.6) for centers. And tied for 2nd most FTAs. Has to start capitalizing on those dollar throws
I always love these kinds of arbitrary stat comparisons. You see it a lot in baseball: PlayerX is the 4th guy since 1927 to hit .457 with 11 doubles and 9 walks with less than 7 strikeouts in the month of July
I think Sengun's FT issue is overblown probably because some of the misses happened in crucial times and are more noticeable. But he has been very consistent year over year shooting around 70% from the line. It's not good, but not terrible compared to some of the notoriously bad FT shooters. If he can draw fouls a lot, he will be a very efficient scorer.
What is Sengun's FT issue? Shooting consistently around 70% for 4 years? Sengun's FT% is overblown because some posters are just trying to overblow things about sengun. For a player who doesn't have an outside shot a consistent 70% ft is pretty respectable. And he goes to the line in clutch most by far. it can be improved but it is not a factor that costs you games or at least not the first spot you would look into.
Flashy moves... Is Alpi on a longer leash, or was this just a blowout exception? What do y'all think?
I don't think people are actually talking about his FT%. If they actually looked at his FT%, they wouldn't be complaining. Most people who criticize him just saying something general like "missing free throws." It's just a subjective narrative, not based on reality. People also criticize Jabari of missing free throws when he is one of the best FT shooters on our team.
To be fair, this is a little more substantial than that. My first reaction was due to overlooking the "fourth year" player part and expecting something similar to your example. I still find it arbitrary, but not as bad. Like, fourth year is more meaningful than under 22 years and 257 days. I think nobody will have that aftertaste —except absolute haters, whose problem is taste in general and not just aftertaste, if he manages to round up to 20-10-5. I guess he can make it to 5 assists by the end of the season, but the points might be difficult. I'd like to see it happen though.
