Jabari and Reed have the same problem: CONFIDENCE It's fatal for a shooter to doubt himself. Both guys are good shooters. They hesitate a lot and whenever that happens, you can bet that they aren't hitting shots. Jabari has gradually improved his confidence over the last few years. But he still has those stretches when he looks like what he was last night. Last night simply happened that he got a lot of open looks and he had to shoot them. (BTW, I absolutely think Ime should have sat him when Jabari was in that condition.) Same thing can be said about Reed. When he is not hesitant and just shoot naturally and confidently with his rhythm, he is fantastic.
next time Bari has a few decent game those people will regain confidence and claim Bari the franchise player again
yes they both lack of confidence, but i think Reed has true shooting talent unlike Bari is just an average shooter who's over-hyped as "a 7-footer who can shoot like...". Reed will break out once he adjust to the NBA games as time progress but Bari will never reach that promised land
Jabari is being asked to hit the same wide-open jumpers he always has and he's failing miserably. They aren't asking him to do anything different than before. The problem is he's a mental weakfish who has crumbled when the team is vulnerable and needs him the most.
This is Jabari's 4th season. I didn't see any improvement. It looks like he's okay with being a role player in his career.
I've never seen a worse 3PT performance than last game. Bari, golden sombrero: 1) Blocked 3PT 2) Airball 3PT 3) Side backboard 3PT 4) 0-10 3PT
Otto Porter Jr is a 3-and-D player with a career average three-point shooting percentage of 39.7%. Jabari's three-point shooting percentage never above 37%, and is not a good defensive player. He is more like Marvin Williams or Channing Frye
Firstly, he failed this week. Secondly, the bolded proves my point. A free throw at the end of the game to to tie the game is NOT the same as a free throw to start the game. Any player will tell you that. Those open shots in that 4th quarter, these buckets, they were NEEDED, because no one else outside of KD could score. Jabari rookie season was not ever taking this many shots because they never upped his role outside of 4th/5th option. In fact, this was his career high in attempts. Just hard disagree here. Being the 4th/5th options is DRASTICALLY different than the 2nd option, we know this is true, because of how players are paid and who teams go to when they need buckets. Sure, on paper, to you, it looks different, but to the player, it's not. It's easy to make a shot when your points aren't the difference between winning and losing, much harder when you know the entire team is depending on you to make the shot.
I honestly do not care that much about his %, I always think fans care FAR too much about numbers. If you look at the great coaches, they DGAF about the numbers nearly as much. Across the board this is true, I'm not saying you are wrong, jsut that I don't care that much. I I'll tell you what I care about though, are players guarding Jabari Smith at three? If yes, then he's done his job, no matter if he shoots 35% or 40%, if teams are guarding him and comitting a man to him, he's doing his thing. The bigger reason why he failed last night, not even the missed shots, the bigger reason is that the Blazers literally left him open. They stopped fearing his shot, and dared him to beat them. That's why he kept shooting, because he was open, and a shooter does not turn down an open shot, to do so is a bad play. Now the coach can take the player out to prevent that, but you don't want your shooter turning down open shots on principle alone. So all this to say just that I don't think the 35/36/37% matters that much to the Rockets, of course you'd rather the number be higher, but Jabari actually loses all value if teams just play off him. Then he actually becomes a negative for the Rockets because then he makes it harder for Amen, he makes it harder for Sengun, to actually get to their game. Even his team defense which is really good, doesn't matter at this point because then he's a non-shooter. Overall, at the end of the day, Jabari by all team metrics is a positive contributor to the team. People can argue up and down that he isn't, but literally every metrick from on/off, to +/- lineups, to game score, to whatever you want to look at says this. The reason being is that on offense he stretches the floor and on defense his defense is A LOT better than what people here think it is. Especially since people here think he's a 'garbage' defender, and his rebounding has always been good, it's not as high as it should be because of him being a switchable defender and he's the stretch big, but 7rpg is nothing to sneeze at, he's not leading the league or anything but he's a factor on the boards. Based on most of this board thinking his a garbage player that adds nothing to the game, he's at this point severely underrated. But yeah, if he shoots like he did this week, teams will stop guarding him and then he'll really be a negative and I imagine all those team grades will go down and we'll be playing against a zone for the rest of year.
May be worth considering. He actually shot really well (49.2% / 37.2% / 82.4%) in the 18 games he came off the bench after his hand injury last year. That said...it's a dangerous game moving a guy to the bench because he's struggling with his shot, which is typically a mental thing. If the player sees it as a pragmatic move to help the team and they take it as a challenge, great things can happen. If they fixate on it being a demotion and get in their feelings about it, their confidence could plummet even further. Last year when he came off the bench, he could dismiss it as a result of his injury. This time around, there'd be no room for such rationalization, and I can't say I'm too optimistic about how he'd handle that.
Otto Porter Jr’s defense was nothing special to start his career. It wasn’t anything special his entire career. He’s not like Otto Porter Jr because his career 3 point percentage is 39.7, but he’s Channing Frye whose career 3 point percentage is 38.8%? Marvin Williams shot 24.5%, 24.4%, 10%, 35.5%, 30.3%, and 33.6% from deep his 1st 6 seasons in the league, but that’s the guy Jabari Smith has been like? Jabari shot 37% from deep in October, 40% in November, 37.6% in December, and then entered a major slump in January shooting 18% from 3. Jabari the 1st 3 months of this season was averaging 16, 7, and 2 on 46/38/79 shooting splits. In January so far, he’s averaging 12, 7, and 2 on 30/18/72 splits which has cratered his season averages. We’ll see if he can bounce back.
I don't think you can square these two things. Opponents care about your reputation as a shooter and how you've been shooting - it's literally in the scouting report. That's why my point is about 3.5 years. It's not about the last two games or the season to date. They're leaving him open because he now has a reputation as a mediocre shooter. This is as irrelevant as it would be if Jasean Tate was in a lot of successful lineups. If you are the reason those lineups are positive, great, that's a good sign. If you're tagging along it's irrelevant. That's why you can't only look at the metrics, we watch the games to discern these things. The way I look at that is: damn, those lineups can be way better if even Jabari can fill that 5th best starter role. There's no evidence that this is true and I'm a huge proponent of spacing. In fact what I see is shrinking gravity. He came into the NBA with a reputation as a shooter and that bought him some time. Years later, everyone has the data and he's not a shooter. He's an aspiring good shooter - that's worth leaving open especially because sometimes he'll just ditch an open shot to dribble into a turnover. If teams are leaving him wide open 8 times a game, he's not spacing the floor at all. Spacing is dependent on reputation. That's why 3.5 years matters. Reputation takes longer to build than a hot streak here and there. Jabari is a shooter and the spacing he provides is regressing. I would dare him to beat us if I'm the opponent. He can't keep a rhythm. I have no issues with his defense. It's fine. He's the 3rd or 4th best wing defender on the team. He's the best or second best PF defender on the team. Very replaceable. We drafted a shooter. A pretty good defender with a mediocre 3PT shot is not an archetype that's going to make it on this team. Again, not my point at all and I have never said that. If you lump in the crazies with the disappointed fans, of course you can cast a wide net and defend Jabari from a patched-together argument. There's honestly no defending his shooting right now and I can see that you're very passionate but still can't defend the shooting. A person who's whole offensive game is predicated on shooting can't be a below average shooter for 4 years. I applaud his effort and hard work and coachability as I do with Jasean Tate, but at twice the MLE I want more than an MLE-level player. If he were a bench player, I'd be happy with his overall production. If he's starting, we need that guy to punish teams for daring him and he's simply not done it enough in his entire career. He's never even been a top 3 shooter on his own teams. There's nothing that has increased the criticism of Jabari Smith more than Jabari Smith's 246 games in the NBA.
