Never understood the hype and the understatement of a player. Trevor is going to be a bona fide player. Allstar type or not.
he was 19 when he came out of ucla after playing 1 season. plenty of players are not a top option on their college team and become excellent pros. he's 24 years old; do you know any other 24 year old people on this planet that have maximized their potential?
i don't think you realize that what he's trying to do (become a playmaker) is not something you can just develop. he hasn't shown any particular aptitude for it. it would be like giving jermaine taylor the ball and asking him to go to work; to be honest, i think taylor would make a better project than ariza given his comfort level with being the #1 option on his teams. shooting, dribbling, fundamentals like boxing out/defense: those are skills that can be dramatically improved by hard work and desire, and are areas where we can rationally expect ariza to get better. playmaking is more of a natural talent that requires court vision, and can be refined but cannot simply be created. ariza simply does not have the court vision required to be a playmaker. i'll give adelman and co. the benefit of the doubt, so maybe they see something i don't, but come regular season if ariza is still struggling when we put the ball in his hands at the top of the key, i hope they stop trying to turn him into something he's not. as is, we have much better options to fill the playmaker role than ariza (brooks, lowry, even chase).
there's more than enough shots to go around on this team. they're going to need buckets from somewhere.
Also it took Turkoglu 5 seasons to become just 2/3rds the player he is today. Ariza could turn out to be better then him nobody knows. This very well could be the season Ariza puts up 15 a game. He has been improving that is all that matters right now it is just taking him a bit longer is all from expectations most are being decieved into. Only 4 guys i look foward to seeing progress this year Ariza, Brooks, Pops (if he makes the team), and Budinger and McGrady if he counts. The rest we already know what to expect Battier, Scola, Landry, Hayes, Lowry etc. Andersen is another one, but considering he is one of the older ones of the bunch i can already invision expectations from him being another Jeff Foster.
i have no problems with ariza taking shots. i have a problem with giving him the ball at the top of the key and waiting for him to create the shots. it isn't efficient and he simply isn't good at it and likely never will be. let brooks, lowry, or chase start with the ball and let ariza do what he does best, spot up or slash to the basket. he'll end up with a much better shot and a much better chance of success. giving him the ball to initiate the offense rather than finish it is putting him in a position to fail.
i think it's very likely that once the regular season starts we're going to see it a lot less often. adelman isn't stupid and i trust him as much as you do. from what i can see, letting ariza start with the ball up top is like letting chuck hayes post up. you let him do it once in awhile so he doesn't feel neglected, but you don't go to that well when you're thirsty for points. and you certainly don't expect the result to be pretty.
rockets.com rockets / thunder recap apparently I was right about that whole "rick adelman" thing. looks like he wants him to develop, who knew?
Correct. RA is building him up and try to find his confidence level. He's allowed to do shoot more, especially play within the offense. Nobody expected him to bring the ball up or be the point forward. As for efficiency, transition game and 3 pointer are his strength. No doubt about it.
i guess time will tell. ariza can get better by being more decisive, but i doubt rick really thinks ariza is someone that should have the ball in his hands to initiate the offense. notice that he said the same thing about lowry, who is in a much different place than ariza as far as playmaking. all that quote tells me is that adelman is using the preseason to see what ariza is and isn't capable of. giving him the ball when the team is up big in the preseason is about as low-pressure an environment you can give a player. it makes sense that adelman wants ariza to gain at least some familiarity with creating his own shot and improve at it, but don't expect it to be a staple of our offense.
i agree that adelman is using the preseason to build ariza's confidence. there is nothing wrong with ariza shooting more. there is something wrong with expecting him to develop into someone who can initiate the offense (which is what seclusion is suggesting). ariza can stick to the transition game and the spot-up 3 and still put up more shots than he did in LA; he doesn't have to develop into something that he is not and probably will never be (a playmaker).
Maybe he's pointing towards a developing overall game. I don't mind him taking the occasional floater, step back fade away, Kobe spin move towards the basket, big hang time lay up. Those moves were great if he can do it consistently. I think seclusion meant he can try to dribble sometimes, which I think he aint bad at. The main ball handler would still be Aaron or Kyle in this case.
i'd say that's a reasonable expectation of his developmental capacity. he certainly has the athletic ability to develop a couple go-to offensive moves. but he isn't going to be someone you give the ball and expect offense from, nor should he be expected to.
I doubt Ariza ever develops much more than what he is now, his efficiency probably goes up, but he is not, nor will he ever be, a lead player. And, we are not paying him as a lead.....so it was still a good deal... DD
That makes no sense. It's almost like you're just throwing around the word 'efficiency' because you like the way it sounds. There's no way Ariza's efficiency goes up this year, and that's not even a knock on him. There's no way any player's efficiency should be expected to go up after moving from the role Ariza had with the Lakers, to the role he'll have here in Houston.
Why can't a 24 year old player get more efficient? What you say makes no sense. His role is different but it is not one of a leader, it is come in and be a cog in a team oriented system. And he can be very efficient in that role, it is when he tries to do too much that he will struggle. He is what he is a good defensive player with a spot up shooting game, and some slash......nothing more. And I find it hilarious that people hated on Von so much for being on 4 teams in a few years...yet fail to see Ariza has done the same thing.......sometimes situations dictate perceptions. DD
Ariza is already pretty efficient, his career fg% is 47%. Unless this is one of the extremely rare instances on the internet where someone includes something other than shooting in "efficiency", I don't see how that's one of the things he needs to improve on.
DD, I am disappointed in you. How can you compare a player who never really cracked the rotation outside of Houston to a player who was in the rotation of all 3 teams (New York, Orlando, Lakers) he has been on. He was a starter for the Lakers during the end of last year's season and the playoffs. Never mind. I know what you thought there. BUT I think they Trevor is much more emotionally stable ( watch the Rudy Fernandez incident) and mature than Von Wafer.
