Effort vs Talent - What on earth is Ariza lacking?

chosed? wtf is chosed. sorry.

 

I think chosed equals chosen

 

he is lacking a superstar mentality

 

It certainly is not effort. Trevor Ariza plays about as hard as any player I have ever seen. His defense is fantastic.



Offensively, he is learning and exploring his game more than he ever has before. The open 3's will fall eventually. Can he develop into something more? Good question, It will take time. We need to let it happen, and realize it will not come over night.

 

*Reads choosed*
*Glances at keyboard and notes the distance between the "N" and the "D" key, still giving the OP the benefit of the doubt*
*Reads chosed, again. Stops reading original post."

 

I disagree with this. Ariza is terrible at defensive rotations. I am not sure if it is laziness or he just doesn't know where to rotate. Perhaps he is tired with the offensive load and saves his energy on D, I dunno, but he could do a heck of a better job than he does. Hes a good man to man defender because of his length (we saw this in a short span vs Kobe) but his team defense leaves alot to be desired. I think this is why we saw him on Durant tonight, if he got beat on defense, Battier could rotate over and help out. If roles were reversed Im not sure you could count on Trevor to cover if Shane gets beat.

 

Talent. he lacks

 

Thats why i laugh when people say its easier to put up good numbers on poor teams. I'm not calling the rockets a poor team, but as a wing when you get the best defender on the court, thats different. When you don't have anyone that has to be doubled, that tough. When you're not accostumed to being a scorer, thats also tough. His talent is he's a good role player even if everyone is a role player. He's a guy that needs another guy. He's a 12-15 ppg type of wing player who plays good defense and can guard 3 positions with his length.

I don't really worry about ariza because after this season, maybe he will get stronger and be stronger with the dribble. I also think his shot recognition will get better. Thats a major hurdle for inexperienced guys is recognizing a good shot at junctures in the game. Even if you're not hitting long range and you shouldn't hesitate, you have to learn how to get easy,makeable hoops. I've said it before, 23'9 is 23'9 no matter how open you are. When 23'9 isn't going in, chop it half and get to 15 ft.

 

lack of talent on the offensive end and lack of effort on the defensive end

 

skill is a part of basketball, or every player can play like kobe bryant

 

Ariza has doubled his scoring average, and a lot of people in the media are probably looking at that and thinking he's a much improved player. So, I do think this shows its easier to put up numbers (superficially) on a team lacking stars otherwise.

More minutes + more shots + more freedom to take bad shots = "better" numbers

If Ariza can develop into a very good pullup midrange shooter then I agree with you on that. The problem is he's shooting even worse from midrange than from 3-point range this season. HoopData shows he's 3-17 on shots between 10 and 15 feet. He's 12-41 on shots between 15 and 23 feet. That means he's 26% on his midrange jumpers, which is just awful. In fact, when you also factor in that he's 3-18 on shots within 10 feet but not right at the rim, that means he's 18-76 (24%) on shots that aren't 3-pointers or aren't at the rim! Clearly, has yet to learn how to get himself good, on-balance shots in the in-between range.

 

His offensive set of tools are not there, it has nothing to do with effort, that's no doubt about it. He's done offensively, other than jacking up 3s from behind the arc, in no possible way can he improve his offensive skill through practice.

Talent is not in his gene pool I may say, no matter how hard he push himself, there's one point where he can't jump over, role players without talent can only be role players.

 

Can he put his effort into developing some dribbling talent?

DD

 

To his credit, he did successfully split a double team in yesterday's game. I think that was a first for him this season.

 

Good point there, he's not dribbling as well as he was expected to, at least in my thought.

And also he tends to dribble in the middle of the bigs then stops and gets called on traveling violation. Every time he got caught up in that situation, my head seems to blow up.

 

I noticed that too, but it felt more like a blind squirral acorn moment to me.

DD

 

Everey shot you take has to be in balance. I've seen him miss layups that normally he would dunk. Also, just because you can hit a few shots from 23'9 doesn't mean its going to be auto pilot from 15ft. What i always try to tell people that when basketball players work on their game, they work on game scenerios. I cant say i was there when ariza was working on his game, but as a first go as a guy getting shots, i don't think he worked situational ball much. He probably took alot of shots from 3 pt range figuring thats where he would get shots from. I've played with guys that played in the league and saw the way they work and its totally different than what most people think. People will say, shoot 500 jumpers and 1000 free throws and everything will be straight. I can tell you first hand that eddie johnson didn't shoot more than 100 shots while working on his game, but they were situational shots. Imitating 2 dribble pullups,coming off curls for jumpers, fading baseline for jumpers, floaters and things to that fashion. As a player, you have to practice these situitions full stream and get the body into a comfort zone of being in balance. When trevor is in balance, he's a pretty good shooter. He'll never be a guy that can take a guy from 3pt range and get to the rim unless its wide open. In the nba, if a guy can start at the 3 pt line and get to the rim, there was some bad defense in there on the opposing team.

Even with all that, i think if he shot more from 15 ft, his % would go up. Now, the closer you get, the more contested the shots are, but thats another level where you have to learn to creat a littl seperation. Trevor seems to get knocked off balance alot off the dribble which goes back to the strength issue in another thread.

 

Honestly, Trevor is still trying to find his place. He keeps gambling on defense and I might just throw him off the bus, but for now this whole team is trying to figure out what the team as a unit needs from them and they are forcing things.

The reason that they want Trev to take so many shots is to get him used to the idea to take the first good shot.

In LA, that wasn't necessarily the case. At this point the coaching staff are likely, imo, trying to retrain him to "getting his" within the flow of the offense rather than deferring.

I'm more concerned with Shane than I am Trev at this point... though at least Shane doesn't cause his teammates multiple problems on the defensive end of the court.

** Seriously, Trev, if you are reading this...(yeah right) stop gambling for steals and play team defense. Anticipate a pass and intercept don't reach for a steal and put extra pressure on your teammates covering the interior when you are out of position! Thank you. **