I don't think Gasol and the now departed Warrick were bad scorers. Anyhow, any improvement the Grizz will show depends on OJ Mayo and Marc Gasol making a big leap forward.
Gay is also an important part of their team,even though he has to make more progress, especially on defense. Part of the reason,his stats were a bit lower was because of the contributions from O.J.Mayo and Marc Gasol. I think Randolph and AI will get more points on the board,but this will come at the expense of their other players.
AI is the antithesis of Shane Battier-he's an All stats no-star. Yeah, excluding last season his final year at the nuggs was decent, 45% is not necessarily bad. However if you look at the bigger picture you'll see that AI's style of play will never lead you anywhere.because a lot of those 45% attempts he had could have been a layup or higher a percentage shot by another teammate. We're not even talking about defense, where AI's gambles lead to decent steal averages at the cost of his opponent getting easy buckets whenever he overplays his opponents.
with Gay, Randolf and Mayo on the team, theres no way iverson's going to average more than 20 points. unless he just doesnt give a **** anymore and chucks up every shot.
No kidding. When I saw the thread title, I figured it was "how long will Iverson handle the Grizz before he blows his top playing for a bad team, and a worse owner?"
The Grizzlies WERE second last in terms of points per game last season... So scoring is a serious issue for them - and it's also an area that Iverson helps out immensely (although I think he's been signed to put bums on seats...) If the starting lineup is Iverson, Mayo, Gay, Randolph, Thabeet Then you're probably looking at Iverson 20ppg Mayo 18ppg Gay 16ppg Randolph 19ppg Thabeet 7ppg That's 80 points per contest, throw in some bench scoring (assuming these 3 play all the remaining available minutes) a bit of Gasol (10ppg), Conley (6ppg) and Arthur (6ppg) and it's up to 102ppg - which would have been 9th in the league last season. There's no reason to believe that the offensive talent that the Grizzlies have assembled couldn't be the 9th best scoring team in the NBA (or higher) - so having those 4 players average in excess of 15ppg isn't a total stretch of the imagination!
This team is a collection of players who are talented but don't understand the concept of team basketball. As if having Randolph, Gay, and Mayo on their team wasn't enough, they decide to acquire Iverson as well...It's like the GM realized this team wasn't going anywhere for the next decade, so he puts together a collection of selfish, talented players just for his own amusement. Who knows, the results might be better than when management was genuinely trying. It'll be amazing to see how this team performs on hardwood. I dont think they get more than 25 wins, unless the team lets the young guns (mainly Conley, Mayo, Gay, and Gasol) take control of the team and not the old cancerous farts (Randolph and AI)
Most over rated super star of the post Jordan era. He can score but he has to slaughter team chemistry in order to do it.
