We need to talk about Sengun's offense this season

a full season can't be bad luck.

draymond was right in a sense. he's way too focused on flopping and trying to get a call. it seems like half his attempts are just flailing shots hoping to hear a whistle which is weird cause he's not exactly jokic at the line.

 

He gets more game planned year by year.....

 

eric gordon probably watches him with pride. "i taught him that sucking on a lemon whiny face." "i taught him that raising your hands and why isn't that a foul?"

 

I would need synergy data or similar, but I wonder if it has more to do with him initiating offense at the top of the key or perimeter this year more vs other years, affecting his positioning for shot attempts. Also I do think defenses are keying in on him now in the scouting report as he's our first all star and we're a threat and weren't really in past years. But yes, curious as well.

 

This is a very good thread. I am a huge Sengun guy, but unlike most I don’t think Sengun got better offensively this season. It’s more complicated than that. His defense got better, but his offense I think got worse. He just couldn’t finish around the rim…at all. It was shocking to me. I was hoping his mid-range game would improve, but it was non-existent. The foul shooting has never been good but it was straight up abysmal this year. But I think u have to give him big credit for his defensive improvement this season.

If he can get his touch around the rim back and if he develops a reliable mid-range game, and improves his foul shooting, he’ll be amazing. He needs to do that next yr or I think there are legit questions about him being a true #2. Not sure what happened offensively this season, but he’s been our most reliable offensive player the last 4 seasons. I’m a believer, but he’s got to clean a lot of stuff up this offseason.

 

At some point, he stopped being a real scoring threat on offense. Not because he got worse, but because defenses got smarter. They cracked the code. Keep him away from the rim, and you're already 75% there. He’s not big enough to muscle through seasoned defenders and he’s not crafty enough to fake them out.

His game is built around a couple of old-school moves, some spins, a few hooks, but no jump shot, no real range. That’s a recipe teams can scout in their sleep.

Now, can he get better? Probably. But will he ever be as efficient as someone like Sabonis? That’s a different question. And the answer might be no.

 

OP IS RIGHT HE SUCKS AND SHOULD BE TRADED

Kidding (I'm not)

Yes, I'm kidding (or am I?)

I'm not (of course I am)

He's good he just kinda sucks.

 

sultan of spin isn't having fun anymore

 

I don't disagree with anything you wrote but I'm not sure there's a whole lot to discuss. Your post is informative and a pretty objective summary of what's happened with him. We'll just have to wait and see what he shows us next year. He's got a lot of work to do this offseason.

 

3-10 ft isn’t mid range bro.

15 ft -20ft is considered mid range. That’s anything outside the paint and half way to 3 pt line. An elbow j. A FT line J. those are mid range. I would be interested in how he shot from 15-16 ft. But as you see across the board his numbers went down. Yet Senun biased fanatics still contend he had grown exponentially this year. The numbers and in game performances do not match this narrative.

 

Warriors didn’t double him in the playoffs.

 

Yeah 15-20 mid range 21-23 long range 2 or some call it long mid range. But paint scoring is usually not considered mid range. That’s why guys like Siakim and Derozan are mid range kings hitting that elbow j or FT J. That’s 15 ft.

 

Frankly it’s a pattern that comes from poor offensive coaching. It’s not a coincidence that Ime keeps saying to take what the defense gives you and obviously every team wants all our players to take midrange shots. Throughout the playoffs people were actually surprised that all 3 of our best regular season scorers can’t make this high volume of midrange shots. I believe we took this 6th most midrange shots in the regular season but finished in the bottom 10 in efficiency.

Regardless of how good your players are at getting to the rim, decent offensive coaches create a system where at least one player can get to the rim as easily as possible. That causes the defense to collapse and creates easy high efficiency shots for the team (like corner 3’s).

Sengun is only an All Star level scorer near the basket. If you want to build around that you put 4 shooters around him. To be good offense a couple of them have to be good at pull up or contested 3’s and we don’t have any of those.

If you don’t like that, the alternative is to put 4 shooters around Amen/Jalen or you can put 3 shooters and a rim runner around Jalen. The paint has to be clear so that the only person they have to beat to the basket is their own perimeter defender. Keep attacking downhill at a fast pace. That will cause the opponent’s defense to routinely collapse and give up an easy 2, an and 1 or a corner 3.

The fact that people keep saying we don’t have good shooters is baloney. Sengun/Jabari/Brooks/Green/FVV is excellent for Sengun. That only empowers one guy out of the 3 though.

Someone like MDA would have had Sengun taking 3’s all season in order to accelerate the incorporation of Amen into the starting lineup and play at a fast pace. Sengun shot 37.5% from 3 in the playoffs and there’s no reason he shouldn’t have taken more to open up the paint and pull out Draymond so that Amen could get easy 2’s. Even if it were 32-33% on higher volume from Sengun, we would have empowered our wings to more than make up that efficiency difference without sacrificing any defense. Instead we just put incompatible pieces out there and took a lot of midrange shots. It’s extremely lazy offensive coaching. Ime’s system is designed for a veteran team where all 5 players can dribble/pass/shoot. He didn’t build the offense to suit the pieces he has.

Really bad tactics. If you have a shortage of shooters, obviously you should maximize the shooting you have. Udoka voluntarily worsened the shooting of a shooting-challenged roster.

I’m not surprised Sengun played less in the crowded areas as Ime stupidly keeps saying. Ime is the one crowding the important areas with his choices.

 

When Sabonis was Alpi's age, he was coming off the bench for Indiana. I don't see any evidence that Alpi wouldn't be able to become as efficient as Sabonis.

 

I think someone mentioned it before that looking at previous years it doesn’t seem like he had the same lift on his shots this year which seem
to affect his touch around the rim. He needs to watch film of himself from before and do so more work with Hakeem to see what he’s doing wrong and to help him with his inside and midrange game.

 

@Joe Rocket do your thing

 

I remember myself and other forum members noticing that his shooting form was much better at the start of the season.. He was practicing a lot of 3s at the warm ups and looked like he really worked on them. His ft% was up in the first 3 months about 4%. He was 47.8% from 5-9ft and 55.9% from 10-14 ft in november. And it went downhill from there. Not just the percentages but the shooting form as well, very interestingly. I can't think of any reasonable explanation, maybe increasing defensive effort and offensive role was too much for him. And he went downhill when he lost the freshness from summer.
I think he also has a mental thing with (long distance) shooting. It is not something I can put into words well but I can see the whole body movement change when he is taking shots he is not comfortable with. It is too much in his head. This even happened with the near the rim shots where he was excellent the past years. As he shot worse, he lost confidence and smoothness in everything. So while the opposing defenses paying him more attention might have been a factor, I see a problem even when he is taking wide open shots.

Finally, quick comments about some of the stats you mentioned.

1. He took 15 fga per game. The percentages say that he is taking (at most) 1 shot per game from longer distance. I wouldn't call it a shift in his offensive profile.

2. I think that's the main point.

The career low in ft% are misleading. as for free throws, he would match his career best if he converted 10 more free throws throughout the season. So, he is pretty much constant in that area.

For the 3% I am always more bothered with the fact that he doesn't (can't) take them with confidence.

The last paragraph is an excellent summary.