Why is it more telling. I don't think it's a fair comparison until Francis has had as many season to improve. It may not even compare with 4 seasons since Francis missed so much of his third season. But four is good enough. Also Nash having Dirk is a good point. I mean if there was someone else on the Rockets that constantly demanded a double team Francis' shooting percentage would be higher too. As his Francis is the one guy other teams double.
So let me get this straight : if Francis averages .3 more assists and .69 - 1.19 less turnovers per game (based on last year's numbers), he becomes an acceptable point guard? The fact that Francis is a bad point guard won't be rectified by him adjusting his stats by the amount you stated above. If it does, it says more about the ignorance of the fans critiquing him more than it does anything about the improvement of his play. Good, now tell us how many first round picks haven't led their team to the best record in the NBA - I suppose they all suck or are inferior as well. Talk about shallow arguments. Is Steve Francis a bad point guard? Yes. I contend no mere .3 assist improvement combined with 1 less turnover per game is going to markedly improve his game. The only thing that will improve Steve's game is him learning basketball. Steve can't read defenses well other than on alley oop plays. Steve can't run a fast-break. Steve can't make great entry passes to the post.
What? Where do you get .3 more assist? I never said that. You need read again that I wrote. And my reference to Dirk is to negate any suggestion that "youth" is a reason for a struggling season. Some one brought up that Nash wasn't the leader of the Mavs. So, I agreed. But that means that Dirks is. Remember, Dirk is in his 5th year. Dirk knows basketball. He has very few holes in his game. Francis knows flash, and dunking. He has a lot of holes in his game.
Having great players around you makes it much easier to play. I promise you that when teams are designing a game plan to stop the Mavs, stopping Nash is about the fourth thing they are worried about. Teams are more afraid of Nick Van Exel than they are of Nash. So yeah, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to slip to the hole sometimes. Also the fact that you don't want to leave Dallas' shooters open to help on Nash makes it easier for him. If Nash was the number on thing teams diagrammed to stop on the Mavs, his numbers would plummet. If every time he tried to drive, he had people collapse hard on him, his scoring would go way down. And if he was passing out to Posey and Griffen instead of Finley and Nowitski, his assists would go way down too. The PG arguement so many Rocket fans make are overly simplistic. We could get Jason Kidd in here, but if the only thing we had him do was dribble up, drop the ball down to Yao or Mo Tay then hang out at the three in case the ball ends back up to you, he wouldn't be nearly as effective. Also, the main people so adamant that we need a "real" PG are the same people that want to run the offense through Yao. This doesn't make any sense. The main reason to have a distributing PG is to run the offense through him. Let him decide who gets a shot and where. That means moving Yao out of the post and making him just one of several options. Look at the recent teams with great centers, and none of them had great distributing PG's. How many assists would Jason Kidd average if his job was to dump the ball down to Shaq every play? So much of this Steve hating going on is ridiculous. People are overestimating the amount of talent on this team. Just look at the roster purely by contribution - not potential. Above average center Below average PF Average SF average SG Above average PG Steve is clearly our best player. All of the hype and excitement surrounding Yao Ming has so many people wanting to see him play and see him try to make plays. but at this point in his career, he's not nearly the offensive player that Francis is. So yes we should take advantage of Yao in the post - especially whe he has a big advantage. But we should also continue to exploit the fact that no one can guard our best player. So, I think the answer is to move Steve to the two if only so we won't see any more threads like this one. Maybe if he has SG intead of PG next to his name, it will make some people feel better. Actually, once we move him to SG, I don't want him to pass as much as he does now. I want him to try to score every time he gets the ball. I want him to become more selfish. It's what this team needs from him. (And Yao as well. They both need to be a little more selfish)
Nash isn't asked to break people down off the dribble? He's asked to do that whenever he's in the game. The guy is a maniac at dribble penetration. You think Steve will play smarter and more under control? Thus we should add Antoine Walker? This probably doesn't even warrant a response, but maybe two negatives equal a positive?
If he moves to SG then I totally agree. The only person Steve should ever have to pass too is Yao unless he is being double teamed. These two players need to be the focus of the offense and the rest of the guys need to hit their shots when the stars are being doubled and kick it out to them. This style of play doesn't work the PG because he then has too many other responsibilities. If he stays at point his 1st pass should be to Yao. If it comes back out he should check for the open man and start the ball that way. IF more than one pass is needed we may be SOL hoping the other players will make the second pass to get the open shot. If there is no one open then Steve needs to get his shot. The funny thing is that I believe this is a concept Rudy T can grasp since that appears to be what he's been trying to do with Cat and Franchise for the last 3 years. My issue with Rudy is that he doesn't appear to be capable of developing talent. We need to bring in some veteran assistants or get a coach who will.
you said So seeing as Francis averaged 6.2 assists last season, that would mean he need to increase his average by 0.3 apg. With me so far? And then Doc also said he would need to cut the TO by .7 to 1.2 a game to meet your 2.5 - 3.0 TO a game to meet the standards you set out. So where did Doc go wrong?
i was pointing out that they are 2 different players. maybe steve will never be the floor general that nash is, but nash will never be a scorer/rebounder that steve is.
Marbury in his 3rd season as a 21-22 year old had 9.3 APG to 3.1 TOPG. Francis in his 4th season as a 25-26 year old had 6.2 APG to 3.7 TOPG. Youth and inexperience can no longer be an excuse. It is time for Francis to decide what kind of leader he is. And if he is wishy washy at all about his commitment to make his teammates better first, and score 2nd, we need to move him to the SG or to another team.
what team was Marbury with then? Who else were on that team? both seem a little turnover prone. Rocket River
Is this the same Marbury who couldn't lead the Nets to the playoffs, who was traded player for player, and the subsequent point guard led the same Nets team to the Finals, while Marbury took a playoff team and led it to the lottery.
haven't read the entire thread yet, but the reason nash's numbers go way up are 3 fold. 1. he wasn't playing injured. the yr before dirk exploded he was playing with a bum ankle and achilles. 2. he had competition. the mavs had just signed howard eisley and it motivated him more. yeah, i know howard eisley. but back then nash didn't have the reputation he has now. 3. his confidence soared after the world championships when he carried canada to a medal.
Totally ridiculous comment. Rick Adelman: "I think you have to give Steve a lot of credit," Kings coach Rick Adelman said. "We couldn't stay in front of him at all tonight, whether he played the pick and roll or not. Sometimes the guy gets it going. I think he's concerned about Nash.
Post his 2nd year Marbury has been fairly consistent in assists (never less than 7.6 with a high of 9.3), TOs (high of 3.6) and points (never less 20.4) all despite playing for some teams good enough to make the playoffs in the west and a team bad enough to win the 1st pick. Interestingly, Francis is similarly consistent past his 2nd year, never less than 20 PPG, but never more than 6.5 APG (low of 6.2) and never lower than 3.3 TO (high of 3.9)--all with playing on two teams with a winning record with one terrible team that also got the first pick sandwiched between. In sum they have amazingly comparable profiles--except that Francis averages almost 2 fewer assists and an extra half a TO. It cuts both ways. This is the same Marbury who was the steady hand in leading his team (with bunches of injuries and a 20 year old rookie PF I might ad) into the playoffs while Francis was leading his more or less healthy team to the only postseason place it has ever been--the lottery. This is also the same Marbury who has played on one of the worst teams in the league (NJ 99-00) and still managed eight and half assists per game. This all supports a couple of points. 1) Don't expect drastic changes in Francis assists just by adding a couple of better shooters. Marbury has never had the quality of shooters (even if he had some good players) around him in the other 4 positions as what Francis had available to him this year yet still got 1-3 more assists every year he has played. Correlary 1a) If Francis is going to be a point guard that makes his team better he has to alter his decision making and level of discipline--just having more shooters won't do that. In fact you could hardly be any more consistent in A & TO than Francis has been across very different situations in these 4 years--the only problem this level even if consistent just isn't where it needs to be to best help the team. It probably isn't realistic to see him get 8 APG and to get his TOs down to around 3.0. More and more I am leaning that we need a 1 or combo 2 who can organize the offense and handle most the routine ball handling. Heck, if AI (who I think understands the game better and is more tenacious than Francis) couldn't handle those extra PG responsibilities without distracting from his and his teams overall performance I am doubting Francis can. No shame in this, Steph and GP appear to be the only PGs going right now who can score 20 while also playing an effective traditional point guard game, and like I said if AI can accept that move Francis should be able to as well. Let's help Francis by putting him in positions to do what he does best (and there are things he can do offensively he is peerless at) and taking him out of positions he is at best medicore at.
Steve just isn't a good point guard and the team needs to realize that. He needs to go the route of Iverson and move to shooting guard.
Any assumptions that Steve will make a better SG than Cat are also assuming that we will be running a different offense next season. Their stats are nearly identical except that SF puts up more shots and obviously makes more passes. It has been suggested that players are not capable of understanding the brilliance of Rudy's offense. If this is the case then dump the lot of them (except Yao, no one questions the Yao anymore). That would be put on the coaches and scouts for not being able to evaluate or develope talent. Since we're not going to see any player or staff changes till after the Playoffs this debate will just run on and on and on until we do or don't see changes. If we do: then the staff recognizes there is a problem other than youth. If we do not: then the staff believes they are capable of teaching the youth to perform at a consistantly higher level. When we see the early signs we can start to have slightly more intelligent debates. Until mid season we won't know how much we've truly improved no matter what happens. And since April is when so many teams gain and lose playoff position we won't know anything for certain until this time next season...
So you do not consider Jason Kidd to be an effective, traditional point guard? At 4 years into their careers how do those two stack up against SF? How about one of the great point guards of our (all?) time, John Stockton? Amongst these 5 players Francis ranks: 2nd in scoring, 4th in assists, 4th in TO, 3rd in Steals, and 1st in blocks. In no catagory does he rank 5th at this point in their collective careers career. Clearly Francis is not productive enough to be our PG! Considering that these guys are the ones most often named as the best I'd say he is right on track. But since he is two good passes a game from being ELITE in the assist catagory and half a bad pass from being acceptable in the TO department lets bag him and move em him to the two or even to another team that would be STUPID enough to take a player that can't figure out how to create motion and passing in an iso offense. Come on, if we are two and a half passes from being contenders then then i'll cut off my left nu##.
I think he is clearly the best PG in the league--but Kidd has never had a season where he scored 20 or better. Like I said, GP and Marbury are the only 20 PPG scorers that IMO do all the other PG things well. I think you comparisons are misleading, you have to consider player development and PT, not just what they did when they were that age or had that experience (just check the Marbury comnparison). Stockton, Kidd, Payton, Marbury, Nash, Davis, let alone 2nd tier ones like Bibby, Cassell, Brandon, Anderson, Dre--all have had seasons with 8 and half APG and Francis has barely hit 6 and half in a season. He also has a higher career TOPG than all of them. Francis also has been remarkably consistent in these numbers each year. You can't just say chalk it up to youth either--the PG most similar to him in the way Francis can physically dominate (Marbury) has been far better in A and A/TO than any of Francis's years even when Marbury was a 20 year old rookie. Francis is a great player, but the sooner we realize he is closer in mentality and discipline to AI than he is to the other elite PGs of the last 20 years (Isiah, Magic, Stockton, Payton, Kidd, and now Marbury has a good case to be added). This is no insult, AI is a great player and his team capitalizes on his strengths and limits the effects of his weaknesses through the team concept--that is what I think we should do. Admitting what you don't do so well is just as important to finding what you do do very well.
